Alliance for Metropolitan Stability
Background and Purpose
The Alliance for Metropolitan Stability (Alliance) is a coalition of organizations advocating for public policies that promote regional equity in the metropolitan area. The Alliance unites more than 20 local grassroots organizations in calling for equity in the Twin Cities metropolitan area by linking issues that have not been traditionally viewed as interdependent. The Alliance's mission is to engage communities in working together to eliminate geographic, racial, and economic disparities and achieve a healthy, sustainable, and equitable environment for all residents of the Twin Cities metropolitan area.
The three strategies of the Alliance are to work for racial and economic justice in its own work and to advance racial and economic justice work in the region; to provide capacity-building support and assistance to organizations engaged in grassroots organizing for regional equity; and to advance equitable development strategies throughout the region.
Current Request
The Alliance is requesting second year support for the East Metro Organizing Project to bring technical assistance and training about community benefits agreements (CBA) and comprehensive plans to organizations in Saint Paul and throughout the East Metro area. A community benefits agreement is a legally enforceable contract, signed by community groups and by a developer.
CBAs may include such things as living wage requirements, first source hiring preferences, job training programs, land banking and affordable housing set-asides, transit integration, environmental cleanup, and other provisions. Through the agreement, the developer commits to specific actions as part of the development project. Often implemented in instances where a project is receiving public subsidies, CBAs are based on the premise that the particular needs of a community should inform the ways in which development in that community takes place.
CBAs give communities a means to articulate their visions, identify key issues and craft solutions to address these issues. CBAs have only been in existence nationally since 2001. The Alliance has been an early leader in Minnesota in proposing the use of CBAs to link community investment directly to community identified needs.
The Alliance will also be involved in providing its Comprehensive Plan 101 trainings to community leaders in the East Metro. State law requires every city in the metro area to submit a comprehensive plan to the Metropolitan Council every 10 years (all are due December 2008). These plans are required by the Minnesota Land Use Planning Act to lay out each city's vision for transit, open space and affordable housing, among other things, for the decade to come.