Budget Committee August 12, 2024   8/12/2024

Good morning.

I am Aisha Chugdai and I'm the chair of the Budget Committee.

I'm going to call to order a regular meeting for Monday, August 12, 2024.

Before we begin the meeting, I want to offer a friendly reminder to all members, staff, and the public.

These meetings are broadcast live to enable greater public participation.

These broadcasts include real-time captioning as a further method to increase the accessibility of our proceedings to the community.

Therefore, all speakers need to be mindful of the rate of their speech so that our captioners can fully capture and transcribe all comments for the broadcast.

We ask all speakers to moderate the speed and clarity of their comments.

Councilmember Payne.

Present.

Wansley is absent.

Rainville is absent.

Vita.

Present.

Ellison is absent.

Osman is absent.

Jenkins is absent.

Chavez?

Present.

Chaudry?

Present.

Palmisano?

Present.

Let the record reflect that we have a quorum.

I'll also remind my colleagues that we're using speaker management today so please make sure you sign in to be recognized.

We have three discussion items on our agenda today.

We will begin with item number one which is the appointed position of managing attorney of labor and employment.

I'll invite Rika Stenerson from the human resources department to begin that presentation.

Good morning Chair Chagtai and members of the committee.

I'm Rika Stenerson with the Human Resources Department and I'm here to present a new appointed position for your approval.

It's the new managing attorney of labor and employment and it's part of the city's attorney's office, manages the labor and employment law work for the city.

It's a very crucial position for a lot of the work that we in fact do in human resources from a compliance perspective as well.

The managing attorney position has been evaluated at 690 points, grade 15.

The 2024 schedule is 168.288 to 199.5.

The 2024 incremental cost is being paid for by the general fund should CAO budget savings be insufficient to cover the additional expense.

Changes for this are effective August 15th.

This position does meet the criteria of section 2010-10 of the Code of Ordinances.

It reports to the designated city department head's deputy.

It's part of the department head management team.

The duties involve significant discretion and involvement in the development interpretation and implementation of

We do have City Attorney Kristin Anderson here today if you have specific questions about this role.

Council Vice President, Council Members, just to repeat a few things that Ms. Anderson covered.

This is a, it's actually a position that we requested in our budget for 2024 and went through the whole job analysis process to develop this position.

The position is actually going to report directly to me, which is really an indication for how

how expansive labor and employment law has become in the city.

One of the things that I feel very proud of our recent work in this area was assisting council understanding of the federation contract and bringing that labor and employment law expertise to that whole process.

So this position is really intended to have that subject matter expert as a manager

Wonderful, thank you City Attorney Anderson and Ms. Stenerson.

Is there any discussion or any questions from committee members?

Thank you, Chair Chug Chai.

I don't necessarily have a comment just that I'm just gonna keep on saying this.

It feels like we continue to fund a lot of positions.

I'm not saying that this isn't important, but there are many positions that keep coming through this body that get paid more than the governor himself and it doesn't feel right when we have members of AFSCME here today asking, I believe, for their rightful wage increases that this body approved and they have yet to get.

and it doesn't feel right when we have members of our own public employees in this chamber asking for their rightful wage increases that we approved as a body in this last budget cycle and we continue to have so many positions during a time when there is a big deficit coming and looming over our heads that pay more than the governor himself.

Thank you for those comments, Council Member.

Any additional questions?

Thank you, Chair Chug Thai.

Thank you, Ms. Anderson, for coming up here.

My only question is, what do you think the timeline is for filling this position?

Wonderful, thank you very much.

Seeing no further questions or discussion from the committee, I will move approval of this item.

All those in favor signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Those opposed say nay.

Any abstentions?

The ayes have it and that motion carries.

Our next item is a mid-year update on change items adopted in the 2024 city budget.

We have several staff on hand to deliver and assist with this presentation, but I believe our COO Margaret Anderson Kelleher will kick us off and then invite up the appropriate staff to present on relevant

change items.

This will include change items that were initiated by the mayor in his recommended budget along with items that were amended into the budget by the will of council in last December.

Welcome Ms. Anderson-Kellher

Good morning, Council Vice President, members of the Budget Committee.

We have a 2024 budget update for you.

The agenda is going to include, and I'll run through this, the City Attorney's Office will start first.

City Attorney Anderson will begin.

The Legislative Department will do their own presentation, split between, I believe, Audit and the Clerk's Office.

I will lead the Office of Public Service slides through the whole thing with the exception of Mr. Hansen who's going to do I believe CPED has six or seven slides so a little more efficient for him to come up but we do have every

Department Head or Deputy here to answer any direct questions about items you may have questions about.

And Office of Community Safety will round out the presentation and be led by each of the individual department heads.

Although I will say there are a number of both department heads.

and the Commissioner is in the overflow room right now.

So you're not seeing them in our side of the room, but that is where they're at.

Before we welcome up the City Attorney to begin this presentation, I will note that Councilmember Jenkins has joined us in this meeting.

Council Vice President, Council Members.

I'll just quickly go through the FTE report in terms of the vacancies that were given to the City Attorney's Office for 2024.

Obviously, if you have any questions, I'm more than happy to answer them.

We had asked for this budget, the labor and employment managing attorney, which we just talked about and my hope is to get that position filled very, very quickly.

You were gracious enough to give us a charging team attorney.

We did hire that position.

It's up and running and functioning and a really great addition to our criminal work.

Um, litigation attorney, we've made a hire.

The legislative attorney, we have distributed assignments in the legislative department to multiple different attorneys.

We, as you know, we have the client services manager that we have some transition in.

We have the new manager starting August 19th.

Very excited about that and we are waiting for the last

client services FTE vacancy to be hired once that manager comes on board so that they can have a hand in the hiring process.

Settlement agreement, one FTE was hired and the other FTE we were going into our second round of interviews for that position.

And I would be happy to stand for questions.

Colleagues, does anyone have questions or comments regarding the city attorney's offices?

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Ms. Anderson.

Just a quick question, and you kind of perked my interest when you were talking about the charging team attorney and the litigation attorney.

They were both hired.

Can you tell me the timing on those?

Were they early?

Like, we're already in August, so when I say earlier this year.

I will, Vice President, Council members.

So the charging team attorney we hired very early on in the year through a promotional process within the office which then created a vacancy that we've filled again early in the year.

And the whole purpose of the charging team is really to have that

All prosecutors can charge, but to have kind of that higher level expertise in looking at cases, ensuring that the charging decisions that we're making are equitable, and that work has been ongoing and extremely successful.

The litigation attorney, we have hired the position.

It's an internal position and we're going to be doing some movement, which is why you see actually a vacant FTE in the settlement agreement because we've got internal movement.

Frankly, that's one of the things that I'm really proud about about my office is that you know, we do have opportunities for folks who decide that they want to try something new we've got a history of folks moving from criminal to civil and and and around so So some of that movement is is because of the internal movement which then creates kind of this waterfall Great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning, Madam Vice President and Committee Members.

My name is Casey Carl.

I have the privilege of serving as Clerk of the City of Minneapolis.

I'm joined by our interim City Auditor, Siddhartha Pudyal, and together we will be presenting the report for the Legislative Department, which, as you know, encompasses the City Council and the offices of City Auditor and City Clerk.

Before we get into the details and for some context, let me remind the Committee that the Legislative Department was formally established in 2022 under our Government Structure Omnibus Ordinance.

The Legislative Department has, as its core purpose, the responsibility for providing institutional support for the City Council in the performance of its legislative, policymaking, oversight, and representative functions.

The department's 2024 operating budget is approximately $26 million.

That represents about or roughly 1.5% of the city's entire adopted budget.

Strong growth over the past two fiscal years reflect significant investments made by City Council, including 17 new full-time positions in the current fiscal year, funding for multiple job reclassifications, and a mix of both one-time and ongoing appropriations for our department's operations.

Much of that information was already presented at this Committee's regular meeting on May 20th when we presented the Department's budget recommendations for the upcoming 2025-2026 biannual budget.

Those recommendations were approved in concept and Council leadership was authorized to submit those requests to the Mayor.

Details about that presentation for our 2025-26 budget were available in LIMS file 2024-575.

Good morning Chair Shakti and members of the committee.

I'd like to provide the status update on budget proposal adopted in 2024 Supplemental Budget for the Office of the City Auditor.

As a part of the budget, the Council approved ongoing funding to establish seven new positions.

We have hired four FTEs, two senior project managers and two management analysts in February of 2024 for oversight and evaluation division.

We also appointed interim director of policy and research division in April 2024 and interim director of oversight and evaluation in July 2024.

The hiring of the last one FTE of policy and research analyst is in progress right now.

The Council also approved $105,000 ongoing funding to allow the Office of City Auditor to further develop the scope of work within each of the three divisions to best support the City Council's legislative policymaking and oversight functions through providing non-partisan research, evaluation, and analysis.

We have been using the fund for continued

establishment of the office through staff obtaining essential trainings, continuing professional educations, and job-related certifications.

In addition, the Council approved 50,000 ongoing funding in contractual services in the newly established oversight and evaluation division.

This is currently being utilized through financial services firm contract to supplement the work.

involving analysis of the mayor's proposed budget and other fiscal matters.

Thank you.

