Budget Committee October 07, 2024   10/7/2024

Discussion

• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:00:31
    Good morning.
  • 00:00:32
    My name is Ayesha Chuktai and I'm the Chair of the Budget Committee.
  • 00:00:35
    I'm going to call to order our Adjourned Committee meeting for Monday, October 7, 2024.
  • 00:00:41
    Before we begin the meeting, I want to offer a friendly reminder to all members, staff, and the public that these meetings are broadcast live to enable greater public participation.
  • 00:00:50
    These broadcasts include real-time captioning as a further method to increase the accessibility of our proceedings to the community.
  • 00:00:58
    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.
  • 00:01:07
    We ask all speakers to moderate the speed and clarity of their comments.
  • 00:01:11
    At this time, I'll ask the Clerk to call the roll so we can verify the presence of a quorum.
• • SPEAKER_12
  • 00:01:16
    Council Member Payne?
• • SPEAKER_09
  • 00:01:17
    Present.
• • SPEAKER_12
  • 00:01:18
    Wonsley is absent.
  • 00:01:20
    Rainville is absent.
  • 00:01:22
    Vitor?
  • 00:01:23
    Present.
  • 00:01:24
    Ellison is absent.
  • 00:01:26
    Osman is absent.
  • 00:01:28
    Cashman?
• • Michael Cashman
  • 00:01:28
    Present.
• • SPEAKER_12
  • 00:01:29
    Jenkins is absent.
  • 00:01:31
    Chavez?
  • 00:01:32
    Present.
  • 00:01:33
    Chaudry?
• • SPEAKER_04
  • 00:01:34
    Present.
• • SPEAKER_12
  • 00:01:35
    Palmisano?
  • 00:01:36
    Present.
  • 00:01:37
    Vice Chair Koski.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:01:38
    Present.
• • SPEAKER_12
  • 00:01:39
    Chair Chuktai.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:01:40
    Present.
• • SPEAKER_12
  • 00:01:40
    There are eight members present.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:01:42
    Let the record reflect that we have a quorum.
  • 00:01:44
    I'll also remind my colleagues that we're using speaker management today, so please make sure you sign in.
  • 00:01:49
    Colleagues, today we have three presentations, one from the City Attorney's Office, the Mayor's Office, and the Legislative Department.
  • 00:01:56
    Our first presentation is from the City Attorney's Office, and for that I will invite City Attorney Kristin Anderson to begin the presentation.
  • 00:02:03
    Welcome, City Attorney.
• • Kristyn AndersonCity Attorney
  • 00:02:04
    Good morning, Council members.
  • 00:02:08
    Happy to be here today to talk about what's going on at the City Attorney's Office and give you our budget overview.
  • 00:02:16
    This is my second year of presenting a budget to you because it's my second year of being here at the city.
  • 00:02:24
    Joining me here today is Civil Deputy Eric Nielsen, Criminal Deputy David Bernstein, our Manager of Operations Linda Roberts, and Leslie Erdmann, our amazing budget analyst.
  • 00:02:42
    So just to launch just a very high level org chart to show the structure of the City Attorney's Office and this obviously just shows the management positions.
  • 00:02:55
    But the way that we've decided to organize the City Attorney's Office is really
  • 00:03:02
    you know the typical city attorney deputy over the civil division, deputy over the criminal division but then we also added some additional management structure to really highlight some of the growing and important needs of the city's legal structure right now so we have the manager of administration,
  • 00:03:23
    managing the operations of the office, the manager of the implementation team reporting directly to the city attorney, and then the new managing attorney over labor and employment, since that area has exploded in need, is reporting directly to the city attorney right now too.
  • 00:03:39
    And then, obviously, managing attorneys reporting to both deputies.
  • 00:03:44
    So the objectives of our office really are multiple, and our office has certainly grown in scope.
  • 00:03:52
    Our usual objectives involve both criminal law and civil law, but as you all know very well, we now have this new implementation work around the area of police reform.
  • 00:04:05
    So achievements this year, again I think we have many.
  • 00:04:09
    We took very very seriously the mayor's call to examine our current budget and determine whether we really have needs or whether we can actually utilize better the resources that we have.
  • 00:04:21
    And we've decided that we are making absolutely no new budget requests.
  • 00:04:25
    We feel like we've got the compliment that we need and we're really doing a lot of work to ensure that all of the positions that we have are really able to take on all the work that we have.
  • 00:04:37
    So in terms of restructuring and reprioritizing and reassigning some work so that everything is covered within the resources that we have.
  • 00:04:46
    also achievement I think this year is our staffing has really stabilized in my first year we were seeing multiple multiple vacancies sometimes seven or nine seven to nine vacancies at a time we know our compensation
  • 00:05:02
    structure was lagging and due to negotiations with the attorney's unit we had agreed to do a major classification and market study that actually brought the attorneys up to market.
  • 00:05:16
    And since that study we have really seen amazing gains in terms of retention.
  • 00:05:23
    Our hiring has stabilized.
  • 00:05:26
    We really have been able to retain fantastic staff and even actually
  • 00:05:31
    We also, this year, implemented a new software system in the Criminal Division.
  • 00:05:51
    It's the same software system that's used by many other jurisdictions, which allows for us to talk
  • 00:05:58
    to our criminal justice partners in a much more efficient way and allowed us to go paperless.
  • 00:06:05
    We're in the process of making that same sort of software streamlining changes to our civil system, again, all with the idea of being more efficient.
  • 00:06:16
    Settlement agreement, you know you've heard from us a lot about this.
  • 00:06:20
    There's a lot of ongoing work to build the structure so that we are in a position to comply with the settlement agreement at the city.
  • 00:06:28
    Our labor and employment team is growing, restructured so that we can have a structure so that we have all of the needs, the labor and employment needs of the city
  • 00:06:39
    covered, including some of the proactive work that we can assist all of the departments in labor and employment law compliance.
  • 00:06:49
    And then I wanted to talk a little bit about two of the criminal division teams that arose out of your generosity last budget cycle.
  • 00:07:00
    We asked for and received a community
  • 00:07:03
    Attorney position and a charging team position.
  • 00:07:06
    And these positions have been filled and going strong.
  • 00:07:11
    And the community attorney team, we have four attorneys covering five precincts.
  • 00:07:19
    They have really been able to get
  • 00:07:23
    And then the Charging Team
  • 00:07:42
    again this was a position that was added to our budget and the charging team now has three people and they're really focused on being able to review some body-worn camera footage before we make charging decisions.
  • 00:07:59
    The volume of the charges that have been coming to our office have actually exploded back to pre-pandemic levels
  • 00:08:06
    This also includes some of our contract work with, for example, the workhouses back up to pre-pandemic levels, so volume is very, very increased and having these charging team attorneys being able to review body-worn camera footage has been extremely helpful in helping us to make good decisions about charging.
• • SPEAKER_04
  • 00:08:27
    Risks and lessons learned, we have a climate of change.
• • Kristyn AndersonCity Attorney
  • 00:08:32
    And whenever we have a climate of change with all of the departments, we always have more legal needs.
  • 00:08:40
    With expanding profiles for our departments, because we're in such a regulated world, the legal needs have correspondingly increased.
  • 00:08:52
    the complexity of the work that we do has increased in every single one of our areas and this is just our new state.
  • 00:09:00
    I think especially as we come back from the pandemic the work has increased and so the legal needs have increased.
  • 00:09:09
    Program and staffing-wise, you'll see on the slide that our budget has steadily increased over time really to account for the normal increases in our budget.
  • 00:09:24
    salaries and fringe benefits.
  • 00:09:29
    Again, not asking for any additional FTEs or any additional budget this year.
  • 00:09:35
    In terms of vacancies, I think right now we have six, I think, four of which are
  • 00:09:43
    In the hiring process, actually one of the four, I think we've got an offer out, but we're in the hiring process and then we've got two that are being occupied by details, which obviously a detail holds two positions.
  • 00:09:56
    So we're very close to full staffed by the beginning of 2025.
  • 00:10:02
    I think we will be at full complement.
  • 00:10:05
    We're working hard to see that that's the case.
  • 00:10:11
    Again, no new budget proposals.
  • 00:10:14
    And then I wanted to just talk a little bit about our performance metrics.
  • 00:10:19
    We're new at this.
  • 00:10:20
    We had some performance metrics in the past and really wanted to kind of revisit them and tweak them.
  • 00:10:27
    So we don't have data on these yet, but
  • 00:10:29
    but we've really worked very, very closely with our partners in PMI to develop new performance metrics.
  • 00:10:36
    So for the Civil Division, we're going to be looking at client satisfaction.
  • 00:10:40
    One of the big things that we do in the Civil Division is to give legal advice to the departments and to you all and one of the ways that we can figure out whether we are accomplishing our goals is to do
  • 00:10:52
    And then in the Criminal Division,
  • 00:11:10
    We really wanted to center our performance metrics around some of the diversion work that we do.
  • 00:11:17
    For us, it's not about getting convictions, it's about making sure that we're getting the resources to folks that need them when we can do that.
  • 00:11:26
    So we're looking at a percentage of eligible defendants that we're offering diversion programs to who participates in those diversion programs and how we are resolving charged cases.
  • 00:11:39
    And again, haven't started that data collection yet, but in the coming year we'll be able to have statistics in those areas.
  • 00:11:48
    So that's all I have in terms of commentary, but I'm very happy to stand for questions.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:11:57
    Thank you for that presentation, City Attorney Anderson.
  • 00:12:00
    Before we move to discussion and questions, I will note that we have been joined in this committee meeting by Councilmembers Rainville and Wonsley.
  • 00:12:10
    With that, colleagues, are there any questions or discussion items related to this presentation?
  • 00:12:17
    I'll first recognize Councilmember Cashman.
• • Michael Cashman
  • 00:12:19
    Thank you, Chair Chuktai.
  • 00:12:21
    Thank you, Attorney Anderson.
  • 00:12:24
    I was just wondering about the hiring slide.
  • 00:12:27
    You said that a detail covers two vacancies.
  • 00:12:29
    Can you explain that?
• • Kristyn AndersonCity Attorney
  • 00:12:32
    Council Vice President and Council Member Cashman.
  • 00:12:34
    Yeah, so essentially a detail is not a permanent position.
  • 00:12:38
    It's putting a person into a position for a period of time because of whatever the circumstances might be.
  • 00:12:46
    and so they have a permanent position that they have rights back to so we can't fill that position behind them because the detail is just a temporary assignment basically.
  • 00:12:58
    So while the person is in a detail, they basically hold both the position, the temporary position and then their permanent position.
  • 00:13:06
    So it's not intended to last for a very long time but as the detail exists, that's the situation.
• • Michael Cashman
  • 00:13:14
    Thank you, and how many folks do you have hired on detail right now?
• • Kristyn AndersonCity Attorney
  • 00:13:20
    Council Vice President, Council Member Cashman, I think there are two positions that are occupied by details right now.
• • Michael Cashman
  • 00:13:25
    For what purpose or for what division?
• • Kristyn AndersonCity Attorney
  • 00:13:29
    Council Vice President, Council Member Cashman, I know one of them is for our IT support, and I can't recall what the other one is.
• • Michael Cashman
  • 00:13:40
    Okay, thanks.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:13:43
    Thank you, I apologize, I missed Councilmember Ellison when I was noting attendance to this committee, so we've also been joined by Councilmember Ellison, and then next I'll recognize Vice Chair Koski.
• • Emily Koski
  • 00:13:56
    Thank you Madam Vice President, thank you CAO, I appreciate the presentation.
  • 00:14:03
    Just following up on her question about the detail, is there a plan then to, or what is the plan after these individuals are out of detail for those open positions?
• • Kristyn AndersonCity Attorney
  • 00:14:17
    Council Vice President, Council Member Koski, the plan, and again I'm sorry I don't remember what the second detail position, but this detail position, we're looking at some reorganization to determine whether we've got some
  • 00:14:31
    Okay, thank you.
  • 00:14:37
    I appreciate that.
• • Emily Koski
  • 00:14:48
    And then just one other question.
  • 00:14:49
    I see that you have a 15% increase in salary and wages.
  • 00:14:53
    I was just wondering what was driving that.
