Budget Committee August 04, 2025   8/4/2025

Good afternoon.

I'm Emily Koski and I will be the chair of the Budget Committee today.

I'm going to call to order the Budget Committee meeting for Monday, August 4th, 2025.

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.

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

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

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

Wonsley is absent.

Ellison is absent.

Osman is absent.

Cashman is absent.

Jenkins is absent.

Paul Misano?

Present.

Vice Chair Koski?

Present.

And Chair Chigtai is absent.

Let the record reflect that we have a quorum.

I'll also remind my colleagues.

I want to remind my colleagues that we're using speaker management today, so please make sure that you sign in.

There will be several staff members speaking, but I will invite our COO, Margaret Anderson Kelleher, up to start us off.

Good afternoon, Vice Chair Koski, members of the committee.

It's good to be with you.

These items are items from 2025 that are reflected in the budget.

They are additions, they are earmarks, they are council-directed spending in some cases.

We have noted particularly the earmarks in this.

I just want to note that.

Vice Chair Koski, late on Friday you asked about metrics, so I thought it would be good to get a couple things out of the way about the metrics and performance management of these particular items.

So, performance management is a process that needs data to go with it.

And what you're going to see in this presentation is a status update on these 2025 budgeted items.

As everyone can remember, the budget was enacted in December of last year, so in many cases, there is no data available yet for these items.

We will try to note that for you where there is data available and metrics available that give us some idea, but we will follow up with a memo on that so that the Council members can have that.

At this point in time, we really need 6 months to 12 months of data to be able to know if the performance metrics are working.

Now, there are other performance metrics that are available to the public, to all of you as well.

And right now, one of the best places to look is the mayoral dashboard of priorities that has on it already community safety, unsheltered homelessness responses, climate action,

recruitment, opioid response, and economic recovery.

And there's a number of measures out on that.

Some of those correspond to these items, but these items are distinct from last year's budget.

And just wanted to make sure that everyone was aware of that.

So today's order is the City Attorney's Office and I'm actually going to take that slide because the City Attorney had no changes to their budget last year.

And then Commissioner Barnett will come up and speak with you about the Office of Community Safety.

I will then return and talk about a number of items that had either one to

4 or 5 changes.

And then I'll be joined by my colleagues, Commissioner Chaplin, as well as Deputy COO Jelly, since CPED Director Hansen is on a much-earned vacation, and then Director Sexton is also here.

Since those three item areas, Health,

as well as CPED and the PW line item, Public Works line item have many, many items we ask the department heads to be here to present in person.

So we will get started.

Again, the City Attorney had no changes to their budget other than what was recommended.

It was a relatively flat budget for the City Attorney's Office.

No increases.

Thank you, Chair Koski and other Council members.

Good afternoon.

I will start with emergency management.

As you can see, there are no budget items there for emergency management and that is the same for our Emergency Communications Center 911 as well.

Police, of course,

I have several items that I will go through.

As you know, the audit compliance capacity is important for the settlement agreement.

If you viewed Alifa's community presentation or were present for that presentation, there they got a question about audit and the importance of it is that MPD be able to audit itself.

So you'll see that there were two FTEs for 2025 and then we're asking for two in 2026 and those two for 2025 are compliance specialists

The next box down, the five FTEs, there is for the curriculum, instruction, analysis, evaluation, and monitoring of our training compliance.

Out of those five positions, we've hired one curriculum development specialist, three civilian instructors, the JAQ has completed, and we're working on an LOA with the union.

One other position, the training coordinator position, the JAQ has been completed, and the posting has been up since July 21st on that one.

As far as the next item, the two FTEs there have been hired.

Those were to backfill to civilian investigator positions and they have been hired.

On to the next slide.

As you know, in 2025, the city took an approach similar to Hennepin County to replicate some of the good things that they did in their response to unsheltered residents.

The police department got some money I believe also rec services and public works in their public Solid waste I got some in coordination to our response here and the money that was used in MPD Was to get some mobile lights and cameras that are now available to MPD and

Next is FTE.

We've hired that position and that was for the crime specialists there.

The last box there are the five FTEs for civilian investigators.

Three

are those positions have been interviewed to our pending resource evaluation.

As you know, two positions were taken out of MPD, I believe, to fund the auditor's office or move to the auditor's office.

So we're looking at what we can do about that loss.

