Budget Committee September 14, 2026   9/14/2026

Good afternoon, my name is Aisha Chugtai and I'm the chair of the Budget Committee.

I'm going to call to order our regular meeting for September 14th.

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.

Present.

Rainville is absent.

Bita.

Present.

Warren.

Absent.

Osman.

Absent.

Stevenson.

Absent.

Whiting is absent.

Chaudry is absent.

Palmisano.

Present.

Vice Chair Schaefer.

Present.

Let the record reflect that we have a quorum.

I will also remind my colleagues that we will be using speaker management today, so please make sure to sign in.

Our clerks are available if you have any trouble with that.

We have one item on our consent agenda today, which is approving a legislative directed related to city contracts.

We do have a revised version of this legislative directive in front of us, which was sent over to us in advance of this meeting by the Ward 4 office.

Thank you, Chair.

Not a lot of additional information to share.

It's pretty straightforward in this legislative directive, just looking for some additional information around city contracts for 2026 and 2027.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

Is there any discussion on this item?

Seeing none, I will, on the motion to approve this, all those in favor please signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Those opposed say nay.

Any abstentions?

The ayes have it and that motion carries.

All right.

Next, we have three presentations related to the mayor's 2027 recommended budget this afternoon.

This officially kicks off departmental presentations.

We will hear from the city attorney's office, the Office of Public Service and the Office of Community Safety, all encompassing the mayor's cabinet.

And we are going to hear these presentations in that order.

So we'll first begin with

The presentation from the City Attorney.

I will welcome Ms. Anderson to join us and begin.

I apologize.

or a question maybe the clerk so you check and help us.

I did want to at least before we begin to further into city business figure out if there was a way to at least recognize the people that are in the room today.

We have family members and advocates of justice for Mariah Samuels and I want to make sure that we at least at a minimum acknowledge that they are here today.

Mariah Samuels was a dedicated mother of two beautiful sons, a dog groomer who loved animals and someone who was passionate about living

Thank you for that acknowledgement, Councilmember Chavez.

Thank you all for being here in the chambers today and making time to be at the city to advocate for a very, very important loved one and community member.

With that, let's begin presentations.

Chair Shakti, members of the City Council.

I'm Kristyn Anderson.

I am the City Attorney.

I'll just introduce the

Why don't you introduce your team.

That's great.

So with me, Civil Deputy Dan Abelson, Criminal Deputy David Bernstein, and the Director of Operations Linda Roberts.

Thank you.

I'll recognize that we've been joined in the chambers by Mayor Frey.

Thank you, Chair Shugthai, members of the City Council and the Budget Committee.

The purpose of my being here today is to set the tone and give an understanding of how we approached this year's budget, some of which I explained in the budget address, but we wanted to make sure we reiterated some of that information prior to the introduction from several of these cabinet and department heads.

Over the next several weeks you'll hear from all of the city departments about investments and divestments in the 2027 budget.

This budget reflects our priorities and priority number one is telling the truth.

Minneapolis and cities around the country are confronting significant budgetary challenges.

Those challenges didn't emerge overnight and several of them happened

due to unanticipated events ranging from remote work leading to a devaluation of commercial property to inflation and increased labor costs to Operation Metro Surge, the shooting at annunciation, and several other issues which we've confronted as a city.

And those instances and combined with

a lack of clarity for whether we're going to continue to get federal investments has made it necessary for us to adjust and evolve faster than was initially apparent.

So of course this budget reflects our values and at this time the primary value that we have introduced this budget on is stewardship.

Throughout this budget you'll see some guiding principles.

First is truth in budgeting.

by rightsizing the budget for each department.

The second is providing long-term budgetary stability for the city.

And then the third is focusing on core city services on which our residents rely.

I know that these decisions in this budget are not universally popular, but as we move through departmental presentations, know that the department heads and city leaders giving these presentations are working really hard.

They also deserve our respect.

And over the last several months, our budget team, our city leaders have taken a comprehensive look at how Minneapolis operates, not simply to identify savings, but how to build a government that is stronger and more efficient.

And we asked several questions of these department heads, which is, is this work something only city government can do, should do, and can we do it more efficiently?

where a program's return on investment was high and is delivering significant results for residents, we doubled down.

But in some cases, once really well-functioning programs maybe 15 years back have become obsolete or not as effective as was originally intended in those cases, we ended the program.

When it came to FTE reductions, we began with the areas that had minimal long-term impact on city services.

Many of these positions were supported by grants, one-time funding, or temporary contracts.

These resources are no longer available.

From there, we reduced contracts, we consolidated operations, and held vacancies open whenever possible.

But when the gap remained, we had to make some difficult decisions to reduce our workforce.

To streamline service and to save money, we've proposed to change the city's structural makeup, and in some cases it means consolidating work

that has been spread across a number of departments.

In other words, it means streamlining administrative functions, eliminating duplication, and simplifying how services are delivered.

A lot of that work has happened and will happen in the course of this year's city budget.

Some of it has yet to happen.

In other words, we still need to do the necessary logistical support and planning to make sure that we are prepared to do some of this additional work in future years.

And finally, this budget also includes investments that will help ensure we can right-size department budgets, ensuring we're most honest and transparent with residents about the cost of these vital services.

I want to thank you all for, I know, the incredible amount of work that you are undergoing and are about to undergo as you evaluate the respective budgets of these departments and the whole budget for the whole city.

Thank you.

We are now ready to begin presentations.

No, thank you so much, Chair Chuktai.

It's really great to have the mayor here to be able to share his thoughts about, which I think were previously shared in your budget address as well, in terms of how you approach this budget.

One thing that I did want to amplify, because I think there is an agreement around we want truth in how we do our oversight functions, would absolutely encourage you to also respond to Council President's letter, where I know you've made a decision recently

to not have staff come to Council's presentations, specifically around our legislative directives, which has been a great vehicle for us to get information so that we can do effective and informative budgeting and also just fiscal management.

And just some of the quick examples that has allowed us to do that most recently, of course, Council Member Warren has led the charge on Heritage Park.

That was a great way in which we had presentations from staff that helped us figure out how to get to our resolution.

Same with last December.

It was those presentations where we were able to discover that the police department overspent by $20 million their budget specifically for overtime.

And now we're having to, according to your proposal, right size that.

And I know we're going to have lots of discussions around what that looks like as we go through the budget process, especially since they're the main ones getting the biggest percentage of investment with this budget.

I just couldn't allow this moment with you emphasizing the need for truth and transparency to also recognize on the body we share that same value in our presentations, in our meetings, in our legislative directives which you have the ability if you don't support them I know you've utilized this authority in the past vetoing them if you feel like this is something that's strenuous on your staff that has been a tool that has allowed us to get information to our residents

for us to make informed decisions so we can walk into the budget being able to pass something that we think actually meets the needs of working class residents.

So I encourage you to essentially read that letter because I think all of us would love to come to agreement with you and your staff for us to have those presentations and that transparency as we go through our rest of our legislative process this year.

So thank you for joining and for emphasizing the need for truth and transparency, especially in this federal climate where so much of that is suppressed right now because of Donald Trump.

And I think we don't want to embody any of those dynamics.

I think that's a shared goal here at the local level.

Wonderful.

With that, I'm going to invite

I'm happy.

Yes, I'm happy.

Councilmember, no, thank you.

