Budget Committee October 21, 2024   10/21/2024

Presentation

• • 00:00:07
    So now
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:00:44
    Good morning, my name is Aisha Chuktai and I'm the chair of the Budget Committee.
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    I'm going to call to order our adjourned committee meeting for Monday, October 21st, 2024.
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    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.
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    These broadcasts include real-time captioning as a further method to increase the accessibility of our proceedings to the community.
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    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.
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    We ask all speakers to moderate the speed and clarity of their comments.
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    At this time I'll ask the clerk to call the roll so we can verify the presence of a quorum.
• • SPEAKER_05
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    Council member Payne is absent.
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    Council member Wonsley is absent.
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    Council member Rainville present.
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    Council member Beto present.
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    Allison is absent.
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    Osman is absent.
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    Cashman?
• • Michael Cashman
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    Present.
• • SPEAKER_05
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    Jenkins is absent.
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    Chavez?
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    Present.
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    Chowdhury?
• • Aurin Chowdhury
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    Present.
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    Paul Misano?
• • Linea Palmisano
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    Present.
• • SPEAKER_05
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    Vice Chair Koski?
• • Linea Palmisano
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    Present.
• • SPEAKER_05
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    Chair Chuktai?
• • Linea Palmisano
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    Present.
• • SPEAKER_05
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    We have eight members present.
• • Aisha Chughtai
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    Let the record reflect that we have a quorum.
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    I'll also remind my colleagues that we're using speaker management today so please make sure you sign in.
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    Colleagues, the agenda for today's meeting is before us and we are entering our final week of departmental presentations as it relates to the 2025 mayor's recommended budget.
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    We have three presentations for today and we will start with a presentation from the Office of Community Safety.
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    I'll invite Commissioner Todd Barnett of the Community Safety Department to start us off.
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    Welcome.
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    I'll also note that we've been joined in this meeting by Councilmember Osman.
• • Todd BarnetteCommissioner of Community Safety
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    Good morning and thank you for having me this morning.
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    I'm Todd Barnett.
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    I'm the Commissioner of Community Safety, of course, for the City of Minneapolis.
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    I'm here to present the 2025-2026 Office of Community Safety budget as recommended by the Mayor.
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    As you can see, the structure of our office, we are now fully staffed and that's important for us as we move our work forward.
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    Our main focus
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    This year has been on strategic oversight of all of our five departments and the implementation of the safe and thriving community report and also building and improving on the strong foundation to comply with the settlement agreement
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    and the upcoming consent decree.
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    And why is that important?
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    Once the consent decree is done and filed in federal court, the responsibility of compliance allowed that will lie with the Office of Community Safety.
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    Some of our mission and priority, as I've said many times before, Council, our mission here is to provide a coordinated, comprehensive and equitable safety services to all residents and visitors.
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    When you look at our office, especially as we look forward to 2025, and that is to build out and support a more robust community safety ecosystem.
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    Of course on those three big pillars for us, which is prevention, responsive, and restorative services.
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    We continue to build a strong foundation to meet the terms of the settlement agreement, of course, and also trying to continue to implement the Safe and Thriving Community Report.
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    The why I keep mentioning both of those together is that when you look at the settlement agreement, a lot of the work
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    when we look at a non-police response, a lot of that work falls into either neighborhood safety or with our director, Amanda Harrington.
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    And so there is that intersection between both the Safe and Thriving Community Report and the settlement agreement and I also believe it will be important to the consent decree as well.
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    Our objectives for the Safe and Thriving Community Report of course is to open our safety centers and you know that we're opening one, actually I think the date is November 4th for our Lake Street Safety Center and we continue to work on getting the South Minneapolis Community Safety Center progress and open as soon as we can.
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    trying to create of course a culture and processes that facilitate collaborative and coordinated actions across all departments for the city and also with all of our community organizations that we have contracts with and those that we don't.
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    Other main objective on the Safe and Thriving Community Report is to increase the community's understanding of the work that's being done to build out the safety ecosystem.
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    Next I'll talk about some of the achievements and risks as we are moving forward with the work, the risk, and some of the opportunities that we see.
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    Of course, moving forward, we want to have a cohesive community safety system in which we think differently about how we do this work and how we work towards our goals.
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    Using the Safe and Thriving Community Report for our departments is key as we're working and thinking of our community safety system in different ways.
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    We want to be guided by the data of course and look at how we can have public safety and community safety centers coexist effectively.
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    Of course we're looking at the progress we're making towards the settlement agreement terms and also the plans that we have as we work to build out the ecosystem including physical spaces, coordinated services,
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    as well as trying to address some of the core issues that ails a lot of the work that we do, looking at access to education, health, and other social interactions that we have as we move forward.
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    The risk of course for us is that as we move
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    forward and look at the settlement agreement and the consent decree and we look at monitoring and compliance with both of those agreements that will require significant staff resources as we implement the terms of that agreement.
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    Community engagement, we've had 40 I'm sorry
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    We've had 40 community engagement events this spring.
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    We've used two of our staff to do that.
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    We prepare for the fall to do more engagement with our staff.
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    Of course, to do that many over a long period of time will take some resources as well.
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    We continue to need sworn and non-sworn staff for effective community safety ecosystem.
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    As you know from prior presentations, MPD staffing levels are at a low and also at the same time we have many officers that are eligible for retirement.
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    Staffing for all of our departments are critical to building out our community safety ecosystem so that we can have appropriate services and responses for our citizens.
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    Our ecosystem as it starts to expand, our internal systems will need to scale up.
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    Our office strives to provide information in a transparent and timely way, but our capacity is limited.
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    The opportunities that we see in barriers also that we continue to work on, of course, is breaking down those silos within the city departments.
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    Of course, community safety doesn't just lie in our five departments in the Office of Community Safety, but that work expands into Health and CPAD and Rec Services and other departments.
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    The Safe and Thriving Community Report
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    also encourages us to approach this work with collaboration, co-production of new solutions to solve the root causes that we see in our society.
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    We also look forward to more partnerships.
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    As you know a lot of times that means partnering with the county of course and also with the state for the county in particular.
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    We sometimes contract with the same organizations and we want to be more effective in how we approach this work together instead of individually.
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    This slide you can see that our staff for 2025 would increase by two.
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    The recommended budget for 2025 will be 3.6 million dollars.
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    You'll see that's 1.5 million dollar increase over 2025 and I'll talk about the reasons for that increase as we get into the budget proposals that we have for 2025.
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    Our salary and fringe benefits have gone up by 21%.
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    That's partially due to staff that we have funded in 2024 with PSA money.
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    If you look at the biannual personnel report that shows one vacancy, that vacancy hopefully will be closed soon because we have extended an offer to that candidate.
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    We've used our vacancy savings to fund our office equipment, parking, phones, if you know in our move here we have cubicles for our staff so we don't have desk phones so we've had to provide phones for them.
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    Also, we paid for printed materials for our community engagements.
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    We've also had our staff go out for some trainings and visit sites in Denver and Orange County to look at their safety centers in order to inform us on what we do here going forward.
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    Next I'll move into the performance metrics, OCS' administrative budget, and the new funding request.
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    I spoke earlier about our priorities and now turning to the metrics.
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    The next two slides that you'll see is a list of priorities and the metrics we plan to use as we move forward into 2025.
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    We want to look at the percentage of preventive, restorative, and responsive services we're using and be driven by the data.
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    I think you've heard Amanda Harrington talk quite often as we look to get the report from NYU Policing Project to help inform us on where we are and to give us some recommendations there to build out.
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    But we want to make sure that we're data driven as we look at programming.
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    also as we move forward with the terms of the settlement agreement and of course the forthcoming consent decree and implementing the safe and thriving community report we want to look at making sure that we're on target to hit those date lines and to meet the terms of the agreement and then lastly we want to support
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    our responses to emergency and planned events and we'll look at the number of EOC activations for those events.
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    You'll see in this slide at the top corner you'll see the recommended budget for 2025 like I said earlier is 3.6 million.
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    It's an increase that I'll talk about in a few moments.
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    We're opening the community safety centers as I mentioned earlier.
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    We want to look at the number total visitors that will come to those safety centers also
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    We want to make sure we create a culture and processes that facilitate collaboration and coordination across our enterprise and with our community groups to provide the services for our residents.
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    And so we want to look at partner satisfaction.
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    Also, we want to increase the community's understanding of the work that we're doing.
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    We have, as we look at the recommended proposed budget proposals for 2025-26, we have five.
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    The first one is the $50,000 ongoing costs out of the general fund.
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    As you can tell from previous slides here, the majority of our funding is for our personnel.
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    but we also need funding like I said earlier for training and office supplies and to carry out our mission.
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    In the past we've used the savings on vacancies but now that we're fully staffed we need those funds to do some of the just operational work that needs to be done internally.
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    Second, here you'll see the slide which I think that image you've seen plenty of times which is $500,000 for our continued recruitment campaign.
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    Like I've talked about earlier,
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    We've made some progress with 911.
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    We're really focusing on MPD and bringing their staffing levels up.
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    And with this one-time funding, we really want to expand our recruitment base.
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    We've seen some positive indications with the number of applications going up in this area.
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    Next proposal deals with background checks for our sworn officers with 335,000 for a pilot.
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    Yes, why is this important?
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    This is important because when we look at background checks for our officers those usually take about 9 to 11 weeks And we will lose folks.
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    What happens is that
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    When folks are waiting for these background checks, we're not the only potential employer.
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    Other agencies also are looking for sworn officers, and if we can get that time down and connect with our potential applicants, that will help us bring them in.
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    And with internal conversations with different vendors, we think we can get that time down to about five to seven weeks.
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    Our next budget proposal is for $500,000 for a nighttime safety strategy.
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    Of course we want to build on what we've done not only this year but years before.
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    We want to see if we can address some of the nighttime hot spots by using this strategy of activating some of our spaces to improve safety for our residents.
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    Our last budget proposal deals with two FTEs that were back-filled in 2024 with public safety aid.
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    These two FTEs I talked about in a quarterly update to PHS and their importance to what we do.
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    These two positions help support our communications not only within our department but all five departments either directly or indirectly with internal, external communications
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    Press release, data requests, media interviews, proactive storytelling Newsletters as well as print and digital content for our departments, but more importantly helping us to improve our communications with community members and also to improve our communications on what's going on with the settlement agreement as required and also with the safe and thriving community report.
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    and this last slide, of course, this shows all five of the budget proposals indicating whether they're ongoing expenses like the $50,000 for our office for keeping building capacity and also ongoing expenses to backfill the two FTEs.
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    The rest, of course, are just one-time funding.
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    That concludes my presentation
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    I stand for questions Thank you
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:19:51
    Thank you for that presentation, Commissioner.
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    Colleagues, are there any questions or discussion related to this presentation?
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    It looks like we have several members getting in queue.
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    I'll first recognize Vice Chair Koski.
• • Emily Koski
  • 00:20:07
    Thank you, Madam Vice President.
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    Thank you, Commissioner, for the presentation.
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    I just have a few questions.
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    First, you noted that the 22% increase in salaries and wages and the 19% increase
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    fringes was partially due to the two FTEs added.
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    What are some of the other factors that are driving?
• • Todd BarnetteCommissioner of Community Safety
  • 00:20:25
    I think I said 21%.
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    21%.
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    It's just our personnel expenses for them and our other employees.
• • Emily Koski
  • 00:20:39
    Okay, thank you.
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    And then, on the community safety recruitment campaign, I don't sit on PHS or AEO, so perhaps this was brought forward there, but I'm just curious if they have received a report or update on the campaign so far, or if you could just maybe, even for us here, elaborate a little bit more about the outcomes that we've achieved through the
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    because I can't remember, I know we allocated a million and then perhaps there was another allocation.
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    So if you could just describe a little bit about the campaign and some of the positive outcomes that you've seen or how you've been able to connect them directly to this spending.
• • Todd BarnetteCommissioner of Community Safety
  • 00:21:16
    I'm sorry, Chair.
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    Not acknowledging you before I answer the question, Chair Chuktai, Council Member Koski.
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    I think our
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    probably MPD and our HR department can probably talk in more detail about it.
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    I can tell you some of the general things that we've seen with the campaign.
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    The campaign started out with looking at increasing
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    applications and staff for our 911 and MPD.
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    We've seen significant improvements with our 911 staffing and so we're in a really good place there than we've been before.
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    When we look at MPD, it's really trying to keep up with those officers leaving and then hiring more officers.
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    But what we've seen with this campaign is an increase in the applications that we've had.
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    I know Chief O'Hara's talked quite a bit about the laterals that he's been able to bring over to the police department.
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    I don't remember, Councilmember Koski, the number of our last graduation class off the top of my head, but we're looking
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    at those applications coming in, I think the big question for us is, does that correlate into more officers being hired?
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    The thing that I think really for me, in particular our office, is that
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    In years past, we just haven't been able to keep up with those officers separating from the department through retirement and going to get other jobs.
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    And so that's just a piece that also we need to concentrate on as well.
• • Emily Koski
  • 00:23:22
    Okay, yeah, I think if we're able to get some additional data around how this specific campaign has correlated with the increase of applications, I did see a pretty significant, I can't remember where now, but I did see, it came across to all of us Council members, where the applications from 2023 to 2024 for MPD has, is up significantly.
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    I just would be curious to know if
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    What part do you feel that this campaign had in that or and whatnot?
• • Todd BarnetteCommissioner of Community Safety
  • 00:23:54
    You know, Chair Tuktai, also Council Member Klosky, I don't know that we'll be able to tie it specifically to the campaign.
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    I think there will be some things we are able to tie it to because we're able to track
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    some of the social media links that people have continued to the applications but also there have been some changes in MPD and the way that they've approached recruitment and just those touch points that they've increased as well.
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    So I think it's going to be a combination of things when we look at that.
• • Emily Koski
  • 00:24:35
    Okay, that's great.
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    These are just significant dollar amounts and we just want to understand that we're putting it in the right place.
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    Last question I have is on page 8, you're talking about the performance metrics.
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    and you were talking about the number of one of the performance metrics that you had on here was oh I think it's the next one sorry maybe then page nine the number of total visitors at safety centers would be one of the measures that you would put in place I'm curious if you have in place to determine that this any metrics about
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    the services that are going to be in there and what are going to be housed there and how we're achieving the outcomes that we're trying to get from each of those individual services and when will those outcomes and goals be set and how will they be communicated to us.
• • Todd BarnetteCommissioner of Community Safety
  • 00:25:34
    Chair Chuck Tai, Council Member Koski, a lot of that work lies with our Director Amanda Harrington who's actually at a conference today and not present and I think she could better answer some of those questions but one of the things I can say is that I know
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    that she has been working on how do we collect the data and working internally trying to see what PMI is able to provide and also just recently last week we were in discussions with our IT department to talk about how do we collect some of the data that we need as well.
• • Emily Koski
  • 00:26:20
    Okay that would be helpful and you know I can stay tuned to probably PHS a little bit more closely on those updates.
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    You know the number of visitors that go there is important to understand but what's more important to me is to understand that those that go there that they're getting the outcomes that they need and they're getting service so I would love to hear how we're going to in the future make sure that we're measuring that and then pivoting if we need to so thank you so much that's all the questions I have.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:26:47
    Thank you Vice Chair Koski.
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    Would you like to note the question you had related to performance metrics for administrative follow-up?
• • Emily Koski
  • 00:26:54
    Yep, that would be great.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:26:55
    That way when Director Harrington returns we can get a more fulsome response.
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    Vice Chair Koski, would you repeat the question?
• • Emily Koski
  • 00:27:01
    Great, yes, I can try to repeat this.
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    So the services that are going to be housed within the Community Safety Center, specifically on the south side, you know, what are the goals and the outcomes that we're going to be setting and when will those outcomes and goals be communicated to the body?
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:27:25
    Wonderful.
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    Now before we continue, we have about seven, maybe eight more members in queue.
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    I will note that we've been joined in this meeting by Councilmember Wonsley, along with Council President Payne.
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    And with that, I will recognize Councilmember Cashman.
• • Michael Cashman
  • 00:27:41
    Thank you Chair Chugtai and thank you Commissioner for the presentation.
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    I was also wondering what Vice Chair Koski was asking about regarding the amount of applications that we've had this year.
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    So just looked up quickly what the Chief had said in the news and it said that we've received over a thousand applications for MPD this year which is an increase from the 700 received in 2023.
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    and then we do, according to him we currently have 570 police officers which is 8 more than we had at the end of 2023.
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    So I just wanted to note that because I heard you say that we're at historically low MPD levels and I think you know if you're thinking on the scale of years perhaps that's true but if you're thinking on the scale of half years or months that is not true so just wanted to make sure that we're clear that we have 8 more
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    or maybe I'll ask you for clarification if it's true that we have eight more police officers now than at the end of last year.
• • Todd BarnetteCommissioner of Community Safety
  • 00:28:38
    Chair Chuck Todd, Council Member Cashman, I would refer to whatever Chief O'Hara said as far as the exact numbers there.
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    We know that law enforcement nationally has seen a decrease in staffing and so when I talk about MPD, when we look at
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    our last couple of years has just been very low compared to what we saw in the 800s prior to 2020.
