Budget Committee October 08, 2024   10/8/2024

Discussion

• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:00:23
    Good morning, my name is Aisha Chugtai and I am the chair of the Budget Committee.
  • 00:00:26
    I'm going to call to order our adjourned committee meeting for Tuesday, October 8th, 2024.
  • 00:00:33
    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.
  • 00:00:42
    These broadcasts include real-time captioning as a further method to increase the accessibility of our proceedings to the community.
  • 00:00:50
    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.
  • 00:00:59
    We ask all speakers to moderate the speed and clarity of their comments.
  • 00:01:03
    At this time, I'll ask the clerk to call the roll so we can verify the presence of a quorum.
• • SPEAKER_09
  • 00:01:08
    Council Member Payne?
  • 00:01:09
    Present.
  • 00:01:10
    Wonsley is absent.
  • 00:01:12
    Rainville?
  • 00:01:12
    Present.
  • 00:01:13
    Vita?
• • Katie Cashman
  • 00:01:14
    Present.
• • Jamal Osman
  • 00:01:15
    Ellison?
• • Katie Cashman
  • 00:01:16
    Here.
• • SPEAKER_09
  • 00:01:17
    Osman?
• • Jamal Osman
  • 00:01:17
    Present.
• • SPEAKER_09
  • 00:01:18
    Cashman?
• • Katie Cashman
  • 00:01:19
    Present.
• • SPEAKER_09
  • 00:01:20
    Jenkins is absent.
  • 00:01:22
    Chavez?
  • 00:01:22
    Present.
  • 00:01:24
    Chaudry?
• • SPEAKER_04
  • 00:01:24
    Present.
• • SPEAKER_09
  • 00:01:25
    Paul Massano, Vice Chair Koski, Chair Chigtai, there are 11 members present.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:01:33
    Let the record reflect that we have a quorum.
  • 00:01:35
    I'll also remind my colleagues that we're using speaker management today so please make sure you sign in.
  • 00:01:41
    Colleagues, today we have three presentations from the Minneapolis Convention Center, the Health Department, and the Youth Coordinating Board related to Mayor Frey's recommended 2025 city budget.
  • 00:01:53
    We will start today with a presentation from the Minneapolis Convention Center and for that I will invite Executive Director Jeff Johnson to begin the presentation.
  • 00:02:02
    Welcome.
• • SPEAKER_15
  • 00:02:04
    Thank you.
  • 00:02:04
    Good morning, Chair Chigabay, Vice Chair Koski, Council members.
  • 00:02:08
    As the Chair stated, my name is Jeff Johnson.
  • 00:02:11
    I'm the Executive Director of the Minneapolis Convention Center and I'm here today to present the 2025 Mayor's Recommended Budget for the Downtown Assets Fund.
  • 00:02:19
    I want to first start out by just saying thank you to Chris Hundges, our Director of Business Services.
  • 00:02:24
    She puts together our budget and our budget presentation and does a great job.
  • 00:02:28
    And then I also want to call out Melvin Tennant and Sandy Christensen from Minneapolis who are here to support us.
  • 00:02:35
    and then I didn't know I was going to have a cheering section but I'm going to call them my cheering section and we have some of our employees here today from the Teamsters in our operations department Sergio, Rhonda and Johnny are here today too so just want to welcome them all
  • 00:02:52
    So the Downtown Assets Fund was created to clearly delineate the uses of local sales, liquor, lodging, restaurant, and entertainment taxes, to provide stable, predictable, ongoing support for these taxes to the General Fund, and to support the comprehensive management of the city's three primary downtown revenue generating facilities.
  • 00:03:13
    The Downtown Assets Fund first supports the debt service operations and repair and maintenance of the convention center and the target center.
  • 00:03:21
    It also supports Meet Minneapolis' contract and the operations maintenance and repair of Peavey Plaza.
  • 00:03:28
    The city's share of the debt service for the U.S. Bank Stadium is removed from the local option sales taxes by the state before they send those funds back to the city.
  • 00:03:41
    Here's our organizational chart.
  • 00:03:42
    It has not changed over many years.
  • 00:03:45
    We have a good structure.
  • 00:03:49
    So as we talk about some of our priority objectives, I just maybe want to ask rhetorically the question, why do cities across the world support convention centers and hospitality entertainment infrastructure?
  • 00:04:01
    Communities use hospitality as economic development tools to reach their goals.
  • 00:04:07
    Throughout this presentation, I will highlight areas where the activities in the Downtown Assets Fund are needed as important tools to help the city reach its goals and maintain a vibrant business and residential community.
  • 00:04:19
    In short, it's about jobs for residents, financial resources for businesses, and vibrancy for our city.
  • 00:04:26
    and we are doing this work after our industry was decimated during the pandemic.
  • 00:04:31
    As we build back, we are building back hospitality so that it can be stronger and more inclusive than it was in the past so that the impact of our work is felt by everyone.
  • 00:04:44
    The Convention Center and the hospitality community it supports is the face of Minneapolis to millions of visitors.
  • 00:04:51
    The Convention Center has always been a diverse group of employees, but after the pandemic we saw a lot of transition in staffing with as much as 50% turnover in our departments.
  • 00:05:01
    We are building back stronger with a more inclusive staff that has grown in its majority of BIPOC staff to 60%.
  • 00:05:10
    We are growing our leadership positions where almost one-third are now held by BIPOC leaders and we also seek to be a place that attracts more female staff.
  • 00:05:20
    We are recovering in a more inclusive way and continue to work to support workforce in every ward of the city.
  • 00:05:30
    And here we are.
  • 00:05:31
    This is the face of Minneapolis and we welcome the world to our city.
  • 00:05:41
    We have some achievements and what we try to do is we are very planful at the convention center and we have a goal to use our resources responsibly.
  • 00:05:49
    Over the last decade, we have invested to meet and exceed the city's climate change and sustainability initiatives.
  • 00:05:56
    We have saved millions of dollars and avoided the use of significant amounts of fossil fuels so that our large facility runs as efficiently as possible.
  • 00:06:04
    In fact, we have reduced our greenhouse gas emissions by 77%.
  • 00:06:10
    As I mentioned earlier we focus on our employees and work to build a culture of service and striving to be the best.
  • 00:06:17
    It has been difficult recruiting staff over the last few years.
  • 00:06:21
    We work hard to hire people who like people and have a service heart.
  • 00:06:26
    During times of low unemployment and changing work schedules, we have found success in building our capacity from within.
  • 00:06:32
    It is hard to find some positions that can meet our demands for diversity, service, and desire.
  • 00:06:37
    So we have found ways to build our capacity internally by creating intermediate positions that become stepping stones for our employees to grow in our organization.
  • 00:06:47
    For example, we have struggled to find building engineers who not only have a boilers license, but can also meet our other demands that come from dealing with our clients.
  • 00:06:56
    We created an engineer assistant position and currently hired three individuals that can work towards the licensure and skills that they need to become engineers.
  • 00:07:06
    We also do similar programs with our event coordinators, production techs, and event operations staff.
  • 00:07:12
    Another tool that we use is called a detail, where when a position and especially a leadership position becomes open, we temporarily place staff in the position and through a competitive process, we make sure that they have a chance to test drive what being a leader is like in our organization and we get a chance to help them and see how they can grow in that leadership role.
  • 00:07:35
    and that really allows them to say, hey, do I want to be a leader?
  • 00:07:39
    Is that something that I can strive for?
  • 00:07:41
    By focusing on our opportunity and growth, we have been able to work towards building our business back and building our department back in a more inclusive way.
  • 00:07:51
    but there are risks that we encounter and our facility is really our physical tool that serves as the foundation for the city's hospitality industry but our facility is 35 years old and 24 years removed from a major investment by investing on a yearly basis on its upkeep we have been able to remain competitive but over time the needs of our clients change and we must be able to fulfill their needs going forward or our market share will decrease
  • 00:08:21
    Although we are the foundation of the hospitality industry in Minneapolis, we also rely on our hospitality community to be vibrant and strong.
  • 00:08:30
    Hotels, restaurants, arts and culture, and other entertainment venues keep our city vibrant as a destination.
  • 00:08:37
    We sell the total package of Minneapolis and we need to keep providing visitor spending so that our hospitality industry can stay healthy enough to reinvest in their own products.
  • 00:08:48
    Events though have been a resounding success for Minneapolis as we rebuild our hospitality industry.
  • 00:08:54
    Visitors from outside Minneapolis will travel to our downtown for an event, even if they have concerns about Minneapolis.
  • 00:09:02
    Their spending is crucial to our businesses.
  • 00:09:04
    Their experience is crucial to changing perceptions about Minneapolis.
  • 00:09:10
    We have long stated that once we get a hesitant client or a visitor to Minneapolis, we have a high probability of exceeding their expectations and positively changing their perceptions.
  • 00:09:21
    But we know competition is fierce, and many communities are using hospitality as a driver of economic recovery.
  • 00:09:27
    As an example, Milwaukee, Wisconsin just opened up an expanded and fully renovated convention center.
  • 00:09:34
    We have rarely competed against Milwaukee for business in the past, but know that they are well suited to compete with us for business seeking a convention center in the Midwest.
  • 00:09:44
    St. Louis, Denver, Sioux Falls,
  • 00:09:48
    Dallas and many other cities are making their products align with our clients' needs.
  • 00:09:53
    These competitors use hospitality and events to enliven their city cores which have not experienced a full economic recovery, especially with office workers and business travelers.
  • 00:10:05
    We know that hospitality and events also bring joy to our urban cores.
  • 00:10:09
    Think of the most energetic times in our city over the last couple of years, and you will most likely think about a concert, a game, a citywide convention, or other event that brought joy to our community.
  • 00:10:23
    And just like everyone else, we are dealing with inflation.
  • 00:10:26
    Everyone is feeling that pinch and we are not alone.
  • 00:10:29
    Keeping our costs down and our revenues up has been a challenge when we have not fully recovered on our business.
  • 00:10:37
    And we know that our event industry is changing.
  • 00:10:39
    Events and their attendees are looking for different opportunities when deciding on destinations and facilities where they host their event.
  • 00:10:46
    Experiential opportunities, legacy community projects,
  • 00:10:51
    Technology, human to human interaction, and learning opportunities are key factors in what events need.
  • 00:10:59
    and we've talked a lot about staffing, but rebuilding our department after the pandemic has been challenging.
  • 00:11:04
    The pandemic hastened a lot of retirements at MCC and we continue to have some departments that have lost a lot of institutional knowledge.
  • 00:11:12
    Employees left the hospitality industry during the pandemic and transitioned to working from home and or more schedule friendly lines of work.
  • 00:11:21
    To work in events, you must work nights, weekends and long hours as you serve your clients based on their event needs, not your schedule.
  • 00:11:29
    Working from home is not an option when you are in the service industry.
  • 00:11:33
    Being intentional about how we hire has caused us to move more slowly and getting back up to full capacity.
  • 00:11:42
    So this is a slide that just shows our program and staffing summary.
  • 00:11:46
    If you were to look back 15 years ago, when we really only had the responsibility of the convention center, you would see that our FTE count was 208.
  • 00:11:58
    Today, we oversee much more and do it with a more efficient workforce.
  • 00:12:03
    Even if you go back to 2019, we had 173 FTEs.
  • 00:12:09
    So our long recovery has caused us to be more resourceful and more efficient.
  • 00:12:14
    And you can see that most of those resources go to the Convention Center and the specific programs of the Convention Center with no additional FTEs.
  • 00:12:26
    We do have some vacancies currently.
  • 00:12:28
    Most are either in hiring mode or recruiting mode.
  • 00:12:31
    If you look at the 22.5 FTE vacancies for the operations maintenance specialists, these are our frontline employees.
  • 00:12:39
    Three of them are sitting in front of you right now.
  • 00:12:42
    They set up our rooms and clean our facility.
  • 00:12:45
    Many of the staff in these positions are part-time.
  • 00:12:48
    and during the pandemic we were forced to lay off all of our part-time staff.
  • 00:12:53
    Not everyone returned when we started hiring again.
  • 00:12:56
    We have had a very difficult time hiring people to our standard of service.
  • 00:13:01
    Our luck started to change in the first quarter of this year and we have been actively hiring staff.
  • 00:13:07
    We found out quickly though that onboarding more than about 10 people at a time is pretty difficult, especially when we're a busy building.
  • 00:13:14
    So each month we have been hiring and onboarding about 10 people and we look to continue that model until all 22.5 FTEs are filled.
  • 00:13:23
    Now let's jump into our programs.
  • 00:13:27
    The MCC events program is focused on our clients and providing them the services they need to have a successful event.
  • 00:13:34
    This program includes our contract with Meet Minneapolis.
  • 00:13:38
    We are showing significant increases in this program that can be attributed to an increase in our employee costs through their collective bargaining contracts and the fact that due to our busier calendar of events more of our employees are now benefit eligible and receiving more part-time hours.
  • 00:13:56
    So generally when we get busier our expenses go up.
  • 00:14:01
    This past year we also renegotiated the Meet Minneapolis contract and devoted more resources towards strengthening our marketing and sales activities.
  • 00:14:09
    You can see that that's the bulk of the increase in this program.
  • 00:14:15
    The rest of the increases are tied to event activity like increased credit card fees and resale services that help us drive increased revenues.
  • 00:14:24
    We are projecting increased operating revenues in 2025 of $2.2 million.
  • 00:14:29
    And as you can see, we carry most of our FTEs in the service of our customers, and as stated earlier, our employees are a wonderfully diverse service-oriented group.
  • 00:14:42
    2024 has been a really strong year with a lot of strong event activity but as you can see we are still in recovery and don't expect to be at 2019 revenue numbers until late 2025 or into 2026.
  • 00:14:55
    The next few years are also showing a booking trend towards smaller events and I think you know it's been great these last few years that we've had a lot of really large events and events that
  • 00:15:07
    have made big splashes.
  • 00:15:09
    In the next few years we just don't have those really large events on the calendar.
  • 00:15:16
    Our occupancy numbers are my biggest focus for the next few years as we need to return to an occupancy closer to 60% to utilize our convention center to its strengths.
  • 00:15:27
    The additional focus and resources that Meet Minneapolis will provide is a key to our success in this area.
  • 00:15:33
    Another key to our success is understanding why we lose events to other facilities and destinations and what competitive changes we need to make.
  • 00:15:45
    One way that we seek to build a competitive advantage that cannot be outdone by physical means is through our employees.
  • 00:15:52
    Our team works every day to do their best and represent Minneapolis by building relationships.
  • 00:15:58
    We survey our clients in order to get feedback on how we can improve and how they view our offerings.
  • 00:16:03
    The current graph shows how likely our clients are to recommend both the Convention Center in blue and the City of Minneapolis in green.
  • 00:16:11
    We see that the Convention Center continues to outpace the city when it comes to a recommendation score.
  • 00:16:16
    A good convention destination is also a good tourist destination and a good place to live.
  • 00:16:23
    Over time, the Convention Center neighborhood has increasingly become a hospitality desert, with restaurants and hotel rooms moving farther away.
  • 00:16:31
    If you look at the options for restaurants within a two to four block radius of the convention center, our options are not plentiful, with challenges on the Eat Street portion of Nicollet and the movement of restaurants towards the river.
  • 00:16:44
    Convention goers want attractions, amenities, and their housing to be close to their convention center, and a city that delivers those resources is a successful convention destination.
  • 00:16:57
    We also ask our clients if they had a problem while at MCC and we empower our staff to respond and fix the problem.
  • 00:17:04
    Our goal is to resolve at least 66% of client issues in the moment of the issue.
  • 00:17:09
    Now you can see that we don't have a lot of issues displayed, which is great news, but we have struggled to resolve the problems this year at our goal amount.
