Budget Committee October 06, 2025   10/6/2025

Good morning.

My name is Aisha Chugtai and I'm the chair of the Budget Committee.

I'm going to call to order our adjourned meeting for Monday, October 6th, 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.

Council President Payne?

Present.

Council Member Wonsley is absent.

Rainville?

Present.

Allison is absent.

Thank you, Madam Chair, Council members.

Again, I'm Kristin Aderson.

I'm the City Attorney and I am very pleased to be here to explain our office budget and give you an overview.

I'd also like to introduce members of my leadership team.

Linda Roberts, who is our office Director of Operations.

David Bernstein, who is our Deputy of our Criminal Division and Dan Abelson, who is our Deputy of our Civil Division

So, I'll just go through the slides.

The first slide really depicts where we fall as the City Attorney's Office in the city enterprise.

We are a very, very unique department in so far as we serve both the administration and the City Council.

and here is a high level overview of our organizational structure.

As you see, I have five direct reports and as well each division of the office, the civil division and the

Criminal Division each has managing attorneys.

In the Civil Division, we are in the structure showing three managing attorneys.

One of those we are using the budget towards the mayor's recommended budget reductions and I'll talk about that a little later.

Our mission, vision, and values as an office high level is to equitably seek justice, embrace accountability, and protect the interests of the Minneapolis community.

We, as an office, came together with a staff-led initiative to develop our mission, vision, and values in 2024.

We used the acronym I-CARE.

Integrity, communication, collaboration, accountability, respect, equity, and excellence.

As a department, we have work expectations that are directly tied to our mission, vision, and values so that we are all held accountable to these values that we have developed together.

So now I want to talk about both our achievements and our risks, and I'm going to spend a while on our achievements.

Overall, what I want to impart to you about the City Attorney's Office is you have a gem in a City Attorney's Office.

The level of expertise and experience and drive and dedication from every member of my office is exceptional.

It is the highest functioning law office that I have worked with and I've worked with others during the course of my career and I am so proud of the folks who work with dedication for the people of Minneapolis in my office.

So each of the deputies will provide some highlights from their divisions, but I want to cover some bigger picture accomplishments that really are attributable to our whole office.

The first, I just want to talk about the stability of our office.

When I came in 2022, three years ago, we had very high office turnover.

I am so proud to tell you that in 2024 and 2025 we have experienced the lowest turnover rates since at least 2018.

So we have a very, very stable office.

We have folks in our office who have responded to the Employee Engagement Survey in record numbers

and our response rates show that people are happy to be in the office and happy to be part of the City of Minneapolis.

Three particular measures, actually four that I want to point out, I intend to stay employed here at the City of Minneapolis.

We increased by 15 points.

I would recommend the City of Minneapolis as a good place to work.

We increase by 18 points.

Where I work, I'm treated with respect.

We increase by 18.5 points.

And my work gives me a feeling of personal accomplishment increased by 15.9 points.

So it's an office, again, of amazing professionals who are dedicated and feel a sense of pride of being part of the City Attorney's Office and part of the city.

The next accomplishment that I want to talk about is our move to paperless technology.

We purchased a technology tool for the criminal division that allowed for us to go almost completely paperless.

And that doesn't sound super exciting, but it truly is in terms of being able to be efficient, making sure that we have all of the information that we need when we go to court,

when we interact with opposing council and we're able to really reduce costs because of the shift to paperless technology.

Another accomplishment that I want to highlight is our work in the MDHR settlement agreement and consent decree police reform implementation.

This group reports directly to me to show the special importance of this work to my office.

The folks in this group provide subject matter expertise on implementation work

to include policy, training, best practices, and making sure that the enterprise is complying with the terms of the settlement agreement, the terms of the consent decree, and any applicable legal requirements.

We represent the city to ALIFA and with MDHR.

Folks in that group staff the Community Commission on Police Oversight in the very same way that we staff the council and the council committees.

and we responded to the requirements of the mayor's executive order to integrate the new requirements imposed by the consent decree reforms to provide a clear path to integrating this work for the city.

In the course of 2025 alone, we've made over 100 feedback and compliance submissions to ELIFA and MDHR for work produced under the settlement agreement requirements and we have gotten ELIFA approval on the following policies.

body-worn camera, in-car camera, IA and OPCR investigations, standard operation procedures, health, wellness, and safety policy, non-discriminatory and professional policing policies, mission, vision, values, and goals policy, emergency medical response policy, crisis intervention policy, and use of force policy.

All of these policies had substantial legal work involved in them.

We partner very, very closely with the departments to make sure, again, that all of the provisions of the settlement agreement, the consent decree are reflected in those policies, that they're all legally compliant and provide them for approval then to ELIFA.

So we have seen substantial success in this area.

Another achievement I wanted to highlight is a new body of work that has taken folks from across both the civil and criminal division.

And this is our extreme risk protection order work.

Minnesota law recently was changed to allow for city attorneys, law enforcement officials, and others to request a court order.

It's called an ERPO.

My office, working hand-in-hand with MPD, has petitioned for

More ERPOs than any other jurisdiction in Hennepin County and maybe the state.

We have had 16 ERPOs issued from the court.

We, going forward, intend to step up our efforts to educate our city colleagues and the public about this important public safety tool.

The next area of achievements I want to highlight is regarding our federal action response and we gave you a presentation on this last week.

This is again an effort that goes across my office, both the criminal division and the civil division coming together to really solve some of the most thorny problems facing the city.

In response to White House executive orders and other federal actions, my office is engaged in a department-wide concerted effort to protect city resources and city autonomy.

This has largely fallen into two buckets, the first being litigation, and we've had two huge wins through federal litigation that we have joined as plaintiffs in concert with other cities and counties.

that have resulted in injunctions preventing federal grants from being taken away from the city.

and the second body of work very much dovetails with that litigation work and it's about reviewing federal grants to make sure that we are not agreeing to terms that are not in the city's legal and policy interests and ensuring that funds continue flowing to the city.

The next area of achievement that I want to highlight is our council office hours.

This is something that we have started in the last couple of months and every week for two hours we staff in the legislative department and make it hopefully

from your perspective really easy for you to stop in, you and your staff to stop in to ask legal questions, to just noodle with us about ordinances that you're considering and just make it much easier for you to access your attorneys.

You know, obviously you can email us or call us anytime, but I know you're busy and sometimes it's intimidating for staff to

reach out to the attorney so we aim to be very very accessible by seating ourselves within the legislative department and making sure that people feel very comfortable just stopping in.

And many people have done that and I think it's going really well and you can tell me if you have the same experience.

So those are some of our achievements.

David Bernstein and Dana Imbelson will be talking more about some achievements in each of their divisions.

Risks, I want to talk about a little bit.

Of course, sometimes our strengths are our risks.

Because we have such low turnover, we are so stable, we have very little salary savings.

Contractual services costs just keep on increasing so our budget does not have a lot of room for extra things.

And along with, again, all of those achievements and all of these different bodies of work that our office has taken on, we have more work to do.

We don't have new resources.

We have more work and different work.

additional work that frankly we hadn't necessarily anticipated.

Folks are so excited to do this work and they have taken on this additional work on top of their normal work.

So we're not in a position where we have been able to staff up more for this new work.

We have just had folks who are just really fantastic and willing to step up and take on

which is obviously a risk for burnout and we try really, really hard to be supportive to our employees and give management support whenever we can.

But in terms of risks, additional work without new resources is always at risk.

So we wanted to just talk a little bit about our budget expense categories.

As you can see, salary and fringe makes up the largest portion of our budget.

Our contract services budget includes many essential services to operating a law office, for example, Westlaw, and our diversion contracts, which David Bernstein will be talking a little bit about.

We have not made a new budget request since 2023.

In 2025, our budget was reduced by nearly 4% of our overall budget.

and in the 2026 recommended budget, there is a reduction by nearly 3% of our overall budget, resulting in a reduction of close to 7% of our overall budget in the last two budget years.

I highlight this here, as I did with the risks, in that our budget is now very tight and we will need to continue to be very mindful to stay within our budget.

Our staffing summary, the total budgeted FTE for the Office of City Attorney reflects a net decrease of funding for 3.3 FTEs in the 2026 mayor's recommended budget, and I'll go through what each of those is later.