Then we move on to the fire department.

As you know, a behavioral crisis response program was transferred to fire.

That transfer has been complete.

I think coming up this Thursday to full council, there will be the BCR contract extension through August of 2026.

And so that will come before you.

Next for fire is the SAFER Grant.

As you know, that grant is for three years.

That grant will end in April of 2026, so we'll need funding for those 15 firefighters that that grant has funded for the last three years, and that will be in the mayor's 2026 budget.

Moving on to neighborhood safety.

As you know, in neighborhood safety, because I believe several contracts have come through as part of the master contract, so those first couple that you see there, Whittier Public Safety Responds, the Midtown Phillips, Balance Prevention and Safety Services, the Longfeller Neighborhood Safety Initiative in the Hiawatha neighborhood,

Safety Initiative.

All of those are part of that master contract and should be completed in the next month or two.

The last two items there, let everyone advance with dignity.

That has been done.

Also the staff capacity that you see where two FTEs were transferred to neighborhood safety.

Those positions have been hired.

That was the business data analysis

Analysts and also the contract administrator For the Office of Community Safety In this slide you'll see at the start the safe and thriving communities work group $25,000 there had come also from

Well, let me back up, maybe explain it better.

If you look at the second box where it says capacity building, there we had asked for $50,000 in the 2025 budget because we had spent about $100,000 in 2024 around community engagement.

We did a lot of engagement around the safety centers with Amanda Harrington being the director

of the design and implementation.

So, out of that, $25,000 was appropriated to the Safe and Thriving Community Work Group.

That work group, I believe, will have their first meeting this month, and the remainder of the $50,000

We'll continue to use in the Office of Community Safety for those things that are noted there.

We'll do supplies and some operation expenses and printing materials and things like that like we've done before.

The background check, we continue

doing those things with Cesar's background checks.

We moved and purchased software and implemented that software.

If you or your staff have done any of those background checks, you used to get a nice size binder, paper binder to fill out.

We've moved that so that it can be done electronically.

so that we can capture that data, store it, and communicate with the MPD applicants that way.

Next, the two positions that were taken last year were backfilled from the Office of Community Safety.

That's done.

And then the last item here is the nighttime safety strategies.

What we did this year was we worked with Minneapolis DID to scale back or scale down the warehouse district live.

We've worked with

our inspectors in Uptown and Dinkytown to increase some patrols there.

Also, we've been working with the U on some of their safety initiatives as well.

Thank you, Commissioner.

I'm going to just do questions for you at this time so that way you don't have to hang around for a bit.

Thank you Vice Chair Koski.

Yeah, I was curious about the supplemental funding for BCR.

I know that the contract was under active negotiation.

It was kind of unclear on how we might implement that amendment.

Can you just update, you know, are we incorporating those program costs into the new contract?

Were we able to do an appropriation midstream?

Chair Koski, Council President Payne, what we did was the contract for BCR had a maximum amount for each year so it'll come to you I think Thursday in which we took the $945,000 to increase the contract amount so that we could exceed the funding for BCR

In our discussions with BCR, they're in the process of looking at what can they present for one-time funding.

I think there was maybe some misunderstanding or confusion that this was one-time funding, and so we're working to figure that out right now.

Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Chair Koski.

Apologies I got here a little bit through your presentation, Commissioner.

So I'm wondering if you can just remind me what happened with the 5th Precinct Crime Prevention Specialist that was budgeted for.

I do see one FTE hired here in the chart.

This is on page 8.

Sorry, let me go back to that one.

Yes.

I know that my notes, I'm sorry, Chair Koski, Council Member Cashman, my notes just shows that that position has been filled.

I will try to get that information for you.

That's all I have.

Yes.

Yes.

Okay, thank you.

Any other questions from colleagues for the Commissioner?

I am not seeing any, so thank you so much.

I appreciate it.

And I'll just note that, just because if you might be leaving, I'll add to that memo kind of what the COO indicated that would just like to connect the progress to the goals, objectives, and metrics that were in the budget book.

Any and all that you have in understanding the

Vice Chair Koski, I'm returning up here.

I did want to talk about the code that you have.

So anything green is in progress.

It is still actively in progress.

In some cases, it's in contracting.

In other cases, it's partway through a project.

If you see a star over the green, that means we consider that item complete.