  • 00:17:18
    Part of that issue stems from two significant power outages during events due to infrastructure challenges with our provider.
  • 00:17:25
    Obviously infrastructure issues cannot be easily resolved and speak to the need to always prioritize infrastructure investments.
  • 00:17:37
    There are a lot of graphs on this slide, but they all tell a really great story.
  • 00:17:40
    The state of Minnesota authorized local option sales taxes to be used primarily by Minneapolis to support its hospitality industry through economic development.
  • 00:17:51
    These taxes have done well in recovery because Minneapolis has been a vibrant event center coming out of the pandemic.
  • 00:17:59
    This is how you dream it up, right?
  • 00:18:02
    Hospitality infrastructure drives economic activity, which supports our community through jobs, taxes, and gives us a little fun too.
  • 00:18:11
    We can still do more though, and we can still bring positive economic growth on the human level.
  • 00:18:17
    But we must continue to protect and support our hospitality infrastructure.
  • 00:18:24
    So let's transition to infrastructure.
  • 00:18:26
    Our next program supports the structure that is the Convention Center.
  • 00:18:32
    So how do we do that?
  • 00:18:33
    We invest in our facility to maintain competitive, but also to make our city a more wonderful place for residents and for visitors.
  • 00:18:42
    This is a picture of our urban pollinator meadow at our plaza.
  • 00:18:46
    We live out the marketing slogan City by Nature for the benefit of our neighborhood and our attendees.
  • 00:18:53
    Our large urban facility has the first SITES certified outdoor space at a convention center in the world.
  • 00:19:00
    You may not know what the term SITES stands for, but the easiest way to explain it is that it is similar to the LEED designation for buildings.
  • 00:19:07
    By the way, we have that too.
  • 00:19:10
    But SITES is for outdoor landscape
  • 00:19:13
    We irrigate the site with over 5 million gallons of collected rainwater, collect honey from our beehive, and just give a beautiful space for dog walkers in our community, in our neighborhood, and attendees who have been sitting in a meeting room session all day long and just want to get outside and see nature.
  • 00:19:36
    We are intentional and planful in how we use our resources and we seek to make the most positive impact on our community that we can
  • 00:19:45
    We are dealing with 1.6 million square feet of building that while well maintained last saw an industry-level significant project in 2001.
  • 00:19:56
    The majority of our costs are focused on the resources needed to keep our building operational and efficient.
  • 00:20:02
    We are seeing higher costs in personnel and in utilities, especially as our summers warm and our weather patterns turn more unpredictable and severe.
  • 00:20:12
    Luckily, the city's liability premiums reduced this year after a significant increase last year, but we are bracing for our building insurance premiums to substantially increase after we go out to market towards the end of this year.
  • 00:20:26
    Our repair and maintenance costs are the backbone of maintaining this 35 year old building, and we use the local option sales taxes to keep our over 650 million dollar building up to date.
  • 00:20:38
    If we don't keep up with these investments, we degrade our ability to support jobs and collect visitor spending generally in the $250 million each year.
  • 00:20:49
    You might ask, why are our investments increasing by 20%?
  • 00:20:53
    Well, our building is aging, and without a major renovation since 2001,
  • 00:20:58
    we deferred many of the capital projects that we were planning during the pandemic season and so we do have kind of a pent-up demand for those projects.
  • 00:21:12
    A big factor in this is really that
  • 00:21:16
    project that we talked about earlier this year and provided a lot of scrutiny was our meeting room project.
  • 00:21:23
    So if you remember back to that conversation, that was only half of our meeting rooms and so in this budget we are proposing again going forward and continuing with our meeting room project and making sure that we have the ability to serve our clients and to present a space for our clients that they desire.
  • 00:21:48
    So how do we know what our clients think about our facility?
  • 00:21:51
    We survey them, and as you can see, we've been able to keep things consistently positive.
  • 00:21:56
    But we also know that this is a constant battle to keep a building that hosts almost one million people a year looking and operating well.
  • 00:22:05
    We have used sustainability as a way for us to validate the excellence of our staff and our commitment to use our resources responsibly.
  • 00:22:13
    We have had great success working over a decade now at reducing the amount of energy and water that we use.
  • 00:22:18
    As I mentioned earlier, it's good to say it a few times, we have reduced our greenhouse gas emissions 77%.
  • 00:22:24
    And now, 100% of our electricity and cooling energy are either produced on-site or sourced from wind and solar energy.
  • 00:22:34
    We also now use half of the amount of potable water that we did in 2009.
  • 00:22:42
    We have a vast recycling program where we recycle at least 60% of our waste.
  • 00:22:47
    That really includes our partners, including our catering company.
  • 00:22:51
    Our program seeks to collect items for their appropriate waste streams and collect items that can be reused like food scraps that are sent to local animal farms as feed, prepared unused food that's sent to local food shelves, and leftover event equipment
  • 00:23:09
    like furnishings from events that are given to local organizations to help people in our community.
  • 00:23:15
    We continue to innovate and work to increase our ability to find ways to improve our programs.
  • 00:23:22
    The Downtown Assets Fund also supports the city-owned Target Center through repair and maintenance capital projects, debt service, and operating support to ASM Global, which manages the facility.
  • 00:23:32
    2024 will turn out to be the best year in the history of the Target Center through their hosting of the great events like the Big Ten men's and women's basketball tournaments, the USA Olympic gymnastic trials, great and diverse concerts,
  • 00:23:46
    and two of the best professional basketball teams in the world in the Lynx and the Timberwolves.
  • 00:23:51
    I haven't been able to say that for many years, but that's great.
  • 00:23:54
    So successful events and successful sports tenants really add to the vitality of Minneapolis and give us all something to cheer for collectively.
  • 00:24:04
    Our main function at the Target Center is to complete capital projects and this slide shows the number of projects that we set out to complete each year and then the percentage that we complete.
  • 00:24:15
    What this shows is how difficult it is to complete projects on a calendar year basis.
  • 00:24:19
    The Target Center is a very busy event building so finding time to get projects done is difficult and you must try to coordinate our city purchasing process with open dates in their calendar.
  • 00:24:30
    Most of the projects span two budget cycles and calendars.
  • 00:24:34
    The 2024 project is, percentage is after the third quarter so we do have some time here in the fourth quarter and I do expect us to finish up some projects so that we can raise that percentage by the end of the year.
  • 00:24:47
    We choose the projects in a variety of ways.
  • 00:24:50
    First, every five years we are contractually obligated to have a third-party building-wide assessment completed.
  • 00:24:56
    This assessment places a ranking on which components the building needs to be replaced, and we choose as many of those most needs that we can accomplish each year.
  • 00:25:06
    Second, we are members of a design group that is contractually obligated to make decisions on improvements to the building.
  • 00:25:13
    The design group consists of members of the Timberwolves and Lynx, the operator ASM Global, and the City.
  • 00:25:19
    And finally, we meet monthly with Target Center staff to understand what they are experiencing on a day-to-day basis and make adjustments to our plan where needed based on real-life needs.
  • 00:25:30
    Another city amenity that we oversee is the PV Plaza.
  • 00:25:33
    PV Plaza is under the first year of a contract with the downtown improvement district to operate and maintain the space.
  • 00:25:40
    The city is responsible for all capital projects as the owner of the space.
  • 00:25:45
    The DID has been a great partner and has integrated PV Plaza into their district operations seamlessly this year.
  • 00:25:53
    This slide shows the number of programmed events happening at Peavey Plaza.
  • 00:25:57
    In 2023, our last year with the organization formerly called Green Minneapolis, we had a huge focus on the activation as a way to really help welcome everyone back to Minneapolis.
  • 00:26:07
    In 2024, we focused on consistent activation times when people that they could expect it and they would know to go to Peavey in order to get those activations and in coordination with the other activations that DID was doing on Nicollet.
  • 00:26:22
    Also there were a few bigger activations from events like Gala Chorus and USA Gymnastics where PV Plaza was activated but they were paying rent and those events are not shown on this graph.
  • 00:26:35
    But they did activate our area to high degrees.
  • 00:26:41
    And last, we have one new program that was added through the mayor's recommended budget to fund initiatives at the Kohl Center.
  • 00:26:48
    My colleagues at CPED and Arts and Cultural Affairs have already presented on their initiatives in their budget presentations.
  • 00:26:56
    This is just the funding source for those initiatives.
  • 00:27:00
    And with that, I will end my remarks and stand for any questions.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:27:06
    Thank you for that presentation.
  • 00:27:09
    Colleagues, are there any questions or comments related to the convention center recommended budget?
  • 00:27:17
    I see several council members in queue.
  • 00:27:20
    Three right now and then we'll see if others jump in with additional questions.
  • 00:27:24
    So we'll start with Council Member Cashman.
• • Michael Cashman
  • 00:27:27
    Thank you Mr. Johnson for the presentation.
  • 00:27:31
    I hope everyone will bear with me.
  • 00:27:33
    I have about five questions here and with the convention center being located in Ward 7, I'm really interested in how to maximize the potential of the investments that we make together for the community.
  • 00:27:46
    So thank you for such a comprehensive presentation.
  • 00:27:50
    I know we've all been really looking forward to how to
  • 00:27:52
    I understand better the Downtown Assets Fund in the last few presentations as well.
  • 00:27:58
    So one question I had, you said a challenge identified by many convention goers is the two to four block radius around the convention center not having restaurants, hotels, retail, etc.
  • 00:28:09
    So I'm wondering if there's anything here in this budget to really get at that.
  • 00:28:13
    I know that the only
  • 00:28:14
    Nearby development that we see right now is the new first precinct which is right across first precinct police station right across from the Convention Center on third But are there any other investments in the in the nearby radius of the Convention Center that you're working on?
• • SPEAKER_15
  • 00:28:33
    Chair Trugtai, Councilmember Cashman
  • 00:28:35
    In this current budget, there are not any planned investments outside of the campus of the Convention Center.
  • 00:28:44
    Obviously, by bringing more people to the Convention Center and letting them get out into the community, that drives business, and so we need to do our job of making sure that keeping
  • 00:28:54
    our event attendees in the downtown core and going out into the cultural districts and exploring our city is a way for them to use that economic engine of spending.
  • 00:29:07
    I know that as we've talked about the convention center there are ideas and plans that we want to bring forward in the future about what we could do to make the convention center
  • 00:29:21
    a more thriving convention district and campus and so those will be discussions that we bring forward in the future.
• • Michael Cashman
  • 00:29:28
    Okay, thank you.
  • 00:29:29
    I know that the restaurants along E Street and Nicollet Mall and the downtown part of E Street as well as into Loring Park really benefit from the convention goers for sure.
  • 00:29:40
    But I'm wondering about, I didn't see anything here as far as security services for the convention center and ambassador services and I'm wondering if that's something you have in your budget.
• • SPEAKER_15
  • 00:29:51
    Chair Chugchai, Councilmember Cashman, we do have security services on our campus so we provide security for our building and for the campus surrounding the Convention Center.
  • 00:30:06
    The Downtown Improvement District comes up to our plaza and so we coordinate well with the DID but we are in control of the security around the Convention Center and on our campus like the plaza in that area.
• • Michael Cashman
  • 00:30:21
    Okay, you don't have any ambassador services, convention center safety ambassadors?
• • SPEAKER_15
  • 00:30:30
    Chair Chugthai, Councilor Cashman, within the convention center, yes, we do have security services.
  • 00:30:36
    We have ambassadors that work inside the convention center.
  • 00:30:38
    They're not DID ambassadors, they're our own ambassadors.
  • 00:30:42
    We have security services that will walk people to their destination, but then we also partner with the DID
  • 00:30:50
    and hand off as people get off of our campus and get into more of the downtown improvement district.
• • Michael Cashman
  • 00:30:57
    Would you be able to follow up with me on how many ambassadors you have at the convention center on hire and how much that costs?
• • SPEAKER_15
  • 00:31:05
    I can definitely most of them are so we have a security force and we can we can show what that budget line item is and then we also have more of that ambassador or guest services component of it and most of them are part-time and they are here when we have events but we can follow up with that okay clerks if we can note that for administrative follow-up thank you
• • Michael Cashman
  • 00:31:30
    Thank you so much.
  • 00:31:30
    Okay, my next question is about the Kohl Center.
  • 00:31:33
    So I'm really excited to see the expansion, I guess, of the Downtown Assets Fund services in this new building.
  • 00:31:42
    And I'm wondering, you know, the 1.15 ongoing for the Arts and Cultural Affairs Department
  • 00:31:50
    for operation and maintenance as well as $240,000 one time for CPED for the next year.
  • 00:31:59
    Do we have any debt service obligations to this building?
  • 00:32:04
    Because I saw that we finance the debt service obligations for Target Center and Convention Center, but do you know if Kohl Center has any obligations?
• • SPEAKER_15
  • 00:32:14
    Chair Chuck Tai, Councilmember Cashman, I believe in talking with CPED that there is a state bond that was taken out for the renovation of the Kohl Center and there are some rules and regulations, for lack of a better term, around how that
  • 00:32:35
    Okay, that's helpful.
• • Michael Cashman
  • 00:32:44
    And then about the PV Plaza, the costs dropped in 2024.
  • 00:32:57
    Is that because programming dropped or because there was another source of funding for the programming at PV Plaza?
• • SPEAKER_15
  • 00:33:05
    Chair, Chuck Tai, Council Member Cashman.
  • 00:33:07
    It's just because we have a new contract with the DID.
  • 00:33:13
    The services are still great.
  • 00:33:15
    The services are still there.
  • 00:33:16
    Programming has come down a little bit as I've said.
  • 00:33:21
    We actually spent a little bit more this year on security than we did on programming, especially on the late night hours.
  • 00:33:31
    So if I'm understanding correctly, the DID covered more of it in 2024 with the new contract?
  • 00:33:54
    Sure.
  • 00:33:54
    Chuck Tai, Council Member Cashman.
  • 00:33:56
    I'm not sure if I would say they covered more of it.
  • 00:33:58
    I think there was more efficiency because they have a larger organization, obviously, because they're watching all of the downtown improvement district.
  • 00:34:08
    And so we were able to see a lot of efficiencies by having them expand into PV Plaza also.
• • Michael Cashman
  • 00:34:15
    Great.
  • 00:34:16
    Thanks.
  • 00:34:17
    Okay, then my last question is about occupancy.
  • 00:34:19
    So you mentioned 60% occupancy would be
  • 00:34:22
    healthy or that's where the goal is for Convention Center and when's the last time that we were at 60% occupancy of the Convention Center in recent years.
• • SPEAKER_15
  • 00:34:33
    Chair Chuktai, Councilmember Cashman 2018 was the last time that we actually reached 60%.
  • 00:34:40
    Over the last, if you go 2019 and back 10 years, we were always hovering in the 57 to 60% range for occupancy.
  • 00:34:50
    And that's when our building really runs well.
  • 00:34:53
    That's when I think that we can really support the infrastructure that we have from a hospitality standpoint in our city in the best way.
  • 00:35:00
    and so you know it has been a struggle it's it's we've again 2024 was the year of big events and and but it also didn't have maybe some of the consistency that we have seen in the past and so we're trying to get back to that consistency we're trying to get back to where we have events every single day and those event days continue and so that's where our hope is to get back to that 60% occupancy standpoint
• • Michael Cashman
  • 00:35:29
    Thank you.
  • 00:35:30
    So June was the big month with U.S.
  • 00:35:34
    Gymnastics and several other events going on at the Convention Center.
  • 00:35:38
    Big events that led to it being a record-breaking hotel occupancy month.
  • 00:35:44
    Do you know if this 60% occupancy goal for the Convention Center is mirrored in the hotel industry as in 60% is what they're going for as a healthy occupancy rate?