I will wait to see if there are committee members with questions.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Mr. Pudiel, I appreciate this information and I'm curious, how do you make decisions about using this money?

Like, what plays into the decisions?

So this one right now is used by the oversight and evaluation division.

So basically right now the goal is the working with the interim director, Jordi Molar Hansen, regarding what's the need and how to best approach.

So basically understanding what's the need of that division because I know this is a newly established division and we're currently working on establishing the policy and procedures and how the working structure

of the division.

What you just... Oh no, we're already in contract with them and we've been utilizing them.

For capacity building of your own office?

Thank you.

I'm not seeing any further questions, but I did have a couple.

Going back to your first slide with the FTEs, I know you mentioned the one policy and research analyst position.

The hiring is in progress right now.

Wonderful.

And of the two capacity building office program funding and oversight and evaluation program funding, can you help us understand how much of these allocations have been used or how much might be left?

And if you'll, just as we're looking ahead to the next year, what did you learn from these allocations?

Are they right?

So for now, primarily some of these funding has been used to establish the Office of Oversight and Evaluation, buying the computers, laptops, softwares.

And also in addition to that, all three divisions have asked the staff based on what's the need of the training.

Wonderful, thank you for that update, Mr. City Auditor.

We will now welcome the City Clerk back to continue the Legislative Department change items.

And I will note that Council Member Osman has joined us in this meeting as well.

Alright, thank you.

Madam Vice President, turning now to the Office of City Clerk.

I'll be addressing first the biggest component of the legislative department's budget and that is of course the 2024 presidential election.

As I noted in our presentation in May, the election is the single biggest item that impacts the entire legislative department's budget.

In fact, election expenses represent approximately one-third of the entire department's operating budget, despite being only one-sixth of our department's core business lines.

As I stated at the May presentation, this underscores both the budgetary impact that free and fair elections have, but also I believe the high value placed on this specific program both by our elected officials as well as the people of Minneapolis.

The additional budget appropriations for this year's elections are shown on the second and third lines of the table on this slide.

And as you can see, there's a total of $5.4 million allocated for this year's presidential election, the bulk of which is for the upcoming general election set for Tuesday, November 5th.

I am pleased to note that a one-time allocation of $650,000 was authorized for this year's presidential nominating primary that was conducted in March.

and the city has already been reimbursed by the state in an amount of approximately $1.4 million for all of the city's qualifying expenditures under state law.

Obviously we're in the midst of conducting the 2024 primary now.

Early voting for the primary ends today at 5 p.m. and all polls will open tomorrow at 7 a.m. to serve voters across the city.

and following tomorrow's primary, there are just 84 days until the big show for the presidential general election as I noted on November 5th.

And as shown on this slide, the Elections and Voter Services Division is planning 11 pop-up early voting centers for that general election, which is in addition to the usual services that the city provides to assure all voters have access to the ballot.

Just beneath the election data, you'll see that we had a one-time allocation of $500,000 for the continued development and refinement of our Legislative Information Management System, or LIMS.

These funds are enabling the development of specific workflows, file management,

and integration for the city's three planning bodies on a scale that's comparable to what has already been developed for City Council for the improvement of similar workflows of the city's independent bodies and appointed boards and commissions and for related work.

Some of that related work includes the development of a new and improved speaker management system.

And all of that work is on target and proceeding under the leadership of our information technology and design team in the legislative department.

As noted, we're pursuing a contract amendment to include work on the new speaker management system.

That leaves the four new personnel positions that are shown at the top of this and bottom of this slide.

We were very fortunate to have three positions added to create the department's outreach and constituent services team.

We've hired Zach Farley and Margo Meyer as our two constituent service coordinators

and we're working on a reclassification of the third position that we envision becoming the unit manager.

That position, the manager, will provide lead work on plans to address departmental communications, engagement and outreach initiatives and programs.

We also received one FTE to expand the team in our data practices unit focused on public safety and as noted, that position was hired in May.

This second slide largely addresses investments that were made in the city's management of information assets under the leadership of our Information Governance Division.

The first three lines all address funds that were intended to improve our management of city data and records.

Combined, it represents more than $1 million.

I'm very proud to say that is the largest investment during a single year for the city's information management program since I started with the city in 2010.

You'll note the first line addresses the transfer of the police department's body-worn camera program, which included a total of three positions.

At the beginning of the year, two positions from police were transferred to our information governance division, specifically into that division's data practices team, as part of ongoing work to consolidate and centralize all data practices functions under the city clerk.

In prior years, the police department had its own data practices unit.

Starting in 2022, we've been working to merge that unit into the clerk's data practices team.

And beginning this year, the clerk's office has assumed responsibility for handling the review, processing, redaction, and control over the police body-worn camera function.

Because this was anticipated to be a heavy lift, we've also used operating funds to hire two contractors, which started in May, to evaluate how we can best integrate the body-worn camera function into our existing team and processes.

And as noted, we're in the midst of finalizing a request for proposals to address systems and technology and to recruit the third position that was included in the budget.

I'm very pleased to also report we finalized an enterprise-wide contract after many months of work and are now preparing to launch a project to update, streamline, and modernize the city's records retention schedule, which we expect will be concluded next year.

Again, this is a project that has been decades in the making.

When I arrived in 2010,

the city had opted to pursue by way of a contractor detailed department specific retention schedules and despite many years of work by that time when I arrived in 2010 only half of the city's departments had retention schedules in place and no one really knew how to apply or use those schedules that were developed

and there were no schedules for the other half of the enterprise.

To address those gaps, I quickly moved for adoption of the statewide retention plan for all of the city's enterprise.

That patchwork system, however, has been in place since 2011.

With this project, we will be updating a unified retention plan for the entire enterprise covering all 25 departments and modernizing that plan so that it meets current industry best practices, complies with all legal mandates, and uses modern technology.

Relatedly, as shown on this slide, the ServiceNow project, which had a one-time allocation of $400,000, is focused on redesigning, developing internal workflows, and improving the user experience with our City's online data request portal.

This is an ongoing project that we're pursuing in conjunction with the City's Information Technology Department, and the funds are primarily being used to pay for a contractor who has specialized expertise in system design and development using that program, ServiceNow, to augment the IT department's full-time staff.

Finally, we received one new position to create, for the first time ever, a dedicated resource to handle the City's appointed boards and commissions.

That's just in time, as we also completed, as you know, after more than a decade, substantial reforms to be applied to all of our boards and commissions, which Council adopted late last year, and which became effective on July 31st this year.

While we're working on classification issues for that position, we've also hired two temporary workers

to work in an immediate capacity to tackle Board and Commission reforms.

As noted here, a report on the progress of our work on those reforms was made to the Committee of the Whole at its meeting on July 16th.

That completes my presentation for the Clerk's Office and our combined presentation for the Legislative Department.

Thank you for that presentation, Mr.

Clerk.

I see a couple of members with comments or questions.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Carl, I was just wondering, thank you so much, first of all, I appreciate all the detail.

Could you just clarify, for the 2024 presidential nomination primary, so it's 1.4 million that we receive, I just want clarity for

everybody to understand.

1.4 million from the state and then plus it's the $650,000.

Through the Chair, Councilor Wieckowski, we actually received an allocation from the city in our budget for $650,000.

We actually qualify under state law for more than that $650,000.

Okay, gotcha.

Okay, thank you for clarifying that.

And then the other question that I have, if I may ask another, the outreach and constituent services, there were three FTEs, and so there is the one FTE that's in development.

Can you describe this?

The Council authorized a communications position from our city's communications department be transferred to our department.

It's my vision to have that be the unit manager to not only oversee the existing constituent service functions but also communications for the department.

My position is that we need someone who has prior experience and expertise in developing communications program.

We have no one on the staff with that skill set.

Okay, thank you.

And then, so all those three roles were not hired until halfway through the year.

Through the Vice President, cost savings and all of our vacant positions are going towards, at least in part, paying for temporary workers.

We currently have

I believe three or four temporary workers who are rounding out our administrative team that supports the entire department.

We have one full-time FTE that does all of the administration.

That's our Administrative Services Manager Kate Redden.

With her soon-to-be departure from our office, we will have none.

So for me, it's a criticality for us to fill our administrative support roles that take care of budget, payroll,

personnel, procurement, HR issues.

So a high priority for me is taking care of the administration of the entire department.

Another big priority for me, I know you're all aware, is that one of our clerks, Lisa Brock, has announced her intention to retire in December.

And our assistant city clerk who leads the entire division of legislative support and administration or operations, Jackie Hanson, will be beginning her retirement in June of next year.

Hiring clerks has proven to be one of the most difficult challenges I have as the leader of the department.

Thank you.

This is just really helpful and I am really appreciative of the transparency and understanding of you know things shift and change.

We allocate funding and we don't always know if we're going to be able to get people hired but I'm really grateful to hear about the creativity that you're using but it's also helping me understand and give light and I hope to my other colleagues too that you're there's some stress around the administrative

Thank you, Vice Chair Koski.

Thank you, Chair Chug.

I don't really have a question.

Just want to say thank you to you and our staff regarding the pop-up voting centers.