It may not have a lot of data with it yet, but it is complete from the standpoint of either a hire has been made or an item has been purchased, whatever is being noted.

Yellow would indicate that we are running into some issues on a budget item from last year.

And red would mean that we have something that looks like it's not going to get across the finish line in 2025.

So, I will continue on for everyone.

That code, that little key is actually in the front of the presentation as well.

So thank you for $30,000 in capacity building in the Office of Public Service.

We've been using that for leadership development for our team, as well as coaching in some cases.

and then also making sure that we have the tools we need to do our work for the city.

So when these offices were set up, I think you can see a theme there between OCS, Office of Community Safety, and OPS.

They did not have a lot of thought about the other auxiliary budget items they would need.

311 Service Center had two positions budgeted for the new South Minneapolis Community Safety Center.

This has a little bit of a different code because it's on track, but that is not going to open this year, so we are holding that, those resources, and just hanging on to them until

we are ready to hire for those positions.

This is part of what makes this a full service center is having the 311 services available to the public.

Arts and Culture had a few programs that were funded last year.

The Civic Arts Program, and that has been dispersed for a number of things, including Arts Leadership Conference, State of Black Design, National Independent Venue Association Conference, and others.

And we can get a breakdown of that for you if you would like that in terms of each of those things.

We also had the much loved vibrant storefronts and cultural districts funding and that has been going very well.

$700,000 of that has been dispersed at this point.

We received over 275 applicants for the program for that $700,000 and obviously

we couldn't fund all of those proposals.

There also is just a little under $500,000 there that is going to be remaining funds that are going to also be arts activations, vibrant storefronts related work.

And then also the art preservation at George Floyd Square that's been going ongoing.

Just give me one second to catch myself up.

One more item for Arts and Culture

and that is the Kohl Center operations and programming and I know you, the council just acted on a contract for a new operator but we do have some other expenses related to that.

Obviously holding the building for the year, making sure it is secure and safe and all of those things as well as working with this project of making sure that we have

continued dance programs and projects in downtown Minneapolis and surrounding area and then the very much appreciated by the public, the public school funding for the dance program that was part of the original agreement when Kohl's opened.

This funding went toward, 350,000 of this went towards keeping that going during this year.

Assessing, there were no changes.

Communications, cultural media programming, and this is underway.

This was an increase meant to maintain the expansion of the East African cultural media funding, and that is ongoing work.

Civil rights had a number of items.

I'm going to start with background checks.

The background checks were particularly for, and that contract was executed in March, for OPCR staff to work with HR for incoming staff members.

There's also the Small Business High Road Labor Standards program and project.

And that contract was executed and amended in February of this year.

We are under contract with the Neighborhood Development Center for that.

Eight small businesses have been served already and we can get you more detail on that.

Civil Rights Training and Administrative Support This of course has been very important for OPCR as well as making sure that we are working with the national partner NACOL

which is the National Association of Civil Rights oversight of law enforcement trainings that we brought in after the reset of the Civil Rights Department.

And then there's a number of future trainings also planned to be done with these resources.

and then of course we have the Labor Standards Division and the co-enforcement work that is ongoing with Say Tool and more than a thousand hours have been logged on that and 500 hours logged in navigation services for workers who have been concerned to connect them with the Labor Standards Division of Civil Rights.

Finance and Property Services had two items, the mobile security team, and those four employees have all been hired and are working with us.

And then the first precinct, custodial staffing, which, as you all know, when we bring a new building online, we also have to account for the services that go with it, like custodial.

And so that is what this is going towards.

The first precinct is just getting up and running so that custodial staffing is getting rolling right now.

Human Resources had a capacity building position that they needed and that position is the labor relations representative, an additional labor rep that was created and that position has been hired and that person is working with us.

I want to go back on just one item.

When I read it, I did think I had seen something from Kayla on this.

that actually 37 businesses have been assisted under the Civil Rights Small Business Program now, and I think those are strong numbers.

When we were first writing this, we believed it was eight, but it actually is 37.

Information technology.

So, public safety data transformation project.

One of these positions is in the JAQ process right now.

So three are in process, one will be slated out into 2027.

So three people will start in 2025, and then there'll be a 2027 start due to kind of where the workload is in that transformation.

and then as well as enterprise-wide conference room modernization and support that FTE is in progress right now.