• • SPEAKER_15
  • 00:35:55
    I think if a hotelier was up here, they would say that their goal is probably 70% from a standpoint.
  • 00:36:05
    That means that they are feeling that they're being used at the ultimate standpoint.
  • 00:36:13
    Why ours would be less than that would be that we're not just cleaning a room,
  • 00:36:20
    We're actually changing large spaces and we're moving big events out and they take time to move out and then a big event takes time to move back in and so we need a little bit more of that time to change over our building.
  • 00:36:34
    My staff right behind, they're the ones that are doing that work and changing out and they don't like when there's not enough time between events and so it puts a lot of stress on the building, a lot of stress on our staff.
  • 00:36:45
    and so that is why our occupancy goal of 60% would be less than what a hotel's occupancy of around 70% would be.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:36:54
    Thanks.
  • 00:36:55
    Thank you, Chair.
  • 00:36:55
    That's all I have.
  • 00:36:57
    Thank you, Councilmember.
  • 00:36:58
    Next I'll recognize Councilmember Chavez.
• • Jason Chavez
  • 00:37:00
    Thank you, Chair Chuktai and thank you Director Johnson for the presentation today.
  • 00:37:04
    I continue to be excited about the work that is being done with the Cole Center, so I appreciate that work.
  • 00:37:11
    But I did want to acknowledge
  • 00:37:13
    that the Teamsters local 320 union and staff are here today.
  • 00:37:17
    They sent this body a letter signed by 63 Teamster represented employees at the convention center.
  • 00:37:23
    These are operation maintenance specialists, building maintenance workers, and ground maintenance workers who perform essential work that keep the convention center clean and presentable for tens and thousands of visitors.
  • 00:37:34
    The letter this council was sent conveys how wages at the convention center have fallen behind the cost of living and other bargaining agreements negotiated with the city.
  • 00:37:42
    It then goes on to say that the convention center has some of the lowest paid workers employed by the city and that they need substantial wage increases.
  • 00:37:50
    They also let us know that they conducted a financial analysis of the Minneapolis Convention Center which was completed by the International Brotherhood of Teensters Economics Department.
  • 00:37:59
    They then let us know that the financial analysis shows that the convention center is in good financial health with increasing revenues and an unrestricted balance of $7.63 million and that they believe that the convention center can afford substantial wage increases.
  • 00:38:12
    I hope that we as a body keep this letter in mind as we make changes into the proposed budget and I guess I give us my question for you Director Johnson is what is in this budget being proposed by the mayor's budget a mayor's proposal to address the concerns that the council received over a letter?
• • SPEAKER_15
  • 00:38:32
    Chair Chuck Tai, Councilmember Chavez, you can see in both programs the events program would be where most of the Teamsters are in.
  • 00:38:42
    You can see an increase in our budget for personnel and so we will have to work within the budgeted amount to make sure that we have the resources to pay our employees.
• • Jason Chavez
  • 00:38:53
    And can you dive more into bigger details about that part?
  • 00:38:57
    Like what is specifically?
  • 00:39:00
    I can go back to
• • SPEAKER_15
  • 00:39:09
    Chair Chuck Tai, Council Member Chavez, you can see here that an 8.3% increase in salary and fringe benefits of 1 million dollars and so from a budgetary standpoint that's what we are putting into our budget in order to make sure that we have the ability to pay our employees based on their collective bargaining agreements and based on their their salary and wages.
• • Jason Chavez
  • 00:39:31
    Was there conversations with staff before that particular number was proposed to the City Council?
• • SPEAKER_15
  • 00:39:39
    Chair Chuck Tai, Council Member Chavez, I speak with the staff every year in November as we sit down so we're getting close to doing that and listen to what they believe is needed for the next year and so those conversations help us as we are putting forth all of our, we call them our impact goals, but also in our budgeting process as we're thinking about where we need to invest more in our facilities and in our building and also in our people
  • 00:40:09
    and that's also where you can see that we've invested in opportunities to one of the things that our staff said and many of the teamsters said is that they wanted upward mobility in the convention center and they wanted more opportunities and so we've been working hard to try to give those opportunities and find those pathways for people in our organization.
• • Jason Chavez
  • 00:40:32
    Thank you.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:40:36
    Director, I'm just going to invite Budget Director Jane DeCenza to just come up and speak to the methodology behind how increases to salaries and fringe benefits are calculated on an annual basis when it comes to the recommended budget, particularly given that the vast majority of city employees are represented by a union.
  • 00:40:57
    Welcome, Director.
• • Jayne Discenza
  • 00:40:58
    Thank you Council Vice President Chugtai.
  • 00:41:01
    Jane DeCenza, Budget Director.
  • 00:41:02
    I just wanted to hop up and remind folks department heads are not directly involved in setting the personnel budgets for the represented departments.
  • 00:41:10
    That all goes through the bargaining process with our labor relations team.
  • 00:41:15
    and where finance comes into play as we work with labor relations to understand what either has been settled with those bargaining units or what is a good placeholder amount for the next year's budget.
  • 00:41:27
    And so those determinations are made in conjunction with HR and finance and not the department head.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:41:34
    Director, if I can just follow up on that, specifically this 8.3% increase as it relates to the convention center.
  • 00:41:44
    Can you give us any insight into conversations between finance, HR, labor relations, when it came to calculating this increase?
• • Jayne Discenza
  • 00:41:55
    I can't speak to 8.3% off the top of my head and I will need to go back to review our materials around specifically what the Teamsters contract says, but as with any city department, we're going to adjust fringe benefits based on the incumbents and the positions and that can radically change what the personnel budget is likely to be.
  • 00:42:20
    and salaries as we know have been moving upwards for many city staff and so I would expect the same dynamic here but we can follow up.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:42:27
    Excellent.
  • 00:42:28
    Clerks if we can note that for administrative follow-up.
  • 00:42:31
    Thank you.
  • 00:42:31
    And then we've got several more members so I will next recognize Councilmember Rainville.
• • Michael Rainville
  • 00:42:42
    Thank you, Chair.
  • 00:42:43
    Mr. Johnston, thank you for the very thorough presentation.
  • 00:42:46
    I do have a couple questions, though, that may be the first one in particular you could follow up with.
  • 00:42:52
    And that is, how many, do you have any idea, or could you have any idea, how many Minneapolis residents work in the hotel and restaurant industry?
  • 00:43:02
    I know you know who works in the convention center, but if that number's available, so you could show this body how important the job's creation is.
  • 00:43:10
    in that hospitality industry, that would be great, unless you have it off the top of your head.
• • SPEAKER_15
  • 00:43:15
    Chair, Chuck Tai, Council Member Rainville, there are 30,000, about 30,000 hospitality jobs in Minneapolis, and the convention center itself supports about 7,000 of them.
  • 00:43:26
    So those are our hospitality workers in hotels, in restaurants, our Uber and Lyft drivers, you know, all of those types of positions.
  • 00:43:38
    that we support and by having attendees come into Minneapolis that are here, are going out and spending their money.
  • 00:43:46
    The great thing about when a visitor spends money in Minneapolis, they leave their money and then they go back home and that's a great way for
  • 00:43:53
    our community to reap the benefits.
• • Michael Rainville
  • 00:43:57
    Thank you.
  • 00:43:57
    That's a great number.
  • 00:44:00
    And you had showed that there was a drop in attendance at PV Plaza.
  • 00:44:03
    Do you attribute that that the Green Minneapolis, they had a lot of dance groups there and that that went away with the DID taking over?
  • 00:44:12
    Is that that's why that big drop?
• • SPEAKER_15
  • 00:44:15
    Chair Chuck Tai, Council Member Rainville, I think it was more that we really focused in 2023 on having as much activity in that space as possible because we felt like it was really the first year that we could celebrate that PV was open.
  • 00:44:33
    It had been renovated sort of and opened during the pandemic time and so there really wasn't that time to
  • 00:44:40
    to really bring people together and reintroduce PV and so we really looked at last year as a year to have as many events as we possibly could have and focus on that so that we could have as many people see and see how great PV is.
  • 00:44:53
    2024 was more of a year to be consistent so that people knew hey on Tuesdays and Thursdays at noon there's going to be music at PV and so I'm going to go take my lunch there.
  • 00:45:04
    if I'm working.
  • 00:45:05
    And also, we had those two big events, the Gala Chorus and USA Gymnastics, that if we put those figures in from an attendance standpoint, it would be much higher than what it is right now, but we left them out because they were more events that were paying rent versus events that we had programmed.
• • Michael Rainville
  • 00:45:26
    Great.
  • 00:45:27
    Well, you should have put those in.
  • 00:45:28
    It would look better.
  • 00:45:30
    Could you go back to the slide, please, on the tax revenues?
  • 00:45:34
    I see there's a pretty good increase in that.
  • 00:45:38
    Thank you.
  • 00:45:39
    So you're building back the local options sales tax, which then feeds into the downtown assets fund.
  • 00:45:46
    What is the balance in the downtown assets fund?
• • SPEAKER_15
  • 00:45:50
    Chair Chuck Tyke, Councilmember Rainville, I would have to say it off of memory, it's in the $70 million range, and that covers all of the assets, so think of all of these venues.
  • 00:46:04
    So I talked about the convention center as being a $650 million building.
  • 00:46:10
    Obviously the Target Center is a very expensive building too and so that is all held then to support those facilities so that if something would happen it acts as a buffer to the general fund so that we don't ever get into a situation where
  • 00:46:29
    you know something bad happens and we need resources and then we're having to come to the general fund for it and so there are different percentages based on our operating expenses that are mandated through finance so that we have to keep in the fund you know just good practices and so
  • 00:46:48
    We feel good about the healthy recovery, but we also know that those resources are needed.
  • 00:46:57
    Those resources are needed for investment into the hospitality industry.
  • 00:47:01
    Because if we don't invest, it will continue to degrade.
  • 00:47:06
    And if it goes away, we'll be coming back to this body and asking for billions of dollars
  • 00:47:11
    that will have to be found in some other way.
  • 00:47:15
    And so by using these resources well, by investing them and being planful in how we're thinking out over time because today's potentially good
  • 00:47:27
    revenue streams and I would argue that some of this is really inflationary.
  • 00:47:31
    Everything has become more expensive and so when you're taxing something that has gone up in price, obviously then you're going to get more money from it, right?
  • 00:47:39
    It's just a math issue.
  • 00:47:40
    But those days may not always happen and if these taxes start to go down because our hospitality industry is degraded, it's very, very difficult to stop that from happening.
  • 00:47:52
    and so investing, and I talked about infrastructure a lot, investing in our infrastructure, investing in our hospitality workforce and investing in this as an economic driver for our city and something that brings people to our city is something that's very, very important and these resources should be used for that.
• • Michael Rainville
  • 00:48:14
    And if I may add, it supports the 30,000 jobs
  • 00:48:18
    in the hospitality industry.
  • 00:48:19
    Thank you.
  • 00:48:20
    One last question.
  • 00:48:20
    Does your organization, do you have any relationships with the building management of the apartment buildings around you?
• • SPEAKER_15
  • 00:48:29
    Chair, Chuck Tai, Councilmember Rainville.
  • 00:48:32
    We work with them.
  • 00:48:35
    I'm not sure relationship.
  • 00:48:38
    We work with them like tomorrow Wednesday We're gonna we have a we put a little library on our Plaza and we're having a book reading Time and so you're all welcome to come play.
  • 00:48:49
    It's a beautiful day tomorrow.
  • 00:48:50
    Read your book sit in our Plaza it's beautiful space we reach out to the
  • 00:48:56
    local apartments and the local community to invite them in on those times.
  • 00:49:01
    Otherwise, it's more of a loose relationship.
  • 00:49:04
    You know, there are neighbors that are out walking their dogs and hanging out in that beautiful space too while we're out there.
  • 00:49:11
    But I wouldn't say there's a formal relationship.
• • Michael Rainville
  • 00:49:14
    But you have the ability to communicate to them, so things like the book reading or if you have a big event, you make them aware so they can inform their residents.
• • SPEAKER_15
  • 00:49:24
    Yes, we try to do that from social media standpoint.
  • 00:49:29
    We also send out our calendar to many of the local businesses and residences around us so that they know what to expect.
  • 00:49:40
    because again sometimes a lot of people also causes some activity that maybe if you're used to being able to drive down the street and with with nobody there and get to your apartment you might have to wait a couple minutes and so we want to make sure that they know that big events are in town so that they can prepare for that too.
• • Michael Rainville
  • 00:49:58
    Great, thank you very much.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:50:01
    Thank you.
  • 00:50:01
    Next I will recognize Council President Payne.
• • Elliott Payne
  • 00:50:06
    Thank you, Madam Vice President.
  • 00:50:08
    I have a number of questions.
  • 00:50:10
    I'm not sure where to start.
  • 00:50:11
    Maybe I'll start with you'd mentioned that for the Target Center there's a annual assessment done by a third-party consultant for capital needs.
  • 00:50:21
    Is there a similar process for the Convention Center?
• • SPEAKER_15
  • 00:50:25
    Chair Chuck Tai, Council President Payne, for the Target Center it's every five years and for the Convention Center we did a third party building wide assessment
  • 00:50:37
    probably in about 2014, I might be wrong on that date, but it's been a few years and what we did from that is really built a 10, 20, and 25 year plan and most of us have been around since then and so we've lived in the building, we know what's been replaced, we know what's needed based on
  • 00:51:01
    What we have and haven't replaced, we know what's working well and what's efficient.
  • 00:51:05
    And so we have built all of our programs and all of our projects based on that first knowledge of that third party assessment and then our knowledge of being in the building for over a decade, most of us.
• • Elliott Payne
  • 00:51:18
    How big of a project is that to do that type of assessment?
• • SPEAKER_15
  • 00:51:22
    It is quite substantial.
  • 00:51:30
    It costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, generally.
  • 00:51:33
    It takes many months, and it's usually by an architectural and engineering firm.
  • 00:51:41
    that will come in, and they basically go through every piece of your building, every component of your building, and they talk about where it is at its age of life, how long they think it will last, and then what condition it is, and they generally rate it, and then we are looking at that rating when we're deciding when to replace things, because sometimes things, you know,
  • 00:52:06
    the warranty or whatever says that it's going to last 10 years but if we maintain it well it can last 15 or 20 years and so we're constantly moving things in the in the programs because something is is still working well and not needed but then something else might jump up and say this thing asked this question that I had that the there's about 70 million dollars in the downtown asset fund right now
• • Elliott Payne
  • 00:52:31
    Do you know off the top of your head what either percentage or total amount is required by policy for reserves?
• • SPEAKER_15
  • 00:52:40
    Chair Chigtai, Council President Payne, I could call up finance but I believe it's about 15% and so they could validate that if they'd like or get that information to you afterwards.
• • Elliott Payne
  • 00:52:54
    And that's 15% of the annual expenditure, correct?
• • SPEAKER_15
  • 00:53:00
    I believe so.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:53:03
    Welcome, if you'll start with introducing yourself, please.
• • SPEAKER_14
  • 00:53:06
    Sure, council president.
  • 00:53:08
    My name is Ben Zimmerman budget analyst in the budget division actually the financial policy stipulate Fund balance requirements in relation to the Target Center specifically and the Convention Center specifically not the overarching umbrella and I was trying to pull it up in real time but each of those respectively I believe are 15% and 10% and
  • 00:53:29
    And again, if you refer to the financial policies, we can see that pretty clearly.
  • 00:53:33
    I just don't have it up yet.
• • Elliott Payne
  • 00:53:35
    15% for Target Center or for Convention Center?
  • 00:53:37
    I think this building needs assessment is a pretty clear process.
  • 00:53:48
    I'm curious about the process that we use in terms of building out that capital plan.
  • 00:53:53
    I think I asked this question maybe during one of our quarterly financial reports and it sounded like there was perhaps a committee of professional staff that put that.