• • Kristyn AndersonCity Attorney
  • 00:14:55
    Council Vice President, Council Member Koski.
  • 00:14:58
    Yeah, so this is the market study that I talked about.
  • 00:15:01
    This was the union and the city had entered into negotiations and agreed to both a classification and a market study
  • 00:15:11
    the classification study wound up showing that that all of the attorneys were working at a higher level and then we looked at the market as well and determined that not only were they working at a higher level but but we were behind in the market so there was a
  • 00:15:29
    Unit-wide, so attorneys ones twos and threes we renamed them now, but all of them, you know were brought brought up So the increases were as a result of that and then we made some commensurate Increases to the managers and the deputies and then to my position so so that there wasn't compression along the chain of command
• • Emily Koski
  • 00:15:50
    Great, thank you.
  • 00:15:50
    That's really helpful.
  • 00:15:51
    And I think earlier in the presentation, anecdotally, you felt that that has helped with stabilizing the department.
  • 00:15:58
    And so I just want to make sure that I understood that to be part of that factor.
• • Kristyn AndersonCity Attorney
  • 00:16:03
    Yeah, Council Vice President and Council Member.
  • 00:16:05
    It's had amazing payoffs, I would say.
  • 00:16:10
    I think what we've not only seen is, as I said, retention.
  • 00:16:14
    We got back an amazing attorney from another jurisdiction.
  • 00:16:18
    I'm not going to name names, but I think you probably know who that is.
  • 00:16:21
    And then we also have seen that our applications, the number of applications have increased quite a lot as well.
  • 00:16:29
    And that's really, you know, when we have vacancies to be able to have really, really good pools of candidates and be able to hire fantastic attorneys.
  • 00:16:38
    It's just, it really, really helps.
  • 00:16:41
    And it's helped to, yeah, it's helped both the retention and the attraction factor for our office.
  • 00:16:47
    Thank you.
  • 00:16:48
    Appreciate it.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:16:50
    Thank you.
  • 00:16:51
    And then next I'll recognize Councilmember Chowdhury.
• • SPEAKER_04
  • 00:16:55
    Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you so much city attorney for your presentation.
  • 00:16:59
    I was wondering, could you kind of walk us through the role of the community attorney, the utility of it and kind of some of the deliverables?
• • Kristyn AndersonCity Attorney
  • 00:17:09
    I will and if I can't go further then I'm going to ask the criminal division deputy to come up.
  • 00:17:19
    But essentially the criminal, the community attorneys are part of the criminal division.
  • 00:17:24
    They're prosecutors.
  • 00:17:26
    but what they're doing, they're not in court, they're actually situated within the precincts to give, I mean their primary role is to give advice to the staff of the precincts but as I said, their interaction goes beyond just the precinct officers and the precinct command staff, it's also making kind of linkages between the law enforcement and
  • 00:17:53
    social workers, crime prevention specialists, so they're sort of part of the criminal justice team responding to a whole variety of different matters that come up within the precincts.
  • 00:18:08
    Right now, I said that there are four staff in five precincts, so two and four have one attorney, and then the other precincts each have a single attorney.
  • 00:18:20
    They have some space that they share within our office, but they're actually located, co-located out in the precincts themselves.
  • 00:18:31
    So their role is not to give advice to the public.
  • 00:18:36
    That's never our role.
  • 00:18:38
    We're the city's attorneys, but they are there to give legal advice and again, kind of make those policy linkages with
  • 00:18:45
    and other stakeholders and providers that kind of touch the system within the precincts.
  • 00:18:53
    And I don't know if, David, is there anything else that you'd want to add?
• • SPEAKER_04
  • 00:18:57
    No.
  • 00:19:00
    Okay, great.
  • 00:19:01
    The only follow-up is how long have the community attorney roles been present within the precincts?
• • Kristyn AndersonCity Attorney
  • 00:19:09
    Do you want to do that?
  • 00:19:10
    I'm going to invite David Bernstein, my criminal division deputy, up to answer.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:19:17
    Welcome, Deputy City Attorney, if you'll start by introducing yourself.
• • SPEAKER_10
  • 00:19:21
    Yes, good morning.
  • 00:19:21
    My name is David Bernstein.
  • 00:19:22
    I'm the Deputy City Attorney of the Criminal Division of the City Attorney's Office.
  • 00:19:27
    Chair Chai, Councilmember Chaudry, the community attorney position has been in our office for at least 20 years.
  • 00:19:34
    It goes back quite a ways.
  • 00:19:36
    We've had varying staffing levels.
  • 00:19:38
    There's sometimes been less attorneys to cover more precincts.
  • 00:19:41
    So again, we're very appreciative for the additional attorney that was awarded to us last year.
• • SPEAKER_04
  • 00:19:48
    Great, thank you so much, really appreciate it.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:19:52
    Excellent, and then City Attorney, if you'll speak to, I wanted to just follow up on the two details into other departments out of yours.
  • 00:20:03
    Am I understanding that correctly or is it the opposite?
• • Kristyn AndersonCity Attorney
  • 00:20:07
    Council Vice President, there are actually details within my office, so they're not to other departments, they're within my office, they're basically, they're, you know, positions,
  • 00:20:18
    a
  • 00:20:37
    you know same level transfer but sometimes it's a growth opportunity and that's actually that the one I don't again I'm sorry that I don't remember the second one but the IT is actually a growth opportunity to give that person you know it's filling that that position temporarily but it also gives that person an opportunity to grow their skills so it's a really good kind of retention tool as well.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:20:59
    Understood and then are there any details of positions within the city attorney's office that are detailed out to other departments?
  • 00:21:08
    Not to my knowledge.
  • 00:21:09
    I'm going to verify there are not council vice president Understood Thank you I'm not seeing any further questions or discussion items for you city attorney Thank you for coming in to present your recommended budget and we will now move on to the next presentation.
  • 00:21:26
    Thank you
  • 00:21:27
    With that, I will ask the Clerk to file this presentation.
  • 00:21:32
    Our next presentation is going to be from the Mayor's Office.
  • 00:21:38
    For that, I will invite Grace Waltz, Chief of Staff, to begin that presentation.
  • 00:21:44
    Welcome, Ms. Waltz.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 00:21:46
    Thank you.
  • 00:21:46
    Good morning Chair Chugtai, Vice Chair Koski, members.
  • 00:21:50
    My name is Grace Waltz, and I am the Chief of Staff in the Office of Mayor Frey.
  • 00:21:55
    Before I begin, I just want to take a moment to thank all of you.
  • 00:21:58
    I've had the opportunity to meet with almost all 13 of you since I started at the city three months ago, so I appreciate you taking the time and look forward to working together in the future.
  • 00:22:08
    I will start with a brief overview of our office reporting structure.
  • 00:22:12
    Our team is split between three verticals, operations, which is inclusive of scheduling and constituent services, communications, which is inclusive of our press office and community engagement, and policy, where each of our policy advisors has a portfolio that corresponds to city departments but maintains some flexibility to meet the needs
  • 00:22:35
    Varying issues that come into our office and those three verticals report up to chief of staff then to the mayor The mission of our office is very simple to improve the daily lives of Minneapolis residents and to provide clear and consistent direction to the cabinet and administrative departments as You've seen before mayor fries prior policy priorities are centered around improving community safety and police relations creating more affordable housing bolstering climate action
  • 00:23:05
    I will spend a minute highlighting some of our achievements from the past year
  • 00:23:24
    Our team has also launched a communications campaign for Mayor Frey to visit with smaller community-led news organizations.
  • 00:23:32
    I'm particularly excited that the team has taken this on and it's not only making the mayor more accessible to news sources that haven't typically seen that kind of level of engagement, but our hope is it helps bridge an information gap amongst neighborhoods as well.
  • 00:23:46
    Our policy team has refined the mayor's priorities to help streamline and guide the process for developing budget recommendations across departments And finally a few metrics from our operations team year-to-date.
  • 00:23:59
    We're at 7,400 for constituent outreach So that's calls emails and online submissions and over 1,100 meeting requests for the mayor which is already well past our 2023 total number of requests that we saw and
  • 00:24:13
    What we're thinking about in terms of risks are consistent with what we hear across the enterprise.
  • 00:24:18
    In terms of FTEs our office is on the smaller end in comparison to other major cities and as you can see anecdotally through some of our operational data the demands on the mayor and by extension staff's time are increasing but our FTE count is remaining the same It also continues to be a competitive job market so it's the highest priority on our team and across the enterprise to ensure the mayor's office and the City of Minneapolis is an employer of choice
  • 00:24:46
    and a place where folks feel supported and proud to come to work every day.
  • 00:24:52
    In terms of FTEs, we're holding study at 16.
  • 00:24:55
    That figure is inclusive of the mayor.
  • 00:24:57
    We have one vacancy listed but that position has already been filled and that person will start next month.
  • 00:25:05
    And finally, with our 2025 budget, we'll be leveraging our existing resources to continue to ensure Mayor Frey and his staff are accessible and responsive to residents, look for new ways to ensure residents are getting information about city initiatives, and continue supporting our staff through the ongoing transition to the new government structure.
  • 00:25:25
    That concludes my presentation.
  • 00:25:27
    Happy to answer any questions you might have.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:25:32
    Thank you for that presentation.
  • 00:25:35
    Colleagues, are there any questions or discussion items for the Mayor's Office presentation?
  • 00:25:42
    I'll first recognize Council President Payne.
• • SPEAKER_09
  • 00:25:45
    Thank you Vice President, Chuck Tai.
  • 00:25:48
    My question is around the various policy roles.
  • 00:25:52
    How do they interact with our professional staff within the administration?
  • 00:25:55
    I'm always trying to have a deeper understanding of how the Mayor's Office operation works with the day-to-day operations.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 00:26:02
    Chair Chigtay, Council President Payne, thank you for the question.
  • 00:26:06
    Like I noted in my presentation, part of the way that we divvy up the policy portfolios within our office are to better align with city departments.
  • 00:26:17
    We're always looking for ways to better refine those to make sure that our office is staying in alignment across all departments.
  • 00:26:29
    So the work of our policy team is largely to help carry out the policy priorities of the mayor and ensure those are being actualized across the city.
  • 00:26:38
    I'd also note that our policy team largely serves in constituent response as well.
  • 00:26:45
    So as issue specific questions are coming in through our constituent outreach team, our policy team is able to help get in touch with constituents and answer those policy specific questions.
  • 00:26:56
    They're of course also helping staff the mayor
  • 00:26:59
    As he's meeting whether it's external partners or within the city, but again, this is a large city department We're largely or large city enterprise.
  • 00:27:07
    We are always leaning on the professional city staff to Do the work of the city and form the work of the city and having our policy staffers on hand helps Filter that information to and out of the mayor's office.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:27:24
    Thank you Thank you.
  • 00:27:25
    Next I'll recognize councilmember cashman.
• • Michael Cashman
  • 00:27:28
    Thank you Madam Vice President, thank you Ms. Walts.
  • 00:27:32
    Can you go back to the slide that has the staffing layout?
  • 00:27:34
    Because I had a similar question to President Payne of just the way that policy staff are kind of organized.
  • 00:27:46
    Let's see.
  • 00:27:49
    Okay, yeah, I just wanted to take a deeper look at the the bottom six of the policy team and how they were organized But are they are you kind of designating policy staff towards the large departments at the city?
  • 00:28:06
    so like CPED public works and staffing accordingly like that in court in terms of topic areas and
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 00:28:13
    Chair Chogtai, Councilmember Cashman, thanks for the question.
  • 00:28:16
    Yes, again, this is kind of an ongoing work in progress of how we further refine these policy areas, but the portfolios.
  • 00:28:26
    So there's a little bit of portfolios by specific topic areas, but then we're also working on making sure that those are aligned with city departments.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:28:38
    Okay, thank you.
• • Emily Koski
  • 00:28:42
    Thank you and then finally I'll recognize Vice Chair Koski.
  • 00:28:46
    Thank you Madam Vice President.
  • 00:28:48
    Thank you Ms. Wells for the presentation and I just had a question.
  • 00:28:51
    I see that there was an 11% increase in salary and wages and could you just help us understand what that increase is due to?