IGR had a very small adjustment for the climate legacy initiative and still important to us because there are still dollars that have been available through the IIJA and we are rolling that into our existing contract with our contractor who does work to help us find those dollars that are out there.

NCR.

There are a few items here.

And I'm going to do this one too, just because I think this is our longest slide of anything other than the one that has, you know, like 20 items or 30 items.

So the Labor Welcome Center, we are working with partnering organizations, the RFP will be released in September

of this year, which is just next month.

Blue Line LRT anti-displacement work.

The RFP is still set yet for this summer.

It's going to be released in the month of August yet.

Senior services and community navigators.

Eight organizations were selected for contract awards that were authorized by the council.

Immigration Legal Services, this added additional funding to our capacity and is well under contract.

And then driver's license education and access to organizations were selected for contract awards to assist us with that work.

PMI, Performance Management and Innovation, had both the Safe and Thriving Communities Gap Analysis.

This is funding for one year of the Embedded Social Worker as well as other work around the Safe and Thriving Communities.

The project team specifically made a trip to Charlotte, North Carolina to

shadow the civilian crash investigators there and that happened in July.

So more information will be coming on that.

And then we had a number of PSA backfill positions here as well that needed to be accounted for from previous budget actions.

No Increases to Racial Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging Reg Services Regulatory Services had three items.

The Unsheltered Homelessness Response.

There was an FTE hired there.

Another is in process currently.

and then the Affordable Home Ownership Preservation Program contract has been awarded in June and then we will start the RFP process on another portion of this money going forward that is a crossover that will include CDBG funds as well as finances working on a portion of this.

Safe parking pilot has not started pending council ordinance amendment that will allow for outdoor parking, delegated authority to traffic control, so that is why that is one of the very few yellows in this whole report in terms of budget items.

And next, I'm going to have the Commissioner of Health come up to do his portion of the presentation.

Thank you, Vice Chair.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Vice Chair Koski, Council members.

Thank you, Chief Operating Officer Kelleher.

My name is Damone Chaplin, Health Commissioner of Minneapolis Health Department.

At mid-year, the Health Department continues to make significant progress across priority initiatives with the 2025 budget additions and earmarks totaling $4.78 million and supporting 10.8 FTEs.

Major investments focus on childhood lead poisoning prevention, opioid response and harm reduction, climate resilience, and community health programs.

While most initiatives are on track,

Some hiring and contracting activities remain in progress.

School-based clinics received $349,000 approximately and 2.8 FTEs to provide on-site mental health services in Minneapolis Public Schools.

To date, 637 visits for 74 students have been completed, including additional care coordination and staff consultations.

Sustainability, Healthy Homes, and Environment has the largest allocation at $3.1 million across seven FTEs, which funds lead remediation, climate resilience, and sustainability initiatives.

Lead Poison Prevention received $1.6 million supporting work in 102 dwelling units, 44 of which have active remediation contracts.

with $302,000 encumbered for services.

Our opiate response initiatives received $1.03 million to expand harm reduction and treatment.

The Opioid Settlement Program launched a Bruxati medication-assisted treatment pilot with 80 patients enrolled.

We also installed a Narcan vending machine and procured essential supplies for the medical mobile unit.

The Sustainability Healthy Homes and Environment continues to strengthen climate programs.

The Green Jobs and Training Initiative awarded $175,000 to four organizations for youth career development.

The Climate Incentives Program is managing $7 million in incentives that will impact 800 to 1,000 properties this year.

Community outreach has continued from 2024 with a focus on Green Cross Share and the Minneapolis Tree Program.

Nine community-based organizations have partnered to increase awareness and participation in weatherization incentive programs.

Urban Forestry Programs have distributed or planted 1,609 trees representing about 46% of the 2025 goal and executed four outreach contracts.

The Biochar Facility Project has entered Phase 2.

and is under contract with completion expected in fall of 2025.

Policy and Health and Healthy Communities has issued an RFP for the urban farms program and executed six food waste prevention contracts to support sustainability and food security efforts.

Opioid response expanded through needle cleanup efforts funded at $127,900.

This includes finalizing a harm reduction position to support Southside Green Zone and the Hiawatha corridor.

Policy and Healthy Communities invested $25,000 in many grants for three organizations serving trans youth and partnered on the Trans Equity Summit to ensure youth participation.

Environmental Health launched the Street Vendor Entrepreneur Grant Program with $150,000 in allocations.

