Budget Committee October 24, 2024   10/24/2024

Presentation

• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:00:29
    Good morning, my name is Aisha Chugta and I'm the chair of the Budget Committee.
  • 00:00:32
    I'm going to call to order our adjourned meeting for Thursday, October 24th, 2024.
  • 00:00:39
    Before we begin the meeting, I want to offer a friendly reminder to all members, staff, and the public that these meetings are broadcast live to enable greater public participation.
  • 00:00:48
    These broadcasts include real-time captioning as a further method to increase the accessibility of our proceedings to the community.
  • 00:00:55
    Therefore, all speakers need to be mindful of the rate of their speech so that our captioners can fully capture and transcribe all comments for the broadcast.
  • 00:01:04
    We ask all speakers to moderate the speed and clarity of their comments.
  • 00:01:09
    At this time, I'll ask the Clerk to call the roll so we can verify the presence of a quorum.
• • SPEAKER_16
  • 00:01:16
    Council Member Payne.
  • 00:01:17
    Present.
  • 00:01:19
    Wonsley.
• • Katie Cashman
  • 00:01:20
    Present.
• • SPEAKER_16
  • 00:01:21
    Rainville.
  • 00:01:22
    Present.
  • 00:01:23
    Vita.
• • Katie Cashman
  • 00:01:24
    Present.
• • SPEAKER_16
  • 00:01:25
    Ellison.
  • 00:01:27
    It's absent.
  • 00:01:28
    Osman.
• • SPEAKER_13
  • 00:01:30
    It's absent.
• • SPEAKER_16
  • 00:01:32
    Cashman.
• • SPEAKER_13
  • 00:01:33
    Present.
• • SPEAKER_16
  • 00:01:34
    Jenkins.
  • 00:01:37
    Chavez.
  • 00:01:38
    Present.
  • 00:01:39
    Chaudhry.
• • Aurin Chowdhury
  • 00:01:40
    Present.
• • SPEAKER_16
  • 00:01:41
    Palmisano.
  • 00:01:44
    Vice Chair Koski.
  • 00:01:47
    We have nine members present.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:01:52
    Let the record reflect that we have a quorum.
  • 00:01:54
    I'll also remind my colleagues that we're using speaker management today, so please make sure you sign in.
  • 00:02:00
    Colleagues, today is our final day of departmental presentations, and we have three presentations planned today from the police department, the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board,
  • 00:02:09
    in the Emergency Communication Center, or 911.
  • 00:02:13
    We will start with a presentation from the Minneapolis Police Department, and for that I will invite Police Chief Brian O'Hara to join us to begin that presentation.
  • 00:02:27
    Good morning, welcome Chief.
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 00:02:28
    Good morning, Council Vice President, Council President, Council Members.
  • 00:02:32
    I am joined by Director Vicki Troskey, the Finance Director from the Police Department.
  • 00:02:40
    So just starting off, this is the same organizational chart that we had in place at the end of last year.
  • 00:02:47
    It reflects positions in leadership that were approved by the governing body last year.
  • 00:02:52
    So the department is currently structured in two branches, each of which is commanded by an assistant chief.
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    Assistant Chief Blackwell oversees the operations branch, which includes
  • 00:03:04
    everything related to, you know, Patrol 911 response and investigations.
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    The other half of the department is overseen by Assistant Chief Gators, the Community Trust and Engagement Branch, and that includes our efforts around constitutional policing, implementation of the settlement agreement, internal affairs, and professional standards and development.
  • 00:03:28
    and then within each of those branches there are deputy chiefs that oversee some of the functional areas followed by inspectors over precincts and commanders over divisions.
  • 00:03:40
    There's also some civilian leadership in the department.
  • 00:03:45
    One position that is new that you will approve last year is the chief of staff.
  • 00:03:49
    and we're looking forward to creating other civilian leadership position in the department as we move forward which will be presented in the future to the governing body.
  • 00:04:01
    So obviously to protect with courage and to serve with compassion is the mission of the police department to reduce crime while trying to earn people's trust and restore confidence in the police department.
  • 00:04:15
    Clearly with the settlement agreement we have a focus on enhancing accountability and transparency.
  • 00:04:20
    as well as collaborating both with law enforcement partners as well as community-based stakeholders and agencies.
  • 00:04:29
    We've been working over the last two years to shift the culture in the department, rebuild the ranks and restore pride in the police department.
  • 00:04:39
    So management decisions to maximize the budget, we try and be as precise as possible dealing with the challenges that we have, focusing on outcomes as well as wellness needs of our members.
  • 00:04:53
    There's a whole lot operationally that's driven not just by traditional metrics but also by assessments and things that are ongoing in terms of the settlement agreement and the independent evaluator, ELIFA.
  • 00:05:09
    I am trying as we move forward to identify opportunities to civilianize professional staff and executive leadership in the department more than what we have, as well as using civilian professionals as best we can to alleviate some of the burden on things that were traditionally sworn roles.
  • 00:05:30
    You know, like over the past summer, we've tried to focus on using even command staff out in the field more than they had been in the past, as well as just simply being present more and communicating more with our members in an attempt to build morale, increase visibility and engage with the community as well.
  • 00:05:50
    In terms of equity, we've implemented quarterly review boards that's in line with the settlement agreement.
  • 00:05:57
    I chaired the last quarterly review board yesterday where we reviewed pedestrian stops in terms of where they're occurring and disparities that are happening.
  • 00:06:09
    you know one thing that we've seen even yesterday which I knew was going to be an issue as we implemented reforms in the settlement agreement is just the difficulty in getting the level of data from our systems that's necessary in order to be able to review things fully in terms with the settlement agreement but I think the conversation with folks from the monitoring team that were there yesterday and they're pleased with our efforts thus far and I'm pleased with the progress
  • 00:06:38
    that the implementation division has been made using that.
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    The second bullet point there says an audit process.
  • 00:06:46
    I want to be clear, that's not auditing in terms of the settlement agreement.
  • 00:06:49
    Those are compliance checks that our civilian and sworn staff within implementation have been doing.
  • 00:06:56
    and the purpose of doing these things on our own is to try and identify problems before the independent evaluator does so that we can address things as quickly as possible.
  • 00:07:08
    Even as I mentioned to staff yesterday, a lot of the things that they review, we report out in terms of percentages to the department where different areas, different commands where things need to improve.
  • 00:07:20
    but also on individual levels where we see that folks are not meeting expectations.
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    I want things addressed as soon as possible just to correct deficiencies and enhance the performance of our members.
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    And I think that's been positive and that again I think is something that the independent evaluator is pleased with.
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    After action review process is completed to address the disparities that I've identified.
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    So like yesterday we reviewed our notes and the things that were assigned to different members of the executive team from our previous quarterly review panel and the same will be done next quarter when we meet for the next topic.
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    achievements and risks.
  • 00:08:02
    In February this year, over the weekend, I think the second weekend in February, we had a really terrible weekend with a robbery spree.
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    I had learned about it I think a Sunday morning after it had happened four hours overnight.
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    and that's something that once I noticed that we got together, we had a meeting and we implemented a crime pattern response critical to deal with these sprees as they had been happening.
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    It's something new that had emerged, you know, and I'm pleased with the results of the protocol as we have implemented it.
  • 00:08:40
    it's been implemented a number of times and since we have been doing that we have noticed that one the frequency of these crime sprees particularly with robberies has decreased over time as well as when they do happen they tend to be there tend to be fewer total robberies that occur and in many instances we have been able to make arrests and recover stolen property from them
  • 00:09:07
    present settlement agreement compliance checks at community M-STAT meetings.
  • 00:09:11
    So, you know, the settlement agreement compliance is something that I want measured.
  • 00:09:18
    So reporting it at community M-STAT meetings is one thing to show transparency where we're going.
  • 00:09:24
    but it's also implemented internally with weekly MSTAT meetings.
  • 00:09:28
    That's something that I've done recently.
  • 00:09:30
    So Commander Wilkes will get up just like the precincts will get up, just like investigations will get up.
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    Commander Wilkes will get up and present on various topics, compliance checks that have been done by the implementation unit by command and everybody in the room can see how we're doing based on precincts in terms of things that need to be improved upon.
  • 00:09:48
    and so that's been my effort to try and essentially normalize the reform stuff that we're doing and put it on the same level of importance and accountability that we have traditionally done around crime and investigations.
  • 00:10:03
    We initiated a mentorship program for recruits.
  • 00:10:06
    That's with the unity community mediation team.
  • 00:10:10
    We have members from different communities around the city that meet with our new officers while they're still in training and then also while they're out in the field and help introduce them to folks in the community.
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    community meeting about a month or two ago at the American Indian Center where that's one of the things that we highlighted with unity community mediation team and it's something that I'd like to build out more over the next year because we had very positive feedback both from community members who got to learn who some of our young people are that are you know becoming police officers as well as from the officers who felt
  • 00:10:47
    kind of the love and support from community members who want them to succeed.
  • 00:10:51
    So that's something I think has been very positive.
  • 00:10:54
    There's been progress with implementing the early intervention system.
  • 00:10:57
    That is in process.
  • 00:10:59
    There is a vendor that's been awarded a contract.
  • 00:11:02
    but that is something that needs to be done through IT and it involves collecting systems and ensuring we have appropriate data and that is a long term project that is in process.
  • 00:11:17
    We completed a facility, equipment, training, and health and wellness assessments.
  • 00:11:22
    Those are all things that have been identified in the settlement agreement and there are plans to remedy the various issues that were identified and there is corrective action in process.
  • 00:11:33
    That's something that transcends not just the police department, but various departments in the entire enterprise.
  • 00:11:39
    We completed Operation Safe Summer 3, which was delayed.
  • 00:11:43
    earlier this year was delayed because of the murder of police officer Jamal Mitchell.
  • 00:11:49
    We did implement that later after his funeral and we had results I think that were the highest numbers of illegal firearms we recovered from previous operations.
  • 00:12:02
    We created an inspection unit.
  • 00:12:05
    That is my effort to ensure greater accountability over off-duty employment.
  • 00:12:10
    there's a number of deficiencies that were already identified once we created the inspections unit and the main tasks that I have them requiring them to do now is ensuring that our supervisors are held accountable for their individual checks over the over the off-duty performance we contracted with mental health services that's for health and wellness for the police department
  • 00:12:39
    Risks, obviously, there's terms and deadlines with the settlement agreement.
  • 00:12:44
    The first year anniversary is March 17th of next year, and there's a number of things that are required to be done within the first year, and I am confident that at least the things that are within the control of the police department, we are on pace to meet, if not all, very close to all of them, which I think would be a significant achievement.
  • 00:13:07
    most of that is in terms of policy and training that must be implemented and to the things that you know we may fall short of I think we will have reasonable explanations that I think again the community and the governing body here I think could be proud of the progress that we've made.
  • 00:13:28
    Working overtime due to shortage of sworn staff and impact on employee wellness.
  • 00:13:34
    The reality is the sworn staff is below even what it was when I started here two years ago.
  • 00:13:40
    We have been dealing with challenges around serious crime with robberies this year.
  • 00:13:46
    as of today the number of shooting victims in this in the city is starting to even out with where we had been at this point last year but the number of murders and the number of robberies remain significantly higher than what they were we had been at this point last year so that being said it's obviously a drain on resources as well as you know we've needed to adjust to operational demands
  • 00:14:13
    as different problems have happened around
  • 00:14:32
    successful.
  • 00:14:34
    And, of course, with, again, fewer and fewer staff, it obviously has an impact on wellness because the demand amongst some of the most serious crime is what carries a whole lot of manpower hours, and that obviously has an impact on wellness.
  • 00:14:52
    There was an incident earlier this week.
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    There was a standoff that occurred for a number of hours.
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    There were a number of officers that were involved in it.
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    There were investigators and crisis negotiators that were speaking to an individual while some terrible things were happening.
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    Things like this unfortunately happen often in the city and it has a deep impact on employee wellness.
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    and ensuring that we take care of our people and giving them time off when they need for some of these traumatic incidents that further places the demand on other folks to kind of step up while people are away.
  • 00:15:33
    It is sort of a vicious cycle.
  • 00:15:36
    I am hopeful that we will be able to start rebuilding over the course of next year.
  • 00:15:41
    But it is something that we're not yet seeing the results on the street that the community needs.
  • 00:15:48
    But again, I think we're on the right path with that.
  • 00:15:52
    managing the investigations caseload.
  • 00:15:56
    It's huge.
  • 00:15:57
    There's a lot of risk there.
  • 00:16:00
    You know, we're looking a little in the presentation.
  • 00:16:02
    There's two civilian investigator positions.
  • 00:16:07
    One of them I'd like to put to help address domestic violence.
  • 00:16:12
    That's a serious concern.
  • 00:16:14
    You know, the staffing for domestic violence has decreased significantly
  • 00:16:18
    since 2020 and that's definitely an area where we need to devote more resources as well as managing the internal affairs caseload.
  • 00:16:29
    There remains a significant backlog of cases with internal affairs and I want to get rid of them.
  • 00:16:36
    I want us and I'm talking to the independent evaluator about different ways to do that, how we could utilize different people,
  • 00:16:43
    but I think overall both what the community wants and the police officers want is our ability to have internal affairs cases close much faster and if we need to have discipline to have discipline occur much closer in time to when conduct occurs and I think both that's exactly what both the community and the police officers here want.
  • 00:17:06
    For this slide I'll turn it over to our Finance Director to explain.
• • SPEAKER_04
  • 00:17:10
    Welcome, Director Troswick, if you'll begin by introducing yourself.
  • 00:17:13
    Thank you, Madam Chair, committee members.
  • 00:17:15
    I'm Vicki Troswick, the Finance Director in the Police Department.
  • 00:17:19
    This is a slide of a big picture of the Police Department.
  • 00:17:23
    Their 2025 recommended budget is $230 million.
  • 00:17:27
    That's a 6% increase from 2024, or $13.7 million, and mainly that would be in personnel.
  • 00:17:34
    Personnel is 77% of our total budget.
  • 00:17:38
    You can see the increase in the FTE count from 935 to 966, recommended in 2025.
  • 00:17:45
    This includes 10 navigators that will be transferred from the Neighborhood Safety Department, 13 case investigators that were permits that became full-time and we reduced our non-personnel to create those administratively,
  • 00:17:57
    And then we had seven new recommended positions that were presented or proposed with our settlement programs.
  • 00:18:05
    We won't be going through those proposals today.
  • 00:18:07
    That was already presented to the committee.
  • 00:18:10
    And then we have the two public safety aid funded positions that the Chief just referenced.
  • 00:18:16
    The current vacancy listed on the slide is 210 and I've been working diligently with HR.
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    The HR report has some positions that should have been closed and inactivated.
  • 00:18:28
    So our actual vacancy is really 175 and they've been working on cleaning up that report so that should be more clear when it's ran again.
  • 00:18:37
    Our budget consists of 731 sworn and of that 155 of those are vacant and then we have 20 civilian vacancies And now the Chiefs gonna go through the program we have our total budget is broken into four programs and The chief will go through those operations
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 00:19:05
    So this first slide, Public Safety Services, you all would know that as patrol.
  • 00:19:11
    This is the precincts as well as Special Operations Division which includes SWAT and the bomb squad.
  • 00:19:21
    $125 million, the adopted budget for 2024, $140 million for 2025, and $143 million for 2026.
  • 00:19:31
    Obviously, patrol is what provides 911 response.
  • 00:19:35
    It creates an environment of trust to further support a common goal of safe community for everyone.
