As the only current Minneapolis City Council member running for mayor, Emily Koski believes she will be able to hit the ground running if she’s elected.
Koski is currently in the middle of her second two-year term as the Ward 11 representative. When she announced her candidacy for mayor in December, Koski said she pledged to be a more present and effective leader for the City.
Koski grew up in Northeast Minneapolis, the daughter of former Minneapolis mayor Albert Hofstede. She now lives in Southwest near Pearl Park with her husband, Mike, their two kids – Croix, 14 and Iris, 11 – and Bertie the cockapoo.
Koski spoke with Downtown Voices editor Brianna Kelly on Feb. 21 about why she’s running for mayor of Minneapolis and how she thinks she could do a better job than incumbent Jacob Frey.
The following conversation, edited for length and clarity, is the fourth installment in Minneapolis Voices’ Q&A series with major mayoral candidates. All of our interviews will include questions based on responses to an internal reader survey.
Downtown Voices: This first question is a two-parter. Since you took office in 2022, what insights have you gained into our City government? How have those insights influenced your decision to run for mayor and your platform as a candidate?
Emily Koski: Because I'm a current city council member, I have a very unique viewpoint of what's happening right now. I have a front row seat.
I was so excited and so hopeful to come in as a City Council member. But when I got here, I was shocked and dismayed by the dysfunction and mismanagement of the executive side of the City, and knowing that we had a new ballot initiative with the strong mayor system, I expected a lot more.
What I saw was no strategic plan that has been done in over 10 years, no willingness from the executive side to do a strategic plan with the legislative side, no performance management system, no metrics, and continued turnover with people leaving the City.
We're on our third budget director in three years. That's just one example of how there hasn't been the ability to make sure that we are being held accountable and transparent for our residents.
I know our residents deserve better, and we’re better when we’re together, when the legislative and executive branches want to work together. That’s what residents voted for when the referendum came forward. They wanted a working government. They deserve a city that works, and they deserve to be put first, too. I’m not seeing that culture at the City. We need to make sure that we’re shifting that mindset. But we can’t do that if we're not working together, if we don’t have strategic plans and work plans within our committees–foundational pieces to any organization.
We're a $1.9 billion organization. These are things that should just be the bare minimum. When the executive side is not doing these things, that’s not going to move us forward. It’s caused us to feel stuck.
DTV: Do you think there are flaws in the strong mayor system, or do you think it hasn’t been executed well?
EK: I think it just hasn’t been executed, but we still have new things to learn. You know, St. Paul has been a strong mayor system for a very long time, so we can learn from them and some of their best practices.
When you are shifting your entire government structure in the way you think and how you move–any organization of this size would have change management consultants and organizational development leaders making sure that we're bringing this together and really making sure that we're consistently connected between those two branches as we move forward so that we could really set the foundation. This was our moment to set that foundation for future generations of our City leadership, and we missed the mark.
DTV: Is that contributing to rifts at City Hall?
EK: When I talk to everyday voters, I explain that my job is to represent you as a constituent and make sure that you come first. That means I’m also there to have oversight of the executive side. That should be something that we want, but what we're met with is defensiveness.
When council members ask questions about how things are being implemented and executed, it's not because we're trying to nitpick. It’s because we need to problem solve and work together. But when it’s met with a big pushback, that’s not putting our residents first. We can’t effectively put laws and ordinances in place if we're not really understanding and working together.
DTV: You started as an ally of Mayor Frey and eventually became one of his most vocal critics. Did anything change, or was it just due to the insight that you gained over time on council?
EK: I have a coaching background, so I’m willing to give thoughts and ideas and pushback while still feeling like we’re moving in the same direction. But, time and time again, we're making decisions that are continuing to be short-sighted, not thinking about long-term effects. I try to give my opinion and thoughts and they’re never taken into consideration, to the detriment of our residents.
I have tried, and if they don't want to listen, I can't force that, but so you have to stand up. And that's what I've done, stand up for what I think is right for residents, and that's how this has evolved.
