A number of our Ramsey residents showed up at the May 12th city council meeting to oppose three resolutions supported by Mayor Heineman.

On Tuesday night, May 12, the following items appeared on the Ramsey City Council’s meeting agenda, page 3:

4. Adopt Resolution #26-102 Designating the Historic Minnesota State Flag as the Official Flag of the City of Ramsey to Ensure Local Control and Fiscal Responsibility

5. Adopt Resolution #26-108 Expressing Formal Disapproval and Censure of Governor Tim Walz

6. Adopting Resolution #26-111 Authorizing Staff to Explore City’s Ability to File Claim Against Governor Walz and Other State Leaders

Full texts of the resolutions can be found HERE, HERE, AND HERE.

The entire Council meeting can be streamed online at https://qctv.org/show/8/17353/

After the call to order, the first item was to approve the agenda. Chris Riley made a motion to approve with the deletion of the three resolutions described above. It was seconded by Kirsten Buscher. A vote was taken with 4 members—Chris Riley, Kirsten Buscher, Shanna Stewart, and Eric Peters—voting for removal from the agenda. The motion carried, 4-3. You can view the video to hear Mayor Heineman’s defense of the resolutions.

Since many persons attending from the public had come to comment on those three items, those comments were still taken under Citizen Input. Nearly every speaker addressed the issue of the state flag. Some opposed the censure of Governor Walz and the exploration of Ramsey’s ability to file claims against him and other state leaders. There was no explicit verbal support for those two resolutions.

Those who wanted to return to the old flag argued that it was tradition; the images were (they thought) racially inclusive because there is after all a native pictured on the flag; the flag was created by a small group of Democrats without input from anyone else (false); they had no idea that this would happen without the approval of all voters; and many wanted the issue put on the ballot. There were also some opinions about how “ugly” the new flag was, among others.

Those in support of the new state flag explained, it was not the only previous flag—there had been changes in the past; a new flag wasn’t a new idea—it had been discussed for decades; the historical significance of the old imagery was anything but racially inclusive and clearly showed the expulsion of many tribes from the state; the current action to redesign the flag began in the state legislature in 2022, if not earlier, and was no secret; laws were passed to create a large commission of people representing all points of view; designs for the new state flag (and seal) were gathered through a public competition with thousands of entries from state; these entries were consolidated into six designs and voted on by the entire legislature. The new flag has the symbolism of the North Star (very similar to the flag of Texas with its lone star) and an abstract outline of Minnesota. It has three distinct colors and is easy to recognize. Modern flags do not use busy images that are hard to recognize for aesthetic reasons. But the main point was that this process proceeded publicly for years and could not be called a surprise.

The Star Tribune published on May 12 an opinion piece by a guest contributor about these three resolutions that addresses the other two issues in more detail.