  • 00:54:02
    So I was asking do we have a similar process to the CLIC
  • 00:54:06
    that we use for citywide infrastructure capital planning.
  • 00:54:10
    It sounds like it's a different process.
  • 00:54:11
    Do you know more specifics about that process for, you know, you have this giant needs assessment, but you have to make some judgment calls.
  • 00:54:18
    Is there a scoring process or how is it determined what's included and not included in the capital plan?
• • SPEAKER_15
  • 00:54:23
    Chair Chug Thai, Council President Payne, really what we have is we take the needs assessment and then our staff, so our facility manager has been in our building for 25 years, and our engineers are actually going through and maintaining
  • 00:54:40
    the different parts of our building every single day and so they're giving us reports and I mentioned earlier that I sit down with our staff we meet in small groups every employee at the Convention Center in November and we talk about things that are needed for the next year and so there's opportunities to come directly to me to say hey you know
  • 00:55:02
    the air handling units are squeaking more than they should and we need to replace those faster than maybe what we have on the plan and so there's this constant adjustment but basically it is through our professional understanding of the building by being in the building every single day by maintaining on it and wrenching on it and working in it
  • 00:55:22
    that we make those decisions.
  • 00:55:24
    And then, as I said, we survey our customers.
  • 00:55:27
    We survey our customers and ask them about the building.
  • 00:55:29
    What's working?
  • 00:55:30
    What's not working?
  • 00:55:31
    What do you need?
  • 00:55:31
    What do we not have?
  • 00:55:33
    And then we're able to make those adjustments based on what our clients are telling us.
• • Elliott Payne
  • 00:55:38
    So you have a number of inputs, whether it's the needs assessment or on the ground maintenance or customer feedback even, and it's ultimately, you're the sole authority that's making those decisions?
• • SPEAKER_15
  • 00:55:50
    Chair Chuck Tai, Council President Payne, ultimately I'm building off of the recommendations for those inputs and then I'll come to you all and ask for the projects to go through and be able to hopefully explain why those projects should go through and so I bring those recommendations forward to the City Council for approval.
• • Elliott Payne
  • 00:56:12
    And then I'm just looking at, you know, we had to learn a lot about the downtown asset fund this year.
  • 00:56:21
    You brought it up with the remodel.
  • 00:56:24
    So we have a little bit more of an understanding and it's
  • 00:56:28
    I'm trying to understand, you know, we have this blended sources of local option sales tax.
  • 00:56:33
    One of those sources is unrestricted.
  • 00:56:35
    The others are quite restricted.
  • 00:56:37
    And it seems like there's a sequence or cascade of restrictions.
  • 00:56:41
    First priority being debt service, operation and maintenance, reserves, which is, it sounds like we're getting an answer on that, cost of capital projects, expenditures and support of the Target Center and capital projects, and then
  • 00:56:54
    other economic development and that was like a little bit left undefined for us but I'm curious you know as we get
  • 00:57:04
    and it looks like we get about 90 million dollars projected in local option sales taxes.
  • 00:57:11
    I'm looking at the budget right now.
  • 00:57:13
    The forecast is our expenses are in the order of somewhere of 60 some million dollars and revenues 20 some million dollars.
  • 00:57:22
    So like about a 40 million dollar deficit in operating but like that's by design.
  • 00:57:28
    The local option sales tax makes up for that.
  • 00:57:30
    I'm trying to understand when we go in excess of our operating expenses, in excess of our reserves, and now we have extra money, obviously we want to have that capital projects identified, but I'm trying to figure out where is the responsible place to do that cutoff of like, here goes the squeaky air handler that definitely needs to be replaced because we're getting bad feedback and it's going to jeopardize our future sales to the
  • 00:57:59
    Council.
  • 00:58:13
    in terms of our balance and then like where do we draw that line on capital improvements because it sounds like that needs assessment would probably be an unfunded needs assessment that's bigger than our budget so at some point there's constraints on it but what is the process that we use to kind of draw those constraints?
• • SPEAKER_15
  • 00:58:33
    Chair Chigtai, Council President Payne, difficult question.
  • 00:58:40
    I guess a couple ways to answer it.
  • 00:58:42
    First is I hope that I am hired to be a professional and to understand what is needed at our facility and what is needed to help support the hospitality industry by being the foundation of that hospitality industry.
  • 00:59:01
    and so yes I use by all of those inputs we talked about I use those inputs I use what's going on in the country and in the competitive landscape and we have to make choices right and we make choices based on the resources that we have
  • 00:59:23
    and we make those choices and we fix the things and we move forward with the things and we invest in the things that make the most sense in the moment in order to make sure that we remain competitive and we remain a viable convention center.
  • 00:59:38
    Talking about excess is sort of a winding road because what is excess?
  • 00:59:43
    Is it really excess?
  • 00:59:45
    You know we've talked about and I and I just mentioned Trying to make sure that we have the resources available so that we don't negatively impact the general fund if you take too much if there's not enough in this fund and and taxes go
  • 01:00:03
    in the wrong direction.
  • 01:00:04
    You mentioned that there's a delta between sort of the internal revenues that we have and the things that need to be supported by the taxes.
  • 01:00:12
    If we go too far and there's not enough excess there, then we're into the general fund for those costs.
  • 01:00:23
    And I think it's time, as I've mentioned maybe six or seven times, I apologize for that, our building is at a stage where we have not done an industry level investment in it since 2001.
  • 01:00:39
    And so there are opportunities, there are discussions, and there are choices that we as a community are going to have to make in the coming years to say, what are we going to do with these resources that the state of Minnesota has given us in order to support hospitality?
  • 01:00:57
    What are we going to do to have the most impact on our hospitality community?
  • 01:01:03
    Council Member Rainville has pointed out 30,000 people that are working
  • 01:01:07
    I'll welcome back Finance to answer that question.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:01:25
    Thank you for pulling it up
• • SPEAKER_14
  • 01:01:29
    Council President Pena, just to clarify in the earlier question, it is a 15% fund balance requirement for the convention center and 10% for the target center.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:01:40
    Thank you so much.
  • 01:01:43
    Wonderful.
  • 01:01:46
    Any further discussion or questions from the committee?
  • 01:01:49
    I put myself in queue.
  • 01:01:53
    Just a quick question for you, just a couple of questions for you.
  • 01:01:59
    First, in looking over your slides, I really appreciate the level of detail and information that you shared with this committee today in your budget presentation.
  • 01:02:10
    That's pretty consistent for you, if memory serves correctly from your previous
  • 01:02:14
    budget presentations and it is the effort that you're putting into these and the information you're sharing with us is very much so appreciated.
  • 01:02:26
    I was looking at slide seven where you are talking about $6.2 million in utility savings since 2011.
  • 01:02:34
    That's significant and consistent with the city's goals for reduction in the use of these utilities.
  • 01:02:44
    And then later on in your presentation you note on slide 21 a 13% increase in the cost of utilities.
  • 01:02:53
    Can you help us just understand what's driving that increase?
  • 01:02:56
    Is it greater usage of the Convention Center or some other factors that may not be so clear?
• • SPEAKER_15
  • 01:03:04
    Chair Chigtai, both.
  • 01:03:06
    So as we use, as the Convention Center now comes back, so these percentage increases are based on the budget of last year.
  • 01:03:15
    And so as we become busier, as we drive that occupancy, it costs more and we use more utilities.
  • 01:03:23
    And that's why being more efficient is really a big deal because I want to be busier, I want to use more, but I want to be
  • 01:03:31
    as efficient as possible with those resources.
  • 01:03:34
    So part of it is use and part of it is again that inflationary cost that I think probably all of us are feeling when we open our utility bills at home.
  • 01:03:43
    They're big bills at the convention center for utilities.
  • 01:03:48
    We do spend a lot on utilities and so we're seeing that same increase.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:03:54
    That's helpful, thank you.
  • 01:03:55
    And then you mentioned this in your response to a question from Council President Payne.
  • 01:04:02
    You know, you've brought up several times the need for thinking long-term about significant investments in infrastructure and being able to keep up with the industry.
  • 01:04:14
    And that's not just something you've mentioned here today, it's something that you bring up pretty consistently anytime
  • 01:04:20
    You are you're talking to members of the council or in front of the body answering questions or presenting and I'm wondering if you can just speak to Beyond the planned or regular repair and maintenance Cycle that you're on are you considering or are you planning?
  • 01:04:40
    any sort of large-scale renovation or expansion of the Minneapolis Convention Center
• • SPEAKER_15
  • 01:04:49
    Chair, I think it's always part of my job to think ahead and to think about where the industry is going and what we are needed.
  • 01:04:58
    And so I would like to bring forward opportunities that we have and decisions that we can all talk about and work through on what
  • 01:05:07
    the Convention Center needs in order to remain competitive.
  • 01:05:12
    And those discussions hopefully will start soon as we think about the next few years and again, how do we get that occupancy back?
  • 01:05:21
    How do we make sure that we can continue to grow in our industry?
  • 01:05:27
    And so there are needs that our clients have made very clear to us about what our hospitality community needs to do in order to make sure that we remain
  • 01:05:37
    a place that our events want to host their events and I'll be bringing those needs forward, yes.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:05:46
    That's helpful.
  • 01:05:47
    Thank you very much and then we'll a final question or discussion items from council member Palmisano.
• • SPEAKER_16
  • 01:05:56
    Thank you Madam Chair.
  • 01:05:58
    Mr. Johnson, you had mentioned in your presentation that your luck had changed with hiring, and I'm just curious, can you help us understand why do you think that is?
  • 01:06:07
    Why have you been more successful this year than in years past?
• • SPEAKER_15
  • 01:06:15
    We tried some different things.
  • 01:06:16
    One, I think we went to almost a continual hiring process so HR worked with us and came up with an opportunity where we were just able to continuously bring people in to interview them.
  • 01:06:29
    I think also the economy has changed a little bit and so we are starting to see that
  • 01:06:38
    people are willing to come back to a job that that maybe is more of an in-person job that is a service-oriented job.
  • 01:06:46
    And so I mentioned that that you know people kind of went away from the hospitality community one because of the pandemic they they had no hospitality job for for quite a while and they went away and then the hospitality serving other people is is uh is it is a hard job it's uh you're you're at their needs not your own needs and so our schedules are not always the greatest schedules um
  • 01:07:07
    Our jobs are not always the most fun jobs in some instances.
  • 01:07:11
    So I think it's the two things.
  • 01:07:16
    We attacked it in a different way.
  • 01:07:18
    We did more of a continuous approach to it.
  • 01:07:21
    And then I think it's just been the economy kind of changing a little bit and the workforce changing and looking to us again.
• • SPEAKER_16
  • 01:07:30
    Thank you, and then for the Kohl Center for their operations, programming, property management, even though the funding will be coming from downtown assets, will it be arts and culture or CPED who manages this or will you be managing it?
• • SPEAKER_15
  • 01:07:46
    Chair Chug Thai, Council Member Palmisano, right now we're a little team, CPED, Arts and Culture, and myself, and we're working through those details on what the next steps will be.
  • 01:08:00
    I do know that the RFP for the operator is live right now, so if you have any friends or know anybody that want to operate a world-class dance facility, please ask them to put in their application.
  • 01:08:13
    but we'll work as a team and how that actually shakes out in the end is to be determined.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:08:21
    Thank you.
  • 01:08:22
    Excellent, and I spoke too soon, I'm sorry Director.
  • 01:08:26
    I will finally recognize, oh never mind, Council Member Vitale followed by Council President Payne.
• • Katie Cashman
  • 01:08:33
    Thank you Chair Chokti and thank you so much so much Mr. Johnson for this presentation.
  • 01:08:39
    I myself
  • 01:08:40
    had the privilege of contributing to the 2024 dollars for downtown.
  • 01:08:46
    I made my money here and I spent my money here and I had a really good time in downtown Minneapolis this year.
  • 01:08:55
    I think 2024 has been my best year.
  • 01:09:00
    I've spent more time in downtown Minneapolis
  • 01:09:03
    than ever before in my life and I spent a lot of time downtown in the 90s.
  • 01:09:08
    I had a good time in the 90s but I also had a good time in 2024.
  • 01:09:12
    So thank you and all the partners who have brought this vibrancy back to downtown that is different
  • 01:09:20
    than what we're used to, but it's good.
  • 01:09:23
    It feels really good.
  • 01:09:24
    It feels really welcoming.
  • 01:09:26
    I've seen so many families and Ward 4 residents at the diverse events that you have.
  • 01:09:33
    There's a coalition of you that have done a spectacular job of building up a different, vibrant, welcoming downtown.
  • 01:09:43
    And shout out to Rhonda, who's here, that always is welcoming to me.
  • 01:09:48
    When I'm at the Convention Center, thank you so much, Rhonda.
  • 01:09:53
    You're a treasure, not only to Warford but also to downtown and you bring that heart and spirit with you to work every time I see you and you make everyone feel welcome in this city and we need so much more of that.
  • 01:10:09
    I really did just want to say thanks for all the work that's going into this.
  • 01:10:14
    Thanks for looking at the future of
  • 01:10:17
    what the Convention Center, the Kohl Center, and also the Target Center
  • 01:10:22
    can be like for this city.
  • 01:10:25
    It is a big part of how my ward gets to operate.
  • 01:10:30
    You know, downtown being vibrant takes a lot from Ward 4 residents who are seeing huge tax increases and so I'm here for it.
  • 01:10:40
    I want to spend as much money as I can.
  • 01:10:43
    I want to encourage everyone around the world to come to our world-class city Minneapolis and participate in the fun and
  • 01:10:53
    all the activities that you all are putting on.
  • 01:10:57
    And it's not just activities.
  • 01:10:58
    That book reading event, that's so cool.
  • 01:11:01
    That is so cool.
  • 01:11:02
    And I wish I had time.
  • 01:11:05
    I would sit there too and read a book, but it is something I would think about bringing to Ward 4.
  • 01:11:12
    And I'm going to end with I know that you're going to take care of your staff.
  • 01:11:17
    you always do and so we did get that email but I'm certain that the staff at the Convention Center will be taken care of I want to support you and your team in making sure that happens because they are so deserving they really truly are they are the heart and the pulse of this city
  • 01:11:35
    and I know you support them, we support them at this council and whatever that takes for us to make sure that they feel good about showing up at work every day and being the cheerleaders of this city, I want to make sure we get that done together.
  • 01:11:49
    So thank you today for this presentation and thank you so much for bringing back this vibrant, much different but wonderful Minneapolis.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:12:00
    Thank you, and then next I'll recognize Council President Payne followed by Council Member Rainville and I'll ask the both of you to keep your remarks or questions brief.
• • Elliott Payne
  • 01:12:11
    Mine's very brief, thank you Vice President.
  • 01:12:14
    Just wondering if you could document for an administrative follow-up, I'd like to see the capital plan for the Convention Center.
  • 01:12:20
    I got it for the Target Center from a previous meeting, but it would be good to see the capital plan for the Convention Center as well.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:12:29
    Excellent, thank you and then finally Council Member Rainville
• • Michael Rainville
  • 01:12:33
    Mr. Johnson, I just want to thank you for your leadership.
  • 01:12:36
    You are the top hospitality advocate in the city.
  • 01:12:39
    You're doing a great job.
  • 01:12:40
    Your presentation today was full of transparency, full of honesty, and I appreciate the ethics and values that you bring into the city and into the hospitality industry.
  • 01:12:51
    We do have tough decisions ahead of us for that convention center.
  • 01:12:55
    It's worn out from success.
  • 01:12:56
    It's a good thing.
  • 01:12:57
    It's been used so much, it has worn out, and in the future we have to
  • 01:13:01
    Take your advice, take your professionalism, and consider how it fits into our goal for the city.