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    you know we have within within patrol we have three precinct community response teams that cover the city one covers the south side both the third and the fifth precinct one covers downtown and the other covers both the north and northeast
  • 00:19:57
    their investigators embedded within the precincts that investigate theft burglaries and property crimes and they respond to any significant incident that includes what our special operations teams do which is against SWAT and our bomb folks.
  • 00:20:16
    We attempt to leverage technology data and equipment to improve services and outcomes mean that we try and be as precise as possible when we're deploying our limited resources.
  • 00:20:27
    So, officers have responded to over 169,000 calls for service year-to-date and have contributed to the recovery of 766 illegal guns year-to-date, planned and ensured safety at many events including the First Lady's visit, the President's visit, Pride Parade, Aquitania on fireworks, and a visit from the Vice President.
  • 00:20:49
    Metrics used within 9-1-1, Priority 1, Cold Response under 11 minutes, which is the key goal for Priority 1s.
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    These are life-threatening emergencies or crimes that are actively in progress.
  • 00:21:03
    76% in 2021, 75% in 22, 75% last year, and 74% so far year-to-date.
  • 00:21:12
    as of today,
  • 00:21:29
    October, we've been able to catch up a little bit.
  • 00:21:32
    We had been up the last couple of months, but I believe we're five above right now where we were at this point last year, and I'm hopeful that we'll be able to close that gap by the end of the year.
  • 00:21:42
    But unfortunately, we have had more fatal shootings at this point this year than we had last year.
  • 00:21:49
    So murders are up about 25% year to date, as well as robberies are up by about 20% year to date, all robberies overall.
  • 00:21:58
    So in 2020 it was 1833, 21 it went up to 2226, 2022 down to 1804, 23, 1450, and 24 year to date 1220.
  • 00:22:14
    Served warrants 49 in 22, 93 in 23, and 64 year to date.
  • 00:22:25
    investigations and forensics.
  • 00:22:26
    So the first slide was patrol.
  • 00:22:28
    This is the other half of the operations branch investigations and forensics within this branch 40 million in 24, 41 million in 25 and 42 2026.
  • 00:22:37
    Obviously, the end goal of investigations is to close things out and ensure that we have cases that are able to be charged and prosecuted so that offenders can be held accountable.
  • 00:22:50
    Within investigations and forensics, this deals with the most serious crimes.
  • 00:22:54
    The patrol side of the house, which includes the precincts, is where the investigators for property crimes reside.
  • 00:23:01
    So this is where the civilian professional staff in the crime lab, as well as the folks who respond out to crime scenes and our investigators that are investigating violence and the most serious crimes.
  • 00:23:13
    Provide outreach service for our most vulnerable activities and obviously process crime scenes, investigate crimes, and analyze data for crime trends and patterns.
  • 00:23:27
    So two of the main divisions within that is forensic services and then the other side is both the violent crimes investigations division and the special crimes investigations division.
  • 00:23:40
    So field operations for forensics responded to 723 incidents, processed 266 vehicles for DNA and fingerprints, examined 5,607 discharge casings, and examined 627 firearms.
  • 00:23:56
    Computer forensics examined 321 cell phones and 9 computers.
  • 00:24:01
    Video forensics responded to 266 scenes to recover video and isolated 1,842 still images from video to be used in cases to be present for prosecution.
  • 00:24:14
    between both violent crimes and special crimes.
  • 00:24:17
    They've conducted 4,240 follow-ups.
  • 00:24:20
    3,699 have been closed.
  • 00:24:24
    35% have resulted in a criminal complaint.
  • 00:24:28
    1,457 have been submitted for criminal charge and consideration.
  • 00:24:32
    312 involved an incident in which a gun was recovered.
  • 00:24:36
    42% have resulted in a criminal complaint.
  • 00:24:42
    Professional standards includes both internal affairs and the training and professional development division.
  • 00:24:49
    2024, it accounted for $37 million.
  • 00:24:53
    2025, $35 million, and $26 million, $36 million.
  • 00:24:58
    provides public safety without bias, ensure resources are used effectively, ensure officers are healthy, well-trained, accountable, and professional.
  • 00:25:08
    Within this also a significant piece of the settlement agreement and that's the officer wellness resources are within professional standards.
  • 00:25:18
    provide crisis intervention
  • 00:25:37
    and conduct candidate background checks.
  • 00:25:40
    Metrics, assessments completed, an action plan being developed for training, facilities, health and wellness and equipment and again those assessments were completed in line with the settlement agreement as well as the plans to remedy those things have been drafted and created in line with the settlement agreement.
  • 00:26:03
    So the next bureau, constitutional policing, this includes community outreach, procedural justice, and everything that we're doing around implementation of the settlement agreement.
  • 00:26:12
    13 million in 24, 13 million in 25, 13 million in 26.
  • 00:26:18
    Adhere to settlement agreement and MDHR reform requirements conduct general outreach and group specific outreach to build trust relationships with all.
  • 00:26:25
    and recruit qualified individuals who reflect the makeup of the city.
  • 00:26:29
    Activities conduct community engagement through engagement systems, create new policy, train the new policy and then conduct compliance reviews or compliance checks to ensure that things are being implemented in accordance to plan, conduct focused recruitment, provide outreach through the CHAPM program, embedded social workers, behavioral crisis liaison and crime prevention specialists.
  • 00:26:52
    and on the left is kind of the pyramid of where we are, how you go through implementing reform through a consent decree or settlement agreement and we're currently in the first year which is the foundational phase.
  • 00:27:06
    We're drafting and revising the policies once the policies are then completed
  • 00:27:11
    We can have training that's finalized and implemented and then move on to evaluating and ensuring that we're entering compliance.
  • 00:27:21
    So this is a multi-year process.
  • 00:27:27
    Metrics for constitutional policing.
  • 00:27:30
    On the right, we have had significant increases in initial applications to the police department and there's been a dramatic increase in the amount of minority representation in those who are applying over the last year.
  • 00:27:44
    So as you can see from the data, it in most categories meets or exceeds the representation of the city.
  • 00:27:54
    made 1,727 interested police candidates.
  • 00:28:00
    That's just from our recruiters.
  • 00:28:02
    That's up from 564 in all of 2023.
  • 00:28:07
    Participated in 120 recruitment events year-to-date.
  • 00:28:10
    That's compared to 140 for all of 2023.
  • 00:28:13
    provided internships to 25 participants through the Peace Pathways Program, which Assistant Chief Gaiters has led, processed 3,562 applications in 2024 versus 2,924 for all of 2023.
  • 00:28:29
    The city was also awarded $175,000 to focus on the 30 by 30 initiative which is the recruitment and retention of women for sworn personnel.
  • 00:28:40
    Currently the department has 15% of the sworn staff who are women.
• • Emily Koski
  • 00:28:48
    Alright, I'll pass it back over to the director.
• • SPEAKER_04
  • 00:28:54
    Thank you Madam Chair, committee members.
  • 00:28:57
    We have two proposals as recommended by the mayor for the 25-26 cycle.
  • 00:29:04
    More detail here.
  • 00:29:05
    $163,000 one-time general fund money.
  • 00:29:09
    This purchases mobile
  • 00:29:13
    camera and light trailers that will be used in both high crime areas as well as supporting the encampment efforts.
  • 00:29:22
    This is a multi-department, so reg services and public works is also part of this proposal.
  • 00:29:30
    And this is two positions that the chief referred to earlier that will go in the special crimes area.
  • 00:29:37
    Two FTEs for $252,000 for the investigations.
  • 00:29:44
    That concludes our presentation.
  • 00:29:46
    We're happy to stand for questions.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:29:49
    Thank you for your presentation, Chief O'Hara and Director Troswick.
  • 00:29:54
    Colleagues, are there any questions or comments related to the Minneapolis Police Department's recommended 2025 city budget?
  • 00:30:02
    I'll first recognize Council President Payne.
• • Elliott Payne
  • 00:30:05
    Thank you, Vice President Chagtai.
  • 00:30:08
    It's not clear to me what our budgeted sworn number is, and I was wondering if you could share that as well as our budgeted civilian investigator number.
  • 00:30:17
    I know that we have the two that are the backfill for the public safety aid, but I'd like to get an understanding of the total.
• • SPEAKER_04
  • 00:30:23
    The total is, through the chair, President Payne, the total is 731 budgeted sworn.
• • Elliott Payne
  • 00:30:29
    731.
  • 00:30:30
    No change from 24.
  • 00:30:31
    Okay, and then how about for the civilian investigators?
• • SPEAKER_04
  • 00:30:36
    That I don't have with me.
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 00:30:38
    Chair and Council President, 24 total case investigators, 11 of which are assigned to activities in internal affairs.
  • 00:30:48
    So 13 are available to investigate crime, of which there's at least one that I know of that is part-time and not full-time.
  • 00:30:58
    I'm not sure if there's any others that are full-time in that category.
  • 00:31:02
    Excuse me, if there's any others that are also part-time employees.
  • 00:31:06
    And you said it was 13 for... For actually investigating crime, the other 11 we have assigned to functions within internal affairs.
• • Elliott Payne
  • 00:31:16
    So are the two FTEs that are in your request amongst those 13?
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 00:31:21
    No, President.
• • Elliott Payne
  • 00:31:22
    That would bring us up to 15.
  • 00:31:24
    Yes, sir.
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 00:31:26
    I'm sorry, Chair and Council President, and my intent with those two is to put one to help our investigators with domestic violence.
  • 00:31:37
    There is a significant backlog of cases there, which I'm very concerned about.
  • 00:31:42
    as well as crimes against children, which as you know is another area that is serious.
• • Elliott Payne
  • 00:31:49
    And then we had a audit on our evidence warehouse and I know that there are some action items based on that audit.
  • 00:31:59
    I mean, I believe
  • 00:32:01
    CVP were able to meet with some MPD leadership to discuss some of those items.
  • 00:32:07
    Do you know if those were able to be absorbed in your operating budget or if that's something that we should be considering through the amendment process?
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 00:32:18
    Chair and President, I would need to follow up to get you the correct information.
  • 00:32:22
    I am not sure if that's in the facilities assessment that was done for the settlement agreement or if that's separate, so I would need to follow up.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:32:30
    We'll note that for administrative follow-ups, clerks.
• • Elliott Payne
  • 00:32:34
    Thank you.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:32:36
    Thank you.
  • 00:32:37
    Next I will recognize Council Member Chavez.
  • 00:32:40
    We've got about four or five members in queue right now.
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 00:32:44
    Thank you Chair Chuck Dye and thank you for the presentation, Chief.
  • 00:32:48
    Can you go to page six?
  • 00:32:50
    It talks a little bit about overtime.
  • 00:33:00
    It is working overtime due to shortage of sworn staff impacted on Plan 1-S. Can you let us know how much overtime has been used year-to-date?
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 00:33:14
    So chair and council member, the projected for the entire year is 26 million.
  • 00:33:20
    I don't know offhand where we are year to date.
  • 00:33:23
    But for the entire year we project to be at 26 million.
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 00:33:27
    Thank you.
  • 00:33:28
    And do we have a projection for next year or is that too early to tell?
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 00:33:31
    Chair and Councilmember, without staffing changing, assuming that the needs are going to remain consistent, I think we can assume that it would be the same for next year.
  • 00:33:45
    Yes.
  • 00:33:46
    Thank you.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:33:51
    Wonderful, thank you.
  • 00:33:52
    And next I'll recognize Councilmember Wonsley.
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 00:33:56
    Thank you Vice President Chuktai.
  • 00:33:59
    Just going back to slide 7 and following up on President Payne's question regarding authorized staffing level.
  • 00:34:08
    I just want to make sure I'm reading this right that right now our staffing levels is exceeding the charter mandate which I believe right now is around 731.
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 00:34:21
    Chair and Council Member, no, we're below 731, we're at 578 total sworn as of today.
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 00:34:30
    Sworn, so you're not including civilian positions into that?
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 00:34:33
    No, Chair, Council Member, no.
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 00:34:36
    So when we include civilian positions with swarm, we do exceed, we're at that 900.
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 00:34:42
    Chair, Council Member, that's correct.
  • 00:34:44
    That's both sworn and civilian, sworn and professional staff.
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 00:34:49
    Okay, so sworn and professional were exceeding 731.
  • 00:34:53
    Okay, and then my next question is, do you have an estimate of how many hours were also worked via off-duty this past year?
  • 00:35:02
    I know you all have that database where you're tracking now, so I wanted to get a sense of if that had been accounted for.
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 00:35:10
    Chair, Council Member, yes, I can get that for you.
  • 00:35:13
    I can get what we have.
  • 00:35:16
    But no, that's not a part of this.
  • 00:35:19
    And there have been discrepancies that we found through tracking this that we've taken corrective action.
  • 00:35:26
    So I think the database has gotten more accurate as the year has gone on.
  • 00:35:32
    And that's improved, but I would not say it would be an accurate reflection of the entire year However, there's a there's a separate database that we may be able to get that out of other than the one that we create.
  • 00:35:44
    Yeah
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 00:35:45
    Okay, so as a staff memo follow-up, I would like to estimate of how many hours were worked this year to date.
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 00:35:52
    Chair, council member, the only thing I would add to that is that that depends on prior to implementing inspections of this, that depended entirely upon the member entering it themselves.
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 00:36:06
    So this year, I thought early or late last year, we received a presentation about you all switching to a new database.
  • 00:36:15
    So I assume you went into this year with like a different tracking system.
  • 00:36:19
    So is that not the case?
  • 00:36:21
    Is it still kind of a hybrid where there was still this self-reporting and maybe some data entry through this database?
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 00:36:29
    Chair, Councilmember, that is correct, but even the new system still requires self-reporting.
  • 00:36:36
    So implementing compliance and somebody directly responsible for ensuring that the supervisors are checking that members are always entering this information is what was missing.
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 00:36:49
    but it sounds like you're able to through both some level of you can get that okay great and then I did want to get a sense of what was the status of the staffing study that you all were looking to do I know we did a LD this summer where you mentioned you all were working with a consultant to revamp that so just want to get a status update on that
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 00:37:15
    Chair, Council Member, there's been an initial report through the Public Safety Partnership and we remain in working with them through the Public Safety Partnership to finalize that report.
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 00:37:28
    Awesome.
  • 00:37:28
    Do you have a timeline of when that would be ready to come for like public release?
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 00:37:34
    Chair, Council Member, I would imagine that would be soon, but there's a number of reports that we're working on at the same time with them.
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 00:37:44
    I will follow up with likely Councilmember Chavez on PHS to see when we can get that through.
  • 00:37:51
    And then I did request this also via AO where we received a presentation on police recruitment tactics and similar to the information reported here in which it was shown that this year you received over a thousand applicants.
  • 00:38:08
    but in the demographic data it basically combined African and Black and some of the other subgroups, well ethnic groups so I wanted to get a breakdown of the subgroups of those specific ethnic communities so I wanted to see if that would be possible.
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 00:38:27
    Chair, Council Member, I'd have to check.
  • 00:38:29
    The data that we get for applicants comes from HR.
  • 00:38:34
    It's not police data.
  • 00:38:35
    So I'm just not sure if we can break it down further than what we already have from them.
  • 00:38:40
    I'll have to check.
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 00:38:41
    Okay, because if on the application, again, like African, Black, is that different from, is it Somali, is it African American?
  • 00:38:51
    Yes, if you all are tracking at that specific level.
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 00:38:54
    Chair, Council Member, I don't know if HR is.
  • 00:38:59
    Yeah, and I think in different places in the city it tracks ethnicity separately.