We had one at the Midtown Global Market in Midtown Phillips and it was, I believe, it was a good success and I went over there that day to get some food just to go check how things were and there was a lot of people.

and it was a good opportunity and a good place for our staff to be in and get out the vote and making sure that an area that doesn't have the best voter turnout has access to voting that day.

Thank you council member and appreciate you being there in person.

Wonderful.

I think I'm calling back our City Operations Officer.

Thank you, Madam Chair, CVP.

First, let me start with, nothing works without the clerks, but nothing works without an amazing workforce.

So I do want to acknowledge AFSCME is in the background here.

And on Friday, the administration, the Labor Relations Department sent

a opening economic offer to AFSCME and I believe they are sitting down on Friday and that begins to address a 2.5 offer for equity adjustment for AFSCME and then on will go the negotiation from there.

So I want to acknowledge

All right, as I mentioned, I am going to do all the slides except for the CPED slides, and Director Hanson will come up for those, but we do have additional subject matter experts ready to go on more detailed questions, so we will begin.

So last year, there were a number of appropriations for the Office of Public Service directly.

The Climate Legacy Initiative Senior Project Manager has been filled, and I can get you the detail on start date, which is very soon here, if not this week.

And that is someone who actually is very familiar with city work internally.

and was the successful candidate.

The George Floyd Square community engagement work for $250,000, that RFP has been issued and the contract is in place for community engagement.

That budget will be fully expended by the end of the year.

Open Streets.

RFPs were issued, individual RFPs.

Three of the five were successfully granted to organizations.

We had one respondent who, when they were notified, then asked for more money than was in the RFP, the $50,000 reimbursable.

and one location was not responded to.

So we are not planning additional events this year but obviously we'll be in conversation and evaluation of where the remainder of those dollars can go and what might happen with them.

Thank you.

Understood.

I thank you Chair Chuktai.

This year when we found out that Lake Street wasn't going to have an open streets, it wasn't the best feeling for many of our residents on our beautiful cultural corridor.

And then to hear that only three out of the five RFPs are being issued for open streets after

These have been super well attended and through a new process makes me have a lot of pause and makes it feel like this new process made it harder for these events to become successful.

I was really hoping that we were going to have these five RPs filled and I still hope we can because the year is not over and we still have a lot of time to get that done so I would just ask that if we can figure out what we're going to do with those two other events because our residents deserve to have

So through the chair, Councilmember Chavez, we did reissue the one RFP that was not successful in the signing of a contract.

And Mr. Ballard might want to come up and talk about which one that was.

Good morning.

I'm Andrew Ballard, the Enterprise Events Manager for the city.

To answer your question, we did reissue the RFP for the two sites that were not filled.

We subsequently did not get any responses to those RFPs.

Thank you so much.

I'm not seeing any further questions or discussion.

Next is our Department of Arts and Cultural Affairs and the adopted budget proposals here.

The program manager position has been filled.

It was filled in May.

Vibrant downtown storefronts and cultural districts.

The applications are currently open for that program and they are coming in.

I think that it is very exciting.

I know there was some press on this recently and they are open through the end of August for those responses.

And then finally for George Floyd Square Arts and Culture, this is related to the conservation of artwork and other items.

and we do have a contract that's been created, conservation firms identified and they're developing the scope of work for GFS.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, CEO.

Appreciate the information.

Just curious about the vibrant downtown storefronts and cultural districts.

I just was wondering, I know that there has been some press, like you said, but what is the means since we're not

Thank you to the Madam Chair and to Council Member Koski.

So we've had a really robust response to both programs.

Cultural District's funding actually ended on Friday and we will continue with Vibrant Storefronts through the end of the month.

Our plan is to go through all the applications over the next couple weeks and hopefully go to contract as soon as possible in September so we can spend on all of the funding through the end of the year.

Our goal is to come back to Council and to share with you the final selections.

So you can get the feedback on that right away.

Wonderful.

Thank you, Director.

And then, Madam Chair, what committee will this go through when you will give us that update just so we can follow that?

We go through business.

Okay, great.

Wonderful, thank you.

And this will be a really excellent reminder when we have new presenters come up if you'll start with introducing yourself.

We all know you up here, but again this is being broadcast live so if you could just introduce yourself with your name and what you do here at the City of Minneapolis before answering specific questions that would be wonderful.

Thank you Director Johnson.

Thank you Madam Chair.

We're on to civil rights and the adopted budget for civil rights.

So here we had two major items, labor standards investigator and co-enforcement work.

And the complaint investigator officer one position will be posted externally from, it's currently posted 8-5 up until 8-19.

and as an update, all co-enforcement funds will be expended by the end of the year, which I think is a good thing.

Settlement agreement, there were three new positions to work on settlement agreement and all interviews are currently underway to fill those positions.

Thank you, Ms. Anderson-Kelleher.

while I wait for council members to jump in queue on these.

I do have a couple of questions for you.

We'll start with the first proposal, labor standards investigator and co-enforcement.

I think this is in my two budget cycles here now, entering into the third one.

This has always been a thing that comes up, right?

And there's always been a council initiated

budget amendment to increase the amount of dedicated resources that go towards co-enforcement.

So if you can speak to two things.

One, what's the status if you can remind us of the ARPA allocation on co-enforcement and

Madam Chair, thank you council members.

My name is Kayla McConaughey and I currently serve as the interim director of the Labor Standards Enforcement Division.

I'm so happy to answer those questions.

When it comes to the ARPA funds for co-enforcement, all of that is also planned to be spent by the end of this year.

So it's all been planned out and will all be spent down by that point in time.

When it comes to the larger question on co-enforcement funding, there is co-enforcement funding that is within

Thank you.

Thank you Madam Chair.

Thank you Director for being here as well.

Michelle Phillips, Director of Civil Rights.

So currently I'm also working with budget and the enterprise with reclassing some of the positions that we currently have with vacancies.

So we'll be reclassing one of the case investigator positions to a case investigator to position so that there is some upward mobility within OPCR.

So some of that funding will kind of be absorbed.

I'm also happy to say that we have a live job announcement that went today.

for a data analyst that will also support our OPCR for data transparency to make sure that we have data accessibility so we're utilizing some of those cost savings as well.

As we continue to do our recruitment, I do not foresee any salary savings just because as I'm reclassing to make sure that we have the appropriate skill sets moving forward to execute what the council as well as the enterprise would like for us to do

I don't foresee any salary savings.

Great.

Thank you.

I'm not seeing any further questions or comments.

Thank you Madam Chair.

We're on to finance and property services and the adopted budget proposals here.

So the senior budget evaluation analyst who is going to have the grants portfolio is filled now.

The Witch's Hat maintenance dollars that were appropriated.

There was a structural evaluation of the facility.

That is complete.

There was a solicitation for structural repairs and those repairs are in process and hopefully going to wrap up in the fall here.

Lake Street Community Safety Center had a half a million dollars and the lease is signed, the design work is complete, the build out of the space will allow for it to be fully operational by November of 2025.

and Community Safety Center Pilots, the Facility Acquisition Analysis Design Contracts and Process.

This is an inter-departmental collaboration that continues on.

And then finally, here we have the remainder of the PSA Public Safety Aid.

Colleagues, any questions or comments related to the allocations in Finance and Property Services?

Thank you, Madam Chair.

This is more of just a comment.

I just want to say thank you to Councilmember Chavez, Councilmember Choudry, and to the city staff who have been working on the Lake Street Community Safety Center and just, you know, I jumped in to work on that with Councilmember Chavez and just grateful to see the work and I think it's just important for the public to know and understand that

We allocated this funding, the work towards that had been long in the process but we had hoped for it to open up this summer but here we are in November but everyone worked diligently to move as fast as we could through the process and this is just sometimes what happens but I'm just really grateful to see this come to fruition and I'm excited to see what can happen at this

Lake Street Safety Center so that we can learn about how this can expand public safety services for the new community safety center that's not that far away but across the city.

Wonderful, thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Can someone remind me how we are going to do ongoing funding for this Lake Street Community Safety Center?

Yes, I can answer that.

Thank you, Chair Chuktay.

And I just want to clarify, I think the opening date is November 2024.

Maybe there's a different definition of operational, of like maybe other stuff happening there, but for the purpose of now.

Madam Chair, I think it's a typo.

Yeah, so 2024, it's a two-year lease.

There's going to be ongoing conversations where my belief and the belief of many of the businesses and residents in the area is that it should be more than a two-year program, but

That's a conversation that needs to happen with the mayor's office as well and figuring out what we're gonna do when that two-year lease runs out.

But again, it's a two-year lease and we're gonna have conversations, see how it goes and figure out if it needs to be here or somewhere else.

It does.

I was trying to figure out if we used one-time money and how it was going to be considered in the future.

Wonderful, thank you.

And Council Member Chavez were you in queue to answer Council Member Palmisano's question?

Wonderful.

Thank you Madam Chair.

I just hope that we can count on our partners to play a role in sustaining the Lake Street Safety Center.

It provides service to a wide variety of people and there are a number of partners at the table, Hennepin County, corporations, etc.

and so

any sustainable future has to include support from those partners.

Thank you.

I am not seeing anyone else in queue.

CVP, we're going to move on to community planning and economic development.

Thank you CEO Anderson Kelleher, Council Vice President, members of the Budget Committee.