Obviously, this is a diversion from the original intent of this particular public hearing.

That being said, here you entirely and simultaneously, we need to make sure both that you get the information that you are required to get under city charter, which absolutely you will get.

But two, we also need to make sure that the department heads, which have limited time, are able to provide the core city services that they're charged with providing residents.

And if there's a way to, for instance, not have them in council chambers for hours on end

simply based on the notion that they might be called up at some time, then that helps a lot us do our work.

I just want to give some context to because the public's probably what what are we even talking about right now.

So as you all know, we have robust conversations.

And one of the things that we can do in the legislative process as council members to get information as the mayor formally as

we just passed even recently for information for the mayor's office to provide on a multitude of things from public safety, as you all know, for those who were here for Mariah Samuels and Allison Lussier last year, we asked for, you know, a variety of legislative directives tied to supporting those victims and those families.

But we've also passed directives around climate change and things of that nature.

And usually

That is a vehicle for the mayor staff who are subject matter experts to come to City Council and give presentations and information and research and data that can also help us be able to either one, figure out policies we need to bring forward or funding that we need to move

or also maybe there are some things that's just not being done right and we need to fix.

So those are our vehicles.

So far, we do have a legislative policy that we passed several years ago, which allows a very thorough process for the mayor's staff to come and participate before something comes to agenda or to a committee meeting.

And just a week ago, the mayor did announce to us that he's only going to be having his staff come to meetings that

Apparently, they only need to speak to an item on consent.

But if it's in discussion, there needs to be all these timelines.

We need to submit something in 48 hours.

These are just new things that, again, kind of differs from our existing process.

And in absence of that, we're getting written memos.

So those presentations that have been really helpful for the public to follow about what we're doing, how we're approaching serious issues.

Right now, we're only getting written memos from the mayor's administration on those things.

So that gives us a little less flexibility to be able to ask questions in real time to maybe do follow up.

Also, we know our residents ask questions of us when you see those presentations and then we follow up on those things.

That makes a lot of that a little bit more challenging or forces those conversations to happen strictly behind the scenes and not in the public, which is what we're here to do.

It's the public work.

So we're having conversations now around how we can not do that, like, you know, withdraw from public conversation, public debate, even when it's uncomfortable.

And to be able to have those legislative directives be done in public and find actual pretty straightforward ways for staff to be able to come present on issues that we know is not just imperative to us, but for you all, especially when we're talking about a budget that is coming with a potential 11 point

4% increase, living increase that we know largely goes to one department, a police department, amongst other some departments as well, but that's the main one.

And I know a number of us will have a lot of directives that in half past directives have helped us to be able to say, well, what we should be cutting?

What should we be scrutinizing in this budget?

And if we don't get those presentations, to be able to have that open conversation makes it a little bit challenging than to just have a conversation with a written memo.

So those are the things that we're discussing.

Want to give that context because it's just like, what is this procedural thing that you're talking about?

All right, colleagues, it is 1.49 p.m. We have three departmental presentations we need to get through, and we have staff here waiting to present that information.

I see that we have two additional members in queue.

Are these questions or discussion items related to the mayor's introduction?

Or are we ready to start the city attorney's presentation?

Councilmember Warren, did you want to address the mayor's comments?

Go ahead.

Thank you, Chair.

I appreciate that.

I want to say that I really understand that the memo process is something that doesn't allow for a lot of public discussion, but here's one thing that I've always been taught and shown is that people can serve you whatever they want to serve you out of their mouth.

They'll give you lip service all day long.

but where something is in writing and in black and white that means that I have a lot more accountability and something to hold you to and it also allocates me to space to be very thoughtful about my questions and detailed about what it is that I'm asking of you so that you can give me an itemized listing of what it is that you say that you're going to do or that you're going to deliver on and you can hold somebody accountable to what's put in writing more than you can when somebody says out of their mouth

So I'm actually OK with that.

I feel like it's pretty straight and to the point.

I know that other people may feel differently, but I feel that it's OK. And I don't mind submitting.

I think when we were calling for department leaders to come before us for nominations, we were requested to send all of our questions and things like that to them beforehand.

because they want to do all this question screening and this, that, and the other.

So I think that that process is okay because we were asked to do it before so we could do it again.

We'll still elevate your questions, you know, just asking the public to follow what they see is happening on the agenda so that we can appropriately make sure that we're bringing your questions forward to get the desired results that you are seeking.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I just want to kind of follow up what Councilmember Wansley said and say that, you know, Council does have a legal authority of oversight.

and we can ask questions, we can receive information and also council has procedures, the council procedures belong to the council, not the mayor.

So that's just the legal way of, I don't really understand the letter if we're talking about, I didn't understand the letter, the intention of it is that

We, as Council members, have the right to oversight.

Any time, any day, we can ask questions, appropriate questions to the staff, and the staff

all of them all have always responded in a timely matter in my experience and come to the front of the council to answer those questions and we're thankful for their services but just overall I want to really kind of follow up what council member Wansley was saying that and let the public know that we do have the legal authority and we have the procedure belongs to us as a council.

Thank you.

Now I see that there are three additional members in queue.

We're going to start the departmental presentation.

We're going to return back to this discussion because we will keep going.

Ms. Anderson, welcome.

Thank you for being here.

Please present your 2027 budget.

How about your officers destroying evidence in Ariana's case?

Just heard that in court today, guys.

It's, may I try, I don't know what world he's in, but it's the clearer problem that's happening in this time that we stood out there, we were treated like we were a problem to be here today.

We're not a threat.

We don't have nothing that causes the threat.

It is not upset for no reason at all.

And so the mayor runs from us, but then he comes out and he parties and he dances in our community.

When people are being killed, when there's all of the police from

We are against evil and corruption and murders and modern day lynchings and cover ups happening in our community and the mayor partying and dancing in our community like this is a joke.

It's not a joke.

Our community is hurting and we're in pain.

And we're here to say that what are we going to do?

How are we going to come together as human beings?

Do we have to sit at a table?

What conversation needs to happen?

But it can't go wrong anymore.

And that's what we're here to say today.

I'm going to note that public comment in our chambers is not allowed unless it is already noticed.

In this meeting, it's not noticed.

I really appreciate members of the community who are here today, who are here for an incredibly righteous reason.

for sharing some additional remarks to help put into context for everyone here where things are going wrong.

So I'm going to continue with our meeting.

Thank you, Madam Chair, Council Members.

So I will be giving the Department and Budget Overview and I will ask my deputies to talk about their division updates.

So, first slide is simply to depict where the City Attorney's Office fits within the governmental structure and we are very unique in that we straddle both the administration and the council, giving advice and counsel to all of the above.

We are the city's lawyers and therefore we have functions for both branches of government.

Our office organization, from a budgetary perspective, is really split into a criminal division and a civil division.

Much of our work actually goes across both divisions, but we'll sort of keep them in those buckets just because I think that'll be easier when you all look at it from a budgetary perspective.

So each division is headed by a deputy and each division has attorney and administrative support that meet the mission and objectives of the office as a whole.

The City Attorney's Office really is, basically it's a public law firm.

And so we operate in very much that way.

So the criminal division has multiple teams.

We have a charging team, a trial team, a domestic violence team, and a community attorney team.

And the criminal deputy will talk about that.

Our civil division also has multiple different teams.

The civil division has a labor and employment team.

