The Minneapolis City Council is the legislative branch of the city of Minneapolis in Minnesota, United States. Comprising 13 members, the council holds the authority to create and modify laws, policies, and ordinances that govern the city. Each member represents one of the 13 wards in Minneapolis, elected for a four-year term. The current council structure has been in place since the 1950s.
In recent elections, council membership has been dominated by the Minneapolis Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL). As of 2026, 12 members identified with the DFL, while four identified with Democratic Socialists of America (three members identify as both DFL and DSA). Until the 2021 Minneapolis municipal election, the city's government structure was considered a weak-mayor, strong-council system. However, a strong-mayor charter amendment was passed, and since 2021, the mayor holds executive power and the council has purely legislative duties.
Contents
History
Pre-charter (1850s–1920)
The Minneapolis City Council has existed longer than the city's home rule charter. The cities of Minneapolis and Saint Anthony incorporated in 1856 and 1855 respectively, each with councils of their own; in 1872, when the two cities merged, there were twenty aldermen, two representing each of ten council wards. By 1900, the council comprised twenty-six members, two from each of thirteen wards.
In 1896, Minnesota adopted an amendment allowing cities more autonomy, and debates began over how to structure the government and its council. At the time, the city had a council government with a relatively weak mayor role.
The first proposal for an independent charter shifted significant power to the mayor. In 1898, voters rejected that strong-mayor proposal. Five versions tried to organize the city in several ways and failed to reach the approval of the electorate. In 1920, the city adopted the seventh attempt at a home rule charter, establishing the city council we have today.
Home rule (1920–1999)
Over the first thirty years of the charter's existence, there were several failed plans to change the city council's role and makeup. These included proposals to change to the number of representatives or to add at-large seats. In 1929, a proposal to establish an executive mayor and legislative council gained traction after council members were caught up in a stock-market fraud scandal centering Wilbur B. Foshay; it failed to win over sufficient voters to amend the charter. Attempts to give the mayor more authority failed at the ballot box several times in this period, most notably in 1988 when it failed despite the support of mayor Don Fraser. In one of the first successful charter amendments, the city council assumed its current size of 13 single-member wards in 1951. In 1983, the term for representatives was changed from alderman to council member.
The first Black city council member was Van White, elected in 1979 to represent Ward 5. The first openly gay member, Brian Coyle, was elected in 1983 to represent Ward 6 and died of AIDS while in office as council vice president.
21st century
The city adopted instant-runoff voting in 2006, first using it in the 2009 elections.
In 2013, Minneapolis elected Abdi Warsame, Alondra Cano, and Blong Yang, the city's first Somali-American, Mexican-American, and Hmong-American city councilpeople, respectively. In 2017, Phillipe Cunningham from Ward 4 and Andrea Jenkins from Ward 8 were elected to the City Council, becoming the first openly transgender Black man and woman, respectively, to be elected to any office in the United States.
In 2021, voters approved a "strong mayor" amendment. This took away the city council's executive authority, delineating the council's role as legislative and the mayor's role as executive.
The city council passed a resolution in March 2015 making fossil fuel divestment city policy. With encouragement from city administration, Minneapolis joined seventeen cities worldwide in the Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance. The city's climate plan is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 15 percent in 2015 "compared to 2006 levels, 30 percent by 2025 and 80 percent by 2050".
In 2018, the city council passed the Minneapolis Comprehensive 2040 Plan and submitted it for Metropolitan Council approval. Watched nationally, the plan rezoned predominantly single-family residential neighborhoods for triplexes to increase affordable housing, seeking to reduce the effects of climate change, and tried to rectify some of the city's racial disparities. After the Metropolitan Council approved the plan, in November 2019 the city council voted unanimously to allow duplexes and triplexes citywide. The Brookings Institution called it "a relatively rare example of success for the YIMBY agenda" and "the most wonderful plan of the year."
In 2020, after the murder of George Floyd, nine city council members announced their highly controversial goals to disband the Minneapolis Police Department. Their plan included amending the city's charter to remove the requirement for a minimum number of officers, along with replacing the MPD with a broader public safety agency. The city council was then discovered to have been utilizing private security at a cost of $4,500 per day for three of their members. The plan made it to the ballot in 2021, but ended up failing with only 43% of votes in support of it; along with six of the nine city council members who wanted to disband the police department either voted out or having not ran for reelection.
Structure
Electoral system
In 2006, Minneapolis voters approved the use of the single transferable vote for its municipal elections. The first use of ranked-choice voting was in the 2009 municipal election. However, since the City Council uses single-member districts, the single transferable vote functions the same way as instant-runoff voting. This system of voting is commonly known in the United States as ranked choice voting.
Each member's term is normally four years, and there are no limits on the number of terms a member may serve. In 2020, voters approved a plan to amend the city charter to establish city council elections in 2021 and 2023 for two-year terms instead of the regular four-year terms, with four-year term elections restarting in 2025. The amendment also granted the ability for the city to use this method whenever regular city council elections do not fall in a year ending in a 3 in order to comply with a state law designed to require city council elections in years ending in 2 or 3 after a census.
Wards
Each city council member represents one of 13 wards. Ward boundaries are redrawn after each census and approved by the court-appointed Charter Commission. For elections, the 13 wards are subdivided into a total of 137 precincts.
Salary
Council members have a base salary of $109,846 in 2024. Raises for council members and the mayor are based on "averaging out the increases included in the union contracts they approved the previous year." The rate was $106,101 in 2021. In 2018, all Council Members were paid a base salary of $98,696 annually, plus mileage, free parking, and the usual employee benefits. This salary included an increase of $10,000 approved in late 2017.
Members
The council is made up of 13 members. The DFL holds 12 seats, while one member (Robin Wonsley) sits as an independent democratic socialist. New members took office January 2026, and in their organizational meeting, they re-elected Elliott Payne (ward 1) as council president and chose Jamal Osman (ward 6) as vice president.
Committees
The Minneapolis City Council operates through several standing committees, each focusing on specific areas of city governance. As of January 2026, those committees are:
Budget Committee
Chair: Aisha Chughtai (Ward 10)
Vice-chair: Elizabeth Shaffer (Ward 7)
Focus: Oversight of the city's budget, financial wellbeing, and approval of financial policies. Full-council committee.
Business, Housing & Zoning Committee
Chair: Jamal Osman (Ward 6)
Vice-chair: Aurin Chowdhury (Ward 12)
Focus: Oversight of community and economic development, housing policy, land-use and zoning policy, and employment and training programs.
Climate & Infrastructure Committee
Chair: Robin Wonsley (Ward 2)
Vice-chair: Soren Stevenson (Ward 8)
Focus: Oversight of community infrastructure, climate resilience, transportation, public works, utilities, and recycling.
Enterprise & Labor Relations Committee
(formerly the Administration and Enterprise Oversight Committee)
Chair: Linea Palmisano (Ward 13)
Vice-chair: Jamison Whiting (Ward 11)