Eager to see contract negotiations with a single citywide trash hauler move forward, the St. Paul City Council approved the purchase of five municipal garbage trucks on Wednesday, a $2.1 million investment in a retooled approach toward garbage collection.

The goal is to have city crews service 10% of residential trash hauling — about one long route per day — and free up a single private hauler to do the rest. Contract negotiations are underway this month with FCC Environmental Services, which is based in Texas and the United Kingdom.

The company services some 5,000 cities, including all of Spain, and operates across the United States, Europe and Africa. A new citywide trash hauling contract could be underway by April 1, 2025, replacing the city’s existing agreement with a consortium of five private haulers — Aspen Waste Systems, Gene’s Disposal Service, Highland Sanitation, Republic Services, and Waste Management.

“The lead time on ordering garbage trucks is significant,” said St. Paul Public Works Director Sean Kershaw, addressing the city council.

City officials have long received complaints about missed trash and recycling pick-ups on certain difficult-to-service routes, especially on the city’s East Side. Haulers, in turn, have said many of the city’s oldest alleys are too narrow to safely navigate in snowy weather.

Complicating matters, the city’s alley plowing system relies on everyday residents — volunteer “alley captains” — to coordinate snow removal for their block and contract a private plow driver. When and where it works, that works great, at less cost than the city might charge taxpayers for the same service. On blocks with less social cohesion, snow removal is more touch-and-go, if not nonexistent.

The hope is that by moving 10% of city trash routes in house, municipal crews will improve service on those particular alleys, while keeping rates competitive for the rest of the city.

“We don’t have the specific routes identified yet,” said Kershaw, though complaints from previous offers some clues as to where to start crafting a system.

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Rudy Gobert can see it happening in front of his own eyes as he stands in the dunker spot by the rim on offense.

The spacing tightens. The ball sticks. The players stand.

The Timberwolves’ offense screeches to a halt.

Minnesota Timberwolves guard Anthony Edwards (5) works toward the basket as Los Angeles Clippers center Daniel Theis (10) defends during the second half of an NBA basketball game, Sunday, March 3, 2024, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

There have been stints of good offense throughout the season. But they’ve been outnumbered by the bad. It hasn’t mattered much for the first-place Timberwolves because the defense has just been that good; Minnesota’s defensive efficiency (108 points per 100 possessions) is 2.2 points better than the next-best defense.

But it’s concerning that the offense appears to potentially be getting worse in the final quarter of the regular season. And it’s starting to cost the Timberwolves games. In their recent seven-game homestand, they dropped all three games they played against quality foes. Specifically in the losses to Milwaukee and the Los Angeles Clippers — a game in which Minnesota surrendered just 89 points and still lost — the offense was almost solely to blame.

Minnesota ranks 22nd in the NBA in offensive rating since returning from the all-star break.

“A lot of it comes down to both Anthony (Edwards) and KAT, guys who want the ball early. They are trying to play into the teeth of the defense too much,” Timberwolves coach Chris Finch said. “We gotta get back to trusting our early structures, things that we’ve been doing well at times. Just playing out of that a lot more.”

From there, it does just boil down to making strong basketball plays — screening, cutting, spacing. Towns and Edwards have to be just as willing to do those things as their teammates.

“They’ve got to be able to put the work in without the ball. It’s a responsibility for everybody, whether it’s Rudy rolling. It can’t be just Jaden and Nickeil cutting. It has to be everybody,” Finch said. “When the defense dicates, you cut. You roll the switch, and you respace for the guy coming into your area. We get caught watching the ball a lot. When you watch the ball, we don’t move.”

It’s starting to disrupt even the offense of Towns and Edwards. Edwards is shooting 46 percent from the field and 32 percent from 3-point range since the all-star break. Towns — who is listed as “out” for Thursday’s game in Indiana with left knee soreness — is at 41 percent from the floor and 33 percent from deep. Those numbers are significantly below what both generally average.

“They’re just chasing the game too much,” Finch said.

Gobert said the lack of those extra things on offense can be a product of fatigue — but that can’t be the case. In fact, cutting and screening and spacing could be what gets Minnesota’s two best offensive players ignited.

A prime example of that has been the second unit, as Kyle Anderson, Monte Morris and Naz Reid have gotten going offensively of late, seemingly as the reserves have picked up their ball and body movement.