  • 01:13:08
    So thank you so much for your top leadership.
  • 01:13:10
    Thank you.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:13:12
    Wonderful.
  • 01:13:12
    With that, we have concluded questions and comments on your budget presentation.
  • 01:13:18
    Thank you for coming before the Budget Committee today.
  • 01:13:21
    And with that, I'll ask the clerks to file that presentation.
  • 01:13:25
    And we are now ready to welcome our next guests.
  • 01:13:35
    Our next presentation will be from the Health Department.
• • SPEAKER_14
  • 01:13:39
    May the Youth Coordinating Board go before the Health Department?
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:13:43
    Absolutely, so instead I will welcome the Youth Coordinating Board's Executive Director Anne DeGroot to present
• • SPEAKER_12
  • 01:13:59
    the Youth Coordinating Board's budget.
  • 01:14:02
    Welcome.
  • 01:14:03
    Good morning and thank you everyone.
  • 01:14:07
    Chair Chugtai, Vice Chair Koski, members of the committee, thank you very much.
  • 01:14:12
    It's great to be here today.
  • 01:14:13
    I always look forward to talking about the Minneapolis Youth Coordinating Board, but I'm going to start by talking about our city's children and young people first.
  • 01:14:22
    This infographic was developed for the Child Friendly Cities work that we are doing with the Minneapolis Health Department.
  • 01:14:31
    And it was developed last year.
  • 01:14:32
    I think I showed it to you last year and we use it quite a bit.
  • 01:14:35
    We're going to be updating it as we get more information.
  • 01:14:38
    But I have a little more information that I want to share with you anyway because I think you should know some things that are more current.
  • 01:14:46
    Minneapolis Public Schools let me know last week
  • 01:14:50
    that our children in the public schools come from families where there are 91 languages spoken at this point in time.
  • 01:14:59
    Our children are coming from a variety of countries.
  • 01:15:02
    Immigrant and refugee children are coming from the number one countries, Ecuador right now.
  • 01:15:08
    They're coming from Venezuela, Guatemala, Mexico, El Salvador, and many countries around the world.
  • 01:15:17
    They're seeing a new pattern, which is that more and more children are coming in secondary migration.
  • 01:15:26
    So they're coming to the United States somewhere else and then here.
  • 01:15:29
    That is a newer thing recently than they've seen.
  • 01:15:34
    So we have a very diverse community of students in Minneapolis Public Schools.
  • 01:15:40
    The other thing that I want to remind you, which I think many of you already know, that you have heard about, is that we have a number of families, and I do not have data for you about this, I really wish I did and I hope at some point I have this for you, but we have a number of families and young people
  • 01:15:59
    who come to Minnesota and Minneapolis because we are considered a sanctuary city for people who are experiencing the criminalization of transgender services and programs in other states and other communities.
  • 01:16:15
    So they come here because it's a safe place and our schools are seeing those children and their families.
  • 01:16:21
    But I want to tell you that all of this that's going on in our schools and our city presents a variety of challenges and opportunities.
  • 01:16:30
    Challenges are obvious, right?
  • 01:16:32
    It's a whole bunch of people, new people, things change all the time.
  • 01:16:37
    but the opportunity for our children is that they're going to school in an environment that is diverse in terms of language, culture, religion, experience, perspective and it's preparing them for the world that they're going to eventually work in as adults and we should be very excited about that and I think our school district does a very good job of helping to make sure that our children are prepared
  • 01:17:03
    in ways that we will see them working and the jobs that we all hold right now, eventually, in the future.
  • 01:17:12
    So I'm very excited about that.
  • 01:17:14
    And when I talk to our young people, their perspectives are great.
  • 01:17:18
    They have a lot to say that I think we could all listen to.
  • 01:17:21
    So I'm very happy about that.
  • 01:17:23
    I want to tell you about the Youth Coordinating Board, a little bit about what we do.
  • 01:17:27
    We basically work in three areas, even though you see five here, some of them go together.
  • 01:17:32
    One of them is we work in early childhood, some of you know that.
  • 01:17:36
    We work in youth development, which we mostly work in after school work, and some of the city's funding that you give us helps to fund some of that work.
  • 01:17:46
    We work in youth engagement, and in that area we do our wonderful Minneapolis Youth Congress, and I want to just take this minute
  • 01:17:55
    to invite all of you to come to the oath of office which is going to happen in November and all of our young people come to the atrium of City Hall and they pledge an oath of office to the Minneapolis Youth Congress.
  • 01:18:11
    And it's a wonderful event.
  • 01:18:12
    It's very uplifting.
  • 01:18:14
    I will send you all an invitation.
  • 01:18:15
    We're still in process on the date, but it will be the first or second Thursday of November.
  • 01:18:20
    We also have an outreach team that works as part of our youth engagement work.
  • 01:18:24
    The final thing you see there is the Youth Master Plan, which is a piece that we put together.
  • 01:18:29
    for use by everyone in Minneapolis, all of our jurisdictions, to look at, to sort of guide you to figure out what it is that our young people think need to happen in order for Minneapolis to be the best place it can be for our children and young people.
  • 01:18:45
    Young people had a very important role in that.
  • 01:18:47
    They actually went to every single ward and met with people in your wards and talked with other young people about what they thought needed to happen.
  • 01:18:56
    Here's our department overview.
  • 01:18:58
    I think all of you know we're a joint powers board.
  • 01:19:01
    We bring together the city, the county, the parks, and the schools.
  • 01:19:05
    From the city, Councilmember Jenkins is our board chair, Councilmember Koski is on our board, and the mayor is also on our board.
  • 01:19:15
    but you can see there, that's our department overview, our org chart.
  • 01:19:20
    We've recently hired a new staff person to work in our youth development area and we're in the process of hiring a new communications and engagement person.
  • 01:19:30
    This is really our budget, the request from the city for 2025.
  • 01:19:35
    This budget hasn't changed in a long time, with the exception of a couple special allocations that you've made to us over the last few years.
  • 01:19:45
    One is ARPA funds and the other is a special allocation made to do some summer programming, but it really hasn't changed at all.
  • 01:19:52
    These are some of our achievements.
  • 01:19:55
    You can see we reallocate money to some of our jurisdictions to do after school programming.
  • 01:20:02
    You can see some of the data from that.
  • 01:20:05
    We also use some of the funds from the city to support the Minneapolis Youth Congress.
  • 01:20:09
    Very successful program.
  • 01:20:11
    and to do work on our outreach team which works both in the summertime downtown, we do some projects downtown, and then we also do work at Camden High School.
  • 01:20:24
    I think we'll do probably a small report on ARPA funds next year but we are finishing up the ARPA funds and when I came in July and talked to the committee about the ARPA funds that hasn't changed.
  • 01:20:38
    We will be expending all of the funds by the end of the year but they went to these programs
  • 01:20:44
    And one of the things that we're very happy about is that the Minneapolis Public Schools liked how we did our process and they said we want to give you a half million dollars to give away and they did and we did and it was a very good process.
  • 01:20:59
    I think I'm going to end there.
  • 01:21:01
    I like to be brief but I also want to leave time for questions so I'm happy to answer any questions when people have them.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:21:08
    Thank you for your presentation.
  • 01:21:11
    Colleagues, are there any questions or discussion items related to the Youth Coordinating Board presentation?
  • 01:21:26
    Wonderful.
  • 01:21:27
    I will recognize Councilmember Jenkins.
• • Andrea Jenkins
  • 01:21:31
    Thank you.
  • 01:21:33
    Chair Chuck Tai and thank you Ms. DeGruy for this presentation and I am indeed proud to be the Chair of the Youth Coordinating Board this year and I think we've been doing some really great work.
  • 01:21:49
    You mentioned that we're seeing an influx of young people who identify as transgender or gender expansive, gender non-conforming.
  • 01:22:02
    in our public schools.
  • 01:22:04
    Is there programming or services provided to those young people in the schools outside of the systems that I think we're trying to build in nonprofits and community organizations, et cetera.
  • 01:22:25
    But do you know if the schools are addressing these young people?
• • SPEAKER_12
  • 01:22:30
    Chair Chuktai and Council Member Jenkins, yes actually the Minneapolis Public Schools has a long-standing program called Out for Good which works with LGBTQ plus students and their families and they've done a very good job of making sure that they're up to date with what's going on in the queer community as you know because queer community changes as everybody does and they've worked a lot with those families and those young people who are transitioning
  • 01:23:00
    are in those situations right now.
  • 01:23:06
    The other thing I wanted to address though is that we're also talking about young people whose parents are transgender.
  • 01:23:14
    So we're talking about the young people who are transgender, we're talking about their parents too.
  • 01:23:20
    So we're talking about a family system, those kids are coming in.
  • 01:23:24
    So that program is addressing that population of young people.
• • Andrea Jenkins
  • 01:23:28
    It's good to know.
  • 01:23:31
    Just FYI, next week I will be bringing forward a resolution honoring the National Day of the Transgender Child.
  • 01:23:40
    So hopefully you know the word can get out about that.
  • 01:23:48
    I think this coming Sunday an organization called Queer Space is opening which is a youth drop-in center for trans and gender non-conforming, gender expansive young people.
  • 01:24:05
    We have this designation of a sanctuary city, but within that we are really trying to create programming and mechanisms or scaffolding to really try to help those young people and their families when they arrive in the Twin Cities.
  • 01:24:25
    So thank you for bringing up that issue.
  • 01:24:27
    and supporting our young people.
  • 01:24:30
    And congratulations on the Child Friendly City designation too.
  • 01:24:35
    I think we talked about that last year, but it's still a really big honor for the city.
  • 01:24:44
    Thank you.
• • SPEAKER_12
  • 01:24:45
    Thank you for saying that about the work in the trans community and our trans young people.
  • 01:24:56
    But what I wanted to say is that Child Friendly Cities, Minneapolis is the second city to receive this designation in the United States, but we join with hundreds of cities around the
  • 01:25:06
    We're in process.
  • 01:25:14
    You're going to hear from our pals over at the Health Department who we work with all the time.
  • 01:25:18
    We are great.
  • 01:25:19
    and we look forward to our next iteration and part of the idea of this is to bring together all the work we do in the city for children and young people and find ways to work together better and that's the role of the Youth Coordinating Board anyway.
  • 01:25:34
    So just any way we can bring us all together to make sure our kids are doing great, that's what we're doing.
  • 01:25:40
    So Child Friendly Cities is another way for us to do that.
  • 01:25:44
    We're very proud of it.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:25:47
    Wonderful, thank you.
  • 01:25:48
    And then next I'll recognize Councilmember Cashman.
• • Michael Cashman
  • 01:25:51
    Thank you, Chair Chogtai.
  • 01:25:52
    Just a couple brief remarks.
  • 01:25:54
    I was able to attend the Community Connections Conference and the roundtable that you put on there earlier this year, which was really great to speak to high school students, which I feel like as Councilmembers we don't have as much opportunity to do.
  • 01:26:08
    in our role and listening to them as real stakeholders in our community really informs, I think should inform our work about how we're preparing for the future of our city and serving the needs of all people.
  • 01:26:19
    And I just wanted to ask you what, how you define youth in terms of age range because I get this question a lot in terms of policy.
• • SPEAKER_12
  • 01:26:28
    That's a great question.
  • 01:26:34
    We see our age range as 0 through 24.
  • 01:26:38
    And when we're talking about youth, particularly with the Minneapolis Youth Congress, we're talking 8th through 12th grade.
  • 01:26:45
    That's who we define that subset as.
  • 01:26:48
    And so I would I would say that's youth when we're talking a little older We're talking about young adults, you know, and when they're starting to get into legal legal status, right?
  • 01:27:00
    So but that's always a conversation in our world, which is what's youth?
  • 01:27:04
    But we really think about it in terms of the youth Congress's 8th through 12th grade.
  • 01:27:08
    So really 13 to 18.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:27:11
    Mm-hmm.
  • 01:27:11
    Okay.
  • 01:27:11
    Thanks Wonderful, and then finally I'll recognize councilmember Chaudry
• • SPEAKER_04
  • 01:27:18
    Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you so much for presenting today.
  • 01:27:22
    It's good to see you.
  • 01:27:24
    I've read your email so many times.
  • 01:27:27
    As a council member who represents a lot of kids in my ward, I want to make a concerted effort to kind of get connected more with the Youth Coordinating Board and learn more about the work that you're doing.
  • 01:27:42
    will definitely attend that oath of office for the Youth Congress.
  • 01:27:49
    I just kind of wanted to offer you the opportunity to maybe share, maybe in the future calendar years, how is the Youth Coordinating Board envisioning growing and evolving as our city changes and as the needs for young people continue to continue to grow.
• • SPEAKER_12
  • 01:28:10
    That's a really great question.
  • 01:28:15
    We have lots of plans, as you can imagine, because we think about this all the time.
  • 01:28:20
    Our job, primarily, is to find ways to make the systems that we work in, our jurisdictions, our governmental systems, center children and young people more.
  • 01:28:30
    So that's really what our job is to do.
  • 01:28:33
    When we work with young people and we talk with them, there are several issues that they raise to us that we always are trying to bring up and talk about.
  • 01:28:42
    One of those issues is community safety.
  • 01:28:45
    So as you mentioned, you were at Community Connections Conference and we're going to be there again this year doing some other things.
  • 01:28:53
    We want to make sure that people understand more about how young people
  • 01:29:00
    Council.
  • 01:29:14
    to find ways to more accurately
  • 01:29:31
    help you understand what that looks like to our young people.
  • 01:29:34
    What does that look like to them?
  • 01:29:36
    So we're doing a project right now and we've worked with the Humphrey Institute a bit in trying to do a safety and stability index to help you understand that a little bit more.
  • 01:29:46
    In really concrete terms that young people can interact with you about.
  • 01:29:50
    through social media and through websites.
  • 01:29:55
    So that's a big project that we are working on and want to help understand a little bit more with our young people.
  • 01:30:03
    Also, we're working, I think, a little bit more expansively on early childhood.
  • 01:30:08
    So what goes on with our little kids, right?
  • 01:30:11
    What's happening?
  • 01:30:12
    And childcare providers are telling us more and more that they're noticing that our little kids are expressing
  • 01:30:20
    Mental health, I don't want to make it bigger than it is, but they're expressing more mental health problems than they've seen in the past.
  • 01:30:29
    So looking at that, working with our friends in the health department and others about what does that look like and what does that mean.
  • 01:30:36
    Also working on workforce issues in early childhood, there's not enough people to do the job.
  • 01:30:41
    that is a problem.
  • 01:30:42
    We have childcare centers that have slots that they can't fill because they don't have enough people to do the work.
  • 01:30:49
    So looking at issues around early childhood in that way is really important to us.
  • 01:30:54
    So those are a couple of areas that we're working on, but I would love to meet with you and talk with you a little bit more about what we're thinking of as we move forward into the next couple of years.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:31:03
    Thank you so much.
  • 01:31:05
    Thank you, and then finally I'll recognize Councilmember Osman.
• • Jamal Osman
  • 01:31:09
    Thank you, Chair, and thank you for that presentation.
  • 01:31:12
    It's been a while since we checked in.
  • 01:31:14
    I just wanted to ask you what kind of engagement or outreach is being done in cultural neighborhoods like City of Riverside.
  • 01:31:24
    Are your staff or the folks that are working have a background of this culture and
  • 01:31:33
    have they done those outreach and if so I would love to connect with them and see what ways we can work together and see the Riverside.
• • SPEAKER_12
  • 01:31:41
    Chair Chuktai, Council Member Osman, we through ARPA funds contracted with the West Bank Business Association to do some outreach in the West Bank and in the cultural communities there would love to be able to do more of that
  • 01:31:56
    If we have funding, we'd love to do more of that.
