As MinnPost’s metro reporter, I’m at all times attempting to get a way of what issues readers think are most vital. If a story is crying out for a journalist’s attention, I would like to listen to about it – and I even publish my direct contact information in hopes people will reach out.

With local elections coming up this November – including high-profile city council elections in each Minneapolis and St. Paul – my bosses and I assumed this weekend’s MinnPost Festival could be a fantastic opportunity to listen to what issues are rising to the surface.

So within the free “Public Square” section of the festival, we arrange a booth and asked attendees this query:

“As we prepare for local city elections this 12 months, what kinds of local stories do you wish MinnPost to cover more?”

We arrange a voting system with plastic jars and puffballs. We handed each survey participant three puffballs, color-coded by their city of residence. They voted for issues they desired to see covered more by tossing their puffballs into nine jars labeled with different issues, starting from “transit” to “basic services” to “taxes.” If participants cared more about a selected issue, we allowed them to vote for a problem greater than once by tossing in extra puffballs right into a single jar.

Listed below are the problems that rose to the highest of our (definitely unscientific) survey:

Festival attendees forged 43 votes asking MinnPost to put in writing more stories in regards to the issue of homelessness. The problems of housing costs (33 votes), race and equity (29), public safety (26), and transit (20) also rose to the highest of our poll.

Self-identified Minneapolis residents – the purple puffballs in our chart above – drove our survey results. They forged 114 out of the 202 votes in our survey, so their priorities tended to rise to the highest.

Voters from the suburbs – the orange puffballs – were the second-biggest voting bloc. For them, race and equity issues were the highest priority.

We also set out a tenth jar for “other” issues they desired to see MinnPost cover, after which asked participants to elaborate on sticky notes:

A couple of highlights:

• Several participants wanted us to devote more attention to the particular public safety issue of gun violence and gun control.
• Street rebuilds got Post-It votes. One note asked for more coverage of St. Paul’s Summit Avenue plan and one other called for coverage of Minneapolis’ Hennepin Avenue overhaul.
• Three respondents called for more education coverage.
• Three Post-Its called for more coverage of the ideological “schisms” dividing local city councils – or, as one Greater Minnesota participant put it: “Why can’t all of us get along.”

Finally, we asked MinnPost Festival-goers to rate how optimistic they were feeling in regards to the way forward for the town of Minneapolis. Most participants in our survey tended to be more optimistic than pessimistic:

These results are removed from representative of every of those communities – however it led to some great conversations with festival attendees who voted, and a few ideas for future coverage.

Do you’ve got ideas about what local government issues MinnPost ought to be covering, especially within the midst of contentious local elections? Send your feedback to our staff – or contact me, the Twin Cities metro reporter, directly.