“I think it comes a lot from the energy that they put into it. Naz, Kyle, Nickeil (Alexander-Walker). You see how fast they move, how much they cut. They screen, they get off of each other really quickly and create space,” Wolves guard Mike Conley said. “I think we can, with that first unit, be a bit slower. We have guys who can post, guys who can move inside and out, so there’s a lot of different opportunities there. So it might make us a little bit slower as a group.

“But this group has to figure out how to get that from our starting unit to play with a little bit more force, more pace, to open things up quicker for Ant and everybody else on the team to make easy plays.”

The chase to consistently achieve that offensively continues. Minnesota looks to find its way as it embarks on a six-game road trip, which opens Thursday in Indiana. Finch was looking forward to Wednesday’s film session in hopes of “starting to build things back in a better way.”

After St. Paul police officers fatally shot a woman’s neighbor, officers put her in the back of a squad car for three hours, though her lawsuit said she wasn’t accused of anything and she asked to leave.

The St. Paul City Council approved a $210,000 settlement Wednesday to Jill Mollner, which will end her lawsuit alleging the city and its officers violated her constitutional rights to be free from unlawful imprisonment.

In December, the City Council signed off on a $380,000 settlement to Cordale Handy’s fiancée, Markeeta Johnson-Blakney, in the same lawsuit.

Immediately after officers shot Handy, police “grabbed Markeeta Johnson-Blakney and Jill Mollner and forced them into the back seats of police cars,” their attorney, Paul Bosman, said in a Wednesday statement. “Jill and Markeeta were not criminals, just witnesses to a police shooting. Despite their requests to leave, St. Paul Police held Jill and Markeeta incommunicado against their will for the rest of the night.”

With the city agreeing to pay $590,000 in total to the two women, “we hope that SPPD will start to show respect for the basic civil rights of the people of St Paul,” Bosman said.

St. Paul City Attorney Lyndsey Olson said they settled Mollner’s lawsuit “to avoid the costs and unpredictability of continued litigation. The city remains dedicated to protecting the rights of all persons through respectful service.”

Civil jury found officer wrongfully caused death

On March 15, 2017, St. Paul officers responded to a 911 call about Cordale Handy, 29, in Dayton’s Bluff. Officers Nathaniel Younce and Mikko Norman reported they saw Handy fall down backward, lower a gun and raise it briefly toward Norman. The officers said Handy raised the gun toward Norman a second time and they both shot him.

The officers were not criminally charged. Handy’s mother, Kimberly Handy-Jones, filed a federal lawsuit and it went to civil trial last year. A jury found that Younce, who fired just before Norman, violated Handy’s constitutional rights by using excessive force and that he wrongfully caused Handy’s death. They did not find Norman civilly liable.

The jury awarded $1.5 million in punitive damages and $10 million in compensatory damages. Last month, a federal judge reduced the compensatory damages to $2.5 million. Handy-Jones’ mother has until March 15 to decide whether to accept the new award or seek a new civil trial focused only on compensatory damages.

Lawsuit: Officers wouldn’t let woman leave squad

When the officers responded to the apartment building where Mollner, Handy and Johnson-Blakney lived, they spoke briefly with the two women. Johnson-Blakney told them Handy’s gun was broken.

Younce and Norman didn’t know before they shot Handy that he’d fired 16 gunshots at a couch in his apartment. Handy, who had taken a stimulant drug, was seeing people who weren’t there and thought they were hiding in the apartment, Johnson-Blakney testified during the civil trial. Handy wanted help, a Handy-Jones attorney said.

“A citizen calling for help should not have to pay the price I’ve had to pay,” Mollner said in a Wednesday statement. “Likewise, those we trust to protect and serve us should not have stolen the life of Cordale Handy, the young man who needed their help and protection that morning.”

Mollner and Johnson-Blakney followed the officers outside and witnessed them shoot Handy.

Another officer arrived and police put Mollner in the back of a squad at 2:29 a.m. The back doors of squad cars cannot be opened from the inside.

Mollner was “dressed in a flimsy robe,” her lawsuit said. She asked an officer at 2:35 a.m. to allow her to go to her apartment to get a tampon; he said she could not.

Another officer told her at 2:36 a.m. she had to go downtown to make a statement. He returned at 2:38 a.m. and offered to go to her apartment to get clothes, saying she couldn’t go with him or have her cell phone.

