Hello Commissioners, City staff and Minneapolis residents,

My name is Amanda Winterer and I represent the Bottineau Neighborhood Association. I am the group’s treasurer.  Thank you for this opportunity to make this statement. Bottineau Neighborhood Association requests that the funding structure and levels of funding remain the same for all neighborhood groups for the foreseeable future. The Citizen Participation Program has worked well for the past 8 years.

For example, Bottineau has established Neighborhood Priority Plans. One such NPP is the Homework Helper at Bottineau Park.  After a few Somali parents asked for this help, at a community meeting, our neighborhood group got busy and set up the coordination of volunteer tutors to help all children get STEM help at our park. Another NPP implemented is Crime Solutions that works with the police to track crime trends and react with organized volunteers when shots are fired in the community or other crimes are committed.  We have many examples of this type of outreach conducted at community request.

BNA also requests that the Community Innovation Funds, CIF, be expanded and used more. BNA was a recipient of one such CIF grant and put it to use studying air pollution around the Lowry Bridge that leveraged an additional 500,000 dollars in MPCA air monitoring that is currently being conducted on the Mississippi Water Management Organization roof top near Lowry Bridge.

As a matter of neighborhood tradition, a pumpkin carving is held at the Park every fall and a Bottineau Neighborhood and Mississippi River clean-up is held every April in honor of Earth Day. This year, as part of the Green Zones in Minneapolis, we will be able to offer 25 free trees to the community to help remediate air pollution and improve the tree canopy in Bottineau.

Thanks again for listening to our request. Copies of this testimony are at the sign in table.