  • 00:39:06
    Like, for example, like Latino is tracked separately in some places and other places it's not, so I'm not certain about that.
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 00:39:15
    Okay, so HR would need to follow up on that one.
  • 00:39:18
    Okay.
  • 00:39:19
    And then speaking of the thousand applicants, do you have a sense of how many will be brought on in the next year and the ratio of that to those who are going to be leaving the department next year through either retirement or organic attrition?
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 00:39:38
    Chair, Councilmember, the bottom line is it's not enough, at least so far.
  • 00:39:44
    So, year to date, we've hired 60 people for sworn positions.
  • 00:39:50
    We've lost 30 sworn members this year.
  • 00:39:53
    We will likely hire more people this year than in the last 10 years for sworn positions.
  • 00:40:00
    the most immediate of that are lateral hires which has been significantly increased over the last year with 15 so far lateral hires so those are people that were police officers elsewhere in Minnesota and that transferred over here there's another four I think in the pipeline to start next month in a couple weeks and a couple people already scheduled to start in January so those are the most immediate hires that you'll see next week on
  • 00:40:27
    Monday night down at Cristal Del Rey High School, South Minneapolis, we're going to be welcoming our latest group of community service officers.
  • 00:40:36
    And that is the group where we've seen the most diversity increase.
  • 00:40:41
    A lot of young people from all different types of backgrounds coming on and there have already been
  • 00:40:50
    with those seven next week that's another 20 people that we're hiring but the problem is with you know like the CSOs they're generally they have to go to college for two years and then we can put them in the police academy so we're looking at two to three years
  • 00:41:05
    in that crew before we actually get them deployable for the street.
  • 00:41:09
    And then the same is true, for example, with the cadets that we fired.
  • 00:41:13
    We hired 11 cadets this year.
  • 00:41:15
    They have to go to head up in tech for eight months to get skills training before then we can put them in the police academy.
  • 00:41:22
    So all together we're looking at a year and a half to two years before we actually get people on the street.
  • 00:41:28
    So that's the biggest problem.
  • 00:41:30
    So even hiring this year, hiring more people for sworn positions than we're losing,
  • 00:41:35
    isn't actually giving us a benefit on the street immediately like we need.
  • 00:41:41
    And we need to be hiring many more people just to keep pace with normal attrition.
  • 00:41:47
    There's currently 131 members that are sworn that are eligible to retire.
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 00:41:53
    Those folks are... Can you repeat that?
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 00:41:56
    I'm sorry, 131.
  • 00:41:56
    131 eligible to retire.
  • 00:41:59
    So that's folks who are 50 and up.
  • 00:42:01
    there's a number of those people who are already over 55 which is the kind of the age where the pension sort of maxes out so it just it remains a significant concern okay the urgency of it okay but I'm just going back to the my first question so where are we at again that total of sworn
  • 00:42:22
    Chair, Council Member, 578 total sworn as of today.
  • 00:42:26
    So the folks that I mentioned that are community service officers that we are hiring that will eventually be sworn, they're not included in that sworn number until they actually are post-eligible to be police officers.
  • 00:42:42
    So while we may be hiring more people than we're losing, it's not going to reflect
  • 00:42:47
    in the sworn number until they're actually post eligible, able to be police officers, if that makes sense.
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 00:42:55
    and then also follow-up question on just slide 12.
  • 00:43:01
    If we could get some figures of like the overall backlog for invest well with investigations for both violent and non-violent crime.
  • 00:43:09
    I know there there's a few numbers about cases resolved under the violent and special crime section but not sure of like what is the totality we're looking at of cases and same with the non-violent offenses.
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 00:43:22
    Yeah, yeah.
  • 00:43:22
    Chair, also member
  • 00:43:24
    I would say it's different for different crimes.
  • 00:43:31
    So for example, yes, we get numbers around that, but so for example, my concern is greatest when we're talking about domestic violence with cases where the suspect was gone on arrival.
  • 00:43:44
    when the police got there, they took a police report, the person's gone on arrival because there's a lot of work that needs to be done to make sure that that person then can be summoned to court and held accountable.
  • 00:43:57
    So there's different, I would say different risks associated with the crimes and different types of crimes when we're talking about backlog, but yeah, we can get some numbers and it's just not going to be uniform for
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 00:44:09
    Yeah, no I get that and I know there's prioritization of course of what is more pressing and we know domestic violence cases are of the most severe nature and can lead to more dangerous outcomes for both the victims or survivors as well as the first responders coming to those crimes but I'm more interested in again just getting a sense of the overall backlog because I know we or I often hear around like when someone
  • 00:44:37
    Okay.
• • Elliott Payne
  • 00:44:54
    is all the questions.
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 00:44:56
    Oh wait, quick.
  • 00:44:57
    With the 20 civilian vacancies that you mentioned too, can you just share like are there specific barriers that's kind of preventing or getting in the way of those positions being filled?
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 00:45:11
    Chair, Council Member, there aren't currently barriers.
  • 00:45:15
    They're in various stages of the process to being filled.
  • 00:45:20
    Okay.
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 00:45:23
    Maybe that's a staff memo of outlining what those barriers are.
  • 00:45:28
    So that's all.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:45:31
    Wonderful, thank you.
  • 00:45:33
    Clerks, we've noted the last two questions from Councilmember Wonsley for administrative follow-up.
  • 00:45:38
    Wonderful, thank you.
  • 00:45:39
    Next, I'll recognize Councilmember Viton.
  • 00:45:43
    I'm so sorry to cut you off.
  • 00:45:46
    Before you get started, I wanted to note that Councilmember Ellison has joined us in this committee meeting.
  • 00:45:51
    Go ahead.
• • Katie Cashman
  • 00:45:52
    Thank you, Chair.
  • 00:45:53
    Thank you, Chief.
  • 00:45:55
    Good morning.
  • 00:45:55
    Thanks for the presentation.
  • 00:45:58
    I just wanted to talk about a couple different things.
  • 00:46:01
    First is, I've gotten lots of positive feedback around some of the community initiatives.
  • 00:46:07
    You either reactivated or have kind of beefed up a little bit over this past summer, one being Battle of the Badges.
  • 00:46:17
    I know you didn't win.
  • 00:46:18
    people were excited to see it back over at North Commons Park so thank you so much for that I'm hoping that that's something that we can continue and I know like in your budget there's not like an outline of a lot of things but some of the things I'm bringing up I'm hoping that there's funding attached to these things where it's not as sparse it's not like you know you and your team aren't like
  • 00:46:43
    trying to scramble to
  • 00:47:02
    to be in
  • 00:47:19
    that needs to be embedded in the training
  • 00:47:38
    for new police officers and so for me something like that has to have a dollar amount attached to it.
  • 00:47:45
    You can't have the expectation that community is going to show up in that way because it was several hours, you know, and it was
  • 00:47:53
    breaking bread they were having a meal with each other they were asking each other questions and you know making a commitment to follow each other through their career paths and you know check what precinct are you going to go to where am I going to be able to find you know like those things that I think is really important
  • 00:48:12
    I just think of myself like when I got elected to the park board, the very first graduation ceremony, I still check in on those police officers or that staff at the park board, you know, you feel like you start the job with them.
  • 00:48:26
    And that was like that, and it was so receptive, it was so beautiful.
  • 00:48:31
    the way that community gravitated to those new officers and they were like these are my officers or this is my community member for people to have that relationship.
  • 00:48:41
    I really hope that if the budget doesn't reflect that that there's an opportunity for you to figure out how the budget can reflect that.
  • 00:48:50
    That was a really big deal and PAL is coming back in a different way.
  • 00:48:56
    I appreciate your commitment to that.
  • 00:48:58
    It's something that I was asked about a lot in war for.
  • 00:49:02
    People like having that program and I think at a minimum it's something that we can help out with and you know a lot of the schools in my ward you know you see some of these
  • 00:49:17
    things that are happening in community and it's really because we need to have opportunities for these young people and PAL and this community policing model is a big way that we can make that happen and so I know that's a separate entity where they raise their own money and do those sorts of things but
  • 00:49:33
    a commitment to that is really important for us to continue moving forward with policing, looking at policing different than just showing up in someone's neighborhood in the middle of an extremely traumatic situation.
  • 00:49:47
    So I appreciate that.
  • 00:49:49
    I wanted to give you the feedback that I've been hearing from people around those things.
  • 00:49:53
    I think your communication in the department has gotten a lot better.
  • 00:49:56
    I appreciate the social media.
  • 00:49:58
    I appreciate the ability to go look on your social media and communicate to people.
  • 00:50:05
    Like if I can't get a hold of someone, a lot of times there's something already out there and it comes directly from your department.
  • 00:50:12
    So it's legit to me if it's coming directly from your department.
  • 00:50:16
    So I appreciate that and I've gotten a lot of feedback from community.
  • 00:50:19
    that the communication has gotten better and they know what's going on in community and they're seeing and hearing solutions and it's being communicated out.
  • 00:50:30
    The last thing I wanted to talk about is I've been learning about, I think it's called fitness for duty and it's like a way to evaluate officers.
  • 00:50:40
    Is that what it is?
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 00:50:43
    Chair, Council Member, we refer to fitness for duty that is like an official exam to see if someone is still able to meet the requirements of a police officer.
• • Katie Cashman
  • 00:50:54
    So like what would trigger that?
  • 00:50:57
    Like how does somebody get a... Am I saying it right?
  • 00:51:00
    Like how do you get a fitness for duty?
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 00:51:03
    Chair, Councilmember, if we're talking about the same thing, yeah, that could be triggered if there's reason to suspect that an individual may not be capable of still performing the job.
  • 00:51:16
    There's other things we do that are not fitness for duty, just ensuring people's health and wellness, but fitness for duty tends to have a kind of a more serious implication than just usual health and wellness checks.
• • Katie Cashman
  • 00:51:30
    So could you kind of explain the stages then to me of the health and wellness check?
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 00:51:36
    Chair, Councilmember, there's a lot of programs that are under the contract that we currently have with the vendor.
  • 00:51:43
    We are, I believe we're in an RFP process right now, if it hasn't started it will start, to renew and potentially get a different vendor.
  • 00:51:54
    but there's various check-ins.
  • 00:51:57
    None of it is required.
  • 00:51:58
    There's a lot of activity that happens with health and wellness but there's all kinds of different things.
  • 00:52:05
    So for example, you know, I mentioned earlier there was the incident, critical incident the other day on Lindale Avenue.
  • 00:52:12
    A number of officers were, you know, very deeply involved in what was happening for an extended period talking to this individual trying to prevent things from happening.
  • 00:52:24
    and it was very traumatic for them.
  • 00:52:28
    So our health and wellness folks will go out with you know professional counselors that are contracted through us and do kind of an initial assessment and stay in contact and follow up with those folks just to make sure that they're okay and ensure that they have
  • 00:52:46
    available to them a variety of confidential services.
  • 00:52:51
    So that's something that's triggered when there is an incident that either is a critical incident, even something that falls short of a critical incident, something that's unusually stressful or traumatic for a member.
  • 00:53:05
    And that's kind of how it's triggered.
  • 00:53:08
    but they also try to do things proactively and we're trying to build that out into the future under the settlement agreement.
  • 00:53:16
    We want Health and Wellness Unit to be available and just to be part of the normal routine of what our employees do, our cops do, because I think traditionally there's just been a lot of stigma
  • 00:53:30
    associated with people looking to get help, mental health help.
  • 00:53:36
    So like right now, they're located up at the SOC, up the old Hamilton Elementary School.
  • 00:53:43
    Eventually, you know, we're looking to have a better facility, both for training and wellness, you know, that would meet the requirements of the settlement agreement.
• • Katie Cashman
  • 00:53:53
    Yeah, I would love to see something like that.
  • 00:53:55
    Not that the sock isn't accessible, but I mean for me if I'm thinking health and wellness on site feels better, right?
  • 00:54:03
    Like if you have somebody at the actual precinct or a really, you know, a more warm and welcoming place.
  • 00:54:10
    If you're going through a traumatic situation, right, like how do we get folks
  • 00:54:16
    into a different environment and give them the opportunity to speak to someone about wellness.
  • 00:54:23
    I get the sock is what we have now, but I just don't see that as a long-term solution to wellness.
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 00:54:32
    Yes, Chair, Councilmember, another piece that we're looking to build out this year is identifying people and getting them trained to have people, you know, that are peer support.
  • 00:54:47
    People that are present with folks every day that are specially trained
  • 00:54:51
    you know to help identify and provide resources and we do have the contract the vendor has been to the precincts but the kind of like the dosage level isn't enough like you said and we just need this to be seen as like a kind of like a normal part of how we operate this stuff is present and there's nothing wrong with people going you know to talk to somebody.
• • Katie Cashman
  • 00:55:12
    Yeah, and I love that you have a plan, Chief.
  • 00:55:16
    I guess what I'm saying is, if I'm trying to find comfort, no offense to my colleagues, I don't find it in the council offices.
  • 00:55:24
    And so, like, are the police officers getting enough comfort anywhere, whether it's the SOC or the, you know, like, it just doesn't seem like
  • 00:55:35
    Wellness, if I need to talk to somebody about what's going on or like do I want to walk past my colleagues and to, you know, I don't know.
  • 00:55:46
    It just feels private and that there should be an opportunity that's more welcoming and warm and inviting for them to be able to do that.
  • 00:55:57
    Thank you.
• • Emily Koski
  • 00:55:59
    Thank you Madam President and thank you Chief for being here and first I just want to thank you for the clear communication that I've seen from MPD about action steps that you're taking to address some of the most serious crimes in some of our hot spots.
  • 00:56:18
    These targeted approaches that I clearly see also include cross jurisdictional partners.
  • 00:56:24
    It's really wonderful to see so I just wanted to note that I appreciate that.
  • 00:56:29
    So you had noted that the police department staffing for domestic violence has decreased significantly.
  • 00:56:36
    Can you speak to what's driving that decrease in resources for domestic violence?
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 00:56:41
    Chair, Vice Chair, it's just simply a decrease in overall resources.
  • 00:56:47
    So while the police department now is a little over 40% below what had been normal here prior to 2020,
  • 00:56:56
    It's the deepest.
  • 00:56:58
    So certain things, different components of the police department went away completely.
  • 00:57:02
    Various different units that used to exist before I got here are gone completely in order to send more people into 911 response.
  • 00:57:10
    The same is true with investigations.
  • 00:57:12
    Staffing in investigations has decreased.
  • 00:57:15
    It's been cut in half.
  • 00:57:17
    It's less than half of what it had been.
  • 00:57:19
    and the City Council.
  • 00:57:37
    is closing out more cases today than they had been prior to 2020.
  • 00:57:43
    It's simply, it's just, it's a matter of volume and it's a greater workload on the fewer people that remain.
  • 00:57:52
    And like the other council member referenced, I mean it's just, it's a matter of triage.
  • 00:57:58
    so you know while we try and be as best we can triaging the most serious things it's very unsatisfying for residents who have you know the first time something that they happen for them you know it's a property crime or the theft of a bicycle or something that
  • 00:58:16
    is not as harmful to the community as a murderer or a violent crime, but we know the responses that residents are getting are not always meeting people's expectations.
• • Emily Koski
  • 00:58:32
    Okay, that's helpful.
  • 00:58:34
    The Domestic Violence Navigators program is something that Chair Choctaw and I authored a budget amendment for last year to increase that.
  • 00:58:47
    Can you speak to how the police department has been using that team and how they leaned into them?
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 00:58:52
    We have one Domestic Violence Navigator in the fourth precinct, right?