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 00:29:01
    The increase in budget for salaries, one just cost of change due to inflationary growth, and then there's also that increase is primarily driven by two positions that were reviewed in job studies that resulted in compensation increases.
  • 00:29:23
    If you removed those two positions, that would drop the salary budget increase to under 6%.
  • 00:29:29
    We're also a small department, so even the slight variations in that make a big difference.
• • Emily Koski
  • 00:29:34
    Thank you.
  • 00:29:35
    And when was the compensation studies done?
  • 00:29:37
    Was that done this last year?
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 00:29:39
    Chair Chuktai, Vice Chair Koski, I would need to double check on when the study was first started.
  • 00:29:45
    This was all prior to my time joining the city, but I'm happy to follow up on that.
• • Emily Koski
  • 00:29:49
    Okay, and then when they were increased?
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 00:29:53
    Chair Chuktai, Vice Chair Koski, those were implemented in 2024.
• • Emily Koski
  • 00:29:57
    Okay, so that the salary increases were implemented in 2024.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 00:30:02
    Vice Chair Koski, yes, I will double check the information but I believe that's correct.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:30:06
    Okay, thank you so much.
  • 00:30:08
    Clerks, if we can note that for administrative follow up.
  • 00:30:10
    Thank you.
  • 00:30:12
    With that we've reached the end of questions and discussion related to your presentation.
  • 00:30:19
    Ms. Walts, thank you.
  • 00:30:20
    I'll ask the clerks to file that report and with that we will move to our final presentation of the day, which is from the legislative department.
  • 00:30:32
    I will first invite City Clerk Casey Carl to begin that presentation.
• • Casey CarlCity Clerk
  • 00:30:52
    Good morning Madam Vice President, Members of Council, before I get started I'd like to publicly say happy birthday to Councilmember Koski and also note singing can happen later I've got a big presentation to go through but didn't want to miss the opportunity to call out it was Councilmember Koski's birthday today also we are on day 17th of early voting for this year's presidential election so we do have our director and deputy director of elections with us briefly but they are eager to return to their duties so
  • 00:31:20
    My name is Casey Carl.
  • 00:31:22
    I have the privilege of serving as Clerk of the City of Minneapolis.
  • 00:31:25
    I also serve as Head of the Legislative Department and I'm here in that capacity to present the Mayor's recommended biennial budget for the Legislative Department for the covering the years 2025 and 2026.
  • 00:31:35
    With me is interim City Auditor Siddhartha Pudyal who will address the Mayor's budget recommendations for the Office of City Auditor which is a division of the Legislative Department.
  • 00:31:45
    committee.
  • 00:31:46
    Mr. Pudyal and I are joined by the leaders of our department's major business lines, Jackie Hanson, the Director of Legislative Support and Operations, Katie Smith, the Director of Elections and Voter Services, and then from the Office of Auditor, we have Andrew Hawkins, the Interim Director of Policy and Research, and Jody Molyneux-Hanson, the Interim Director of Oversight and Evaluation.
  • 00:32:07
    This slide depicts the legislative department, and as you can see, the department is built around the City Council.
  • 00:32:14
    The various offices and divisions within the department all support various aspects of council and, under council's leadership, work with the public and with city departments to develop effective and responsive public policies that advance the priorities and needs of the people of Minneapolis.
  • 00:32:30
    This slide also cites charter authorization for each major function and provides the total count of full-time positions by program and by division.
  • 00:32:39
    The department has a total complement of 114 full-time positions by major programs.
  • 00:32:45
    That means that the council program has a total of 41 full-time positions.
  • 00:32:50
    That accounts for about 36% of the total staffing in the department.
  • 00:32:54
    The auditor has a total of 18 positions, which accounts for about 16% of the department's personnel resources, and the clerk has a total of 55 positions, accounting for the remainder of the department's personnel resources, about 48%.
  • 00:33:11
    The department's priority objectives are directly tied to the primary functions of council.
  • 00:33:15
    Council enacts local laws and public policies, oversees the city administration, and represents the people of Minneapolis.
  • 00:33:23
    These three functions are the focus of council and then by extension of the legislative department.
  • 00:33:29
    All of the various divisions and functions within the offices of Clerk and Auditor are identified on this slide, each of which supports Council, directly or indirectly, and contributes to its performance as the City's legislative body.
  • 00:33:42
    Next, we'll address each of the three major department programs in the Legislative Department, which include City Council, City Auditor, and City Clerk.
  • 00:33:51
    So we'll begin with the City Council program.
  • 00:33:55
    City Charter defines the City Council as the city's legislative body.
  • 00:34:00
    The charter specifically assigns to the council all of the city's legislative, policy-making, and oversight authority unless that authority has been delegated elsewhere.
  • 00:34:09
    For example, the charter delegates some policy-making authority to the elected Park and Recreation Board of Commissioners and to the elected Board of Estimate and Taxation.
  • 00:34:18
    The authorities that are delegated to these elected bodies are powers which are assigned to the city councils in every other municipal jurisdiction in the state of Minnesota.
  • 00:34:27
    The city charter also delegates some municipal authority to the Civil Service Commission, the Civil Rights Commission, and the Planning Commission, and to a variety of other boards and commissions created either by state law or city charter, or by the council under its own authority pursuant to the city charter.
  • 00:34:43
    Furthermore, under the executive mayor structure, the mayor has certain policy making authority over the administration.
  • 00:34:50
    So for these reasons, City Council is the primary policy making authority of the city, but it is not the only policy making authority in the city.
  • 00:34:59
    The Minneapolis City Council includes the 13 council members and the 28 aides assigned to the ward offices.
  • 00:35:05
    It is the only full-time legislative body in the state of Minnesota.
  • 00:35:09
    And like the state legislature, its work is primarily driven by its system of standing committees.
  • 00:35:14
    It is at the committee level where policy proposals are analyzed and refined, where the work of the administration is evaluated, and where opportunities for community engagement are provided, primarily through public hearings and comment sessions.
  • 00:35:27
    Minneapolis is the economic engine of the metropolitan region and indeed the entire state of Minnesota.
  • 00:35:33
    It is the center for finance, commerce and industry, transportation, the arts and cultural affairs, both in Minnesota and throughout the upper Midwest, second only to Chicago.
  • 00:35:43
    Minneapolis is also the state's most populated municipality.
  • 00:35:47
    To provide some context, Minneapolis is more than the equivalent of a first-class city larger than its twin, the city of St. Paul, exceeding that city's population by more than 100,000 residents.
  • 00:35:59
    In fact, each of the city's 13 wards contains roughly 33,000 residents.
  • 00:36:06
    That means that each of our council members represents a portion of the community larger than the entire population of the City of Brooklyn Center based on current population estimates.
  • 00:36:16
    It also means that each of our council members represents a ward with a population greater than 97% of all cities incorporated in the state of Minnesota and a population greater than 54 of the state's 87 counties.
  • 00:36:31
    That basic statistic means that Minneapolis, the City Council in Minneapolis, has a significant impact on the metropolitan region and the entire state.
  • 00:36:39
    What the Minneapolis City Council does resonates and has an impact far beyond the city's borders.
  • 00:36:45
    The Minneapolis City Council, together with the administration, has been responsible for groundbreaking municipal policy over the years.
  • 00:36:52
    That has included, as examples, the first guaranteed sick and safe time policy and the first municipal minimum wage policy in the state of Minnesota.
  • 00:37:01
    The City's 2040 Comprehensive Plan, which addresses housing affordability and increased housing options through trailblazing changes and zoning regulations, has been lauded as a model for other communities across the nation.
  • 00:37:13
    The City's Climate Action Plan, its Vision Zero Action Plan, and its Complete Streets Plan, these are all further examples of the kinds of innovative, nation-leading municipal policies that the City of Minneapolis has achieved when the Council works in partnership with the experts in the City's administration.
  • 00:37:29
    and that's a key point I want to emphasize.
  • 00:37:32
    These policies and these achievements are the result of collaboration and productive partnership between the council and the administration.
  • 00:37:40
    As a city, we do best when we come together and focus on common goals.
  • 00:37:44
    We do best when we work together.
  • 00:37:48
    Here we've identified some of the achievements and risks for the City Council program over the past year.
  • 00:37:53
    In August, while presenting the first Council tracking report, I noted that the legislative output of this Council during its first seven months had essentially been doubled in comparison to the two previous years
  • 00:38:06
    combined.
  • 00:38:08
    So the council has significantly increased its own workload, and that has had a major impact on all parts of the legislative department, oftentimes meaning that staff are struggling to keep up with the pace.
  • 00:38:19
    While this is an achievement, it also highlights a potential risk.
  • 00:38:23
    There is a limit to what any organization can do, and when the focus expands too far and too wide, it can reach a tipping point.
  • 00:38:31
    The need to identify and focus on specific goals is critical.
  • 00:38:35
    That's why, among its many accomplishments, I'm proud to note that the City Council this year developed committee work plans and Council budget priorities as ways to identify and focus members' collective attention and departmental resources on shared priorities.
  • 00:38:51
    In part, this helps to mitigate against the risk of overwhelming the system.
  • 00:38:56
    These work plans and the budget priorities are intended to help identify what is strategic and what is routine, and to provide a shared focus on what Council values most.
  • 00:39:05
    Looking to the future, the combination of committee work plans aligned with similar work plans for departments in the administration would help provide much-needed guardrails to advance city goals and objectives within the enterprise's capacity and resources.
  • 00:39:21
    As I reported in August, Council has enacted a large number of ordinances this year on a wide range of topics.
  • 00:39:27
    That includes, for the purposes of illustration only, protections for transportation network employees, commercial to residential conversions, vibrant storefronts, renters' right-to-know policies, encampment removal mandated reporting, extended pre-eviction notice requirements, and vacant building fees and penalties, among many others.
  • 00:39:47
    Council has also promoted accountability and shared awareness amongst its members by circulating notes and information from the various leadership meetings across the enterprise and instituting the follow-up response memo process for council and committee meetings to assure that council members have the information needed for decision-making and also assuring that information is accessible to the public.
  • 00:40:10
    Finally, significant investments over the past two budget cycles in the legislative department itself in terms of staffing, budget, and systems have expanded our capacity to support City Council.
  • 00:40:22
    While the council has many successes, there are, of course, challenges or risks that face this division, some of which are listed on this slide.
  • 00:40:31
    Of particular note, the fact that ward staffing and budgets have remained largely flat for at least the past 20 years is a risk for council.
  • 00:40:39
    That fact, combined with high staff turnover and non-standardized processes for handling transitions and orientations, can create instability in the ward offices and therefore impact on council members.
  • 00:40:52
    This slide shows staffing information for the council program and as you can see there are no changes anticipated in the mayor's recommended budgets for 2025 or 2026.
  • 00:41:05
    Again, the council program includes a total of 41 full-time funded positions which equates to approximately 36 percent or about one-third of the department's personnel resources.
  • 00:41:16
    Of that total amount, one position is currently vacant
  • 00:41:19
    which occurred in just the past two weeks.
  • 00:41:22
    A recruitment process is underway to fill that vacant position.
  • 00:41:26
    In addition, there are a total of three temporary workers who are supplementing this core workforce paid for through ward budgets.
  • 00:41:34
    The next few slides address the City Auditor's Office, so I'll yield to Mr. Pudyal for that update.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:41:41
    With that, we are going to welcome interim City Auditor, Dr. Pudyal, to continue this presentation.
• • SPEAKER_11
  • 00:41:49
    Good morning Chair Shaktai and members of the committee.
  • 00:41:54
    My name is Dr. Poudel and I'm the interim city auditor and thank you for the opportunity to present mayor's recommended budget for the office of city auditor today.
  • 00:42:05
    So starting with the achievements for the Office of City Auditor, we have listed the achievements by division.
  • 00:42:11
    So for the audit division, we completed 2024 Enterprise Risk Assessment, which also included Community Safety Assessment as well.
  • 00:42:19
    Compared to last year, we had like a separate risk assessment, but this year we combined that as one and presented as one Enterprise Risk Assessment.
  • 00:42:27
    In addition to the annual
  • 00:42:29
    Risk Assessment, we also completed 8 projects in the last year which will boost the city's ability to function effectively and efficiently.