In 2025, we had a net decrease of 5 FTEs, so our department has been asked to continue performing the same work and, as I said, even more work with 8.3 fewer budgeted FTEs.

Good morning.

Again, my name is David Bernstein.

I'm the Deputy City Attorney of the Criminal Division of the City Attorney's Office.

I just want to start by saying I'm so proud of all of our employees in the Criminal Division, from attorneys to paralegals, victim witness specialists, legal support specialists, investigators, our law clerks.

They are working hard every single day.

As Kristin said, we're trying to do more with less.

Crimes occur every day, unfortunately.

And the Criminal Division pursues justice without bias or prejudice to the best of our abilities to ensure public safety, accountability, and rehabilitation for all of those involved, including victims and defendants.

We do that in a variety of ways.

I could be up here for the full day telling you all about it, but I'm going to keep my comments brief and tell you about some of our highlights.

One of which is our community attorney program.

We have four community attorneys working at the five Minneapolis Police precincts.

One of them splits between two precincts.

And those attorneys attend community meetings.

They're very much aware of the community's needs, which as you know, differ from precinct to precinct and from ward to ward.

They bring those to our attention and to the attention of the Minneapolis Police Department.

To that end, they present roll call trainings.

They also communicate with our justice partners.

And if there are programmatic changes, if there's specialized attention needed on certain topics, they bring those to the attention of management and we handle those accordingly.

So the community attorneys are incredibly important to the work that we do.

We also have a dedicated charging a team that consists of one lead attorney, two senior attorneys, and one halftime attorney.

And those attorneys review the incoming complaints to the city attorney's office to decide whether or not we're going to pursue charges.

If charges are appropriate, they file complaints accordingly.

If charges are not appropriate, we file declination letters and explain the reasoning for our declines.

Having a dedicated charging team allows more in-depth review up front and hopefully less time between the offense and the time of charging.

We do have high volume, but we try and keep that amount of time as low as possible.

The small experience team also ensures that we have consistency in our standards and in our charging, which is incredibly important.

I want to highlight our trial and domestic teams.

We handle approximately 10,000 cases every single year.

We have dedicated team members on our trial and domestic teams.

That averages out to approximately 623 cases per trial attorney.

Certainly not all of those cases go to trial, but the attorneys are doing the in-depth review of every single case, which then leads to resolution in many cases at the pretrial stage.

If they need litigation we obviously handle that as well.

I mentioned that they handle approximately 623 cases per attorney.

The American Bar Association has provided some guidance and recommendations that attorneys handle approximately 400 non-complex misdemeanor cases each year.

So we are well over that number and we do handle a number of complex types of cases as well.

So our attorneys do the best they can.

The excess of caseloads for prosecutors can lead to systemic issues in the justice system.

They can include inadequate case attention, rushed plea bargains, delayed disclosure of exculpatory evidence, case delays, and increased stress and burnout among prosecutors.

I will tell you that there is stress in the criminal division.

That's not necessarily surprising, but I am incredibly impressed with how efficiently our staff works.

We do our very best to ensure that each case deserves the proper amount of attention that their appropriate offers to resolve cases.

There's timely disclosure of evidence and very minimal case delays.

I want to highlight our Victim Witness Specialists.

We have five VWS's in our office.

Two are on a dedicated domestic team and three work on our general trial teams.

One VWS, Victim Witness Specialist, is kind of in a hybrid role.

She is Spanish speaking and so any victim or witness who is Spanish speaking in the case, she handles those cases.

Their job is to gather victim input including restitution requests to make victims whole We also keep victims informed and as comfortable as possible throughout these uncomfortable criminal proceedings We also made a change to our policies and procedures earlier in the year to attempt to make contact earlier in the process with hopes that that will result in resolutions earlier in cases

I'm also excited.

Kristen mentioned our new paperless system in the criminal division.

We are going to be introducing a victim portal in 2026 which will allow victims to opt in and receive case updates as their cases proceed to the next stage.

It will also allow them to communicate with us electronically regarding input and restitution requests.

We have a full-time Brady team.

We have one full-time Brady attorney and a Brady paralegal, and we have without a doubt the most robust Brady system in the state of Minnesota.

It is being used as a model for other prosecution offices in the state.

For those who are unfamiliar by Brady, we are obligated by United States Supreme Court case law to disclose exculpatory and impeachment information.

and I was able to gather some numbers for the first eight months of 2025 from January through August.

Our Brady team processed 3,043 cases involving Brady requests and that included 10,845 officers for which we are gathering information and making those appropriate disclosures to the defense and to the court.

We also in that time filed 212 pleadings which included motions for in-camera review by judges and protective orders and Those are very very time-consuming each one.

So our Brady team works incredibly hard on that

I also want to highlight our DWI drug impaired driving team.

The DRE team stands for Drug Recognition Evaluator and I will proudly say we have one of the best DRE teams in the nation.

All of our attorneys on that team receive two weeks of dedicated training because these are very very complex cases.

We have two managers, 14 attorneys and one paralegal that work on these types of cases and our team has expanded in recent years because of the increase in drug impaired driving.

That is why we applied for and received a grant for a dedicated drug recognition prosecutor which was heard in the AEO committee last week.

My thanks again to Councilmember Palmisano for authoring that resolution We hope to have one prosecutor specifically dedicated to this line of work To give you some insight on that we started tracking these cases in 2001 and at that time there were 23 drug impaired driving cases in 2001 Currently we have nearly 200 open cases

that has increased significantly.

That includes a year-to-date 76 closed cases.

And of those, people were found to be driving under the influence of drugs such as fentanyl, cocaine, methamphetamine, and THC, whether alone or in combination with other substances.

And so we really dedicate a lot of work to these cases.

And finally, our diversion programs.

We are very proud of our diversion programs.

We have a number of them, including our Pathway to New Beginnings gun diversion program, our North Point domestic diversion program, the Restorative Justice Community Action, or RJCA program,

interact for obstructing legal process cases, shoplifting, traffic education, and our driver diversion program.

We continue to innovate and seek out new programs as our budget allows, and we're very proud of the programs that we have.

A few statistics on this.

Statistics show that 75% of individuals reoffend before programming.

That number drops to 24% after participating in programming.

So our programs have been very successful.

And there was a quote from one participant that I thought was worth mentioning.

He went through our Pathway to New Beginnings gun diversion program.

and he stated, quote, Now I have the tools to think in a long term state of mind, not just short term.

I don't need a gun to feel safe, end quote.

Very, very powerful statement and we've been fortunate to see a number of very positive outcomes from our diversion programs.

There's so much more I could talk about.

Our staff work incredibly hard to seek fair and just outcomes in every case we handle to improve public safety and trust in the criminal court system.

We maintain a commitment to public service and I believe that we have one of the best prosecution offices in the state of Minnesota.

Good morning Chair, Committee Members.

I'm Dan Abelson.

I'm the Deputy City Attorney for the Civil Division.

I had the privilege of stepping into this position earlier this year and to work with an amazing group of attorneys both on litigation and client services.

Today I'm going to highlight three achievements from the year.

The first is a significant litigation victory.

The second is the grant review process, which the city attorney touched on a little bit.

And the third is some of the key ordinances that our office has worked on.

So the first is the Fletcher Properties case.

So this was a Minnesota Supreme Court case that upheld the city's ordinance prohibiting discrimination based on status with regard to public assistance.

This is an ordinance that was first challenged in 2017 by a group of landlords alleging all sorts of claims about why they believed the ordinance was illegal.

This was hard fought.

The office litigated this for eight years, including multiple trips to the appellate court.

Ultimately, the Minnesota Supreme Court rejected all of the claims from the landlords.

And one of the key findings was that the ordinance was not preempted by the Minnesota Human Rights Act, because it complements the act, and the act doesn't have any legislative intent to prohibit local governments from enhancing its reach.

So this is an important ruling both in obviously upholding this specific ordinance But also in setting this precedent that local governments can pass these types of ordinances that provide additional protections beyond the Minnesota Human Rights Act

On the federal funding review, as you know the council passed a resolution earlier this year centralizing the authority for executing grants and the city attorney's office working with the finance department and others across the city created a grant review process.

and both federal and non-federal grants go through this process, though the review is very different for non-federal grants.