• • 00:58:58
    Do we have the other navigators?
  • 00:58:59
    I'm actually not clear.
• • SPEAKER_14
  • 00:58:59
    I thought we only had two or three.
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 00:59:01
    Okay, Chair, Vice Chair, I know we have one domestic violence navigator that works out of the 4th Precinct.
  • 00:59:07
    I'm not sure if the other navigators are under the police department currently?
  • 00:59:14
    I don't know.
• • Emily Koski
  • 00:59:15
    I can, actually that's part of my second part of the question is that my understanding is that they are being moved to the police department and so I guess it would be twofold.
  • 00:59:25
    How have they
  • 00:59:27
    been leaning on them even though they were in a separate department and then how do you propose to start to utilize that team due to the resource deficiencies as well?
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 00:59:39
    So chair, vice chair, to my knowledge they are in neighborhood safety currently and will be transferred back to the police department.
  • 00:59:49
    Just through my understanding I believe the bulk of the work
  • 00:59:52
    for all of the domestic violence had been led by the navigator in the fourth precinct, had been coordinated through her, but I can follow up and get more information.
• • Emily Koski
  • 01:00:03
    Yeah, I would love to just understand since they're being moved over, you know, and we've increased that team, how the police department has leaned on them and then how you can, you know, what the plan is and to continue to be partnering with their team.
  • 01:00:19
    So I believe they are up to three right now.
  • 01:00:23
    And you know, the goal for me was to be able to have five, one in every precinct.
  • 01:00:27
    And so we're, you know, slowly getting there.
  • 01:00:30
    But I would love to have
  • 01:00:32
    I just want to understand what we can be doing to support them.
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 01:00:55
    I'm drawing a blank on her name, but there is a manager for the Navigators that's a part of our M-STAT meeting every week and is present.
• • Emily Koski
  • 01:01:03
    Ms. Miller.
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 01:01:03
    Yes, Katie.
  • 01:01:06
    And she does everything and she wears all hats and she helps coordinate all the activity with the Navigators.
• • Emily Koski
  • 01:01:14
    and this also kind of moves into my next question.
  • 01:01:18
    I noticed that there's 31.01 FTE increase from 24 to 25 in the schedule 5 in the budget book and I was just wondering if you could walk through each of those FTE changes.
  • 01:01:32
    Some of them do include Ms. Miller's team but if you could walk through the 31.01 changes that would be great.
• • SPEAKER_04
  • 01:01:39
    Yes, Chair, Council Member Koski.
  • 01:01:41
    So 13 were administrative ads that are already in our budget.
  • 01:01:46
    We just had moved non-personnel to personnel, so they didn't show up in the FTE count until 25.
  • 01:01:51
    So that's 13.
  • 01:01:53
    And then 10 represent the nine navigators plus a manager.
  • 01:01:58
    Got it, okay.
  • 01:01:59
    And then the two case investigators that are the new proposal, the special crimes that we talked about.
  • 01:02:07
    and then the seven are the new ones that we proposed with the settlement agreement so five are related to training settlement and two were compliance specialists in the implementation unit and then we had one reduction which was related to the allocation of the CDBG grant we don't lose an FTE really because we have money left over from last year so we're not getting rid of anybody but when we do the count for the
• • Emily Koski
  • 01:02:31
    You had a thousand applicants, correct?
  • 01:02:49
    And of those thousand applicants, 60 have been hired from that pool?
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 01:02:55
    Chair, Vice Chair, that's correct.
• • Emily Koski
  • 01:02:57
    So the 940 applicants who did not move forward through the process, can you just explain a little bit more about the reasons for that?
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 01:03:07
    Chair, Vice Chair, that's something that we're looking into.
  • 01:03:10
    It's a concern.
  • 01:03:13
    I would have expected a greater number in some of the different titles in recruits and in community safety officers, community service officers.
  • 01:03:28
    It's something that we're looking into.
  • 01:03:29
    I think it speaks to just
  • 01:03:33
    both the reality that we're in today is different in terms of trying to get people into the police department and frankly the generation is different.
  • 01:03:43
    I think we have to be more intentional about getting a hold of folks and staying engaged with them through the process because there's just way too many other opportunities that are out there that they can be
  • 01:03:55
    So our process overall, I would say, does take longer than most.
  • 01:04:06
    And that's structural.
  • 01:04:12
    you know the volume of folks coming through it.
  • 01:04:16
    Part of it is all of the different titles that we have, the different pathways to come into it, and part of it again is just a function of a lower level of staffing with a higher level of work.
  • 01:04:31
    But that being said, you know, I think the numbers did show our recruiting team is engaged a lot more They are in contact with a lot more people But we need to be getting more people across the finish line.
  • 01:04:45
    I don't accept that I don't accept an explanation of people giving that the people applying today are just simply not good enough.
  • 01:04:53
    I don't believe that and I also don't believe that
  • 01:04:57
    I think
  • 01:05:15
    and it's also a different generation.
  • 01:05:18
    So we need to be engaged with them as much as possible, keep them interested, keep encouraging them to come to Minneapolis and get them into some position, whether it's an internship or whatever, as quickly as we can.
  • 01:05:30
    So I think that's the way going forward, but we have to do better at identifying where are we losing people along the way.
• • Emily Koski
  • 01:05:38
    I appreciate this explanation and I would really love to dig into this a little bit more because you know we have invested million plus and you're asking for more dollars in order to recruit more and I am not seeing us actually having a problem getting people to apply.
  • 01:05:56
    Correct.
  • 01:05:57
    I'm having, I'm seeing us having the ability to actually get through the applications.
• • Linea Palmisano
  • 01:06:03
    Correct.
• • Emily Koski
  • 01:06:03
    and so I'm not sure that that additional $500,000 that you're requesting is going to solve this problem.
  • 01:06:10
    I would rather put those dollars towards figuring out what do we need internally to make sure that we can get these good applicants through the process.
  • 01:06:20
    I understand that you know there's lots of people just put applications everywhere here and there and
  • 01:06:26
    I know it's a different department but I was just down with the public works garbage haulers this morning and several people I spoke to he said he waited multiple rounds to get this job
  • 01:06:44
    you know his brother or their sibling and so it's hard for me to see this number of a thousand applicants and only 60 of them come through so I would really like us to dig a little deeper on what we can do internally to shift those
  • 01:07:01
    ratios around and I agree I think we need to think creatively here.
  • 01:07:05
    I think we need to think about what are other roles at the city that they can be doing within our public safety ecosystem that helps them understand so if they want to be an officer that doesn't preclude them from working in within our public safety ecosystem and learning about the city and then transitioning if that's the case.
  • 01:07:25
    people want to work at the city, we want them to come.
  • 01:07:28
    So I appreciate your urgency and I look forward to setting up another meeting to see how I can help and if there's anything we can do in this budget process, I think we need to do it.
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 01:07:38
    Chair, Vice Chair, thank you.
  • 01:07:41
    This is, to me, this is, you know, the most serious, one of the most serious issues that we have, we have a lot of them, but it is getting people across the finish line.
  • 01:07:50
    You know, it's, the process still works the way it was
  • 01:07:54
    20 years ago when we had way many people more applying for positions that are here and my concern is particularly as you get people that are not connected to the police department you're getting newcomers people from neighborhoods and people who don't have family members that either you know have connections with city government or have connections in the police department they don't necessarily understand it's a complicated process here there's different what is a recruit what is a cadet what is a CS all these things
  • 01:08:23
    and if we want to have more people coming on from different communities that haven't been here before and we want to encourage more of our residents that may not have a connection or somebody that can call when there's a problem like we have to be the resource for those people to explain okay maybe there's some simple thing you need to do and then you'll be good in the process like we need to be able to better help bring our people on so yes thank you appreciate it
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:08:54
    Thank you, next I'll recognize Councilmember Palmisano.
• • Linea Palmisano
  • 01:08:58
    Thank you, Madam Chair.
  • 01:08:59
    Going back to something said earlier, Chief O'Hara, you mentioned 578 sworn officers.
  • 01:09:06
    Does that include officers out on different types of leave?
  • 01:09:10
    Medical leave, mental health leave, injury, that sort of thing?
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 01:09:14
    Chair, Councilmember, yes, that includes everyone whether or not they're physically able to work.
• • Linea Palmisano
  • 01:09:21
    So yeah, the last part of what you said was kind of my point.
  • 01:09:27
    I really appreciate in your earlier slides, I think it was on slide four, the continued focus on identifying civilianization opportunities just to reduce the burden on sworn staff.
  • 01:09:40
    Did it say how much progress you made toward that goal this year?
  • 01:09:45
    What I mean by that is work previously done by sworn officers now being done by civilians.
  • 01:09:52
    Can you comment on how much work that is, just generally speaking, and how that's going?
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 01:09:59
    Chair, Council Member, not enough.
  • 01:10:04
    So while we have, you know, we made permanent the temporary criminal case investigators that were temporary last year, last time we talked about this, we made those first folks permanent.
  • 01:10:18
    There has not been, since then, a net gain in civilians investigating crimes.
  • 01:10:24
    We have, you know, investigators that are doing functions under internal affairs, so whether it's
  • 01:10:29
    in the IA function itself and in intake or in the candidate investigations component or in force review and body worn camera view.
  • 01:10:42
    So my comment would be no, it's not a net gain in terms of being able to help investigations of crime.
  • 01:10:50
    Committee.
  • 01:11:06
    consent decree with the DOJ.
  • 01:11:10
    So while it's good and we've built out an implementation division under Commander Rolkes that is almost entirely civilian, that's great, but that's all new work.
  • 01:11:21
    That's not addressing crime.
  • 01:11:24
    So that's kind of the problem with that.
• • Linea Palmisano
  • 01:11:28
    Yeah, thank you.
  • 01:11:29
    That's helpful.
  • 01:11:30
    I want to point out that in last year's budget the council amendments removed three of your new civilian MPD investigators and we backed filled them with one-time PSA money.
  • 01:11:42
    One of the reasons the mayor's budget increases the police department is his recommendation to replace two of those three positions with ongoing general fund.
  • 01:11:52
    money.
  • 01:11:53
    So I hope we all agree that civilianization of our force has value and we stop doing these shifts of money.
  • 01:12:03
    These actions from last year have consequences.
  • 01:12:07
    Domestic navigators are great.
  • 01:12:09
    I'm glad they're coming in to be more integrated within the police department but we have to stop, you know, pitting our needs on council against each other and against where you're
  • 01:12:19
    Thank you, next I'll recognize Councilmember Rainville.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:12:28
    Thank you, Chair.
• • Michael Rainville
  • 01:12:36
    Chief, two compliments.
  • 01:12:38
    First, the feedback I'm getting from the people in my ward about the public MSTAT communities.
  • 01:12:44
    So they have a deeper understanding of policing.
  • 01:12:47
    That's working out really well.
  • 01:12:49
    It's a great idea.
  • 01:12:50
    And in particular, in the second precinct, April, I don't know if she's
  • 01:12:56
    a social worker, I think that's her title, but she's working out so well and helping the people that officers really can't help.
  • 01:13:06
    She's almost a link between the officers and the behavioral crisis response team, so she's doing a really good job there.
  • 01:13:15
    But as far as the budget, could you walk us through, so we had two recent incidents on Lindale Avenue, one Lindale solved the shooting,
  • 01:13:25
    which tied up a lot of resources.
  • 01:13:27
    And then just last night on Lindale North, the horrific accident.
  • 01:13:31
    So what, budget-wise, what resources do we spend on major incidents like that?
  • 01:13:38
    What personnel are there?
  • 01:13:40
    What is the cost for overtime?
  • 01:13:42
    Could you just give us a rough idea?
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 01:13:44
    Sure.
  • 01:13:45
    Chair, Councilmember, thank you.
  • 01:13:47
    I would say the greatest impact with these large incidents is overtime.
  • 01:13:52
    We talked about the 26 million.
  • 01:13:56
    Whenever we need to assemble a large group of people,
  • 01:14:00
    It is almost always exclusively overtime whether that's for late-night safety plan whether it's downtown It's in dinkytown or most recently in uptown Or be having personnel, you know drawing resources for elsewhere Maintaining people at a steam over a period of time It drains other resources citywide.
  • 01:14:23
    So whether that's like on Lindale Avenue
  • 01:14:28
    We are a partner to all the law enforcement agencies here.
  • 01:14:49
    One of our partners is the University of Minnesota, so when they need help and they think that they need a few dozen officers just to stand by to maintain order, that's oftentimes over time.
  • 01:15:05
    It is almost exclusively operational issues.
  • 01:15:12
    But on a day-to-day basis, we rely on overtime simply to staff 911 and to try and staff each precinct, each shift at a minimum level.
  • 01:15:29
    We're using overtime every single day to do the most basic functions of a police department.
• • Michael Rainville
  • 01:15:35
    Thank you.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:15:38
    Thank you.
  • 01:15:39
    Next I will recognize Councilmember Chaudry.
• • Aurin Chowdhury
  • 01:15:43
    Thank you Madam Chair.
  • 01:15:45
    Thank you Chief O'Hara for your presentation.
  • 01:15:47
    This is my first time sitting as a council member for all of our recommended budget proposals.
  • 01:15:59
    So I was definitely looking forward to this one.
  • 01:16:01
    I have plenty of questions.
  • 01:16:02
    Probably will follow up with you ahead of our budget so we can discuss it more one-on-one.
  • 01:16:08
    But for some of the questions that I do have is I know with the passage of the new police contract one of the provisions was removing the 70-30 split and I wanted to just hear from you with
  • 01:16:26
    the ability to move officers around without that constraint.
  • 01:16:32
    What have been the changes that you've experienced?
  • 01:16:37
    What are some metrics that you can communicate over to us on the shifts on the ground?
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 01:16:43
    So chair, council member, not much so far both because of it's just been a short period of time
  • 01:16:52
    and City Council.
  • 01:17:09
    I would anticipate about 40 this year and about 40 next year also.
  • 01:17:15
    So depending on where those places come from, it would be used to backfill 911 and then patrol from different places.
  • 01:17:27
    but again it is just a critically low staffing right now.
  • 01:17:36
    My hope is again that we are able to grow the police department more next year and that would become something that would be more useful as we have more people to deploy.
  • 01:17:48
    But it is just both a very low number of people that we're dealing with to begin with and not many separations, not much movement since the contract has been approved.
• • Aurin Chowdhury
  • 01:18:00
    Thank you, I appreciate that.
  • 01:18:01
    And then I had a question related to slide 17, the recommended budget proposal on unsheltered homelessness.
  • 01:18:13
    It's that one time funding for 163,000.
  • 01:18:16
    Understand the purchasing of mobile lights, cameras, to monitor encampments deter crime activity while ensuring the well-being of both.
  • 01:18:27
    The homeless population and surrounding community, just reading off the slide, wanted to get more details on the second bullet point, which is address the complex issues surrounding homelessness using a comprehensive approach.
  • 01:18:42
    What does that comprehensive approach entail and then how do you plan on using that $163,000
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 01:18:52
    For the mobile lights cameras and then that comprehensive approach just trying to understand So chair and council member this this funding is specifically just for those two $80,000 trailers and the police department is a part of Is not the lead department but is a part of the administration's overall
  • 01:19:16
    The Reg Services Department is the lead department on the homelessness response.
  • 01:19:24
    We are a component under the overall plan.
  • 01:19:28
    The funding is specifically just for these two light trailers.