  • 00:42:36
    We also closed 14 issues, audit issues, insurance management, satisfactorily completed the agreed upon action plans.
  • 00:42:47
    For the Policy and Research Division, there were a total of 15 resource reports that were completed, which included large-scale efforts that were divided into phases.
  • 00:42:56
    We also completed Operation Manual to provide additional information and transparency on the work of Division and the staff.
  • 00:43:03
    We also expanded the project dashboard to provide up-to-date project status and implemented a preliminary assessment memo and complexity scoring form templates to assess the scope and complexity of any incoming project request as well.
  • 00:43:19
    For the oversight and evaluation division, there were like four FTEs were hired in February of 2024 who are deepening their understanding of the legislative process.
  • 00:43:33
    Council adopted rules and the new government structure changes as it pertains to the legislative branch.
  • 00:43:39
    We also appointed interim director for the division and currently developing services to provide the city to the city council and its committee in support of oversight and evaluation.
  • 00:43:49
    functions in tandem with the legislative process reform project.
  • 00:43:57
    So in terms of risk and potential challenges-wise, risk-wise for the audit division, as you know, being a highly specialized team, sometimes it's difficult to hire
  • 00:44:07
    staff with all the required skill sets.
  • 00:44:10
    For example, staff with IT audit skill set or any fraud waste and abuse investigators with certified fraud examiner certification or even the community safety auditors who have in-depth knowledge in those areas.
  • 00:44:27
    So in addition, any turnover in the team could hamper the completion of the planned projects and also could lead to depletion of the required skill set.
  • 00:44:37
    For the policy and research division, there could be mismatch between demand and capacity with the numbers of incoming requests and the capacity of staff to take some of those projects versus the request because this is the new division and there has been a lot of requests coming in from the council members and the committee so we're just trying to balance what's the number of requests versus what's the capacity of the team
  • 00:45:06
    So based on the type of requests coming in and trends, there could be a need to shift from research generalist to the focus area expertise because right now we're trying to identify any trends on if there are any certain topics for which the requests are coming in.
  • 00:45:23
    For example, like housing, transportation, encampments.
  • 00:45:26
    So based on those requests in future, we're planning to maybe focus on those certain areas versus being a generalist in nature.
  • 00:45:46
    For the oversight and evaluation division that is not having adequate time to effectively build the division and the first staff to effectively understand the legislative system so this division can provide high quality professional non-partisan services to the City Council and its committees because this division was created last October
  • 00:46:05
    and the team is with the new team members.
  • 00:46:08
    We're still trying to develop the plan, work plan as well as the policy and procedures and help the staff to understand how the process works.
  • 00:46:17
    So not having enough time to develop all the skills that might hamper the work, the quality work they might provide in the future.
  • 00:46:27
    Here's our program and staffing summary as you can see we have total 18 FTEs with currently three vacant positions with slight increase in budget in 2025 and 2026 primarily driven by position reclassification and standards inflationary growth with no change to FTE count based on the mayor's recommended budget and
  • 00:46:58
    So now moving on to the individual divisions.
  • 00:47:01
    So for the audit division, the mission is to enhance and protect organizational value by providing risk-based and objective assurance advice and insight.
  • 00:47:10
    So basically, any work we come up with as a part of the audit plan is based on the risks.
  • 00:47:16
    So which also centers around what's the city's goal to achieve some of those goals as well, also while being remaining independent and neutral.
  • 00:47:26
    and when needed also investigate an incidence of potential fraud, waste and abuse as well.
  • 00:47:32
    And some of the examples of projects we completed for the last one year, and this is not a complete list, but just some of the examples, is like sexual assault, examined skin kit, special project follow-up review, property and evidence, process audit.
  • 00:47:50
    PCOT program process audit and neighborhood safety department till risk assessment as well.
  • 00:47:56
    And for the 2025-2026 mayor's budget proposal, we don't have any proposals included for the audit division.
  • 00:48:11
    For the oversight and evaluation division, so the mission is to provide professional
  • 00:48:16
    Non-partition analysis, evaluation and consulting services to the City Council and its committees in support.
  • 00:48:22
    of oversight and evaluation functions but if you look at the 2024 adopted budget it includes 1.1 million instead of 750 because this includes the investment that were approved by the council last year for both programs including the par as well so that's why it looks 1.1 but if you add the 1.1 to the 591 in the next slide it
  • 00:48:47
    The total is the same but how it was split between the oversight and evaluation and the par.
  • 00:48:53
    That's why there's a difference.
  • 00:48:54
    It seems like it's decreased but it's considerably has increased for 2025 which I can answer later.
  • 00:49:06
    So the goal for the oversight and evaluation division is at least to right now to develop the division policies and procedures and also come up with the 2024-2025 work plan and also complete the division's work related to the legislative process reform and then also work related to the legislative department budget and financial policies review as well
  • 00:49:33
    and once some of those work are completed then the division will focus more on creating that policy evaluation services as well.
  • 00:49:43
    And for the 2025-2026 mayor's budget proposal, there were no budget proposals included.
  • 00:49:56
    So moving on to the Policy and Research Division, the mission of the Division is to provide clear, objective, nonpartisan research and analysis in support of effective, informed, and evidence-based legislative policymaking.
  • 00:50:09
    And the goal of the Division is to support the legislative decision-making throughout each stage.
  • 00:50:15
    a policy process through consultation services and independent research that provides preliminary assessment policy briefings or formal reports based on the request areas of focus and it could be either requested by individual council member based on what they're planning to research on or could be by the committee as well and also the provide support services to individual council office
  • 00:50:42
    policy working groups or tax forces and other focused on specific policy areas.
  • 00:50:47
    And these are some of the examples.
  • 00:50:49
    It's not just an example.
  • 00:50:51
    Projects listed here are related from renters, protection to early care and education, safe outdoor spaces, pollution control registration program, off duty fees.
  • 00:51:03
    municipal zero-waste programs and law enforcement recruitment and retention again similarly for the last other two divisions for the 2025-2026 mayor's budget proposal.
  • 00:51:15
    There is no proposal included.
  • 00:51:17
    All right, I'd like to invite City Clerk Carl to provide his update on the office of City Clerk.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:51:32
    Thank you.
  • 00:51:32
    Welcome back Clerk Carl.
• • Casey CarlCity Clerk
  • 00:51:34
    Thank you.
  • 00:51:34
    So I'll present the Clerk's Office program budget information for 2025 and 2026.
  • 00:51:41
    Over the past year, one of our biggest achievements in the Clerk's Office was addressing the multiple new positions and reclassifications that were invested in our office thanks to City Council.
  • 00:51:51
    Because of those investments, the Clerk's Office has been able to fully staff our department's information technology and design team
  • 00:51:58
    a total of three full-time positions.
  • 00:52:00
    We hired two constituent service coordinators, which is the start of our envisioned outreach and constituent services team, and we reclassified and hired two administrative program coordinators to expand our department's centralized administrative team.
  • 00:52:16
    The Elections and Voter Services Division has successfully implemented new election programming to support its permanent mail ballot list, as well as supplies and materials for pop-up voting sites as part of this year's election plans.
  • 00:52:30
    These investments will enable the City to fulfill our pledge to take the ballot to the people in more ways, building on the team's strong reputation for voter service, ballot access, and excellence in election administration.
  • 00:52:42
    Last year, after more than a decade of work, the Council enacted a series of administrative reforms for the City's appointed boards and commissions, and the Clerk's Office has been focused this year on implementing those reforms.
  • 00:52:54
    That work has primarily centered on new policies and procedures impacting the bodies classified in Tiers 3 and 4, which are the City's advisory bodies and work groups.
  • 00:53:05
    We also hired a temporary project coordinator to support this work,
  • 00:53:09
    which will eventually lead to a full-time employee dedicated to supporting the work of the City's multiple boards, commissions, committees, and working groups, service districts, all of which today includes 57 bodies with approximately 700 individuals serving.
  • 00:53:25
    That's the first dedicated personnel resource we've ever had to support the City's boards and commissions in my 15 years with the City, and we very much appreciate Council's investment, led by Councilmember Wansley, for that core work.
  • 00:53:38
    One accomplishment of special note is the fact that, with Council's support, we were able to secure funds to complete an enterprise-wide records retention review and scheduling project, which launched this year and is anticipated to be completed in 2025.
  • 00:53:52
    This work is not only required by state law, but it directly supports the effective operation of every single department in the city enterprise, as well as the city as a municipal corporation.
  • 00:54:05
    Until now, the City has had a hodgepodge retention schedule that included a mix of department-specific plans and a larger, more generic citywide plan.
  • 00:54:16
    And those plans sometimes overlapped and had conflicts.
  • 00:54:19
    This project will eliminate all of that and provide a single, modern plan that aligns with all of the legal requirements on the City and give assurance the City is meeting its obligations with respect to its information assets.
  • 00:54:33
    As Council knows, the larger focus of our Information Governance Division is on handling requests for government data.
  • 00:54:40
    This work dominates the entire division, accounting for 15 full-time positions.
  • 00:54:45
    Fortunately, the team has increased its closure rate for data requests, despite year-over-year increases in the total volume of requests.
  • 00:54:52
    For example, between January and September of 2023, the team closed a total of 3,768 requests compared to that same period of time this year when the team closed 3,819.
  • 00:55:06
    That's an increase in the closure rate of about 1.4 percent.
  • 00:55:11
    And while that seems small, it has a significant impact on continuous improvement efforts and on building our capacity to address the existing backlog as well as the new requests that are submitted every day.
  • 00:55:23
    And this is despite the fact that during those same timelines between 2023 and 2024, the total volume of requests this year is more than 12% higher than last year.
  • 00:55:35
    Finally, our department's IT and Constituent Services teams launched new systems to support City Council this year.
  • 00:55:42
    That included ADJER, our Constituent Relationship Management System, built specifically for Council, and Councilpedia, an online collection of reference materials, guides, and resources to support ward offices.
  • 00:55:54
    and of course continuing improvements made as a result of council investments for the city's legislative information management system.
  • 00:56:02
    The IT team also has completed work on a new custom-built speaker management system for use during council and committee meetings which we anticipate launching later this year.
  • 00:56:13
    and we continue to add to the curated collection of legislative and non-legislative records that are made available to the public through our MuniDocs system.
  • 00:56:22
    Those collections now include data back to 1878.
  • 00:56:26
    We continue to prioritize adding important records and data to MuniDocs to facilitate a self-service approach to making government information readily available to the public.
  • 00:56:36
    in terms of risks, the Clerk's Office, like most departments, faces its greatest risk in terms of staffing.
  • 00:56:43
    The turnover that we have experienced and that we know we will continue to experience, as well as the resulting operational instability that turnover creates, has a significant impact on our office, on our department, and on the entire city enterprise.
  • 00:56:58
    Though largely behind the scenes, our work in the Clerk's Office contributes to all services, programs, and functions across the enterprise.
  • 00:57:06
    The Clerk's Office is both a direct service provider as well as a supporter of service delivery by other departments.
  • 00:57:13
    In many ways, the Clerk's Office is one of the primary organizational hubs within the city enterprise, so turnover here has a multiplying effect.
  • 00:57:22
    Moreover, unlike many other departments, the Clerk's Office does not have a clearly identifiable career path.
  • 00:57:29
    There is not a pool of eligible clerks from which we can draw, nor are there clear pathways into the Clerk's Office.
  • 00:57:35
    Instead, as I've said before, the Clerk's Office continues to function in the apprenticeship model, where a new member must learn on the job over many years before gaining proficiency.
  • 00:57:46
    For example, in the work of elections, a new team member needs to complete at least a full four-year election cycle at minimum before really understanding the intricate web of interlocking federal, state, and local laws, regulations, and policies that dictate how elections are planned, organized, and conducted.
  • 00:58:04
    For those in our legislative support team, the timelines are at least aligned with the usual four-year cycle of council, but also are measured in terms of years due to some items that are only addressed once each decade, like redistricting or comprehensive planning as some examples.
  • 00:58:21
    The Clerk's Office has benefited over the past many years from long-serving team members.
  • 00:58:26
    It has not been unusual to have employees stay with the Clerk's Office for 15, 25, or even 40 years, sometimes their entire career.