That team actually reports directly to me, mostly because my background is as an employment lawyer, so it seemed very efficient to have them reporting to me.

through a manager, the implementation team whose job it is to help advise the enterprise to comply with the MDHR settlement agreement and the consent decree, and that team also reports directly to me, again, through manager.

We have a client services team, a litigation team, both of which report to the deputy of the civil division, and Dan Abelson will talk about that.

and then we have an administrative team that really serves the whole office.

It's led by our Director of Administration who reports directly to me and then that team reports to her.

Overview of our department mission, vision, values.

It is to equitably seek justice, embrace accountability, and protect the interests of the Minneapolis community.

It's to provide the highest quality legal services to serve the Minneapolis community.

And we do that in a variety of different ways in the different areas that we serve the city.

Whether it be advising the city enterprise on legal compliance, drafting ordinances, protecting the city's legal interest in civil litigation, which includes a new stream of litigation against the federal government.

We advise on compliance with the MDHR settlement agreement and we prosecute misdemeanors and gross misdemeanors that occur in the city of Minneapolis, which also includes a number of diversion programs that the criminal deputy will discuss.

Our

Our budget does not include much in the term of revenue.

We're not a revenue-making enterprise.

From time to time, we will receive reimbursement for fees or copies or other court filing reimbursements, but that's sort of typical in the life of a law office, but we don't generate revenue.

Investments in our office this year are minimal.

There is one inclusion in the mayor's budget for work that we do to support the traffic safety camera pilot program.

It's a $20,000 investment that allows for us to staff appeals that come to our office when folks dispute their traffic tickets through the red light camera process.

In terms of our growth of our budget over time we've actually shrunk in terms of numbers, but of course our budget is mostly employees and so the salaries, wages, fringe benefits have continued to grow over the course of time.

The next slide is just another pictorial just showing the growth in those expense categories from 2024 through to 2027.

Here we can see particularly the FTE count in 2025.

The FTE count was 115.

It shrunk down in 2026 to 111 and then the proposal is to shrink down to 109.

We have, since I've been here, really steadily decreased in FTE size because of budgetary reductions through the budget process.

Our work has, at the very least, stayed steady and in fact has increased, particularly because of the large amount of federal litigation that we now have

and actually some additional work that we've taken on for extreme risk protection orders that Deputy Bernstein will be talking about a little bit.

Our budget by division is slightly larger in the criminal division only because we have a few more FTEs but it's very close to half and half of our budget is split between civil and criminal.

Contracts.

We have some examples of our major contracts.

We are, you know, again, we're really a law firm in a lot of ways, and so we have contracts that are necessary for providing legal services, you know, Westlaw, other technological contracts that we can't do our business without those contracts.

But then we have a couple of other contracts that I think are a little bit unique and worth talking about.

So we, on the criminal side, hold three types of contracts that I think might be of interest.

One is that we actually fund social worker and domestic violence victim services through a JPA with Hennepin County.

It's an important part of the overarching work that we do to make sure that we're not just focused on prosecutions, but actually helping people get the services that they need, whether it be victims or offenders.

Then we have a good share of contracting services in the area of diversion programs, which again,

Deputy Bernstein will be talking about.

These are not things that we have to do but it is you know one of the focuses of our office again is not simply prosecuting for you know for having folks have criminal records for the rest of their lives if there is a way to divert them from the criminal justice system and give them a

services, training, what have you.

You know, we found a lot of success in these diversion programs.

Again, it's not a core critical service, but something that I think that we're really passionate about and committed to.

And then the other big contract we have is actually the workhouse, and I think this is probably the most unique of our contracts.

When we have

offenders who are convicted of gross misdemeanors or misdemeanors and are sentenced to the work the Hennepin County Corrections Workhouse, we are obligated to pay Hennepin County for those folks.

This can be very volatile.

We've over the course of time taken a look at how much we've spent and actually there were many many years that we over budgeted and underspent on that line and so last year we really tried to right size that and divest quite a bit and really bring it down to what we thought our actuals will be.

And this year, frankly, our staff has done an amazing job actually line iteming those bills to make sure that we're only being charged for the things that we are actually responsible for.

But we are really, really close to exactly what we owe.

And frankly, if it wasn't for the diligent work of our staff,

making sure we're not paying for things that are not our responsibility we might have even gone over budget so we are really at the point that we should not divest more from that workhouse budget because again we're gonna owe it no matter what and if we have underfunded then we will we will be in a position of going over budget.

In terms of the mayor's recommended divestments, he's recommending a reduction of an FTE in the department.

We are not planning on stopping any of our programming.

When we have divestments of personnel, how we handle it is by spreading the work around to fewer people.

redistributing work so that we've got fewer people doing more work that obviously impacts our capacity to some degree.

And then our other divestment that we're going to make is we have right now a training budget that we use to send mostly attorneys but not always just attorneys to training on specialty areas that continuing legal education is really important.

but we are going to divest that down so that I think we'll only have about $4,000 left in that training budget which again will be used for specialized training but folks are going to have to get their continuing education through free means with that divestment.

Good afternoon chair, council members.

I'm Dan Abelson.

I'm the deputy city attorney for the Civil Division.

I'm just going to talk a little bit about the 2027 plan budget as well as some of the work the division did in 2026.

The proposed budget is approximately $11.15 million, 100% from the general fund with 50 planned FTEs.

Currently in the Civil Division we have one vacancy which is a litigation attorney position that is currently posted This is a change from 2026 to 2027 of about nine hundred and seventy seven thousand dollars and the driver to that increase is personnel costs

Just a few highlights of the work the Civil Division does.

I know you all are very familiar with it 2026 we had significant new litigation with the Federal Administration both litigation against and defending on litigation As well as substantial work on federal grants.

This was all work that

done with our existing staffing on top of the existing work.

And then just some numbers on our client services attorneys who, in addition to advising the departments, they also advise the council.

So on the council support there's approximately 150 hours spent in council committee and ABC meetings there are about 49 ordinance introductions and of course the work on an ordinance introduction could range from 15 minutes drafting an ordinance introduction to You know many many hours of work on on ordinances

and then a little bit on the implementation team as well.

The 47 documents submitted, 60 recurring meetings that they attend, and 17 approval submissions.

Good afternoon, Chair and Council members.

My name is David Bernstein.

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

As the slide indicates, we have 59 planned FTEs for 2027.

That comprises of attorneys, paralegals, victim witness specialists, legal support specialists, and investigators.

We also staff volunteer law clerks.

We have teams as Kristyn indicated.

We have four managing attorneys that directly support 14 direct reports each.

We have four community attorneys who are embedded at our five Minneapolis police precincts.

One of them supports two precincts.

We have three members of our charging team, two treatment courts attorneys, one full-time Brady attorney.

We have a full-time traffic safety resource prosecutor that's grant funded.

We also have 15 attorneys on our trial team and six members of our domestic related team.

As the slide indicates, we anticipate over 10,000 cases referred to our office in 2026.

That indicates an average of approximately 679 cases per attorney on the trial team.

It's a large number.

indicate that that number should be around 400 for a misdemeanor level caseload.

And I do want to specify that we prosecute petty misdemeanor, misdemeanor, and most gross misdemeanor cases within city limits.

We do not prosecute felony cases which are prosecuted by the Hennepin County Attorney's Office.