My name is Eric Hansen and I am the Director of CPED and I have 19 budget items to report on to you today so this is the reason why it's probably a little easier for me to get up and just go through these.

So I'm happy to answer questions.

I'm just going to kind of roll through them if you want to stop me.

By all means I have

Fantastic.

Alright, so the first thing on our list is eviction representation.

This is one of the examples of programs that are funded on a one-time ongoing basis so each year the mayor will present a number of things that go through CPED and that the council adopts on ongoing programs but just it's dependent on how much money the city has in its budget situation and that's one of the reasons why you see so many change items in the CPED budget every year.

So eviction representation is Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid.

We provide free services for people that are facing eviction and representing in a housing court.

That is fully contracted as usual and we will be spending that by the end of the year.

The next two are ARPA-related positions.

There are seven positions that we have moved into the General Fund.

These are people that handle financial administration, housing and equity development coordination, our construction management, our developer technical assistance program.

So it's all through the department.

This fund was helpful in helping us get weather through the COVID pandemic and now we're able to keep those staff, those critical staff throughout the department.

Inclusionary zoning planning is a evaluation at the five-year mark of our inclusionary zoning program.

We are hopefully to be back in front of the council in November.

with a full presentation on that plan.

We're in the middle of that process now, coming to the end, and in that allocation, you see about 150 for that evaluation, and then rest is an IZ coordinator, which we have hired.

Strategic homeless response funding, this is $950,000.

We're working with the mayor's office and a number of tribes referred from community that we need more culturally specific treatment options for those experiencing homelessness.

We're working on a partnership with tribes within the state around some sort of treatment facility.

Those are in the nascent stages of conversation with those partners.

Opioid settlement programming, this is divided into two, $1.5 million to CPED, which actually was $500,000 to help turning point a treatment facility on the north side with some capital improvements.

That program is contracted, and we were working on dispersing that funding, and then the remaining $1 million is actually some programming that the health department has encumbered.

The next one is climate legacy initial pathway program that's $450,000 half of which goes to some apprenticeship outreach program with the trade unions that those funds are contracted as of last week.

This one's kind of updated as we go and then we have an RFQ out for partnerships around getting jobs in the green energy economy and that is just hitting the streets now and so we should have

contracts coming back to the City Council later this year so that that work can happen in 2025.

The Rise Up Center is the second year of some pre-development funding.

It's a labor partnership of five organizations to put an actual physical center on Lake Street to help BIPOC residents enter into the labor trades.

This is the second of two years.

We did 250,000 pre-development in 2023 and then another $250,000 in 2025.

for that center.

They have since been successful with getting some financing from the state of Minnesota, so we're excited that we will see some action around the actual center coming together in the near future.

Community Outreach and Safety Program is a pilot that started with ARPA funding and these are contracts for organizations that do outreach and livability and safety programs.

We do an annual RFP.

For these and we have some organizations both in North Minneapolis and South Minneapolis that are providing services.

This is we're building this Outcomes back into the rethinking public safety that the Office of Community Safety is conducting right now and as we were talking to this committee last year during the budget we are due to come back to to the City Council with a report and

before you guys make your budget deliberations into 2025.

We're expecting to do that at the end of September.

So you'll see a review of that program with more detail.

Hate crime prevention was some funding that was in CPEDS budget but has since been moved into the Office of Community Safety by the City Council's action back in July.

Moving on, cannabis planning and programming.

As you know, there's a new cannabis legalization in the state of Minnesota has put a lot of burden on the city of Minneapolis.

There are two positions for both technical assistance and then zoning oversight and regulation.

Those two positions are being hired as we speak.

So I think we have some offers out to get folks up and running.

And then we're also using a portion of this funding to help with program guidelines, spacing requirements, all of the things that we would need to make sure that we are administering our role in legalized cannabis appropriately.

And so we'll be seeing that as the state's Office of Cannabis Management gets set up.

The next two are Culturally Specific Business Weeks.

The first one is Black Business Week.

We had a successful week a few weeks ago, Black Business Week, with a number of you participating, so thank you for doing that again.

We had about 500 participants over the series of events that week and about 70 black businesses participating, so we think it was a huge success.

More details will be coming out.

as we report back to you about the, as we're collecting all the data.

Latino Business Week is brand new, it was put in the budget by the council last December and that is in the planning stages and we should see that in the first week of October during Latino Business Month which runs between the middle of September and the middle of October.

Ownership and Opportunity Fund is one of those ongoing programs that gets funded on a one-year basis.

We got three million dollars in the 2024 budget.

We've got about 20 applications in the history of the program dating back to 2018 that have been funded and we are now working, we're continuing to work through

We're committed to work through our pipeline, and for those who are unfamiliar with this program, this helps businesses purchase the properties that they're doing business in.

So we're one of our cornerstone wealth creation programs in the Economic Development Division.

Developer Technical Assistance Program is our annual allocation of funding to help fund contracts for emerging developers to get into our pipeline for city projects.

Vibrant Downtown Storefronts Culture, this is the other side of what the Department of Arts and Culture Affairs are doing.

This is a contract with the

Minneapolis Downtown Council and we do a program called Chameleon Shops and it helps BIPOC businesses infiltrate vacant spaces in downtown so that they can get better exposure for their businesses.

The Director of Strategic Initiatives and Partnerships is a FTE and then the second half of it is annual memberships.

The hiring process for the Director of Strategic Initiatives is underway.

And in the partnerships there's three buckets.

There's our annual allocation for the greater MSP partnership.

We have also allocations for the Lake Street partnership and the Cedar Riverside partnership.

And this is, those are

kind of a legacy component that we're in the old city coordinator's office for time and in 2024 those contracts moved into CPET.

George Perry Floyd Square People's Way, this is property maintenance for the people's way that the city acquired about just a little over a year ago and it's just funding that's available for us to make sure that we are managing the property appropriately.

and then the job training and creative commons which skims and I'll keep this up for a little bit and then move to the next one because it bleeds into the other one.

Let me just pull up the notes because this one I want to highlight a little bit.

and I have too many windows open.

This is a relationship we have with Pillsbury United Communities to help with BIPOC artists through their theater on Chicago Avenue and so that contract's in place.

They're developing the program and then next year we'll be soliciting applications for artists to participate in the program and I'll

With that, I'll wait for some questions that you might have, and I will see if I can pull up the details on that element.

Thank you, Director Hanson.

I will start with, we have a few questions in queue.

Thank you, Chair Chuktai.

If we can go to page 17, and maybe the clerks can help us clarify on this particular one.

My understanding was that the Hate Crime Prevention Program, the motion that Council Vice President Chuktai move forward was to both have the MPD cameras for Hate Crime Prevention Program and also still have

The Hate Crime Prevention Program within CPED.

Okay?

Chair Chug Tai, Council Member Chavez, we're learning on the go here that the

If that is still in our department budget, then we will revert back to where we were before this action took place, and the department would then have to produce a program that would come through the City Council, and after that program would be approved, then we could allocate the funding.

I'm just looking to see, okay.

Perfect.

Thank you.

And then really excited about the George Floyd Square, the Pillsbury Creative Commons.

program, the job training one, and then the actual development of the program.

This is something that my office and Councilman Jenkins worked on last year as well, and really excited to see how this is going.

Yep.

Yeah.

Chair Tugtai, Council Member Chavez, these are contracts for service with Pillsbury United Communities and I found my notes.

It is a project provides job skills, entrepreneurial training, paid internships, job placements for 30 black and brown artists annually and technical theater and media arts trades beginning in 2025.

Perfect.

So thank you and then the 150,000 is for the development of the project that is going to be near George Floyd Square We can just follow up over this but we'd love to see what that's going to look like when it comes to council.

Is it a loan?

Chair Chuck Dyke, Council Member Chavez, we haven't negotiated the terms of it.

So we start with establishing the public purpose of the use of the funds and you know, what are eligible expenses and

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Director.

I just had a couple questions around the Director of Strategic Initiatives and Partnerships.

You said that the hiring is in process for this position.

A couple things.

Good morning chair and committee members.

Brett Jelly, Deputy City Operations Officer in the Office of Public Service.

So on the process standpoint, the position was posted I think later in May and was open for about a month.

Yes chair Chug Thai and council member Koski the focus of this position is really both for

kind of looking forward about kind of how the city changes post-COVID, particularly in two focus areas, downtown and then also cultural districts, where we'll have, CPED is currently doing a lot of good work

on kind of planning and looking at action steps to advance our kind of what the city will look like as we move forward.

That will inform a lot of the work.

okay thank you and I'm not sure if this is be directed to you or for director Hanson but I don't remember the annual membership dues as being part of the this last year when we adopted the budget and I could have just missed that in the

footnotes of this role, but can you break that out?

What's the amount that is for the membership dues and then the actual role?

And then what have we done in the past?

Because if this is an annual membership, what funding sources have we used in the past?

Chair Chugtai, Council Member Koski, so

This is the the city has been a member and a contributing member to the greater MSP partnership for its since its existence and The city has chosen to fund it in different ways You know through the years and in different departments most recently it was in kind of general operations of the

The city the old city coordinators office the mayor chose in this last budget to be very deliberate about You know kind of put some daylight on this Contract as a change item into CPEDS budget moving it back into the Community Development Department as opposed to in the oversight of the city the old city coordinator and

It was in that but that change item and that's what you see the and part There's the director of strategic initiatives is one thing and the partnerships is the second thing in the budget Change order requests as those three partnerships the greater MSP the Lake Street partnership and the Cedar Riverside partnership

Those are also historic partnerships the city hasn't been involved in with public, private, and other governmental agencies.