  • 00:58:36
    But that is now shifting.
  • 00:58:38
    The Clerk's Office will need to adapt to the new norms of the work world where career changes happen more frequently.
  • 00:58:43
    It is unlikely that we will be recruiting clerks today who will stay with the office for another 15 to 30 years.
  • 00:58:50
    And given the stability that the Clerk's Office provides to Council and to the enterprise, that future state of regular turnover and change can have unintended and potentially negative consequences.
  • 00:59:01
    The staffing issues that I've identified under risk also impact the strength of our bench, and that bench strength has a direct impact on all the other risks on this slide.
  • 00:59:13
    The Clerk's Office anticipates only a small change in the Mayor's recommended budget for 2025 and 2026 in terms of staffing and this is the elimination of one unfilled vacant stock clerk position in the Document Solutions Center.
  • 00:59:26
    It's a position we've been targeting for elimination for many years and are now ready to remove from the books.
  • 00:59:32
    The work that the stock clerk position had has been absorbed into the remaining positions in the Document Solutions Center as well as our records manager positions in the Information Governance Division.
  • 00:59:43
    As a result, we do not anticipate any negative impact from the elimination of this one position.
  • 00:59:48
    I also want to address what appears to be significant fluctuation in staffing shown in 2024 and 2026 on this slide.
  • 00:59:57
    As the Council knows, this is tied to our Elections and Voter Services Division and the need for higher levels of temporary staff in even-year elections when President and Governor are at the top of the ballot.
  • 01:00:08
    Greater voter turnout in even-year elections requires us to staff at higher levels for even-numbered election years.
  • 01:00:15
    You'll recall that I noted at our initial department budget presentation on June 10th that the elections budget represents almost half of the entire city clerk budget.
  • 01:00:26
    In fact, it accounts for roughly one-third of the entire legislative department budget, despite being only one of its six divisions.
  • 01:00:35
    As I've said before, this underscores the impact of elections as a significant variable in terms of the legislative department's budget from year to year, and it is a major driver when it comes to planning for future needs and investment opportunities.
  • 01:00:49
    Of the 55 full-time funded positions in the Clerk's Office, six are currently vacant, as shown.
  • 01:00:54
    That's roughly an 11% vacancy rate.
  • 01:00:57
    One of these vacant positions is in our Information Governance Division.
  • 01:01:02
    We recently completed a reclassification to create a deputy director position, and we've already opened recruitment for that job.
  • 01:01:09
    Having a deputy director position will better balance increasing workloads within that division, provide greater leadership support and direction, and also assure a critical line of succession within our Information Governance Division.
  • 01:01:22
    That division is supplementing its core team with two temporary workers who have been assigned to support the transfer of body-worn camera functions.
  • 01:01:31
    You'll recall those functions were transferred from the police department to this division.
  • 01:01:35
    We're still attempting to accommodate and adapt to that transfer and no doubt will be submitting future requests for additional personnel to accommodate that significant increase in work.
  • 01:01:47
    The remaining five vacancies we're carrying forward are in the Legislative Support and Operations Division.
  • 01:01:53
    These include the new Director of Administration position that Council authorized in this year's budget, which we are in the final stages of reclassifying so that we can open recruitment.
  • 01:02:03
    This position is the top priority I have in terms of staffing because it will significantly improve day-to-day operations and remove a significant volume of work that has accumulated on my desk and on the desk of Assistant Clerk Jackie Hanson.
  • 01:02:17
    As the department has grown over the past several years, we have not invested in our core support team and that is now creating negative impacts on our daily operation.
  • 01:02:27
    The new Director of Administration will be the leader for our central administrative, outreach and constituent services and information technology teams.
  • 01:02:35
    A total of 14 positions once all of them have been fully implemented.
  • 01:02:40
    In addition, as council members know, we recently lost one of our superstars, Kate Redden, who took a promotion to a new position with the state of Minnesota.
  • 01:02:50
    So we are looking to backfill that vacancy, but we want to enable the new director of administration to lead that recruitment effort since they will be the supervising position.
  • 01:02:59
    In addition, as noted, Council allocated a new position in this year's budget to support work associated with the City's appointed boards and commissions.
  • 01:03:07
    Due to timing issues, we opted instead to fill that position on a planned, temporary basis so that work could begin immediately on implementing adopted reforms that were approved last year.
  • 01:03:19
    However, that position needs to be filled and, again, we plan to delay that until after the new Director of Administration is hired and on board since they will be responsible for that position as well.
  • 01:03:29
    We also have deliberately left vacant the new position authorized by Council in this year's budget for a manager of the new Outreach and Constituent Services team.
  • 01:03:39
    I mentioned this in my presentation on June 10th, but to repeat, we envision the new Outreach and Constituent Services team as providing dedicated support for the Council and the Department's communications plans, community outreach and engagement initiatives, and centralized constituent services programming.
  • 01:03:57
    We are working to have that position classified and anticipate opening recruitment when we return to our remodeled and larger spaces in City Hall in the second quarter of next year.
  • 01:04:07
    As Council members are well aware, we simply do not have room in our temporary office space for any new positions beyond those that already exist.
  • 01:04:16
    Meantime, we've leveraged the vacancy savings from that position to address serious challenges with public meeting broadcast functions.
  • 01:04:24
    That's included improvements to captioning for broadcast meetings as well as the purchase of new equipment and consulting services.
  • 01:04:32
    The final vacant position authorized by Council in this year's budget is for the code reviser position.
  • 01:04:39
    I have kept this position vacant for two reasons.
  • 01:04:41
    First, and most directly because, again, we simply don't have space for a new position in our temporary spaces here at the Public Service Center.
  • 01:04:49
    But second, and most importantly, I intend to leverage that vacant position as part of critical succession planning to address the planned retirement of Assistant Clerk Jackie Hanson.
  • 01:05:01
    I am hoping to use the vacant code reviser position as a temporary placeholder to hire the next Assistant Clerk so that we can have as much of an overlap between Ms. Hanson's remaining time with the department and the new hire who will eventually succeed her in that critical leadership role.
  • 01:05:17
    After that transition of a new assistant clerk is complete, we would backfill the code reviser position as originally planned.
  • 01:05:25
    Despite these vacancies, the division does have five temporary workers.
  • 01:05:29
    That includes one position I noted to coordinate the administrative reforms for boards and commissions, one temporary position to provide interagency response for public meeting broadcasts and captioning support,
  • 01:05:41
    One administrative position to help provide much needed stability as we work to hire our office's full administrative team.
  • 01:05:50
    And as noted, two positions hired in the last two weeks to augment our clerk team and increase the bench strength of our legislative support team.
  • 01:05:59
    Happily, there are no vacancies in the Elections and Voter Services Division, but of course we do have a significant number of temporary and seasonal workers who supplement the core team to support this year's election.
  • 01:06:10
    The next slide summarizes each of the Clerk's major business lines, starting with Elections and Voter Services.
  • 01:06:17
    The Mayor's 2025 recommended budget includes approximately $7 million for elections and voter services to conduct the next regular municipal election, which is just 392 days from today on Tuesday, November 4.
  • 01:06:31
    It also invests about $10 million for the gubernatorial election that follows in 2026.
  • 01:06:35
    The Elections and Voter Services Division includes eight full-time positions, eight intermittent positions, and it employs between 130 and 270 temporary and seasonal positions each year.
  • 01:06:47
    with a 2025 recommended budget of about $7 million.
  • 01:06:51
    This division represents approximately 45% of the total budget for the clerk's office and about 25% of its personnel resources.
  • 01:06:59
    As indicated previously, this one division is the largest in the entire department and it accounts for almost half of the entire clerk's office operating budget.
  • 01:07:07
    The Elections and Voter Services Division is responsible for those functions assigned by law to the city clerk as the city's chief elections official.
  • 01:07:15
    This is a corporate responsibility that primarily has an external focus on the community at large, on candidates and campaigns, and most importantly, the voters of Minneapolis.
  • 01:07:26
    The elections budget is unique in that it consists of two components.
  • 01:07:30
    The first part is the year-over-year funding required to maintain the staffing, facilities, equipment, and other core resources of this division.
  • 01:07:38
    That equates to just about 3.6 or 3.7 million dollars.
  • 01:07:43
    I think of this as being the core infrastructure budget for the Elections Division.
  • 01:07:48
    It includes, as I mentioned, the core staff, our facilities and rent, our overhead, our technology, and our equipment.
  • 01:07:54
    The second part, which supplements the core budget, is for the specific election each year based on the regular four-year election cycle.
  • 01:08:02
    That second part includes funding to pay for the costs associated with the specific election.
  • 01:08:07
    So, for example, that would include seasonal and temporary staff, ballots, polling places, election judges, election-specific supplies, and the costs for early in-person and vote-by-mail campaigns, pop-up voting sites, voter outreach, and more.
  • 01:08:23
    for the 2024 presidential election, that supplemental budget is about $6.6 million.
  • 01:08:30
    So in comparison, the 2025 budget reflects a supplemental budget of about $3.3 million, about half.
  • 01:08:37
    And that explains why the elections budget works in these two related but distinct parts.
  • 01:08:42
    The first is the year-over-year costs for the division.
  • 01:08:44
    The second is the costs for conducting the specific election.
  • 01:08:48
    As I've mentioned, and as shown on this slide, the Election Division operates on a standard four-year cycle that begins this year with the presidential election.
  • 01:08:56
    We have regular elections programmed in three of the four years.
  • 01:09:00
    The fourth year in the cycle is a year with no regular elections programmed.
  • 01:09:05
    The next off-year in our cycle is 2027.
  • 01:09:08
    The primary function of the Elections and Voter Services Division is to plan, organize, and conduct elections whenever they are required, and to ensure that all of our qualified voters are election ready.
  • 01:09:20
    The mayor's recommended budget for the Information Governance Division is about $3 million in both 2025 and 2026.
  • 01:09:26
    The slight deviation in years reflects the anticipated change in basic costs of doing business.
  • 01:09:33
    That includes salary increases, supplies, and materials as examples.
  • 01:09:37
    The Information Governance Division is primarily responsible for functions that are imposed under three state laws, all aimed at government accessibility, transparency, and accountability.
  • 01:09:49
    Those include the Official Records Act, which essentially defines records that governments must make and preserve,
  • 01:09:55
    the Records Management Statute which essentially defines how long and in what manner government records are to be managed and when they can be disposed or destroyed and the Government Data Practices Act which defines the classification of various types of government records who may access those records and under what conditions access may or must be provided.
  • 01:10:16
    This work is tedious.
  • 01:10:18
    It's time consuming.
  • 01:10:19
    It's incredibly detailed.
  • 01:10:21
    and absolutely essential to good governance and to the foundations of good government.
  • 01:10:26
    These three laws, when combined with the Open Meeting Law, often described as Sunshine Laws, because they have a common focus of ensuring that government operates in view of the public and that it is accessible and accountable to the public it serves.
  • 01:10:40
    In that context, these laws and the work of the Information Governance Division are about protecting the rights of the people.
  • 01:10:48
    The Information Governance Division ensures that the city enterprise has appropriate management controls and processes in place to comply with these three laws and provide centralized support for managing enterprise information assets across their defined life cycles.
  • 01:11:04
    The services highlighted
  • 01:11:05
    on this slide are what I'm discussing.
  • 01:11:08
    The Information Governance Division has a 2025 recommended budget of approximately $2.6 million and 17 full-time positions.
  • 01:11:16
    I noted earlier, 15 of those 17 are involved in data practices work.
  • 01:11:21
    The other two handle records management.
  • 01:11:25
    In total, that represents approximately 17% of the Clerk's Office budget as a total recommended budget and about 31% of our personnel resources.
  • 01:11:34
    The Information Governance Division is responsible for the functions that are assigned by law to the City Clerk as the City's responsible authority and as the legal custodian of its information assets, regardless of medium, regardless of format.
  • 01:11:47
    This is a corporate responsibility of the office and has both an external and internal focus including the community at large as well as the city's elected and appointed officials, the offices and departments, divisions, boards and commissions that make up the enterprise.
  • 01:12:03
    The Clerk's third major business line is the Legislative Support and Operations Division.