So these are only petty misdemeanor, misdemeanor, and gross misdemeanor levels and we are approximately 70% above the national average.

As Kristyn said, we do the best we can with spreading the work.

But one thing that I want to emphasize as I go to these remaining bullet points is that attorneys in the criminal division have their primary team functions, but they also take on additional functions, which we call or refer to as liaison assignments.

For example, skipping ahead to the U visas and the ERPOs, the Extreme Risk Protection Orders, we have staff members who work on those in addition to their daily responsibilities.

There are other offices who have dedicated attorneys and staff members that work on U visas and ERPOs.

Our office does not do that due to resources, so we have individuals who have their primary job responsibilities in addition to these responsibilities.

The U visas are requests for temporary status by victims or witnesses while cases are pending.

As the slide indicates, we've received 100 requests to date in 2026.

This takes a large number of time with investigating cases and providing written responses to these requests.

The Extreme Risk Protection Orders, there are 32 that were filed with our office as of July 31st.

I know that those numbers have gone up significantly.

There were a number filed in August and early in September.

We don't have the final tally on those numbers, but when those come in, attorneys and paralegals work fast and furious to respond to those requests.

The City Attorney's Office is the second-highest filing agency in the state.

It's possible that when the final end-of-year numbers come in, we will be the highest, I'm not sure.

But we file a number of these and we respond very, very quickly to them.

Jumping back to the diversion programs, we're very proud of the number of diversion programs that we have and that we offer to individuals.

We have the Pathway to New Beginnings program for gun diversion, which is offered by Urban Ventures.

We partner with Northpointe for a domestic diversion program.

We have our Restorative Justice Community Action, or RJCA, program for livability offenses.

We have our Interact program for obstructing legal process offenses, which is also facilitated through RJCA.

We have our shoplifting diversion program and traffic education course, both of which are offered by Diversion Solutions.

And we have our driver diversion program to help individuals get a valid driver's license.

We screen the eligible offenses.

You'll notice we screened over 2,000 so far.

There are only certain offenses that are eligible.

DWIs, for example, are not eligible for diversion, but for the ones that are, they are screened and determined whether or not they're eligible.

and those that are eligible are offered for the opportunity to partake in a diversion program.

We've had very, very good success with those who have participated.

Finally, jumping down to the last bullet, our Drug Recognition Expert Program.

This is an internationally standardized program in which curriculum is given to officers to do roadside investigations.

We educate our prosecutors to receive the same training as law enforcement so that they better understand it and can better evaluate cases.

As of September 9th, we have 275 cases open with over 50 different types of drugs.

We have noticed a significant increase statewide and nationwide in drug impaired driving.

The most common drugs that we find are fentanyl, methamphetamine, cocaine, and THC.

And those can be either alone or in combination with each other or other substances including alcohol.

Our DRE program of prosecutors is nationally recognized.

That's also the basis behind which we were able to get the grant for the Traffic Safety Resource Prosecutors.

We're very, very proud of that work.

But again, the attorneys who work on those cases do so in addition to their regular caseloads.

We again have other liaison assignments that we spread out as much as possible to ensure that all the work gets done in a timely manner.

Our mission remains to enhance public safety, to serve justice, and to vigorously represent the interests of Minneapolis and its residents, which includes protecting the rights of both victims and offenders, and we will continue to do that.

Thank you council members and both of my deputies.

I think you can tell from this presentation we've got a lot of work underway in my office and I couldn't be prouder of the work that my staff does on behalf of both the enterprise and the people of Minneapolis.

Wonderful.

Thank you for that presentation.

Colleagues, are there any questions or discussion related to the City Attorney's presentation?

Thank you, Madam Chair.

In a previous meeting, we were able to discuss the difference between how NPD might file charges for misdemeanors and that sometimes they might file them directly to a judge.

I'm wondering how that relates to the caseload here when it comes to reviewing those charges.

Another way of asking the question is for the caseload that you're presenting, is that exclusively charges that were submitted

by way of the City Attorney's Office, or would that be inclusive of those tab charges that you were referencing?

Thank you for the question and council president and members.

There are different means by which misdemeanor charges can be brought to court.

One of which is by a referral to the city attorney's office in which our charging team or other team members review the police report and other evidence and determine whether or not to file charges and if so which charges are appropriate and we file them what's called a complaint.

into the court records.

And so the City Attorney's Office initiates those charges.

Another means by which law enforcement charges can be brought, and this is not specific to Minneapolis, this is statewide, is through a process called tab charging, which is allowed by the Minnesota Rules of Criminal Procedure.

Tab charging is when law enforcement determines what charges are appropriate

and they file a tab charge directly into court records.

Courts then initiate a court case and it is scheduled for first appearance.

Our dedicated charging team reviews all cases that are tab charged, but that review takes place in advance of the court proceeding.

That's how we become aware of those tab charges.

Most often, although not always, there's no bright line rule, but oftentimes gross misdemeanor offenses are more often than not filed by complaint.

Misdemeanor charges, I would say, more often than not are filed by tab charge.

Again, but that's not a bright line rule.

I think part of your question, Council President, was what percentage of our caseload comes in through tab charge versus by complaint.

And unfortunately, I don't know that information off the top of my head.

Council President and Members, that's correct.

So when I indicated that there were 10,000 anticipated cases, that's by combination of tab charged as well as charged by complaint cases.

Wonderful.

We've got a few other members in queue.

Thank you, Chair.

I wanted to know, just going to slide 13, how does the domestic violence advocate relate to the domestic violence, I think the navigators who are in the navigator unit of the police department, if there's any cross-collaboration between the two, but just wanted a little bit more

So I am going to have Deputy Bernstein come back up.

Councilmember Wonsley, Members, thank you for the question.

To be clear, our office has what are called victim witness specialists.

We have statutory obligations under Chapter 611A of Minnesota statutes that require us to inform victims of certain types of things, court appearances, restitution, testifying, etc.

The navigators that you're speaking of and other advocates are advocates.

and I want to emphasize that the victim witness specialists in our office are not advocates.

And so particularly when a case is initiated, there can be conversation between the advocates and the victim witness specialists if a victim makes contact with both because they serve different functions.

Part of that collaboration depends upon whether a victim does make contact with one or both individuals.

If they do, it's helpful to obtain and share information between the two so that we understand the full picture.

But the victim witness specialists in our office advise on the court process versus the navigators and others advocate.

So they may assist individuals with obtaining an order for protection, as an example.

If someone speaks to our victim witness specialist and says, I want to apply for an order for protection, how do I do that?

Thank you for that clarification.

Then probably language-wise, it'll be good to tweak the presentation, because the reason why I ask is on slide 12, it names one, I'm assuming the D-A-S-C advocate.

Is that different than the domestic violence victim services?

Council Member Mauds and members, DASD stands for Domestic Abuse Service Center.

Okay, so essentially there's two streamline of services.

So through the CAO with, you know, contact with the witness specialist, there can be a referral directly to this one advocate that's being shared with us through Hennepin County.

And then separately, it sounds like the police department then, through their navigator program, has their own advocates who can also support victims through getting resources and referrals.

Okay, thank you.

Wonderful.

Thank you, Chair Choctaw and thank you, Attorney Anderson.

Can you tell me where the City Attorney's Office spends money on outside or third-party counsel?

Council, Madam Chair, Councilmember Schaefer, so the we have a basically a panel of attorneys that we can call on

to provide third-party representation.