There are three client services attorneys who are taking the lead on this.

They're doing this on top of their regular work.

Since April, the City Attorney's Office has reviewed approximately 80 grant applications, 41 of those being federal applications involving over $116 million in federal funding.

And the purpose of this review is to ensure that the city's only executing grant agreements that have terms that are acceptable to the city and that comply with the injunctions that

the City has received in litigation against the federal government.

And then finally I want to talk about ordinances.

The City Attorney's Office has worked on dozens of new and revised ordinances, and this primarily the Client Services Group, though one change we've started to do a little bit this year is also

to pull in the litigators more to advise internally on the ordinances because when the city does new and innovative things in ordinances, people don't always like it.

So it's helpful to have the litigators to advise at the beginning on ordinances where we anticipate that

litigation will be likely.

So just a few of the ordinances that the office has worked on.

The revisions to the civil rights ordinances to add the new protected classes of justice and impacted status and height and weight.

Updated franchise agreements and their corresponding ordinances with both Centerpoint Energy and Excel.

Ordinance prohibiting algorithmic rent setting.

the sidewalk cart and street vending program ordinances as well as an ordinance on procurement of surveillance technology and I think as you know the office has worked on many more ordinances than that but those are just a few of those.

Thank you again City Attorney Kristin Anderson.

So I wanted to just very briefly go through the budget changes for 2026.

These are reductions in our budget as requested to help lower the levy.

So our first reduction, pretty self-explanatory.

Our food and beverage amounts we've completely reduced.

The next two are workhouse and miscellaneous and these are contracts.

They are contracts that we have habitually underspent on and so we are taking a gamble particularly on the workhouse.

This is essentially when we prosecute crimes and there is a jail sentence involved we have to pay the county.

But our diversion programs have been so very successful

that we have seen over time a less and less billing from the workhouse and so we are making an educated gamble that our diversion programs will continue working and we can take some money out of our workhouse account.

Likewise with our contractual funding, we've got a line item that has been underspent and so we are reducing that.

And then in terms of positions, we are reducing in the Civil Division by 2.3 FTE That is composed of

paid law clerks.

We are no longer going to pay our law clerks.

We are hopeful that we are such an attractive place to work that we will have folks who are willing to work during their law school experience.

We are a very attractive place for folks to work, so we think that that's a reduction that we can weather.

And then in the Civil Division, as I noted before, we have a vacant manager position.

that we have not filled and we will not fill.

We have basically flattened out the management structure in the Civil Division, so there is a deputy manager over litigation and one manager over client services.

There had been two managers over client services.

and we determined that actually having a flatter management structure allows for more collaboration within the client services unit and then between the client services unit and the litigation team.

And as Deputy Attorney Dan Abelson had identified, we're doing more and more work of pulling together the litigators and the client services folks to help

work on ordinances together, work on these federal projects, and that has actually been facilitated by flattening that management structure.

And then in criminal, we are reducing by one vacant FTE, which it's a legal support specialist vacant position, which we are able to weather because of that paperless technology.

that we have invested in in the criminal division so that we don't actually need as much legal support when we don't have paper files.

So that comes to the end of my presentation.

Kind of my parting words are, again, I am so proud of the work that this office does, the talent, the dedication.

We are doing a lot more with less.

We are managing our budget as well as we can given the circumstances, and I ask for your

support with the reductions and the budget that we have so that we can continue doing really fantastic work.

Thank you for that presentation City Attorney and and Deputy City Attorney's colleagues.

Are there any questions or comments related to this presentation?

Thank you Vice President Chagtay.

I was wondering if you could expand on the improvements we've made to Brady.

I know that

Council President Payne and members, thank you for that question.

And then I was curious if, I know there were some questions about discipline records being included in Brady materials.

Has that been resolved or is that still kind of an open question?

When you say discipline records, are you referring to a certain...?

Yes, President Payne, thank you for the question.

We have a process by which when cases are set for a contested evidentiary hearing or trial, our Brady team automatically goes through the check and determines whether or not any officer subpoenaed to testify in the case have disciplinary records.

If they're public records, we disclose those directly to the defense.

If they are non-public or private records, we go through the court to make a motion for an in-camera review with a protective order so that if the judge orders disclosure, they are disclosed under that protective order.

Thank you.

Thank you Madam Chair, thank you City Attorney I am so grateful for the presentation and just echo the praise that you've given your team and grateful for your leadership through these last few years I just had a quick question about outcomes Minneapolis or the performance management I'm not seeing a dashboard just curious or some additional information on the slide just curious when like what your timing is to get that in place and

Madam Chair, Council Member, so we are in process working very closely with PMI to come up with some really good sound performance measures that actually are meaningful and help us make decisions.

So we've got data that we're pulling together on the diversion program so that we can show

how successful they are.

Deputy Attorney Bernstein did cite some of those statistics for you, but we're looking across the office and coming up with performance measures for both the Civil and the Criminal Division, looking at things like how many ordinances are we working

on how many, even time spent with the council, other things, excuse me, how quickly we're doing charging decisions and things like that.

So there's many different measures that are in flight with PMI.

We're working very closely with them and hopefully by next year we'll actually have the ability to unveil those performance measures so that those statistics are

Thank you.

My office director is on top of this so hopefully before before this time next year, so First or second quarter of next year again, we're actively working with PMI and I've met with them several times as leadership and management To try to focus on what those numbers are that again that would give some idea to outside folks of

Some of our metrics but also metrics that are actually going to be useful for us to make decisions.

Madam chair council member.

Okay.

And then on slide two, you have this flow chart, and I'm just wondering about these four managing attorneys.

Madam Chair, Council Member, yes.

So on this flow chart under the Deputy City Attorney for the Criminal Division there are four managing attorneys.

We've got a very large number of staff in the Criminal Division and so we have four managing attorneys so that we can equitably distribute the management and make sure that the folks are all getting

the management support that they need and then in the civil division again we're going to be reducing one manager so it's the litigators are overseen by one manager and the client services are attorneys are overseen by another

manager and the support staff in the client services division, sorry, in the civil division are overseen by the litigation manager.

Awesome, thank you.

I just had a couple of questions for you, City Attorney.

When you were highlighting your risks and achievements, you talked about IRPO, I remember that acronym.

I can't remember what it stands for, Extreme Risk Protection Orders.

So can you just walk us through

When did this law change that allowed your office to use this authority?

Madam Chair, Council members, so the Minnesota law was changed in either this last session or the session before.

And so it is a newer

law.

Most of the cases that we've been dealing with have come to our attention through our partnership with law enforcement officials.

And again, it's a partnership, again, between the criminal division attorneys, the civil division attorneys, and MPD is really providing us the evidence.

gotcha so I mean this just caught my attention because you know I think about just recently in the news the example of Mariah Samuels who you know called and asked for help several times was was shot

and killed, I think about the example of Davis Maturi who called and asked for help, I think it's like 19 times, and was shot by his neighbor.

Those are a couple of examples that come to mind as times when, just in the way that you're describing this process, an extreme risk protection order could have prevented

there the person who harmed them from having a firearm in their possession in the first place.

Is that, am I understanding this process?

So, Madam Chair, Council members, I don't know enough about those particular cases to know whether those were the facts and circumstances that this then an ERPO would have been known

to be a resource would have been useful, successful, I don't know.

But what I will say, again, this is a new tool that we have started to see success at and one of our efforts going forward is going to be to do more education.

Gotcha.

Council Chair, Council Members, certainly more than in Hennepin County, maybe in the state, don't know.

And can you give me a sense of how many?

So our office has petitioned for 17.

All but one.

All but one.

That's awesome.

Well, thank you very much.

I just wanted to shift gears real quick and talk about near the end of your presentation where you're talking about removing compensation for law clerks.

Can you tell me

Sure, Council Vice President, Council Members, we needed to find some cuts to make, right?

We focused and always focused on our essential services.

Law clerks are very very nice to have but they are not within our essential services so rather than you know looking at layoffs or Reducing contractual services budgets to the point that we think that we will be in danger of going over budget We felt that the the paid law clerk program is again It's a very nice to have but it's not an essential and we do think that we are attractive enough that we will be enticing for

We know that we have partnerships with law schools where they can get credit for their service with us from time to time, which could help to offset the lack of pay.