• • Michael Cashman
  • 00:29:10
    Okay, thank you.
  • 00:29:13
    Yes.
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    Really glad to see one of the opportunities is breaking down siloed work.
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    I think that's great and was wondering
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    If you considered hiring an interagency coordinator for OCS, just knowing that other large departments at the city like CPED, Rec Services and Public Works have an interagency coordinator, this is the person that is really easy for us as council members to get in touch with and direct our questions to and wondering how you're thinking about that.
• • Todd BarnetteCommissioner of Community Safety
  • 00:29:43
    Chair Chuktay, Council Member Cashman, we have not considered that.
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    We
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    Each of our directors, if you look at our Director of Communications works very closely with all five of our departments, but she also works with and meets regularly with all the communication folks in the city.
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    They have meetings together.
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    When you look at our Director of Administration, Marian Anderson, I think many of you know, has worked very closely with Neighborhood Safety, but she comes
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    to us with a wealth of knowledge on budget and finance and has very good relationships there.
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    And when you look at our director, Amanda Harrington, she has been able to bring teams
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    Throughout the city together from all different departments to work on that when we talk about the relationship Particularly with council members.
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    That's area in which we can do better And but we have not considered that position for us.
• • Michael Cashman
  • 00:31:06
    Okay, that's helpful.
  • 00:31:07
    Thanks.
  • 00:31:08
    Yep Who would you say?
  • 00:31:10
    I mean, are you still considering yourself to be the best point of contact for council members and then directing from there?
• • Todd BarnetteCommissioner of Community Safety
  • 00:31:16
    Chair Tuktai, Council Member Cashman, I think if you send it to myself or Jared Jeffries And I think most people know especially if you're trying to schedule something Larissa Brown is the other person to CC as well And that usually works well
• • Michael Cashman
  • 00:31:35
    Okay, thanks.
  • 00:31:36
    Last question I have here.
  • 00:31:37
    So $500,000 for nighttime safety strategies?
  • 00:31:40
    Yes.
  • 00:31:42
    Can, at hotspots, can you elaborate on which hotspots you're looking into and does this include Warehouse District Live?
• • Todd BarnetteCommissioner of Community Safety
  • 00:31:50
    Sure.
  • 00:31:51
    Chuck Tye, Councilmember Cashman.
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    What we want to do is with that money we want to really look at at the time what are the hot spots and what can we do as far as activating those spaces.
  • 00:32:08
    I would think that we would continue with downtown there's no indication that we would not but we want to expand beyond downtown and look at other areas in which hopefully we can have the same success that we've had the last couple of years downtown.
• • Michael Cashman
  • 00:32:25
    Does this include Warehouse District Live?
• • Todd BarnetteCommissioner of Community Safety
  • 00:32:28
    I would hope that we would continue that, yes.
• • Michael Cashman
  • 00:32:31
    But this budget line, is that where the Warehouse District Live investment is?
  • 00:32:36
    No.
• • Todd BarnetteCommissioner of Community Safety
  • 00:32:37
    I think that it includes Warehouse District Live.
  • 00:32:40
    I mean those safety strategies.
• • Michael Cashman
  • 00:32:45
    Right?
  • 00:32:45
    Do you know?
• • Todd BarnetteCommissioner of Community Safety
  • 00:32:46
    I'm getting indications from my staff that it does.
• • Michael Cashman
  • 00:32:51
    Okay, so this is then a decrease in the investment from Warehouse District Live last year, which was $750,000 down to $500,000.
  • 00:33:01
    I'm seeing nods as well.
  • 00:33:02
    Okay, thank you, that's helpful.
  • 00:33:05
    Yeah, I think that just speaking as a council member representing that area, I think that
  • 00:33:12
    Street closures are very helpful for nighttime safety and would love to see that strategy employed also in uptown at Lake and Hennepin where there's also a lot of nightlife but it was really really difficult this summer to have multiple back-to-back weekends of homicides on 5th and Hennepin and I know Warehouse District Live is on First Avenue but just next door having
  • 00:33:35
    a vehicular homicide followed by gun-related homicides the following weekend.
  • 00:33:41
    I would love to focus on that area and work together with you on that.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:33:48
    That's all, Chair.
  • 00:33:50
    Thank you.
  • 00:33:50
    I'll also note we've been joined by Councilmember Jenkins and next I will recognize Councilmember Wansley.
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 00:33:57
    Thank you, Chair Chuktai.
  • 00:33:59
    Actually, thank you Councilmember Cashman as well for answering some of the questions that I had initially about the nighttime safety strategies as I also was wondering if this was the same thing as Warehouse District Live and knowing, as was pointed out, that there seemed to be a decrease in the funding allocation for this.
  • 00:34:16
    So it sounds like all of this money will just go towards that one event.
  • 00:34:21
    Is that correct?
• • Todd BarnetteCommissioner of Community Safety
  • 00:34:23
    Chair Chuck Tye, Councilmember Wisely, no I don't think that's correct.
  • 00:34:29
    I think it's that we have to look and see what strategies that we can use, not just downtown, but also just try to be more effective with those funds.
  • 00:34:40
    So I wouldn't say it's just for warehouse district life.
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 00:34:45
    Okay, if there's someone amongst OCS who can spell out then the breakdown of what's going to Warehouse District Live because as we mentioned that used to be a pretty sizable allocation and going for $500,000 to $750,000 and now there's $500,000 that's being said that it's going to go to multiple things so is it still that Warehouse District Live has its own line item and this is contributing some or this is a lump sum towards a variety of other strategies?
  • 00:35:14
    and it seems like maybe your staff is talking in the back.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:35:22
    Mr. Jeffries, if you'll start by introducing yourself.
• • SPEAKER_17
  • 00:35:25
    Of course.
  • 00:35:25
    Thank you, Chair Shakti.
  • 00:35:27
    I am Jared Jeffries.
  • 00:35:27
    I'm the Chief of Staff for the Office of Community Safety.
  • 00:35:30
    Councilmember Wonsley, I would recommend a response in a response memo for that.
  • 00:35:35
    We can give a little bit more of a detailed description of what that's going to look like.
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 00:35:38
    Okay, thank you.
  • 00:35:39
    I will ask for that to be included in the staff memo.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:35:43
    Clerks, if we can note for administrative follow-up, a detailed breakdown about how the $500,000 nightlife change item is going to be appropriated at different locations across the city and how to reconcile the significant decrease in the warehouse district life allocation.
  • 00:36:04
    Does that cover your question, Councilmember?
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 00:36:07
    Yes.
  • 00:36:09
    And then also following up on Vice Chair Koski's question, I also had some follow up around the recruitment campaign dollars and wanting to know more of a breakdown on that one in terms of how it relates to the police contract that council just passed which makes MPD officers some of the most the highest paid in the country right now.
  • 00:36:31
    So one to see if that also factor into some of the increased recruitment numbers that we're seeing.
  • 00:36:37
    in addition to getting some more data on how existing recruitment campaign dollars from the previous budget how that factor into it as well.
  • 00:36:48
    And then I also wanted to note just knowing that the Safe and Thriving Communities Report is a priority of the office but in Public Health and Safety in the next couple weeks we're going to be getting a presentation from New York
  • 00:37:02
    We're going to have to be bringing something forward.
  • 00:37:21
    Hopefully that captures our ability to support some of those pilots, but it seemed like there was an understanding that
  • 00:37:28
    New York policing project would be doing this and just wanted to know why there wasn't an allocation at least made in the budget to at least be able to support that work since it's such a key piece of implementation of the Safe and Thriving Communities Plan.
• • Todd BarnetteCommissioner of Community Safety
  • 00:37:48
    Chair, Council Member Wonsley.
  • 00:37:51
    I think part, and I think you've heard Amanda Harrington talk about this, that a lot of times her work doesn't always correspond to our budget sequence and processes that we have here in the city.
  • 00:38:06
    One of the things that I think stands out with a lot of the work in this area is that
  • 00:38:16
    I think you've heard Amanda Harrington say this that a lot of the services are there and it's not necessarily Replicating the services, but it's how do we coordinate the services in a comprehensive way We just don't know what that report is going to give us yet and whether there would be funding necessary We just don't know yet because we don't have the report
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 00:38:45
    Just so I wasn't I'm trying to recall the scope of focus in their contract but from my understanding it was their responsibility to develop some new pilots which I get we usually have relegated that to PMI but we do know pilots typically come with some type of budgetary
  • 00:39:03
    allocation.
  • 00:39:04
    So just even, you know, looking at past permits to say maybe $500,000 because, again, investing in nighttime strategies, I don't know what led to the $500,000 similar to if you have $500,000 saying this is at least going towards this, we'll see what might be needed after the report comes forward.
  • 00:39:27
    But, yeah.
  • 00:39:29
    I would just like to see some more proactive just inclusion of the strategies that's being baked into that plan and I'm talking about the Safe and Thriving Communities Plan.
  • 00:39:41
    And that also was my last question but I did want to follow up with Vice Chair Koski and say yes please follow into PHS.
  • 00:39:53
    I believe we're going to have an end of year presentation on the Safety Center.
  • 00:39:58
    because one piece that's also not included in this too is looking at outcomes from the Lake Street Safety Center and how that's going to correlate with the South Minneapolis Community Safety Center.
  • 00:40:08
    So I do know Director Harrington is going to be giving the presentation on how they're prepping for that and would invite you to join that pres- or committee meeting to ask some of those questions to directly offer.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:40:23
    Wonderful, thank you.
  • 00:40:24
    Next I'll recognize Council Member Chaudry.
• • Aurin Chowdhury
  • 00:40:28
    Thank you Madam Chair and thank you Commissioner for your presentation.
  • 00:40:31
    I just have a few questions here.
  • 00:40:33
    One of the things I'll just knock out quick, I had written down prior to my colleagues bringing it to the forefront that same question around the nighttime safety program, where we'll go, what beyond downtown means and how does that just square with programming
  • 00:40:52
    Like warehouse district live before so just noting that for you.
  • 00:40:55
    It's of interest for me as well, and then I did have some questions about the recruitment campaign It just making sure that I have it correct we so far have allocated 1 million dollars previously is that the total amount and
• • Todd BarnetteCommissioner of Community Safety
  • 00:41:16
    Chair, Chuck Tye, Council Member Chaudry, that's my bill, I believe is one million dollars, yes.
• • Aurin Chowdhury
  • 00:41:23
    Awesome.
  • 00:41:23
    And then how much of that one million have we spent to date?
• • Todd BarnetteCommissioner of Community Safety
  • 00:41:29
    I don't know the answer to that.
  • 00:41:34
    Do we know?
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:41:35
    Let's note that for administrative follow-up and let's get an answer.
• • Aurin Chowdhury
  • 00:41:40
    Yeah Great, I think we'll probably want some administrative follow-up on just some of the questions around the campaign and I'm kind of looking at it purely from the standpoint of if like we're putting dollars towards promotion with an end goal of Recruitment and applications.
  • 00:41:56
    We want to make sure that this campaign is effective and getting to that goal and if it's
  • 00:42:02
    showing that it's not as effective as we want it to be then we should make some considerations about allocations and how we're spending especially if we have a significant or perhaps not significant amount of money left from the 1 million that was allocated through federal dollars.
  • 00:42:19
    With the recruitment campaign are we going to with the $500,000 are we going to continue recruiting both for MPD and 911?
• • Todd BarnetteCommissioner of Community Safety
  • 00:42:29
    Chair Chuktai, Council Member Chaudhuri, I don't think that at this time we need to do any increase recruitment other than what we've done in the past for staffing for 9-1-1.
  • 00:42:47
    I really do believe we're in a good place there.
  • 00:42:52
    So I don't think we need to do any additional
  • 00:42:58
    Outward ad campaigns for that.
  • 00:43:00
    What we've done internally is that we have started to
  • 00:43:10
    work with our two new staff members to start telling some of the stories of the work that's being done.
  • 00:43:16
    And so you might see more of that coming out just to put in the forefront of some of the good things that are happening that maybe we don't hear about that often.
  • 00:43:28
    And that, in a way, is also a way to use to recruit more people.
  • 00:43:33
    But right now, 911 is in a good place as far as staffing.
• • Aurin Chowdhury
  • 00:43:39
    Great, so then just to clarify, it's not anticipated that the additional $500,000 would be used for 911, it would be used for MPD?
• • Todd BarnetteCommissioner of Community Safety
  • 00:43:50
    Yes, yes.
• • Aurin Chowdhury
  • 00:43:55
    Do you foresee that changing at all?
• • Todd BarnetteCommissioner of Community Safety
  • 00:43:58
    Chair Chuck Todd, Council Member Chaudry, I think what any changes that we'll see would be using that campaign funding for other staffing that we might see trying to increase outside of MPD just because now we with these two new positions we have the ability to do some of our own
  • 00:44:24
    When it comes to content and video and stuff like that, we're able to take on that work.
  • 00:44:31
    When this contract ended, OCS took on the rest of the campaign.
  • 00:44:43
    I could see a place in which, cross our fingers, in which NPD staffing is high enough that we can move on to a different department within OCS.
  • 00:44:57
    But when we look at the other departments like fire, fire's in a good place.
  • 00:45:02
    When we look at emergency management, I think, you know, they're in a pretty good place.
  • 00:45:09
    And then we look at neighborhood safety.
  • 00:45:10
    You know I've been here I think plenty of times talking about building out their capacity and what they're doing so I could see us If we don't They've ran a good place with our campaign with MPD.
  • 00:45:23
    I could see us moving to other areas Yes
• • Aurin Chowdhury
  • 00:45:27
    Good to know and then do you have off the top of your head or recollect what the goal was in terms of metrics to hit with the 1 million dollars allocated to the Imagine campaign?
• • Todd BarnetteCommissioner of Community Safety
  • 00:45:45
    Chair, Chuck Tye, Council Member Chaudry, I don't remember the goal.
  • 00:45:53
    the specific metric in the goal.
  • 00:45:55
    I know that they've used some metrics to try to see how effective they are, but I don't remember the goal.
• • Aurin Chowdhury
  • 00:46:02
    Okay, well then I'll note that one for administrative follow-up to understand what was the metric goals for the one million dollar initial Imagine campaign because I'll just know if we are purely looking at MPD numbers
  • 00:46:22
    As Councilmember Cashman mentioned in her remarks we saw a net increase of eight positions and so thinking about how one million dollars probably take a little bit away from the one million if we're considering the 9-1-1 recruitment how much we're spending per those eight positions and I kind of wonder is that the is that the right return on investment at this point?
• • Todd BarnetteCommissioner of Community Safety
  • 00:46:49
    I think it's what I said earlier about the net is eight, right?
  • 00:47:00
    But I think we have to look at how many new officers, whether they're sworn or non-sworn officers, came in versus those who separated their employment, meaning the number that either retired or left
  • 00:47:16
    we know that we have at least 130 or so eligible MPD officers that can retire.
  • 00:47:26
    So, I mean, we don't know the, I don't know the number off the top of my head.
• • Aurin Chowdhury
  • 00:47:31
    And I think we should, hopefully that can come in the follow-up too and I think there's like a long-standing history of attrition, natural attrition that occurs within the MPD and I think one of the goals
  • 00:47:44
    that would show that this is effective is that the campaign would kind of help mitigate the net loss and see a net increase with attrition.
  • 00:47:56
    Just a couple more questions on the campaign and then I have one more on the public safety and backfill positions.
  • 00:48:04
    For the campaign itself, could you kind of share like the mechanisms that were used?
  • 00:48:09
    I know that there is advertising kind of looking for details around like is it paid advertising on social media to generate clicks?
  • 00:48:18
    other other types of
• • Todd BarnetteCommissioner of Community Safety
  • 00:48:20
    I know that they've used social media for advertisement.
  • 00:48:27
    I think they've also used print media as well and maybe some billboards.
  • 00:48:35
    We can get you more information on exactly what advertisements they use, but like I said earlier, Council Member Chaudhary,
  • 00:48:45
    There are other things within MPD besides the campaign that I think also has been very helpful in recruitment as well.
• • Aurin Chowdhury
  • 00:48:55
    Yeah, thank you.
  • 00:48:56
    And are the QR codes on the side of the squads a part of it?
  • 00:49:01
    Okay.
  • 00:49:02
    The reason why I ask is precisely why what you mentioned is there are other things that have occurred that may have led to increased applications.
  • 00:49:12
    For example, the historic increases for police salaries through the contract.
  • 00:49:19
    and so I'm kind of thinking like with the campaign if there's data points around social media clicks the number of times that QR code is actually hit like those are data analytics and insights that I would be looking for and for this campaign it's more of a science than an art to understand if it's effective
  • 00:49:39
    I feel like out of today's presentation I don't quite have the understanding on what our return of investment is what our goals were out of the 1 million and so to say that we're going to Allocate another half million without those in place feels pretty difficult because I think we should we could be able to get hard information around it to determine if this is a
  • 00:50:03
    How we want to spend dollars, especially when we have limited amount of dollars this time around Just moving on to the last one because I want to make sure my colleagues have times to ask their questions I'm a little confused by the title of the position public safety aid backfill Could you kind of dive a little bit deeper into what that is?