The funds for that, as I understand it, come out of the self-insurance fund.

How we would use those contracts are oftentimes if we have

Police cases, Section 1983 cases, which I know that you all have heard about.

If we have a claim against both the city and an individual officer, we will usually represent the city and then we'll hire one of those third-party attorneys to provide separate representation, which we are under law required to provide.

So just in case there's some sort of conflict that or other reasons to have separate representation.

From time to time we'll have specialty areas that we just don't have the expertise in-house and we'll use that the panel attorneys sometimes we even go beyond the panel attorneys to hire attorneys from the outside that have specific expertise that that is just not part of our

It would be, you know, Fourth Amendment searches, like those sorts of police cases.

Not typically HR related.

That's really helpful.

And then just a couple simple questions.

There's another million dollars budgeted in 2028.

Madam Chair,

I think we are under, but not under a lot.

I know that historically we've actually been under quite a lot, but when we did that right sizing of our workhouse contract, we really lost kind of the slop there that we were, maybe that's not the right word, cushion, let's say cushion.

Thank you Thank you.

Thank you.

Here's a really small but quick question.

Madam Chair, Councilmember, I'm getting a shake of the head no, that that is not the source of the special revenue fund.

Okay.

Okay.

Sorry, Madam Chair, Councilmember Palazzano, the fees collected from the program are intended to cover all of the expenses.

My understanding is it's not currently covering all of the expenses, so it is intended to provide this $20,000.

I see.

Okay, that's helpful.

That's the hope.

Thank you.

And then, Ms. Anderson,

I might ask this of every department head as we go on here.

I understand that final decisions about staffing reductions will be made at a later time and in consideration of your entire department's organizational structure.

But can you be any more specific at this time as to the impact of proposed reductions beyond increasing workload and reducing capacity?

Madam Chair, Councilmember, for our department, we're pretty much all personnel, right?

And we have a lot of classifications that do very similar, not the same, but similar work.

And so really, regardless of where the cut comes from, it's just spreading the work around, regardless of, you know,

Yeah.

And then I saw on slide 16 that you had one attorney position in the Civil Division vacant.

Yes, Madam Chair, Council Member, yes.

We recently, we have two criminal attorneys who are onboarding in a week, which are our newest hires.

And then we have a litigation position that's open and posted right now because we had someone

leave and someone from litigation go into that position so we've got a little bit of waterfall going on and as you all know our litigation group is extremely busy so we are just not in a position to be down staffed in that area.

Thank you.

I put myself in queue because I was hoping to ask a similar question to Councilmember Palmisano actually about the FTE reduction to your budget.

So I see that there are two FTE reductions to your general fund supported budget, which is like most of it, or almost all of it.

I appreciate that there's one vacancy that is posted and you're hiring for.

So there's two vacancies.

It's been just over a month since the recommended budget came out.

Madam Chair, Council Members.

So it's not going to come from attorneys.

I mean, that's why I'm continuing to fill those vacancies.

You know, we're a law office.

So the attorney, only attorneys can do attorney work.

So I know it's not coming from there.

Okay, and when, as the council is looking to finalize a budget this December, when might we hear from you about where you have identified the places to cut, right?

I think what you're going to hear from council members as we get closer and closer to adopting a budget is if you are cutting somewhere, I want to know exactly where you're cutting so that we can then make the set of decisions we need to.

Gotcha.

Excellent, thank you.

So I don't think this is something we need to note for administrative follow-up.

I would imagine there's going to be an entire process with the budget team to share this information out for departments who won't be able to identify exactly where their cut is coming from.

while they're presenting.

The second question I have for you is thank you for outlining where the major contracts in your departments are under the contractual services budget.

I think it sheds so much light for us into what type of services and core needs are fulfilled by that money.

Thank you.

There's about a million dollar discrepancy, about a $900,000 discrepancy between the contracts that you have listed, which you do say are major contracts and major contract buckets, and your total contractual services budget.

Council members.

Again, my name is Linda Roberts.

I'm the director of administration.

And I understood the assignment was to give the examples that would give you some clarity on the work that we're doing, as you were just stating.

There is a variety of different things, as the city attorney mentioned, that

a law firm has to have contracts with.

We have to have transcribers.

We have to have folks that do service delivery.

We have to have folks for copying services, things like that.

So there's a very large variety of those types of contracts.

And what I understood from the assignment that we received from Budget is that if they were those smaller types,

that they wouldn't need to be highlighted.

Yep, that makes sense.

And I see someone from the budget office.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, budget chair, council members.

I'm Daniel Duggan in the Finance and Property Services Department.

I'm a budget and evaluation analyst.

Also included separate of this would be some of those internal service charges, which as a budget category are captured as contractual services.

Gotcha, so the bulk of the money that's the discrepancy between the major contracts slide and the full contractual services budget is almost exclusively the internal service charges.

That's super helpful, thank you.

I'm not seeing any further questions, so I will direct the clerk to file that report.

We're now ready to move to our next presentation.

which will be from the Office of Public Service.

I know I'm not supposed to touch the microphone, Madam Chair, but I cannot balance my book and do that.

You know what?

It's just easier to move the don't touch the microphone and then maybe do it.

Let's hope it stays.

All right.

Thank you, Madam Chair, Vice Chair Schaffer, Council President Payne, Council members.

Thank you so much.

I'm Margaret Anderson Kelliher.

I serve as the City Operations Officer for the City of Minneapolis.

A job that I love in my, I was doing my math, 38 years of public service, the most interesting, the most challenging position I've ever held.

And so today I'm proud to present to you our budget, upcoming budget, but first I want to introduce to you the direct team who I work with day-to-day in the DCOOs.

Of course, Mr. Jelly, who was here earlier today, and I want to say a special thank you to him because we were a little understaffed for a while this year and he took on a lot extra.

Katie Topinka, who is newly appointed as DCOO, Chris Tolks, who's also here newly appointed as DCOO over internal services.

And then, of course, you know that the Public Works Director and Civil Rights Director also directly report in and we treat them as our team.

I also want to thank today Finance and Budget Office and particularly Director Green for his work on the budget with us.

They have done a tremendous amount of work and really thank them for that.

As the mayor has outlined for the 2027 recommended budget, there are some guiding principles here.

And the guiding principles include truth telling in right sizing this budget.

and I think that for the fiscal health of the city that is very important.

It is a painful budget on many fronts both in terms of what the projected increases look like for the levy as well as the impacts on both program and staff and I do not want to undersell that here.

At the same time, this will provide long-term stability for the city.

We are going to be in a better place by getting through this budget year.

And then finally, of course, one of the core things that I think we all share, which is the very best services, core services for residents and visitors to the City of Minneapolis.

Those principles have provided us with our guiding moments here in putting together this budget.

So I'll do the departmental budget overview, program and division updates, as well as a little bit of a touch on a special topic, which is the PMI incorporation into OPS here.

So as you can see, this is where we sit within the organization.

I often describe it as about two-thirds of the workforce sits under the Office of Public Service.

We're a small office.

This year we have 12 FTEs.

Next year it will be 10 FTEs.

But we provide really that critical oversight role and management role for these departments.

In 2027, the budget recommendation is $2.9 million.

Last year was $3 million.

We are one of the smaller departments in the city but have a larger viewshed than other departments in terms of what we do.