• • Aurin Chowdhury
  • 01:19:33
    Okay, that's good to know Yeah, and I would just like note for the public that then it's specifically for those items and I understand like there's a underpinning around comprehensive approach but when I see that on the proposal it leads me to believe that there's more spending outside of Those materials and it sounds like that's not the case.
  • 01:19:55
    So that's just good clarification
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 01:19:59
    So chair council member it's this is just the part that we're fulfilling The larger proposal is in reg services But this is the piece that we're providing for that plan Great and then
• • Aurin Chowdhury
  • 01:20:18
    Could you remind me what's the expected new recruit classes, the numbers of potential sworn to be?
  • 01:20:31
    I know you said that they couldn't be counted for the current numbers because they have to get to that point first.
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 01:20:40
    So chair and council member, it's a total of 60 hires so far year to date, four sworn positions.
  • 01:20:48
    Of those 15 were already police officers elsewhere in Minnesota, so very quickly we hire them, we give them a couple weeks of training, they're out on the street.
  • 01:20:56
    Other than that, the recruit hires were 14 this year.
  • 01:21:01
    These are people who are licensed by the post board so they can immediately go into the police academy.
  • 01:21:06
    Four months later, they're out on the street.
  • 01:21:08
    Eleven were cadets.
  • 01:21:10
    So those are folks who have bachelor's degrees.
  • 01:21:12
    We hire them, we send them to Hennepin Tech for eight months, and then they come back, they go through the police academy, and then they get on the street.
  • 01:21:20
    So roughly 15 months from the time of hire.
  • 01:21:23
    uh the last one is CSOs there's 13 we hired so far this year another seven we're bringing on next week next Monday so it'll be a total of 20 they are in different
  • 01:21:37
    Each individual has a different number of college credits, but generally if someone had nothing, they go to Hennepin Tech for two years to get their associates, and then they go in the police academy.
  • 01:21:48
    So it is a complicated process in Minnesota to become a police officer, and that's why these folks are in all different stages.
  • 01:21:56
    But the only people that you really get an immediate impact for are those laterals from within the state, 15 of them.
  • 01:22:04
    and another four we have coming on in November.
  • 01:22:08
    So it'll be, I believe, 19 for the year, which is the most ever hired in a year here.
• • Aurin Chowdhury
  • 01:22:15
    And then so it's from other departments within the state.
  • 01:22:19
    Sounds like individuals graduating from college.
  • 01:22:24
    Some individuals finishing high school going into the CSO program.
  • 01:22:28
    Different tracks of life out of those individuals.
  • 01:22:31
    Do you have like a rough estimate of for the laterals like how many are coming from within the state of Minnesota outside of the state of Minnesota and then for the other section of groups?
  • 01:22:43
    How many are?
  • 01:22:44
    local to Minneapolis, local to Minnesota.
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 01:22:48
    Chair, Council Member, offhand I can tell you I know one that was a New York City police officer for 12 years.
  • 01:22:57
    That is a police officer here now.
  • 01:22:59
    He is East African.
  • 01:23:00
    He was hired this year.
  • 01:23:01
    The others that I know came from the Sheriff's Office, came from Metro Transit.
  • 01:23:09
    One person had 20 years on in a suburban Hennepin County Police Department and then she came here.
  • 01:23:17
    They all vary.
  • 01:23:18
    I don't think there's anyone else that was outside of the state Other than the guy that came from New York City Great thank you, and I kind of in that same vein.
• • Aurin Chowdhury
  • 01:23:31
    This is my last question, but this has kind of been the Thing that was on my mind throughout your presentation coming into this presentation and just generally the conversation around recruitment
  • 01:23:47
    Obviously, we're in very challenging times.
  • 01:23:50
    The consent decree is emblematic of that.
  • 01:23:54
    Our history is emblematic of that and we're competing both with the
  • 01:24:02
    racism, misogyny, classism, and the unconstitutional practices that have existed within the department and working towards correcting that alongside a shortage, growing safety issues like your presentation highlighted that well.
  • 01:24:24
    Looking at the new recruit classes, both the cadet classes, CSOs, the laterals, one of the things that I think I would like to know more about and that I feel a sense of anxiety about is as we're bringing in new recruits to the police department,
  • 01:24:44
    how what's the vision for ensuring individuals who might not have had education been in an education system where they are interacting with people of a different race or ethnicity class background might have some racist beliefs coming in just from the community that they were raised in might have
  • 01:25:05
    biases of all of those natures, how do we ensure that the new recruits that we're getting and bringing a part of the police department aren't continuing a legacy of a culture that leads us to biases that can lead to race-based violence, gender-based violence, both towards the community or within the police department.
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 01:25:27
    So chair, council member, thank you.
  • 01:25:30
    I would encourage you and all the council members to come next Monday night to Crystal Del Rey High School to see for yourself the young people that are coming forward to take this job.
  • 01:25:45
    They're remarkable, and it is different from what had traditionally been folks coming into policing.
  • 01:25:53
    That being said, I think, you know, I mentioned earlier, Councilmember Vito had mentioned earlier,
  • 01:26:00
    the efforts that we have to have community mentors they're from all different stakeholders from different communities from around the city to have them introduced to our officers while they're still in training and then have them available to our officers to introduce them to who the community is as they then go out onto the street and like the council member said that's something that we need to figure out how we can actually provide funding for because right now it's people from community who are doing that on their own time volunteering
  • 01:26:29
    That being said, I feel much better than I did when I first got here about the state of the police department today.
  • 01:26:39
    I think the members that are here are incredibly resilient and dedicated to our residents and to getting this right.
  • 01:26:47
    I think there had been an incentive for people to leave and to walk away and the people that are here
  • 01:26:53
    did not.
  • 01:26:54
    They didn't turn their backs on our residents.
  • 01:26:56
    And I believe that we are moving forward in a better direction.
  • 01:27:01
    I think we're getting back to reminding people what the purpose is for being here in the first place.
  • 01:27:08
    And I think this police department, although we're not like other communities that love to say how supportive they are of the police and all these other things, our officers
  • 01:27:22
    don't
  • 01:27:43
    that they are working at much higher levels to provide service to our residents.
  • 01:27:50
    They're working much harder than police officers had been in the past.
  • 01:27:53
    It's just there's nowhere to hide here.
  • 01:27:55
    That's just the way it is.
  • 01:27:57
    And I feel very positive that we are making progress on addressing those issues.
  • 01:28:01
    That being said, is it perfect?
  • 01:28:03
    No, it never will be.
  • 01:28:05
    But we are creating
  • 01:28:07
    a better system for our people.
  • 01:28:09
    I think we are staffed with incredibly good people.
  • 01:28:13
    I think what happened in the past was a system that failed people.
  • 01:28:17
    It's not that people were inherently bad in the past, but I do think that the system that we have is getting fixed, it is getting better.
  • 01:28:25
    Just this week,
  • 01:28:27
    yesterday we had an academic director start for the training division.
  • 01:28:33
    That's someone who has a PhD who had been teaching for a number of years at university within the state and also has experience as a police officer here and I think
  • 01:28:44
    You know, going forward, like I mentioned earlier, as we continue to professionalize and try and change the culture around the police department, which there is still work to do, there is still work to do around changing how the training unit functions, how field training functions here, there is still work to do, don't get me wrong, I do think
  • 01:29:05
    that we are on the right path, I think the independent evaluator sees what we are doing and I think that as they conduct audits in the future, they report publicly, they report to the court
  • 01:29:20
    I think publicly we will see what a lot of residents have been saying to me over the course of two years is that they see things improving.
  • 01:29:30
    There is definitely still a lot of work to do.
  • 01:29:33
    In terms of gender, that's why we have signed on to 30x30.
  • 01:29:37
    We have the grant that I mentioned.
  • 01:29:40
    and with our applicants, the police department is getting a lot more diverse than it ever had been before.
  • 01:29:46
    But I do feel very, very strongly that we are on the right path to correcting those things.
• • Aurin Chowdhury
  • 01:29:55
    Thank you.
  • 01:29:56
    You've given me much to reflect on.
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 01:29:58
    Thank you.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:30:00
    Thank you.
  • 01:30:00
    We're coming near the end here.
  • 01:30:01
    Thank you for your patience, Chief.
  • 01:30:05
    I'll recognize Councilmember Chavez.
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 01:30:07
    Thank you, Chair.
  • 01:30:08
    I just want, based on the comments made on the dais about the domestic violence navigators, I went back to look in the history and found out that it passed unanimously through the council and there was no dissent in November 2023.
  • 01:30:20
    So I'm just confused about the rhetoric.
  • 01:30:23
    It passed with 12 votes and only one person was absent and that was Councilmember Jenkins.
  • 01:30:27
    But just wanted to clarify that, folks.
  • 01:30:30
    up here in the comments.
  • 01:30:31
    It passed unanimously when that happened, so thank you.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:30:35
    Thank you Councilmember.
  • 01:30:38
    Just to wrap up your presentation here, I'll share just one quick piece of feedback during the discussion and question and answer period.
  • 01:30:49
    You mentioned that you are seeing a historic level of recruitment within the department, 60 new sworn personnel in the department.
  • 01:30:58
    I think you said it was the highest in 10 years perhaps?
  • 01:31:01
    and I really wish that was included in the achievements section of your presentation.
  • 01:31:06
    That's a really big deal and I know it's something that residents and members of the public really pay attention to and it's something that I wish had been uplifted.
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 01:31:18
    Chair, thank you.
  • 01:31:21
    I can't say enough about the young people that are coming here, especially the CSO group.
  • 01:31:29
    They are incredibly diverse.
  • 01:31:31
    They're incredibly good people.
  • 01:31:33
    I hope you all get a chance to meet them and interact with them.
  • 01:31:36
    It will give everyone more hope to see.
  • 01:31:40
    I mean we had some of them I think some people may have been here at community meeting we had where I introduced a couple to them a couple of them to you know and we had actually we've received a lot of hate
  • 01:31:51
    from around the country after the last time I did a swearing-in ceremony because we had some significant firsts.
  • 01:31:58
    We had the first Somali woman that became a police officer here and the first permanent resident who's a woman from Mexico that's been living in Minneapolis since she was four.
  • 01:32:07
    And for about a week we had people from all over the country calling here with nothing but hate because these two women were hired.
  • 01:32:14
    But if you actually met them
  • 01:32:16
    and got a chance to talk to them like we had them at the American Indian Center and they got to tell their story.
  • 01:32:21
    I mean, you just, them and everyone else, all of them, I mean, you'd be blown away with how genuine and sincere and good they are.
  • 01:32:29
    You know, one female who's Mexican American was telling folks that, this is the week before she got sworn in, she said, my mom doesn't know I work here.
  • 01:32:39
    She thinks I work for Ramsey County because she's too scared.
  • 01:32:42
    of me coming to work for Minneapolis.
  • 01:32:45
    And I mean, you know, we have really, really good people that, again, I mean, I think it's my job with the settlement agreement to make sure that we have the right system in place to support them and keep them here.
  • 01:32:58
    And I think, you know, I know they would appreciate, you know, to meet you all and to see you all, and I think you would feel better about where we are if you got to know some of these people yourself.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:33:10
    And then just last brief question that I'm hoping we'll get a very brief response to.
  • 01:33:16
    Do you budget for CSOs separately from sworn personnel in your personnel budget?
  • 01:33:23
    Or are you using vacancy savings from the sworn personnel budget?
• • SPEAKER_04
  • 01:33:30
    Chair, they are not sworn.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:33:34
    Thank you so much for coming in to present your 2025 recommended budget.
  • 01:33:45
    With that I will ask the clerks to file that presentation and we're ready to welcome our next guests.
  • 01:33:55
    Thank you.
  • 01:33:56
    So the next presentation we will receive is from the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board and for that I will invite Superintendent Al Bangoura to begin that presentation.
  • 01:34:08
    Welcome.
• • SPEAKER_14
  • 01:34:10
    Thank you, Chair Taktai, Vice Chair Koski, Council Members, President Payne.
  • 01:34:17
    It's great to see everybody and thank you.
  • 01:34:18
    It's a privilege to be here today speaking in front of you and sharing our budget with you.
  • 01:34:22
    Before I turn this over to Director Weissman, I'd also like to say too that it was a privilege to sit here and to listen to our Chief,
  • 01:34:29
    and working in partnership with them and our organization.
  • 01:34:33
    It was really informative and I too had the privilege of the Battle of the Badge.
  • 01:34:38
    We're still salty about not winning that but the ribs were delicious and so it was a great opportunity to meet with our partners there and I'm glad it's back and it was a great event so thank you for mentioning that too before.
  • 01:34:51
    Again, just wanted to add that.
  • 01:34:53
    The one thing before I get started and turn this over, I do want to just kind of address something that I think we should all be really incredibly proud of as a city for our park and recreation system.
  • 01:35:04
    Just recently, if you haven't heard, we won the national recognition for the best of the best, the gold medal award for excellence in park and recreation on a national level.
  • 01:35:14
    I know sometimes the park system gets recognized through TPL, Trust for Public Lands, as one of the best park systems in the country multiple years.
  • 01:35:22
    that is based on metrics and very kind of definitive sort of data.
  • 01:35:26
    This is really an incredible award that is presented to us at the National Conference.
  • 01:35:32
    It is based and rooted through the award that we received in Atlanta.
  • 01:35:37
    8,500 people were in the conference.
  • 01:35:40
    There are categories that are presented.
  • 01:35:43
    We are class one, which is over 400,000 residency.
  • 01:35:47
    The Gold Medal Award was founded in 1965.
  • 01:35:50
    The Park Board has applied.
  • 01:35:53
    The last time we won was in 1989.
  • 01:35:57
    We had applied just several times and you apply when you believe that the organization should be recognized for its work.
  • 01:36:05
    We applied and we won, and the gold medal is administered by the American Academy for Park and Recreation Administration.
  • 01:36:13
    It's an amazing organization.
  • 01:36:15
    I am honored to be an inductee and a fellow in that organization.
  • 01:36:20
    And the criteria that they look at, and the reason I'm saying this, of course, because it reflects our budget.
  • 01:36:26
    The reason what they look at is
  • 01:36:29
    Long range planning, resource management, volunteerism, environmental stewardship, program development, professional development, and agency recognition.
  • 01:36:39
    The really important piece behind this is how we manage our park system and how we provide this incredible park system, this jewel of a park system that's been around 141 years
  • 01:36:51
    and I always say we're a city within a park.
  • 01:36:53
    How important that is.
  • 01:36:54
    I wanted to mention that because this is the work of the organization.
  • 01:36:58
    We are an incredibly transparent organization.
  • 01:37:01
    We bring forward in our budget that we work very hard at and we respond to our council, we respond to our board very importantly.
  • 01:37:10
    but at the end of the day our constituents use our parks every day in this incredible park system that we call Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board.
  • 01:37:17
    So I just wanted to share that with you how important this is.
  • 01:37:20
    I hope that you all have an opportunity to go on our website to look at the gold medal and to, there's a video that is really good and the questions that they ask around this are really deep and involved.
  • 01:37:33
    and again I wanted to share that with you to say not only congratulations to the Park Board but what it means to the residents of Minneapolis.
  • 01:37:40
    So I just wanted to share that.
  • 01:37:42
    With that being said too then I want to turn this over to Director Weissman.
  • 01:37:46
    The process and our budget we met with our board yesterday.
  • 01:37:50
    We presented the budget to our board.
  • 01:37:52
    The budget now is going to be the hands of our board of course.
  • 01:37:54
    They're going to review for the next several weeks.
  • 01:37:56
    and they will come back with either questions, amendments, a lot of work that we're going to have to do before the final adoption.
