Elizabeth Shaffer reached the Ward 7 City Council seat after serving as a Minneapolis park commissioner, a move between two separately elected governments that share the same neighborhoods.

Shaffer represented District 4 on the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board for about three years before her 2025 council run, in which she won the DFL endorsement, outraised her opponents and defeated incumbent Katie Cashman in the November election, according to the Star Tribune and her city biography. In a ward defined by the Chain of Lakes, parkways and trails, her record on the body that runs those assets was a natural credential.
Minneapolis is unusual in having an independently elected Park and Recreation Board that governs parks separately from the City Council, with its own budget and its own property-tax levy. A homeowner effectively pays toward both. As a park commissioner, Shaffer helped oversee the park system; as a council member she now legislates on zoning, policing, streets, licensing and the city's roughly $2 billion budget, which the council passed 11-0 on Dec. 9, 2025.
The two bodies' separate levies show up side by side on tax bills. For 2026 the Park Board adopted a 6.75% levy increase, while the city's maximum levy was set at 8%. A council member who has served on both bodies is positioned to explain that distinction and to work the seam between them on shoreline restoration, parkway and trail projects, and the boulevard tree canopy, where a single project can require both governments to act.
The crossover is not a shortcut. The council's docket is broader and more contested, spanning policing and citywide land use with no parks equivalent, and Shaffer takes the seat on a council where outcomes depend on negotiation rather than a reliable bloc. Whether she becomes a genuine bridge between City Hall and the Park Board is the question for residents to watch.

Hennepin County is expected to bring its final design for rebuilding Lyndale Avenue South to the Minneapolis City Council this month, after a June 1 public meeting where Uptown business owners and cyclists clashed over a plan that adds a bikeway and cuts about a quarter of on-street parking.

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The Lowry Hill Neighborhood Association board meets the first Tuesday of each month, 7 to 9 p.m., at the Searle Mansion, 1915 Logan Ave. S., where parks requests, traffic concerns and land-use notices get aired.

For the first time in years, the Hennepin Avenue corridor through Uptown heads into summer without an active construction zone, the rebuilt street now served by the METRO E Line that began carrying riders in December.