The direct organization is here for you to see and certainly you know a lot of these people in these boxes.

You've worked with them over the years and that makes it a very important department as a liaison to all of you in the work that we're doing, especially on complex issues is what I would say we specialize in.

We specialize in getting you information in a timely way.

OPS is very good at both responding to your administrative follow-ups as well as your legislative directives.

And we also really provide that executive and operational support.

So something like Heritage Park is a great example of this, where we have many, many departments involved.

And being able to coordinate across those departments is super important.

So we provide that executive leadership.

We coordinate work across these departments to provide services for city residents as well as those who visit our city.

We also manage the complex enterprise projects often, working often with OPS to do that, and support departmental performance, financial, organizational, and service delivery.

We also coordinate a number of special events for the organization that are often forward-facing, like open streets, and then monitor key initiatives, operational risks, and program implementation.

A quick view at our budget.

Of course, we are a rather new department in our own right.

And so you will see that a bit reflected in this.

We've actually been going down in overall budget spend.

And we are, like the city attorney mentioned, we are mostly people.

We don't have a lot of other programs that we're running and so when looking at how to make reductions and in a philosophy that frankly I bring with me from the state of Minnesota which is if we're gonna make cuts everybody shares in those cuts to the degree that they can

we are taking two FTE cuts as well.

And so I think that is important.

We of course do have increased internal service charges.

This is an area that I think working with the finance department and budget department on we are diving deep on both for 27, 28 and beyond of how can we control more of those internal service charges for everyone.

everyone feels those as a department.

And so we actually therefore have a net reduction of $182,000 in our budget.

You can see that here, about a 6% reduction.

And this is where you see from the budget book both the FTE count, the reduction, and the dollar amount reduction.

Like I said, most of our costs are in people, and so salaries and wages, fringes, a little bit of contractual services, and then our operating costs to the department.

And we are very lean in how we operate the office ourselves, but we do sometimes support other departments in some of these endeavors.

Okay there is our reduction and again I'll just anticipate we cannot identify right now exactly which two positions these are but I assure you we will get to that amount of 277, 517 or whatever in working with the council where we need to get to and so I want to just say that that is yet to be determined totally in terms of the exact positions.

You will see here the summary of all the offices under the Office of Public Service and the overall change to those departments.

You do see the 26 to 27 change.

There are quite a few reductions here in terms of the budget.

There are also some, like I mentioned, the service level agreements with other departments and the internal service charges do kind of take out some of those reductions, but we are working hard to make sure we are making real reductions in the budget here.

And that has been painful for everyone because that usually means FTE reductions.

what will it mean for our work?

Well, we have one current vacancy and what I would say is we lose some of our executive coordination and support work across the Office of Public Service.

We have a little less redundancy in terms of support for some activities.

So it just means that when somebody goes on a much needed vacation,

we're not gonna maybe assign that work to someone else because there's no one else there to do it for a week or two.

And so those are the sorts of things that I can anticipate from this.

We do not anticipate slowing down information providing for all of you.

And we also do not, we need to stay focused on operational and financial performance

in terms of how we can improve that, it just may take a bit longer to get some of those things done.

I do want to speak to the PMI into OPS move.

And so one of the things I do want to mention here is that very small departments, understanding that I am overseeing a somewhat small department, but it has a broad overview, small departments can have challenges in the enterprise.

They have to pay the overhead costs that everyone else pays.

They also sometimes can run into barriers in terms of timeliness of response.

And so in looking at performance management and innovation, we find at the city this to be a very valuable department.

We want it to be successful and we want it to be seen as really some department that can help us with evaluating how to move forward in the modern city.

And to do that, we've done analysis and looked at it and believe that it's going to be more effective under OPS than as a solo standing department.

and so that's why the recommendation has been made in that way.

It'll help enhance their effectiveness and I know that some of you might have had a conversation or two about why not put it in finance and budget, that might be another answer to that question but then it might only be seen as a finance and budget exercise for departments working collaboratively or across problems

and really the goal of PMI is both programmatic evaluation and looking and creative help on things like the Bloomberg work that we've done in the past to make the city more efficient and that's not just a financial thing.

So we wanna make sure that it has really the backing of the COO's office to make sure that we are doing that work together.

Thank you for your presentation COO Anderson Kelliher.

Do my colleagues have any questions or discussion related to this presentation?

I'm not seeing anyone jump into queue, so with that I will ask the clerk to file this presentation.

Thank you very much for presenting your 2027 budget.

and we are now ready to continue to our final presentation of the day from the Office of Community Safety.

For this I will invite Interim Commissioner Todd Barnette to join us and begin this presentation.

Good afternoon Chair Chuktai and Council members.

Thanks for this opportunity to be here today to present OCS 2027 recommended budget.

I'm Todd Barnette, Commissioner of Community Safety.

As COO Kelliher

has explained, you know, we had these three sort of guiding principles by the mayor.

One was to right size the budgets.

Of course, those budgets mainly are in my department where you see the budget increases or investments.

At the same time, looking at long-term stability for the city's economic future and then focusing in on those core services that the city provides.

Looking at the agenda that's been set out for us with the budget template following the same three areas, subject areas that the presenters before me has.

We'll do department and budget overview, program and division updates, and of course the special topic that's been requested.

The first area, of course, is department and budget overview.

You can see in this slide where OCS fits.

We, in the city structure, of course, our mission continues to be to provide safety services to all residents and visitors, and those safety services should be well-coordinated, comprehensive, and equitable.

In 2000, this year, 2026, OCS, as you can see, has eight FTEs.

And in the proposed budget for 2027, our budget is $2 million.

This slide, of course, shows those five departments that are under us.

It also included our administration on that line as well.

of course it's 911 emergency management, fire, neighborhood safety, and the police department.

When you look at this slide, I won't read all of it to you, but I'll highlight a few things.

You know that OCS focuses on the right response for the right situation, that we continue to work across departments, working together, training, reviewing and evaluating the city's emergency responses and the city's emergency preparedness.

At the same time, we focus in on employee wellness,

because it's so important the challenges that our first responders and other city employees have experienced with Operation Metro Surge and isolation and other major incidents that they show up mentally healthy for those events.

We also work on reform related to the settlement agreement, the consent decree, and of course the safe and thriving community report as well as the asset and gap analysis.

I should have.

Some of the key areas I'll just mention real quick is what I said earlier about ensuring that we have the right resource response at the right time, whether it is for an emergency situation or non-emergency situation, whether that's what we're doing to plan and operate the safety center in South Minneapolis or looking at recovery services after major events.

This slide is the historical slide where it shows a divestment of $200,000 in 2027, which for us in our budget is equivalent to one FTE.

You'll see later, we just don't have any room in discretionary funding other than an FTE.

but you'll see the net budget impact for us for 2027 will be a reduction of $85,000.

You'll see the 2025 to 2026, you'll see a budget drop there.

That's, as you recall, are the five FTEs that went to the City's Communications Department during that period of time.

This slide here is just a different way of showing the information you saw in the previous slide.

This slide, of course, gives you some ideas when it comes to salaries and wages.

We'll have a reduction of 4%.

and salaries, a 6% increase in fringe benefits and a 13% reduction in contractual services, 20% reduction in operational costs, and there's no impact to our capital equipment.

This slide, looking at 2728, it just really shows you that there's no significant funding changes for us.