A new contract with the Healthy Roots Institute was executed and four vendor cohorts are scheduled to begin last month, July of 2025.

Policy and Healthy Communities continues to work with the City of Lakes Community Land Trust to manage the urban farm community ownership and operations program.

Within the sustainability healthy homes and environment, the carbon fees program is advancing climate goals by reducing emissions in the industrial and commercial sectors.

The $274,617 allocation supports staffing and contractual efforts to evaluate compliance and promote greenhouse gas reductions.

The carbon fee program is advancing climate accountability with efforts focused on hiring an industrial outreach specialist and assessing compliance for industrial facilities.

The Department is on track to meet its core objectives.

Lead hazard remediation, opiate treatment expansion, and climate initiatives are progressing well.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Vice Chair Koski and committee members.

My name is Brett Jelly and I'm a Deputy City Operations Officer for Development, Health, and Livability.

I am subbing for Eric Hansen who was on a well-earned vacation with his family.

The next seven slides encompass 31 CPED items for a total of just over $18 million in 2025 spending.

All items are on track right now, meaning they are either in progress or in queue with a projected completion or contract execution in 2025.

The first slide

is a collection of five development project loans.

These, kind of just generally speaking, these projects go through kind of three big steps, negotiating the terms between the city and the developer, then the terms are approved by the City Council and eventually the projects go to closing.

So you can see all five projects are on that journey right now with a couple that have gone through the City Council.

Slide 35.

The first item is the Ownership and Opportunity Fund.

This program ensures that we can continue to make loans available to emerging developers and small businesses to own commercial real estate.

CPED Business Development Team is working through loan applications on a rolling basis.

In 2025, year-to-date, two loans for $900,000 have been approved and three others for approximately $700,000 are in conversation.

The Business Technical Assistance Program 2025 contracts for general BTAP service providers were approved in early May to 22 service providers for a total of $450,000 contracts will run from May 25 to May 2026.

Within that, there were uptown specific contracts and for a total of $75,000.

Item 3, the Great Streets program.

Four uptown specific Great Streets business district support contracts were awarded for a total of $100,000.

Maintaining the adult workforce program and the fifth item, the economic development team continuation of services.

Both of these had the

a common element of moving expenses off of the development fund and onto a more sustainable general fund to maintain those services.

Slide 36, the Youth Workforce Development Program.

This is a 2026 allocation and it provides continued funding for youth workforce program that funds the youth wages and programming for the step up program.

Nicolette Programming, this is $150,000 for the exploration of family centered activations on Nicolette Mall, specifically to conduct a feasibility study to assess the viability of developing an indoor play facility for children and families on or near Nicolette Mall.

The planning team is working on that scope of services.

Climate Legacy Initiative Green Jobs Training,

This funding is for green jobs training and it goes through the career pathways program.

The employment and training staff is working on the project details to have the allocation out for contract this year.

Last year, the team coordinated and funded Emerge to get people trained and ready for jobs.

Next item is for People's Way property management.

This is to pay for the holding costs and maintenance associated with the People's Way property at 38th and Chicago.

the small business support for construction and hardship.

This is a complicated project, one of the more complicated projects on this list and the team has been working through the various legal and administrative questions that need to be answered as they put together a program to meet the intent of this $900,000.

The Early Childhood Education Workforce Development.

An update on this one was presented at Public Health and Safety Committee on the 30th of July.

And this is intended to provide early childhood education for participants who live in Minneapolis and who intend to work in early childhood education.

The Technical Assistance for Uptown Revitalization.

This is under contract with the Urban Land Institute.

And this is a project to work

These dollars are under contract with two organizations, Little Earth Protectors and AIM Patrols.

The Affordable Housing Trust Fund, $3.8 million.

The request for proposal to support the preservation and creation of affordable rental housing in Minneapolis is underway right now.

The 2025 budget is a total of almost $18 million with $3.8 million made up of the sales tax revenue, aka LAHA, and $294,000 of CDBG program income.

The Minneapolis affordable rental stabilization funding is designed to support struggling affordable rental projects in Minneapolis.

The pilot was funded with one million dollars in collaboration with Hennepin County and four projects have been funded and we expect that to be fully expended in 2025.

The Minneapolis Homes program is designed to support the preservation and creation of affordable housing ownership in Minneapolis.