DTV: I have to ask, can we dig into the ‘Land of 10,000 Work Groups’ comment from your campaign launch?
EK: Yeah, there’s another one that was started for downtown. I think we have almost a dozen other work groups or organizations that have put forward ideas, and I have yet to see anything come out of these work groups. I don’t see results and I don’t see action.
It’s nice to put out there in the newspaper to make it look like we're doing something, but at the end of the day, we have no results. We have nothing to show for it, and that's what we need to change.
If we want to create task forces and work groups, they have to have meaningful objectives and they have to be held accountable to bring back deliverables that we can actually take action on. We've got to come back to the community and say, ‘Here's what we've accomplished, and here's how we're moving forward.’
DTV: Let’s say you’re elected mayor. Day one, you come in, how will you work to build consensus among the entire council?
EK: I'm lucky to say that I've already started that. As a current City Council member, that's where I believe I'm uniquely qualified to be able to do this. I can take that baton, and from day one, have already had four years of building relationships with colleagues, not only on the council but also City staff.
DTV: Alright, let’s move on to some specific issues highlighted by our readers. What should the city do to address homelessness, particularly encampments?
EK: I'm not surprised this is something that the readers brought up, because it's hitting home to so many people, and we see it and it's not getting better. The reality is, we haven't done anything creative around addressing and supporting our homeless population since we opened up Avivo Village. But we know the low-barrier shelter model works.
We need to be thinking more innovatively and creatively. There are a lot of simple things that we can do. For example, an organization opened up the warming hour during severe cold weather, and I had an opportunity to go over there and talk to community members and find out what it is about the warming house that makes you feel like you could come inside and maybe get some support there.
What I’ve learned is no two people have the same story of how they’ve become unhoused. How we help people out of homelessness has to be equally as unique. That takes patience, trust, time, money, and a tremendous amount of collaboration between our jurisdictions.
On day one, I would make sure that the City would be responsible for coordinating efforts between the County, State and City. Right now, I think we all are trying to do good for our residents, but there's not a coordinated effort, and the City can kind of serve as a project manager and that hub of information for resources and efforts.
DTV: What’s your stance on rent control?
EK: Rent control is one tool for housing stability. We’ve seen it be put in place in St Paul, and we've seen the effects it’s had on our entire metro area. And, yes, we have seen a decrease in the amount of permits, construction, and investors. We're like a hot pan, no one wants to touch it, and that's the opposite of what we need.
So, I don't believe that rent stabilization or rent control policy is something that we should be investing our time and energy in right now. I think there are other ways that we can make sure that we're supporting our renters, like rehabbing older infrastructure and building new affordable and market-rate housing.
DTV: Would you push for a Labor Standards Board as mayor?
EK: The Labor Standards Board is something that I supported because I think there is a lot of opportunity for us to make sure that we have the voices of our workers, experts, and employers at the table. I think it's about bringing those voices and that connectivity together to solve problems. Without a mechanism and a structure to do it, often somebody's voice is not there. I believed a Labor Standards Board would allow us to make sure that we have the right people in the room to start having discussions about a lot of the challenges that we have.
I mean, I hear it from our small businesses all the time, the regulations that we put on them as a City. I was at a meeting the other day where a business in the area is upset because the wastewater fee that we put on is too much. They can't be the only business that's thinking about that.
What's the harm of us having a structured space for us to have those conversations and come to an understanding? That would maybe inform the City and the City Council that, yeah, we need to take a more holistic look at all of our fees that impact our small businesses, specifically.
I think this was a missed opportunity for a deeper conversation, and that's where I believe a strong mayor would come in and be able to help make sure that we understood the reasoning and the why behind all of this. A strong mayor that brings people together, moves past the differences, and helps lead them together towards a common goal. Because, at the end of the day, I know that our small businesses want to take care of their employees, so let's learn from them and our workers.
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