The slight change that you see has to do with personnel.

Slide here just breaks down where the majority of our funding is spent.

82% of that is in personnel, which 64% is salary, 18% is fringe.

The other 18% is the contractual service and a tenth of a percent for operational costs for us.

When you look at the divestment of approximately a little bit over $200,000 for 2027, again, we don't have a lot of discretion when you see it in the previous slides where 82% is in personnel that this type of reduction will be in FTE.

So we will lose FTE, which will have some impact to what our capacity will be in 2027.

Here of course like in other presentations that you've had this evening shows the net increases and decreases for each department and as you know fire and police

have additional significant funding to right size their budgets.

And you'll see that the other departments, you'll see some decreases in neighborhood safety and of course, the Office of Community Safety.

And then the second area that we're covering based on the budget template here has to do with programs and division updates.

So you look at this slide, which has some of the previously covered information that our budget for 2027 is $2 million that will go from eight FTEs down to seven.

When you look at some of the activity and programs that we're looking forward to in 2027, of course, is opening the South Minneapolis Community Safety Center, continuing to lead and coordinate safety responses.

making progress on our safety reform, continuing to develop city's safety ecosystem, building out the mobile crisis response program, and hopefully starting some activities under the burn grant, and then continue to engage policymakers on our safety topics that come up.

Special topic that came up for OCS and the question that was presented to us was what will OCS administration do differently in 2027 to better plan for, monitor, or exercise oversight and prevent or correct budget overruns among departments it exercises command and control over in 2027 and beyond.

And this slide just kind of shows it has one thing missing that I'll mention at the end.

But really it's about right sizing the budget for our departments.

You heard the mayor talk about that in his budget address and here today so that it reflects the resource operation and budget realities for our department.

and I mentioned it before, that is significant investments in fire and police.

Currently, I think as most of you know, the finance department meets with each department monthly to review their financial status.

We in OCS have supported that where

Maybe a department doesn't have a budget director, whether that's when MPD didn't have a budget director for a while or helping support other departments that don't have that position available to them.

Also, OCS leadership meets regularly with each department to discuss their financial status.

I think most of you know that our OCS Director of Administration, Margaret Anderson, is really

that glue for us and that liaison between the finance department, OCS departments, and any of our departments that have a financial director available to them.

OCS leadership also keeps the mayor updated on the financial situation for each of our departments.

The mayor provides some direction when it comes to operation and resource priorities.

This year, which doesn't show up on this slide, we started monthly meeting with the budget chair and vice chair.

Matter of fact, I think we have one tomorrow to try to stay up to date and make sure we're sharing the same information that they're seeing and that we're seeing at the same time.

Thank you for your presentation.

Colleagues, are there any questions?

Yes.

Thank you, Chair.

I just have a clarifying question.

So this last slide that you just had up, Commissioner, you talked about kind of moving forward the communication that's going to happen around budget overages.

Let's just talk about that, for instance, because that's been

topic for a long time.

So are you saying that you're going to be communicating with the budget chair and vice chair about it?

Let me just say that, let me just give you a little bit of context.

Because last year when this happened, like when we found out we were about 20 million over budget,

I didn't think it was shocking because I had been having conversations kind of behind the scenes that like MPD was going over budget.

There were no public conversations about it.

Like nothing came up in committee.

The chair and the vice chair public safety was not talking about

like they had quarterly updates and stuff like that but it never came up how much money MPD had been spending quarter by quarter and then when it got to budget season the budget chair and I certainly had a lot of conversations about it and

Of course, I didn't know what the number was, but I knew that we were going over budget.

Now, we still have those presentations.

I think people are a little bit more proactive about talking about those in those quarterly presentations, like where things are, but I'm trying to understand how is this going to be communicated, not only to the mayor, because that slide felt like it was heavy on the administration and not really

I know you're moving along, but I really want a transition plan that sets somebody up to where they can have an open conversation about these overages.

And it's not just police.

We know that almost every department under

Through the Chair, Chuktai, Councilmember Viton,

not to open a wound, but going back to all of the communication previously around the budget, I would say that there is more scrutiny that's occurring now.

Everything that I mentioned to you is happening now.

It's not actually something that's happening in the future when

I don't, I think it was when Councilmember Schaffer came on in January, so I'm thinking January or February, I reached out to Chair Tuktai and Vice Chair Schaffer

just to say would it be helpful if we met monthly and went through all five of the departments under OCS to at least make sure that the information that's being presented, we're on the same page of the same sources and things like that.

And so in our monthly meetings,

just to take a little more deep dive into that.

I'll let them know, for instance, the impact that we're having with FML leaves specifically in our 911 department.

It's impacting us 20 to 30%.

So I'm acknowledging that earlier than I think what they would normally see from the quarterly

The quarterly updates they get from finance, if I can just go back a little bit, it might be in the finance department, I have to tell you when they report to the Budget Committee.

But one of the things that happen is that the

The quarter one ends but it's not reported out to the Budget Committee until months later.

And so this way we're at least heading in the same direction with here's what's occurring, here's what we see, here's some of the trends.

One of the things I think we've talked about over and over again in neighborhood safety, just saying, look, they look like they're under budget spending, but because of the way their invoices come in, you might see

next month are a huge increase.

In December, right, at the end of the year.

Just trying and I know that they've had questions asking for different information from us to report to them as well and I think that this is a way to make sure we're

Okay.

I mean, I'm happy to hear that it is budget has been identified as the place for this to come out of.

Just the last thing is, you know, an example I want to use is there was

this back and forth about the Chief's details, this $4 million expense and it came up in the committee and I was like really trying to track it down and understand what was going on with it and how it happened and what it was exactly.

Where the money was, you know, it was just kind of like all over the place and we couldn't really like pinpoint

anything, right?

And then it just came back that, oh, it wasn't categorized right.

That wasn't really the chief's detail.

Somebody put it in the wrong category.

I don't know what the case is, but I know that it's really hard to explain that.

to the general public.

That there's a category of something that was there, there was a public meeting about it, it was said and now it's being taken back and there is no details in between.

So like those sort of things certainly have to be prevented and I'm hoping the future of this department and the oversight of those other departments includes

Through the Chair, Councilmember Vita.

I think what you'll see in our last budget director and police started to clean some of that up.

We have a new budget director who I think is starting to do the same thing so that we

we don't have to dig so deep for the answers to questions that the categories actually, the descriptions of the categories actually represent what that expenditure is for or if we are getting any monies with that, what those fundings are for.

Just one thing that I forgot to mention to answer your question, previous question Council Member Vitai, there is a memo,

that goes out weekly from the chief of police related to overtime.

Chief O'Hara started it, interim chief Peterson has continued to send the memo to myself, CCing the council president Payne and also I believe the mayor.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Chuktai.

Also, yeah, I will name too, since it was brought up that when Councilmember Chavez and I both chaired and vice-chair public health and safety, while we had quarterly presentations, I don't think it was our understanding that we needed to micromanage you all around budget.

But what we did learn, actually in real time, while it was, you know, helpful that some council members got private conversations,

what we heard in real time during budget deliberations was multiple staff within the mayor's administration saying and budget also saying that we discovered this at this current moment the scale at which we knew probably a few million but no one thought 20 million and that is where we had robust conversation of how that is just not good governance

and I don't think that was isolated to absence of conversations in PHSE but overarching what is going on with our budgetary process where you can essentially just allow 20 million to just be unaccounted for.