The 2025 budget is $3.8 million.

The funds were committed through a council action and will be fully contracted by the end of 2025.

This represents 35 new affordable ownership units across 23 projects.

The Heritage Park $500,000 is a development in Ward 5 with 440 affordable rental units.

The city's $500,000 is being used as a critical match in a application by the developer for state stabilization funds.

Avivo Village Stabilization and Shelter Operations, $1.6 million.

Aviva was preparing a scope budget breakdown of how the funds will be used by category between stabilization and operations and this is being negotiated with CPED.

And I skipped emergency housing vouchers for 1.8 million dollars.

This is a partnership between the city and public housing authority.

There's been an extensive amount of work between MPHA and the city of Minneapolis to work out the details of this program scope and that will be used to develop the contract.

Senior Housing Code Abatement, $810,000.

This program is part of Minneapolis Home Sustains Program.

It's intended to assist seniors to age in place.

Two projects have closed in 2025 and we anticipate there's $525,000 of contract of work being processed right now.

Two projects have closed assisting 15 households.

Stable Homes, Stable Schools expansion, $830,000.

This is a partnership between the MPHA, the City of Minneapolis, Hennepin County, and Minneapolis Public Schools, working to reduce homelessness among families with elementary-aged kids in Minneapolis.

All partners are planning for the future and with an anticipated fiscal cliff in 2026 and so conversations are ongoing on how to best move forward with the program.

The 2050 Comprehensive Plan, this is a 2026 budget allocation and that work will begin in 2026.

the Latino cultural designation.

This is funding to establish a cultural destination and our staff team is working on program guidelines.

The developer technical assistance program, $350,000.

This provides no cost training and technical assistance to emerging real estate developers.

Funds are expected to be expended by the end of the contract term in the spring of 2026.

And last but not least was an earmark for Latino Business Week.

That's in October of 2025 for $70,000.

The proposals are in and will be reviewed here in the next month or so.

I'm expecting good response.

We had a very successful Black Business Week.

And finally, allocation for coal center property management to cover expenses for utilities, graffiti, all other associated property maintenance.

And that is in progress and on track.

Thank you.

We have a few council members in queue, but I think I'll just wait until Public Works codes finish and then we'll go to questions for everyone.

Thank you Vice Chair Koski, Council Members.

My name is Tim Sexton.

I serve as Director of Public Works.

So we have, in Public Works for the 2025 budget, we had 11 change items to work through.

I'm happy to share that all 11 are on track.

They were a combination of General Fund, Enterprise Funds, and Climate Legacy Initiative funded items.

Oops, there we go.

Alright, so starting with our traffic safety cameras.

A little over a million dollars was added to fund implementation of the traffic safety camera pilot that was authorized by the legislature last year.

as part of our goal to reduce traffic deaths and serious injuries on our streets.

We're starting with speed safety cameras this year.

I think folks have heard a lot about this, I hope.

But five cameras are planned to be rolled out in September of this year.

So that remains on track more to come in 2026 where we have approximately a 1.9 million dollar budget.

The goal ultimately for that program I will mention is to be cost neutral as there is a revenue component that will begin over time.

Next item we have surface water and sewer staffing support.

And this is really triggered by additional permit requirements from the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency and EPA.

So we need to do more work around stormwater management best practices and permit requirements.

So we are on track to have seven positions hired to meet those new requirements.

All are hired or in process.

For EV charging that was funded through the Climate Legacy Initiative, this is meant to support and expand electric vehicle charging throughout the city.

Work is currently underway to install one to three new EV charging hub sites by the end of this calendar year.

Another Climate Legacy Initiative funded effort was around zero waste planning.

And the goal of this one was to really evaluate sustainable funding and zero-waste activities and invest in local waste reduction projects to prevent reusable, recyclable, and compostable materials from entering our waste stream, allowing us to get to that zero-waste future.

There are three parts of that effort.

All three are underway.

It includes understanding what a zero-waste funding mechanism could look like moving forward,

Community Waste Reduction Grants, so funding community groups to develop their own ideas and help us understand that path forward based on sort of a bottom-up approach to community engagement and understanding around zero waste and doing a recycling awareness campaign.

Next we have an earmark around unsheltered homelessness, excuse me, not an earmark, unsheltered homelessness response cleanup.

This is meant to cover equipment and staff time for encampments, site maintenance, and cleanup.