• • Todd BarnetteCommissioner of Community Safety
  • 00:50:26
    Chair Chuk Chai council member Chaudhuri there were two
  • 00:50:31
    positions in the Office of Community Safety during the 2024 budget markup that were taken out and those two positions were in our communications department.
  • 00:50:46
    Those two positions were back filled with public safety aid dollars during that budget process.
  • 00:50:55
    So, what we propose for 2025 budget is that we fund those two positions in the mayor's budget.
  • 00:51:09
    Because they were taken in 2024.
• • Aurin Chowdhury
  • 00:51:12
    Right, understood.
  • 00:51:13
    So that would be perhaps one of the strategic communications coordinator or the communications project manager roles?
  • 00:51:19
    Yes.
  • 00:51:20
    Okay, great.
  • 00:51:21
    Those are my questions.
  • 00:51:22
    Thank you, Commissioner.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:51:25
    Thank you Councilmember Choudry.
  • 00:51:27
    Next I'll recognize Councilmember Rainville and then we've got three more members after that.
• • Michael Rainville
  • 00:51:31
    Alright.
  • 00:51:33
    Thank you, Commissioner, for the presentation.
  • 00:51:36
    I'm just wondering, I have a recruitment question as well.
  • 00:51:39
    I understand how many recruits we've gotten onto the force and comparing that to the attrition.
  • 00:51:48
    I understand how that number eight came up.
  • 00:51:51
    But I'm really curious as to the CSO recruitment.
  • 00:51:53
    When I go to the events, I just see that program as growing.
  • 00:51:57
    Could you speak to that briefly, please?
• • Todd BarnetteCommissioner of Community Safety
  • 00:52:00
    Chair Chuck Tai, Council Member Rainville, I don't know the numbers off the top of my head for that, but that particular program has brought a lot of diversity for our force.
  • 00:52:14
    I know that.
  • 00:52:17
    Boy, when you hear Chief O'Hara talk about it, about the program, he just, I mean, that's one of those really positive recruitment tools for his department.
  • 00:52:31
    And so I think they've had a lot of success in that area.
  • 00:52:34
    Of course, we can get you those numbers if you need them.
• • Michael Rainville
  • 00:52:40
    I don't need them, but I think the rest of the Council should understand how successful that CSO program is, and that it's a long-term recruitment strategy.
• • Todd BarnetteCommissioner of Community Safety
  • 00:52:48
    Yes.
• • Michael Rainville
  • 00:52:49
    That you cannot identify a return on investment immediately with that.
• • Todd BarnetteCommissioner of Community Safety
  • 00:52:53
    That is true.
  • 00:52:54
    Thank you.
• • Michael Rainville
  • 00:52:55
    One last question.
  • 00:52:56
    How is the relationship building going with the county?
  • 00:52:59
    You know, obviously the county has more resources both financially and staff-wise than we do to do this non-arm public safety, this new way of keeping people safe.
  • 00:53:10
    How is that relationship building going?
• • Todd BarnetteCommissioner of Community Safety
  • 00:53:13
    Chair Chuktai, Councilmember Rainville,
  • 00:53:18
    I think there's a couple of different areas when we talk about the relationship with the county.
  • 00:53:24
    I think if you separate it with the work specifically on the community safety ecosystem and the partnerships and relationships that Amanda Harrington are doing, I would say
  • 00:53:42
    with safe communities.
  • 00:53:46
    I think that's going well in those discussions, especially around contract providers that we have the same, we're using the same ones and so we've had this individual approach to community safety by these contracts and what can we do to make sure we're not duplicating services and what can we do to make sure that we're maximizing
  • 00:54:12
    Those contracts in a way that both the county and the city has a benefit for that.
  • 00:54:19
    So I think that's going well I think that at a different level as far as when we look at
  • 00:54:29
    Emergency Management and how are those relationships going with the county.
  • 00:54:34
    We have a new director that starts today in Emergency Management but all of those relationships I think have improved and I think we're doing a better job at coordinating especially around planned events.
  • 00:54:49
    We continue to talk
  • 00:54:51
    about how we're addressing different things and I think the lines of communication both with emergency management I think are going very well and with Amanda Harrington.
  • 00:55:06
    Hopefully that answers your question.
• • Michael Rainville
  • 00:55:08
    Yes it does.
  • 00:55:09
    The other point I'm trying to make is that as you develop these community safety centers in conjunction with the 3rd Precinct or the Lake Street Safety Center, the services provided are coming from the county.
  • 00:55:21
    Most of those services are coming from the county.
  • 00:55:23
    So how are we going to be able to fulfill the need for those services?
• • Todd BarnetteCommissioner of Community Safety
  • 00:55:29
    and Chair Chuck Tai, Council Member Rainville.
  • 00:55:34
    I think a lot of that work is what Amanda, Director Amanda Harrington's been doing as she's been building out there, building out the Lake Street Safety Center and talking with different folks and
  • 00:55:49
    I can tell you one of the exciting things about her work is that there's not been a lack of folks saying that they would like to participate.
  • 00:56:01
    I think when we look at this
  • 00:56:06
    System and I think a lot of the questions is what will work for those residents there and Are we using the right data points to collect data?
  • 00:56:17
    Are we evaluating the effectiveness of what's happening?
  • 00:56:20
    So I think you know as we move along those are the important things with how our relationships are going with the county and also with just those individual organizations that we contract with that the county doesn't and
• • Michael Rainville
  • 00:56:36
    Thank you.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:56:39
    Thank you Councilmember.
  • 00:56:40
    Next I will recognize Council President Payne.
• • Elliott Payne
  • 00:56:44
    Thank you Vice President.
  • 00:56:46
    My question is around the settlement agreement and consent decree and specifically around implementation and so I know we have an implementation unit in the Attorney's Office.
  • 00:56:58
    Council, and
  • 00:57:21
    Council, City Council,
  • 00:57:40
    From transitioning to no settlement agreement to a fully functioning implementation unit, where should those roles actually sit from your perspective?
• • Todd BarnetteCommissioner of Community Safety
  • 00:57:53
    Chair Chuck Taib, Council President Payne, that is the work that's currently being done internally.
  • 00:58:00
    We're having those discussions.
  • 00:58:03
    I think what you see is that, and to your point, we can't wait for
  • 00:58:11
    the consent decree to be completed and then just all of a sudden turn on the switch and have that work come over to the Office of Community Safety.
  • 00:58:23
    So I think what you've seen is the contract with Danny Murphy has moved over to OCS.
  • 00:58:30
    Internally, we are meeting with the implementation team from NPD and
  • 00:58:38
    with the City Attorney's Office.
  • 00:58:42
    So we are really on track to be in a place where there's a deadline here and our responsibility is way up at the beginning to know whether or not we're going to meet that deadline.
  • 00:58:59
    If we're not going to meet the deadline, what is it that we need?
  • 00:59:03
    And so those are the things that we're working on internally so that
  • 00:59:09
    that compliance work and those terms of that agreement are met.
  • 00:59:15
    It's a very aggressive timeline, but I think internally we're really starting to move in that direction of OCS starting to monitor and lead that work.
• • Elliott Payne
  • 00:59:29
    I think maybe myself, you, maybe the city attorney, maybe even the civil rights director should get into a room and talk through some of those specifics because the timeline that we're operating under right now is getting our budget amendments done and I want to make sure that as we go into next year we have the right balance and needs for implementation.
  • 00:59:50
    And then a follow-up question which is more as an administrative follow-up building on some of the questions that Councilmember Chaudry had asked.
  • 00:59:59
    I'm curious which agency we're working with when it comes to our recruiting campaign and for that agency I'd like to see the creative brief that initiated the campaign and any most recent traffic report.
  • 01:00:12
    So that's industry lingo for like where are they putting their media by.
• • Todd BarnetteCommissioner of Community Safety
  • 01:00:19
    Chair, Chuck Tag, Council President Payne, I believe the media, the campaign contract was with Adventure and so we can get that information for you.
• • Elliott Payne
  • 01:00:33
    And if possible, I'd also be interested in a meeting with that agency.
• • Todd BarnetteCommissioner of Community Safety
  • 01:00:40
    Yes, the reason why I was pausing was more along the lines of I think that contract has expired, but
  • 01:00:50
    we still have contacts with the representatives.
• • Elliott Payne
  • 01:00:52
    If they're interested in another half million dollars of money, I would be interested in meeting with that agency.
• • Todd BarnetteCommissioner of Community Safety
  • 01:00:59
    Chair Chuktai, Council President Payne, the campaign, this campaign is moved under OCS, not with the ad agency anymore, so it's totally with us.
  • 01:01:14
    They have
  • 01:01:15
    I've been very generous with advising us where needed but I believe either the contract has expired or it will expire soon.
• • Elliott Payne
  • 01:01:29
    I'm assuming that it would be unwise of us if we were to spend another half million dollars on a campaign that we'd want to RFP it out to a brand new advertising agency that has no background.
  • 01:01:40
    So I'm assuming that they're currently seeking new business on the order of $500,000 and they would be absolutely interested in hearing from their potential client.
• • Todd BarnetteCommissioner of Community Safety
  • 01:01:51
    Chair, Chuck Tai, Council President Payne, I don't believe we're gonna
  • 01:01:56
    A lot of this money that we've used has been for placing ads.
  • 01:02:02
    We, as part of that contract, we have all of the content that they produced.
  • 01:02:10
    So now it's just us using that along with any new things that we produce ourselves.
  • 01:02:18
    If that helps you with where we're at.
• • Elliott Payne
  • 01:02:21
    Then I'd be happy to meet with whoever is amongst our staff that is placing those ads.
  • 01:02:26
    Yes.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:02:30
    Next I'll recognize Councilmember Osman.
• • Jamal Osman
  • 01:02:33
    Thank you, Madam Vice President.
  • 01:02:36
    Thank you, Commissioner, for that presentation.
  • 01:02:37
    First of all, I'm glad to hear that you are fully staffed.
  • 01:02:41
    So that is really good to note that.
  • 01:02:47
    What is your, speaking of hot spots, I don't know how we define hot spots, I would say if we define it the way I think we have been defined which is homicide and shootings and things like that then I have few hot spots in my ward and we have not had any
  • 01:03:09
    crime prevention programs or alternative policing as you go in there or there's no plan, there's no strategy.
  • 01:03:18
    I will name a few things and I'm sure, I don't have the data front of me, but there have been times of shootings and people losing their lives and we have memorial shrines still hanging in those areas as we speak.
  • 01:03:35
    My question to you is, I believe you have met Ventura Village.
  • 01:03:49
    What is it called?
  • 01:03:51
    There's a group of people, a coalition, a group of people, a coalition that has been advocating on Chaco and Franklin issue.
  • 01:03:58
    We had many challenges, many shootings in that area.
  • 01:04:02
    What's your safety strategy on that?
  • 01:04:05
    and do you plan to bring any alternative policing on any Minneapolis us or crime prevention groups at that location as we have it on Lake Street because it's much needed and also
  • 01:04:23
    18 in Nicollet or 19 in Nicollet.
  • 01:04:26
    As you drive right now, there are some challenges.
  • 01:04:29
    Businesses are struggling, of course, but there's a situation of public safety that people are dealing with and safety concerns.
  • 01:04:38
    And I will consider those places as challenging places for our city.
  • 01:04:43
    Also, the same question, what's your strategy
  • 01:04:46
    Safety strategy dealing with that and do you have any plans for any of those locations to place this resources in city Minneapolis if not Or if so, I would love to work with you To get those because I think they will be super effective in that area.
• • Todd BarnetteCommissioner of Community Safety
  • 01:05:07
    Thank you commissioner Thank you chair Chuktay council member Osmond I think you know that
  • 01:05:16
    With the leadership of Chief O'Hara, they've tried to be very innovative in their response especially to violent crime with the resources that they have.
  • 01:05:30
    You've seen him respond differently months ago with the carjackings or robberies in which he's basically said all hands on deck
  • 01:05:46
    It looks like there's a spree of things going on in this particular area and it has saturated that area with law enforcement and that's all over the city of Minneapolis.
  • 01:05:59
    I think you saw a similar response or curfew here downtown.
  • 01:06:07
    So I think as far as MPD is concerned in the type of violent crimes, I think that they're doing a good job with their responses that they're able to have.
  • 01:06:19
    When we look at alternatives or non-sworn staff within MPD, as you know, we have social workers there, we have crime prevention specialists, and this is in all of our departments.
  • 01:06:41
    As far as a response, one of the things that we're doing
  • 01:06:46
    as we are looking at our alternatives and responses is how do we respond?
  • 01:06:55
    not just to a particular ward but how are we responding overall in the city of Minneapolis and being able to have our contracts with our providers to not just say hey we have a contract with you but to be more strategic in what we do like for instance when we talk about hot spots
  • 01:07:20
    looking at that the crime that we see really starts to increase let's say from 9 p.m. to 2 a.m. making sure that we have those folks there at those hours and not just have them go during the daytime so changing that way of responding going forward we're really looking at how can we have a more comprehensive plan going forward at our responses so
  • 01:07:47
    that we're responding to those hotspots no matter what area there are in the city that we know the resources that we have to provide in each section of the city.
  • 01:08:00
    One of the things that I think is important as we move along to strategies in 2025 is that report from NYU with the access and gap analysis as we look at how we're deploying our services and can we do it better.
  • 01:08:18
    So hopefully that answers the majority of your question.
• • Jamal Osman
  • 01:08:23
    Thank you.
  • 01:08:24
    I just wanted to, the alternative police, you know, for example, the teams that are wearing oranges that are working around some areas in our city are very effective in my opinion because I have some in Cedar Riverside and Cedar Lake Street and Broadway, different areas.
  • 01:08:43
    What can we do to have those teams here at those locations?
  • 01:08:47
    Is there anything that our office can do to help you bring that team in there?
• • Todd BarnetteCommissioner of Community Safety
  • 01:08:56
    Chair Chuck Tye, Council Member Osman, I don't know if there's anything specific that you can do but I think as we move along and looking at a more broader comprehensive plan in building out these things just
  • 01:09:14
    You know Amanda Harrington has been very open with her time and being able to provide updates to any council member that asked her.
  • 01:09:23
    You can stay current that way.
  • 01:09:25
    Also, I think that as we move forward you'll see through some of the presentations what's happening with this work.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:09:37
    Thank you.
  • 01:09:39
    Council Member Osman, I'll also note that we will have a presentation from the Neighborhood Safety Department later this week.
  • 01:09:45
    Okay.
  • 01:09:45
    And it might be worth- I thought this was the Neighborhood Safety Department.
  • 01:09:48
    Office of Community Safety today and then the Neighborhood Safety Department within will also be returning.
  • 01:09:54
    So it might be worth just asking them directly as well and then we'll work with you on potential additional budgetary
  • 01:10:03
    pieces, too, as we... All right, and next I will recognize Councilmember Wonsley.
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 01:10:17
    I did want to pitch for Councilmember Osman.
  • 01:10:23
    I believe Councilmember Cashman is bringing forward a legislative directive to the Public Health and Safety Committee that I think is going to be very informative for the questions that you're raising.
  • 01:10:32
    I think a number of us has been
  • 01:10:34
    is asking for
  • 01:10:53
    you know information to those exact questions and the geographies in which these resources are being you know targeted so I would encourage you to look at our agenda and connect with Councilmember Cashman if there's some things that you would like to maybe have be added to that legislative directive but I did want to pitch that's coming up because we've had this conversation for quite some time now.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:11:19
    Wonderful, and then I just had a couple of quick questions for you, hopefully, as a part of the response that you'll give the administrative follow-up on the recruitment campaign.
  • 01:11:32
    I think it'd be really helpful if you also included some information in helping us understand
  • 01:11:36
    the different tools of recruitment like lateral hires and what the efficacy of lateral hires has been compared to those joining the force through other mechanisms.
  • 01:11:51
    And then I think it'd be helpful to understand what the impact of increased applications has been.
  • 01:11:57
    Applications have gone up, that is really excellent news, and is that resulting in a larger class of recruits?
  • 01:12:04
    and then I think it would also be helpful to just understand why this initial investment was actually made in the Human Resources Department and it's now being moved into the Office of Community Safety so it would just be helpful to understand some of the thought
  • 01:12:22
    process or decision-making behind that.
  • 01:12:24
    And it sounded like perhaps in response to the question Council President Payne raised that perhaps the recruitment campaign is moving more in-house rather than being contracted out.
  • 01:12:37
    And so what's the methodology behind that same $500,000 number if a lot of that work is actually happening in-house and not being contracted out?
  • 01:12:48
    So I think all of those pieces of information would be really helpful.
  • 01:12:52
    And then the question I'm hoping you might be able to speak to right now is I see the backfill for two of the communications positions within the department.
  • 01:13:02
    There's also a communications director within the Office of Community Safety.
  • 01:13:05
    So I'm trying to understand
  • 01:13:08
    where there are redundancies within our entire enterprise.
  • 01:13:12
    And this is an area of focus that often comes up as we have departments present their budgets.