It's $130,000 out of that budget, I believe, is in the partnerships.

Great.

Thank you.

Next we have council member Jenkins Thank You chair Chuktai And thank you.

Mr. Hanson for this director Hanson for these updates.

I'm curious.

What is the maintenance?

Chair Choctaw, Council Member Jenkins, essentially it's around like, you know, vegetation removal, snow removal, any kind of like, if there's a, something breaks and causes some sort of public, public emergency, we can remove that.

we're also looking at potentially funding some porta potties that have been we're learning that have been community supported for a number of years we're actually in the process of potential of taking over that maintenance and operations of those porta potties that are serving the the district

but it's really general maintenance.

We have this for most of our properties.

This one, since it was brand new, we asked for this additional funding in the budget so that we made sure that we knew as this is the first year we had enough to cover what we needed to cover on the property.

Yep.

Chair Chogtiak, Council Member Jenkins, yes, it's a little bit of both.

Proactive, like the grass is going to grow, the weeds are going to come, the snow is going to come, well maybe, we'll see this next winter.

The snow is going to come, and we have to deal with that.

But we have to react to if someone dumps some things in there that we have to remove and dispose of, we have to deal with that.

And if a water main breaks or something inside the building, we have to fix that.

That's reactive.

But this is not a budget item to help with the planning.

We're using other funding to help with the planning.

As you know, that is underway, and we're getting to the

Thank you Thank you

Council Member Osman, did you still have a question?

Okay, wonderful.

Quick thing for you, Director Hanson, before we're ready to move on to the Health Department's change item update.

On slide 16, the opioid settlement programming, you mentioned 1 million of that 1.5 allocation is encumbered by the Health Department.

Is that in addition to

their 1.3 that was a part of a change item request.

Chair Chogtai, I'd have to defer to the COO about the Health Department's budget.

We'll get to that when we get to it.

Wonderful.

I'm not seeing any further questions or comments for the CPED change items.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you Madam Chair and committee members.

We're going to move on to health and it sounds like there will be a few questions here.

We'll start with the opioid settlement programming and here the mobile medical unit delivery is coming in the fall.

This is the vehicle that will be moving around the city.

We're underway as well for the hiring of FTEs that will staff that mobile medical unit.

and also the first step prioritizing spending here is we have some grant funds.

We're going to spend those down, which is wise, and use those first in this case.

Then we have the Elliott Park Community Area Community Health and Wellbeing Services work.

Health is working with regulatory services on an RFP to have this funding become active.

and then the Climate Legacy Initiative, we have a number of items here.

There's the Pathways and Workforce Program and that is 64% contracted with 16 different partners.

767 projected reach with those contracted funds and the diversity numbers of this cohort are actually outperforming even diversity within the city.

I think that's important for everyone here to know.

And then furthermore, there is the Climate Legacy Incentives pot of funding, which was almost $5 million.

is 100% contracted with 300 projects that are working through the process.

And these slides were updated at times a little bit before our dates here, so you see that it was mentioned in August 1st deadline as well.

Then we have the carbon sequestration work that's going on through Climate Legacy CLI and here there are two site plans that have been developed.

The equipment is currently in Cincinnati and the RFPs are out for contractor bid and expected to be reviewed in the next week.

We hope to get production online here at the end of the year, beginning of next year.

So end of 24, beginning of 25.

Then Homegrown Support.

There are 18 community partners here.

First Projects are off and running and we'll continue that work.

And then there was some administration dollars for CLI appropriated.

And there we have the hiring of the Climate Equity Action, the Director of Climate Equity Action and that has happened.

They have started.

We have a contract position hired, a weatherization position hired, and data and analytics first hire, and the new director is starting on the 12th of August.

and then Green Cost Share which 100% allocated to six awardees and they were chosen funding within the environmental justice communities, the EJ communities, working on clean air, clean water and healthy food and the overall goal of reducing impacts of climate.

So I will stand for questions.

Thank you Madam Chair, I appreciate it.

First of all, I look forward to having a conversation with the Health Department.

I'm super excited about Elliott Park.

I think it's much needed services at this moment.

It's been a struggling area.

and we have Catholic Charities and other good organizations that are doing some great work over there.

With that being said, I have a question on opioid cultural program that we amended on the last two budgets actually.

There's 150 and then I believe there's another 150.

For this 2020

3 and 2024, I believe.

So I wanted to know, I know there was a one that was allocated recently with some cultural organizations that are doing outreach and education for opioid.

Was that last year's budget?

Or was that this year?

I mean, what am I saying?

Last year's budget that we allocated, or was it a couple years ago?

Because I only remember

One RFP that are going out.

Thank you Chair Chugtai and Council Member Osman, committee members, Heidi Ritchie, Deputy Commissioner of Health.

We had the $150,000 for 2023 was the community opioid response and engagement.

We had one that was specific for cultural communities and one that was specific for youth prevention.

So that 2023 allocation has gone out.

The $150,000 that was earmarked for 2024, that has also been contracted.

Chair Chuktai and committee members, moving on to HR and their allocations for 2024.

There was a substantial allocation for capacity building in HR.

Seven of those eight positions have been filled.

One is being reclassified or classified to begin the hiring process currently.

Metamorphosis contract lives within the leadership training, lives within HR.

With this $150,000, two additional cohorts for both department heads and division directors have been completed now.

And then public safety and recruitment and retention initiatives.

We've talked about this a lot over the last few months There the retention and recruitment initiatives are being discussed and negotiated with 911 and certainly we could have someone come up and discuss detail on that and then of course there was two million dollars for pay equity I think I as much as I could address that in my earlier comments about the desire of

to come to the table with AFSCME and get some dates on the books.

Thank you.

There are a couple of members in queue with some questions, but I anticipate that at least some of those questions will be related to the public safety recruitment and retention initiatives and some to the pay equity initiatives.

So I'll just name with public safety recruitment and retention that was specific to 911.

that was a council initiated budget amendment.

Earlier this year, just a couple months ago when we were considering the public safety aid reallocation proposal from the Office of Community Safety.

It is my understanding, I've seen a letter of agreement that this money is in the process of being distributed or it's making its way as intended.

While there are some, I believe, retention and recruitment initiatives that are being negotiated with 911, some are encumbered.

Is that not correct?

Please start by introducing yourself.

Thank you, Chair Chogtai.

I think, so... Mr. Jeffries, will you start with introducing yourself?

Yes, I am Chief of Staff for the Office of Community Safety, Jared Jeffries.

Chair Chogtai, I believe your question is how much of the 1.35 million is encumbered currently?

I think my comment was just to address the fact that I don't see any mention of the fact that some of that 1.35 is encumbered through a letter of agreement for recruitment incentives for 9-1-1.

I see that councilmember Rainville has joined us in this committee meeting.

Thank you

Thank you Madam Chair, thank you COO Anderson Kelleher.

I want to speak to the last item, pay equity.

Two million dollars dedicated to AFSCME workers to get pay equity increasingly higher in our city and I think this is the only budget item we see here today with no action and so

you know when the city council and the mayor at the end of the year sign a budget together it's the expectation for us and for our constituencies that that money will be acted upon and so I think that's the frustration why there's so many AFSCME workers here today on this item and why I was really shocked over the last couple weeks to be talking with workers and to hear about the lack of action on this.

I do understand that your intention is to

move this money through in negotiations this year, but that was not the expectation when this money was set aside.

Madam Chair and Councilman Cashman.

This is a complicated issue.

I was not the COO when this was talked about with all of you, but my understanding is we have an active and in-place contract with AFSCME in the city that expires at the end of this year.

The process that has been communicated many times is that that pay equity adjustment, internal equity adjustment, following the wage pattern of the city

which means AFSCME bargained first last time, settled for less than other units would be addressed in bargaining.

And I believe that was fully communicated by the City Attorney's Office last time.

And that is what the position is.

That is why we made an opening offer, it's kind of unusual to do that, last Friday and would like to have dates so that we could fully negotiate this contract before the end of the year.

Okay, I'll just note that it really feels kind of like a slap in the face to workers to be at the bottom and to not be prioritized in these change items.

We just saw a position in CPED to be filled for $330,000 salary.

Is that not for that amount?

Madam Chair, I think we need to clarify that that position is far less than that.

At least $130,000 of those dollars were going to greater MSP for membership and to other partnerships.

So it's not near that.

Okay, thank you for clarifying that I think my point is that there are you know positions in the city that make more than $200,000 and their positions in the city that are making less than a quarter of that and so pay equity is an issue that entire nations have taken up in in northern Europe to To get at policies that make sure that people who are making the least amount of money in the city are not you know less than

1 to 4 ratio of the people making the highest amount.

So I think the intention of the council when they passed this budget line was to make sure that people making the least amount in our city are being raised up to counter inflation and other higher expenses coming up in the city.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, CEO.

I have a couple questions about the public safety recruitment and retention initiatives.