  • 01:31:58
    We think that the idea of having adults who are trained and who care about young people, who look like those young people, speak like those young people, understand those young people, to talk to them informally and to do activities with them is really so valuable in terms of their ability to feel like they're seen and heard in the community.
  • 01:32:20
    You know what happens when people feel invisible.
  • 01:32:22
    It's dangerous when people feel invisible so our young people are the same and so doing the outreach work we've done we think is very important particularly in communities where young people don't feel noticed so we'd like to do more of that but we've done quite a lot of work with the West Bank Business Association
  • 01:32:42
    and we've also worked a bit with Brian Coyle or have connections with Brian Coyle and would like to continue doing that in the West Bank.
  • 01:32:50
    But there are other communities in our city where we would like to have that same kind of impact.
  • 01:32:55
    One of the things that we did was we created an outreach manual
  • 01:33:00
    so that we can train others about how we do our outreach work, what our approach is.
  • 01:33:04
    And we do youth engagement outreach.
  • 01:33:07
    So we don't do mental health outreach, we don't do outreach to people who are drug addicted, although our folks know what to do when that happens.
  • 01:33:14
    But ours is really about engaging young people.
  • 01:33:17
    And so we can do training.
  • 01:33:18
    We did some for the DID this year, we've done some for the city, and we would love to do that as a way to train more people about how to do that outreach so that
  • 01:33:29
    More organizations can do that in their own communities.
• • Jamal Osman
  • 01:33:33
    And some of your staffs, do they go in the community and do this engagement or is it just a partnership with the organization that are based?
• • SPEAKER_12
  • 01:33:45
    Chair Chuktai and Council Member Osman, our summertime outreach team does go into community.
  • 01:33:51
    Mostly they spend time downtown, but we have gone into community and we have outreach team members from a variety of communities.
• • Jamal Osman
  • 01:33:59
    I would love to see if those staff or outreach members of your department to do those more engagements with those areas.
  • 01:34:14
    Of course, good organizations and programs that are taking place and there's different events that take place in the community and them being there and visible and seeing and providing support and resources could be super helpful so love to see them in the field more.
  • 01:34:33
    Thank you.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:34:35
    Thank you very much.
  • 01:34:36
    With that we've reached the end of discussion today related to your presentation.
  • 01:34:43
    I will ask the clerk to file that report and we will now welcome our final presenter today.
  • 01:34:51
    Thank you.
  • 01:34:52
    So our final presentation this morning is going to be from the Health Department and for that I will invite Health Commissioner Damone Chaplin to join us and begin his presentation.
  • 01:35:05
    Welcome, Commissioner.
• • SPEAKER_10
  • 01:35:07
    Good morning Chair Chuk, Ty and Council Members.
  • 01:35:10
    Good morning, good afternoon, wherever we're at in the day.
  • 01:35:13
    Good day to you.
  • 01:35:15
    My name is Damone Chaplin, I'm the Health Commissioner with the Minneapolis Health Department and I will be providing you the 2025-2026, let me get this right here.
  • 01:35:37
    The 2025-2026 Mayoral Budget Recommendation.
  • 01:35:43
    I will be joined by Deputy Commissioners Heidi Ritchie and Patrick Hanlon for this presentation.
  • 01:35:53
    So the Health Department is divided into six divisions supported by roughly about 22 programs with a staff of approximately 160 staff.
  • 01:36:06
    Some of the priorities for the health department include expanded treatment and recovery options for substance use disorder, lead elimination plan for 2035, and then implementing the climate legacy initiative.
  • 01:36:28
    and some of the achievements for 2023 and 2024 include we've gotten into our thousandth home made lead safe through the opera level funding for the lead elimination plan and then we also had 337 individuals, youth and adults have been involved in Green Careers exposure training activities and certification in the following areas, solar installation, oops, yes, solar installation,
  • 01:36:58
    Sustainable Land Care, Urban Agricultural, Tree Care, and Planting and Energy Efficiency.
  • 01:37:07
    And so some of the risks that we've seen for 2024 have been core services are under supported by general fund.
  • 01:37:15
    So we're asking for more core services, particularly for our clinical staff.
  • 01:37:19
    And then grant external funding, the federal opera grants,
  • 01:37:23
    that will be ending in 2024 which may equate to interruptions and or discontinuation of community services and so we're all aware of the upper cliff and it's part of the risk that's involved when we are leveraged by grant resources.
  • 01:37:42
    So some lessons from prior years include increased funding has meant an increased focus on compliance and the staffing necessary to ensure it.
  • 01:37:52
    So growth of the administrative support staff focused on grants, contracts, and invoicing must keep pace with the increase of grant revenue and program growth.
  • 01:38:03
    And then we also need to continue to work outside of our silos to address problems like climate change, childhood lead poisoning, homelessness response.
  • 01:38:12
    and opioid addictions.
  • 01:38:15
    We aren't a big department, but we are effective in putting health lens on issues to help solve them.
  • 01:38:23
    And so when we look at our program and staffing for 2024, we're looking at a staffing level of about 160 staff and then for 2025, we're looking at a staffing level of about 170 folks.
  • 01:38:37
    And the current vacancies that you see there, we do not have any vacancies at the moment.
  • 01:38:41
    When this was taken, we had several positions that were either encumbered or in the hiring process and some of those positions were grant positions that no longer have funding so they have been eliminated.
  • 01:38:58
    So to go into program updates, our core public health infrastructure, which is ideally our operations team, the mission is to effectively manage resources, promote equity in all policies and practices, maintains a high standard of operations in line with national best practices,
  • 01:39:15
    Some of the goals for this program is to maintain compliance and good standing with all federal, state, and local funders.
  • 01:39:26
    And then funds released from the department to support community work are done so with a focus on equity and impact.
  • 01:39:33
    and some of the accomplishments for this program include we secured $6.1 million in grant funding to strengthen and diversify the public health workforce through the CDC's Public Health Infrastructure Grant.
  • 01:39:46
    We submitted accreditation documents to the Public Health Accreditation Board and that's actually re-accreditation documents because we're already an accredited health department.
  • 01:39:54
    and over the past year our epidemiology research team has completed close to 100 case investigations for pertussis, varicella and foodborne outbreaks.
  • 01:40:11
    The team is also currently finalizing the community health assessment which is a requirement for the re-accreditation for the health department and is working with
  • 01:40:20
    Minneapolis Public Schools to update the immunization records for over 3,000 students.
  • 01:40:29
    And so our Family and Early Childhood Program mission is to improve the well-being of mothers, infants, and children in Minneapolis.
  • 01:40:37
    Their goal is to promote healthy birth outcomes, positive parent-child interactions, child growth and development,
  • 01:40:45
    family self-sufficiency, nutrition education, family planning, and connection to early childhood education.
  • 01:40:52
    They also provide services that ensure that children are ready for school.
  • 01:40:56
    Some of their accomplishments and metrics include, between January and June, provided home visiting services to over 1,500 individuals through a contract with Hennepin County.
  • 01:41:08
    In December, they distributed approximately 1,000
  • 01:41:11
    rapid COVID test to residents in collaboration with community partners.
  • 01:41:15
    And then they also participated in community events to promote back to school vaccinations.
  • 01:41:25
    So when we think about our youth development and health sexuality program, the mission is to invest in supports that ensure young people are healthy in school, engaged in their community, and exposed to important protective factors, ensure comprehensive and inclusive reproductive health services for young people, promoting healthy sexuality while focusing on young people experiencing the highest rates,
  • 01:41:51
    of Disparities.
  • 01:42:04
    Some of the accomplishments and outcomes for this program include hosted an annual Partners with Youth Conference in partnership with CPED and the Youth Coordinating Board over 120 youth were attended this event designated as a child-friendly city through the UNICEF of USA the second US city to receive this designation and
  • 01:42:25
    and then coordinated the statewide STI testing week with partner organizations to support clinics in providing free STI testing events for youth.
  • 01:42:34
    A total of 326 youth attended and were tested.
  • 01:42:41
    Our Emergency Preparedness and Response program builds preparedness and resiliency in Minneapolis by ensuring a response ready department and engaging with community stakeholders.
  • 01:42:52
    The goal for this program is to invest in community preparedness through partnerships and training and then provide effective communication to Minneapolis residents on the importance of public health emergency preparedness.
  • 01:43:03
    and some of the outcomes and accomplishments for this program include they updated the emergency operations plan in compliance with public health re-accreditation board, re-accreditation standards presented at the annual public health emergency preparedness summit in collaboration with the epidemiology staff.
  • 01:43:27
    And then our public health infrastructure program, their mission is
  • 01:43:32
    to be a competent and diverse and to create a competent and diverse and skilled workforce, meeting the foundational public health capabilities and services.
  • 01:43:42
    Some of their goals include to develop a strong and culturally competent workforce, focus on anti-racism, employee wellbeing, trauma mitigation, and professional development, and then also prepare young people of color for jobs in the green energy and environmental jobs sector.
  • 01:43:59
    and some of their accomplishments for 2024 include green career programs totaling total participants in 2024 of 307 and then the total number of green sector trainings in 2024 equaling 38.
  • 01:44:16
    Our Homegrown Minneapolis, this program you're probably familiar with.
  • 01:44:21
    The mission of the Homegrown Minneapolis initiative is to expand and improve the local food system in the city of Minneapolis, making it more healthy, sustainable, and equitable.
  • 01:44:31
    Residents have access to land to grow their own food, and then also to increase policy and investment support for food systems improvement.
  • 01:44:41
    Some of the outcomes and performance metrics for this program include 59 gardens leased in 2024, 73% of the community gardens are in North Minneapolis, Phillips, Central, and Powderhorn neighborhoods, and average duration in the program is 8 years.
  • 01:45:04
    And so when we look at our Healthy Living Initiative Program, the mission for this program is to work with the community partners to implement sustainable policies and innovative strategies improving health equity through healthy food, active living,
  • 01:45:17
    Commercial Tobacco Free for Living, Health Care, and Community Well-Being.
  • 01:45:21
    Some of the goals for this program include to develop and maintain individual and organizational partnerships in communities most impacted by health inequities to implement its programs, and then program activities will improve the prevention and management of chronic conditions.
  • 01:45:38
    Some of the outcomes from this program include 45 funded community partners in 2024, and then the PRODIS RX pilot programs at four Minneapolis community health centers delivered fresh veggies and fruits to the homes of 272 patients from the summer of 2022 through June of 2024.
  • 01:45:57
    And so I will turn this over now to Deputy Commissioner Patrick Hanlon to talk about our sustainability program.
• • Patrick Hanlon
  • 01:46:12
    Chair Chuck Tai, Council Members, my name is Patrick Hanlon, I'm the Deputy Commissioner of Sustainability, Healthy Homes, and Environment.
  • 01:46:19
    This is the Sustainability Team, thank you Commissioner Chaplin.
  • 01:46:22
    This is the Sustainability Team that's led by Manager Alice Frelich and new Director Megan Hoy.
  • 01:46:29
    This team uses research, technical assistance, policy development, community engagement, and grant writing.
  • 01:46:35
    We've done a little bit of retooling that this is a service oriented group that works across the enterprise.
  • 01:46:41
    They collaborate with residents to advance environmentally just policies that achieve deep carbon emission reductions, repair past environmental injustices perpetuated upon black indigenous communities of color, and create solutions for a sustainable and inclusive economy.
  • 01:46:58
    This group is some of the achievements.
  • 01:47:01
    One thing I should note as well on this slide, the number that you're seeing up there when the Climate Legacy Initiative was first adopted, it was parked under the sustainability budget and so you'll see between this slide and next slide that there's a change in that budget because a lot of the programming was in different areas with environmental programs and even different places across the enterprise.
  • 01:47:24
    So that's why you see that big difference there.
  • 01:47:26
    This group, we just hired a new Director of Climate Equity Action, Megan Hoy, who will be working across the enterprise to look at, I mean, we looked at the Jeff Johnson, Director Johnson, with the Convention Center, all the great results that they've had there across the enterprise, all the results that we have in different departments and really pulling our enterprise together to get a full picture of how we're all working together with the climate legacy as one piece of that puzzle towards hitting our climate equity plan goals.
  • 01:47:56
    This group, they contract with community groups not only in getting services out and building capacity to let people in the community know that these resources with our climate legacy initiative and other grants are out there for them, but then also getting feedback from those groups, from our community groups to inform the decisions that we make on our climate equity plan and the climate legacy initiative.
  • 01:48:19
    they also have some programmatic pieces where they oversee some nationally leading programs like our energy benchmarking program has seen some of the highest compliance rates that since the history of that program and over 5,000 truth and sale housing inspections on new homes so looking at what sorts of energy
  • 01:48:39
    Assessments are done on homes as they as they transition hands or change hands within our city.
  • 01:48:44
    The next up is our Environmental programs group.
  • 01:48:47
    This is the I mentioned sustainability is our policy outreach and research environmental programs is our doing or our operational group and
  • 01:48:55
    They are led by Kelly Moolman or Team Kelly as her team calls her.
  • 01:48:59
    This group, they prevent pollution that negatively impacts the lives of Minneapolis residents, workers, and visitors with an equity-first approach utilizing... Oh, sorry, I'm not...
  • 01:49:11
    Sorry about that.
  • 01:49:12
    I'm used to presenting where folks are pulling that forward for me.
  • 01:49:19
    No.
  • 01:49:25
    There we go.
  • 01:49:25
    All right, the environmental programs, we just missed one slide, right?
  • 01:49:28
    All right, the environmental programs group, this is The Doing, I mentioned that, led by Team Kelly, they have reduced, these are some examples of some of the metrics, there is a lot more, in fact we have a presentation that we're bringing to climate and infrastructure November 21st that's going to talk about all the great results from the climate legacy initiative.
  • 01:49:46
    that's been going on but we've so far this year we've had three in projects that have come back 3,200 tons of greenhouse gas reduction for over 400 green green cost year projects across the city in 2024.
  • 01:50:01
    Again just highlighting some examples of work that we do there's 112 air quality monitors deployed across the city of Minneapolis that's one of the most
  • 01:50:08
    hyper local air quality studies done in the nation that's going on in the city right now.
  • 01:50:15
    We issue over a thousand environmental permits and over 3,000 inspections are conducted across the city.
  • 01:50:21
    Our Lead and Healthy Homes program, Commissioner DeMone-Chaplin highlighted some of the results there that we've had with this program.
  • 01:50:30
    The mission is to leverage resources and partnerships to eliminate in-home lead and asthma risk to children.
  • 01:50:36
    One of the main goals is to eliminate childhood lead poisoning from in-home causes by 2035 and to reduce childhood emergency room asthma visits for children in Minneapolis.
  • 01:50:48
    And in order to hit that eliminating childhood lead poisoning by 2035, we need to take a preventative approach
  • 01:50:55
    I think we've said this over and over again coming to Council that children are not lead detectors.
  • 01:51:01
    The way that we have been finding lead in a home is by finding it in a child's blood first and then we go into the home.
  • 01:51:07
    So these ARPA fundings, over 6.4 million dollars of ARPA funding over the last year have allowed us to be able to get into homes ahead of the hazards, ahead of children getting in contact with those hazards.
  • 01:51:19
    So we've made over, by the end of the year, hopefully a thousand homes lead safe through this work.
  • 01:51:24
    It is also part of our budget ask that we'll go through in a moment.
  • 01:51:27
    89% of the homes that we entered, that we target with inspections, so we have data-driven approaches.
  • 01:51:34
    If you were to go across the city, probably 10% of the houses would have lead hazards in them.
  • 01:51:38
    When we follow the data that tells us where these hazards are going to be, 89% of those homes that we go into, we find those hazards and remove them.
  • 01:51:46
    We've conducted 120 asthma inspections that's increased, that's bringing us back to pre-pandemic levels and we've given out over 500 inhalers to children in the city with partnership with our Minneapolis public schools.