  • 01:13:19
    We have an entire communications department that is staffed with 13 FTEs, so can you help us understand why they cannot be an effective tool in helping get some of those positive stories about what we're doing out?
• • Todd BarnetteCommissioner of Community Safety
  • 01:13:34
    Chair Chuktay, just one thing going back to the campaign real quick.
  • 01:13:41
    That contract was with HR when I got here.
  • 01:13:45
    We knew that contract was expiring at some point and that we needed to continue the campaign and it just made sense when we're looking at public safety that it be with the Office of Community Safety.
  • 01:13:56
    So I think that's what you'll get in your response but at least you have some of that foundation.
  • 01:14:06
    Real, I think shortly, capacity is the issue when it comes to the communications department and where we are.
  • 01:14:16
    So, we have five departments under the Office of Community Safety.
  • 01:14:22
    And when you look at MPD in particular, that is a constant
  • 01:14:29
    media machine, right?
  • 01:14:31
    And I say that because they are data requests that have to be filled.
  • 01:14:36
    They are media requests for information that are being filled.
  • 01:14:43
    they're operating basically 24-7 with communications and trying to get out information as quickly as possible and that is a struggle for them without some of the, even with
  • 01:15:01
    some of the communication folks that they have there presently, right?
  • 01:15:05
    I mean, so there are two sworn staff members there for communications at MPD and we continue to supplement them in every way that we can.
  • 01:15:15
    And so that's just one department.
  • 01:15:19
    When you look at the other four departments under OCS, there are no true communication folks for those departments.
  • 01:15:29
    We're working, like when you look at fire, we work with fire in particular, we're lucky to have folks there who are able to take care of those data requests, they're able to get information out,
  • 01:15:48
    and they're doing it, they did it well before OCS but now we're helping them on doing that.
  • 01:16:02
    911, Neighborhood Safety, Emergency Management also have no people to do their media at all.
  • 01:16:09
    So when you look at the enterprise, the city as a whole, you look at the communications department, we would be in line to get those things done.
  • 01:16:20
    And a lot of our responses are more immediate responses that folks need, but at the same time,
  • 01:16:30
    We're working on better relationships with the community, being more transparent with what we do and having greater control over that with the folks that we have.
  • 01:16:43
    And so they do, I think I had a list of things that they do with just our print and digital content and trying to keep our webpage
  • 01:16:53
    Up to date and you know, we have to go through a process to get that done through the city We don't have that direct access like we would like and so it's a lot of Work for our folks to support not only the Office of Community Safety, but also the five departments under us
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:17:15
    Thank you very much.
  • 01:17:16
    With that we have wrapped up discussion and questions related to your presentation.
  • 01:17:20
    Thank you so much for coming to present your 2025 budget.
  • 01:17:23
    I'll ask the clerks to file that presentation.
  • 01:17:26
    Thank you again.
  • 01:17:27
    And with that we will now have a presentation from the Emergency Management Department and I believe I will be inviting Lori Burns to join us and begin.
  • 01:17:53
    Welcome.
• • SPEAKER_13
  • 01:17:54
    Thank you.
  • 01:17:54
    Good morning, Chair Committee members.
  • 01:17:58
    I'm Lori Burns and I am the outgoing Interim Director for Emergency Management.
  • 01:18:14
    Emergency Management's mission statement is shown above our organizational chart.
  • 01:18:19
    Our work focuses on how we can prevent, mitigate against, prepare for, respond to and recover from complex incidents.
  • 01:18:28
    Complex incidents include what we commonly refer to as disasters,
  • 01:18:32
    such as tornadoes and other wind storms that may cause widespread damage and or where we were we are working with multiple jurisdictional partners to accomplish our mission emergency management partners with other city departments as well as other local state and federal emergency management entities nonprofit and private sectors
  • 01:19:00
    Our program is based on the National Fire Protection Association's 1600 standard.
  • 01:19:06
    That's a standard on emergency management and also the continuity of operations program.
  • 01:19:11
    As such, the priorities to having a comprehensive emergency management program encompasses the five mission areas to accomplish our department mission.
  • 01:19:21
    While all our mission areas are important, for the purposes of this budget presentation, we focused on three mission areas.
  • 01:19:28
    Preparedness, prevention, and response.
  • 01:19:32
    Overall, we have nine metrics we use to track our performance.
  • 01:19:37
    However, after multiple discussions with the PMI team, we are intentionally focusing on tracking metrics for just a few of the capabilities within these three mission areas.
  • 01:19:47
    The first one that I'll talk about is the watch officer.
  • 01:19:51
    Program.
  • 01:19:52
    Emergency Management provides interagency coordination response service on an ongoing basis through our watch officer capability.
  • 01:20:01
    We have a staff member on call 24 by 7 that monitors threats and hazards and is available to provide support to incident command and field operations.
  • 01:20:11
    Most incidents in the city are within the capabilities of our first responder departments such as fire, police, health,
  • 01:20:20
    and Public Works.
  • 01:20:22
    Emergency Management is more of a second responder in that we are a support to the first responders.
  • 01:20:29
    We are the next call for help and therefore remain in a constant vigilant state of readiness if an incident threatens to or exceeds their capabilities.
  • 01:20:39
    So our objective with this particular capability is really to increase our situational awareness of triggering events across the enterprise in a timely and accurate way and take appropriate action.
  • 01:20:51
    The second one is warning sirens.
  • 01:20:54
    Initially, we plan to focus on the outdoor warning siren system as one of the priority objectives.
  • 01:21:01
    However, after several conversations with the PMI team, we agreed to focus on the public education.
  • 01:21:08
    Unfortunately, I was not able to change this slide before it came through.
  • 01:21:12
    So our public education program engages with the public
  • 01:21:18
    to ensure that they have access to the information they need to understand key hazards and impacts and how to prepare and plan for them.
  • 01:21:27
    The objective is really to support the public to better understand potential hazards and their role in preparing and responding to events.
  • 01:21:36
    When we look at disaster management, we're looking at having that shared responsibility.
  • 01:21:41
    So from individuals and families to local governmental entities as well as nonprofit and private sectors, we all have a part in making sure that we understand how we can prepare for
  • 01:21:55
    and respond to disasters and emergencies.
  • 01:22:03
    The last one is the continuity of operations plans.
  • 01:22:06
    Emergency management manages the city's department-level continuity of operations program.
  • 01:22:13
    Incidents may impact city departments' ability to do business through the loss of critical facilities, personnel or information.
  • 01:22:21
    To plan for this, departments
  • 01:22:23
    have department continuity plans that are reviewed, trained, exercised, and improved annually.
  • 01:22:31
    The objective is to work with the other departments and partners to prevent and minimize impacts to the city in the event of a continuity of operations incident and some examples might be an IT outage or when we had the pandemic.
  • 01:22:47
    Those were two clear examples of when we need to implement the continuity of operations across the enterprise.
  • 01:22:55
    In terms of racial equity impacts,
  • 01:22:59
    While disasters impact people regardless of race, age, gender, or economic status, research has shown that disasters disproportionately affect the most vulnerable members of our communities, especially those that do not have the necessary resources to cope with and recover from such events.
  • 01:23:19
    Emergency management helps support and coordinate the enterprise-wide action taken when disasters and emergencies happen.
  • 01:23:27
    In addition to this, we are also focusing efforts on the following.
  • 01:23:32
    Ensuring we conduct outreach to residents and engage the public on their role in emergency preparedness and response.
  • 01:23:39
    Ensuring we have staff trained
  • 01:23:42
    to respond and or manage incidents that can help minimize impacts of disasters and emergencies for all residents and working with REIB and NCR and other departments that can aid in addressing equity disparities before, during, and after emergencies and disasters.
  • 01:24:05
    In terms of our achievements,
  • 01:24:09
    2023 was a very busy year for emergency management.
  • 01:24:12
    Our key accomplishments include the implementation of the NIMS Reset Training and Exercise Program.
  • 01:24:21
    This program was designed to ensure staff from various departments throughout the city are equipped with the training and skills to ensure a collaborative, coordinated response to countless incidents.
  • 01:24:38
    The Enterprise-Wide Emergency Management Training.
  • 01:24:41
    We rolled out an online city-wide emergency management training for all city employees.
  • 01:24:47
    The training is designed to help employees understand the basics of emergency management, continuity of operations, and personal emergency preparedness.
  • 01:24:57
    Increased community outreach and education.
  • 01:25:01
    We increased our efforts on
  • 01:25:03
    Community Outreach and Education.
  • 01:25:05
    We attended and or had a table to share information on emergency preparedness at numerous community events such as Community Corrections Conference, the Youth Day Resource Fair honoring our youth celebration, Juneteenth, Somali Independence Day, Sister Cities, just to name a few.
  • 01:25:22
    The intent is to increase emergency management visibility within our communities and provide outreach and education to residents and emergency and disaster preparedness in response.
  • 01:25:36
    We also, in terms of our completion of our 2020 AAR items that EM is responsible for, so we're very pleased and satisfied with the work that we've done because it was a huge undertaking in terms of looking at all the different AAR findings and the continuous improvement items that the enterprise needed to work on and
  • 01:26:04
    In terms of our 2024 achievements, we marked the completion of the NIMS reset project with an integrated emergency management course in Emmitsburg, Maryland in March.
  • 01:26:17
    This project was a huge undertaking to implement the NIMS training and exercises to city employees and executive leadership and then to have it culminate into a successful learning experience that tested our capabilities was extremely rewarding.
  • 01:26:33
    Additionally, as a result of the collaborative hard work and camaraderie, the participants demonstrated IEMC.
  • 01:26:41
    It has served as the catalyst for the city to continue this momentum through ongoing training and exercise at the enterprise-wide level.
  • 01:26:51
    The intent is to capitalize on building muscle memory on the NEM structure and processes across the enterprise and impart the knowledge and skills to others who are not able to attend IEMC.
  • 01:27:03
    We plan to share a final report on the NIMS research project at the COW meeting later this year.
  • 01:27:09
    We have now transitioned to NIMS maintenance project.
  • 01:27:13
    This project is meant to sustain and supplement the training and exercises from the NIMS reset project, ensuring we have staff through the city trained and ready to respond to incidents.
  • 01:27:29
    In terms of some of our risks and lessons learned,
  • 01:27:33
    Emergency Management is currently heavily dependent on grant funding for staffing.
  • 01:27:38
    Of our nine and a half FTEs, six and a half FTEs are funded with grant dollars.
  • 01:27:43
    These federal flow-through grants are subject to changes from the federal government by way of either grant guidance changes or federal legislation changes and also at the state level in terms of any changes that they choose to make in administering the grants.
  • 01:28:02
    Another risk is related to citywide turnover, staff turnover.
  • 01:28:07
    While this issue is not unique to Minneapolis, when there is a high turnover, this means institutional knowledge is lost that could complicate the response to complex incidents.
  • 01:28:19
    Some of the lessons learned from last year include going through the rigorous NIMS reset project, which we were on track for that.
  • 01:28:27
    We learned how critical it is to sustain ongoing training and exercises to strengthen enterprise-wide partnerships and the incident support team, ensuring the city can respond to incidents in a seamless and coordinated manner.
  • 01:28:49
    Another lesson learned, when disasters occur, access to institutional knowledge equips new city personnel involved in the incident support system with guidance and best practices.
  • 01:29:01
    This ensures an efficient, coordinated incident response with minimal delay in response efforts.
  • 01:29:08
    Incorporating time for ongoing continuous improvement plans is essential rather than a desired goal Sometimes it may feel like it's very cumbersome to kind of go through this entire continuous improvement process
  • 01:29:20
    However, ineffective processes, plans, or procedures can drain resources, making the incident support system work harder to fulfill its mission during disasters and emergencies.
  • 01:29:31
    By testing, exercising, and improving our plans during low stress periods, we can achieve better outcomes and build confidence among the personnel through gradual improvement.
  • 01:29:42
    And lastly, with high staff turnover in the city,
  • 01:29:46
    Emergency Management will need to continue to build relationships with city departments to ensure the success of maintaining a robust incident support team within the Emergency Center Emergency Operations Center when it is activated.
  • 01:30:05
    Our program and staffing summary.
  • 01:30:08
    In 2023 our actuals were higher due to the NIMS reset project.
  • 01:30:12
    In 2024, we were approved for $220,000 for ongoing expenses in the budget proposal for the NIMS maintenance project.
  • 01:30:23
    And in 2025, Emergency Management does not have any budget proposals on the table nor do we have any funds from the American Rescue Plan Act.
  • 01:30:37
    Responding to the changes in the budget from 2024 to 2025, overall department expenses increased by 3.3%, primarily driven by increased personnel costs and internal service charges.
  • 01:30:57
    These increases are occurring across the enterprise and were to be expected.
  • 01:31:02
    Personnel expenses increased by 3.2%,
  • 01:31:06
    Salaries increased by 2.9% and French increased by 4.2%.
  • 01:31:11
    This increase is in line with expected COLA and STEP increases.
  • 01:31:17
    Internal service charges increased by 14%.
  • 01:31:21
    And here are some of the increases.
  • 01:31:23
    For Fleet, it was 9%.
  • 01:31:25
    For IT, 52%.
  • 01:31:27
    Rent, 11%.
  • 01:31:29
    And workers' comp, 12%.
  • 01:31:32
    The internal changes roll up under contractual services and operating costs in OpenGov.
  • 01:31:41
    Other vacancies and staffing.
  • 01:31:44
    Again, emergency management remains at a steady nine and a half FTEs for staffing.
  • 01:31:50
    Last year we had one vacancy, the Emergency Management Director position, and as of today, woo-hoo, that vacancy has been filled by Rachel Sarah.
  • 01:32:03
    We do not have any vacancy savings from this.
  • 01:32:06
    The interim director positions was taken from the general funds.
  • 01:32:09
    The director position cannot be used from grant funds.
  • 01:32:15
    In terms of year-end, over and under budget, Emergency Management has spent 56.3% of its budget year-to-date.
  • 01:32:24
    We will be $90,000 over budget due to this money being earmarked from the approved NIMS reset project and we're just waiting on Finance to be able to move that money over to our budget.
  • 01:32:36
    We anticipate that we'll spend our normal budget plus this amount by year-end.
  • 01:32:47
    The next couple of slides are to provide program updates associated with some of our objectives and activities Emergency Management has an annual operating budget of a little over 2.1 million dollars nearly half of which is funded or financed with federal grants
  • 01:33:12
    In 2025 and 2026 there is a slight increase expected respectively.
  • 01:33:18
    The emergency management function to accomplish our department's mission is distributed across the enterprise.
  • 01:33:25
    Nine and a half FTEs are not sufficient though to operate all the capabilities listed in the capabilities dashboard.
  • 01:33:33
    Instead we rely on our city department partners to assign personnel
  • 01:33:38
    to serve as emergency operations staff and damage assessment teams to support communications and public education efforts, to name a few.
  • 01:33:47
    We have and maintain strong relationships with other emergency management organizations, including the City of St. Paul, Hennepin County, Ramsey County, the state, and FEMA, as well as maintain connections in the community.
  • 01:34:03
    In terms of the capabilities dashboard, the Emergency Management Program is stable and functional.
  • 01:34:09
    While we are only focusing on three of our capabilities in our work with the PMI team, we want to share with you the full picture of what we evaluate as part of our Emergency Management Program.
  • 01:34:22
    We have nine capabilities that we track and most of them fall under one or more mission areas.
  • 01:34:28
    For each of these nine capabilities,
  • 01:34:30
    We have plans in place related to the program and our capabilities, and all are performing as we expected.
  • 01:34:38
    On a regular basis, we test the performance of these plans through drills, exercises, and also during actual incidents.
  • 01:34:50
    Terms of our discussion items are related to outcomes in Minneapolis.
  • 01:34:56
    In collaboration with the PI team, again, we identified three program areas within our department to focus our efforts to collect data that will help tell the story on the great work Emergency Management does to accomplish our mission and support the enterprise and the community.
  • 01:35:13
    Although much of our work is qualitative in nature and does not yield significant quantitative data to align with budget proposals, we will diligently provide meaningful information to support this effort.
  • 01:35:30
    Our Watch Officer program is a 24 by 7 monitoring program.
  • 01:35:35
    The intent of this program is to get ahead of incidents and take practical, proactive actions in response to the potential or actual threats or hazards.
  • 01:35:45
    Most incidents that occur within the city are managed within the first responders capabilities and therefore will not be reflected in our data collection.
  • 01:35:54
    However, it is important to emphasize that while the WATCH Officer program metrics may not generate large quantitative data associated with or aligned with future budget proposals for emergency management, the criticality of having such a program is essential to the effective coordination of interagency support and resource management on our worst days.
  • 01:36:22
    So the objective again is to increase situational awareness of triggering events across the enterprise in a timely and accurate way and take appropriate action.
  • 01:36:32
    The activities that will commence with this metric is to operate the watch officer program in accordance with our national standards and our internal plans.
  • 01:36:43
    to review watch officer operations for lessons learned, corrective action, and continuous improvement, and also to offer to our internal staff monthly watch officer training to sustain our capabilities in this area.