  • 01:12:08
    The Mayor's budget recommendation in both 2025 and 2026 is roughly $5.7 million each year.
  • 01:12:14
    This division is the bread and butter of the Clerk's Office and is the one I expect that Council members are most familiar with.
  • 01:12:20
    based on the close working connections between council, council members, and this division.
  • 01:12:25
    In fact, during our stay here at the Public Service Center, the council and this division have been co-located in the same space.
  • 01:12:32
    And that approach to co-location and shared space is baked into the remodel of City Hall when we return next year.
  • 01:12:39
    This division essentially contains two separate but related teams.
  • 01:12:43
    First, the legislative support team, which includes the clerks that, working together, function as the secretariat of the City Council and its committees, as well as of certain assigned boards and commissions.
  • 01:12:55
    And second, the department's operations team, which includes three separate small teams, administration, information technology and design, and outreach and constituent services.
  • 01:13:05
    The Legislative Support and Operations Division includes 24 full-time positions.
  • 01:13:10
    In total, this division represents about 38% of the Clerk's Office budget and 44% of its personnel resources.
  • 01:13:17
    The Legislative Support Team is responsible for functions that are assigned by law to the City Clerk as the Secretary of the City's governing body.
  • 01:13:25
    That includes a variety of meeting management functions,
  • 01:13:28
    the issuance of legal notices, the certification of official acts, the publication of the city charter and code of ordinances, and similar duties.
  • 01:13:36
    The operations team manages the department's day-to-day work and includes financial management, personnel administration, purchasing, and coordinating internal support functions across all of our business lines and divisions.
  • 01:13:52
    This slide shows supplemental investments recommended by the mayor to support the regular elections in 2025 and 2026.
  • 01:13:59
    I've captured on this slide the total recommended budget for each year along with a small description of what that investment buys for the city.
  • 01:14:07
    As you can see, the mayor has recommended a one-time investment of approximately $3.3 million for the 2025 municipal election
  • 01:14:14
    that will support the operation of the city's 137 precincts serving an anticipated 126,000 voters based on turnout in the last two municipal election cycles.
  • 01:14:25
    We also anticipate those funds will enable us to hire up to 130 temporary and seasonal workers to augment our core team of election administrators.
  • 01:14:34
    We plan to allocate about $1.2 million for early voting next year with the remainder reserved for election day needs.
  • 01:14:41
    Some of the major growth factors that impact that budget decision are listed for reference.
  • 01:14:46
    On the right side, we've reflected the mayor's recommendation of a one-time investment of about $6.2 million for the 2026 gubernatorial election.
  • 01:14:55
    That will enable us to support the anticipated 193,000 voters across the city's 137 precincts,
  • 01:15:01
    again based on turnout from the previous two gubernatorial cycles.
  • 01:15:05
    We plan to allocate about three million dollars of that total supplement for early voting and about two million dollars for election day functions and again some of the significant factors driving that budget decision are listed for reference.
  • 01:15:19
    The other supplemental request included by the mayor in the 2025 budget is $200,000 to support the post-election transition as well as orientation and inauguration functions.
  • 01:15:31
    This supplemental investment is consistent with similar investments that were made in prior transition years for similar functions.
  • 01:15:37
    As I indicated a while ago, there are now just 392 days until the next municipal election.
  • 01:15:44
    Following that election day, there are only about 60 days in the transition period before newly elected and re-elected officials are sworn into office in January 2026.
  • 01:15:54
    So that's a total of about 450 days from now.
  • 01:15:58
    These funds will offset the costs that we know will be required to ensure a seamless transition for our departing officials as well as a smooth onboarding for our returning and new officials and provide for both onboarding orientation and the public inauguration ceremony.
  • 01:16:16
    This slide simply captures the investments for elections and the post-election transition in 2025 as I've already discussed.
  • 01:16:24
    And that completes our presentation of the mayor's recommended budget for 2025 and 2026 for the legislative department.
  • 01:16:31
    Staff is available to respond to any questions the committee might have.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:16:35
    Thank you for that extensive presentation, Mr. City Clerk and Mr. City Auditor.
  • 01:16:42
    Colleagues, are there any questions or discussion items related to this presentation?
  • 01:16:46
    I'll first recognize Councilmember Palmisano.
• • Linea Palmisano
  • 01:16:51
    Thank you, Madam Chair.
  • 01:16:52
    This first question is for Director Poudial.
  • 01:16:55
    Actually, Poudial.
  • 01:16:57
    Did I say that correctly?
  • 01:17:00
    Thank you.
  • 01:17:02
    Director, could you explain to me the Audit Division's responsibility with respect to the Legislative Department's budget and financial policies review?
  • 01:17:13
    Like, who directs such a thing?
  • 01:17:17
    budget and financial policies review on our legislative side.
• • SPEAKER_11
  • 01:17:21
    So that work is primarily based on what to support the budget committee.
  • 01:17:28
    And so primarily it's based on what's required by the budget committee and what kind of services that they would like us to provide.
  • 01:17:37
    And we have been have professional services hired, APDO, to perform some of those services as well.
  • 01:17:44
    So that was for that.
• • Linea Palmisano
  • 01:17:47
    Right so I ask because I understand that was a huge priority at the end of last year that that was part of why we set up the oversight and evaluation division and earlier this year there was a staff direction directing the auditor's office to develop a review and analysis for financial policies and so I'm just curious if that work is being done I didn't see it directly on a slide and
  • 01:18:17
    It seems like it's a big priority.
  • 01:18:19
    It was in the original staff direction.
  • 01:18:22
    It was due mid-July And so I'm just curious is that work still underway?
• • SPEAKER_11
  • 01:18:28
    Okay.
  • 01:18:29
    So for that I'd like to invite the interim director Jody Molinar-Hanson, probably she'll have more detailed knowledge about that.
• • Linea Palmisano
  • 01:18:36
    Thank you.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:18:41
    Welcome, Director.
  • 01:18:41
    Thank you.
  • 01:18:43
    Jody Mulliner-Hanson, Interim Director of Audit, I'm sorry, Interim Director of Oversight and Evaluation, Chair Tugtai, Councilmember Palmisano.
  • 01:18:53
    The staff direction was given to the Office of City Auditor back in February and the work is continued underway.
  • 01:19:04
    We have been working with the chair of the Budget Committee to put the timeline together.
  • 01:19:09
    The original timeline of July 15th did not work.
  • 01:19:14
    And so we've been working closely with the chair to figure out when and how that staff direction gets wrapped up.
• • Linea Palmisano
  • 01:19:22
    Do you think Director Mullenar-Hanson that it will be ready for this coming budget review?
  • 01:19:31
    Will it be done by the end of this year?
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:19:32
    I'm going to, if I may, defer to the Chair of the Budget Committee to talk about next steps with that staff direction.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:19:43
    Yeah, thank you Director, thank you for the question Council Member Palmisano.
  • 01:19:47
    I wanted to just name a couple of factors that have contributed to the delay between July and now.
  • 01:19:56
    The most significant of that being the person working within ABDO most closely in reviewing financial policies.
  • 01:20:07
    as a part of that staff direction went on parental leave earlier than expected and had a child much earlier than expected and so has been out of the office in dealing with that.
  • 01:20:24
    So that's a large part of the delay and the hope is that we will be on track to complete to have a completed product in front of
  • 01:20:34
    the body for review before the end of this year before adoption of the budget.
• • Linea Palmisano
  • 01:20:40
    Thank you, I appreciate that.
  • 01:20:41
    I also seem to recall that we have a contract increase that we're considering later at AEO committee today for that particular services contract so it would also be an additional
  • 01:20:53
    amount of work being done.
  • 01:20:54
    So it made me curious about this kind of broad initiative.
  • 01:20:59
    I'm curious also, Director Mullenar-Hanson, what's happened with the legislative process reform directive that Councilmember Wonsley and I authored in February of last year.
  • 01:21:12
    We were the original authors of that directive in the prior term.
  • 01:21:16
    which required regular reports to Committee of the Whole and then this got renewed by Council President Payne for this term under the same guidance and reporting framework.
  • 01:21:28
    I haven't seen any reports at Committee of the Whole this term and now we're ten months into that first year.
  • 01:21:34
    So I'm not sure what's happened.
  • 01:21:36
    I did receive an email from you late on Friday, but that's not regular reporting to Committee of the Whole.
  • 01:21:44
    So can you tell us a little more about the plans for that?
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:21:46
    Chair Chug Thai, Council Member Palmisano.
  • 01:21:53
    As noted in the presentation here, we have had four new staff.
  • 01:22:00
    I'm working on onboarding those staff.
  • 01:22:04
    The legislative process reform staff direction that was approved in February did direct
  • 01:22:10
    the City Clerk and the City Auditor to report on how to define, clarify, strengthen the professional support provided by their respective offices to ensure effective support for the City Council's official legislative policy making and oversight functions.
  • 01:22:25
    So we were just one aspect of that.
  • 01:22:27
    We actually have been working on
  • 01:22:31
    As I'm onboarding staff, we're using the legislative process reform as a way to ensure and help them understand the legislative process.
  • 01:22:41
    We have been putting together a plan.
  • 01:22:43
    The plan to help support that work will be presented on October 29th at the Committee of the Whole.
  • 01:22:51
    We can talk about the work we've done to date as well as what we're planning on Our aspect are our pieces of it what we planning on doing for the rest of 2024 and then into 2025 Thank you.
• • Linea Palmisano
  • 01:23:05
    You mentioned that the city clerk is involved in this work.
  • 01:23:08
    Can you help me understand the city clerk's?
  • 01:23:11
    involvement with you in that legislative reform
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:23:18
    So the way that I have interpreted the staff direction is that it directs both the city clerk and the city auditor to do this work.
  • 01:23:30
    The interactions that I have had with the city clerk, and I want to ask you to stand up here as well, is through discussions on what are those
  • 01:23:39
    pieces that makes most sense for the oversight and evaluation division to start taking on.
  • 01:23:46
    And so we have been in conversations as well as with the city auditor and as well as with the author of the staff direction, the Council President Payne.
  • 01:23:59
    Would you like to
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:24:01
    I'll just note an example of regular reporting to the Committee of the Whole in terms of work on legislative process reform was the Clerk's presentation to the Committee of the Whole a few months ago or a few cycles ago for sure with an update on all of the acts, all of the
  • 01:24:29
    with some insight into what work is moving here at the Council or in the legislative
  • 01:24:54
    Department.
• • Linea Palmisano
  • 01:24:56
    Thank you, and I appreciate that.
  • 01:24:57
    I just, I know how much work the City Clerk's team did last year to address legislative process changes, and I'm just a little bit confused about how oversight and evaluation specifically is now involved in that work.
  • 01:25:10
    It almost, to me, just an observation and no judgment about it, it feels like we're going backwards instead of forwards in this work.
  • 01:25:22
    I know that you've had staff on board for several months now but when you said when it was explained there'd be a work plan developed is there a 2024 work plan that you're developing still this year in October or is that that for 2025?
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:25:45
    Chair Chug Thai, Council Member Palmisano.
  • 01:25:48
    The plan is to present the 2024-2025 work plan to the Audit Committee on October 28th so that the 2024 plan will also talk about what we've done to date, what we will be doing for the rest of 2024, and then what our plans are for 2025.
  • 01:26:08
    It's very similar to the work plan that Internal Audit puts together.
  • 01:26:12
    We're mirroring their work plan as how we start to then set up our own work plan.
  • 01:26:19
    So that will be on October 24th.
  • 01:26:22
    Thank you.
  • 01:26:22
    I'm sorry I said that wrong.
  • 01:26:23
    October 28th.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:26:25
    Thank you.
  • 01:26:27
    Thank you.
  • 01:26:28
    Next I'll recognize Councilmember Cashman followed by Councilmember Vitaw.
• • Michael Cashman
  • 01:26:34
    Thank you Chair Chugtai.
  • 01:26:35
    This question is for Clerk Carl.
  • 01:26:38
    I'm really wondering about the 28 council staff in the City Council.
  • 01:26:44
    You mentioned that board staffing and budget has been flat for 20 years and I was wondering if you've done any analysis of turnover or attrition with regards to council staff or have any analysis of that?
