A longtime Marcy-Holmes renter is running against Ward 3 Councilmember Michael Rainville this fall for the second time.

Marcus Mills unsuccessfully challenged the incumbent in 2023, and he hopes the election results will tip in his favor this November, when Minneapolis residents also vote for mayor. 

Mills was raised in Burnsville until he was 3, then his family moved to Dallas. After he graduated from high school, he decided to give the Twin Cities another shot and moved here to attend the University of Minnesota, where he studied psychology and philosophy. Mills has lived in Minneapolis’ Marcy-Holmes neighborhood ever since.

Now, Mills runs his own consulting firm that specializes in communications, political consulting, and environmental justice.

This is the first installment of Downtown Voices’ interviews with Ward 3 and 7 candidates. Downtown Voices editor Brianna Kelly spoke with Mills to discuss his campaign on April 18 at Brasa in Northeast. The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Brianna Kelly: What are some of your qualifications as a candidate?‍

Marcus Mills: I’ve been working in the energy and environment sphere for the last decade, so I’ve had a few reasonable breakthroughs. I’ve had major parts in achieving the Climate Legacy Initiative and the Minneapolis Climate Equity Plan. I’m on the Energy Vision Advisory Committee for the Minneapolis Clean Energy Partnership. The governor appointed me to the board of the “green bank,” the Minnesota Climate Innovation Finance Authority. 

I have actually been working with the City, developing relationships for a very long time, both on the council, in the Mayor's Office, and in departments.

People–the actual constituents, the residents here–need to be involved in more of the workings of things. So, one of the things I'm in favor of is participatory budgeting, getting people involved with the departments as they begin their process in February. I think that’s a big thing that will actually help the overall processes, especially if the department heads are doing a good deal to reach out to folks and they get their understanding in the initial processes.

I've been a part of the Neighborhood and Community Engagement Commission. I think we need to bring back more funding for neighborhood associations. Neighborhoods are a huge clearing house of real feedback from folks, and it keeps people understanding that somebody is listening on the regular. 

‍BK: Why are you running for City Council again?

MM: Basically, I have a general rule that is, I’m not going to run against an incumbent that I can work with. And no matter what people may think about the previous incumbents, when Jacob (Frey) was on the City Council, at least at the beginning of his run, and definitely when Steve Fletcher was an office, I could work with them. We came up with great solutions. We were working on major projects and working together in a great way. And so I didn’t see any reason to run against them.

That is not the case with Michael Rainville. I mean, just to begin with, I believe there have been conversations about lunch or coffee for the past three and a half years, and that has yet to happen. I have actual bonafides in several areas, and I live in his ward, and I’ve tried to bring solutions to him. I’ve had to go to places like the Mayor’s Office instead, because the conversation isn't nearly as worthwhile with Michael.

Then you start to look at the actual processes, the things that we're trying to work on. We both supposedly believe in housing. I want to see more low cost housing developed in this area. Michael is not in favor of rent control. He ran against it, he voted against it, and he voted against it in a way that I think is ugly. The vote at the time in 2023 happened to show up on Eid, so three of our Muslim councilmembers were not available. Instead of deferring the vote to when they could be present, not only did he vote to have it at the time, he voted not just voted it down and sending it back to the committee, he sent it back to the authors, which had already been expanded. So, he killed the idea essentially, for the time being, and did so in a way that disenfranchised a quarter of the populace and acted against the interests of over half of us. We are a majority renter city.

BK: So, it sounds like you support rent control?

MM: I absolutely support rent control. The original Framework 5 that came out and was voted on, I support that, in general.

Also, people will tell you and Michael will tell you that rent control in and of itself will slow down the market, that people won't want to build here, and I have a solution for that. What you want to do is boost the engine and create an incentive for there to be more building. So what you do is you say that any luxury developer who wants to build a building here has to make a partnership with a low-income developer to construct somewhere between 15-25% of that building as low-income housing. 

Now, usually with inclusionary zoning and the luxury developer has to build 2-5%, they want the City to defray the cost. They want the city to pay for the cost of those units, because they're not going to make the money they wanted to make. So what you do instead is you subsidize, as the City, what the low-income developer would have to pay to be a part of this building because they’re giving the City what it wants, low-income housing.

BK: Would affordable housing be one of your priorities if you were elected?

MM: It’s definitely one of them. My three priorities are housing, energy and environment, and community safety. 

I’m also very big on intergovernmental relations, because I believe our IGR department is underutilized and could really be of great effect. In general, IGR just does what they're told by the IGR committee, and we should be telling them more.

‍BK: What are your ideas for community safety?

MM: There are a number of things. Right now, we're having an issue with our violence intervenors. What is basically happening is we don't have any good measures of accountability because all of our violence interveners are from contracts, so the only accountability measure you have as the city under contract circumstance is to end the contract.

We need to bring the concept in house. We need to have it as a part of the enterprise. What we should be doing is partnering with the communities and finding folks that are respected in those communities, bringing them on as violence intervenors, and creating a system of accountability, both within the community and the City, which would be their employer.

In terms of the actual police department, we need to be able to acquire leverage over the people that we put in charge of protecting us. I think that's true in terms of the violence intervenors and the people that we regularly consider our protectors, the police. We have no leverage over them in terms of negotiation or accountability, and we need to regain that and there are processes by which to do it.

BK: What can the City do to better support small businesses?

MM: As a small business owner myself, I believe that some of the greatest things that we can do are to provide technical assistance for the kinds of businesses that we're trying to accomplish. The building of small businesses, I think, is something that technical assistance is absolutely necessary for, without question, but access to technical assistance for businesses that already exist can be crucial in maintaining the existence of businesses that help to keep our citywide economy afloat and keep families and businesses in Minneapolis.

BK: How would you serve your Ward 3 constituents differently than Councilmember Rainville has over the past few years?

MM: One of the biggest things is general availability, on top of the policy positions. Like I said, one of the things that I have been doing for the past decade is taking concepts from community ideation all the way through implementation. I've done that as a civilian, and I have yet to see Michael manage that in true form. So, getting people truly active–and I'm not just talking developers, I'm talking everyday people truly active–in the City process, so it's not just understood, it's a process that people feel welcome in and can build up the understanding to be a part of. That is a thing I am devoted to. So, making sure that I'm down here in community meetings, doing my open office hours in places that people are regularly.

BK: How would you engage people who haven’t typically gotten involved or even paid attention to City politics?

MM: What I will generally do is I will try and find folks that have been left behind in the process, and I will try and find the niche that is most useful for them. I want to go to places and meet those people on their terms, to try and understand some of the things that are going on.