> About Us > Chair's Messages August 2007

Council sets priorities for coming year

In recent weeks, members of the Metropolitan Council have spent a good deal of time talking about where we should be going in the months and years ahead.

We conducted a day-long Regional Policy Conference attended by 180 local officials, state legislators and community leaders to discuss opportunities and challenges facing the region. And we followed that with a day-long Council retreat.

Long-term changes in the Council’s direction and emphasis will require more discussion.  However, our priorities for the next year are clear:

• Collaborating with communities. The Council will work closely with communities as they complete their local comprehensive plans, which are due at the end of 2008. These plans, which must be consistent with our regional plans, are critical to ensure the orderly growth of the seven-county area and the efficient use of regional infrastructure.
• Improving transit. Construction begins this fall on the Northstar commuter rail line and preliminary engineering is well underway on the Central Corridor light-rail transit line, two critical elements in our long-range transit improvement plan.
• Funding parks. The Council is working to establish a regional parks foundation to raise funds from private sources and accelerate the acquisition of the last, best natural areas in our region while they are still available and affordable.
• Expanding affordable housing. The Council is exploring creative ways of helping communities expand the supply of affordable housing.
• Partnering with adjacent counties. The Council is striving to develop closer working relationships with the fast-growing counties immediately adjacent to the metro area on growth-related issues.

In addition, I am very interested in an idea that emerged at our Regional Policy Conference. The idea is for the Council to play a more active role as a “convener” of discussions on regional problems that might not fall within the Council’s traditional areas of responsibility.

In a sense, we already are doing this on the issue of water supply planning, using a task force of state and local officials authorized by the Legislature. Another example might be leading a discussion of municipalities getting into WiFI to determine if they can develop compatible systems.

The Council could play a valuable role in identifying issues, providing a forum for their discussion and forging proposed solutions without assuming broader responsibility for their implementation.

Peter Bell

August 2007