  • 01:52:01
    The next group that I'm going to cover here is our Environmental Health Group, Food Lodging and Pools.
  • 01:52:08
    They protect Minneapolis residents and guests by preventing disease and injury at food lodging and pool and body art facilities, other businesses regulated under health code.
  • 01:52:17
    Their Environmental Health Food Lodging and Pools Division uses three guiding principles to prevent disease and injury at food lodging, pool, body art, and other businesses.
  • 01:52:26
    They protect public health, support our businesses, and are part of a city that works.
  • 01:52:31
    and their inspection compliance rates are impressive.
  • 01:52:37
    The rate at which inspectors get out there, a lot of times departments are hitting an 80-85% service level agreement hitting their requirements and their standards on inspections.
  • 01:52:50
    This group is up at 94% and then 95% on follow-up inspections completed within 30 days.
  • 01:52:57
    That's impressive response rates.
  • 01:52:59
    They inspect almost they have almost 7,000 inspections that they do across the city and they really I talked about lead and healthy homes transitioning to a preventative model This group is really transitioning to a training model is making sure they're getting into places where they're seeing Reoccurring violations and doing trainings and the results that they're getting from that work is also impressive it's hard to get even a percentage reduction in violations and regulation a lot of times and
  • 01:53:24
    and when they go into places where they're having recurring problems, they're getting a 65% reduction in the number of violations.
  • 01:53:30
    And as you can see down there below, there's other trainings that they are constantly going out and offering trainings to food workers across the city.
  • 01:53:41
    And with that, I will hand it over to Deputy Commissioner Ritchie.
  • 01:53:45
    Thank you, Council.
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 01:53:51
    Good morning, still, 1154.
  • 01:53:54
    Thank you for having me, Deputy Commissioner Heidi Ritchie.
  • 01:53:57
    I'm going to talk about school-based clinics and opioids and then also move us into our proposals for 2025-26.
  • 01:54:04
    The mission of our school-based clinics
  • 01:54:10
    is to provide services and resources for physical and mental health for students and families, as well as empowering students towards self-determination relative to their health, well-being, and school success.
  • 01:54:23
    The program does this by engaging and supporting students to make proactive and healthy decisions about their own reproductive health, mental health, and physical health, and that they are aware and comfortable using the school-based clinic services.
  • 01:54:38
    We provide these services in nine Minneapolis public high schools including Edison, Fair, Wellstone, Henry, Longfellow, Roosevelt, South, Southwest, and Washburn.
  • 01:54:51
    In the 2023-2024 school year, we saw a 15% increase in visits from the previous year, with 67% of students receiving services who identify with communities of color.
  • 01:55:03
    Also this past school year, out of the 70% of sexually active clients tested, there were 110 positive screenings with an infection resolution rate of 100%.
  • 01:55:16
    Our mental health therapists screened over 40% of our school-based clinic clients with an 85% of those who screen positive receiving follow-up care.
  • 01:55:26
    Note, we currently have 120 clients with a full waiting list for mental health care.
  • 01:55:32
    Overall, our school-based clinic staff engaged nearly 29,000 students and family members in activities such as classroom presentations, peer education groups, open houses, and more.
  • 01:55:46
    Next slide please, or I can do it.
  • 01:55:50
    Now we'll turn to our Opioid Response Program area.
  • 01:55:53
    The mission for this work is to eliminate the negative impacts of the opioid epidemic.
  • 01:55:58
    We do this by providing services and resources to community, businesses, and organizations either directly or in partnership with community organizations and or governmental partners such as the county and the state.
  • 01:56:12
    We use a comprehensive strategy including prevention, harm reduction, treatment, and peer recovery.
  • 01:56:18
    Some of the programs and services within our opioid response program include syringe litter mitigation, naloxone or Narcan education, administration and community distribution, a hospital-based emergency department treatment referral program, community contracts for prevention and treatment within disproportionately impacted communities, and expanded access to medications for opioid use disorder or MOUD.
  • 01:56:44
    in particular for buprenorphine and or suboxone as well as newer medications which you might hear about for the first time today called Sublacate and Brixati that make M.O.U.D.
  • 01:56:55
    more easily accessible, administered and stored.
  • 01:57:01
    We're incredibly excited that just a couple weeks ago our mobile medical unit was delivered.
  • 01:57:07
    We are currently setting up the unit staffing, programming, operations, supplies and equipment.
  • 01:57:13
    Within the unit, we will have services including dental and medical, wound care, MOUD, social service referrals, and private exam rooms to allow for safe and comfortable spaces for consultation and treatment.
  • 01:57:26
    This past year, our Naloxone Education Administration and Distribution Initiatives have grown to not only community distribution and saturation efforts, as well as widespread trainings for community and city staff.
  • 01:57:40
    As of July 3rd, it now includes an Arcan vending machine located in South Minneapolis in partnership with the Minneapolis Fire Department.
  • 01:57:49
    This Narcan Vending Pilot can be scaled up and recreated throughout the city.
  • 01:57:53
    So far since its launch just over three months ago, over 800 boxes have been vended with a weekly average of 65 boxes or 130 doses.
  • 01:58:04
    Understanding the need to message to a broader audience about the risks associated with drug use and prevention, we have initiated a focused media campaign targeted at youth.
  • 01:58:14
    Our focus areas are the Native American and East African populations in Minneapolis with a message trying to engage youth in learning about the dangers of drug use while using trusted leaders from those communities that share the messaging.
  • 01:58:30
    Our First Step Hospital-Based Overdose Intervention Program, a partnership with M Health Fairview Emergency Department, continues to evolve and has now enrolled 465 patients, with 78 either receiving an induction of or a prescription for buprenorphine.
  • 01:58:48
    The majority of patients served are male, between the ages of 18 and 39, and black or American Indian.
  • 01:58:55
    As of June 12, in addition to the most common formulation of buprenorphine, providers participating in First Step also began administering the extended release seven-day buprenorphine formulation, which will help patients as they transition to the month-long injectable formulation, which I mentioned earlier and is called Sublacate or Brixati.
  • 01:59:17
    Additionally, the program has now trained and has 16 individuals working as substance use navigators through all emergency department shifts.
  • 01:59:26
    Before I move on to the next few slides that highlights the Mayor Health Department proposals, I did want to bring your attention to the table.
  • 01:59:33
    On the upper right, and note that from 2025 to 2026 there is a significant drop from $2,282,424 to $1,427,537.
  • 01:59:46
    Unlike proposals for general fund spending, the proposal using opioid settlement funds are for 2025 or one year only.
  • 01:59:54
    This is because opioid settlement funding disbursements are unpredictable and as a result we don't yet know how much will be available to plan for 2026.
  • 02:00:03
    We will be looking at our strategic plan for opioid settlement funds as well as the programs and contracts that we've stood up and executed over the past two years when considering funding for the 2026 supplemental year.
  • 02:00:21
    You'll stick with me to move on to our first recommended budget proposal.
  • 02:00:29
    This budget proposal is $348,218 and 2.8 new FTEs.
  • 02:00:36
    This is for continued funding for our three mental health therapists or 2.8 FTEs to provide mental health care to school-based clients.
  • 02:00:45
    It's intensive on-site mental health therapy for over 120 clients per school year totaling over 3,600 visits.
  • 02:00:55
    This general fund investment is currently ARPA funded so this investment will continue to provide for those mental health therapists.
  • 02:01:08
    We know that clients' mental health issues will be addressed early and that can help prevent suicide, substance abuse, youth violence, and more complex mental health issues leading to school success and healthy futures.
  • 02:01:22
    According to the 2023 Client and Parent Satisfaction Surveys, mental health and counseling services were identified as the most selected benefits to students in clinics at 77% compared to other services.
  • 02:01:35
    Parents recommended putting more resources toward mental health and counseling services in the clinic for youth and young adults.
  • 02:01:43
    99.5% of students indicated that they would come back to the clinic knowing that the clinic also offers mental health service.
  • 02:01:51
    Over 83% of our current mental health clinics are from communities of color.
  • 02:01:56
    At least one in five adolescents cope with clinical depression, anxiety, attention deficit disorder, or substance use disorder, with higher rates in LGBTQ+, female, multiracial, and Latinx communities.
  • 02:02:12
    Approximately 70% of children and adolescents with a diagnosable mental health disorder do not receive effective treatment.
  • 02:02:23
    I'll move on to the next.
  • 02:02:27
    The next three slides encompass the opioid response.
  • 02:02:30
    They're in buckets that correspond with the M.O.
  • 02:02:36
    memorandum of agreement between the state and the settlement.
  • 02:02:43
    The first one falls into the bucket of treatment.
  • 02:02:46
    That's part one strategy in Appendix A of the MOA.
  • 02:02:50
    This is $750,000 in opioid settlement funds.
  • 02:02:54
    $300,000 would continue to operate and equip the new mobile medical unit I mentioned before, including prescribing authority, supplies, maintenance, and programming.
  • 02:03:04
    $450,000 would go to create and implement a Sublacate or Berxati MOUD pilot.
  • 02:03:12
    The strategies align with our MOA Part 1 treatment and include strategy A to treat opioid use disorder, B support people in treatment recovery, C connections to care, and E addressing the needs of perinatal population caregivers and families including babies with neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome.
  • 02:03:32
    Next slide.
  • 02:03:40
    Part two is the prevention harm reduction bucket.
  • 02:03:44
    This is $99,311 in opioid settlement funding.
  • 02:03:50
    This would go to scale up our Narcan vending program funds paying for additional machines and naloxone as well as our installation and maintenance costs.
  • 02:03:59
    The strategy aligning with this from the MOA is strategy H to prevent overdose deaths and other harms.
  • 02:04:07
    And finally, our third strategy is in the bucket of quote-unquote other strategies.
  • 02:04:14
    This is $50,000 in one-time opioid settlement funds, which will go toward the Minneapolis Health Department to convene, facilitate, and lead a collective impact model initiative with Hennepin County and the state of Minnesota in order to collaborate on opioid response strategies and investments.
  • 02:04:32
    These funds will be used to contract with a facilitator to convene and organize this work.
  • 02:04:37
    This strategy aligns with Part 3, Strategy J, Leadership, Planning, and Coordination.
  • 02:04:43
    For all of these slides, all Minneapolis residents will be impacted by this proposal, but we know that the communities most impacted by opioids are the Native American and Black communities, respectively, which are 27 and 3.6 times more likely than white residents to die from an opioid overdose.
  • 02:05:02
    By collaborating with the county and state to identify root causes of addiction and overdose, create shared goals for reducing harms related to the opioid epidemic, and collectively invest in areas and populations with the greatest needs for prevention, treatment, and recovery service, we hope to address racial ethnic disparities present in the epidemic at a higher and more effective level.
  • 02:05:28
    With that, I'm going to turn it over to Deputy Commissioner Hanlon to talk about the rest of the proposals.
• • Patrick Hanlon
  • 02:05:37
    Chug-Tug council members.
  • 02:05:40
    I mentioned a moment ago the environmental health program, food lodging and pools, Cindy Weckworth.
  • 02:05:45
    Director Cindy Weckworth is here and should get credit for all of that work and the training that they've done there.
  • 02:05:53
    This is about the lead elimination plan as part of the budget proposal.
  • 02:05:56
    It's a 1.1 million dollar request for the lead elimination action plan.
  • 02:05:59
    I mentioned before eliminating lead poisoning from home causes by 2035.
  • 02:06:05
    There's four FTEs of trained staff that are going to be continued on from ARPA funding through this request to continue on the successful lead elimination work that started in 2021-22 to create this preventative lead program.
  • 02:06:21
    This gets us on a path, it starts us on the path to that lead elimination by 2035.
  • 02:06:26
    It keeps core trained staff and gets us into about 150 homes a year of preventative inspections and financial assistance.
  • 02:06:36
    It's really a base, carrying on the base program from ARPA and to be able to get results and to scale that up in future years to be able to work at the level of that lead elimination action plan.
  • 02:06:47
    We follow HUD guidelines in terms of how we roll this program out.
  • 02:06:54
    It's a very prescriptive program.
  • 02:06:56
    When we look at lead poisonings, they are predominantly in high percentage BIPOC communities.
  • 02:07:03
    The Lead and Healthy Homes work serves high percentage of BIPOC communities itself.
  • 02:07:09
    87% of the customers identify as people of color.
  • 02:07:14
    and it is predominantly in low income households as well with 90% of the folks that we serve are low income residents.
  • 02:07:23
    The Climate Legacy Initiative, I have a little clarification on this as well.
  • 02:07:30
    There was a $10 million, just under $10 million increase in the budget for the Climate Legacy Initiative.
  • 02:07:36
    That's all departments that was including ongoing funding from last year.
  • 02:07:41
    What we're talking about today is the ongoing funding, or sorry, the one-time funding that's continued on.
  • 02:07:46
    and there was 2.1 million dollars of that city wide but much of that goes to other programs so what we're talking about for the health department of one time funding that's continuing on from the climate legacy initiative is close to 1.3 million dollars.
  • 02:08:01
    This includes two FTEs
  • 02:08:03
    One of the positions is a green jobs position working with over 500 youth and young adults Incredibly high percentage of BIPOC folks from North Minneapolis, South Minneapolis in our green zones, our environmental justice communities are taking part in those trainings just as planned The other position is for a climate incentive project manager and that is continuing on We were able to save money by having that position in ARPA funding last year
  • 02:08:31
    So it would have been in last year's climate legacy initiative request.
  • 02:08:36
    That person is managing over 300 incentive contracts at over close to 500 properties around the city.
  • 02:08:42
    And then there's money in here for community outreach and engagement, marketing, it's one thing that we aren't able to do often in government so the climate legacy initiative has made it possible for us to have marketing campaigns that have been incredibly successful with Russell Herder being able to get the word out to people so they even know that these resources exist.
  • 02:09:01
    and then we're also working with contracts with over eight neighborhood organizations and community organizations so that they can have a grassroots campaign to get the word out about our incredible energy efficiency, solar, innovative grant resources that we have for people in Minneapolis.
  • 02:09:18
    Urban forestry, this was included last year but it maintains 1,000 more trees planted in the budget.
  • 02:09:25
    And then biochar operations to have over 1,000 tons of CO2 sequestered.
  • 02:09:30
    We cannot reach our climate equity plan goals of being net zero without some form of carbon sequestration.
  • 02:09:36
    So this gets us on the path for carbon sequestration.
  • 02:09:39
    in our climate equity plan.
  • 02:09:40
    And then Homegrown was mentioned previously in the Homegrown slide has contracted.
  • 02:09:45
    They were first out of the gate with this work working with community gardeners, farmers, and organizations to reduce waste in the Venn diagram overlap between the climate equity plan and Homegrown.
  • 02:09:55
    All of this work continues on the successful programming from 2024 and we follow a White House Justice 40 standard that at least 40% of the funding goes to environmental justice communities or low-income members
  • 02:10:11
    make sure that we aren't greenwashing, we aren't equity washing, that our money is where our mouth is and we're getting resources out to the people, the folks that need it most.
  • 02:10:19
    And that White House Justice 40 standard is a low bar for us.
  • 02:10:23
    We're up around 60% with a lot of our programming, but we want to ensure that the money gets out with an equity approach first.
  • 02:10:33
    And with that I will hand it back over to Commissioner Chaplin.
  • 02:10:36
    Thank you.
• • SPEAKER_10
  • 02:10:40
    Thank you, Deputy Commissioner Hanlon.
  • 02:10:42
    I also want to recognize our other staff here, Chris Stokes, Lisa Brindale, Patty Bowler, and Marquita Keys.
  • 02:10:49
    Here are our senior managers joining us today as well.
