As the Minneapolis City Council reviews the mayor’s proposed 2027 budget, much of the debate will focus on what the city can afford to preserve, expand or cut. Those choices will shape residents’ safety, stability and quality of life well beyond the next fiscal year.

That is why we should evaluate public investments by more than the service delivered today. We should also ask: After the dollar is spent, what remains?

As executive director of the Minneapolis Highrise Representative Council (MHRC), that question looks different from the lobby of a public housing high-rise than it does from a budget hearing.

Government is organized into departments and budget lines. Residents experience housing, health care, benefits and transportation all at once. Budgets are written vertically, yet lives are lived horizontally.

Related: Documenters report: Minneapolis budget process in full swing as Council hears presentation on $2.3 billion budget

When those systems fail to connect, someone has to bridge the gap. Sometimes it is a social worker or public employee. Often, it is another resident: the neighbor who explains a notice, the council officer who knows whom to call or the person who notices someone has not come downstairs in several days. Yet there is rarely a metric for the value created when residents learn to navigate those systems and help their neighbors do the same.

Government is good at calculating what a low-income resident receives. It is less practiced at calculating what residents learn, build and carry forward. That is more than an accounting problem. It points to a failure of imagination.

At MHRC, “Project Lookout” offers one example of what I think of as a generative public investment. Project Lookout is a resident-led safety program in Minneapolis Public Housing Authority high-rises. MPHA spends nearly 30 times as much on contracted professional security as it does on Project Lookout. The program works differently because the investment is made directly in a resident-owned effort. Residents help identify concerns and strengthen day-to-day safety while also building relationships, knowledge, confidence and leadership.

Project Lookout does not replace professional security, and it should never become an excuse to provide residents less of it. But it responds to a reality: Security resources are finite, and residents themselves possess knowledge that no contract can purchase.

A resident may join because she is worried about activity in her hallway. In the process, she gets to know more neighbors, learns how to report concerns, builds relationships with staff and security, and begins to see that her observations matter. That may lead to a resident council meeting, another leadership role or involvement in a different community issue.

Over time, she becomes a more active member of the building. Civic engagement often begins with one issue. The most effective programs intentionally leave behind skills, relationships and confidence that allow residents to become civic catalysts. That is what I mean by a generative public investment: one that addresses an immediate need while leaving people and communities more capable than before.

Related: Minneapolis Council asks, ‘Hey Detroit, got any ideas?’

This is not an argument for government retreat or aggressive return-on-investment analysis for every dollar. Critical public services cannot be replaced. But when resources are scarce, we should ask whether investments also build the trust, knowledge and capacity communities need to solve future problems.

In a year when every dollar is under greater pressure, we should ask more than whether a program delivered the service named in its budget line. We should also ask what that investment helped grow.

Public housing makes this especially visible, but the lesson belongs to Minneapolis as a whole. People are not merely recipients of public investment. They can also be the reason that investment succeeds. That should matter when we decide what to fund and what to cut.

For MHRC and residents of Minneapolis’ public high-rises, government becomes real at the apartment door. The mistake is assuming everything of value is standing on the government side of it.

Ryan Vasquez is a Minneapolis resident in the North Loop neighborhood and is the executive director of the Minneapolis Highrise Resident Council. 

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