So, you know, I think we feel very confident that we will be able to get good law clerks even despite this budget reduction.

And again, you know, we had to find

Gotcha.

Thank you Attorney Anderson for this presentation.

I think your office is doing a lot of really important work in regards to changes at the federal level and protecting the rights of residents in Minneapolis.

We appreciate that.

And this work is

you know an ever-changing climate with resources that are already spread thin and now you have to increase workloads due to FTE cuts in your office.

So thank you.

It was interesting to hear about the workhouse expenses budget reduction and that it's due to successful diversion programs.

Mr. Bernstein outlined these programs a bit but I just wanted to point out it's exciting to know that successful programming can also

So just pointing that out in your presentation.

Awesome.

Thank you I will thank you so much for coming in and presenting your 2026 recommended budget.

I will ask the clerk to file this presentation.

Thank you again Before we move to our next presentation.

I will note that we have been joined in this committee by council member Chowdhury and

With that, our next presentation is from the Performance Management and Innovation Department.

I will invite Director Kira Hasbargen to join us and begin this presentation.

All right.

Good morning, Chair, Council members.

My name is Kira Hasbarg and I'm the Director of Performance Management and Innovation.

I'm here today to present our department's 2026 recommended budget.

PMI sits within the Office of Public Service as part of internal services.

We report to Deputy City Operations, Seray Garnett-Hohuli.

PMI is a lean, highly collaborative team of nine staff.

We act as internal consultants, leading and supporting projects that advance equity, inclusive design, and continuous improvement across the enterprise.

Four program managers scope, implement, and manage initiatives while fostering meaningful dialogue and collaboration.

Three data analysts build alignment, visualize insights, develop innovative community-centered recommendations that inform decision-making.

and myself and our Deputy Director provide thought leadership and lead enterprise-wide efforts to improve the government process, efficiency, effectiveness and good governance.

Our work empowers departments to improve services, align initiatives with city priorities and deliver measurable impact.

Our mission is about building a culture that transforms how Minneapolis delivers services.

By being data informed, we ensure that decisions are grounded in facts and measurable results.

By being innovative, we test new approaches and scale what works.

By staying community centered, we design services with residents, not just for them, which builds trust and relevance.

At the core, we focus on addressing inequities by using data to identify and close racial and geographical gaps.

And lastly, by building resilience, we help the city adapt and change to sustain progress over time.

Together, these principles make our government more effective, more equitable, and more responsive to the people that we serve.

So this year PMI hit a lot of important milestones and so I'm not going to go into all of them but first really want to take a step back.

Two years ago I stood before many of you as a department of one.

A year ago I stood before you as a department head who was beginning to rebuild the department and today I stand before you with this amazing list of key achievements and milestones that Performance Management and Innovation has undertaken over just the last year.

I would be remiss in not thanking the team for all of their efforts, their work, their commitment and really work in driving data-driven decision-making and their exemplary commitment to being amazing public servants.

Again, we have shown steady improvement over the strategic goals that I mentioned earlier.

Each of the milestones listed here reflects our commitment to transparency, accountability, and continuous improvement.

We supported citywide dashboard and performance reporting, many of which you have begun to see through some of these Budget Committee presentations.

We have partnered with departments to deliver more timely and important projects.

And lastly, we have completed the first year of the city's Enterprise Performance Management Framework Outcomes Minneapolis, integrating performance measures with budgeting to create accountability.

The program update portion of my presentation will go into deeper detail about our key achievements and these key milestones.

So risks and lessons learned.

As with any change effort, there are challenges, silos that slow collaboration, urgency that risks burnout, resistance to change, prolonged timeline, and resource constraints.

From this, over the last year, we really learned that trust and partnerships are essential.

Structure change management, clear communication, and training to help embed lasting cultural shifts are key to success.

Having unified adoption helps make changes that stick, and moving from vision to intentionally instilling ownership drives success.

Three core objectives guide our outcome Minneapolis metrics, continuous improvement, so embedding performance tools that drive accountability, community well-being, advancing equitable community centered outcomes, and organizational capacity, strengthening the city's ability to sustain and scale improvements.

So continuous improvement, so we'll sort of again go over these.

Continuous improvement, here are our outcomes Minneapolis metrics for this.

They really again demonstrate how we are embedding a strategic evaluative approach within the enterprise.

Looks at things like completed projects.

the number of projects in progress, how well we're delivering our projects on time, how well we are doing at scoping, how long a project will take to complete, how much time we're spending on sort of different buckets, that being continuous improvement and reimagining community safety.

Shown on the slides for my Outcomes Minneapolis metrics, I'm showing you both the full year of 2024 and then 25 year to date also with the comparison.

as to that same section in time last year.

So I'm going to go into a couple of these in a little bit more detail, but did want to provide this.

I will note that you'll see here PMI does share its performance management dashboard online, like many other departments.

Ours goes up to date, so you can look at these.

We share these with the public at any time, and so we're happy to be transparent with the work that we are doing.

And it also shows things like the departments who we're working with.

and on the dashboard itself you can sort of scroll over the projects to get more information like what is the actual project that's being counted here, but these are those high level numbers for continuous improvement.

Community wellbeing, these metrics are in two areas, how we track how we're improving service delivery, strengthening internal effectiveness and promoting equitable outcomes.

Again, you can see the two different year periods there, focusing first on projects that are looking centered on community safety, projects that are focused on equitable service delivery.

I will say they're not exclusive, so projects that focus on sort of the continuous improvement aspect that I mentioned, community safety and equitable service delivery, so it's not just one.

And then organizational capacity, we're looking at the number of new collaboration requests, so who's reaching out proactively to work with us.

a number of repeat partners, the number of engagements held, percent of satisfaction, and then use of partners who are saying that they are using the tools that we provide to them.

So those are those numbers there, and I will go into detail to some of those metrics later in my presentation.

The first that we really want to touch on, we're very proud of this team's work, is yearly project summary.

So building on that performance data, our overall project delivery shows steady growth.

As of August 31, 2025, PMI completed six projects with seven more underway or in progress.

That's an increase over last year and shows the growth in both our project portfolio and our ability

to deliver a higher capacity to support departments and the enterprise.

And we've had other projects come in just since the end of August, but again, we are going through the year here.

I also think that it's very important to stress that projects counts alone don't tell the full story or the story.

Again, very happy about the work that we're doing.

But what I'll give you as an example is Outcomes Minneapolis.

It's listed, for example, in how we capture it in the department as a single project.

But in reality, it's a five-step process that has many different things that we're working on, working with all departments and offices over those five things.

And really that's when we look at what is a core critical service of performance management innovation.

that is mandated by ordinance by 12.260 that we can really help to support departments, what's working, identify areas for improvement, and communicate the impact of services.

We have engaged every department in the city and we have had nearly 200 one-on-one sessions in this last year.

Also by centering residents in this work, we ensure that performance data reflects real outcomes for the people that we serve and while we do track the number of projects, as I mentioned, we really look at things like quality repeat customers that I showed you earlier in the previous slide.

Accurate work planning is another outcomes Minneapolis metric that we think is important.

We really want to be able to talk about how we're able to accurately scope and deliver projects.

We're aiming to keep this variance between estimated projects and actual projects at 10% in 2026.

You can see here last year and so far this year, we're at about or closer to 15%.

So we are on track.

Again, the department was stood up just probably about a year ago and it's being rebuilt.

So we're doing a lot of work internally on that project management to really understand what projects are like things when we sort of scope things and try to understand how much time and then also

support different requests, right?

A department or a partner may come to us with one request and then it sort of gets bigger.

So really wanting to adjust and provide what outcome and what service is going to help that department, but sometimes that means making adjustments.

So internally we're doing some really great work on trying to have a little bit more routine and standard to that so we can accommodate those types of requests.

I'll say also to put that 10% in perspective, in the consulting and professional services world, firms often experience around an 8% overrun between what they estimate and what they log.

In the public sector, particularly what we saw in our research, IT, for example, that gap is much larger with the research showing that it's closer to 20 to 25%.