So I was just wondering if, I see the Director of HR is here, but could you just walk us through some of what has happened and where some of this funding has

I'm hearing that some of it has been encumbered but you know what some of the successes that we've had I was just at an MSTAT meeting and several council members were there and the police chief talked about a lot of positive recruitments from our laterals and just some successes they've seen is that because of

Some of this work here in the $1.3 million or is that other initiatives?

Madam Chair, Council members, my name is Nikki Odom.

I am the Chief Human Resources Officer here for the city.

So right now, we are still in the middle of our recruitment campaign.

We've launched both mostly online, but we are in the process of launching billboards and other kind of

It's hard to say whether or not it's a one-on-one correlation but we certainly have been doing really well in terms of our recruitment for both 911 and MPD.

This is one of the largest classes we've seen in a long time and Same with 9-1-1.

They're expecting a full class for the first time in a while this year So I think we can't say that that that this is the only reason that we are seeing those successes, but I certainly think getting the word out and

and some of the good publicity that we've had overall for those two positions, those two departments, excuse me, also contribute.

Madam Chair, Council Members, so yes, the purpose was to focus on the hard to fill public safety positions primarily in 9-1-1 and MPD and that is where we have primarily focused our attention.

Madam Chair, we, I think, are confusing two different pots of money here.

So this money really is about 911.

and recruitment and retention, the money that we're talking about for the broader recruitment campaign came out of other funds and has been expended as well.

Some of the ARPA funding and...

Yes.

Okay.

Yes.

Okay.

All right.

And so just want to clarify that there's kind of... We probably need to do a better job naming things than the exact type of name that we have for the other thing.

And can I just jump in?

I'll offer some clarification.

There are two different change items that are worth the exact same amount of money, $1,350,000.

This has come up in a previous presentation when the two separate change items were conflated with one another.

As a part of, there was one change item that was in HR for public safety recruitment retention initiatives.

The descriptions that you're talking about right now with ad placement, recruitment,

All of that was a part of a human resources change item that was included in the mayor's recommended budget that also came from public safety aid.

The second $1.35 million is a recruitment and retention incentives package for 911 that was initiated by Councilmember Vitopp.

Those are two separate things.

Both actually ended up going to HR.

Okay, that is helpful.

Chair, I have the answer to that.

So there is one letter of agreement in existence, but it's only for hiring incentives for one of the for one of the unions.

Okay, and then I just have a comment.

I just wanted to think, I see that we have members from ASME here today and I'm also just a comment grateful to hear that there is movement forward because it was alarming for me to see this when we this was first put into limbs if there was no action taken on this yet and so I'm grateful to hear that this has changed over the weekend.

Thank you Vice Chair Koski.

I put myself in queue.

I wanted to just speak to the raise equity.

It wasn't a pay equity proposal.

It was a raise equity proposal.

Those two things are separate from one another.

and you know I can appreciate that the status as you describe CEO Anderson Kullerher has changed from an opening offer made on Friday.

What I would just say though is

This proposal was one that was really important to me and it was one that was really important to the council.

We all worked really hard to find $2 million to make sure that some of the lowest paid employees in our city, some of the most diverse employees in our city, received the same amount of money and raises as the average employee that had a settled contract for 2024.

This was back in December.

There are several other bargaining units that have since settled their contract for this year.

The Minneapolis Police Department is a really good example of that.

And I'm incredibly, you know, I appreciate that you made an offer, an opening offer on wages.

That's for 2025 though.

This money was put into the budget to be encumbered in 2024 for workers in our city to experience the benefit of raises in 2024.

And then I've heard a lot of different reasons why this money hasn't been encumbered.

One of them being we have a standard bargaining process and a part of that

we don't like to make contract adjustments prior to outside of bargaining.

And then I see examples right above, right, the 911 recruitment and retention initiatives that had also a settled contract when a letter of agreement was signed to get some of this money out.

And that sort of contradiction doesn't

feel right or make sense to me at all.

And so what I really hope is that we find a way to get this $2 million as was described in its legislative intent out to the workers who make our city run and who have not received and have not been beneficiaries of the same type of raises that others in our city have been.

Well Madam Chair, I think I should just read from what the City sent AFSCME on Friday.

Sure.

The City understands that AFSCME is looking for a COLA increase that would be effective retroactively to January 1st, 2024, over and above the increases that we already negotiated in the 22-24 labor agreement.

The City cannot lawfully provide retroactive pay increases for time worked under a settled contract.

We go on to say we appreciate the work, we want to get together, we want to get to the table.

This proposal was never supposed to be retroactive pay, it was supposed to be at the beginning of the year because we had money allocated in the budget in the form of a letter of agreement for 2024

Madam Chair, I do not want to get into a back and forth with you, but you just said there's a letter of agreement about this item.

Okay.

Wonderful.

Any additional questions from committee members?

So Madam Chair and Council Member Chavez, and this was actually outlined in the letter as well, the police were working without a contract.

So when you're working without a contract and then your contract settles, you are due the agreed wage for that period of contract settlement.

That is how you get to any back pay for MPD because they were out of contract.

Here we have a settled contract.

through the end of 2024, December 31st in fact.

And so that is where this comes in with being very clear that there is not retroactive pay.

We are willing to sit down and negotiate, and the opening offer was for pay equity, not actually on the 25 wage.

That's to be determined in

the negotiation and that's a 2.5% opening offer for pay equity.

This is not an uncommon thing in the city to have a situation where one union settles early and others settle after.

Thank you and thank you Chair Choctaw.

I just I'm still having a hard time understanding why an allocation that council unanimously approved in December and eight months later there is still little movement on this to a workforce that works really hard for our city that is one of the most diverse workforces in our enterprise and I'm still having a hard time understanding why there it took until Friday

probably after many of us on the council got many emails from our own workers that there is little to no movement on this.

I just don't understand.

And again, I'm going to go back to the point where we're moving many positions since I've been elected in this body through the administration side that are costing the city a lot of money that pay more than Governor Tim Walz.

and yet we can't pay our employees equity and fair wages.

Thank you Chair Chuktai.

So I missed part of the conversation but I just wanted to clarify some things in particular because I feel like there's this divide is happening with workers and I think we all care about every single one of our workers and like 911 workers matter just as much as the AFSCME workers do and council members picked

different things they wanted to champion and got pots of money.

Just to be clear, the 911 operators' retention and recruitment money that I led, I was told that they needed to be in negotiations to get the money.

They weren't just going to get some dollar amount pulled out of the sky.

and giving to them that they had to actively be negotiating and that would be a part of it.

I couldn't select the number, I couldn't say I think they should all get $100,000 because I love them and they're doing a fantastic job.

It's not happening that way.

They have negotiations, so does other unions and when that comes up,

then they will be able to look at this pot of money based on the staffing, current staffing, and potential staffing for recruitment.

And so this is not a situation where 911 has been selected by Council Member Vitale to receive a check right away in a dollar amount.

They're going to be in negotiations and this money will be used for that.

It hasn't happened yet.

That was in last year's budget already.

I mean, also, it's not like they just got bumped up to the top and not even a letter of agreement or anything has happened.

So I just want to make sure that we clarify that we're not, I'm not.

selecting a union over another.

The same with the ASME contract last year.

We were told that you can't just allocate funding without negotiations being in process.

And so I just want to clarify that and make that clear.

a part of the public comment because this what I'm hearing feels like you know we wanted this money to go as council members and the staff didn't do it and that's not my experience at all.

We're ready to move on to information technology.

Thank you, Madam Chair and committee members.

One item here, nearly half a million dollars, one FTE, that position is filled.

That is the data scientist position that has been filled.

And then, and this is in IT, I want to be very clear, there may be other data scientists in other departments that folks are working on.

It also covers the benchmark

contract, the EIS early intervention system work, as well as licensing around those technology products.

Colleagues, any questions or comments?

Thank you Vice President.

Chair Chugtai, Council Member Payne, I believe that software... Oh yes, I am Paul Cameron, I'm the Chief Information Officer for the City.

I believe that software was called Lefte and...

Now, I'm maybe getting a couple different ones confused.

So that was a procurement process that was led by the MPD.

I'm really interested in that because I think there's a real risk enterprise-wide in terms of just where the current status of all of our policies are and whether or not we're accurate and up-to-date and I think we could certainly benefit from a tool like that and I'm hoping that we don't have to spend additional monies on additional softwares and that wasn't taken into account during this original procurement process but please keep me abreast of any developments in that space so that

We're ready to move on to intergovernmental relations Thank You chair chug tie and committee members.

This is the funding that was put forward for a contract that contract is with Stan tech Baker Tilly helping provide technical assistance to us in in

seeking out funding from the Federal Infrastructure Bill and we've spent about $40,000 of this $100,000 so far.

We have had some good successes already with IIJA, Build Back Better.

We will continue to seek out further opportunities with these dollars and that can range everything from

hard infrastructure, our bridge improvement grant that we have still we're waiting hearing to things that are climate related to even health related items.

Thank you Vice President.

I've seen a number of change items for the Climate Legacy Initiative across a number of departments and I'm wondering, and apologies if this happened in our Climate Infrastructure Committee, but is there a singular

Madam Chair, Council Member Payne, I don't think that this would be the best reflection of everything going on.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I just wanted to address Council President's ask here about Climate Legacy Initiative programmatic updates.