• • Casey CarlCity Clerk
  • 01:26:58
    Through the Chair, Council Member Cashman, I have not undertaken work as you would describe it as an analysis on the existing model.
  • 01:27:05
    I have had very, very preliminary discussions and I think I shared this in June with our Human Resources Department by looking at comparable jurisdictions that have similar types of positions for legislative bodies wherein those positions are structured in ways that offer more flexibility to members in terms of both
  • 01:27:27
    how many aids are allocated and how they are compensated and the work assigned to them.
  • 01:27:34
    So as an example, Seattle, Washington has a model that's different from ours and I believe accommodates goals that I've heard expressed by individual members in this term and in previous terms for greater flexibility, a little bit more nimbleness and how those positions are used.
  • 01:27:54
    and then also the City of Toronto has a full-time, very dominant City Council and they have a staffing model that I think also provides much more flexibility and the ability to, to some degree within budgetary constraints, customize how staffing is done at a ward office level.
  • 01:28:16
    So those preliminary conversations have started to ask our Human Resources Department and also we need to engage our city attorneys.
  • 01:28:24
    to talk about how we might consider similar types of models here at the City of Minneapolis.
  • 01:28:29
    We do have different state laws, different personnel, civil service rules that apply to us, so it would be working within the existing structure but attempting to gain the benefits of those models for the City of Minneapolis.
  • 01:28:42
    Sadly, that's not something that will happen this year or likely this two-year term, but starting now, it's my hope that as we transition into the next four-year term, 2026 to 2029,
  • 01:28:54
    Those could be some options that the Council could consider for a go-forward basis.
  • 01:28:59
    I hope that answered part of your question.
• • Michael Cashman
  • 01:29:01
    Thank you, Clerk Carl.
  • 01:29:02
    Can you remind me what the second city was?
  • 01:29:04
    You said Seattle and then the second city you're looking at?
• • Casey CarlCity Clerk
  • 01:29:07
    Through the Chair, the second city that I mentioned we've looked at is Toronto.
  • 01:29:10
    Toronto.
• • Michael Cashman
  • 01:29:11
    Yeah.
  • 01:29:11
    Okay.
• • Casey CarlCity Clerk
  • 01:29:11
    And the Ontario province in Canada.
• • Michael Cashman
  • 01:29:13
    One more follow-up question.
  • 01:29:15
    Have you looked into, you know, with regards to the flexibility of these positions, you know, pay equity or having the Council staff within the same pay range instead of on two different pay ranges?
  • 01:29:26
    Is that something that you've considered?
• • Casey CarlCity Clerk
  • 01:29:28
    Through the Chair, prior to your start with the Council, Councilmember Cashman, there was an analysis done by my office led by the Human Resources Department that evaluated both of those positions.
  • 01:29:40
    and there were significant changes done to both grades so that the technically the office associate position which we think of as the junior aide and the council assistant that we think of as the senior aide were reviewed
  • 01:29:55
    the pay grade for the junior position was entirely moved up several steps so there now is an overlap between the junior and the senior positions previously there was a gap between those and it had been grown pretty significant over the years without a regular review of those two jobs and I won't bore the body at this point but we'll say that the history of how those positions
  • 01:30:18
    came to be.
  • 01:30:19
    Both the council assistants and the office associates, the senior and junior aides, is very complex as are everything around the city of Minneapolis involving special state laws to create those positions.
  • 01:30:31
    The transition of what were formerly
  • 01:30:34
    represented civil service jobs in AFSCME, bargained for and represented by AFSCME to now politically appointed jobs.
  • 01:30:42
    And so the history behind that all sort of provides both a historical context but also some, frankly, constraints in what we can do right now.
  • 01:30:54
    We would have to undo much of that construction on how those positions were developed.
  • 01:31:00
    to achieve the greater flexibility that cities like Seattle and Toronto have for their positions, which never were classified jobs.
• • Michael Cashman
  • 01:31:08
    Thank you.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:31:10
    Excellent.
  • 01:31:11
    Next I will recognize Council Member Vitale, followed by Vice Chair Koski.
• • Katie Cashman
  • 01:31:16
    Thank you, Chair.
  • 01:31:18
    My question is for Director of Oversight and Evaluation, I'm sorry.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:31:24
    Director Molinar Hanson, welcome back.
• • Katie Cashman
  • 01:31:29
    Molinar Hanson, thank you.
  • 01:31:30
    Sorry about not knowing your name.
  • 01:31:32
    I just had a couple of questions because I had met with Council President a little earlier in the year and I was hoping I would have some answers to these questions by now.
  • 01:31:44
    I'm trying to understand who decides the priorities and the work assignments for your department.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:31:54
    Chair Chogtai, Council Member Vita, those are the things that we are actually trying to figure out as we build this division.
  • 01:32:04
    So there's been a
  • 01:32:09
    I've just been the Interim Division Director since July, so I'm just three months into it, so I am trying to figure out and create policies and procedures, create the work plan for this office while understanding what it means to be in a division within the Office of City Auditor.
  • 01:32:30
    right now I am the one making decisions on the work that we're doing we are being led by the two staff directions in front of us which is the legislative process reform staff direction and the staff direction from the Budget Committee on that financial policies review and so trying to figure all these things out
  • 01:32:53
    Hoping well, we will have those pieces in place by the time we present in October to both the Audit Committee and the Committee of the Whole And then going forward it is discussions with also the interim city auditor to try to figure out some of these pieces as we try to figure out what it's like to be three divisions within an office and
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:33:17
    Wonderful, and then just a quick jump in.
  • 01:33:21
    There are three divisions within the Office of City Auditor, Internal Audit, Policy and Research, and Oversight and Evaluation.
  • 01:33:28
    All three division directors report up to the City Auditor.
  • 01:33:33
    The City Auditor and the Office of City Audit report to the City's Audit Committee.
  • 01:33:38
    Their work is guided by the Audit Charter.
  • 01:33:42
    the two divisions policy and research and oversight and evaluation are a little bit unique in that the audit committee through its power last year or last term designated or delegated the
  • 01:34:00
    the work of the policy and research division and the oversight and evaluation division to relate more closely to the City Council.
  • 01:34:09
    That's why the City Council has the ability to give staff motions to these two divisions where we cannot do that with the internal audit division.
  • 01:34:22
    So that's just some additional context
  • 01:34:23
    I know that.
• • Katie Cashman
  • 01:34:24
    I didn't need the additional context.
  • 01:34:26
    I'm asking specifically about the oversight and evaluation department.
  • 01:34:34
    And the next question is, okay, so earlier this year we met.
  • 01:34:38
    You were in a meeting with myself and the Council Vice President to discuss my board priorities.
  • 01:34:44
    I guess I'm trying to understand how those are going to fit into this upcoming work plan and or if they fit into that.
  • 01:34:52
    this upcoming work plan and what's the process for working with council, what's the process for your department to work with council and council offices and how the information that I shared with you earlier this year is going to fit in your department's work plan.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:35:11
    Chair Chuktai, Council Member Vita, a couple of different things.
  • 01:35:15
    So within the legislative process reform, one of the projects that we're doing within there is helping council committees create their work plan.
  • 01:35:25
    And so the priorities
  • 01:35:27
    Either the discussion, I'm sorry The other piece that we did is with the Budget Committee Council priorities did some work and finding out the council priorities So that is once again underneath the legislative process reform staff direction helping committees in this case the Budget Committee help them implement their
  • 01:35:50
    work plan that the council priorities were part of that committee work plan and that's my involvement in that was to help the chair vice chair put together those council priorities and then that you guys came forward with that and presented those back in May or June if I remember correctly.
  • 01:36:09
    As far as the and then so how do we support other committees?
  • 01:36:15
    That is us working to help develop the committee work plans going forward and then trying to help Implement those you're you've already done version one this year with many council committee work plans and we are working also to help improve the Planning for those committees next year
• • Katie Cashman
  • 01:36:39
    I'm extremely confused.
  • 01:36:42
    I really don't understand that answer.
  • 01:36:48
    Simply because, well the first part of it is that you said that the priorities haven't even been established yet.
  • 01:36:55
    That based on the legislative directives, those two legislative directives are the guiding principles for the department.
  • 01:37:01
    So I'm not sure how we've already moved forward to work plans that were established before I met with you.
  • 01:37:10
    and the Council Vice President to now that is what your department is leading, is helping on those work plans.
  • 01:37:19
    I mean, we specifically met about my budget priorities.
  • 01:37:23
    I don't even know where that meeting went, like what that was for and how that is going to be included in the budget or, you know what I mean?
  • 01:37:32
    Like, I'm not understanding.
  • 01:37:34
    And I've had this confusion all year.
  • 01:37:35
    I've talked to the Council President and Vice President about
  • 01:37:39
    having a better understanding of how my team can better utilize this particular department and I'm just not understanding how this is beneficial to Ward 4.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:37:53
    Chair Chuktai, Council Member Vitah, I apologize.
  • 01:37:58
    So the discussion that we had with you earlier in this year was very much tied to supporting the Budget Committee's work plan.
  • 01:38:05
    And I was helping the chair put, by meeting with different council members, put together your collective council priorities.
  • 01:38:14
    that you brought forward and then adopted and that was done I believe in late May or early June.
  • 01:38:22
    As far as the working with the Division of Oversight and Evaluation, that is the work that we're trying to do right now to figure out how do we actually
  • 01:38:36
    Support the the council and we're doing it through two different ways.
  • 01:38:40
    We're doing it by developing a work plan And then we're we're also doing it through responding to staff directions And then that will be presented to the Audit Committee again in October And then from that will be additional more conversations to then figure out.
  • 01:38:59
    What does that look like?
  • 01:39:01
    going into 2025 when we will be
  • 01:39:06
    up and running more than we are now.
• • Katie Cashman
  • 01:39:09
    So then do you, does your department have regular meetings with council members or like what, I'm still confused on how to access like your office and learn more about what the services are.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:39:24
    Chair Chugtai, Councilmember Vita, the meetings that I'm currently having with council members are through the legislative department leadership meetings that happen every two weeks.
  • 01:39:33
    It's through meeting with the council president, who is the author of the legislative process reform staff direction.
  • 01:39:41
    And it's meeting with Council Vice President Chugtai, who is the chair of the Budget Committee, which then ties to that financial policies review staff direction that we're currently working on.
• • Katie Cashman
  • 01:39:52
    Okay, thank you.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:39:54
    We've got two more members with discussion items or questions and we've got about 17 minutes left of this committee meeting so with that I'll recognize Vice Chair Koski followed by Council Member Palmisano
• • Emily Koski
  • 01:40:12
    Thank you, Madam Vice President.
  • 01:40:14
    I just have a couple questions for both the City Clerk and City Auditor.
  • 01:40:18
    City Clerk can go first.
  • 01:40:19
    Oh, City Auditor.
  • 01:40:20
    Okay, here we go.
  • 01:40:22
    I'll start with the City Auditor here.
  • 01:40:25
    I am just curious about what factors are driving the 13% increase in salaries and wages for your office.
• • SPEAKER_11
  • 01:40:32
    So that 13% increase is driven by two main factors.
  • 01:40:37
    So the first one is the standard inflationary growth and the additional is, so last year when we received seven FTEs, five of them were
  • 01:40:50
    from Performance Management and Innovation.
  • 01:40:53
    So when we budgeted for the 2024 budget, so the classification was based on how it was in the PMI, but we had to do a declassification job study and this year we changed some of those job classification, especially for the director of
  • 01:41:13
    power and director of oversight and evaluation so that increase the salary portion component of it significantly.
  • 01:41:21
    So those are the two major factors for the increase in 13% change.
• • Emily Koski
  • 01:41:27
    Okay, thank you, Mr. Podial.
  • 01:41:29
    And then I see that you have an increase in operating costs from roughly around $11,000 to $56,000, so about a $45,000 difference.
  • 01:41:39
    Can you just help me understand the discrepancy there, or the change, I should say?
• • SPEAKER_11
  • 01:41:44
    So basically, so that was for like basically when we moved from Department of Internal Audit to now Office of the City Auditor with increased
  • 01:41:52
    with like two additional divisions.
  • 01:41:55
    So what we did was we looked at all the actual spendings where we were doing and it was not aligned properly with the budget how it was budgeted.