  • 01:38:02
    There will be several, of course, community input in response to the board as we go through that, as we always do, and it's very, very important.
  • 01:38:12
    But again, I wanted to also thank
  • 01:38:15
    Chair Choctaw and President Payne for your support when we were going after the levy.
  • 01:38:22
    We had some incredible challenges on this budget.
  • 01:38:24
    We really, it was difficult, but we were grateful that you recognized WAGE and our workers and the continued investment in our youth.
  • 01:38:32
    So thank you for that.
  • 01:38:34
    That was really significant for us.
  • 01:38:36
    As challenging as it was, that really helped us to recognize our employees and our youth, so thank you for that.
  • 01:38:43
    With that, I'm going to turn this over to Director Weissman, who will go through the presentation and thank you for this opportunity and look forward to your questions.
  • 01:38:51
    Thank you.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:38:54
    Welcome, Director Weissman, if you'll begin by introducing yourself.
• • SPEAKER_11
  • 01:38:58
    Thank you.
  • 01:38:59
    My name is Julie Wiseman and I'm the finance director of the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board.
  • 01:39:07
    So we're excited to present our first two year budget.
  • 01:39:15
    The city started that process two years ago and this is our first go round.
  • 01:39:22
    Updated on LIMS now is all the documentation that we provided to our board last night and then all of this budget information is also available on the park board website.
  • 01:39:36
    So our budget book I will go go through this presentation Based on how the budget book is also laid out Sorry
  • 01:39:58
    So we began developing our budget in April and May with our budget retreats with our board of commissioners.
  • 01:40:08
    We discussed the impacts of expanding the citywide needs-based free and reduced youth programming.
  • 01:40:16
    We talked about our expenditure pressures with wages, inflation,
  • 01:40:21
    and capital needs, our system equity investment needs, and then closing the youth investment gap in 2025 and 2026.
  • 01:40:31
    The board shared with us that they understood the impact that property taxes are going to have on the residential properties.
  • 01:40:42
    In this next year and in ongoing years And they really wanted to continue serving the youth of Minneapolis caring for the park assets caring for the environment Identifying new funding sources for the park system to help alleviate some of the property tax pressures that we feel and investing in our employees
  • 01:41:12
    So I won't talk about the tax levy again.
  • 01:41:15
    The superintendent mentioned that.
  • 01:41:19
    The Board of Estimate and Taxation set a maximum tax levy for the park board at
  • 01:41:26
    an 8.27% which included the investments that we needed in wages and benefits for our employees as well as the support for expanding our free programming citywide.
  • 01:41:43
    In 2026, our budget plan
  • 01:41:47
    forecast the property tax levy increase at six point three three percent and includes current service levels again with the investment in employees as well as a standard of service level of service for Greco and Upper Harburg terminal parks as we have added almost 25 to 30 acres of park land
  • 01:42:15
    the single largest investment of new park land in many, many years.
  • 01:42:26
    So our legacy investment, our board has worked tirelessly as well as staff on these three legacy
  • 01:42:39
    investments.
  • 01:42:40
    And the first that you are aware of from last year's budget is the dedicated parkway and stormwater funding.
  • 01:42:47
    So this budget includes those two investments.
  • 01:42:54
    We are also at a point where we can announce publicly that we are working with the Minneapolis Parks Foundation to establish an endowment for parks.
  • 01:43:07
    This would provide funding in perpetuity for historic infrastructure, regional park and trail care and maintenance, and our natural resources.
  • 01:43:19
    By the end of 2024,
  • 01:43:22
    The endowment agreement will be approved by both parties and the work will begin to establish the endowment.
  • 01:43:32
    So our budget is really guided by the Minneapolis Park Board Comprehensive Plan and our board adopted the 2023 to 2026 strategic directions back in 2022 and that's the short term goals for implementing our long term comprehensive plan.
  • 01:43:59
    So we have five strategic directions.
  • 01:44:02
    The first one is acting boldly for our climate future.
  • 01:44:07
    We have been working hard to decrease our footprint.
  • 01:44:13
    We have Graco, which is the first net-zero building in the MPRB park system that will be opening up early 2025.
  • 01:44:25
    This is exciting.
  • 01:44:27
    We are participating in the Xcel Energy Solar Rewards community so that we are currently obtaining 100% of our electricity from renewable resources.
  • 01:44:44
    and then we always continue our formal criteria for evaluating any equipment replacements to reduce fuel consumption and minimize pollution and emissions.
  • 01:44:59
    We have also partnered with the Minnesota Energy Corps
  • 01:45:03
    to perform energy efficiency assessments on all MPRB facilities.
  • 01:45:09
    This work started this year and we hope to get through all of our facilities by the end of 2026.
  • 01:45:19
    Our next strategic direction is cultivate each community's place and honor cultural traditions in Minneapolis parks.
  • 01:45:30
    And a lot of our focus on this strategic direction has been our relationship to the indigenous community.
  • 01:45:38
    And this budget supports continued work
  • 01:45:42
    with that community as we work towards indigenous acknowledgement and reconciliation.
  • 01:45:55
    Strategic direction C are quality youth programming.
  • 01:46:01
    This budget represents an expansion to the citywide needs-based free and reduced cost youth programming.
  • 01:46:12
    We have right now three programs that we use to offer parents to have access for their youth to receive, participate in the parks.
  • 01:46:26
    We are eliminating those three and moving to one citywide so that it's more consistent, it's more easily understandable, it's more easily accessed.
  • 01:46:37
    by our parents in registering our youth for programs.
  • 01:46:44
    We also are closing our youth investment gap.
  • 01:46:49
    So as you know, in this 2025 represents the fourth year of our $2.6 million in youth investment.
  • 01:46:58
    2024 ARPA goes away.
  • 01:47:03
    and the $2.6 million will not be fully realized within the property tax levy until 2027.
  • 01:47:11
    That means there's a $520,000 gap in 2025 and a $260,000 gap in 2026.
  • 01:47:21
    So we are utilizing one-time decreases in general fund transfers for operations facilities rehabilitation and park land purchase reserve to close those gaps both in 2025 and 2026.
  • 01:47:38
    Care for park assets is our next strategic direction.
  • 01:47:45
    We are implementing our Parkway investment partnering with public works and The city as they do our pavement work for us This budget includes an acceleration of that increase to Parkway investment
  • 01:48:02
    with 1.25 million in 2025 and 2.7 million in 2026.
  • 01:48:09
    So the 2.7 investment is coming in a year earlier than what was originally projected.
  • 01:48:19
    So we are appreciative of that shift.
  • 01:48:24
    implementation of next generation asset management software that will enhance our capabilities and then one-time funding we are using to
  • 01:48:37
    to allocate to Greco Park since we were not successful in getting property tax support for Greco Park in 2025.
  • 01:48:48
    We are utilizing one-time funds.
  • 01:48:52
    Those one-time funds are coming from the closure of the North Commons Water Park.
  • 01:49:00
    So as we prepare for the large construction project,
  • 01:49:05
    at North Commons Park and the replacement of the water park.
  • 01:49:11
    With the condition of the water park, we felt that closing it in 2025 and commissioning its demolition is prudent in preparation for that major construction.
  • 01:49:24
    So that frees up about $250,000 of operation dollars that is being directed towards some one-time items within this budget.
  • 01:49:39
    And then of course when the water park opens up that funding will be restored.
  • 01:49:44
    So part of that is to open Greco Park.
  • 01:49:48
    We are planning for an opening that is limited, not a full opening because we weren't able to identify full funding of one-time money for Greco Park.
  • 01:50:03
    and then of course in 2026 our forecast for property taxes include Greco and Upper Harbor Terminal Park.
  • 01:50:12
    Our final strategic direction is steward of our natural resources so the main accomplishment and focus in this area is really around our storm water management as well as our natural areas management
  • 01:50:31
    and then our tree canopy.
  • 01:50:38
    I wanted to just show a couple of department highlights because you may start hearing about these from your community members or from our commissioners.
  • 01:50:52
    I wanted to make you aware of these.
  • 01:50:56
    In this 2026 budget, we had been budgeting our property tax collection rate at 99%.
  • 01:51:05
    and that had been working for us for many many years.
  • 01:51:09
    For the last two years it has not.
  • 01:51:12
    The collection rate has reduced largely due to the court cases surrounding the downtown commercial sector and so in this budget we are reducing our property tax levy in collection rate
  • 01:51:31
    from 99% to 98.5%.
  • 01:51:37
    We are planning a reduction in five ice ranks, and this is due to uncertain climate fluctuations.
  • 01:51:47
    It's become increasingly difficult to maintain ice with weather changing.
  • 01:51:58
    We have identified youth and recreation center programs and environmental education.
  • 01:52:04
    We have a beautiful facility at the Weber Natural Pool and with a fireplace, it's a beautiful facility.
  • 01:52:15
    So without having an ice rink, recreation and environmental education are planning to activate that area with outdoor winter activities and events.
  • 01:52:26
    Recreation centers will be closed on all major holidays.
  • 01:52:32
    Recreation centers have been closed on the majority of major holidays.
  • 01:52:37
    There's only four in which we had stayed open.
  • 01:52:41
    So we are planning to be closed for all major holidays.
  • 01:52:46
    And then there is
  • 01:52:48
    A reduction in hours by one hour.
  • 01:52:53
    So instead of closing at nine, the rec centers would close at eight.
  • 01:52:59
    And we will no longer be open on Sundays.
  • 01:53:02
    Right now we only have five recreation centers that are open on Sundays.
  • 01:53:07
    And so those five would be closed and we wouldn't have any recreation centers open on Sunday.
  • 01:53:15
    What I want to communicate to the public and to this council, this in no way reflects our commitment to the city-wide free programming.
  • 01:53:27
    The period of time, if you think it's
  • 01:53:29
    Eight to nine is not a programming hour, it's mostly a drop-in hour and so these changes in hours are really reflective on the usage of the building during those times and it will not impact our ability to expand and increase our youth programming.
  • 01:53:57
    So the budget book
  • 01:54:01
    I just delivered the superintendent's budget message and highlights.
  • 01:54:08
    In your budget book, under the strategic goals section, it shows all the budget investments that have been made in all of the performance measures and priority strategies from 2023 to now the recommended 2025 to 2026 budget.
  • 01:54:31
    And then there's a background section.
  • 01:54:38
    And then we get into property taxes.
  • 01:54:41
    So here we show 2025 with the 8.3% property tax increase.
  • 01:54:48
    We are 17.5% of the total city tax.
  • 01:54:52
    2026 I have here as a forecast and the city amounts that are on here we took from the mayor's recommended budget just for presentation purposes and I want to say full disclosure in the mayor's recommended budget our 2026 property tax increase
  • 01:55:19
    is being reflected at 2.6%.
  • 01:55:22
    So the Park Board and City have some work to do to kind of reconcile those two things, but I wanted to present to you today the forecast that we are making for 2026.
  • 01:55:40
    Local government aid, we're holding steady as we won't know any increases to LGA until the next legislative, until the next state budget.
  • 01:55:53
    and then our general fund.
  • 01:55:55
    So taking just a little bit of time here, you'll see on current property taxes the percentage increase is 7.7 for 2025.
  • 01:56:06
    So that's the reflection of going from a 99% collection rate to a 98.5% collection rate.
  • 01:56:15
    And so our overall growth in our general fund is 5.4% and our 2026 plan has an overall general fund growth of 5.1% On the expenditure side you'll see in 2025 we have a larger percentage increase of wages and fringe
  • 01:56:43
    To note for the City Council, we are a year behind for the wage adjustments that have happened here at the city.
  • 01:56:57
    We have been projecting our wage increases and of course building in our settlement with our local 363 into 2025 and 2026.
  • 01:57:10
    So our increases to wages and fringe are at a higher percentage for those years.
  • 01:57:21
    This shows our expenditures by division.
  • 01:57:24
    Our Environmental Stewardship Division still remains almost 50% of our budget and Recreation represents 25%.
  • 01:57:40
    This is our six year financial projection for our general fund.
  • 01:57:46
    And you'll see the 6.33 for 2026, 6.19 for 2027, and then in the fours going out 28 to 2030.
  • 01:58:01
    And the reason for the 6.33 and the 6.19 are still surrounding our system equity investment.
  • 01:58:10
    So again, in 2026, we are showing property tax dollars for Greco Park, Upper Harbor Terminal, and a small amount for Lake and Hiawatha.
  • 01:58:24
    Upper Harbor Terminal is going to come on in phases operationally for us.
  • 01:58:30
    So you'll see those dollar amounts being reflected in 27 and 28.
  • 01:58:36
    And really in 2027 the largest increase will be around the North Commons construction and activation of that new facility.
  • 01:58:50
    In our special revenue fund, this is my favorite picture of this slide deck.
  • 01:58:56
    That is from the Monarch Festival.
  • 01:59:01
    and so in our special revenue fund that the additional natural areas management sits here
  • 01:59:08
    It is an allocation from the state operations and maintenance funding.
  • 01:59:13
    So in 2025, we established this fund in 2024 at $500,000.
  • 01:59:18
    We're continuing it in 2025 at the $500,000 level.
  • 01:59:24
    And then in 2026, there is a plan to expand our seasonal workforce for
  • 01:59:33
    Natural areas management from six months to nine months as there is significant work that needs to happen from spring to fall In our enterprise fund
  • 01:59:48
    For 2025, we are showing, again, the larger revenue sources come from our visitor services with parking and vendor and concession agreements, and then golf is the next highest.
  • 02:00:08
    The thing about Enterprise Fund, for those of you that may not know, this is our business fund, so no property taxes support
  • 02:00:18
    anything in this fund.
  • 02:00:21
    It is the net income from this fund that pays the debt service, does the capital improvements and rehabilitation.
  • 02:00:31
    So at the bottom, you'll see the almost $1.3 million for debt service.
  • 02:00:38
    That's our debt service payments for the Parade Ice Garden.
  • 02:00:42
    We're nearing the end of that within the next five years.
  • 02:00:47
    We have a MRF payment that comes out of that and then our improvements.
  • 02:00:54
    For 2026, we do show a negative operating income in 2026.
  • 02:01:02
    This is largely due to the local 363 contract and building in the wage and market adjustments into these areas and our
  • 02:01:14
    fees like golf fees and things like that have not been adjusted yet for those for those added costs so they will need to be revisited in 2026 to definitely to help close that gap and to help build our replacement programs.
  • 02:01:36
    Here is our capital improvement program within the Enterprise Fund.
  • 02:01:42
    There is a lot of red.
  • 02:01:43
    Red means that it was a change from last year.
  • 02:01:47
    And really the largest changes here is that we had to add some additional money for the North
  • 02:01:56
    Nokomis concession building.
  • 02:01:58
    They're building in an enclosed area for seating.
  • 02:02:03
    That project started this fall.
  • 02:02:06
    We needed to allocate some additional money to get it to the finish line.
  • 02:02:11
    So that allocation is now in here, and we've adjusted slightly to account for that.
  • 02:02:19
    And then the other, and then the Chalet building envelope project.
  • 02:02:24
    That is money that we're setting aside for several years.
  • 02:02:28
    We have $200,000 set aside.
  • 02:02:31
    By the end of 27, we will have $1.2 million because that is a larger project that needs to be done.
  • 02:02:40
    And as well as amount in 2027,
  • 02:02:46
    to start looking at the parking lot redesign and replacement at the Worth Park golf course area.
  • 02:02:58
    Our storm water.
  • 02:03:01
    So this is a new fund that was created in 2024.