We did have an update in the Climate and Infrastructure Committee in March.

So that is, as far as programs and goals, that's where you could direct constituents to.

And we have in our C&I work plan that the Climate Legacy Initiative program would bring another

update to the committee in November.

Thank you.

I'm not seeing any further questions.

Thank you Chair Chuktai.

Neighborhood and Community Relations adopted budget items include the neighborhood's 2020 funding.

99% of this money is contracted with 69 neighborhood organizations and 64% of it is fully spent already.

Then we have the FTE position in the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs.

That position is filled.

And then we have Senior Services as an item.

And 100% of these funds have been contracted with two vendors.

The two vendors are listed here, Trust, Inc. and Eastside Neighborhood Services.

I'm not seeing any questions or comments.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Public Works had a number of items.

We'll start with traffic calming.

I'm not going to read the whole slide to you, but traffic calming work is underway.

The busiest time of the year for our crews is actually right now in traffic calming.

We use the months of August and September to build out the number of items you can see here.

And I think it's always good to just state on the record that although sometimes we hear complaints from the public about bollards, they work.

So I was harangued the other day in public about this.

I just want to say our traffic calming efforts are incredible.

They are saving people's lives.

on a day-to-day basis and appreciate this funding.

The climate legacy EV charging infrastructure dollars, these are EV chargers that have been installed in multiple city parking ramps.

The cord management issue is ordered.

Here we still do sometimes see some supply chain issues as things are coming together.

And we are in the final stages of hiring a project manager on this item Then the granary crossing study that that was a earmark for money that the council directed towards the towerside neighborhood and That is being finalized in a scope of work

that the neighborhood and city staff will agree to.

Then there's a railroad crossing study and that is underway.

The grant applications are due September 23rd and I think that is a federal grant or state grant we're applying for.

A federal grant we will be seeking out.

Sidewalk snow and ice removal pilots, they're in the process of hiring the project coordinator.

The project coordinator will work with Neighborhood and Community Relations on senior snow clearing assistance grants.

The permanent snow site storage, which always a need of the cities, we actually have moved this site to Fridley, to the Fridley water site, and because we did not find a permanent location that we could

purchase and site at.

Then many of you remember the MPRB water quality partnership work.

We are making quarterly payments to the park board on this item.

Q1 and Q2 have been completed.

and then Warehouse District Live.

We have received our first invoice as of the writing of these slides, which were for events in July.

We expect these funds to be fully expended by the end of October.

There's also work happening at George Floyd Square on some pedestrian level lighting and better lighting out there.

We hope to start that work in October, especially as the sun

comes up later and goes down sooner to have some additional lighting work done there.

And then there was some capital equipment expenditures and I'm happy to say both skid steers and the pothole tacking kettles have been purchased.

The snow blowers are out for bid and expected to be purchased by the end of August.

Thank you Madam Chair, thank you CEO for the update.

I just wanted to note for the public the traffic calming, the $400,000.

You know this was originally $100,000 in the budget and many of us have

you know, prioritize this.

We've also prioritized this in our 2025-26 budget.

And so I'm so grateful to see this.

I just want to note, though, that we did get a really extensive presentation in CNI recently about this, and I know not all CLMS members are in that.

And in there, and just I'm looking to the chair here to make sure my numbers are correct, but

you know for us we have this new traffic calming program where residents can submit different areas and projects they'd like to see and they noted to us with their research that it would cost about 21 million dollars over the course of three years for us to actually implement all those programs so

I am so grateful to see our $400,000.

We are so a long ways away from the $21 million that could in programming be seen, but I also think it's also good for the public to understand that these programs and these projects are done in a short period of time.

Our capacity, our money, everything is constrained, but although we are continuing to keep this as a priority, I just want to note

what the total cost really looks like to do this.

And then I had another question too if and perhaps my apologies the permanent snow storage site.

Yes, good morning.

Chair Chuktai, Council Member Murkowski, my name is Tim Sexton, I serve as Public Works Director.

In terms of the snow storage site, the money we've spent to date has been to explore options for a permanent location for snow storage.

Right now the Fridley site is being used as a temporary facility and the cost that we've spent is really to ensure permit compliance for the snow that we store there because it does have salt and other things in it so we need to make sure that it's not contaminating any nearby water bodies.

We're continuing to look for other, like a more permanent

Thank you, Chair.

Chuck Tai.

CEO O.O.

Anderson, is the lighting improvements at George Floyd Square intended to be permanent?

Chair Chuktai, Council Member Jenkins, I believe the intention is to put them and install them in such a way that they will be something that will be there after the reconstruction as well.

Wonderful.

I am not seeing anyone else in queue.

Madam Chair, if I could say one thing about traffic calming.

The other thing that happened two years ago in the legislative budget is there is an account set up at the state but does not have a permanent source of funding that would assist us with this.

And so I think that that is something that quite possibly should be looked at for

IGR for next year, and certainly working with Senator Dibble on that issue.

He is quite a strong supporter, Chair Dibble is, of making sure cities are getting funding to do these necessary improvements as well.

All right, regulatory services.

I have two slides left.

I'm kind of hopeful.

I know that you have a tight timeline today.

Unsheltered homelessness response.

This is the coordinator was promoted to manager, the lead position.

with class and comp has, I think that's an incomplete sentence because the coordinator position has then been posted.

But there are four FTEs here and of course if you need more detail the director can come up.

Renter Assistance, Relocation Assistance $17,000 of this $240,000 has been expended.

This is particularly for renters who are being displaced because of maintenance issues that they need to be out of their site.

Expanding the Proactive Renters First and Alternative Enforcement Initiatives $310,000

Project coordinators are hired.

Start date was August 5th.

Fire Inspector 2 will be posted in August with the goal to hire in the early part of September.

And there's a number of other things here, but our rental property owners workshop web course is currently being done in partnership with NCR and IT into five languages as well.

to help, I think, with compliance in our code.

And then finally, shelter staffing in response to increased animal intakes.

Three staff have been hired.

They were hired early in January.

I think Animal Care and Control gets the award for the first expenditure out of that 2024 money.

and they also were able to reinstate Saturday hours in 2024 and have done a really good job of trying to get animals adopted out of our shelters into homes in some very clever ways, particularly some open days where residents of the city can adopt without fees.

Thank you Madam Vice President.

Thank you CEO for that great presentation.

I have a question about I know homeless outreach team and the homeless folks outreach response team do a phenomenal job.

I'm in

constant contact with them.

I remember a few years ago they were driving their vehicles and going to encampments in different areas.

So if you can summarize, Director, how many staff are working on homeless outreach team and are they driving their own vehicle or do we have city vehicles now?

Certainly.

Thank you, Chair Chugtai, Council Member Osman.

I'm Enrique Velazquez and have the honor of serving this great city as a Director of Regulatory Services.

In response to the question about the staff, we currently have two staff.

As COO Anderson Kelleher mentioned, we have one position that's currently with class and compensation to reclassify from a homeless response coordinator to a lead homeless response coordinator to help with the oversight to management, help with some of that administrative work, and then we also have a position that's currently posted for our base homelessness response coordinator, so hopefully

Before the end of this year, we will have a full complement of a four-person team and In terms of what vehicles they use they had used their personal vehicles in the past.

We were able to get them through the support of you council member Osmond through a

Ambulance, which we were able to utilize for a period of time until we were able to transition into a standard city sedan.

Thank you.

I'm not seeing any additional questions.

All right.

The final slide for the Office of Public Service is the Department of Race, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging, the Adopted Budget Proposal.

This is one large amount of $550,000.

And right now, we are negotiating a contract for a vendor to provide video and video editing, video archiving with the Library of Congress.

to be able to for the fifth anniversary of the murder of George Floyd to record a number of people's own experiences and there will be a broader program as well developed with this where people can do this on their own as part of the project as part of truth and reconciliation and healing work and then the second item is a scope of service work to really enhance truth and reconciliation and healing work

with the residents and owners at 38th and Chicago who have been harmed and impacted by local, state, federal public safety agencies.

Any final questions, colleagues?

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Wonderful, thank you.

Thank you, I'm Vicki Troswick, Finance Director in the Police Department.

I'm here to talk about the 2024 budget proposals for the Police Department.

they were given five million dollars in overtime and law enforcement support one million of that was meant to be for law enforcement support we don't anticipate spending that million dollars but we are going to be spending all five million on overtime

Overtime is running slightly higher than 2023 so through June we've spent 12.4 million dollars and we anticipate about 24 million through the end of the year and I spent time calculating the vacancy savings with our finance partners and when we consider the contract

and all of the salary savings through vacancies as well as the anticipated overtime.

We do plan to be very close to even with budgets.

We do plan to spend the $5 million in 2024.

They were also allocated 1.5 million for 12 FTEs, and the forensic scientist was an error on this slide, so that's not part of this complement of 12.

So we only have one vacancy, and that's the police technician, which should be posting soon.

These were to civilianize sworn roles in support of intelligence and investigations both internally and externally.

So some of these positions are for our internal affairs area as well as external investigative work.

and then we had the settlement agreement 6.3 million.

2 million of that is for overtime for training in the settlement and the 4.5 remaining is ongoing to support these new positions.