  • 01:42:04
    So to cover some of those especially for the office supplies,
  • 01:42:07
    and travel related issues and in the past we didn't accurately budget for the audit management system which is almost like $30,000 so those factors so basically what we did last summer was looked at the actual spending on for the operating cost and
  • 01:42:27
    allocated the budget neutral as a part of the budget neutral reallocation.
  • 01:42:32
    We allocated some of those for the budget so which wasn't done in the past.
  • 01:42:38
    So that basically increased even though we had like actual cost incurred in the past as well.
  • 01:42:44
    But now we have budgeted for those costs appropriately to reflect the actual nature.
  • 01:42:50
    So it could be the budget could see more accurately.
• • Emily Koski
  • 01:42:54
    Okay, thank you.
  • 01:42:56
    And then I'm not sure what number slide it is, but it talks about the current vacancies.
  • 01:43:01
    The slide says you have three current vacancies.
  • 01:43:04
    I don't believe you walked through those.
  • 01:43:06
    Can you describe what those roles are and what the hiring plans are for those?
• • SPEAKER_11
  • 01:43:12
    So basically because so for those three vacancies I'm looking at from perspective of so we have total 18 FTEs and we have like 15
  • 01:43:22
    Currently employed so the difference of that three and we have a lot of Like a person's in the interim role as well So for example, if you look at like interim of par interim director and O&E and me in the interim role as well So total we have like 15 so that so when we look at from the vacancy standpoint how you see it like we do have like two positions in par and
  • 01:43:46
    and so how you look at it like either being like a position of city auditor even though I'm interim city auditor or if since I'm the interim I'm looking at the director of internal audit as a vacancy as well because me transitioning into the interim city auditor position so
  • 01:44:05
    and the three interim directors.
  • 01:44:06
    So that's why even though it looks like three vacancies, but the way some of these interim roles work is like you have to put hold on the previous roles as well.
  • 01:44:18
    So even though we want to hire additional people, but we are on hold until some of these interim roles are permanently hired.
• • Emily Koski
  • 01:44:28
    Thank you.
  • 01:44:28
    That's really helpful.
  • 01:44:29
    I appreciate that understanding.
  • 01:44:30
    And now I have just a couple questions for the city clerk.
  • 01:44:34
    I see that you have a decrease in expenses, about 15%.
  • 01:44:39
    I'm just curious what was driving your decrease in expenses.
• • Casey CarlCity Clerk
  • 01:44:48
    Through the Chair, Councilor Murkowski, you're saying in terms of our comparison to 2024?
  • 01:44:54
    Correct.
  • 01:44:54
    Going into 2025.
  • 01:44:55
    We had, as Council knows, a very significant rollover in 2023 into 2024 for ongoing work product.
  • 01:45:04
    that work continues now into 2024.
  • 01:45:07
    And so although there appears to be a decrease in what was planned in 2024, I believe that's because of the rollover anticipated from 2023 to 2024.
  • 01:45:18
    And then what would move forward into 2025.
  • 01:45:21
    So for example, we had work in flight
  • 01:45:24
    on our legislative information management system.
  • 01:45:27
    We had work in flight on contracts to develop out our ServiceNow contract, which is the online data request portal.
  • 01:45:35
    Those dollars, because the work wasn't done, carried over, but was not put into the base budget of 2024, but was rolled over from 2023.
  • 01:45:46
    I believe that's the answer to the question.
• • Emily Koski
  • 01:45:48
    Okay, thank you.
  • 01:45:50
    And then I am just curious, in the City Council's division there was one vacancy and can you just describe what the plan is for that role or what that role is?
  • 01:46:04
    You walked through the clerk's six vacancies very
  • 01:46:09
    in very high detail.
  • 01:46:11
    I'm just curious about this role and then what you've used that vacancy savings for.
• • Casey CarlCity Clerk
  • 01:46:16
    There is, through the Chair, I'll say there is a vacancy in one of the aid positions in Ward 4 that just came about in the last two weeks, so there is a process underway to replace that with a permanent hire.
  • 01:46:29
    There is a temporary person holding that job down to support the Ward 4 office in the meantime.
  • 01:46:37
    The vacancy savings under ward budget guidelines for the position, the comp, but not the full costs of the employee position, are re-attributed to the ward budget.
  • 01:46:51
    So when there is a vacancy in a ward aid, the comp
  • 01:46:56
    the unused comp portion of that can be reallocated to the ward budget.
  • 01:47:00
    So that's how we're paying for the temporary position while we undertake a recruitment to replace the aid position on a full-time basis.
  • 01:47:09
    Okay, thank you so much.
  • 01:47:11
    Absolutely.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:47:14
    Wonderful and then next I'll recognize Councilmember Palmesano followed by Councilmember Chavez.
• • Linea Palmisano
  • 01:47:21
    Thank you, Madam Chair.
  • 01:47:22
    These aren't questions for people that have presented, it's just some things I want to point out and observations and Council Member Vitale helped me understand some of this as well.
  • 01:47:32
    In this legislative department presentation, one of our council's accomplishments, a major one since many of the ordinance things in here have been staff-led,
  • 01:47:41
    seems to be investments in and funding of positions in the legislative department.
  • 01:47:46
    That's part of why this presentation today is pretty important.
  • 01:47:49
    I haven't always agreed with that, as you all know, but that's been the consensus of this body so fine, and I supported this budget last year.
  • 01:47:57
    But let's acknowledge the City Auditor's office grew the most proportionally, and it was these two subdivisions.
  • 01:48:06
    PAR, Policy and Research, is one.
  • 01:48:08
    Oversight and Evaluation is the other.
  • 01:48:11
    For PAR and O&E, these two divisions were created at the same time.
  • 01:48:16
    They have the same number of staff.
  • 01:48:19
    and I'm struck by the output here.
  • 01:48:22
    PAR and Audit, Policy and Research Division and the Audit Division both have a lot of project examples in this presentation.
  • 01:48:30
    But our Oversight and Evaluation Division has none.
  • 01:48:34
    And I'll acknowledge that Director Molanar-Hanson spoke just now about committee work plans.
  • 01:48:39
    But what have we accomplished with this division so far in 2024?
  • 01:48:44
    It looks like they've been fully staffed since February.
  • 01:48:49
    I'm not sure what accomplishments we have for the five full-time positions that were allocated and hired.
  • 01:48:56
    They have goals and that's important to have goals and I want to give everybody the opportunity time to get oriented But I don't see just like Councilmember Vitale doesn't see any interaction with this whole division They have not been at any service to any of my work here at City Hall and if they're only Interacting through the legislative department leadership meetings.
  • 01:49:21
    I think that's a lot for five people and that's just a comment.
  • 01:49:24
    Thank you
• • Casey CarlCity Clerk
  • 01:49:27
    Thank you and then finally Madam President
  • 01:49:32
    If I might maybe just respond in high level to that comment, Council Member Palmisano.
  • 01:49:41
    And with great respect, I would rush to point out, you made a comment that said that the policy and research group and the oversight and evaluation group were created at the same, the two divisions were created at the same time.
  • 01:49:52
    And that's not true.
  • 01:49:54
    The research and policy and research group was created with the original government structure omnibus ordinance.
  • 01:50:02
    and Ms. Molyneur Hansen's position was folded into that separate division.
  • 01:50:06
    It was only then pulled out last year through an amendment to the government structure omnibus ordinance to create a new division that is, although similar in scope and function, with a different focus or lens to help the council and council committees.
  • 01:50:23
    and I know that we've done a few presentations about the work in the legislative department over the past three or four years and I will note that we haven't done as many this term and took note that we need to do more.
  • 01:50:38
    But the functions of those new divisions are not just new to
  • 01:50:46
    the auditor's office and to the legislative department but to the city enterprise.
  • 01:50:51
    These are functions that have never existed before and as we talk about the wholesale change in government structure and prioritizing the executive branch as the starting point because it is the executive branch which delivers services that the people benefit from I think most directly.
  • 01:51:08
    There is both a direct and indirect cost to the legislative department to maintain its
  • 01:51:15
    policymaking and oversight functions.
  • 01:51:17
    And I think that those two divisions are strategically positioned to assist council and council members.
  • 01:51:22
    There also was an unusual, as everybody will agree, midterm election, two two-year terms back to back, is difficult.
  • 01:51:30
    Leadership on the council has changed, the priorities of the body have slightly shifted, and the entire legislative department has had to adjust to that.
  • 01:51:38
    and, as I noted in my extensive comments, Council's work this year, just in nine months, has been more than it was the two previous years.
  • 01:51:48
    So I think that Mr. Poudyal and I hear these comments and honest critiques.
  • 01:51:56
    I don't want to push back on the honest critiques.
  • 01:51:59
    I think we would be very open to rising to responding to specific criticisms and observations, but in defense of the legislative department,
  • 01:52:07
    building something brand new from scratch does take time and resources and I think that we are doing that as a team.
  • 01:52:16
    Ms. Mullenar-Hanson noted we have regular meetings with council leadership to receive and provide direction and information exchange on a regular basis between the leaders of the department and the council's representatives, their chosen leaders.
  • 01:52:29
    So certainly not wanting to
  • 01:52:34
    to deny, like I said, honest criticisms about any of the work of the legislative department, including my own and happy to respond to those.
  • 01:52:42
    But just wanted to push back a little bit on where we are as a department growing.
  • 01:52:46
    So appreciate that space and opportunity.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:52:49
    Thank you.
  • 01:52:50
    I'll finally recognize Councilmember Chavez.
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 01:52:52
    Thank you, Clerk Call, for correcting those comments that were made and for standing up for our city staff.
  • 01:53:00
    I just had one question about the communications position.
  • 01:53:02
    I think there was a position that was funded in the budget in December.
  • 01:53:06
    If you could just give us a status update on that one, please.
• • Casey CarlCity Clerk
  • 01:53:09
    Through the Chair, yes, Councilmember Chavez, as I indicated in my presentation in June and again today, the communications position that was allocated by Council into the Clerk's Office budget is vacant.
  • 01:53:20
    We are working with the Human Resources Department to reclassify that position at a management level.
  • 01:53:26
    We've delayed any further effort to recruit that position until we move back into City Hall
  • 01:53:31
    which is I think slated currently for Q2 or second quarter of next year and at that point would open up recruitment.
  • 01:53:39
    The position is envisioned as leading a new function that does not exist today within the legislative department.
  • 01:53:45
    We're calling it outreach and constituent services.
  • 01:53:48
    Very broadly, I'll repeat, we anticipate that person and the team of people reporting to them
  • 01:53:53
    to take leadership both for council and the legislative department in terms of professional support for communications plans, community outreach and engagement initiatives, and then of course our centralized constituent services function so that management level position is critical to the success and future growth and development and really the vision of that team and look forward to doing that second quarter of next year as we relocate to City Hall.
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 01:54:17
    Thank you.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:54:19
    I will close by saying Mr.
  • 01:54:34
    Clerk
  • 01:54:35
    I think you did an excellent job of summarizing this sentiment but I want you and the leaders of our legislative department to really know, really see how much we value your work and that we could not make it through a single committee meeting.
  • 01:54:52
    We couldn't do any aspect of our job without the support that we received from the legislative department.
  • 01:54:57
    There are times when we ask you to do superhuman things and almost always you deliver on them
  • 01:55:03
    and so your work is valued.
  • 01:55:06
    It is deeply appreciated by myself, by members of this body and truly we couldn't do our jobs without you.
• • Casey CarlCity Clerk
  • 01:55:15
    Thank you Madam Vice President.
  • 01:55:16
    I feel that and I know the department staff do as well.
  • 01:55:18
    Thank you.
  • 01:55:19
    Thank you.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:55:20
    With that I will ask the clerk to file that presentation.
  • 01:55:24
    Thank you again.
  • 01:55:26
    With that we have concluded all business to come before the committee this morning and without objection we stand adjourned until our next meeting tomorrow, Tuesday, October 8th, 2024 at 10 a.m. where we will receive presentations from the Minneapolis Convention Center along with the Health Department and the Youth Coordinating Board.
  • 01:55:46
    All three of those presentations are available for your review in LIMS Thank you everyone