  • 01:36:58
    Our outcome is a percentage of identified improvement plan items executed in a timely manner.
  • 01:37:07
    So after each incident that we have, we do an internal after action review.
  • 01:37:12
    so that we continue to increase the robustness of our watch officer capability.
  • 01:37:20
    Our performance metrics include the percentage of tour gain events that the watch officer responds to within 15 minutes of notification of an event.
  • 01:37:34
    and also the percentage of triggers where the watch officer summarizes the incident summary information and takes action within 30 minutes.
  • 01:37:42
    So right now those are our metrics that we're using for the watch officer program.
  • 01:37:48
    For public education, our public education program is still relatively new, but it is gaining traction as we continue to enhance our outreach efforts and community engagement with the public.
  • 01:38:00
    ReadyCamp is part of the public education program.
  • 01:38:03
    and the ReadyCamp is an emergency preparedness class for residents to learn about potential hazards and their role in preparing for and responding to events.
  • 01:38:13
    The objective is to support the public in understanding the potential hazards and their role in preparing and responding to events.
  • 01:38:22
    And the activities include offering ReadyCamp quarterly to residents to inform them on disasters and emergencies and their role in emergency preparedness.
  • 01:38:32
    and the second one is attending community events to raise the public awareness of disaster and emergency preparedness and also emergency management's role as part of community safety and within the enterprise.
  • 01:38:50
    The two outcomes that we have for the public education is the percentage of ReadyCamp attendees who indicate emergency management is a trusted source of information and the percentage of learners who are satisfied with ReadyCamp and we'll find that out by doing surveys and having follow-up interviews with the ReadyCamp individuals as well as looking at what actions they have taken once they've attended our ReadyCamp class.
  • 01:39:21
    Continuity of Operations, the continuity operations program is part of the prevention mission area.
  • 01:39:26
    The COOP program is designed to assist city departments to be more prepared to respond in the event of a continuity incident.
  • 01:39:34
    The objective is to work with other city departments and partners to prevent and minimize impacts to the city in the event that there is a continuity of operations incident and the activities include
  • 01:39:48
    coordinate and work with city departments to train and exercise continuity plans annually and to work with city departments on continuity plans, review and improve plans based on lessons learned through the training and exercise.
  • 01:40:04
    The performance metric is the percentage of continuity plans that have actually been validated through this exercise.
  • 01:40:12
    Again, these are the three capabilities that we will do a deeper dive with PMI to improve how we communicate our story to the broader audience including residents moving into the year 2025.
  • 01:40:23
    We expect to identify which metrics were effective and which were not in conveying who we are and what we offer to the enterprise and the community.
  • 01:40:34
    We look forward to continuing to collaborate with PMI to enhance our metrics for future budget proposals.
  • 01:40:41
    The lessons learned from implementing the metrics framework for these capabilities will help us improve other aspects of our program.
  • 01:40:49
    And this concludes my presentation.
  • 01:40:52
    I stand for any questions.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:40:54
    Thank you, Interim Director Burns, for your presentation.
  • 01:40:57
    Outgoing.
  • 01:40:58
    Outgoing.
  • 01:40:59
    Until this afternoon.
• • 01:41:01
    The operative word.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:41:02
    We're really grateful for your service.
  • 01:41:04
    Thank you so much.
  • 01:41:05
    Colleagues, are there any questions or comments related to the Emergency Management Budget presentation?
  • 01:41:11
    I'll recognize Councilmember Rainville.
• • Michael Rainville
  • 01:41:13
    Thank you, Chair.
  • 01:41:15
    Outgoing Director Burns, I just want to take the time to thank you.
  • 01:41:19
    I know this was an incredible challenge for you.
  • 01:41:22
    You filled in very well, and thank you so much for giving that extra effort to all of our employees in Minneapolis, but I want to recognize you for that extra effort, so thank you.
  • 01:41:34
    I appreciate it, Council Member Ringville.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:41:37
    Thank you, and next I'll recognize Council Member Pita.
• • Katie Cashman
  • 01:41:40
    Thank you, Chair.
  • 01:41:40
    I also wanted to say thank you so much, outgoing Director Burns, for your service and for stepping up and doing this work while we were looking for someone to take it on in a more permanent role.
  • 01:41:54
    You've done a phenomenal job.
  • 01:41:55
    Thank you for
  • 01:41:56
    keeping the department together and also continuing to do the work that this body has asked of the department over the years.
  • 01:42:04
    This presentation was just wonderful and it really did capture a lot of the holes that I feel like people have had at the time that I've been here, like some of the things that
  • 01:42:16
    So we
  • 01:42:31
    We appreciate that they like starting stuff, don't worry, it's all good.
  • 01:42:36
    But thank you so much for the work and continue.
  • 01:42:41
    I think it's just like right there and I'm hoping that the new person sees all the work that
  • 01:42:47
    this team has put into just creating opportunities where anything happens in this city, we're ready, right?
  • 01:42:55
    And if we're not ready, we know how to get ready and we know how to communicate to the entire city, not just amongst ourselves on how we're reacting and responding to, we've had some major incidents in the city of Minneapolis.
  • 01:43:11
    So again, thank you so much.
• • SPEAKER_13
  • 01:43:13
    Thank you.
  • 01:43:15
    I would be immensely remiss if I did not acknowledge the work that Interim Director Brian Gorman did during this transition process as well, as well as the entire team.
  • 01:43:32
    I'm very proud of what we've been able to accomplish during a very
  • 01:43:41
    I'm trying to think of the right word, so I'm just going to move from that one and just say, through this difficult transitional period, I think that would be an honest and fair way to say that.
  • 01:43:51
    No transition is easy, and so there are a lot of bumps in the road, but I feel like we accomplished that together as a team, and so kudos and congratulations to my entire team and all the support that we've had from OCS, executive leadership, and all the other partners that we have within the enterprise.
  • 01:44:08
    Thank you.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:44:09
    Thank you very much.
  • 01:44:10
    With that we have reached the end of discussion and question and answer for your presentation.
• • Emily Koski
  • 01:44:15
    Thank you for coming to present that on your last day as the Acting Director.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:44:19
    So I'll ask the clerks to file that presentation.
  • 01:44:23
    Okay, thank you very much.
  • 01:44:24
    Wonderful.
  • 01:44:24
    And with that we are going to welcome our last and extensive presentation for today.
  • 01:44:30
    which is from the Public Works Department and I will invite the Director of Public Works Tim Sexton to begin that presentation.
  • 01:44:39
    Welcome.
• • Tim Sexton
  • 01:44:41
    Thank you.
  • 01:44:41
    Good morning Chair Tungtai and Council Members.
  • 01:44:44
    Yeah, thanks for the opportunity to share our proposed 2025 budget for Public Works as it's getting loaded.
  • 01:44:48
    Thanks.
  • 01:44:50
    So yeah, my name is Tim Sexton.
  • 01:44:52
    Excited to be entering my fifth month here at Public Works and the director role.
  • 01:44:57
    Just want to really recognize how wonderful the team has been helping me get up to speed in this new position.
  • 01:45:03
    Their knowledge, dedication, and passion for our city has really made it a privilege thus far to serve in this role.
  • 01:45:08
    I also want to recognize Public Works Finance Manager Derek Lofgren and our Interim Director of Business Administration Jen Swanson.
  • 01:45:15
    This budget process was also new to them and I'm really grateful for their support and enjoyed learning the process together alongside them, our Deputy Director and City Engineer and all of our Division Directors who took on a larger role in this year's budgeting effort than in previous years.
  • 01:45:32
    I also want to acknowledge the work of Jenny Hager
  • 01:45:36
    and her team for developing and presenting the Public Works Capital Budget presentation on October 10th.
  • 01:45:43
    Public Works is a large department that works independently, coordinates across internal divisions and city departments, and collaborates externally with business, non-profits, academia, and community to deliver services to residents and visitors of our wonderful city.
  • 01:45:57
    While our business lines are diverse, our staff's dedication, professionalism, and integrity are really consistent throughout the department.
  • 01:46:06
    and every year there are lots of exciting and impactful projects led by public works on bridges, tunnels, bike facilities, green storm water infrastructure, street painting like our wonderful Lynx street painting recently and others alongside the critical infrastructure and services like water, trash collection, storm water management.
  • 01:46:26
    Whether seen or unseen, our work only gets done because of the dedicated staff and public works.
  • 01:46:31
    Our people are the greatest asset we have.
  • 01:46:34
    They keep the city running, quite literally, and we are grateful for the often unseen work they do.
  • 01:46:39
    These are hard jobs that not everyone can do, especially the work of our field staff.
  • 01:46:45
    It's not easy keeping the streets clear of snow and debris, collecting trash and recycling, ensuring human waste flows safely to treatment centers, and keeping award-winning water flowing through our taps.
  • 01:46:55
    Our dedicated Public Works staff routinely works nights and weekends in the heat, rain, and cold.
  • 01:47:01
    They crawl through small pipes, hang over tall bridges, and do whatever it takes to keep our city functioning.
  • 01:47:07
    They are also the face of the city for many residents who have more interactions with field staff than they do with many of us.
  • 01:47:16
    So, finally, I just want to thank and appreciate the recognition from all of you for Public Works staff.
  • 01:47:24
    with Public Works Week, Drinking Water Week, National Planners Month, and through several retirements.
  • 01:47:29
    Now, to get to the meat of our discussion today.
  • 01:47:33
    So when we talk about Public Works, we're really talking about almost a quarter of the city's workforce.
  • 01:47:39
    We all share the mission of providing critical city services that contribute to public safety and neighborhood vitality.
  • 01:47:45
    This slide gives a high-level overview of the department structure, showing where our more than 1,000 staff are located across nine divisions that provide a range of core city services.
  • 01:47:55
    The Deputy Director and City Engineer role is currently filled by Brian Dodds, the Deputy Director for Business Administration role is currently vacant after Brett Gelley moved to the DCOO role, and Jennifer Swanson has taken on many other responsibilities on an interim basis.
  • 01:48:13
    We've grouped divisions here by business lines.
  • 01:48:17
    This might be a new chart for you.
  • 01:48:19
    By administration, utilities, and transportation.
  • 01:48:23
    Obviously staff clearly collaborated across lines and divisions.
  • 01:48:27
    But a little bit of an overview of how we've grouped this.
  • 01:48:29
    Administration largely supports department-wide or agency-wide services.
  • 01:48:34
    Mostly funded through, oh yeah, that's in the green.
  • 01:48:38
    In orange, our utility business lines, mostly funded through utility fees and their work, must be tied to utility services.
  • 01:48:45
    And finally, the transportation business line in blue includes all things transportation, from the Transportation Action Plan to building bridges and plowing snow.
  • 01:48:58
    We continue to use performance measures to identify strategic priorities and track performance.
  • 01:49:03
    Our approach to performance measurement and management will continue to evolve as we sharpen our focus on data-driven decision-making and begin work on strategic planning.
  • 01:49:11
    Outcomes Minneapolis will be a useful tool in that evolution.
  • 01:49:15
    This is the first year we have attempted to break down our priority objectives by business line instead of division.
  • 01:49:20
    This change has helped us reduce our priority objectives from over 100 to the 15 on this slide, which I recognize are too small to read very easily, and I'm not going to walk through all of them, but you have them hopefully in your slides.
  • 01:49:36
    That reduction I think is really a demonstration of an area where less can be more.
  • 01:49:39
    If everything is important, then nothing is.
  • 01:49:42
    We'll continue refining our strategic and priority objectives in the years to come, ensuring we are using our limited resources as efficiently and effectively as possible to meet the needs of our customers.
  • 01:49:52
    Again, I won't go through all of these, but our overall focus really is continuing to provide safe, reliable and efficient services in all areas.
  • 01:50:00
    We continue to identify ways to ensure equity, safety and climate action frame all of our work, and these areas will be further highlighted in future years.
  • 01:50:11
    In terms of maximizing our existing budgets, we continue to leverage opportunities to reduce costs, maximize existing assets like equipment and vehicles, and leverage external funding from the state, federal government, philanthropy, and others.
  • 01:50:26
    Examples include strategically contracting work to consultants to meet timelines or when we lack internal capacity or specific expertise.
  • 01:50:34
    Prioritizing work based on risk to focus on issues with the highest risk to reward ratio where risks are more likely or where they would have significant impacts if realized.
  • 01:50:45
    For example, our fats, oil, and grease program where we follow a regular cleaning schedule but utilize hotspot maps to show where backups are more likely and clean them more regularly.
  • 01:50:56
    We routinely partner with external stakeholders.
  • 01:51:00
    We strive to maximize federal funding.
  • 01:51:03
    We use hybrid construction protocols that allow city crews to perform construction on federally funded projects to keep our teams busy, build internal expertise, and reduce project costs.
  • 01:51:14
    We share equipment and space across divisions, like the Pacific Solid Waste Recovery site for transfer of debris picked up on right-of-way.
  • 01:51:22
    And we map and edit maintenance routing to include new infrastructure designs into existing activities.
  • 01:51:29
    For example, as we add new infrastructure and complete street designs, we continually edit our maintenance routes to maximize efficiency.
  • 01:51:37
    Just a very few of the highlights from the past two years, they showcase specific ways that Public Works is maximizing external funding, planning for a safe, equitable, and sustainable future, and prioritizing equity in our operations and investments.
  • 01:51:54
    We completed the $55 million-plus central city stormwater tunnel.
  • 01:52:01
    Following the record-breaking winter of 22-23, we filled more than 9,000 potholes.
  • 01:52:09
    We successfully were awarded $3.3 million for water-led service line replacements.
  • 01:52:17
    And even though we just signed the contract in mid-October, we already have or will replace approximately 350 private lead service lines this construction season alone.
  • 01:52:30
    We added our 147th EV to the city fleet.
  • 01:52:34
    That's up 47 vehicles after earlier this summer when we were at number 100.
  • 01:52:41
    We've developed a new traffic calming application program that this year received over 1,200 new applications.
  • 01:52:48
    We developed new plans to guide our work and future investments including the racial equity framework for transportation, the 22-23 vision zero action plan, updated the ADA transition plan for public works, and completed the winter walking and biking study.
  • 01:53:07
    Getting close to the end here.
  • 01:53:09
    We successfully applied for multiple external funding grants, including $25 million from Safe Streets for All, another $5 million for flood mitigation, $4 million for the North Transfer Station, a $25,000 grant from Bloomberg for asphalt art on the South Falwell Safe Routes to School project,
  • 01:53:29
    We rolled out the As You Go Minneapolis Mode Shift campaign and subsequent events to promote and share the benefits of walking, biking, and using transit.
  • 01:53:39
    This is really a key strategy to achieve some of our city's mode shift goals and successfully advocated and were granted legislative authority for the traffic safety camera pilot.
  • 01:53:52
    In terms of risks, I think these are similar to past years and really overall risks relate to the ongoing need to do more with less.
  • 01:54:00
    and the associated risks to people, budget, and the condition of our infrastructure.
  • 01:54:05
    We continue to see a gradual erosion of what we can do with the resources we have.
  • 01:54:11
    Several things contribute to that erosion, including inflation and rising costs, particularly for labor, materials, and utility costs.
  • 01:54:19
    Staffing, we're experiencing burnout, difficulty filling certain positions, especially those in our non-capital business line.
  • 01:54:28
    Supply chain issues for projects,
  • 01:54:31
    For example, EVs and certified mechanics, copper wire theft, over 10 miles of copper wire stolen in 2024.
  • 01:54:44
    Probably a new risk this year is really partner agency coordination and how we cost participate with some of our state and county partners.
  • 01:54:55
    They were successful in getting a lot more funding for transportation.
  • 01:54:58
    and through the legislature, those projects are welcome in the city, but we have to cost participate on those, and that has the potential to disrupt our capital improvement program.
  • 01:55:10
    We can talk more about that if interested.
  • 01:55:13
    Overall aging infrastructure, you know, condition of our streets and alleys continue to deteriorate, and more substantial fixes cost more, right, and they have more construction impacts on people and businesses.
  • 01:55:24
    Again, sort of the more with less.
  • 01:55:26
    We know it's a good thing that more is expected of our projects.
  • 01:55:30
    From community engagement to making sure that our projects are accessible, all of our infrastructure is accessible, to request for green infrastructure and making new opportunities for natural solutions to stormwater.
  • 01:55:44
    and then space pressure.
  • 01:55:45
    So lots of loss and pressure on areas for handling things like sweeping material, seal coat chips, debris, other things.
  • 01:55:53
    It's getting harder and harder to find space that we can use for those types of uses within the city.
  • 01:56:05
    So, program and staffing summary.
  • 01:56:08
    So the 2024 Public Works Operating Budget is currently $440 million in 2024.
  • 01:56:14
    It's proposed to increase by 4.5% to $459 million in 2025.
  • 01:56:21
    We'll discuss those specific increases more in later slides.
  • 01:56:24
    We currently have 133 vacancies across all of our general fund, internal service fund, and utility funded positions.
  • 01:56:32
    The proposed 14 new positions for 2025 are a combination of six administrative ads and eight new positions proposed by the mayor in his budget.
