Matthew McSheehy, Greenfield Councilmember, 8845 Greenfield Road, Greenfield, MN (2026)

06/15/2026

One year ago yesterday, Minnesota lost Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark to an act of political assassination. Their golden retriever Gilbert didn't survive either.

Nationally, June 14th — our nation's 250th year — was marked on the White House lawn with a celebration centered on violence and combat with racism and decisiveness center stage. I wish we could have honored Melissa Hortman with something different. A nation coming together. But that will take time.

Some say we should focus on the positive, ignore the bad, and trust that unity will come naturally. That's not what our founders believed. They fought for something greater while others chose to preserve the status quo. Whether the cause is fair taxation, a growing community, or opportunity for all — the path forward shouldn't require tearing each other down.

The language of violence and hyper-partisanship has replaced how we see one another. Not as neighbors who disagree, but as enemies — red or blue, patriot or threat. I attended a friend's granddaughter's graduation this weekend to celebrate her next step in life. He and I poke fun at each other's politics, but we respect and love each other because we know we'd each be there when the other really needed someone. That's what neighbors do.

As a country we've lost our way. I see it at both the national level as well as the local; when we can't agree on policy, we attack the person. Last year, one man in Minnesota decided the only solution was to eliminate his political opponents with a bullet.

I close my shades at night, because even as a local council member, I've had people honking outside my home in the early hours, trash thrown in my yard, and objects left that carried a message they knew I'd understand. Threats and intimidation don't belong on the White House lawn any more than they belong in local politics.

My most persistent critics rarely engage with the substance of what I've said — the response is usually something personal.

How do we find our way back to center? I don't have a complete answer, but I reached out to the League of Minnesota Cities last December asking for exactly that locally. They recommended a conflict resolution forum. This Thursday, we begin that process. I'm hopeful it leads somewhere better — for the council, and maybe as a small example of what's possible when people choose to work through disagreement rather than around it.

Melissa Hortman believed in that kind of work. It's the least we can do to honor her.

06/14/2026

Kurt Street, and a problem bigger than one street

The City is preparing to charge each Kurt Street property about $4,030 — a 50/50 split with the City — toward the road's reclamation; well below the assessment cap; $6,900. Measured against what some other streets have paid, that number isn't crazy; the 2021 project assessed slightly more for a property under 3 acres at $5,400, the most comparable project for size, age and condition. So, in some ways there's a win here. But the dollar figure isn't the real issue. The way we get to it is, and Kurt Street is a clear example of why.

Here's what I've pieced together, all from the City's own records and from public property data anyone can look up.

The residents already paid for this road. In 1993, the original 32 lots on Kurt Street were assessed $1,504.85 to build it. The City took on maintaining it after that. (Today there are 36 properties — 35 owned by residents, one held by the City as an unbuildable lot.)

The road failed early — and the record points to deferred maintenance. The last protective seal coat was in 2009. Sealing is what keeps water out of a road's base. After 2009 the records show only crack sealing and one patching job. The condition score fell from 54 to 30 in just two years, making it the worst-rated street in town. Roads don't decline that fast from age alone — that's the pattern of water reaching an unsealed base in our freeze-thaw climate. It's the same complaint residents on other streets have raised.

A flat 50/50 was never a policy — it was a practice nobody examined. Our assessment policy doesn't actually say how reclaim or reconstruction projects should be cost-shared or capped. The 50/50 wasn't adopted as a standard; it was proposed by the City Engineer and approved by the Council on each project without scrutiny, until it became the default. It was used in 2021, 2023 and now in 2026. Many Minnesota cities tier the share (25%, 30%, 40%), cap the per-home amount, or set a flat rate. Greenfield never made that choice. The cost share was effectively set by the same firm that designs and manages the projects — a firm paid as a percentage of project cost approved as feasible and necessary.