So this was in an effort to gain compliance with the MDHR requirements as specified by the settlement agreement.

So there is three positions that were not filled to our data scientists.

One is an early intervention system data scientist.

Those are interviewed.

I think they're close to hiring right now.

And the other is the data scientist for the implementation unit.

And then we have a training director.

These are all civilian positions, both the 12 and the 28.

And the training director position is going to be in the training division, but it does support the settlement agreement work as far as curriculum and working with the settlement or implementation unit team.

There was four positions that were already filled, but they've been vacated, so we've been struggling to refill them as well.

So we've really done well with hiring all the 28 complement.

Colleagues, any questions related to the change items for the Police Department budget?

Thank you, Vice President.

Six, so they were listed as two body worn camera and four case investigators.

Good afternoon, Chair, Chuktai, and members of the committee.

I'm Lori Burns, Interim Director for Emergency Management.

We have one budget item line in here, and that is the NIMS maintenance training and exercise.

And this is really a scaled-back version of the NIMS reset project that we've been working through for the past 16 months.

We have allocated $220,000 and we do not have any FTEs for this particular budget.

So in terms of the status of the work that we've been doing, we have the training and exercise RFPs that we developed and posted.

We've executed the contracts with vendors for both items.

Colleagues, any questions on the NIMS proposal?

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Good morning, Chair Koski.

members of the Budget Committee.

So we had three budget proposals that we were approved for in 2024.

The first one was for, actually it says zero FTEs because it was paid out of public safety funding, but it was for an interagency coordinator.

We were able to fill that position a few months back.

As a matter of fact, we stole them from you, so I'm sure.

We were given a one-time addition of $800,000 in overtime funding to help us mitigate what has been a high year so far with overtime costs and actually is our last budget update.

We've already gone through that so that's already been accounted for.

Our last thing was for mobile data computers.

They are the computers that are in each of the rigs from which we use to receive our emergency runs and communicate with dispatch.

So those have been ordered.

We've already purchased them.

We're still waiting for installation.

I think we're in line behind the police because they purchased some too, but that project should be completed here in the very near future.

Thank you, Madam Vice President.

So actually we're attacking that from a number of different angles.

As you are probably aware, we did receive a safer grant to add 15 more positions.

We are pursuing another one next year to add more positions.

So that is the plan, but it's

Okay, wonderful.

I'm not seeing any further questions for you chief.

Thank you.

They're a little taller than me, thank you.

We've got several items that I'll go over briefly.

The DV Navigators is the very first item you'll see.

Council allotted us three FTEs.

We are in final interviews with those.

actually the manager position and two DV navigator positions are how that played out.

The manager position is hired, the two DV navigator positions, one for the LGBTQ community and one for the Native community.

We're in final round interviews this week.

The senior project manager position that we were given also has been filled.

We reclassified this position slightly to become an associate director of compliance, and that person has started their second week of employment.

The cultural district safety ambassadors, we're working collaboratively with PMI and OCS on project design and planning.

Work is underway.

There is a full work plan that we can get to you later if you'd like to see that.

The work is being done in four phases.

Phase one is information gathering, phase two is planning, phase three is implementation, and phase four is continuous improvement.

The first two phases are largely being handled by PMI as they are doing information gathering and planning, and this work is well, well, well underway.

The Collaborative Public Safety Strategies and Elliott Park Community Safety Initiatives.

I'm going to kind of tackle those together.

I think Not Start is a little misleading.

The Collaborative Public Safety Initiatives, we are information gathering so that we can make sure that we have the correct partners involved and we're in the middle of designing the RFP.

The goal for a program implementation would be quarter 2 of 2025.

We have leadership hired that has been assigned to this project.

Also with the Elliott Park safety community initiatives, we are also thoughtfully preparing this RFP and working to schedule some time with Councilmember Osmond's office so that we can get full information

and have a thoughtful and intentional procurement process outlined.

The Lake Street Public Safety Coordinator, that contract has been fully executed and work is underway.

In fact, I signed that contract this morning.

And the continuation of violence prevention initiatives, that included several different initiatives.

I'm looking for my notes so I don't miss any of them.

This included the Minneapolis contracts.

There was one million in contracts.

We've contracted with five vendors and those contracts are underway and go through the end of March 31st of 2025.

The GVI technical assistance is also included in this That contract is underway work has begun.

Our selected vendor is NNSC and They will actually be here in September to provide training several council will be invited to that actually

Why GVI, which is the adolescent specific GVI, is also included in that.

Those contracts have been executed, work is underway, they are receiving referrals.

We have two vendors that receive contract through that.

Community trauma and de-escalation is also a part of this and this actually explains last time I was on the dais.

We were talking about ARPA funding and there was an error.

Now I see where it came from.

It was here.

So this money is being used to extend the community trauma response contracts that we started with ARPA funds, but since those ARPA funds end,

the end of

They're in various stages.

Most of them are fully executed, some are still being negotiated and finalized.

I expect that these will all be finalized and will commence within the next 30 days or by the end of this month and will commence in the next 30 days.

Traffic Safety Coordinators, we're in the same position as the other two, Elliott Park and the other, which I'm sorry I'd have to go back to see, and Collaborative Public Strategies.

We're really being thoughtful and intentional on this one because we know that Metro Transit is doing some work with their, help me Jared, what's?

trip agents, thank you, with their trip agents.

So we want to make sure that we're in alignment and we're collaborating effectively so we're putting a lot of thought and intention on how to move forward with this.

I also would love to reach out to council's office to get some input and give an update specifically on transit safety coordinators.

Wonderful.

Thank you for presenting on the Neighborhood Safety Department Items.

We have several questions or comments in queue.

Thank you, Director Nelson-Brown.

I appreciate that presentation.

Yeah, I look forward meeting with you and your office for Elliott Park Safety Initiative.

I think that

and all the main government agencies are doing everything they can in that area.

Metro Transit, MPD, Park Board, all of them are doing everything they can.

So this money is much needed to get out the door.

I think it's a little late now in August, but I look forward to seeing you in it.

Thank you Council Member Nexol.

Thank you Madam Chair and thank you Director Nelson-Brown for the great update.

I'm really happy to see that the Cultural District Safety Ambassador Program is underway and seeing the commitment to implementation here.

And this is on slide 36.

I was wondering if you could speak a little bit about the timeline for this work plan with PMI, information gathering, planning, implementation and continuous improvement.

There actually is a draft right now that I'm holding and I'd be happy to get that to you.

I did notice that the timeline is not on this draft.

Thank you.

I look forward to seeing that.

I also just want to note that the title of this change item is Cultural District Safety Ambassadors, but the way that it was budgeted is for the seven cultural districts plus three Great Streets eligible areas of the city.

So that includes Uptown, Dinkytown, and the Mill District.

And so for folks wondering why Uptown is included in this program, even though it's not technically a cultural district, that's why.

Thank you.

Wonderful.

Thank you Chair Chuk-Tha and thank you Director Nelson-Brown for the presentation.

I know you said you're going to reach out to Council Member Osman regarding the Elliott Park one.

Yes.

Would appreciate if you could reach out to my office for the Collaborative Public Safety Strategies Program.

That is a budget amendment that my office authored and would love to see it get off the ground but I do appreciate this update.

Thank you.

And then finally I'll recognize councilmember Chowdhury Thank you chair Chug Thai and thank you so much director for presenting today.

So transit safety coordinators was the item that I authored I am happy to hear that you're interested in connecting with council around updates

I would love to be the person that you connect with and I'd love to invite our leadership to join me in that meeting as well.

Have had some conversations with Commissioner Barnett, Leslie Kondaris, Metro Transit, and conversations with community members who have reached out about safety.

on and around transit.

And I think it's that around and ecosystem part of it that is really missing presently, right?

Presence on the train.

I know that the state and Hennepin County and Metro Transit and Tandem have upped that.

But it's not just about the presence on the train car itself because it's in and around the station and it's beyond just

Reactive efforts and I know you know this But I just wanted to touch on that because I think this is an opportunity for the city to really carve out its role and coordination and also thinking about how we can

Join other levels of government that have stepped in because I know the county, the state, Metro Transit again, they're all a part of it.

Thank you so much Councilmember Chaudhuri.

You're absolutely right.

Wonderful.

Any further questions or comments from colleagues?

Wonderful.

I am not seeing any.

Thank you for this extensive update and questions and comments from colleagues.

With that, I will direct the clerk to file this report.

and colleagues, we are coming up on, so it's about 1235 right now.

We've got one more item on our agenda, the Biannual Personnel Report.

I understand from conferring with Vice Chair Koski that we may lose quorum here.

We have several members that have to go across the street for an event or meeting.

So we have enough flexibility in our next regular Budget Committee meeting that the biannual personnel report can be presented there first.

And it sounds like from COO Anderson Kelleher that we are able to have that presentation, staff will be able to make that adjustment work.

So without objection from colleagues, I will ask that we move item number three to our next regular committee meeting and allow colleagues a break before we have to come back for cow in less than an hour.

All right, we've got a motion and a second and all those in favor, please signify by saying aye Those opposed say nay The ayes have it that motion carries with that.

We have concluded all business to come before the committee today and without objection We stand adjourned.