  • 01:56:46
    So, focusing on the general fund staffing vacancies, of the 133 vacant positions, 39 are paid through the general fund and are shown here along with the length of time they've been open.
  • 01:57:03
    The 22 positions vacant 0 to 6 months are largely service worker 1 and 2 classification where there tends to be more turnover.
  • 01:57:11
    As mentioned earlier, these are hard jobs and they're not for everyone so we expect attrition.
  • 01:57:18
    We do group hiring also so vacancies will go up before the class begins, go down once the new class is hired, and slowly build again as people decide to move on to other jobs.
  • 01:57:32
    will post the next class of service workers again in early December.
  • 01:57:36
    The positions open 7 to 12 months tend to be difficult to fill technical roles where there can be challenges because there are limited applicants in the job pool or we have difficulty competing with salaries.
  • 01:57:48
    The positions, the almost 15 positions open 12 months are a mix of difficult to fill positions or positions open because somebody left the role temporarily to serve in a job detail elsewhere in the department.
  • 01:58:04
    Public Works is the biggest city user of job details to help people get higher level job experience and to grow internal talent.
  • 01:58:15
    Alright, so some program updates.
  • 01:58:17
    starting with the General Fund Division Administration.
  • 01:58:23
    The Administration Division has 16 people divided into four business units who lead training, safety, finance, and HR functions for the department along with several department-wide initiatives like intergovernmental relations and outcomes Minneapolis reporting.
  • 01:58:38
    Jen Swanson serves as the Interim Director of Business Administration and directs the division.
  • 01:58:44
    Pictures above showcase recent participants in the Public Works Training Program.
  • 01:58:48
    In 2023, 35 service worker trainees started and 24 completed the program this year.
  • 01:58:55
    To give you some sense of how many we hire and then how many stay to complete the training program.
  • 01:59:03
    Admin administration has prioritized work on improving worker safety and increasing workforce diversity, especially increasing the number of black, indigenous, and people of color or BIPOC and female job applicants.
  • 01:59:16
    The graph on the right shows steady progress being made towards a target of at least 40% BIPOC employees to better reflect overall city demographics.
  • 01:59:26
    A $570,000 approximately decrease is proposed for 2025 for the Administration Division.
  • 01:59:34
    These changes come from a decrease in one-time money for Warehouse District Live, which as we discussed previously has been shifted over to OCS for 2025.
  • 01:59:45
    The balance comes, and then the remaining balance comes from the cost of living salary increases for staff.
  • 01:59:53
    There are no new budget proposals for the Admin Division in 2025 Transportation, Maintenance, and Repair This division has 222 people divided into 5 business units
  • 02:00:08
    Transportation Maintenance and Repair, TMR, performs winter and summer maintenance like street sweeping and snow plowing.
  • 02:00:14
    They run a construction crew that builds and repairs streets, sidewalks, alleys, and bridges.
  • 02:00:19
    And they are also frequent collaborators with other divisions, departments, and external agency partners when operation support is needed within the city.
  • 02:00:26
    Joe Pomman serves as the Transportation Maintenance and Repair Division Director.
  • 02:00:32
    So TMNR focuses on maintenance and repair of transportation infrastructure throughout the city and evaluates their performance based on reactive work in response to complaints and concerns and proactive or preventative maintenance to cost-effectively extend the life of transportation assets through efforts like pavement resurfacing.
  • 02:00:51
    One example is response time to pothole complaints as shown on the graph to the right.
  • 02:00:56
    The blue bars show the number of complaints reported through 311 and the green line shows the percent of complaints result within 12 days.
  • 02:01:03
    Resolution means that the pothole complaint was either filled by city staff or referred to the proper jurisdiction of the roadway.
  • 02:01:12
    So Hennepin County, MnDOT, others.
  • 02:01:15
    The $1.3 million increase in 2025 is largely for cost of living adjustments and no new budget proposals are included for TM&R.
  • 02:01:27
    Transportation Operations and Mobility is a legacy budget label for the Public Works Division better known as Traffic and Parking Services and the General Fund portion of our Transportation Engineering and Design Division.
  • 02:01:41
    TPS runs the sign shop, or Transportation and Parking Services, runs the sign shop and impound lots, builds and installs signal boxes, manages city parking lots and meters and parking policy, and leads our traffic and mobility management efforts.
  • 02:01:55
    TPS has 117 divisions divided into four business units.
  • 02:01:59
    Alan Klugman serves as division director.
  • 02:02:03
    So TPS is really about helping people move freely around the city regardless of mode,
  • 02:02:09
    If you want to park at ramps, use a scooter, walk, or ride a bike.
  • 02:02:13
    TPS works to ensure streets are lit, signage is present and clear, and streets are open for plowing and sweeping to ensure all users can navigate the city.
  • 02:02:21
    They also lead our annual traffic calming application process to support calming measures throughout the city.
  • 02:02:27
    Their performance measures largely focus on our assets and ensuring these assets function as intended.
  • 02:02:34
    For example, the graph on the right shows progress towards our goal for 100% of intersections to comply with modern ADA standards, including ramps.
  • 02:02:43
    The proposed $3.9 million of new funding is largely from cost of living wage and contractual increases.
  • 02:02:53
    And the new budget proposal is for $355,000 for EV charging funded through the Climate Legacy Initiative.
  • 02:03:04
    For 2025, we've also identified $100,000 from our Active Mobility General Fund to be applied towards neighborhood traffic calming.
  • 02:03:12
    We've been consistent each year with that base funding level.
  • 02:03:16
    So, the EV charging proposal in the mayor's budget.
  • 02:03:22
    This is really about what we can do to promote EVs that have a lower cost of ownership than gas vehicles and other benefits like less noise and air pollution.
  • 02:03:33
    Lack of access to reliable and convenient EV chargers is a known barrier to more people buying EVs, and when left to the private sector, EV chargers are less likely to focus on neighborhoods with lower income or a high percent of multifamily dwellings.
  • 02:03:47
    This funding will apply an equity lens that includes these locations.
  • 02:03:51
    Our budget request includes $354,000 to buy new EV chargers and maintain existing chargers throughout the city.
  • 02:04:00
    The funding would come from the Climate Legacy Initiative to help us maintain existing chargers in good working order through in-house staff or external service level agreements and help us fund a 20% match for federal grants for new EV chargers to offset the costs Transportation, Planning, Design and Engineering Another legacy budget heading that combines two separate divisions currently known as Transportation Planning and Programming or TPP
  • 02:04:30
    Transportation Engineering and Design, TED operating staff, again the others were in the previous budget item, who work on unbuilt capital projects and the TED lab that researches pavements and materials
  • 02:04:48
    TPP has 25 positions divided into two units who develop transportation policies and programs, build the capital improvement plan, coordinate public engagement on projects, and lead early project design to ensure project designs align with department goals and priorities.
  • 02:05:06
    Jenny Hager serves as TPP Division Director.
  • 02:05:09
    Transportation Engineering and Design, or TED,
  • 02:05:13
    leads and reviews project design and engineering, manages construction projects, and handles right-of-way and property management issues.
  • 02:05:21
    TED has 95 positions divided into five business units.
  • 02:05:25
    Don Elwood serves as division director.
  • 02:05:31
    So, TPP and TED divisions really combine to plan and design our transportation system.
  • 02:05:37
    This group is the one that created the Transportation Action Plan, the racial equity framework for transportation, Vision Zero, and the Vision Zero plans to guide our transportation investments.
  • 02:05:47
    Their performance measures demonstrate the division's commitment to safety and equity for our transportation system.
  • 02:05:53
    The graph on the right shows the continued challenges to reducing fatal crashes in the city through 2023.
  • 02:05:59
    Fatal crashes are preventable and we still have a long ways to go to reach our goal of zero.
  • 02:06:05
    The budget proposal increases in 2025 for cost of living and contract increases and the $1,025,000 traffic safety camera pilot, which I'll talk about just briefly here.
  • 02:06:24
    So, I think folks have heard about the traffic safety camera pilot.
  • 02:06:27
    It was approved by the 2024 state legislature to allow the city to pilot cameras for speed and red light running.
  • 02:06:35
    The Traffic Safety Cameras are one strategy identified in our Vision Zero plan to get to zero traffic deaths in the city.
  • 02:06:41
    The proposal is for $1 million approximately in 2025 to begin the pilot in August 2025 with five cameras.
  • 02:06:48
    This is the earliest we're allowed by statute to begin the pilot.
  • 02:06:52
    The $1.9 million in 2026 would allow
  • 02:06:57
    would fund expansion of the cameras and cover a full year of the pilot operations compared to only five months in 2025.
  • 02:07:02
    We're starting late.
  • 02:07:04
    It's going to cost less money to operate next year.
  • 02:07:08
    Funding would also support contracts for camera installations and operations, community engagement, location analysis, signage, and a database system.
  • 02:07:16
    We're still working on specific staffing needs, which is why it shows as zero, and expect it could include traffic control agents and regulatory services.
  • 02:07:23
    Costs are expected to decrease in the future with program administration costs being at least partially paid by fees collected through the program.
  • 02:07:33
    A full program framework will be shared at CNI on October 24th.
  • 02:07:38
    Utilities and internal services, the next business line.
  • 02:07:43
    So Fleet Services, starting with Fleet Services, has 73 positions divided into four business units who purchase and maintain over 2,000 vehicles and large equipment for all departments within the city, from sedans to snowplows and stupor trucks.
  • 02:07:57
    Chris Royston is the Fleet Services Division Director.
  • 02:08:02
    Fleet Services works closely with departments to match them with equipment that cost-effectively meets their needs.
  • 02:08:07
    In recent years, conversion to cleaner electric vehicles has been a priority.
  • 02:08:11
    The team has been working on the puzzle of fitting the right vehicle model to meet the customer needs and charging availability at different city facilities.
  • 02:08:19
    Preventative maintenance is a focus to keep vehicles operating cleanly and efficiently to reduce costs and pollution.
  • 02:08:24
    The graph on the right shows progress on increasing the number of EVs in the city fleet as a percent of all vehicles.
  • 02:08:30
    currently at 8%, but you can see it's quite a bit of progress over the last two to three years.
  • 02:08:36
    Nothing new is being proposed as the budget increase for 2025 is only to cover higher costs for vehicle repairs and replacements, parts, and labor.
  • 02:08:48
    Solid waste and recycling.
  • 02:08:49
    This division includes 150 positions divided into three business units who help keep our city clean.
  • 02:08:56
    The teams pick up residential trash, recycling, organics, and yard waste for half the city and contracts with MRI, a private waste hauler for the other half.
  • 02:09:07
    They also support encampment cleanups and graffiti removal.
  • 02:09:11
    Excited to announce that Nick Gerald has started as the new director on October 14th.
  • 02:09:18
    Nick brings over 32 years of solid waste experience, including most recently serving as the city's general foreman for solid waste and recycling for the last seven years.
  • 02:09:31
    So, Solid Waste and Recycling focuses again on keeping City clean for people and the environment.
  • 02:09:35
    They partner with Minneapolis Health, Hennepin County, and private haulers to work towards a zero waste future that includes waste reduction, reuse, and recycling.
  • 02:09:44
    The graph on the right shows a slight reduction in garbage or waste that cannot be reused or recycled since 2019.
  • 02:09:53
    While the City is still considered a national leader in waste reduction and recycling, more work is needed to make meaningful and lasting reductions.
  • 02:10:00
    The Mayor's 2025-26 budget proposals for solid waste and recycling show an overall planned reduction in 2025 due to shifting capital expenses out until 2026, a couple of
  • 02:10:14
    Packer trucks will have some new technology that will be better tested in 2026.
  • 02:10:18
    The proposal is to delay purchasing those in 2025.
  • 02:10:22
    And also reducing our contractual services budget to better align with lower than expected funding in recent years.
  • 02:10:29
    Or spending, excuse me, in recent years.
  • 02:10:32
    Two new items are introduced to help identify what a clean city fee could look like that expands the city's role in waste collection and reduction and funding to support restoring public and private property after encampments are cleared.
  • 02:10:50
    The $300,000 proposal includes approximately $100,000 to evaluate the potential design of a Clean Cities funding program and $200,000 to provide direct support to community-based organizations to pilot innovative waste reduction strategies that are community-driven.
  • 02:11:09
    There will be a focus on areas with a higher percent of renters, lower incomes, or more BIPOC residents where participation in waste reduction has traditionally been lower.
  • 02:11:21
    The second proposal from Solid Waste and Recycling relates to unsheltered homeless response site cleanup.
  • 02:11:30
    Public Works participates in these cleanups by clearing physical and human waste after people have left the site and fenced the property.
  • 02:11:38
    They frequently interact with people leaving the encampments and help move their valuables in a respectful way.
  • 02:11:44
    The approximately $180,000 proposal has two parts.
  • 02:11:50
    but first ongoing funds for one FTE or one quarter of four people's time from solid waste and recycling to support cleanups.
  • 02:12:01
    The second part of the proposal is one time funding to support cleanup materials and equipment like fencing.
  • 02:12:14
    So I'm realizing nine divisions are really like nine departments
  • 02:12:19
    The surface water and sewer division has 132 positions that build and maintain the sewer and stormwater infrastructure, including gray assets like pipes and green infrastructure like engineered vegetated medians and boulevards that detain water before it enters the stormwater system.
  • 02:12:42
    All work in surface waters and sewers is funded by utility fees.
  • 02:12:46
    The budget's divided into sanitary and sewer, with their position total split between the two.
  • 02:12:51
    We'll talk about sewers first.
  • 02:12:52
    This is the water from faucets and toilets that must be treated at Metropolitan Council facilities.
  • 02:12:57
    We'll then talk about stormwater, the water that runs off the roofs, parking lots, and streets that's largely untreated.
  • 02:13:03
    Angie Kraft serves as Division Director for Surface Water and Sewers.
  • 02:13:09
    So, starting with sanitary.
  • 02:13:11
    Sanitary sewers are aging, and the Division uses a data-driven asset management approach to guide rehabilitation and replacement of sewer mains owned by the City.
  • 02:13:19
    System performance is regulated at the federal, state, and local levels, and backup leaks or failures can have health or environmental impacts.
  • 02:13:27
    The graph is a true representation of combined sewer overflows, which has consistently been zero between 2019 and 2023.
  • 02:13:36
    As shown, the national average for comparable cities is 18 overflows per year.
  • 02:13:43
    We've consistently been a national leader in that area.
  • 02:13:47
    So the higher budget amounts for 2025 and 26 are driven by Met Council, who we need to pay to treat our water.
  • 02:13:53
    While their annual rate increases are normally in the 5% range, this year they've increased the rate 8.2% for 2025.
  • 02:14:02
    Rate increases have a significant impact on this fund as they account for 70%
  • 02:14:05
    of our operating expenses.
  • 02:14:10
    Stormwater is next as part of surface water and sewers.
  • 02:14:13
    This is the other fund they direct.
  • 02:14:16
    The group takes actions and invests in research to reduce water pollution through design solutions like engineered green water, green storm water, infrastructure, trash booms, and other natural solutions like vegetation management to clean water before it enters water bodies.
  • 02:14:34
    Stormwater funds, again, used to operate and maintain and improve our storm sewers.
  • 02:14:38
    The state recently required additional measures to comply with a federal EPA National Pollution Discharge Elimination, or NPDES, permit that created the need for additional staff and resources.
  • 02:14:50
    For example, this year's compliance report alone was over 270 pages long.
  • 02:14:56
    The graph to the right shows our progress using best management practices to remove phosphorus from stormwater.
  • 02:15:01
    Phosphorus contributes to algae blooms that harms wildlife and can make our lakes and streams unswimmable.
  • 02:15:07
    From 2019 to 2023, we built BMPs capable of removing over 130 pounds of phosphorus per year.
  • 02:15:15
    The additional funding proposed in the Mayor's budget will be used for new positions in 2025 and 2026 to comply with new permit requirements and improve resilience to climate change due to more frequent large rainfall events that can overwhelm our stormwater system and contribute to flooding.
  • 02:15:36
    In terms of the proposal itself, this is really being driven largely by new permit requirements.
  • 02:15:42
    at the federal level.
  • 02:15:44
    The other positions that we have included here will expand our capacity to reduce flooding and improve resilience to more frequent heavy rainfalls due to climate change and help us successfully design and maintain green stormwater infrastructure to help detain stormwater and be desirable to neighbors.
  • 02:16:04
    when properly maintained.
  • 02:16:07
    The added capacity will also help us pursue more state and federal grants like the recent $5 million grant from the MPCA to reduce flooding in the Cleveland neighborhood.
  • 02:16:18
    Moving on to water treatment and distribution services.
  • 02:16:23
    Water is funded through utility bills to ensure the city has clean water to drink and fire systems have adequate flow and pressure for public safety needs.
  • 02:16:30
    The 200 people in water are divided into four business units who build and maintain water infrastructure throughout the city and operate the water treatment plant for the city.
  • 02:16:39
    The division includes a diverse mix of field, operating, and technical staff who ensure we have some of the most affordable, cleanest, and best tasting water in the country.
  • 02:16:48
    Annika Bankston is the Water Treatment and Distribution Services Division Director.