So we feel that our 10% target in 2026 is ambitious but is grounded in what we're seeing across industry standards outside of government and what we believe to be possible as we work on those internal things that I mentioned earlier.

Again, achieving this means better forecasting, clearer expectations, stronger trust in our work, and the ability to work on more projects.

Timely project delivery.

Our goal is to complete at least 80% of projects by their agreed upon deadlines.

I'm really striking that right balance between quality, efficiency, flexibility to build trust with our partners.

So far this year, we're on pace to meet that goal with 83% delivered on time.

Just for context, Statista

reports that management consultancies, again, average about 82% of on-time delivery, and this was from some of the data that they were able to cull from 2021 through 2023, with a nine-year average they shared of just shy of 80%.

This again means that PMI is close to performing at or above industry standards even as we continue to support a diverse and complex set of city departments and get to know the work.

It's a strong baseline and one that we hope to keep improving year over year.

With every engagement, we survey our partners and results consistently show high satisfaction.

Most reports a positive experience working with PMI.

We believe that relationships have been critical to our success.

We're setting baselines and targets carefully, though.

While our current satisfaction scores are strong, we had not been tracking response rates, and so research shows that feedback sort of comes at both extremes, those who are

had a really great experience.

Those who may not have had a very positive experience.

So we want to learn more from that middle ground.

30% is considered a standard survey response rate benchmark.

So we will be adding that in starting now for 2026.

So that way we can really make sure that we're getting at least 30% responses from the surveys that we send out.

As we receive more satisfaction responses, we do believe that that may shift what's right now showing as a very high satisfaction score currently at 98.2%.

And so that's why we've set those baselines within industry standards.

Our funding has remained relatively stable.

In 2025, we received a one-time 500,000 amendment to support the implementation of the Safe and Thriving Communities Report.

That's why you're seeing a decrease in contract services for 2026.

and then the year before that we also had about a hundred, excuse me, one million dollar grant with NYU and the Policing Project, so that's why you sort of see that in the previous year.

What you're seeing there is a spend down and a transfer of that grant, excuse me, that contract to the Office of Community Safety.

Overall, our operating costs remain less than 1% of our general fund, or about 200,000, so again, we are mainly contract, excuse me, salaries and wages.

As I mentioned, we have nine FTEs in the department.

That remains unchanged for 2026, and we have zero vacancies.

So, program updates.

Our programs are designed to translate resources into meaningful outcomes.

They include continuous improvement initiatives, community wellbeing approaches, and organizational capacity efforts.

Together, these programs ensure that innovation and accountability are embedded across the city.

So first I'll speak to continuous improvement.

PMI strengthens enterprise capacity by embedding a performance management framework that aligns the budget process, outcomes Minneapolis, and performance-based contracting.

Much of that work that we did in 2025, you've heard about in other department presentations so far.

The wage theft contract with civil rights, working on performance metrics with neighborhood safeties,

Office of Violence Prevention Services.

And again, over this last year, we've completed a full cycle of Outcomes Minneapolis, going from just defining measures to turning insights into actions.

Operationalizing the Outcomes Minneapolis framework has become central to how we design service effectiveness and inform resource allocation and promote continuous improvement.

Since its launch in 2024, PMI has worked with departments and again you've seen those public dashboards through some of the budget presentations so far this past month.

in partnership with the budget team.

Outcomes Minneapolis, we are now looking to track performance trends and having performance metrics in the budget amendments in that.

This year as well, we are rolling out performance-based contracting, as I mentioned, helping departments to embed outcome measures directly into city contracts.

to scale this work.

We worked with Results for America.

Their experts came in and helped train multiple departments like finance, like neighborhood safety, and how we can really include that outcome focus in our contracting.

This is foundational to support accountability, equity, and better results for residents.

Community wellbeing, so PMI's community wellbeing work is centered on improving quality of life, reducing racial disparities, and building trust through innovation, data, and transparency.

First, through community safety pilots, we've worked to design and launch several culturally responsive public safety pilots.

The Community Ambassador, the Cultural Safety Ambassador Program, an initiative that deploys trained ambassadors to build relationships, de-escalate conflict, and connect to resources has been launched successfully and transitions to neighborhood safety.

The embedded social worker in 911 MECC is also underway.

As you heard in PHS just last week, the social worker started taking calls just last week and is now we are working to help connect residents in crisis to supportive services and we are beginning that transition to 911 MECC.

The traffic control response to non-injury collisions, which you also heard about in PHS, this pilot really seeks to take the burden of non-emergency calls from MPD so that our traffic control agents can respond to those crashes.

It will be citywide and the project team made a trip to Charlotte-Mecklenburg earlier this summer to really understand what that looked like and how we can learn from a successful program.

Through community impact tools, we also work with departments to change their data into impact stories and into dashboards

We also launched a new performance management page that is a public city page which shares why performance management matters, talks about that process, and hosts the dashboards and impact stories that I've mentioned earlier.

This transparency ensures that residents, council, and staff alike cannot just see the numbers but the outcomes behind them.

Together, this shows how outcomes Minneapolis has become a shared framework.

It also complements sort of LIMS but makes performance data more accessible and interactive.

Third, community engagement resources.

PMI helps departments design equitable, effective engagement.

We created with NCR and REIB a survey design guide which helps to enable clarity and inclusion through question development.

We also worked to create ARPA case studies developed with the budget office where we showed how federal recovery funds created measurable community impact.

to gather these initiatives from pilots to dashboards to engagement tools, demonstrate how PMI is helping the city innovate, measure what matters, and improve outcomes.

Lastly, organizational capacity.

We provide technical assistance, training, convenings, and enterprise review models that help departments not only measure outcomes but manage towards them.

We launched our technical assistance program this year through our Understanding Performance and Opportunities workshop.

These services are tailored to the problem at hand and focus on evidence-based, equitable, community-centered

Solutions.

We prioritize low or no cost options so that departments of all sizes can participate.

We also advanced Innovation U, our enterprise training program.

Two courses, Why Performance Management Matters and Developing Outcome Measures are now available to all city employees in Comet.

And we're finalizing a third, Leading Performance Management Meetings for Impact.

We've also launched City Goal Convenings, a collaborative session that will bring departments together to address cross-cutting high-priority issues.

And looking ahead, we're preparing to launch a CityStat model in 2026, an enterprise-wide performance review process based on best practices from other cities like Baltimore and Philadelphia.

CityStat will institutionalize regular, data-driven accountability sessions

with departments focused on results and solutions.

So our 2026 budget reductions, we've met our 2026 target by reducing our technical assistance line item by $25,000, bringing it down to a little less than $250,000.

While the reduction is modest, it may limit our ability to expand from performance measurement into accountability and service redesign as departments are starting to ask for more support in technical assistance.

An example that I will share is Director Topinka and her

Budget presentation mentioned that she was working with PMI to really focus on data collection and to get information from partners.

And so again, we were able to use an internal software system, Smartsheet, that was already available.

But this fund is what allows us to provide or potentially recommend something that it would be at cost to a department.

This cut does not immediately impact any core operations, but it could reduce our ability to scale in the future.

So thank you very much for your support in helping to advance data-driven equitable service delivery across the city of Minneapolis.

I'm really excited about the work that the team has done so far just this year, and I'm excited to see what we're able to do in 2026.

Thank you so much for that presentation, Director.

Colleagues, are there any questions or comments?

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you so much, Director, for the thorough presentation and there's a lot to share, so I appreciate that.

I was just wondering, you went into a little bit more detail about CityStat.

Can you talk a little bit more about what

Yeah, happy to.

Chair Chuktai, Vice Chair Koski.

And so the difference so we were sort of see all of these programs as working together as complimentary so sort of you know take it take a step back.

Outcomes Minneapolis is an annual performance management program.

So departments have gone through, identified what they believe to be core and critical to their services, identified measures, identified baselines that they feel best represent their work, and sort of what is the most relevant to them.

Annually, so at the end, some departments may report more, but generally it's an annual program, so at the end of each

year.

We will go back.

We started Notify Departments again this year, right?

If you're changing your measures, let us know that these are still your measures.

Start figuring out what your data collection will be so that way in quarter one of 2026.