So we have purchased a Bobcat, which is a small tracked vehicle with a scoop on the front, along with funding for four people at a quarter time each to do that work.

Next up we have an additional support for lead service line replacements.

So we have these private lead service lines throughout the city.

It's a huge expense to replace those and so far we've been working with state and federal resources.

This position is partly to help people understand what those resources are available and help them complete that work.

So this would fund one water loss specialist in our water treatment and distribution services division to support that lead service line replacement work.

The position was hired in April and is currently working in the field.

Next we have a Public Safety Improvement Low Barrier Employment Pilot.

This is a new program.

The Aramark directed us to create a new pilot program to hire adults who are encountering housing instability and working with that organization or those people to clean up trash, graffiti, and do other clean city type of work, especially in the Southside Green Zone.

Now this is a brand new program, so we are planning to post that RFP this fall and enter into an agreement by the end of the calendar year.

We do have $285,000 that was allocated for this work.

We do not expect to spend that full amount this calendar year, but we do plan to have a contractor under contract on board so that those funds could be rolled forward.

neighborhood traffic calming.

So this $1.5 million was meant to complete more neighborhood traffic calming projects.

I think many of you are familiar with this, but this is construction of things like speed humps and traffic circles.

Work is currently underway.

We are working actively on 49 projects on neighborhood streets, 127 speed humps, 13 traffic calming circles, 5 bollard bump outs.

Those are in progress.

And starting this fall, we have seven locations identified on municipal state aid streets.

These tend to be some higher volume streets.

We have seven locations identified for construction this fall.

Dinky After Dark, this is a pedestrian-scale lighting project where $500,000 was earmarked to add lighting in the Marcy Homes neighborhood, including Dinkytown.

We updated the pedestrian-scale map that was a requirement in order for us to spend money in that location.

We're currently installing those lights right now.

It's about 29 lights between University Avenue Southeast, Fifth Avenue Southeast, between 11th and 13th.

So in that Dinkytown area,

Work is currently underway.

It should be done in the next few weeks.

Reconnecting Communities.

This was, it has the unique identifier on that one with the box around the green circle.

This was $400,000 that was moved from street maintenance to be used as a local match for the non-profit Our Streets if they received a federal Reconnecting Communities grant for Interstate 94.

They did not get the grant so the money remained in public works, transportation, maintenance and repair.

So we're continuing to use that for daily maintenance activities.

And finally, there was an earmark for electric wheelchair, scooter and mobility aid and phone charging study.

So this looked at how the city can support charging phones, electric wheelchairs, scooters, and mobility aids around the city available to the public similar to how you might think about electric vehicle charging around the city.

So that work started on July 15th and is on track to be completed by the end of the year.

Thank you, Director.

Welcome back.

Thank you, Vice Chair Koski.

As you can see, these change items from 2025 are almost 100% on track.

And I want to say thank you to all of the staff teams who've been working on these items.

I also want to thank a few people for help on this presentation.

It takes a lot of people to pull this together.

And so I want to thank Trudy in our office, Molly in our office, who did a lot of work on this, Jane Desensa as our budget director, and her team to assist us in this.

and then of course all the department heads and their support staff from budgeting to operations, making sure that we could give you accurate and up-to-date information.

Thank you.

Thank you Madam Chair and thank you

Ms. Anderson-Kelleher for this presentation.

I really appreciate how well organized it is.

It's very easy to understand and for us to track it.

I've actually been in queue since Director Chaplin was speaking, so my first questions, if that's all right, start with him on slide 33.

Some of these changes that we saw in the presentation today were from budget amendments that came through last year and we were aware of the impacted funding source.

In others, they were less clear.

So I feel like I would benefit that everyone would benefit from a better understanding for the appropriations and earmarks within a department how that ended up impacting service delivery or department operations.

Like did it end up being a good trade-off or did something else suffer?

that we were unaware of when we did this during the budget.

So Director Chaplin, back on slide 33, there had been two earmarks and you called them out within health.

They were carbon fees.

This was one I had supported.

It was for PCAR and its fee study.

Yeah, Councilman Palmisano, Vice Chair Koski.

The earmarks were designed to help support contracting for Braun and then also hiring a position for the carbon fees as well which is what we did.

Right, but Director, what I'm asking is the money, that money had to be pulled from somewhere in your department.

