Brooklyn Center Mayor April Graves Shares City’s Legislative Priorities for 2026
Brooklyn Center Mayor April Graves outlined the city’s legislative priorities headed into 2026 when she recently spoke with CCX Media’s Dave Kiser.
Opportunity Site
The city hopes to attract some bonding money from the state in order to pay for some infrastructure needs at its Opportunity Site.
“This would really give us the opportunity to fill the gap, about a $3 million gap in the needed infrastructure in the first phase of the Opportunity Site,” said Graves.
She reiterated the city’s goal of attracting businesses, multi-family housing development, and an event center to the site.
“Infrastructure is the first step,” she said.
Central Garage
Brooklyn Center’s main public works garage is aging and in need of replacement, said Mayor Graves. The city hopes for some bonding money to help pay for a replacement.
“It’s really outdated,” Graves said. “There’s even some safety hazards as well as operational inefficiencies. It’s over 50 years old.”
Group Homes
The mayor also wants the state to help the city draw more control over the licensure of group homes and assisted living centers in the city.
“We really feel like the licensure should be changed (and) we could have a little more oversight,” she said. “Oftentimes it leads to higher calls for police service, as well as an unfair burden on people who might want to come and buy a home in Brooklyn Center. If they’re being bought up by investors to create group homes, then that’s an issue.”
State Aid for Road Financing
Finally, Mayor Graves said she hopes to state and city can work together on how and for which projects the city can use state municipal aid funding intended for road projects, like but not limited to any possible changes to Highway 252.
“We get municipal state aid, but if we use that on a big regional project that actually benefits cities beyond Brooklyn Center, then that’s not fair to us when we actually have roads we need to repair and we can use that state aid for,” said Mayor Graves.