We can update that and you'll be able to, for example, look at that year by year.

So it's annual.

So that's all you're looking at.

A city staff program is intended to be more real time.

And so it's really focusing.

So cities, again, like Baltimore, Philadelphia, many cities in the United States have them.

So they'll focus on things that sort of go across the organization.

So an example

and what might it feel like as a business or a person who's going through the permitting process.

So here, for example, if you're gonna build a new building in the city of Minneapolis,

you will engage with many departments, right, to get your elevator permit, your fire inspection, all of those, right?

So what that does is it looks across sort of at the service provision itself and it's looking at data in more real time so it may be anywhere from once a quarter to some communities, right, based on what they believe there needs to be and sort of they figured out their right cadence, maybe meaning monthly.

So instead it's cool how we do last month on this

right what changes are we seeing right is there something we need to talk about right and how can we then make a change more in real time to adjust right to meet what we believe to be the SLA and the experience that we want our customers to have so it's again not to say that departments are not using their data to do that annually many of them are that's what those step four workshops were but so you're making it at the end of a year right as opposed to

or in real time, so quarterly or again, some communities indicated they were doing it monthly.

Okay, thank you, that's helpful.

My follow-up question is about budget and just the capacity of your team to implement CityStat.

What does that look like long-term?

We are still right now in the information gathering phase.

So again, we've done a couple of site visits, we've been talking with Baltimore, the team has had informational calls with quite a few of the larger programs, DC for example.

and through our work with What Work Cities have been able to talk to some of those communities.

So I would say right now we don't know.

I think because we don't know what the size of the program is going to look like so that the community that I mentioned that has eight staff who run their city staff program, they have

Essentially, again, this is a loose ballpark.

They have like 10 different stat programs that they're running, and so that team is just constantly doing different meetings, right?

So that's why that team is so big.

We've not scoped what it looks like, so we are recommending a pilot of a service to sort of see what that looks like.

As I mentioned, some of the risks that we have is the

As you indicated, department staff also have full-time jobs that they are doing.

So what is that request for support and effort going to look like from departments before we would need to make a budget request?

I think it's right now too premature because we don't know the size.

A city like Baltimore has been running a city staff program for like 20 years.

They were one of the first after Governor Martin O'Malley sort of launched that for the state.

and so I think we'll see.

Okay, thank you.

And so next year for 2026 you're thinking of one program that you would pilot this versus multiple departments all at one time.

So we will start with a topic for example like permitting or licensing which would then include I think quite a few departments and any department that is doing licensing or permitting I think again we need to sort of figure out the scope right now that we're sort of moving forward in this way and sort of see what that looks like so it could be that you know any department is doing permit or licensing

Gotcha.

Thank you Yeah, topic is a better way to us.

Thank you.

I appreciate that and the additional clarification.

Next I'll recognize councilmember Palm sono

Thank you for this presentation.

I appreciate your mission statement.

It seems like they're all getting better this year and well really more precise and more thoughtful and I think that's helpful from a team perspective.

You know we sit up here on the dais frequently debating decisions and calling for more information, more data to best serve residents and the work of your department is a great way to get there.

We've slowly watched this work build over several years from the idea to visioning to planning and implementation and I see the work of your department all over this budget process so far.

I know some departments are ahead of others in terms of goal setting and data gathering but the point that every department is now somewhere on that continuum

I think is something to celebrate.

One question and you might have said this at the end of your presentation and I just missed it.

The budget book reflects a decrease of $500,000 in miscellaneous contractual services.

What services are being cut and are you able to make those up in-house?

Thank you for that question.

That half a million dollars in contractual services was one-time funding, I believe through a budget amendment brought by Councilmember Wonsley.

to help implement

Nope, so thank you for the follow-up.

With that money, we funded the first year of the embedded social worker in 911 MECC, and then that also funded the project team's trip to Charlotte-Mecklenburg.

We are also in conversations with the Office of Community Safety to understand if there are other safety centers.

Albuquerque is one, there's Portland, there's some other, again, communities who are doing similar work to us.

to use that before we go ahead and sort of start launching pilots.

The two pilots that we have underway, the juvenile deflection pilot which we've spoken about at PHS as well as the traffic control response to

non-accident collisions is being funded through a DOJ grant.

So under, again, the guidance of the budget office and the mayor's office is not to create, and I think you've heard this as a theme as well, fiscal cliffs using one-time funding to

to implement pilots.

And so to that extent, we're being very judicious in how we use it.

I think Sink will say there was a bit of a pause when Director Harrington transitioned into her new role as Director of Neighborhood Safety and the pilots that they were moving forward

in Neighborhood Safety had funding attached to them.

So there wasn't a pilot or sort of activities based on research that we felt were responsible to spend those funds on.

Thank you, sounds good.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Director Hasbergen.

Yes.

Chair Chuktai, Council Member Cashman, thank you for the question.

So I'll first start with juvenile deflection, and so that is to just keep, and again, you've heard from the City Attorney's Office earlier about some of the diversion programs that they're running.

A deflection program seeks to keep, this is juveniles, so youth, out of the justice system entirely.

So what are populations that we can engage with who haven't even been charged?

as opposed

and we're excited to share it is now going citywide originally we were focusing in two zones but are able to go citywide that is

two things.

The first is to restore a service that was provided by MPD in the before times, really to provide that victim services to people who are engaged unfortunately in a non-injury traffic

and the City Council.

and the

and City Council.

Charlotte Mecklenburg police to do what they need to do by statute as a peace officer, and then they are out faster.

So even if they're going, it's less time.

I'm sorry, I don't remember the exact figure of how much less time they're spending, but is really able to then get them where they need to go to those priority calls where law enforcement is needed, as opposed to, can we still want to provide that civilian response?

Okay thanks, so I see this one definitely as part of our city goal to divert 911 calls to other agencies within the organization and last I saw the data was we were at 10% and that our goal is by 2030 to get to 20% of 911 calls being diverted to traffic control or behavioral crisis response or annual care and control.

Chair Chung-Thi, Councilmember Cashman, thank you for that question.

No, so I think we've looked at that work.

We are in collaboration with both 911 and MACC, you know, Director Hodney and sort of how that's working and those are conversations that we had begun at that time again with Director Harrington before she moved over to Neighborhood Safety and now with Director Christensen who has just started.

So we continue to work with

the policing project and sort of understand what may make sense.

I think again it also as we consider the pilots has to do with capacity.

I think traffic control has done a really amazing job and a lot of work that they provide but to do more right they would also need to have more staff so I think at that point we did not necessarily feel comfortable just

you know, giving them eight different pilots.

So yes, I think we've looked at that.

We have some ideas of what may make sense for other pilots and sort of cleaning up that.

The other question I had was about the mayoral priorities dashboard.

How much did it cost in 2025 to develop this?

Yeah, Chair Chuktai, Councilmember Cashman, thank you for the question.

I don't have that information, you know, directly.

I know Chief of Staff Walz did reach out, that sort of that email was sent to her.

So I'm happy to follow up in a staff memo.

And I would say again, our role is providing, helping departments really provide data driven information, right.

And I think that is one of the ways in which we did support that work from from the mayor's office.

Yeah, Chair, Chuck Tai, Councilmember Cashman, thank you for the question.

That'd be great, thank you.

Wonderful, thank you.

I'm not seeing anyone else in queue, so I will ask the Clerk to receive and file this presentation.

Thank you again, Director Hasbargain.

We are ready for our third and final presentation for the day, which is from the Finance and Property Services Department.

Good morning Chair Chuktai, members of the Budget Committee.

My name is Dushani Dai.

I am the City's Chief Finance Officer and I also serve as the Department Head for Finance and Property Services Department.

I will be presenting the Mayor's recommended 2026 budget for Finance and Property Services.

Finance and Property Services is a department established under the Office of Public Service and is part of the Internal Services team.

On the screen you'll see the Finance and Property Services Org Chart.

We consist of 10 divisions with a staff of 293 recommended in the Mayor's 2026 budget.

I'll go over the details of each of the divisions later on in my presentations.

And the ten divisions perform unique functions within the department, but we work collaboratively within the department as well as other stakeholders within the city.

FPS's mission is to provide essential financial resource and asset management services and engage enterprise partners in the decision-making.