And here's what an unexamined practice produces, straight from the City's own records. The 2021 Street Renewal — the project that established the 50/50 practice — never actually came in at 50/50. The City Engineer's own assessment-hearing slides tell the story: the reclaim project cost was $1,327,711, and on the assessment slide the 50% figure ($663,855.57) is struck through and replaced with $557,897.38 — the amount left after every parcel was dropped to its assessment cap based on the appraised benefit gain range. That's about 42% of the cost, not 50%. The City covered the other ~58%, and that gap now sits in the budget as a recurring line literally labeled "2021 Street Renewal Project Assessment Bond Shortage," $7,273 every year through 2037, paid by all taxpayers; a $109k project shortfall between intended and collectible assessments. The city borrowed against its reserves and has been paying itself back over 15 years. Both of those numbers come straight from the City's own slides.

Then, in late 2022, the response wasn't to write a real cost-share policy or to tighten the cost estimates that produced the gap. It was to change the assessment-calculation formula — from 90% of the lowest appraised benefit to 90% of the lower third of the range. That new assessment calculation was proposed by the city engineer. The plain effect of that change is to raise the amount a property owner can be assessed from the very same appraisal. It addressed what owners pay; it didn't change how the City plans or what the City pays.

So, the residents on that 2021 project paid about 42% — but Kurt Street is being asked for a true 50/50, a heavier share for the same kind of work, calculated under that amended formula. Same work, different and larger deal, project to project — because no policy fixes it. I believe the City should be writing real cost-share rules and planning required maintenance to protect our investments, the same way we do with our homes and cars. If you skip the maintenance, what we paid good money for fails early.

There's also a second problem — with how the benefit numbers that justify these assessments are produced. When you line up the City's appraisal ranges, a brand-new road with curb and gutter barely scores higher than a simple reclaim project (degraded pavement to new pavement), and four very different streets worth hundreds of thousands of dollars apart all got the exact same benefit number (2023 project) and two streets on an HOA (Davis and 78th) weren’t appraised at all, but relied on the appraisal for less expensive properties in different parts of the city (Mark St., Harff Rd., 94th Ave.). That's not how a real property-value appraisal behaves. It raises a fair question about whether those numbers are measuring property value at all. I lay that out in detail in the documents below.

I'm not arguing the road shouldn't be fixed. I'm asking the Council to finish the assessment-policy reform that's already under discussion before imposing this charge — so a fair, written rule governs it, not a flat number carried over from five years ago. I proposed several fixes in the last city council work session, but was told I needed to explain why they were necessary, that the mayor and two other council members present did not believe there was a problem and that if I wanted to see my proposal’s taken seriously, I would have to show a structural problem first. That is a fair ask. So, I spent my time after putting my daughter to bed and kissing my wife good night, burning the midnight oil, putting that request together.

I've posted the full documentation so you can read it and check my work. It's sourced to City records, Minnesota law, public tax data, and other cities' published policies and sent to the city administrator to distribute to the council for their consideration:

📄 The full analysis: [https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1YxTTEe9IVrsU_UWNOvjRbCHsyruJGdjy ]
📄 The appraisals I performed a data request to obtain, because the city never provides these in their feasibility acceptance records voted on by the council: [https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1bzGOtbtcQY2fLb66SBQVKZzxFF7ZSlWv]

If you live on Kurt Street — or anywhere in Greenfield where a road project may be coming — the assessment hearing is where your voice counts most. Under Minnesota law, once a property owner offers their own evidence about value, the City's number no longer automatically gets the benefit of the doubt.

Questions or corrections welcome. I'd rather get this right than get it loud.

— Matthew McSheehy, Greenfield City Council

* The opinions and data provided here are presented by a single council member and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the city or the council.

06/11/2026

If it looks like a duck and goose steps like a duck, it's a Fascist:

What is fascism:
- Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
- Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
- Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
- Supremacy of the Military
- Rampant Sexism
- Controlled Mass Media
- Obsession with National Security
- Religion and Government are Intertwined
- Corporate Power is Protected
- Labor Power is Suppressed
- Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
- Obsession with Crime and Punishment
- Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
- Fraudulent Elections

** Is the United States the next Fascist state? Ask yourself, how many of these signs of fascism have a check mark next to them. Let that be your own guide to where we are on the spectrum. This is not a Democrats good, Republican's Bad discussion. I don't believe in that . . . but I am a student of history and I can see the signs.

