Star Tribune

Bosacker is leaving the top-paying job in the city for a journey abroad.

​From the 'what a refreshing idea' and 'if I could only do that' departments:

Steven Bosacker, the Minneapolis City Coordinator for the past six years and one of the most powerful employees in the city, is leaving a job he likes because he wants to spend a year traveling the world.

Bosacker was the city's highest paid employee as of 2010, reportedly hauling in a base salary of $147,154 that year. But good for him -- he's managed his money wisely and is clearly motivated by travel more than income.

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Aren't these phones cool? Thieves think so too.

​Attention, idiots who walk down dark Minneapolis streets at night while obliviously staring at your fancy phones -- thieves are out there, and if the opportunity presents itself they may leave you iPhone-less.

A police alert issued this afternoon by the city of Minneapolis warns about a recent rash of smartphone thefts throughout the city.

And no, there is no app to keep thieves away -- just good ol' fashioned common sense.

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St. Paul: Lots of colleges, but declining literacy.

​Instead of creating a new food and beverage tax to help fund a Vikings stadium, perhaps the Ramsey County Board should invest in libraries.

The annual Central Connecticut State University literacy study ranked Minneapolis as the third-most literate city in the country in 2011, behind only Washington, D.C. and Seattle.

St. Paul? Things are apparently going to hell in a handbasket on that side of the river, as for the first time since 2005 the capital city fell out of the top ten, all the way down to 12th overall.

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The city's 2003 plans imagine a Metrodome-less downtown.

​The Metrodome, in its current form, has become an afterthought in recent weeks as Gov. Mark Dayton and Mayor R.T. Rybak push for the Vikings to stay somewhere in Minnesota.

Though one Rybak proposal imagines an $895 million renovation of the Metrodome, it seems obvious that the 'Dome's days as an NFL stadium are numbered. Will the city load up the 30-year-old venue with dynamite? And if it does, what will downtown look like without the stadium?

The city has a plan on the books examining that very question, the Downtown East / North Loop Master Plan, which came out in 2003. In a plan designed to "encourage renewed interest in living, working, and shopping in downtown Minneapolis," the city considered the increasingly likely scenario in which the Minnesota Twins and Vikings no longer needed the Metrodome.

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Wikimedia

The city wants you to know what's in your kid's toys.

​That little phrase on the side of your kid's toys, the one that says "Made in China"? Well, most concerned parents already know that sometimes that phrase is the  English translation of "Bathed in lead paint - Toxic, little kid fall down go boom."

But now people can find out for sure. The city of Minneapolis is offering to test kids' toys for lead paint, free of charge, over two planned dates in the next month.

The city's offer is not exactly preemptive, but rather, a perhaps overdue effort to quell a disturbing trend: Last year, 79 children in Minneapolis tested positive for lead poisoning. It's unclear which kids were exposed to lead through the paint in their homes, and which came across it through toys made on the cheap, but the city's at least trying to head off the unnecessary tragedy of a child being made ill during playtime.
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Lori Gildea is a powerful woman who just insulted you.

​The Minnesota Supreme Court visited Brainerd last night, as part of a "community dinner."

Borrowing a page from Sarah "real Americans" Palin, Chief Justice Lori Gildea took the opportunity to insult the Twin Cities, flatter Brainerd, and embarrass herself.

Fortunately -- or, in Gildea's case, unfortunately -- a reporter for the Brainerd Dispatch was there and caught Gildea's odd assertion.

"I'm so happy to be in real Minnesota," Gildea said.

Okay, well, maybe Gildea was just coming down from an acid trip, and couldn't tell if she'd actually been in the state of her birth. Let's give her a chance to explain.

"Outside of the Twin Cities," Gildea clarified.
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We're number 6! We're number 6!

​Minneapolis, and the fortunate state that hosts it, get named to all kinds of lists all the time. Hell, City Pages already put out something this morning that seemed like ironclad proof that we're the best state in the union.

In yet another list, Minneapolis has been named the sixth best  city in the country. But this one's a little different. Compiling a list of lists that considered environmental factors, health, and technology, Minneapolis came in No. 6 in the "Best of the Best" rankings from Scientific American.

Science! See, we knew we were great, and now science has confirmed it.

Unfortunately, we came in just after New York City, home to those Gawker-sters who couldn't deign to rank our state higher than sixth in their little poll. The good news is, we're two spots ahead of our hated hipster/bikester rivals, Portland.
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This happens a lot.

​If you've ever wondered how much money people spend on retrieving towed cars from the Minneapolis Impound Lot, City Pages has the answer: A lot.

Minneapolis drivers have paid more than $30 million in towing and retrieval fees since 2006, according to city records obtained by City Pages. The city accounts for nearly $40 million in revenue related to the impound lot during the same time.

The vast majority of that revenue goes back out the door in expenses for employee salaries, towing companies, and the lot itself. But not all of it: From January 1, 2006 to July 31 of this year, the City of Minneapolis has made more than $7 million profit thanks to towing fees and the auction sales of cars that owners don't retrieve.

In total, 208,520 cars have been towed into the Minneapolis Impound Lot, at an average of about 37,300 a year. That's more than 100 cars for each and every damn day of the year.
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Courtesy Justin Johnson.

After three and a half years, Justin Johnson will be let go from the Minneapolis Fire Department.

​It was late November, and Justin Johnson was watching a Thanksgiving youth hockey tournament at Braemar Ice Arena, an Edina rink where he worked part time as an EMT.

Toward the end of the second period, Johnson was standing ice level when he saw the referee suddenly collapse. Quickly, he hopped onto the rink and ran toward the limp body.

"He wasn't breathing and there was no pulse," he says. "It was obvious that he was having a heart attack."

Johnson began the chest compressions while a nurse went for the defibrillator. With the whole arena watching, Johnson jolted the lifeless 54-year-old's heart back into rhythm with one shock, bringing him back to life.

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The cuts will informally lower minimum daily staffing from 96 to 93.

​The already-diminished Minneapolis Fire Department is about to get even smaller.

Thirteen firefighters found out yesterday morning that they are being cut from the department, effective next month. Three will be forced into retirement, the other ten laid off.

How exactly these cuts will affect the department's service is still to be seen. But many firefighters say that the department has already been cut dangerously low over the years, and fear that more layoffs will inevitably lead to even slower emergency response times and more firefighter injuries.

"It's gonna blow up," says Mark Lakosky, president of the Minneapolis firefighter union. "There is just a bottom line to operate in a successful fire department."

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