We were nonspecific as to where to take it from.

Chair, Council Members, Patrick Hamlin, Deputy Commissioner in the Health Department.

So the funding that was used to earmark these positions, it reduced the amount of work that we could do in terms of

Green cost share work or some of the other work related to energy efficiency, solar, that kind of work.

So the change in earmark made for a reduction in those types of projects, exactly how many I wouldn't know, but it did reduce the funding.

We typically

Thank you.

The impacts of this would be much further out in terms of what we were able to get done this year with it versus how our PCAR program once up and running is going to help.

impact our city.

So thank you for that.

My next question was actually for CPED, so I guess I'm asking DCOO Jelly.

I'll just remind my colleagues, CPED had a lot of changes.

31 total changes and over 18 million dollars worth of changes is what we

moved around in CPED between the mayor's budget and our changes to it.

There were four earmarks that were made mostly with affordable housing trust fund money.

But I specifically recall Director Hanson indicating at the time that one amendment removed a significant amount of money from code and construction services.

Vice Chair Koski, Council Member Palmisano, I don't have the details standing here.

I do know one of the earmarked items is likely coming to the council for an update.

And so that would be a place that I can help work with the team to be prepared to answer that question.

Council Member, would you like that as a formal memo, or do you want more of what...

I think so, that way we can all be aware of it as it comes back, if that's alright.

Clerks, if you can note that, or do you want her to repeat that?

I'm curious how the reduction the proposed reduction to code and construction services ended up because Director Hanson had said he absolutely could not afford a reduction from that part of his budget and Mr. Jelly suggested that there's actually something coming forward to council for it in the future I would just like more information as to how all of that worked out

Thank you Vice Chair.

I have a couple questions for Reg.

Services and CPED.

This is all DCOO Jelly or COO Anderson-Kelleher on Reg.

Services.

27.

Okay, thanks.

Who's Director Velazquez behind you?

Welcome.

Thank you very much, Vice Chair Koski.

I believe it was Council Member Chaudry who asked the question?

Cashman.

Sorry, I couldn't hear.

Enrique Velazquez, Director of Regulatory Services.

So with the addition of these two staff members, that brings our HRT team up to 6.0 FTE.

Okay, thank you so much.

Yeah, just a brief comment on that.

I have found this to be helpful just from a user experience or from a constituent services perspective of being able to reach out to this team and having them really on scene very quickly to help the individuals who are camping somewhere in the ward.

So just wanted to give kudos to that team and their work.

My next questions are for CPED.

Got it, thank you.

The second one was about the Stable Home Stable School expansion on page 38.

I believe this was Councilmember Chowdhury and Budget Chair Chugtai, maybe other authors on this amendment, Chavez and Payne.

So, you know, more than willing to hear from you all too, but I do recall from my recollection that this was to expand Stable Home Stable Schools to serve middle school children and, you know, I see here on page 38 that it does say

Okay, thanks.

I just wanted to make sure I understood correctly because it does seem like something that we all need to be aware of and trying to solve for with such a successful and impactful program with so many partners and a really important service of helping our public school families access housing.

So I just wanted to be able to recognize that and bring it to our attention as something to work on in the long term.

and then just that's all the questions that I had but just wanted to thank you all so much for this presentation you know we're in a rapidly changing world and changing our budget or city budget to reflect emerging needs coming from the community I think is important so I'm glad that you know our job as representatives is to identify those needs and try to amend the budget accordingly to fit what our constituents are raising to our attention and I think

This is really great work that's come in just a few months out of this year.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

My question is for Director Sexton.

You said that we were going to have $400,000 go back because the Open Streets, the Our Streets application

wasn't awarded.

That's exactly what I wanted to hear, Director.

Great.

So more potholes filled, more snow plowing happening with that $400,000.

Love it.

All right.

Any further questions from colleagues?

I'm not seeing any so I just want to say thank you so much to city staff and leaders for preparing all of this.

I know it's a tremendous lift but I think it's so helpful for us to see where we're at in progress and making sure that we are showing to the public how their taxpayer dollars are being spent.

So it's great again to see all the great progress and thank you for all the hard work to make that transparent for us.

Seeing no other discussion, I'll ask the Clerk to receive and file this report.

And with that, we've concluded all business to come before the Committee Day.

If there's no objection, we stand adjourned.