Tell Them:
Vote No on MAK

MAK Doesn't Work for Minneapolis. She Works for Frey.

The City Operations Officer controls the implementation machinery for every piece of legislation this council passes. She decides what gets built and what gets buried. What data reaches the council and what disappears between the hearing room and the department floor.

When you reappoint this position, you are not filling a job. You are choosing whose Minneapolis gets served for the next four years.

Roof Depot: MAK Chose Diesel Over Children

East Phillips is 75% people of color. It sits on an EPA Superfund site. The soil is contaminated with arsenic. Residents die from particulate air pollution at a rate of 102.6 per 100,000. Children have lead in their blood and asthma in their lungs that their family histories cannot explain.

The community proposed an urban farm, solar panels, housing, and food sovereignty on land that had poisoned them for generations. MAK, as Public Works Director, drove the plan to demolish the Roof Depot warehouse, crack open the cap on arsenic contamination, and run 888 diesel vehicles through the neighborhood daily. She did this over the objections of the community, Ward 9's representative, environmental justice advocates, and the American Indian Movement.

When the community finally won the right to purchase the site, the mayor's office canceled a negotiation meeting because they were "uncomfortable" with a planned protest. That is the culture MAK has built: a city government more afraid of accountability than of poisoning children.

Concrete on Sacred Ground

After Camp Nenookaasi was evicted three times in four weeks in early 2024, city crews dumped piles of concrete rubble across two vacant lots in Phillips and Cedar-Riverside. Not to build. Not to remediate. To make the ground so hostile that human beings would not try to rest there again.

These lots sit inside the American Indian Cultural Corridor. Inside the Southside Green Zone. They are suitable for housing. They could hold homes. Instead, they hold the city's waste. Placed there on purpose. Under the operational authority of the office MAK leads.

MAK Overruled Her Own Staff, Then Withheld Their Findings

In 2022, before she was even confirmed as Public Works Director, MAK unilaterally reversed years of staff work and stripped 24/7 bus lanes from the Hennepin Avenue reconstruction, proposing that dedicated transit lanes convert to parking during off-peak hours.

In March 2022, her own Public Works Department conducted an internal risk analysis. It found that dynamic bus lanes posed a "moderate to high risk" to the $60 million Metro E Line rapid transit project through most of the day, from 6 AM to 10 PM. That analysis was not included in the presentation to the City Council's Public Works and Infrastructure Committee. It became public only after Minneapolis resident Adam Wysopal filed a data request and posted the findings online. The Star Tribune reported on July 13, 2022 that Council Member Andrew Johnson, who chaired the committee, said the omission "raises eyebrows."

The entire 15-member Minneapolis legislative delegation wrote to the council demanding dedicated bus lanes. Metro Transit stated in writing that full-time lanes were "critical to the success" of the E Line. MAK's own professional staff recommended them. She overruled all of them. Mayor Frey vetoed the council's 8-5 restoration of 24/7 lanes. It took months of organizing and 20,000 constituent emails to undo the damage.

A 20% Emissions Increase Is Not Climate Leadership

MAK's biography highlights a climate summit she organized in the Legislature. That was a decade ago. Her climate record in city government: she championed expanding a diesel fleet where children die from air pollution. The city's own assessment said the Hiawatha Expansion would increase greenhouse gas emissions by 20%. She sabotaged transit infrastructure foundational to reducing vehicle emissions. She oversaw dumping construction waste on residential land instead of investing in green infrastructure.

MAK Is the Shield. Break It.

This council has spent two years passing legislation that the executive branch ignores, slow-walks, or defunds. You voted to defund the mounted patrol; the police department found other money and kept the horses. You funded emergency housing vouchers; they were not implemented.

A veto is visible. Administrative obstruction is invisible. It leaves no fingerprints. And it all flows through the City Operations Officer.

During the 2026 budget markup, MAK told this council: "I plead with you, the mayor's bright fluorescent line has been no layoffs." She does not plead for the residents of Phillips or Cedar-Riverside or Ward 10. She does not plead for transit riders or unhoused families. She pleads for the mayor's line. Because that is who she works for.

A Rubber Stamp Is Not a Partnership

You were elected to govern for the whole city. She was appointed to govern for one man's political survival. That is not a partnership. That is a rubber stamp.

Do not reappoint MAK. Demand an operations officer who treats Phillips, Cedar-Riverside, and Ward 10 with the same urgency as Southwest. Who treats transit riders with the same respect as parking seekers. Who treats unhoused residents as constituents, not obstacles to be buried under rubble.