  • 02:16:57
    Water's focus is on operating safe and secure drinking water systems for the city.
  • 02:17:02
    Much like other areas in public works, water is also dealing with the need to renew aging infrastructure, in the case of water mains, while still keeping rates affordable.
  • 02:17:11
    Being an effective steward of public resources means that we continue to thoughtfully invest in our water system to ensure long-term performance without overburdening ratepayers.
  • 02:17:20
    The graph shows miles of water line renewals each year since 2019.
  • 02:17:25
    This progress comes from increased emphasis on cleaning and lining to extend the life of existing assets
  • 02:17:31
    based on our condition assessment from higher budget amounts for water main renewals using a mix of revenue and bond funds.
  • 02:17:39
    Water mains are owned and maintained by the city and water service lines.
  • 02:17:42
    The pipe that runs from the city water main in the street to the property's water meter are privately owned.
  • 02:17:49
    Our budget proposal for 2025 and 26 includes one new position along with cost of living increases.
  • 02:17:59
    Again, this is largely being driven much like on the storm water side by federal regulation, the need to add a staff person.
  • 02:18:09
    New federal regulation for lead and copper includes increased requirements for the replacement of lead service lines.
  • 02:18:15
    For example, in Minneapolis the number of private service lines replaced annually is expected to increase five to ten times in future years.
  • 02:18:25
    We propose adding one new position to collaborate with property owners and provide a point of contact with the City for lead service line replacements done by contractors to help people access the $3.3 million in state grant funding.
  • 02:18:40
    The position will help coordinate inspections, work with contractors, and follow up with customer outreach with property owners.
  • 02:18:50
    Staff will help manage contracts and coordinate required inspections by city staff to make sure the work is compliant with requirements so property owners don't get stuck with unexpected costs.
  • 02:19:03
    Finally, here's a summary of our 2025-2026 budget proposals for all of Public Works.
  • 02:19:09
    Total amount for 2025 is $2.8 million and $3.7 million in 2026.
  • 02:19:15
    The Zero Waste Planning and EV Charging are proposed to come from the General Fund through the Climate Legacy Initiative Thank you for your attention, stand for questions
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 02:19:29
    Thank you for your presentation, Director.
  • 02:19:32
    Colleagues, are there any questions or comments related to the Public Works Departmental presentation?
  • 02:19:38
    Director, I'll warn you, there are a lot of members in queue and I'm sure that more will be added as we continue.
  • 02:19:45
    So with that, I will start by recognizing Councilmember Palmisano.
• • Linea Palmisano
  • 02:19:51
    Thank you Madam Chair.
  • 02:19:53
    Since Public Works has over a thousand of our employees, I, like many of you, have a lot of things I'd like to ask.
  • 02:19:59
    So how much time do we have for this meeting?
  • 02:20:01
    I see all the people in queue.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 02:20:04
    We are going to continue this meeting until we lose quorum.
  • 02:20:09
    We have the Administration Enterprise Oversight Committee is set to begin at 1.30.
  • 02:20:15
    and we need about 15 minutes in between to be able to turn over the room.
  • 02:20:20
    We have captioners booked until the end of the day today.
  • 02:20:23
    So please go ahead and ask your questions and if we run into any problems then we'll start noting all the questions everyone has and send those over for administrative follow-up.
  • 02:20:34
    Does that sound okay?
  • 02:20:35
    Thank you.
• • Linea Palmisano
  • 02:20:36
    Yeah, well I see over 10 of the leadership team members of Public Works have been here since 10 a.m. and I held my questions and comments from the other much smaller departments to have more time here.
  • 02:20:47
    So I'll try to be brief.
  • 02:20:49
    I'm going to pare down my questions to traffic calming, surface water and sewers, and a quick one about EV charging.
  • 02:20:56
    First Director Sexton, thank you for the hard work of your department.
  • 02:21:01
    By a far margin, the issues I hear about most often are about core city services.
  • 02:21:08
    It's about garbage pickup, potholes, traffic calming, parking, street sweeping, alleys.
  • 02:21:14
    And I know that these aren't flashy things, but they really are a big part of what contributes to the satisfaction or dissatisfaction from our residents.
  • 02:21:22
    your staff do a great job.
  • 02:21:25
    I'm glad to see also front and center on slide four the recognition of priority goals and the integration with Outcomes Minneapolis.
  • 02:21:34
    In this time of budget deficit and always I think embracing evaluation and metrics of our existing programs and goals is how we have a high functioning city.
  • 02:21:46
    And I'd also like to thank the decision made by Public Works to make sure each ward got a traffic calming project this year.
  • 02:21:54
    There are needs all over the city and I appreciate the recognition that each situation is different and that we all need help.
  • 02:22:01
    So my first question is about traffic calming.
  • 02:22:04
    According to Director Klugman's presentation this summer, there will be an anticipated 850 eligible applications for traffic calming in next year's construction season.
  • 02:22:18
    The budgeted spend this year was $500,000.
  • 02:22:22
    Is that the anticipated amount again in the next couple of years?
  • 02:22:29
    I'm not sure.
  • 02:22:30
    I guess I'm just wondering, I know how much interest there is in traffic coming across the city.
  • 02:22:36
    Are we increasing that budget amount over the next couple of years or not?
• • Tim Sexton
  • 02:22:44
    Yes, Chair Tracti, Council Member Palmesano.
  • 02:22:47
    First of all, yes, thank you for the recognition of the folks here.
  • 02:22:50
    It really is a terrific team that does really
  • 02:22:54
    Passionate, dedicated, and work with the utmost integrity, so grateful to be a part of that.
  • 02:23:01
    We do propose maintaining the current base funding, the existing base funding for traffic calming at the moment, but I'm going to give a quick...
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 02:23:13
    In your presentation, Director, you mentioned it was $100,000.
• • Tim Sexton
  • 02:23:16
    Yes, and that is consistent with previous year's funding for traffic calming.
• • Linea Palmisano
  • 02:23:22
    So it won't be changing.
  • 02:23:23
    I do remember Director Klugman had said it would cost $15 million to address all of the eligible issues next year or $7 million annually to address them all, including future applications like by 2028.
  • 02:23:40
    Obviously, these are massive numbers.
  • 02:23:42
    It's not something we can do right now.
  • 02:23:45
    Are there other creative ways that we could deal with this that wouldn't bust our budget?
• • Tim Sexton
  • 02:23:52
    We'd be happy to explore those.
  • 02:23:57
    I think the one bit of clarification which is unfortunate is The previous numbers that we shared this summer have actually are likely to increase because we had higher than expected interest and applications this with this round of funding so that's
  • 02:24:19
    Not the line of questioning you were going towards, but I did want to make that clarification in terms of those previous estimates that were shared.
  • 02:24:26
    I think we're continuously looking for lower cost options, exploring those.
  • 02:24:33
    There have been some pilots we've looked at and will continue to, but I don't, happy to follow up in more detail with you, but don't have a suite of those to share right now.
• • Linea Palmisano
  • 02:24:46
    I'm just wanting to express that there's a lot of interest from people in the community about that particular area and seeing not a large increase in funding for it I think disappoints a lot of our city's residents.
  • 02:25:03
    Another question is about the surface water and sewers FTEs.
  • 02:25:08
    Are these all required, you mentioned a couple times saying permit requirements, or if the FTEs themselves aren't required, are they necessary to meet our own ordinances and our own goals here on the FTEs?
• • Tim Sexton
  • 02:25:26
    Sure, Councilmember Palmesano.
  • 02:25:29
    That is maybe a difficult question to answer in terms of distinguishing between required and necessary.
  • 02:25:38
    I think a portion of those positions are really going to be dedicated to permit compliance and I would argue that those are both necessary and while not required, it will be difficult for us to maintain compliance, is my understanding, without additional staff capacity.
  • 02:25:59
    It also includes some work on climate resilience and flooding that are very important but are not directly tied to the permit.
• • Linea Palmisano
  • 02:26:11
    But they are pretty critical as we all
  • 02:26:13
    work on trying to run a city that's working and high functioning.
  • 02:26:20
    So that was kind of my point.
  • 02:26:22
    These are, some are very necessary and some are absolutely integral to meeting our own standards here.
  • 02:26:30
    The other question is about EV charging stations.
  • 02:26:33
    Do you have a sense, or if not, could we get follow up on what percentage of time are our existing EV charging stations being used?
• • Tim Sexton
  • 02:26:45
    Chair Chuktay, Council Member Palmesano, we can follow up with that.
  • 02:26:50
    I can see if that data is available.
  • 02:26:52
    With the city, yes, we'll follow up with that one.
• • Linea Palmisano
  • 02:26:56
    Thank you.
  • 02:26:58
    I am just curious about how much capacity we would be increasing with these additional stations, though I recognize they're still new and part of it is the perception of availability of them everywhere really helps to increase uptake in the decision on whether or not to get electric vehicles.
• • Tim Sexton
  • 02:27:17
    Yes, so this would be a combination of DC fast chargers that tend to be quite a bit more expensive you know in the range of 150,000 plus for four charging ports but also includes level two chargers that are much less expensive five to ten thousand dollars depending and so this would be a
  • 02:27:43
    a combination, but I think what's important here is the proposal would do two things.
  • 02:27:48
    One, it would make sure that the charges we have already in the city, they work because
  • 02:27:55
    that's really important that we're maintaining those and we can repair them if they're not working so people don't have a negative experience if they've already purchased an EV.
  • 02:28:04
    But then also to leverage federal dollars.
  • 02:28:07
    There's a number of, a lot of billions of dollars of new federal money for EV charging
  • 02:28:13
    that requires a 20% cost share for any of those grants.
  • 02:28:17
    And so this funding would allow us to leverage those federal dollars to add more chargers in the city.
  • 02:28:22
    I don't have an exact number though to answer your specific question of what we would get from the funding, but we would do everything we could to add as many chargers as we can.
• • Linea Palmisano
  • 02:28:32
    No, that's helpful, especially about just leveraging other money to the extent possible.
  • 02:28:38
    Thank you.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 02:28:40
    Thank you, Councilmember.
  • 02:28:41
    Next I'll recognize Councilmember Rainville.
• • Michael Rainville
  • 02:28:44
    Thank you, Chair.
  • 02:28:45
    And thank you, Tim.
  • 02:28:46
    You've done a really great job here in the five months.
  • 02:28:49
    In fact, you're very, very close to being nominated for Rookie of the Year for your performance, so keep up the good work.
  • 02:28:58
    I did want to thank you for all
  • 02:29:01
    for you for all the great staff work and in particular I want to recognize Director Alan Klugman.
  • 02:29:06
    Alan, you've really helped me a lot learn this job and I can't believe, I believe it was Councilmember Palmesano said how many calls she gets for public works issues.
  • 02:29:19
    That's what rings my phone all the time, my email and you know to know that I have
  • 02:29:25
    Thank you.
  • 02:29:28
    Next I'll recognize Councilmember Jenkins.
• • Andrea Jenkins
  • 02:29:51
    Thank you to Chuktai and Mr. Sexton.
  • 02:29:54
    Thank you for that presentation.
  • 02:29:56
    Very thorough and yes, lots of departments within the department.
  • 02:30:03
    So just a couple of them.
  • 02:30:06
    You talked about we have 147 EV vehicles.
  • 02:30:09
    No, that's the goal, right?
  • 02:30:11
    Or we have 147 now.
• • Michael Rainville
  • 02:30:14
    Correct.
• • Andrea Jenkins
  • 02:30:14
    What types of vehicles are they?
  • 02:30:17
    Are they passenger cars or garbage trucks?
  • 02:30:22
    Like what kind of electric vehicles do we have in the fleet thus far?
• • Tim Sexton
  • 02:30:27
    Yeah, Chair Tuktoy, Councilmember Jenkins.
  • 02:30:31
    They're largely a combination of sedans and pickups.
  • 02:30:36
    If you'd like more specific detail about that breakdown, I'd be happy to bring up our Fleet Services Director, Chris Royston.
• • Andrea Jenkins
  • 02:30:43
    Yeah, do we have like the oversized vehicles, have they been constructed and or delivered yet?
• • Tim Sexton
  • 02:30:54
    Why don't I, this would be a good chance for Chris to respond to some of those questions, Chair Tucker, Councilmember Jenkins.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 02:31:01
    Director, if you'll begin by introducing yourself, please.
• • SPEAKER_18
  • 02:31:04
    Sure, good morning everybody.
  • 02:31:06
    I'm Chris Royston, I'm the Director of the Fleet Service Division, Council
  • 02:31:12
    To answer your question, we currently operate a number of sedans in the form of Chevy Bolts, some new
  • 02:31:26
    S.U.V.s and the Trailblazer as well as Ford Lightnings.
  • 02:31:31
    So the way it works, the way it breaks out is that... Ford, which one?
  • 02:31:36
    Ford Lightnings.
  • 02:31:38
    Ford.
• • Andrea Jenkins
  • 02:31:39
    Ford.
• • SPEAKER_18
  • 02:31:40
    Lightning.
• • Andrea Jenkins
  • 02:31:41
    Lightning, okay.
  • 02:31:42
    Lightning.
  • 02:31:43
    Alright.
  • 02:31:43
    Yes.
  • 02:31:43
    I'm not familiar with that vehicle.
  • 02:31:45
    It's a pickup truck?
  • 02:31:46
    Yeah.
  • 02:31:46
    Okay.
• • SPEAKER_18
  • 02:31:46
    Yes, it's the F-Lightning is what its model number is.
  • 02:31:51
    So the way it works is that
  • 02:31:55
    We operate sedans, SUVs, light duty pickup trucks, medium duty trucks, as well as heavy duty trucks.
  • 02:32:06
    From a technology standpoint, EVs exist primarily in the sedans, SUVs, and light duties, if that helps.
  • 02:32:16
    Okay, thank you.
• • Andrea Jenkins
  • 02:32:20
    and then I'm wondering how you you mentioned a project around painting the street and I know that that has been proven to kind of
  • 02:32:36
    to help with heat index effect or something and a lot of, I've been getting a lot of interest from residents in my ward to think about how we can better reflect the sun and subsequent heat island effect and painting the streets is one of them.
  • 02:33:04
    How do we get that?
  • 02:33:06
    process started.
• • Tim Sexton
  • 02:33:07
    How is that?
  • 02:33:13
    Our street painting has largely focused on celebrating our
  • 02:33:20
    should have been WNBA champions last night, the Minnesota Lynx, along with the Timberwolves, but more along with we've done some street painting for celebrations like Pride in the past and traffic calming.
  • 02:33:38
    One of the grants we received was to do some street painting around a school.
  • 02:33:43
    to both sort of celebrate the school and the community, but also, you know, hoping to sort of a creative approach to traffic calming to get to one of Councilmember Palmesano's earlier questions.
  • 02:33:54
    I'm not familiar with us exploring painting for reducing the albedo effect or trying to absorb less of that heat to reduce the heat island impacts, but that's something we can follow up to confirm with you, if that's okay.
• • Andrea Jenkins
  • 02:34:09
    yeah let's follow up on that and I mean it certainly would be celebration but have multi I guess purposes so I would be thrilled to follow up on that and then I guess my last question is about sort of solid waste and cleanup you talked about cleaning up encampments after the fact but a lot of times they create a lot of
  • 02:34:40
    and the City Council.
  • 02:34:52
    How are we approaching
  • 02:34:55
    what might be some ways to discourage dumping at these encampments.
  • 02:35:03
    A lot of people bring their old sofas and mattresses and things to these encampments and you know I know from my 20 plus years of being involved in the City Council that it is really challenging to deal with
  • 02:35:23
    illegal dumping as it were, but are there any strategies and is there some proactive ways to help keep our city clean?
  • 02:35:36
    I've just been getting a lot of comments, complaints about the
  • 02:35:48
    Council Member Jenkins.
• • Tim Sexton
  • 02:36:06
    I might look to our newest Division Director if he wants to come up and add anything about the encampment question about what do we do to sort of reduce the debris and other solid waste issues prior to cleanup.
  • 02:36:21
    And I think your other questions around sort of the clean city, I just wanted to make a quick comment on.
  • 02:36:29
    One is, you know, we are exploring
  • 02:36:34
    what a clean city fee could look like.
  • 02:36:37
    That's one of the proposals here is actually requesting money to look at that.
  • 02:36:42
    More geared towards reducing waste, but I think having that feeability might give us some additional flexibility, but there's a lot of statutory and other
  • 02:36:52
    challenges with that, which is why we're requesting the funding to explore that in real detail.
  • 02:36:59
    The other piece around illegal dumping, I think we've heard that from some of your colleagues and are in conversations right now with regulatory services to understand if there might be an opportunity to collaborate on some of the dumping that happens outside of
  • 02:37:18
    the residential areas where our solid waste and recycling teams focus really just on single family up to smaller multi-family units.
  • 02:37:30
    But the dumping is happening around the city at businesses, at larger apartments and other places and so we hear that.
  • 02:37:36
    We have some challenges in terms of what we're able to do, what we have capacity to do beyond
  • 02:37:41
    that required services that we provide.
