MTN has a few staples it still airs regularly on Minneapolis channels 16, 17, or 75. Somali Media Live has been running on MTN since 1999, and is the country’s longest-running Somali language variety talk show. “We the People,” a show sponsored by the League of Women Voters, has worked through MTN for 25 years. “Black Focus,” hosted by civil rights activist Ron Edwards, has aired for 28 years. And while it’s not an MTN production, “Democracy Now” has been a longtime standby (as it has been for public access channels nationwide for years).

Walt Fehst says Columbia Heights reminds him of his hometown of Joliet, Ill. “It’s a working-class town with a lot of diversity. Fortunately, the Heights is not influenced by Chicago politics.”

Walt Dziedzic spoke his mind and fiercely stood up for what he thought would benefit his constituents, collectively and individually. Retired from elected office in 2009, Walter Paul Dziedzic died of natural causes the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and was buried on the day he would have turned 86, November 29, 2018.

Ever since a consent decree was handed down in 2017, the Northern Metals Advisory Council (NMAC) has wrestled with how to spend the $600,000 settlement. They’re not quite there yet.

The March 3, 2017 settlement called for the metal recycling company on the west side of the Mississippi River to pay $2.5 million in costs and penalties, including a $1 million civil penalty; payment for three years of continued air monitoring near the facility; reimbursement to the state for past monitoring costs, court costs and legal fees; and $600,000 to the city of Minneapolis for community heath projects to benefit nearby communities. It was also required to move its metal-shredding plant elsewhere; it is building a new plant in Becker, Minn.

A huge change in the nature of urban transportation is coming. You’ve encountered much of it: Light rail, enhanced buses, Uber, Lyft, Nice Ride, Bird, Lime. More is coming soon: Southwest and Bottineau light rail lines, enhanced bus lines, dockless bikes, more scooters. But the real change is just on the horizon: tying them all together with the “why,” as well as the “how,” a job for government at all levels.

Gil Roscoe, president and CEO of Mid-America Business Systems, rushed out the door of his office at 2500 Broadway Street NE as a pair of giant scissors snipped the red ribbon suspended across the roadway and his employees cheered from the parking lot. “I wanna see what I got for my $86,000,” he said.

Like many business owners in the Mid-City Industrial neighborhood, he was relieved and happy to see the section of Broadway from Stinson Blvd. to Industrial Blvd re-open to traffic once more. Sarah Crowley, co-owner of Wander North Distillery, 771 Harding Street NE, said her business had dropped 40 percent during the five-and-a-half months the road was under construction.

The next stage in a thorny Northeast environmental situation is about to happen, and 40 concerned Holland neighborhood residents came to the Firefighters Hall and Museum on October 30 to hear an update.

The Universal Plating Incorporated, a metal-plating operation at the corner of 19th Avenue NE and Monroe Street, became property of the state in 2015 through a property tax forfeit, and has since been the site of an extensive cleanup.