The officer returned at 2:44 a.m. with clothing and a tampon. She was “forced to change and put in a tampon in the back of a squad car,” the lawsuit continued.

Video from the squad showed Mollner “weeping and rocking” as Handy’s body was in the street outside. Mollner asked an officer to cover his body. He told her he couldn’t but offered to move her to his squad car around the corner, and he did.

Another squad camera showed Mollner exited a squad at St. Paul police headquarters at 5:20 a.m. She appeared on a camera in an interview room at 6:07 a.m. and left the room at 6:49 a.m.

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FORT MYERS, Fla. — When Twins pitcher Joe Ryan arrived to camp last year, the talk surrounding him was about his revamped slider and his split-change, both of which he had spent the offseason working on. This year, he has a new trick — well, actually an old one that he decided to pick back up again — that he has been working on: a two-seamer.

“When I was at Driveline, (director of pitching Chris) Langin was kind of like, ‘All right, this could be fun, whatever,’ ” Ryan said. “And I kind of took what I knew and what we had learned from some other pitches and applied the reverse concept, and it works and they like it and the team likes it. The hitters don’t seem to like it, so it’s great.”

Ryan, who threw three innings and gave up a solo home run in the Twins’ 7-1 win over the Boston Red Sox on Wednesday at Hammond Stadium, isn’t sure how much he’s going to use the pitch, but he figures to be mixing it in depending on the opposing lineup and whether he needs it on that given day.

An extra weapon for the fourth-year starter could be valuable as Ryan looks to build off of a 2023 season that started off so well before subsequently being interrupted by a groin injury that he tried to pitch through unsuccessfully for more than a month before notifying the Twins.

In the 15 games before the injury, Ryan had a 2.98 earned-run average, and opponents were hitting .203 off him. In the next seven games, opponents hit .336 and he gave up 31 runs in 32 1/3 innings (8.63 earned-run average) before he landed on the injured list. Though he returned for the final month of the 2023 season, he never quite regained his early-season form, finishing the year with a 4.51 ERA in 29 games.

The key to his consistency throughout the full season, his manager Rocco Baldelli said, will be how well he can execute his secondary pitches.

“He has always relied and gone back to that good fastball, the good upshoot fastball that he uses. But you definitely need to keep developing those other pitches and pay a lot of attention to them, and he is. And that’s what he has been spending his (time on in) camp — he did the same thing last year,” said. “He came in with some new pitches. Having those pitches very consistent and under his full command, that’s the important part. So that’s going to be a big part of his success.”

Tinkering around with a pitch he used to throw — Ryan said his dad originally taught him how to throw a two-seamer as a child, and it wasn’t really until high school that he started throwing the four-seam fastball — is exactly how he can accomplish that.

It started with him kind of joking around, he said. And now?

“It’s a great pitch to add to the arsenal,” Ryan said. “I don’t know what that usage looks like throughout the course of the season, but it’s a fun pitch to have in my back pocket when I need it, and it’s a fun pitch to throw.”

Twins make first cuts

The Twins made their first round of cuts on Wednesday, reassigning pitchers Jovani Morán, Randy Dobnak, Ronny Henriquez and Ryan Jenson to minor league camp, as well as catchers Alex Isola and Pat Winkel, infielder Aaron Sabato and outfielder DaShawn Keirsey Jr. None of the eight were on the 40-man roster.

Some, like Morán, who is rehabbing from Tommy John surgery, are hurt. Some, Baldelli said, are younger players who they just want to go get the game reps that they need to get ready.

“Henriquez and Jensen, they need to go pitch. They just need to get out there and pitch and work on specific things. It’s harder to do that here,” Baldelli said. “The longer you’re in camp, the longer you think, ‘Well, there’s a chance. I may have an opportunity here to make this club.’ And them working on themselves and their pitches and getting themselves ready is just much more important right now.”

The cuts leave 50 active players in major league camp.

Briefly

Catcher Jair Camargo went 2 for 2 with a walk, a double and a home run in Wednesday’s exhibition game. Camargo, who is on the 40-man roster, is expected to begin the season in Triple-A but would be the first call should something happen to Ryan Jeffers or Christian Vázquez. … The Twins will have Thursday off before returning to action Friday to take on the Pittsburgh Pirates in Bradenton, Fla. Baldelli, father to 2-year-old Louisa and 5-month-old twins Nino and Enzo, said he planned to spend his day “playing with babies.”

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