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4 HOLMES & GRAVEN CHARTERED ROBERT J. DEIKE 470 Pillsbury Center. Minneapolis. Minnesota 53402 • Attorney at law (612) 337-9300 Direct Dial (612) 337-9204 July 7, 1988 .Joseph David Strauss Executive Northern Mayors' Association 8525 Edinbrook Crossing Brooklyn Park, MN 55443 Dear Mr. Strauss: This letter is written in regard to our meeting of last Thursday, June 30, 1988 during which we discussed the nature of your organization, the Northern Mayors' Association, and methods by which the association might- within a statutory framework seek to further its goals and objectives. • I understand that the Northern Mayors' Association is a voluntary association of a number of cities within the northern metropolitan .area. A major goal of the Northern Mayors' Association is to promote economic development within its members' cities. You have inquired whether there exist any ways in which the Northern Mayors' Association might broaden the scope of its involvement with the . promotion and undertaking of economic development activities. We informed you that, in fact, there exist ways in which this could be accomplished and the purpose of this letter is to outline one way which would confer upon the Northern Mayors' Association the broadest scope of economic development powers possible while still retaining its members' ability to control economic development within their own cities. The proposal which we discussed involves your association's member cities joining together under a joint powers agreement under which they would jointly exercise certain economic development powers available to them individually by statute. Minnesota Statutes, Section 471.59 allows two or more governmental units to enter into an agreement to jointly or cooperatively exercise any power common to the governmental units or any similar powers, including those powers which are the same except for the territorial limits within which the powers may be exercised. In other .words, two or more governmental units which share common powers may contract with each other to exercise those powers jointly or cooperatively. Therefore, this authority would permit the members of the Northern Northern Mayors' Association to enter into an agreement under which a joint board' comprised of representatives of each of the members could exercise jointly economic development powers which the members are authorized to exercise individually. • The next question which we discussed was whether it would be more desirable for your member cities to enter into the joint powers, agreement or to have some other development entity within the city enter into the agreement. Under Minnesota law,