Why post this on my Council Page? Because all politics is local. This impacts all of us.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1D4e3kZz4i/

06/06/2026

18 months on the Greenfield City Council. Here's what I've learned — not for my sake, but because others serving at the local level need to hear it.

1. You won't always get it right — and that's okay.
I've made tactical mistakes. The measure isn't perfection — it's whether you're honest enough to learn and keep doing the work. Adjusting course when the evidence demands it is strength, not weakness.

But there's a difference between a genuine mistake and a principled stand that someone else wants to call a mistake. Not everything that draws fire is an error. Sometimes speaking an inconvenient truth, asking an uncomfortable question, or refusing to go along is exactly right — and the people who want you to stop will work very hard to convince you that you were wrong to start.

Know the difference. Own the first. Don't concede the second.

2. Not everyone is going to like you — and sometimes that's the point.

I asked the mayor to retract false public statements made from the dais. The response was coordinated complaints filed against me and a censure. I've had residents recruited to oppose me. None of that has anything to do with whether the work is right. Sometimes the loudest opposition is the clearest confirmation you're on the right side of something.

3. Judge the quality of your work by the quality of your opposition.

Disorganized, petty, or personal opposition isn't a sign you're failing. It's a sign you're threatening something someone wants to protect.

I spent a year and a half trying to get special assessment policy reforms before the full council — reforms designed to protect property owners from conflicts of interest, ensure appraiser independence, and bring basic transparency to a process that directly impacts people's finances. In that time, I never once heard a substantive argument against the protections I proposed. What I heard instead was that there were "no reasons" for them. That I was making accusations of collusion. That I was being divisive.

No engagement with the substance. Just characterization of the messenger.

And when I tried to remove the single provision that had created a conflict of interest last August, so the remaining reforms could move forward — the mayor refused to hear it. Publicly. Even after promising me he would during his campaign. That's not opposition. That's a broken promise being enforced with a gavel.
Ask yourself who benefits when hard questions get shut down before they're answered. Ask yourself who loses something if the answers come out. The shape of the resistance tells you exactly what's at stake — and for whom.

4. Not every attack deserves a response.
I've been called an enemy of the people. I've had my mental fitness questioned by people with an obvious motive and no qualifications. I've had supporters of my opponents promise to park outside my home framed as a promise to "protect" my family - something I know was a veiled threat. I've been accused of fomenting rebellion and civil war — in a formal Code of Conduct proceeding that cost taxpayers $24,000 and substantiated none of it.

These are not political disagreements. They are not substantive critiques. They are designed to do one thing: make the target spend their time and energy defending their sanity, their character, and their family's safety instead of doing the work.
I won't take the bait.

Some attacks tell you more about the attacker than any response ever could. The people who know me know who I am. The record of the work speaks for itself. And the nature of these attacks — their desperation, their escalation, their distance from anything resembling substance — is its own kind of answer.

Not every attack deserves a response. But sometimes silence isn't enough. Sometimes you have to point at what's happening and let people decide for themselves what it means.

***************
Neighbors/friends have told me they would understand if I walked away. Former City Council Members of other cities facing the same coordinated attacks have told me their own stories and why they stepped down. I understand why. This work is hard, and it is thankless more often than it's not.

But the property owner trying to understand why the same engineering firm that identifies the project, estimates the cost, and recommends the appraiser — while earning 15–20% to manage the project they deemed feasible — received the majority's support instead of answers? They don't have the option to walk away. Neither do I.

That's why I knocked on every door in Greenfield two years ago. That's why I ran.

I have sat in closed sessions with the majority and heard the language used about residents who decided to fight city hall. I've heard how they talk about the people who push back. It explains a lot about why city hall almost always wins — even in a small town, the institutional advantage is real. It's structural. It's by design. And when you try to change that design, expect a fight.
But here's the thing about design: it can be changed. Not by one voice. By many.