Our mission statement is short, but the level of service we provide is extensive.

I will highlight some of the goals, priorities, and objectives that we have established to carry our mission.

So some of our goals, we ensure long-term fiscal stability is sustained, allowing the city to respond to future challenges.

Next, our goal is to provide clear, accessible information and foster trust through open decision-making.

We use resources strategically so we maximize our city's value to our residents.

We maintain and manage city facilities and we prioritize safe, clean, effective operations.

We also identify, mitigate, and manage financial and operational risks across the enterprise.

and we also produce timely paychecks and payroll processing.

And finally, we provide accurate city-wide utility billing services.

Finance and Property Services has several objectives.

Some are long-term and others will be prioritized over the next few years.

One objective is that we strive to partner with leaders so we can make the best financial decisions based on accurate and objective data.

By doing so, we ensure long term fiscal stability and the city's ability to respond to future challenges.

Second, we follow best practices in financial accounting processes and internal control measures to account for city's financial assets.

This ensures that we are efficient and produce financial reports free of error.

and we strive to provide clear, accessible information to all stakeholders as we believe transparency will create public trust.

Third, we develop new talent and recruit to fill open positions.

This is a long-term objective that ensures that our finance fellows program and the talent pipeline is active.

Next, Property Services manages city facilities and properties to provide a safe work environment for employees and visitors in city-owned and leased properties.

And lastly, the Workday Project implementation, currently named EVOLVE, will be a significant focus for the next few years for the Finance and Property Services Department.

This project will be a collaboration with IT and HR departments and we will work to replace the financial system known as COMET.

You will hear more about this project from the city's CIO in the upcoming budget presentation.

Moving on to the department's notable achievements.

I have several new leaders in the department and I'm pleased to have them all contribute to the accomplishments that I will share shortly.

First, FPS received the Government Finance Officers Associations Award for Excellence in Budget Presentation as well as for the financial reporting again this year.

Budget Division and the Controller Divisions work diligently throughout the year to ensure that we incorporate feedback received from the professional organization in order to continue to receive these awards.

Most recent award received represents the 50th consecutive year the city has been recognized for financial excellence.

Another notable achievement is the State Auditor issuing an unmodified audit opinion which confirms that our financial statements fairly represent the financial condition of the City.

This audit is a year-long process and getting this opinion is extremely valuable and meaningful to staff.

Next, City's bond rating remains at AAA from all three major rating agencies Fitch, S&P, and Moody's This year we used an auction method to sell bonds and I shared the details of the sale and the outcomes in an email earlier last month to City Council

and lastly property services has delivered several large-scale construction projects while still maintaining the existing city buildings and delivering on exceptional service to visitors and staff

One notable project is the first precinct build out and the relocation of staff into the Century Plaza building.

This project received the Chief's Award of Merit in recognition of the work done by the project team.

Moving on to risks and challenges.

Property services is seeing an increased material and construction cost due to inflation and tariffs.

As projects get delayed, project costs have also increased.

Another challenge that we face is attracting and retaining finance and accounting talent.

And this has been an ongoing challenge for a few years.

And we continue to compete with others in pay and competitive benefits.

I've lost several key leadership roles within the last year but I've also been fortunate to bring on new talent.

Banking and credit card fees continue to increase and the finance department has been absorbing these increases without budget allocations.

Prior year budget cuts have also required finance department to hold positions open to pay for required audits and maintenance costs on software.

And lastly, security needs are continuously increasing and property services will be monitoring the resource needs and will be supplementing staff or utilizing contracts as needed.

Lessons learned from the prior year.

City Auditor has identified areas where we can partner to address some risks and strengthen internal controls and we will continue to work on that in the upcoming year.

As a department, we continue to adapt and use new technologies and implement best practices to complete our work.

Workday implementation will take staff effort but will produce great outcomes and we look forward to working on that project.

FPS has faced challenging times and resource constraints but the department staff is very dedicated and consistently deliver and produce great results.

Moving on to budget categories, Finance and Property Services has a recommended 2026 budget of $65.1 million, which represents a 1.2% increase from 2025.

Our budget expense categories have remained flat, even with the salary increases.

And more than half of FPS's budget is for property services.

And this budget allows property services to maintain our city facilities.

Each color on the bar chart represent a division budget.

This slide shows the property services budget being the largest in a table format.

Property services is an internal service fund and is not funded by property taxes.

And the smallest of the division is the executive and administration division, which I'm part of.

This is the Finance and Property Services FTE summary.

The department has 293 FTEs recommended in the 2026 budget and there are currently 12 vacancies as of September 30th.

Out of the 12 vacancies, three are security positions in property services and the remaining vacancies are in the finance area.

And they're in various stages of the hiring process.

Next I will go through each of the ten divisions highlighting some key metrics and accomplishments.

First is Executive and Administration.

This is the smallest of the divisions and has budget for four employees.

This division includes myself, Deputy CFO, and two administrative staff.

As established by the City Charter, the role of the CFO is to ensure that the financial health of the city is maintained.

To accomplish this, I engage with management team to update financial policies and make recommendations with policy makers.

There is often interagency collaboration and coordination that is required to keep the financial transactions accurate.

As a CFO, I also provide information to the investor community and rating agencies on the financial status of the city to build confidence ahead of bond sales.

Some of the internal work has been focused on the FPS workforce.

As with other departments, hiring and recruiting top talent has been difficult.

We have partnered with HR to promote job postings widely and actively recruit for open positions.

As mentioned earlier, I will be providing strategic leadership for the ERP workday implementation and to ensure successful transition from comment to workday.

Next is Banking, Investments, and Debt Division.

This division is led by Director Alan Hoppe and has a staff of seven.

They manage the banking relationships by minimizing the cost of the city and they also oversee the city's investments and debt.

This division also coordinates with the BET, Bond Council, and the financial advisor for the city to ensure the success of bond sales.

I would like to note on the chart to the left on this slide, as recently as 2022, the city only had a AAA rating from one agency.

And in 2024, the city received the highest rating category for its creditworthiness by each of the three main municipal bond rating agencies.

We were able to retain the highest rating again for 2025.

Chart on the right shows the audit findings for the division and the goal is to have zero findings.

Next division is the budget division.

This team has nine FTEs and is led by Director Jane DiCenza.

The main goal of this division is to facilitate a budget process with the departments and policy makers to produce a balanced budget and a sustainable five year outlook.

Policymakers, city department staff, residents, and businesses rely on transparent budget development process.

With that in mind, the city uses its budget website and the financial transparency tool to effectively communicate how city resources are allocated and spent.

Throughout the year, budget staff in collaboration with the accounting staff review and monitor department spending to stay within the appropriated budget.

As mentioned earlier, the Division was awarded the Distinguished Budget Award for Excellence in Budget Presentation from GFOA.

This is a significant achievement for the Division as the presentation must meet 14 mandated categories and meet or exceed the evaluation criteria before it's awarded.

Next division is the Controller Division, which consists of 64 staff and is led by Controller George Hartgrove.

This division plays a critical role in providing financial information to the city, policy makers, city staff and external stakeholders such as the public, city investors, bond rating agencies, state auditor and grant agencies.

Controller Division also ensures the fiscal responsibility through expense monitoring and establishing internal controls.

This team also produces the quarterly financial report and presents quarterly financial reports and gives council status updates on the budget.

One of the most important aspects of the controller's role is to produce the annual comprehensive financial report.

This report shows the city's financial position and is required by state statute and is audited each year.

Controller Division coordinates this audit process on behalf of the City, and this team ensures that the City financial transactions comply with generally accepted accounting principles and standards set by the Government Accounting Standards Board.

Controller Division has received the Government Finance Offices Association's Award for Excellence in Financial Reporting for the 50th consecutive year.

Moving on to the metrics of success.

Each year controller division works to reduce the number of audit findings.

And some audit findings are out of their control, but having this metric allows the division to provide trainings and establish new internal control measures and update policies to ensure that findings are reduced or eliminated.

Our next metric is to produce the annual comprehensive financial report by the due date, which is June 30th.

For the last several years, we have needed to request an extension due to staff turnover.