  • 02:10:52
    And so this is reaching towards the end of our presentation.
  • 02:10:56
    The recommended budget proposals summary include $2.35 million which support sustaining school-based clinics, mental health services, eliminating child-led
  • 02:11:10
    poisoning, and then our opioid settlement programs.
  • 02:11:15
    And then recommended budget summary for our climate legacy initiative includes about 1.29 million for 2025 and includes the green jobs and training, climate incentives, community outreach and engagement, urban forestries, biochar operations, and then the home-grown initiatives.
  • 02:11:36
    So, Chair Chuck, that concludes our presentation and we're available for questions.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 02:11:42
    Thank you for that presentation.
  • 02:11:43
    Colleagues, are there any questions or comments related to the Health Department's presentation?
  • 02:11:50
    I will first recognize Councilmember Vitale.
• • Katie Cashman
  • 02:11:54
    Thank you Chair Chokti and thank you so much Minneapolis Health Department for that presentation.
  • 02:11:59
    I don't even know where to begin with how wonderful that was but I love you Minneapolis Health Department.
  • 02:12:06
    I truly do.
  • 02:12:07
    One of the beauties of living in this city and I carry so much pride as a council member but because of how wonderful the Health Department is and how you all have led
  • 02:12:21
    the work in public health for decades.
  • 02:12:24
    I myself have had a relationship with some of you for over 20 years.
  • 02:12:29
    You've mentored me through my career in public health.
  • 02:12:31
    You continue to mentor me as a council member, but I'm so proud of the work that you all do, that you've continued to do, especially
  • 02:12:41
    for the community that I represent.
  • 02:12:43
    You know, the presentation around lead, that is some work that needs to continue.
  • 02:12:49
    And you all understand how important that is to North Minneapolis.
  • 02:12:53
    So I appreciate the budget allocation to continue doing that work.
  • 02:12:59
    I was happy to join Council Member Ellison in what he has started in 2021 and 2022.
  • 02:13:05
    So keep it coming until we get lead out of every single house in this community.
  • 02:13:10
    this work is not done.
  • 02:13:12
    Also, I've had the beauty of working with most of you and this year a lot of you who are here today I've continued to be able to work with Patty, Heidi,
  • 02:13:28
    Louisa, Cindy, Marquita, Mayor Hanlon I don't see him anymore but I know he's in here somewhere Evelyn on things from tobacco to lead to just the health and well-being of the people of Minneapolis and one of the things that was brought to my attention this year and I didn't see it in a budget but I'm hoping we're figuring it out is that we have
  • 02:13:53
    a need for vaccines in Ward 4, a large need for it that we've seen a lot of families come into the ward, in particular immigrant families who haven't had access to these vaccines and want them and so I'm hoping
  • 02:14:11
    if there's a way for us to figure this out.
  • 02:14:14
    I had a community clinic reach out to me earlier this year.
  • 02:14:17
    I'm hoping we're making plans.
  • 02:14:19
    I know I talked to Deputy Commissioner Ritchie about this earlier this year and also Louisa.
  • 02:14:25
    So I'm hoping we'll figure this out.
  • 02:14:27
    If not in
  • 02:14:28
    in a direct budget allocation.
  • 02:14:30
    But we have to make sure that these vaccines are accessible to these families for many reasons.
  • 02:14:37
    And I know that I've read recently that we have an uptick in measles.
  • 02:14:41
    And that was one of the things that the community clinic talked to me about earlier this year.
  • 02:14:47
    So I'm hoping if not seen on one of the slides today, that you all are having conversations about how we get these much needed vaccines.
• • SPEAKER_10
  • 02:14:58
    We are working on that Deputy Commissioner Ritchie has been working on getting appropriations for the clinic that you spoke of and that's part of the more core conversation that we're having for the department and those types of services are part of that core service.
• • Katie Cashman
  • 02:15:16
    Thank you and I'll make sure that I follow up.
  • 02:15:19
    I'm just going to end with saying that you all are doing some fantastic work to keep the city healthy.
  • 02:15:26
    I'm so proud of all the work that the Minneapolis Health Department does and just always know that Ward 4 is here to help you in whatever way we can to make sure that we continue to accomplish the brilliant goals that you all set for our city.
  • 02:15:42
    Thank you.
• • SPEAKER_10
  • 02:15:43
    Thank you.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 02:15:45
    Wonderful, thank you.
  • 02:15:46
    And next I'll recognize Councilmember Osman followed by Councilmember Chavez followed by Councilmember Jenkins.
• • Jamal Osman
  • 02:15:54
    Thank you, Council Vice President.
  • 02:15:56
    Thank you, Commissioner.
  • 02:15:58
    Really wonderful presentation.
  • 02:16:01
    A lot of good things to hear from the Health Department.
  • 02:16:03
    And I want to really thank you for your leadership coming down the community, doing the walk with me, visiting some of the hard hit places of opioid epidemic.
  • 02:16:18
    You know, we know this is a crisis in national, not just our state.
  • 02:16:24
    and it's just dismantling our youth and our society.
  • 02:16:30
    We are seeing just overwhelming people that are addicted with with opioid.
  • 02:16:35
    What is the national conversation or the statewide conversation of of opioid?
  • 02:16:41
    I feel like it's like a
  • 02:16:44
    It's just we're in a war and somehow we're losing what's happening in our society.
  • 02:16:50
    So I was wondering, you know, overall, not just the city, but is there a conversation going on addressing this epidemic?
• • SPEAKER_10
  • 02:17:01
    Chair Chuck Tai, Council Member Osman, thank you for that.
  • 02:17:04
    Yes, there is, this is a war.
  • 02:17:06
    We are in a war.
  • 02:17:08
    Nationally, we're seeing large cities experience many of the same things that we're experiencing here.
  • 02:17:14
    I can tell you from Minneapolis, we are really on the brink of some very innovative
  • 02:17:21
    steps towards approaching this.
  • 02:17:23
    And so Deputy Commissioner Ritchie had kind of spoke to the sublicade and the perksadi.
  • 02:17:29
    I think that might be a turning point for us as a city and as a community in dealing with this issue.
  • 02:17:35
    Part of the strategy that we are seeing, part of the issue that we have with opioids, particularly the fentanyl, it closes that window of opportunity for us to engage with individuals.
  • 02:17:45
    and that window is super important because that window is when we're able to get folks into treatment and then get them into recovery and then to re-entry into the community.
  • 02:17:55
    And so this Bruxati and Supplicate pilot program will open that window up and give us more time to engage with the individuals within the community.
  • 02:18:05
    And so we're really looking forward to that First Step program, expanding that First Step program, but also looking at other areas and ways that we can use that particular product.
• • Jamal Osman
  • 02:18:13
    Thank you for that and anyways we can improve just the public policy to improve and help those folks that are struggling.
  • 02:18:23
    I do have a couple questions.
  • 02:18:25
    The first question is the opioid settlement money that we have received.
  • 02:18:31
    We understand that we are using small junks each year as we go by.
  • 02:18:36
    Is that something that ruled by the state or the
• • SPEAKER_10
  • 02:18:41
    Right now those are internal controls that we're discussing with the mayor's office about how best to We don't want to overspend before we get the money and we don't want to put too much stress on programming to be one-time just-in-time type of programming so we want to have a
  • 02:19:07
    a very methodical way about doing this and so those conversations about internal controls are kind of happening now.
  • 02:19:14
    It hasn't been decided yet but we're trying to take it as we get it and then as we get more consistency and we have that a longer run path we can do more planning and so the idea is to be very methodical about our approach to this but also be intentional.
• • Jamal Osman
  • 02:19:30
    Definitely more resources needed because I haven't really seen any worse time we're in for last few years But also the last question I have it's about Narcan Fending Program that's really wonderful.
  • 02:19:46
    That's great But you know look at the data and looking where people are overdosing I see places like
  • 02:19:55
    Fire Station 7, which like Cedar and Riverside, Franklin, Hiawatha, Little Earth in that area.
  • 02:20:02
    Why was that 38 and Hiawatha chosen and not went by the data and really start with Fire Station 7?
  • 02:20:10
    That's what I hope to see more and so yeah, just wanted to see what was the idea behind 38 and Hiawatha.
• • SPEAKER_10
  • 02:20:20
    I think that they were a partner that was willing to work with us in the beginning.
  • 02:20:23
    This is a pilot project and that was kind of the idea behind it.
  • 02:20:28
    A place that could manage that pilot project over a period of time.
  • 02:20:32
    We are actively looking for other places to try and put that same particular program and so we're in the process of that right now.
  • 02:20:40
    So the idea was just to get it started to see how it goes and then we will expand it to other areas of the city as finances allows us.
• • Jamal Osman
  • 02:20:47
    Wonderful, thank you so much.
  • 02:20:48
    Yeah, definitely look forward Having some including some ideas and what are we hearing from the community the places that are?
  • 02:20:57
    Struggling opioid are this area that I mentioned also places that I have the most encampments that we continue to see pop up so Thank you.
  • 02:21:08
    Thank you so much.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 02:21:09
    That's it Thank you next I'll recognize councilmember Chavez I
• • Jason Chavez
  • 02:21:15
    Thank you Commissioner Chaplin for your presentation today.
  • 02:21:19
    If we go to page 25, it's about the budget proposal for opioid response part 2 prevention harm reduction.
  • 02:21:28
    It talks about $99,000 in one time special revenue, the opioid settlement dollars to help with Narcan vending and similar to Council Member Osman's component.
  • 02:21:38
    One, I think this is a really great project.
  • 02:21:40
    I am very happy
  • 02:21:41
    that there is one already here in the city of Minneapolis and would love to see more.
  • 02:21:45
    So my question for you, Commissioner, would be what does $99,000 get us?
  • 02:21:50
    Is there a plan to fund a specific amount in the city in the coming year?
  • 02:21:57
    What does it cost?
  • 02:21:58
    One, install one Narcan machine.
  • 02:22:02
    What does it cost to maintain the NARC Commission?
  • 02:22:04
    And three, are we thinking about adding naloxone test strips?
  • 02:22:09
    Are we thinking about adding the test strips to the vending machines?
  • 02:22:12
    Or are we just using this funding to also purchase additional fentanyl testing strips?
  • 02:22:17
    So I'm going to defer to Deputy Commissioner Ritchie because he probably can give me details on that.
• • SPEAKER_10
  • 02:22:21
    but I will say that the idea is to fund the machine and then replenish the machine over a period of time and then the ideas around the other pieces around the test strips.
  • 02:22:32
    I'm not sure if they've been considered yet but I can see that being an option as well.
• • Jason Chavez
  • 02:22:39
    and I can give an example.
  • 02:22:40
    So there's a photo right here.
  • 02:22:41
    Me and Council Vice President Chuck Tai went to Art Shelf.
  • 02:22:45
    It's in Ward 10.
  • 02:22:46
    They do a lot of harm reduction and art with folks for free in the community and they showed us in person one small little box that folks can have test strips.
  • 02:22:59
    Narcan, and it's probably not the same that the city has but like an example even like lower costs to get more bang for your buck I would say and have more places in our city to do this, but yeah, sorry go deputy commissioner
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 02:23:14
    Thank you.
  • 02:23:14
    Through the Chair, Councilmember Chavez, the $99,311, we are budgeting around $10,000 for the equipment.
  • 02:23:24
    That's how much the box costs.
  • 02:23:25
    There are some, depending on where we put it, like when we put it at fire station number seven,
  • 02:23:30
    or sorry, fire station at 38th.
  • 02:23:34
    We had to do some retrofitting work around electricity and a concrete slab just to make sure that the space was adequate for the equipment.
  • 02:23:45
    And then the rest of it really is refilling the machine.
  • 02:23:49
    So I mentioned we have gone through about 800 boxes in three months.
  • 02:23:54
    That's about almost $11,000 a month.
  • 02:23:57
    and so it has been utilized and we have to figure out a sustainable way of funding those.
  • 02:24:03
    We've been talking with the University of Minnesota as well as Hennepin County about how we might be able to enter into partnerships by where we purchase the equipment and help with the retrofitting and then they kind of sponsor the refilling of those machines.
  • 02:24:17
    that could include naloxone only or Narcan only.
  • 02:24:21
    In the machine that we have right now at 38th and Hiawatha roughly, it's the nasal Narcan, but there are other options and we have been talking with the U of M about other things like test strips, xylazine test strips, fentanyl test strips, and even potentially, you know, getting into areas around
  • 02:24:44
    you know safe alcohol consumption or safe reproductive care.
  • 02:24:49
    So kind of working how we might be able to utilize those vending machines.
  • 02:24:58
    I don't know, was there another question or another part that I missed?
• • Jason Chavez
  • 02:25:01
    Yeah, I was just very curious, and I think you answered the question, Deputy Commissioner, about the cost of one vending machine.
  • 02:25:06
    So it's $10,000 for the setup of one location, and then it costs additional dollars to maintain and supply the resources for the community, so that's additional dollars.
  • 02:25:17
    So we could probably assume that this could maybe get us five to maybe nine, that's like on the low end, possible locations in the city?
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 02:25:27
    Yeah, through the Chair, Councilmember Chavez, I think it depends on the cost of refilling these machines and how we're able to partner with other folks to help us with that sustainability piece.
  • 02:25:38
    We've also talked to a number of groups that work together around harm reduction in both South and North Minneapolis and have
  • 02:25:47
    that offer technical assistance to them, whereas we might not be able to purchase a vending machine and keep it stocked for them in their neighborhood, but we could provide that technical assistance and how they might be able to do that as a community group.
• • Jason Chavez
  • 02:26:00
    and then the last comment I have for this part is really curious and you probably remember the council I authored it with council president Payne the staff direction to our policy and research team to do more research on the opioid or opioid response and seeing how we can expand some of these stations and what other municipalities do to expand these stations to transit hubs I think there's an opportunity to use this and I mentioned this in the past but like
  • 02:26:24
    partner with Metro Transit figure out like what it could look like to do some of these vending machines at light rail stations on Franklin on Lake Street other areas in our city where we know that this is desperately needed so my the point of my questions are more of like I think that I am really excited that there is funding specifically going to this work and I think we need more and I think we need to figure out how we can make sure that they are sustainable and that they are there for the community for good use so thank you.
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 02:26:52
    Councilmember Chavez and I did want to mention too and back to Councilmember Osmond's question about where we the location we chose it's the location of a safe station too and so we wanted to make sure that there was those resources within the fire station that if somebody was coming to utilize the vending machine they also had an opportunity to meet or get an assessment at that time.
  • 02:27:16
    But yeah, I think I think there's definitely those opportunities to partner when I talked about the $50,000 for the collective impact model that is exactly the type of thing we're looking to do maximize those investments by using Our partnerships with other jurisdictions that also have opioid settlement funding coming in in chunks over the next 18 years Thank you
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 02:27:46
    Thank you.
  • 02:27:48
    We have a couple of additional questions from members, but we no longer have a quorum in this meeting, so unfortunately we are going to have to end discussion here.
  • 02:28:00
    What we will do for council members that were seeking to ask additional questions on that list was Council Member Jenkins, Council Member Koski, and I believe Council Member Chowdhury.
  • 02:28:14
    We will work on putting together those questions for you in writing and we will hope that we can get an administrative follow-up from you.
• • SPEAKER_10
  • 02:28:24
    Absolutely.
  • 02:28:25
    Will that work for you?
  • 02:28:26
    Yes.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 02:28:27
    Excellent.
  • 02:28:28
    Thank you.
  • 02:28:29
    With that, we've concluded all business to come before this committee today and without objection we stand adjourned.
  • 02:28:40
    We are adjourned to our meeting on Friday.
  • 02:28:44
    October 11th at 10 a.m. where we'll receive a presentation on the capital budget.
  • 02:28:49
    Thank you.