  • 02:03:04
    It is funded through the stormwater utility fee that is charged to customers.
  • 02:03:18
    And we have a separate line there now for
  • 02:03:21
    the stormwater utility fee for the stormwater infrastructure that is on park land and what we are responsible for.
  • 02:03:31
    You'll see a slight increase in 2025 as we are working with the city to try to get an inflationary amount on the base water quality testing that we do and the water quality education that we do that we have been doing
  • 02:03:50
    for years.
  • 02:03:52
    We would like to have an inflationary factor on that.
  • 02:03:56
    And then in 2026, there's an inflationary factor on what we call the base amount, and then a $359,000 request
  • 02:04:07
    for an increase to add an additional FTE plus additional supplies, contractual services to continue to enhance and expand that program.
  • 02:04:25
    Our internal service fund, we have three, information technology services, self-insurance fund, and our equipment, mobile equipment operations.
  • 02:04:36
    These funds, or these areas, were held to an overall 2.5% increase in 2025.
  • 02:04:45
    That is because they are considered contractual services on the
  • 02:04:54
    on the general fund and other funds side and we weren't able to increase those by more than the two and a half percent and so we have some adjustments that are being made and we hope that we can begin to increase that going forward.
  • 02:05:14
    We worked really hard to improve our level of equipment replacement and we don't want to fall behind.
  • 02:05:25
    Our personnel summary, we have 633 full-time employees this year.
  • 02:05:32
    In 2025, we have two full-time positions being added in our golf operations.
  • 02:05:41
    That's being funded through a conversion.
  • 02:05:43
    So we're decreasing our seasonal golf park keepers to provide two full-time park keepers that will improve the consistency and year-round maintenance to our enterprise operations.
  • 02:06:00
    And then in 2026, the plan is for 642 FTEs.
  • 02:06:04
    That's an additional seven.
  • 02:06:08
    Six of those are related to Greco Park and Upper Harbor Terminal Parks.
  • 02:06:15
    So the care and maintenance and activation of those parks.
  • 02:06:19
    And one is in the stormwater area where they're requesting a full-time water quality position.
  • 02:06:32
    Our Capital Improvement Program, one thing that I would like to highlight here is you will see in 2026 our NPP-20 amount stagnates and it's the same amount
  • 02:06:48
    between 26 and 2030.
  • 02:06:50
    And that is because we are due by ordinance to negotiate with the city our next five years of guaranteed annual minimum amounts that we will receive from NPP 20.
  • 02:07:04
    So that will happen in 2025.
  • 02:07:07
    So in the next budget round, you will see potentially a change in the numbers for 27 through 2030.
  • 02:07:18
    You see in 2025 that general fund transfer going to zero Again, that helps fund the youth investment gap in 2025 and then in 2026 you'll see a little bit of it coming back as our investment gap is 260,000 in 26 and then in 27 it's reestablished to its original amount
  • 02:07:46
    On the regional park side, you'll see that Metropolitan Council is zeroed out and that is due to the legislature not passing a bonding bill this legislative session.
  • 02:07:59
    So our CIP has been adjusted for that.
  • 02:08:07
    shift or major change in our CIP, you all have access to the big large spreadsheet that shows all those adjustments and changes, is that the board adopted Resolution 2024-144 and allocated $10.5 million to the North Commons project.
  • 02:08:28
    in 2026.
  • 02:08:30
    And what that does is it delays every other capital project by one year.
  • 02:08:37
    So it doesn't take any project away, it just delays everything else by one year.
  • 02:08:44
    And that is due to the funding that is needed
  • 02:08:48
    for the project, and we have received state funding, we have received philanthropic money, and we needed to put some of our own money towards this major project.
  • 02:09:07
    We are now in our budget review, comment, and amendment timeframe, and that will be over November 6th through the board adoption on December 10th.
  • 02:09:21
    So we have three board meetings that we will be working through and discussing the superintendent's recommended budget.
  • 02:09:30
    And with that, showing the great gold medal award, and we're available for questions.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 02:09:37
    Thank you so much for your presentation, Director Reisman and Superintendent Mangora.
  • 02:09:44
    Colleagues, are there any questions or discussion related to this presentation?
  • 02:09:49
    I will first recognize Council Member Cashman.
• • SPEAKER_13
  • 02:09:54
    Thank you Chair Chugtai, thank you Director Wiseman, thank you Superintendent Van Gora for being here and the thorough presentation.
  • 02:10:01
    One question that I have because I'm the City Council representative on the Minneapolis Tree Advisory Commission and this came up in the Public Health and Safety Committee, Councilmember Palmisano asked it then and I don't think we've had an answer since and I don't see it really outlined clearly in your presentation here.
  • 02:10:18
    So what is the 2025 investment in trees and how does that compare to previous years?
• • SPEAKER_11
  • 02:10:24
    Vice President Chuktay and Council Member Cashman We were prepared for that question so I have my response and I wasn't able to get it into the presentation but obviously we are in charge of balancing many factors In 2024 we had a general fund budget for tree purchases of $410,000
  • 02:10:51
    We also had $500,000 from ARPA.
  • 02:10:56
    So in 2024, we had $910,000, which is close to the million dollars that is being recommended.
  • 02:11:08
    The ARPA funding going away and the pressures on property taxes We did increase our general fund budget within this budget to $557,000
  • 02:11:25
    So that is a hundred and thirty seven thousand dollar increase That increase is coming from the carbon the urban carbon offset program part of it And then also we have a tree restitution fund when capital projects happen within the city of Minneapolis and they remove public trees to do these projects and
  • 02:11:52
    they have to pay the Minneapolis Park Board for the value of those trees and we have allocated $40,000 of that money for additional tree purchases.
  • 02:12:06
    We are also always continuing to look at philanthropic and grant dollars.
  • 02:12:11
    So for 2025, we have two grants, one from the State of Minnesota DNR Department, and then one is a grant through the state through the Metropolitan Council, both of them approximately $100,000.
  • 02:12:28
    So in 2025, we will have
  • 02:12:33
    just over $800,000 available for tree purchase.
  • 02:12:38
    And again, there's a lot that goes into the health of the trees.
  • 02:12:42
    It's not just planting new trees.
  • 02:12:46
    It is, you know, the watering and pruning and care of those trees ongoing.
  • 02:12:54
    So it's a balancing act to make sure that we can help those trees survive throughout their life.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 02:13:02
    Thank you so much.
  • 02:13:04
    Wonderful, thank you.
  • 02:13:05
    We've got about three more members in queue right now.
  • 02:13:09
    Next I'll recognize Council President Payne.
• • Elliott Payne
  • 02:13:13
    Thank you Madam Vice President.
  • 02:13:14
    I just wanted to say thank you for this presentation and I think this national recognition is just a reflection of the depth of investment that we as a community have in our park system and we can't make that investment in our parks without investment in our people and that's why I was really proud to be able to
  • 02:13:31
    to support those workers and putting all my cards on the table.
  • 02:13:35
    I also see our park system as a critical component of our comprehensive public safety system because we know that having youth programming in places for kids to go and having caring adults in those kids' lives, that's an upstream thing, an investment that we can make to make Minneapolis a safer, more thriving city.
  • 02:13:54
    So I'm just really grateful that we have this close partnership.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 02:13:59
    Thank you.
  • 02:14:00
    Next I'll recognize Councilmember Rainville followed by Vice Chair Koski.
• • Michael Rainville
  • 02:14:05
    Thank you, Chair.
  • 02:14:06
    I also, I agree with Council President Payne that you are part of our Comprehensive Public Safety Program, but in your presentation I didn't really see how do you account for your police department and technology and things like that.
  • 02:14:22
    What bucket does that come out of?
• • SPEAKER_11
  • 02:14:25
    Vice President Chuktai and Council Member Rainville.
  • 02:14:30
    The Park Police Department is underneath the Superintendent's Office.
  • 02:14:35
    We also have Community Connections and Violence Prevention Department that is included in the Superintendent's Office as well.
  • 02:14:45
    And like the City Police Department, we only have 35 sworn officers.
  • 02:14:52
    We currently have
  • 02:14:54
    We currently have cadets working through the program and we are nearly fully staffed.
  • 02:15:08
    We're pretty close to being fully staffed if we can get these candidates all the way through the program.
• • Michael Rainville
  • 02:15:14
    and in that budget the superintendent has and maybe the superintendent can speak to this.
  • 02:15:19
    Do you include portable lights and cameras, technology to help support your police?
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 02:15:29
    Welcome back.
• • SPEAKER_14
  • 02:15:32
    I don't specifically I believe I don't have an answer at this moment I think I know when we do have to put cameras out there we do have those portable cameras that are
  • 02:15:48
    That funding would come through, I believe through my office or the police department itself.
  • 02:15:58
    And so it's underneath that budget line which then comes through me obviously, but it's through the police department.
  • 02:16:04
    Great.
  • 02:16:04
    Thank you.
  • 02:16:05
    Yes.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 02:16:06
    Councilmember Rainville, would you like to have us note that for administrative follow-up and our clerks can send the question over to the superintendent.
• • Michael Rainville
  • 02:16:12
    That's a great suggestion.
  • 02:16:13
    Thank you.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 02:16:14
    Wonderful.
  • 02:16:14
    Clerks if we can note that for administrative follow-up.
  • 02:16:16
    Thank you.
  • 02:16:19
    With that I'll recognize Vice Chair Koski.
• • Emily Koski
  • 02:16:23
    Thank you Madam Vice President and thank you so much for the presentation.
  • 02:16:26
    I will add on the layer of congratulations for the Gold Medal Award.
  • 02:16:32
    I think you noted this but when's the last time that we received this?
  • 02:16:37
    I just had a couple
  • 02:16:57
    I guess questions and maybe comments too.
  • 02:17:00
    I see that in order to reduce costs due to the reduced property tax collection rate there were there's going to be some operational changes for some of the buildings and I'm just wondering if you could just walk through those again around the recreation centers.
  • 02:17:18
    I think it's five
  • 02:17:20
    Ice Rinks that will not be open this winter and then it will look like all the holidays they will be closed and then there's an hours are going to be reduced by one hour they're usually open till nine and now it'll be eight and then are all like I guess a couple questions are all recreation centers open till nine and are all recreation centers right now open on Sundays
• • SPEAKER_11
  • 02:17:45
    Vice President Chuktay and Council Member Koski, on Sundays we only have five recreation centers that are open.
  • 02:17:56
    I can't name them off the top of my head, but it's one per park district.
  • 02:18:02
    So it would be the closing of five recreation centers.
  • 02:18:06
    All the other recreation centers are already closed on
  • 02:18:10
    on Sundays.
  • 02:18:12
    And then as far as the recreation centers, they are all open right now until 9 p.m.
  • 02:18:19
    So this change would have them be open until 8 p.m.
• • Emily Koski
  • 02:18:23
    Okay, and I imagine this was a difficult conversation and I was just curious what was some of the, if you kind of walk through a bit of the process to make this decision of the specific
• • SPEAKER_11
  • 02:18:37
    I guess specific changes and adjustments.
  • 02:18:46
    I'll start with we really made an investment in our employees, our full-time employees this year and a commitment to our full-time employees this year.
  • 02:19:01
    So you will not see any reductions in full-time employees within the 2025 budget.
  • 02:19:10
    We recognize if we do not get a property tax levy increase that we will request next year, that we will need to either absorb
  • 02:19:24
    to 30 new acres of parkland within the current structure and and if not you know if
  • 02:19:36
    and potentially other cuts as well.
  • 02:19:41
    So we didn't want to impact significantly like our full time operations in 2025.
  • 02:19:50
    And I think that the discussion and the decision around these areas, again, is that we believe that this will not impact our ability to
  • 02:20:02
    Come to follow through on our commitment to our youth programming and our expansion of our citywide free and reduced cost youth programming as these days and hours are not really programming hours at the park and
• • Emily Koski
  • 02:20:22
    That's helpful.
  • 02:20:23
    I really appreciate you walking through.
  • 02:20:24
    I don't know if Superintendent, you had additional, I see you nodding and feel like you want to add.
• • SPEAKER_14
  • 02:20:30
    Sure, she did well.
  • 02:20:31
    Yeah, Chair Taktai and Council Member Koski.
  • 02:20:34
    I think she said it well too.
  • 02:20:35
    I think that also to add to this, we've been very intentional about how we track our data around the usage of our parks.
  • 02:20:42
    Part of that is using power bi we have extensive tracking tools that we're using for and response from our communities So that's not just a arbitrary sort of way that we say we're going to close just based on maybe a qualitative or you know hearing things, but this is actually rooted in data and
  • 02:21:00
    and so when we looked at, as we discussed, it was a very hard discussion as you can imagine and we spent a lot of time not only with our division heads but then we went into our directors, went into our managers, went to supervisors so it was a very collaborative effort that went through all of our parks to talk to our field staff who are out there every day working to really have that input from community, have that input from staff all the way to the time that we made a decision on what was going to be
  • 02:21:26
    the least impactful impact towards our full-time employees because we had to make some hard decisions around our tax levy obviously so these decisions were not easy but we recognize again as Director Weissman said that this is not going to impact programming as we looked across the program that eight to nine time sometimes kids are either going home they want to get home early and safety those kind of questions that we have and so I think that we did the best we could on decisions around obviously getting to a balanced budget so
• • Emily Koski
  • 02:21:54
    Yeah, I appreciate this transparency.
  • 02:21:56
    It's really helpful to understand the process you went through, and I'm really grateful to hear that it just didn't happen at the top, that you went all the way through to every level of your employees and into the community to discuss this and really understand, and then also the data-driven approach.
  • 02:22:15
    And I'm really grateful to hear how you prioritize continuing to keep programming.
  • 02:22:22
    Obviously, it's disappointing.
  • 02:22:24
    I understand where you have to give and take here.
  • 02:22:29
    And just on a personal note, and I just want to say thank you.
  • 02:22:32
    I live really close to Pearl Park.
  • 02:22:35
    Obviously, all of us live in walking distance to a park.
  • 02:22:39
    but I you know I utilize Pearl Park as a space where people can connect with me there and once a month we have meetings and they go till eight o'clock you know I will move those back obviously we all will adjust you know I play pickleball on Sundays at Pearl Park that will not happen it's okay I will find a new spot but I am mostly excited
  • 02:23:07
    Committee.
  • 02:23:22
    I'm just so grateful to hear that you've prioritized our use because you know like we described I think we also could do a better job of understanding and integrating your work that you're doing with our public safety ecosystem and the data-driven approaches that you're talking about making sure that we're
  • 02:23:41
    talking about those and how you can be a part of what we're doing here and really make sure that we're sharing that story and creating that story.
  • 02:23:49
    So again, thank you so much and I appreciate the presentation and again, congrats on the gold medal.
• • SPEAKER_14
  • 02:23:55
    Thank you.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 02:23:58
    Wonderful.
  • 02:24:00
    Do I see the chair?
  • 02:24:04
    Welcome please, if you'll introduce yourself.
• • SPEAKER_09
  • 02:24:07
    Thank you, Vice Chair.
  • 02:24:09
    Chuck Tye and particularly Council Member Koski.
  • 02:24:13
    It's something that I can say and these guys can't say.
  • 02:24:15
    Anyway, I'm so freaking proud, I'm not kidding you, of this gold medal.
  • 02:24:20
    And I just, you know, don't want to set up expectations.
  • 02:24:23
    Number one, I want you to know the Trust for Public Land has rated us what, first, second, or third?
  • 02:24:27
    That's a data-driven matrix that makes that decision and basically they do keep on adding new matrix, okay, to try and push the envelope every time.