  • 02:37:44
    But it's something that we have started conversations between regulatory services to understand if there's what flexibility we might have both for cleaning up but also discouraging dumping.
  • 02:37:57
    Because it's really hard for business owners when they can see
  • 02:38:03
    There's a lot of evidence to suggest who maybe is even doing that, but it's really hard for folks to do anything about that.
  • 02:38:09
    So we're looking at a few areas where we recognize it's a problem.
  • 02:38:12
    I'm going to pass this over to our newest director to maybe mention a little bit more about the encampment piece, though.
• • Andrea Jenkins
  • 02:38:21
    Before you leave, though, I will just note, like, the area 38th and Chicago is a pretty
  • 02:38:29
    Yes, thank you councilmember chair wonderful director welcome if you'll begin by introducing yourself
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 02:38:44
    Good morning or good afternoon.
  • 02:38:45
    My name is Nick Gerald.
  • 02:38:46
    I am the newest director for Solid Waste Recycling Division.
  • 02:38:50
    So, thank you.
  • 02:38:51
    So, Chair Chuck Dye and Council Member Jenkins, around the preventative care and cleanup around homeless camps, right now we have a crew of four people that daily goes out and provides services to the larger camps.
  • 02:39:04
    It's currently approximately 31 active homeless or unsheltered encampments around the city.
  • 02:39:10
    But there's a small handful that are large that create the amount of debris they're describing.
  • 02:39:15
    And we clean those up daily.
  • 02:39:17
    We provide carted service to those unsheltered camps and are cleaning that up as often as we can to prevent large piles and large debris from accumulating out there every day to keep it clean for the residents.
  • 02:39:30
    So that is what we're currently preventing measures that we're doing.
• • Andrea Jenkins
  • 02:39:34
    Thank you, and then I think Director Sexton, you talked about human waste too.
  • 02:39:43
    How are we cleaning that up as well?
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 02:39:48
    Well, we have that, Chair Chuck Dye and Councilmember Jenkins.
  • 02:39:52
    We do have that.
  • 02:39:53
    We are forced to clean that up when we clear an encampment.
  • 02:39:57
    And when we find it at the curb, we are cleaning it up as part of our preventative cleaning and cleaning and care.
• • Andrea Jenkins
  • 02:40:06
    All right.
  • 02:40:08
    Thank you.
  • 02:40:08
    That's all I have.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 02:40:15
    Any further questions, Councilmember?
• • Elliott Payne
  • 02:40:16
    No, that's all I have.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 02:40:17
    Wonderful.
  • 02:40:18
    Thank you.
  • 02:40:18
    Next I'll recognize Council President Payne.
• • Elliott Payne
  • 02:40:21
    Thank you Vice President.
  • 02:40:22
    My question is about our alley paving program and just for context I think I asked this last budget cycle as well.
  • 02:40:29
    I have two alleys in my ward that are unpaved and one of those alleys creates quite a bit of erosion problems for my constituents and so I have a pretty tactical question.
  • 02:40:41
    Does the current amount of money in the capital plan for our alley program
  • 02:40:46
    can that is that sufficient to address the specific alley or do we need to work together to identify a cost estimate and get that included in the plan and not I'll forward you an email from my constituent that has a lot more specifics into that but it's a very very very specific tactical thing that I'm hoping to resolve through the budget process well I don't know that you need to answer anything right here but
• • Tim Sexton
  • 02:41:10
    We'd be happy to follow up.
  • 02:41:13
    It sounds like that's okay with you.
  • 02:41:15
    Yeah, we'll do that.
  • 02:41:16
    Okay.
  • 02:41:16
    Thank you.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 02:41:18
    I know Councilmember Palmisano had similar questions as it related to the capital budget earlier this month as well.
  • 02:41:25
    Wonderful.
  • 02:41:25
    Thank you.
  • 02:41:27
    With that, I will recognize Vice Chair Koski.
• • Emily Koski
  • 02:41:31
    Thank you, Madam Vice President.
  • 02:41:33
    Thank you, Director, for the presentation.
  • 02:41:35
    It's a lot of information to get through, so I appreciate the thorough information and for your entire team to be here.
  • 02:41:44
    It's really incredible to see everybody here together and representing our public works, our many unsung heroes in the city, so I appreciate that.
  • 02:41:54
    I have a question on the administration.
  • 02:41:57
    I think page 13 you talk about the percentage of BIPOC Employees I'm just wondering and this might be for a follow-up what percentage of women I know that that's part of one of your priorities is Increasing the amount of women that are working in our public works Divisions and so I'm just curious if you have that breakdown by by 2019 through 2024 as well
• • Tim Sexton
  • 02:42:24
    Vice Chair Koski, I don't have it available and we will follow up with that.
• • Emily Koski
  • 02:42:36
    Great, that would be wonderful.
  • 02:42:37
    I would just love to understand, we see the goals that you have for our BIPOC
  • 02:42:43
    individuals but would like to see what those goals are for increasing the amount of women.
  • 02:42:48
    I've met several amazing women that work for public works not only in our administration but are out there shoveling snow and are filling our potholes and are plowing and you know some of them have worked for us for over 30 years and I'd love to get the word out there
  • 02:43:08
    to our city residents and more women about that career path and what we can do to increase that.
  • 02:43:15
    The other question that I have is going back to the neighborhood traffic calming program.
  • 02:43:23
    You know, it's noted here as an achievement
  • 02:43:26
    yet the 2025 budget was decreased from last year from the $500,000 that was allocated to the $100,000.
  • 02:43:35
    But in our council priorities there were five council members that had this as one of their top priorities and as you can hear even if council members didn't put it as one of their top priorities it's definitely something that we've recognized as a positive program.
  • 02:43:52
    And so, you know, we want to see an increase from the 500, yet it was decreased.
  • 02:43:57
    And so I think that, you know, I would just be curious to see and understand how was that decision made.
• • Tim Sexton
  • 02:44:07
    Yeah.
  • 02:44:09
    Chuck Chai, Vice Chair Koski.
  • 02:44:14
    That one, as I was reading that, I'm realizing that I need to do a little bit more exploring on that.
  • 02:44:22
    I think if you're amenable to us following up on that, I think it sounds like we're going to have quite a bit of follow-up, but I know that that is a priority for many, if not all, of the council members here, so we'll be sure to add some details and I expect we're very open to additional conversations too.
• • Emily Koski
  • 02:44:37
    Great, because I think my question would be why would we deprioritize or take away funding from a program that we know has been successful.
  • 02:44:46
    This was, in my opinion, and I think about the staff that put this program together and how it has evolved, and I know you weren't here for that evolution and for all of it, but this is such a strong participatory
  • 02:45:03
    type of program and finally I feel like residents are feeling like they are seen and heard with some of the programs that they're looking at and so I think that it's important that we continue these conversations.
  • 02:45:18
    I will say, you know, Council Member Palmisano asked what can we do in light of the fact that as we heard the presentation was over the course of three years it could cost us up to 21 million dollars for this.
  • 02:45:30
    I have started conversations with Senator Dibble and Senator Fateh and I want to make sure that we continue to pull you into those conversations because this is really something that we can highlight that the city of Minneapolis started but I think other cities are going to want to be able to learn from us and learn from the team that created this program and really make sure that we put this on our IGR agenda for this year so that we can
  • 02:45:59
    I'm actually also going to the American Public Works Association conference and I'm on a panel to speak on behalf of this program It will be hard for me
  • 02:46:18
    to tell them that one of our biggest barriers is the fact that we have $100,000 that is allocated when we need $7 million per year, or $21 million.
  • 02:46:29
    And so that is definitely a reality, and I'm sure it's a reality for other cities too, and hence why I think we need to broaden where we're thinking about this funding goes, or really thinking about how we're prioritizing our current budget.
• • Tim Sexton
  • 02:46:44
    Yeah, Chair Tucker, Vice Chair Koski,
  • 02:46:48
    Point taken.
  • 02:46:49
    I just want to acknowledge that.
  • 02:46:51
    I think we do need to follow up, but in the meantime I think it's important that you understand sort of how we got to that number that's included today.
  • 02:47:02
    And so I'm going to ask Derek Lofgren to come up briefly and maybe explain some of that.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 02:47:10
    Welcome if you'll begin by introducing yourself, please.
• • SPEAKER_15
  • 02:47:12
    Yeah.
  • 02:47:12
    Hi.
  • 02:47:13
    My name is Derek Lofgren.
  • 02:47:13
    I'm the Public Works Finance Manager.
  • 02:47:15
    I just wanted to point out we didn't actually lower the traffic calming budget.
  • 02:47:18
    We had $400,000 of one-time money that was added last year.
  • 02:47:22
    So the $100,000 is just back to the baseline that we were at previously without that one-time money.
• • Emily Koski
  • 02:47:29
    thanks for that clarity and you know the difference between ongoing and one-time funding but I still personally feel like we have taken we did not add to at least sustain the funding so to me we just did not prioritize that but I appreciate the
  • 02:47:44
    Thank you.
  • 02:47:46
    And again, thank you so much.
  • 02:47:48
    And as you can see that I'm passionate about this because these are the phone calls that we get.
  • 02:47:53
    These are what residents feel.
  • 02:47:55
    This is the questions that we get all the time.
  • 02:47:58
    And it's not to negate from all of the amazing other work that our Public Works staff are doing every day.
  • 02:48:04
    So, thank you.
• • Tim Sexton
  • 02:48:06
    Chair Chuktah and Vice Chair Koski.
  • 02:48:09
    Yes, and if we don't have things resolved by the time of your presentation, feel free to reach out because we are doing a lot of other things on our projects that have traffic calming benefits that other cities aren't necessarily doing.
  • 02:48:24
    We're really a leader in Complete Streets and Vision Zero and all these other areas that really focus on safety that have those calming benefits even if the standalone traffic calming program
  • 02:48:35
    you know, separate or in addition to the standalone traffic calming program.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 02:48:42
    Wonderful.
  • 02:48:43
    Next I'll recognize Councilmember Vita.
• • Katie Cashman
  • 02:48:45
    Thank you, Chair Chokti.
  • 02:48:48
    Thank you, Director Sexton, for this presentation and thank you to all the Public Works staff.
  • 02:48:55
    So, I started out as a Councilmember in meetings with Public Works staff almost feeling invisible and silent.
  • 02:49:03
    and the last this term this year has been absolutely the opposite for me in my office.
  • 02:49:11
    It has been truly a joy to work with public work staff and to get to the place where I just like
  • 02:49:20
    I just love everyone there.
  • 02:49:21
    I love the responsiveness.
  • 02:49:23
    I love Alan Klugman, and I'm very sad that David Heberholz retired.
  • 02:49:31
    There's just been so much really good work.
  • 02:49:35
    As a council member coming in and understanding that the number one issue in my ward was livability, I knew right away, like, you gotta have a relationship with Public Works.
  • 02:49:44
    You gotta have, like, this understanding of, I need you all to understand what the community is asking me for and to know that it's not me.
  • 02:49:53
    Like, I'm asking this because
  • 02:49:55
    This is what the people of Ward 4 want and I really feel like we've gotten there.
  • 02:50:00
    I really do appreciate all the work that the Public Works Department has been putting into making Ward 4 a better, cleaner, safer place.
  • 02:50:12
    We have unique challenges in Ward 4 and as I said, livability is at the top of that and that includes so many things.
  • 02:50:21
    you know a big issue in North Minneapolis in general is just dumping.
  • 02:50:25
    We get a lot of dumping from first tier suburbs because the things that you pick up in Minneapolis for free they have to pay to pick up.
  • 02:50:33
    So it's a big livability issue in our ward and it's frustrating for people who are trying to do their best to keep it clean and you know you wake up in the morning and this vacant lot across the street from your house just has piles of garbage in it and it's an ongoing thing.
  • 02:50:50
    What I appreciate is Public Works' responsiveness to it, but like Councilmember Jenkins, I'm looking forward to us working on something where we can curb some of the dumping because it's a burden to the businesses.
  • 02:51:05
    The way we pick up trash is different for a commercial property than it is a private property, right?
  • 02:51:11
    And so like businesses experience dumping
  • 02:51:15
    also and they have a price tag that's associated with that and so I've talked to staff in Public Works and we're working on some things so I'm looking forward to figuring out what we can develop and how we can work together to figure out some type of strategies.
  • 02:51:32
    for dumping in the city of Minneapolis.
  • 02:51:35
    Thank you all so much for the lights on Lindale.
  • 02:51:38
    The community really appreciates the new lights down Lindale Avenue.
  • 02:51:45
    Also, we have an area on Lorry and Penn where people just kind of hang out, but they clean up after
  • 02:51:52
    after themselves and they were bringing their own trash bags but they were dumping the trash outside of neighboring homes garbage and those people were being penalized for the excessive trash and the trash kind of being out there and Public Works stepped up, provided the yellow bags and they picked those bags up now.
  • 02:52:14
    and so we don't have that issue in that area anymore and that's fantastic.
  • 02:52:19
    That was just like a quick solution to something that's just been a really big problem this summer.
  • 02:52:26
    So I appreciate that.
  • 02:52:28
    Also, especially the Connecting Camden Project.
  • 02:52:32
    Like I said, I went from feeling invisible to physically crying in a meeting from joy.
  • 02:52:37
    And so thank you for that.
  • 02:52:39
    Thanks for the Connecting Camden Project.
  • 02:52:41
    That's a really big deal.
  • 02:52:43
    to North Minneapolis, probably we'll find out people from all over the city has been held up by that train for long periods of time.
  • 02:52:53
    So thank you all for that so much.
  • 02:52:56
    One of the two questions I have though is about the charging stations.
  • 02:53:00
    Are those just for city vehicles or are those like for public use also?
• • Tim Sexton
  • 02:53:06
    Chair Chuktay, Councilmember Vita, the charging stations proposed here are for public use.
• • Katie Cashman
  • 02:53:11
    Okay, so where are they put and how is that determined?
• • Tim Sexton
  • 02:53:16
    Sure, Councilmember Vita, part of this would be the funding would help to do the location analysis is my understanding, so we haven't determined those but we would be applying an equity lens and really trying to fill the gaps that the private sector is less likely to.
  • 02:53:34
    Okay, so the short answer is that we have not determined specific locations.
• • Katie Cashman
  • 02:53:39
    But there will be some sort of analysis to figure out what's going to be the best place for these charging stations.
• • Tim Sexton
  • 02:53:47
    Yes, that is part of our plan.
• • Katie Cashman
  • 02:53:50
    Okay, I'm really excited to hear that because there's definitely a need for charging stations.
  • 02:53:56
    And then the last question, most of the time when I get complaints about snow removal or cleanup, I trace it back to usually a contractor.
  • 02:54:08
    right like it's like not public work staff it's usually something that we contract out for so is there some type of training or what happens as far as like quality of service you know like what what happens when someone gets a contract with the city of Minneapolis do they do they have some type of training or like is that it's the expectation that the quality is that of public work staff or like how does that work
• • Tim Sexton
  • 02:54:36
    I appreciate the opportunity to bring up some of our division directors and I'm going to use that again.
  • 02:54:43
    Joe Palman here with Transportation Maintenance and Repair.
• • Katie Cashman
  • 02:54:46
    They've been here all day, they should speak.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 02:54:49
    Director if you'll begin by introducing yourself please welcome.
• • SPEAKER_14
  • 02:54:52
    Good morning, Chair Chugtai and members of the committee.
  • 02:54:54
    My name is Joe Pom and I'm the Director of Transportation, Maintenance and Repair.
  • 02:54:58
    To answer your question, yes, when we take on a contractor we have a set of specifications that includes some training, inspection of their equipment and so forth to make sure they're complying with city standards.
  • 02:55:09
    In addition to that, when we become aware of contractors that don't work for the city depositing snow where it shouldn't be, we also try to chase those down and try to educate so that that does not happen again.
• • Katie Cashman
  • 02:55:20
    you answered my second part of the question because I've had that reported to me also where you know it wasn't I mean it's hard for the average person to know if they're if they're a city contractor or not but my office has tracked it down and found out that it was just someone else dumping you know like a private homes cleanup dumping somewhere so thank you thank you those are all my questions wonderful thank you very much and then
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 02:55:50
    With that we've actually reached the end of discussion and questions for you director.
  • 02:55:56
    Thank you for coming in and bringing in your talented team of division directors to present your 2025 recommended city budget.
  • 02:56:04
    I'll ask the clerk to file that presentation and with that colleagues we have reached the end of departmental presentations for today.
  • 02:56:10
    As I noted at the beginning we are in our final week of departmental presentations.
  • 02:56:14
    and we will meet again tomorrow and receive presentations from the Neighborhood Safety Department and from the Fire Department.
  • 02:56:23
    Both of those are available in LIMS right now and then Thursday we will meet for our final session on departmental presentations where we will receive presentations from the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, 911,
  • 02:56:36
    and the Minneapolis Police Department.
  • 02:56:38
    And with that we have concluded all business to come before this committee today and without objection we are adjourned until our next meeting on Tuesday October 22nd at 10 a.m.
  • 02:56:48
    Thank you everyone.
• • 02:57:29
    and the City Council.