Filing dates to run for Greenfield City Council are July 14–28. The seats of CM Bronczyk, CM Wald, and Mayor Roehl are all on the ballot this year. I can guarantee you the majority is already working to fill them with more of the same.

If you've read this far and felt something — don't just share it. Step up. Be part of the solution.

The door is open. I'll help anyone who wants to walk through it.

*As always these are my personal thoughts and not that of the City of Greenfield or the council.

06/04/2026

A Reflection on Representation — Rep. Kristin Robbins
(This is my personal statement as a Greenfield resident and council member. It is my own view and is not an official statement of the City of Greenfield or the City Council.)

At Tuesday's council meeting, Rep. Kristin Robbins gave her final legislative wrap-up before leaving her House seat. I want to be fair to her, and I want to be honest. Both.

The fair part is real. Rep. Robbins has at times stood up for this city. She has worked to move bonding legislation forward that could help Greenfield, including on our wastewater needs and Greenfield Collector Road project, and she pointed us toward how to keep pursuing that funding. I'm grateful for that work, and I won't pretend otherwise. Crediting what someone does right is not a weakness; it's the baseline of honest representation.

But I represent all of Greenfield — not only the majority of us. And I would be failing the neighbors I don't share a background with if I stayed silent about how Rep. Robbins used her position this year.

As chair of the House committee responsible for fraud oversight, she and her caucus worked with an out-of-state online influencer on a viral video alleging fraud at Somali-run child care centers in Minneapolis. House Republican leadership publicly confirmed the collaboration, and one member acknowledged that some of the video's information came from House staff. That video helped trigger a freeze of federal child care payments to Minnesota and the dispatch of federal agents — and it was followed by an ICE surge across the metro earlier this year. The state later reported that the specific facilities singled out were operating as expected, and national reporting found that some of the video's claims were simply false.

Here is my honest view, and I'll name it as exactly that — a personal moral judgment, not a neutral recap. What happened was inexcusable. A position created to root out fraud was used to hold up an entire immigrant community for a national campaign — at the very moment the President was already targeting our state and its Somali residents with dehumanizing language. Real families lived through fear and federal enforcement on the strength of claims that did not hold up. That is not fraud oversight. That is using the machinery of a public office to manufacture a villain.

And it is a distraction. While a community of our neighbors was held up as suspect, the genuine looting of public trust at the federal level — the self-dealing, the pardons handed to the connected, Epstein File redactions of the powerful and still withheld 3M documents, the billionaire-class donors empowered by this administration — continued without the same scrutiny. We were pointed at the powerless and told to look there. We should know better.

Most of Greenfield is white, Christian, and was not personally touched by the metro surge or by the ongoing weaponization of immigrants in this country. I understand that for many of my neighbors this felt distant, or didn't register at all. That is precisely why it has to be said out loud by someone who represents them. The test of representation isn't how you treat the people who look and worship like you. It's whether you'll speak for the ones who don't, when it would be easier to say nothing.

I want to be clear about the difference I'm drawing, because it matters to me. I have strong views, and they differ from those of the council majority — that's fine, and it's healthy. But I have never used my seat, or the public's money, to push my personal views unless they directly affect the residents I serve. I cannot say the same for how this community's conflicts have been handled.

When the mayor moved to remove me from committee assignments, he made statements about me that were false — statements I have documented, and that the city, the city attorney, and the council all have on file. That is using the authority of office to damage a colleague with claims that don't hold up — not unlike how Rep. Robbins used information her committee held to target a community. The tool is different; the impulse is the same.

And over my own objections, the council spent more than $24,000 of taxpayer money — a $20,000 outside investigator and over $4,300 in city attorney fees — on a censure of me. The conduct it reached to police was my political speech as a private citizen, made outside the council chamber. The mayor himself published a post — naming himself as mayor and me as a council member — claiming my words made him and others "fear for their lives," and tying that to the killing of Charlie Kirk. Those are his words, on the public record.