So for the first time in a few years, this report was finalized by June 25th of this year, which is a significant accomplishment for both the controller and the deputy controller who joined the city just a year ago.

Next division, Development Finance.

This division is led by Director Angie Skildum and they provide management analysis, planning, administrative services to CPED, NCR, and myself, an elected official in support of City's economic development and housing activities.

This team manages $143 million in TIF notes and they also file the annual state audit reports on TIF districts.

They have administered $40 million in neighborhood programming, they service $468 million in real estate loans, and they also process $33 million in pass-through grants.

This chart shows the CPED and NCR loans as they are serviced by the development finance team.

Number of loans have fluctuated over the years, but the team has serviced 100% of them.

And I'm pleased to say that this work is completed by 10 staff, only 10 staff, and the level of volume that they take on each day is incredible.

Next is the Payroll Division, which is led by Director Tammy Hoff, and they're instrumental in administering the payroll for over 4,300 city staff and manage city labor agreements, civil service rules, and city ordinance requirements.

This team consists of 16 staff to ensure that

City is in compliance with federal, state, and local payroll laws and issues over $450 million in wages each year.

Updating the payroll module will be a large part of the workday implementation and this work will be a main focus for the next few years.

Payroll metrics are very simple.

It is to ensure that all paychecks and tax filings are accurate and filed on time.

And year after year they've met these targets.

Moving on to procurement, this division is led by Director Pam Fernandez, and procurement manages the bidding and contracting process for the city through an open, competitive and cost-effective manner.

They ensure that the city follows relevant procurement laws and policies, and this division also maintains a central warehouse, mainly providing services for public works.

Some of the key projects by partnering with the City Attorney's Office, they were able to streamline the procurement process to gain efficiencies.

The team continues to look for opportunities to further refine the process, including providing ongoing training to current and new staff.

The Division held a total of 14 procurement trainings across five categories that span 30 days.

There were a total of 661 employees trained.

Some metrics of success.

One metric that procurement tracks is the utilization of the target market program.

This small business program, which started in 2017, saw the largest participation in 2024.

Total awards through this program was $53.6 million last year, which is 37% higher than 2023.

The next metric outlined on the right side which tracks the sourceable spending.

Sourceable spending is defined as any goods and services that's provided by multiple vendors or suppliers that go through a competitive process.

In 2024, City used a competitive process for 59% of the spending, which totals $477 million.

There's also a dashboard that shows the department's spending, including metrics on suppliers and vendors.

Procurement also manages the accounts payable function for the city and independent boards.

They have processed over 100,000 payment transactions in 2024.

And all this work is completed by 43 employees in the procurement division.

Next is Property Services.

This division is led by Director Barbara O'Brien, and they provide comprehensive land facility security and furnishing needs for city-owned properties.

These services include preventative and routine maintenance, construction, tenant improvements, as well as security and life safety needs.

It is the goal of Property Services to provide safe and equitable working environment for all.

This includes city employees, clients, visitors to our public buildings.

It was a busy year for Property Services.

I will highlight a few projects from 2025 and some of these will extend into 2026.

New Minneapolis First Precinct is now occupied in the former Century Plaza building.

This project completion along with the design process for the Southside Community Safety Center is underway.

Another notable milestone is the relocation of staff from Public Service Center to City Hall.

This move included Finance and Property Services staff and we returned to the mezzanine floor where we were prior to the move out.

Two of the metrics Property Services wanted me to highlight.

In June, Property Services received an on-site assessment that lasted several days by CIMS.

CIMS stands for Cleaning Management Standards.

Property Services received the highest industry standard certification which says that we are committed to sustainable practices and building management.

Second metric tracks the city's progress towards net zero emissions as set forth in the climate equity plan.

The graph on the right shows the energy use and emission levels being the lowest since we have been tracking this data going back to 2008.

And some of this detailed information is published in the annual Clean Energy Partnership Report if you'd like to take a look.

Next division is Risk Management and Claims.

This division is led by Director Andrew Lathrop, also a new addition to Finance and Property Services.

This division has a staff of nine that work on preserving city assets, prevent financial loss and work proactively to reduce injury to employees.

This division also administers the workers comp and unemployment claims.

Their objective is to guard the city from potential loss by identifying and assessing mitigating risk.

They also promote efficient and responsible use of public funds and resources by implementing policies and procedures.

The bar chart on the left shows how timely we are in closing claims and our goal is to close them 100% of the time and some of the litigation claims are still open and the goal is to complete them by year end.

The chart on the right shows how our self-insurance fund is funded.

We use an actuarial study to determine the funding levels for our self-insurance fund and we're happy to report that we are adequately funded.

The next division is Utility Billing.

This division is led by Director Ali Saleh Mohammed.

This function is mandated by Minneapolis City Ordinance and has a team of 37 in Utility Billing.

This work is carried out in collaboration between finance and public works to provide great customer service to our residents and businesses.

It is this division's objective to provide timely, accessible, efficient, and excellent service to utility customers in the city.

One of the key projects they worked on is launching a new payment platform for utility bills It's called Paymentus and this new payment method also allows PayPal, Venmo and other electronic payment methods We still allow citizens to go to retail outlets if they want to pay with cash

or call over the phone and make payments.

Some of the metrics they track, given that they process over 100,000 bills monthly, they take 50% of those bills and do a review to make sure they're accurate.

The second chart on the right shows how fast they answer the customer service calls, and their goal is to answer them within 60 seconds, and they have met this goal.

year after year.

This is the QR code for our metrics in the Outcome Minneapolis site.

I only highlighted a few metrics for each of the divisions and many of the other metrics are posted online.

Next I will move on to the budget changes and reductions.

As with other departments, the food and beverage budget was reduced by 1800.

For FPS it was a small amount and there will not be much of an impact with this reduction.

In utility billings, credit card fees will be passed on to the customers beginning in 2026.

Now that we offer a lot more options for payments, absorbing $900,000 in fees within the Finance and Property Services budget was not maintainable going forward.

Between the food budget and the utility credit card fees, our total reduction is $901,800

There were three positions added in the 2026 budget.

The first edition is a budget neutral ad.

There was a need at the Minneapolis Animal Care and Control Office for a security position.

Rec Services provided the funding so they could have a security personnel at the MCC.

MACC, excuse me.

The two positions on the bottom of this chart, there are two positions added as part of the 2025-26 budget last year.

One is custodian that we knew we would need once the first precinct was fully online.

Now that's been added to the 2026 budget.

An additional security position was also added last year and all three positions outlined here are part of the property services budget complement, FDE complement.

As you can see, Finance and Property Services' ten divisions, their scope and responsibilities vary from division to division.

One thing that is consistent is the commitment of staff that work in each area.

They're professional, of high caliber, and continuously strive to do the best for the city of Minneapolis.

The accomplishments from last year and the awards received from external finance organizations show the high standards we as a department strive for.

I'm extremely proud of our work, my team of leaders, and close to 300 staff in the department.

Madam Chair, with that, I conclude my presentation.

Thank you for that presentation, CFO Dai.

We all really appreciate

how thorough you have been with us today.

I see Councilmember Palmisano in queue and in the interest of time I'm going to ask her if she will just share her questions and comments and we'll note those for a follow-up memo if that works for everyone here.

Thank you.

Thank you for this presentation.

Your department has a lot of different business lines with very different functions.

One of those business lines is our budget division, and so I felt this was an important time to recognize and congratulate Budget Director DeCenza on her recent recognition as a top woman in finance by Finance and Commerce.

I'm glad that the larger finance community now recognizes what we already knew about her, but I just wanted to make sure that we mentioned it.

My question that could just be for follow-up then is for the reduction of $900,000 due to no longer covering credit card fees, I'm curious how many people pay their utility or other bills using this method and

how we might message this to our customers.

For example, myself, I established that automatic payment a couple decades ago or more and I don't even know if I have it, how it transacts through my account and I would be willing probably to set it up as a debit card instead of credit.

Clerks, did we note that for that follow-up memo?

Wonderful.

Thank you so much for coming in for your presentation and we will get you the information around a response memo and make sure that's included.

I'll ask the clerks to file this presentation and with that we have concluded all business to come before the committee this morning and if there are no objections we stand adjourned.

Thank you everyone.