  • 02:24:39
    Anyway, just want you to know that gold medal is different We can't apply for another five years Okay, so just don't set your expectations that we're gonna be getting it every year now and everything But anyway, it is Park Professionals judging Park Professionals, so it's a pretty awesome award.
  • 02:24:56
    Thank you for the time and also your support
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 02:24:59
    President Forney, thank you for adding in those comments.
  • 02:25:03
    Superintendent Bangura, Director Weissman, I'm going to ask you to come right back because we're not through discussion quite yet.
  • 02:25:10
    So we've got just a perhaps a couple more questions for you.
  • 02:25:14
    Thank you so much.
  • 02:25:15
    I'll recognize Councilmember Vita.
• • Katie Cashman
  • 02:25:18
    Thank you, Chair.
  • 02:25:19
    I was just going to acknowledge that President Forney was here.
  • 02:25:23
    She's gotten up here, so I'm done.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 02:25:26
    Wonderful.
  • 02:25:27
    Thank you.
  • 02:25:28
    I just had put myself in queue.
  • 02:25:30
    I'm hoping to have a brief conversation and would be very happy to pick it up offline with you.
  • 02:25:35
    I know that's something that you've offered before.
  • 02:25:38
    Now, I want to understand, you know, earlier this year there was some news on some potential proposed cuts to the North Commons park improvement project by about $300,000 into the total $3 million commitment by the city.
  • 02:25:59
    Now, as you know, I think there's been a lot of very public discussion
  • 02:26:05
    among this body about that and I hope that you hear pretty clearly from this council that we're committed to making sure that the city makes good on that commitment, on that full $3 million commitment so that this project is on track to open on time as planned.
  • 02:26:26
    But I'm hoping, can you just speak a little bit to have you had conversations with the administration about whether this cut is still
  • 02:26:35
    moving forward, if it's still happening.
  • 02:26:37
    It'd just be important for us to know as we're moving through our budget process so we can make the appropriate decisions.
• • SPEAKER_14
  • 02:26:47
    Okay.
  • 02:26:48
    Chair Tata, thank you for that.
  • 02:26:49
    I don't know from the Council or from the Mayor's perspective on where that lies, meaning
  • 02:26:59
    My expectation that I've sent the letter very clearly is our expectation that that $3 million will be supported because, again, it's critically important to the construction and opening of this particular of North Commons.
  • 02:27:13
    So I cannot answer to where it is within the Council's purview or the Mayor's, but I'm aware that the $3 million from what I'm hearing from Council will be supported.
  • 02:27:27
    and that we will have that funded for us or that we will have that available to us as an organization.
  • 02:27:33
    Again, I think it lies within, I don't know as far as how it's moving through the council, how it's being adjusted, but I do, when I talk to the mayor, you know, he said he's of course fully supportive of North Commons and I'm hearing from the board or from the council that it's also fully supportive of that $3 million that's been promised to this, to the park board for this project.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 02:27:53
    I would just say today is the last day of departmental presentations for us here and as we head towards markup I think that as a
  • 02:28:08
    as a body will want to stay in pretty close touch with you, in particular Councilmember Vita and I would imagine Councilmember Ellison are going to be leading the budget amendments.
  • 02:28:18
    We've committed our support to them as leaders of this committee and so we just want to make sure that we're working with you to make sure that the improvement project is fully funded.
• • SPEAKER_14
  • 02:28:28
    and I appreciate that I do fully expect that the support of the three million dollars for this project will be supported by the council and by the mayor.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 02:28:35
    Wonderful, thank you.
  • 02:28:36
    With that we have reached the end of discussion.
  • 02:28:38
    Thank you for coming in to present your 2025 park board budget.
  • 02:28:44
    I will ask the clerks to file that presentation and with that colleagues we have
  • 02:28:53
    We have completed all departmental presentations for the 2025 city budget.
  • 02:28:59
    Oh my gosh, yes, you're right, you're totally right.
  • 02:29:02
    I'm so sorry.
  • 02:29:04
    I apologize Director Hodney, you've been waiting for so long.
  • 02:29:11
    Our next presentation is going to be from the Minneapolis Emergency Communications Center.
  • 02:29:14
    It's our final presentation, for real.
  • 02:29:17
    And I will invite Director Joni Hodney to come and present the Emergency Communications Center or 911 recommended budget.
• • SPEAKER_01
  • 02:29:29
    Thank you Chair Choctaw and Council Members and I will try to make the last one as brief as I can here for you.
  • 02:29:38
    I'm Joni Hodney, the Director of Minneapolis Emergency Communications Center, otherwise known as 9-1-1.
  • 02:29:47
    I'm sharing here our organizational chart and I'm going to start right off with one of the most significant changes we're going to be doing in 2025.
  • 02:29:57
    The
  • 02:29:58
    Radio Shop is going to be integrating in with the MECC emergency department.
  • 02:30:05
    So the organization chart is going to show a little bit of a difference here with that department starting to report directly to me in 2025.
  • 02:30:13
    That's going to move some operations over to my assistant director.
  • 02:30:17
    Operations is a heavy lift and that's a good place for one person to stay focused on while I take over the training and the radio shop.
  • 02:30:38
    So our mission at MECC is a call to action that underscores the vital role each of us plays.
  • 02:30:45
    We're here to save lives, protect property, and assist the public in their time of need.
  • 02:30:52
    We achieve this by serving as the critical link between the public safety responders and the communities we serve.
  • 02:30:59
    This mission is what drives us every day and makes us proud to do the work that we do.
  • 02:31:05
    Our commitment to excellence is reflected in our focus in the Outcomes Minneapolis framework for 2025.
  • 02:31:11
    This framework, which aims to maximize the 90% of all incoming calls are answered in 15 seconds or less, will guide our efforts to enhance customer service in the upcoming year.
  • 02:31:26
    Working together with human resources and compensation, job analysis questionnaires have been done on all but one remaining department position.
  • 02:31:36
    Several job duties have been shifted to adjust the workload, eliminating unnecessary duplication of work and moving the responsibilities to more equitably suit the positions.
  • 02:31:48
    This collaborative effort ensures that each position serves the department and the community with the best possible measures.
  • 02:32:01
    In 2023, we had a high turnover rate, losing almost half of the new staff that we had hired.
  • 02:32:09
    In 2024, as we're nearing the end of the year, we've moved into a new updated dispatch center that was part of the mayor-approved City Restack project.
  • 02:32:19
    We have good working relationships with our IT department, which helps us substantially lower any operational risks to our system, and they were a key part of our move.
  • 02:32:30
    helping us install updated equipment and technology to do better jobs today and prepare for the next phases of NextGen 911.
  • 02:32:39
    This was a positive move for current staff as well as incoming new staff.
  • 02:32:45
    So maintaining the staff that we have is a critical part of being a high functioning department.
  • 02:32:52
    We can now start our biannual training again.
  • 02:32:55
    With the outcomes framework in 2025, we will show the benefits of this statistically.
  • 02:33:03
    Our focus on the start of 2024 was to visualize a new way of getting and retaining staff.
  • 02:33:12
    We joined the Imagine Yourself campaign and offered a $1,000 hiring incentive.
  • 02:33:18
    This resulted not only in an increased number of applications, but also an increased number of
  • 02:33:25
    qualified applicants.
  • 02:33:28
    So far this year we have successfully held nine classrooms for call takers, fire dispatch, police dispatch, and Channel 7 training.
  • 02:33:37
    We've hired 20 new call takers in 2024, promoted three dispatchers, two supervisors, and one admin person, losing only four of the call takers we hired this year.
  • 02:33:49
    While we have lost three supervisors and one admin person, we've already replaced each of these positions and are currently advertising the last of our open positions.
  • 02:34:00
    With equally important roles holding different responsibilities, we're currently conducting interviews for the last few call taker and dispatcher openings.
  • 02:34:16
    Our staffing has been at 85 FTEs for 23 and 24.
  • 02:34:24
    Moving into 25, with the radio shop moving under our department, we will be going to 93 full-time employees.
  • 02:34:31
    As of right now, the radio shop is 100% staffed.
  • 02:34:37
    MECC has 74 out of 85 positions filled or 87% staffed with the remaining positions being interviewed for over this next week or two.
  • 02:34:53
    We launched a pilot program this year starting with part-time employees in MECC and currently have six part-time employees that are helping to fill the gap where we might have some additional overtime needs.
  • 02:35:12
    We didn't have any significant budget request increases for 2025.
  • 02:35:17
    The increase in our budget is based on normal inflationary expenses.
  • 02:35:25
    About 12.7 million in 2024, 13.1 in 2025, and 13.5 in 2026.
  • 02:35:32
    The increase in the budget is
  • 02:35:37
    I'm sorry, based on inflationary expenses.
  • 02:35:41
    Roughly 85%, 88.5% of our expenses goes to wages and fringes.
  • 02:35:47
    10.5% of our budget is for contractual services with IT hiring expenses.
  • 02:35:57
    And less than 1% of our budget goes for office supplies membership dues.
  • 02:36:03
    We diligently watch over our budget monthly to ensure the end of the year we are within the budgeted amount for our department.
  • 02:36:13
    To answer the call for service, part of our objectives in connecting with the public with the appropriate first responder is to do this in a prompt, courteous, and professional manner.
  • 02:36:25
    We began shifting some of the duties
  • 02:36:28
    for data requests between two employees, changing the focus of each operations manager to better provide service and assistance to the call takers and the dispatchers individually, and teaching additional employees how to perform quality assurance checks as we increase the volume of the quality insurance
  • 02:36:51
    By shifting this work, we're creating a solid succession plan and ensuring the best governance of our staff with the financial spending in our department.
  • 02:37:06
    Outcomes and performance metrics within AMECC is to answer and process the calls for service.
  • 02:37:12
    We track incoming call answer time and determine the number of staff, the systems, the software we need in place, and the overall efficiency of staff processing the call.
  • 02:37:23
    In the past year, we've seen call answer times as low as 67% in less than 15 seconds.
  • 02:37:30
    We currently are up to 83% of all incoming 911 calls in 15 seconds or less, with a goal of moving that to 90-95% in 2025.
  • 02:37:45
    We measure the standard of service with our quality assurance program to determine the community is being served to the best of our ability.
  • 02:37:53
    We're measuring currently above 90% in quality assurance assessments on medical calls.
  • 02:38:00
    Beginning in the fall of 2024 and moving into 2025, we are enhancing our quality assurance program and beginning to bring in more medical calls, police calls, and starting to do radio quality assurance to ensure that the voices going out to the first responders are containing the information needed.
  • 02:38:26
    The radio shop's new to MUCC in 2025, so I'm still learning about it.
  • 02:38:32
    I don't have a whole lot to report on what metrics have been used so far in the radio shop or are being planned to be used in the radio shop in 2025, but I can assure you that the radio manager and I will be spending time together in the early months of 2025 working on those.
  • 02:38:49
    I can tell you some of the activities because of the close working relationship with them that they've accomplished during 2024.
  • 02:38:56
    They've engaged in multiple projects to keep our city resources communicating with each other.
  • 02:39:02
    They moved all the radio councils into the new MECC center.
  • 02:39:06
    They've done council and software updates, microwave path updates to create connection redundancies so we assure that we never lose our connection.
  • 02:39:18
    reprogrammed portables and installed updated mobiles and squads and have done updates to 15 fire stations to make sure the external antennas would allow the rigs to open the doors from the outside after the doors, the new doors were installed.
  • 02:39:33
    Part of that task is yet to be completed by the end of, or by the first quarter of 2025.
  • 02:39:43
    And that is the end of my presentation.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 02:39:47
    Thank you so much for your presentation, Director Hodney.
  • 02:39:50
    Colleagues, are there any questions related to the Minneapolis Emergency Communications Center 911 budget presentation?
  • 02:39:58
    I'll recognize Councilmember Palmisano.
• • Linea Palmisano
  • 02:40:01
    Thank you, Madam Chair.
  • 02:40:02
    Director Hodney, as I've said to a couple other departments, thank you for centering Outcomes Minneapolis and your goal framework here and helping us evaluate the effectiveness of how money is being used in your department.
  • 02:40:15
    It's important and we all embrace this work together.
  • 02:40:19
    I'm also pleased to hear about your success and your success rates through
  • 02:40:24
    the Imagine Yourself campaign, you know, not only an increase in the number of candidates, but also in the quality of applicants.
  • 02:40:33
    Now, you did just say this and I was excited to hear that the radio shop was moving into your department.
  • 02:40:40
    You did say that you weren't quite sure how it will necessarily be integrated.
  • 02:40:46
    But is there anything more you can share about how that radio shop might work with some of the plan changes with fire department communications?
  • 02:40:55
    I am familiar with the radio shop only because of our work on the alerting systems for fire.
• • SPEAKER_01
  • 02:41:04
    Chair and Council Member Palmisano, I should clarify that I have ideas of how the department is going to integrate into the Minneapolis Communications Center and it's an important combination that the radio shop is moving in with us.
  • 02:41:19
    We understand that that department is the key to keeping us communicating outwardly to the
  • 02:41:30
    I think what I should clarify on there is I don't yet have matrix that I've developed
  • 02:41:49
    with working with the radio shop yet for 2025, but we'll have a goal of working with him in the first quarter after the department moves under me to develop what those metrics look like.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 02:42:03
    Thank you.
  • 02:42:06
    Wonderful.
  • 02:42:07
    I am not seeing any further questions or discussions, so with that, thank you so much for coming in to present your budget and being so patient with us while we went through our other presentations.
  • 02:42:16
    I will ask the clerk to file that report.
  • 02:42:18
    Thank you.
  • 02:42:21
    Colleagues, now we have come to our final departmental presentation, so I will briefly walk through some next steps, both for council members and for members of the public who have input.
  • 02:42:36
    So we held our first public hearing on the mayor's recommended budget back in September.
  • 02:42:40
    Our second public hearing is scheduled for our regular meeting on Tuesday November 12th at 10 a.m.
  • 02:42:47
    In addition to the testimony received here in our public hearings residents are encouraged to submit written comment to the city's website at minneapolismn.gov slash public comment.
  • 02:43:00
    Those comments received will be added to the official public record on the 2025 city budget On Wednesday November 20th at 5 p.m.
  • 02:43:10
    So just under a month from now all budget amendments All proposed budget amendments are due to the budget chair
  • 02:43:18
    From there, Vice Chair Koski and I will work with the budget team, the city attorney's office, and the clerk's office to review those amendments, finalize any proposed changes of course in consultation with authors of each amendment, and assemble the markup packet.
  • 02:43:39
    Though that markup packet for review by council members and the public, we are aiming to have ready before we all break for the Thanksgiving holiday.
  • 02:43:49
    Following this, the Budget Committee has markup meetings scheduled for Friday, December 6th, and Monday, December 9th, both at 10 a.m.
  • 02:43:58
    So we'll have a week once we return from the Thanksgiving holiday before we take up markup.
  • 02:44:05
    I anticipate we may need both of those sessions so council members should plan for lengthy meetings on both of those days that Friday and Monday.
  • 02:44:14
    When this committee is completed with its markup we will send our final recommendation to the full council for a final public hearing and adoption which will take place on Tuesday December 10th at 605 p.m. Are there any questions on this process that has been laid out?
  • 02:44:31
    I'll continue to communicate about this in writing.
  • 02:44:35
    So with that we have concluded all business to come before this committee today.
  • 02:44:39
    And without objection we are now adjourned.
  • 02:44:43
    Thank you very much.