I'll let residents weigh that contrast for themselves. Whether at the State Capitol or in our own council chamber, the same thing troubles me: public position and public resources turned against people — a vulnerable community in one case, a dissenting colleague in the other — rather than used for the work we were elected to do. I have tried, always, to use my voice and my vote for the residents I serve. That is the difference. And I believe it is the difference that matters.

I'll let residents weigh that contrast for themselves. One representative used the tools of public office to target some of the most vulnerable people in our state. I have used my voice, and my vote, to stand up for them. That is the difference. And I believe it is the difference that matters.

Some may ask why I didn't raise the Robbins matter at the council meeting itself. I thought about it and decided against it. The council chamber is for the people's business — roads, budgets, ordinances — and Rep. Robbins was there to report on the session, not to be put on trial. Turning that moment into a confrontation would have been grandstanding in the wrong room, and the residents present deserved better than a spectacle. A conviction worth holding is worth stating in the right place, in my own name, where I answer for it. That's what I'm doing here.
I don't expect every neighbor to agree with me. But this isn't about agreement. It's about whether a public office should ever be turned against the most vulnerable people among us for political gain. I don't believe it should — and I felt I owed it to all of my constituents to say so plainly.

— Matthew McSheehy
Council Member, City of Greenfield

06/04/2026

Council Meeting Report — June 2, 2026
This is my personal report to residents as your council member. It is my own account and is not an official statement of the City of Greenfield or the City Council.

Friends and neighbors,
Here's my report on Tuesday night's work session and council meeting. As always, I've tried to give you the facts plainly so you can judge for yourselves.

Kurt Street — what was voted on, and how I voted
The council voted on two resolutions to move the Kurt Street reconstruction forward: one to order the feasibility report, and one to order plans and specifications. Both passed 3–1. I voted no on both. (Vandeputte was not present)

I want to be very clear about something: I support rebuilding Kurt Street. The residents there have waited a long time and the road needs to be done. What I did not support is the process — specifically, voting to keep the project moving and ordering the appraisal before we've finished reviewing the assessment policy that determines how much residents will be asked to pay, and before anyone has explained the basis for charging residents a 50% share.

When I tried to ask, on the record, what the basis was for the proposed 50/50 assessment, I was ruled "out of order" and the city engineer was instructed not to answer. I asked whether any comparable street had been assessed at 50/50, and was told that question wasn't allowed at that meeting either. I think residents deserve answers to those questions before the votes that commit money and momentum — not after.

What the city's own records now confirm

After the meeting, city staff produced the historical research on Kurt Street that I and residents had been asking for. I'm grateful they did, because the city's own files confirm several important things:

The road is about 31 years old — not "close to 50." Kurt Street was built in 1993 and finalized in 1994. At the earlier vote, its age was described on the record as closer to 50 years. The city's own construction file puts it at 31. That matters, because age is central to how fairly the cost should be shared.

The city performed routine maintenance — seal coats, crack sealing, and a roughly $91,000 patching effort in 2017 — but no full rehabilitation, and the road kept deteriorating anyway.The records show seal coats and crack sealing in 2000, 2005, and 2009, a roughly $91,000 patching effort in 2017, and additional crack seals in 2020, 2022, and 2024. What the record does not show is any major rehabilitation — and the road kept deteriorating anyway. Its condition score fell from 63 in 2017 to 54 in 2023 and then to 30 in 2025, making it, by the city's own rating, the worst street in town. In other words, the crack sealing of recent years did not arrest the decline. A resident testified Tuesday that the city "hardly did anything" to keep the road in good repair, and the trend in the city's own scores reflects a road that was allowed to fail.

