The City of Golden Valley believes everyone in the community (living, visiting, and working) should feel safe, accepted, and welcomed. Public safety services play a major role. Collaborative Solutions: Investing In Community Well-Being is the City’s initiative to enhance those services and be a leader in how they are delivered.  

Collaborative Solutions is part of  local movement toward innovating and transforming traditional approaches to public safety. It involves working with community partners to design and implement engagement and response efforts to address specific issues such as mental health services, drug abuse treatment and prevention, homelessness support, and violent crime intervention.  

Collaborative Solutions offers ways to address these issues and others while understanding that specific needs may call for specialized services. One example is Golden Valley’s embedded social worker, who provides community members with additional resources as needed. 

What Is The Current Status?

In 2021, the City received a $250,000 Pohlad Foundation public safety grant to support its Collaborative Solutions work, which includes: 

• identifying community and developing partnerships through engagement
• conducting a racial audit of City policies and coordinating recommendations
• providing staff training to enhance understanding of and develop tools against systemic racism
• establishing transparency and accountability to the community
• researching and implementing ways to expand community response through additional means

From the grant work, one initiative in progress is the racial equity audit of the Police Department handbook. This work included input from partners such as the Golden Valley Police Employment, Accountability, and Community Engagement (PEACE) Commission.  

City staff is also collaborating across departments to enhance learning and professional development and to facilitate community engagement. 

Community Engagement Opportunities 

The City is seeking feedback on police policies and expanded response methods to ensure community values and voices are reflected in public safety delivery. Online and in-person sessions are scheduled currently and through May.

Police policy topics include:

• automated license plate readers
• criminal conduct on school buses
• public recording of law enforcement activity
• personnel complaints

Expanded response topic examples could include:

• embedded social workers
• increased EMS training for fire department staff
• community partner services for crisis and warm lines like 988 for suicide prevention

Dates, times, locations, and registration information for input sessions are posted on the City website. Check the web page for updates and more information as it becomes available.