The original 1993 assessment was about $1,505 per property across 32 lots — a figure the city's research confirms ($1,504.85, 32 lots). Residents have long recalled being told the city would maintain the road afterward, and that any future charge would be for sealcoating rather than full reconstruction. The 1993 records the city has now produced support that recollection: at that fall's assessment proceedings, the city's engineer stated on the record that ongoing maintenance would be picked up by the city and that sealcoating — not reconstruction — was what might be assessed to owners down the road. To be precise about the record, that statement was made in the course of the broader 1993 street-assessment hearings rather than in the Kurt Street segment specifically, and the staff summary correctly notes there is no statement that these properties would "never be assessed again" — I'm not claiming there was. But the documented commitment to maintain, and to treat sealcoating as the contemplated future charge, is directly relevant to what's fair to ask of these residents now — especially given how little major work followed. (The above two paragraphs were updated on June 5th after an updated city admin document was received)

Why the maintenance history matters to your wallet
This is the part I most want residents to understand. A special assessment is supposed to reflect the increase in your property's value caused by the improvement. But here's the problem: if the "before" value is measured using the road's current, badly deteriorated condition, then the worse the city let the road get, the bigger the apparent improvement — and the more residents can be charged.

In plain terms: deferred city maintenance could end up inflating the bill sent to property owners for a decline they did not cause and did not control. The city set the maintenance schedule; the residents didn't. I've asked staff, in writing, to confirm how the appraisal establishes that "before" condition, because it should be answered before any assessment is certified. I don't think it's fair for the city's own deferral to increase what neighbors are asked to pay.

The fairness principle — and the city's own precedent
I've proposed several common-sense reforms to the assessment policy. The central one is a time-based schedule: the older a road is when it's rebuilt, the larger the city's share — because a brand-new road and a 30- or 40-year-old road simply aren't the same situation. I've proposed that roads in the 20–40 year range be assessed at 25% rather than 50%.

I've also proposed a fairness cap on how much more a property with direct benefit can be charged versus one with only indirect benefit. When I raised this, it was called "arbitrary." But it isn't — and here's the proof from our own history: in 1993, this very city charged properties with full street frontage three times what it charged properties with only indirect access, because, in the council's own words at the time, the indirect properties "do not receive the same value." The city has already assessed by benefit. My proposal simply asks us to do consistently, and in writing, what Greenfield has done before.

These are not radical ideas. Cities across Minnesota use them. West St. Paul assesses street reconstruction at 25%. East Grand Forks at 30%. Edina is moving toward fully funding reconstruction. Greenfield's 50% — on a road that's being reclaimed and repaved, with no new curb or gutter — sits at the high end.

How the policy discussion went

I'll be honest with you about the tone, and let the record speak. During the work session, before I could present my proposals, a fellow member introduced an anonymous letter framing my concerns as if I were alleging criminal conduct — which I was not, and said so plainly. When I began explaining a concern, I was told there was "a lot of misinformation" in what I'd said and that several other things I'd said were "wrong" — though when I asked, no specifics were given. I was asked who I was "working with" on the reforms; when I answered that I'd brought them to many residents, a member remarked that I didn't have very many friends — a comment I objected to on the spot as inappropriate and asked be withdrawn, which the member did.

It's worth noting that these are not last-minute proposals. As I stated on the record Tuesday, the council has had this document for at least a year, and the mayor has had it roughly a year and a half — which he confirmed, saying he'd read it. These are not new or rushed ideas. They have been available for review and discussion for a long time. and was why I originally supported Nick for mayor. He has done a 180, now that he is mayor.

I don't share this to air grievances. I share it because residents are entitled to know how their representatives conduct the public's business — and to decide for themselves whether these questions are being met with answers or with deflection.

What's next

Staff indicated revised timing for the Kurt Street steps, including a public hearing this summer. That hearing will be the legally protected opportunity for affected property owners to formally object and be heard — please watch for the date, and if you're a Kurt Street property owner, plan to attend or submit a written comment. The assessment policy review also continues at our next work session. I'll keep you posted as dates firm up.
On the state legislative session: Rep. Robbins gave her final session wrap-up, including news that the wastewater bonding request did not pass this year. I'll write separately about her remarks and the bonding outlook, as that deserves its own discussion.

As always, my door is open. If you have questions about any of this — or want to see the records I've described — reach out to me directly. I work for you.

— Matthew McSheehy
Council Member, City of Greenfield
(Image is from my collection on mcsheehy.com)

Matthew McSheehy, Greenfield Councilmember

06/15/2026

06/14/2026

06/11/2026

06/06/2026

06/04/2026

06/04/2026

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