That said, I did have some follow-up questions based off of the presentation that we received last week from Budget as well and their overall like department slides.

I'm curious to know because you list this as like a responsibility of OCS of managing like the settlement agreements.

Can you tell me what was the financial or what is the financial like management role that you all play?

Because in the 2027 budget, it's proposed that we actually do a dedicated source.

When I named this last week, my office had inquired with budget multiple times around why we didn't already do this.

And we were told that a percentage of our cash fund offer flexibility for this.

But then also, we were constantly being asked to approve contracts related to the settlement agreement.

But then we were see these damning like

reports from a LEAFA that says we're not hiring the staff that needs to be hired to actually be in compliance with the settlement agreement.

So it's like what are we actually doing financially with these funds and how are we overspending if it's not helping us actually essentially achieve an A in our settlement agreement compliance.

Through the Chair, Councilmember Wansley, I'm assuming in that question, are you talking specifically about the contractual services?

Because, I mean, that's of course different than the actual staff.

I mean, it's two different funding sources.

There is settlement, agreement, contractual services.

And I think this is part of the request for a line by line or like spending because I think it's both.

We know that the settlement agreement also make recommendations for staff positions, but also there is a contract piece like for training, but none of that was categorized in 2026 budget.

You'll see, I'm trying to remember, I think the finance department can correct me if I'm wrong, but you'll see, like you see the overtime line item, you'll see regular contractual service line, I believe, and I think you'll also see a settlement agreement contractual service line as well.

That doesn't account for

FTEs that are directly related to the settlement agreement.

That's totally different.

And we would have to go down the list of FTEs and which ones are associated or related to a settlement agreement.

And that's also what I'm requesting for 2027.

So being in conversations with the LEFA where I'm assuming you all are, what is actually needed?

What has they recommended and what are we actually proposing and if they line up?

If my memory serves me right, the contractual services for the settlement agreement as proposed by the mayor in 2027, I believe is $2.4 million.

when you're saying staff for the settlement agreement, I mean, that's a number, I mean, you're talking sworn and non-sworn.

I would have to probably pull out the implementation team that's doing the work in the police department.

You have the implementation team in the city attorney's office.

You also have other,

sworn members that aren't on the team but are working on the settlement agreement.

So, I mean, it's a branch of, and you look at other departments, you have the IT department working on settlement agreement issues as well, property services working on different issues.

So, I mean, it's a breadth of

across departments that work on settlement agreement and particularly to MPD.

Yes, I'm requesting as a memo because I think that has been the biggest piece.

Clearly, implementation is not going well based off of our recent progress reports.

So I'm trying to get a sense amongst all those cross-department staff positions that you're naming, is that actually what is needed based off of the progress reports that they're saying, they're constantly recognizing staffing in turnover, specifically within the police department, as being a hindrance to implementation.

So if we got all these different staff, why are we still struggling to have the staffing meeting to make sure that we're fully in compliance and hopefully getting out of this as soon as possible instead of having to make this like constantly a blank check?

So that is my question of like where, how much staff are we dedicating across departments to this?

And I was hoping budget will have this be like categorized so we can see across the departments

across the city enterprise.

How much are we expending in staff labor for the implementation?

Good afternoon, Budget Chair again, Daniel Duggan, Finance and Property Services Department, Budget and Evaluation Analyst.

Through the Chair, Councilmember Wonsley,

Thank you for flagging this because what did come up last week was that Finance and Property Services will be doing this so this does make it a little bit unclear for me than what role OCS actually plays in regards to that if you all are holding that piece.

But my next question actually will be related to something that's come up of

around why are we constantly leaving money on the table in terms of off-duty fees and why OCS has struggled to, or let me not even say struggled, why you all failed to implement it because you were given exactly the resources that you named was necessary in order to implement it based off of you all's study.

and we know that as of now based off your figures that we could be collecting up to two million dollars and essentially eliminate the subsidization from taxpayers of these side gigs by our police officers so I'm so confused again like OCS this is a great opportunity to also support taxpayers also regulate a big piece of like our public safety work in terms of off-duty why is there not being implementation of this within OCS when I know you have the staff you have the budgetary resource

Yes, through the Chair, Councilmember Wonsley, I believe that Deputy Commissioner Jared Jeffries, I think, reported on this earlier this morning during the budget meeting.

The way that we see it is so important that we have

our UKG implemented in order to layer all of these other things to do the off-duty fee at this time.

Mr. Barnette, do you not have someone who records off-duty hours now that then gets translated into a memo sent out to council detailing all the hours done in off-duty?

Not in the OCS.

That's MPD?

So you are currently tracking off duty hours?

And again, what is the issue when you're given the resources in 2026, the staff person, and even the money that you needed for technology to then apply that to the hours that you're already tracking?

You already have someone doing that.

I am so grateful for your mission in this because these are the things that's making me really excited about this budget cycle because it's crazy to me that you all are referencing an app that was actually referenced back in 2018.

as one of the barriers for off-duty fees implementation still in 2026 when you are given and have been given all the tools that you needed to implement this.

There's fees on the books and the fact that you all still resist to do this when we're proposing upwards to a nine percent increase of the police department's budget is just preposterous to me.

So I do look forward to hopefully rectifying that in this upcoming budget cycle so that we can at least start ending some of that public subsidization and we'll figure out you know

how to get that through this budget process.

So thank you for that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Through the Chair, Councilmember Stevenson,

I'm trying to make sure I tread delicately with the advice that we've been given about specifically identifying those FTEs but I don't think that there's a secret for our department because it's so small that the impact for us with the

reduction of one FTE I think is a delay in some of the work that we're doing.

Some of the work that we would like to get done in 2027 might be delayed.

okay it's not that it won't get done I think it's just a matter of let me back up we've been in OCS and working with other city departments outside of our five

we've had, I believe, some good collaboration and partnership with other city departments where we're using their resources to help us accomplish some of our goals.

Okay.

I wouldn't say all.

I think it's a matter of what we can prioritize with the resources that we can use from other departments.

So for instance,

I think I'll be able to give you more specifics later.

But before, I think you heard that in a previous presentation that I believe that we will have a list of the specific FTEs that are impacted.

Okay, yeah, very much looking forward to that.

And then next, I wouldn't bring this up in this context, but because of the

the special topics and the OCS approach to managing within budget in 2027.

Because of that slide, I do have some like structure questions for you.

Yes.

First off is I guess I'm wondering about some structural issues with the way that your office

organized.

You mentioned budget oversight for the departments that are under your department.

And in previous conversations you had mentioned like, oh, well, and it was more than just you who had mentioned this.

So I guess I'm wondering this for going forward structurally in your office.

going forward, you had mentioned in the past and others had mentioned this as well that the police chief had a bit of a unique situation and so though the police chief is under you, the police chief also kind of reports directly to the mayor and there were reasons for that in the charter or whatever and other things, not just whatever, but other issues.

So I guess I'm wondering for department like budget oversight, obviously that's the, you know,

the biggest driver of overspending is the police department.

Through the chair, Council Member Stevenson,

I'm going to separate this out in two parts.

One is I think that

When it comes to discipline, you might be referring more to that mayor direct line to the chief of police under me.

When it comes to the budget, I believe that structurally there are things now in place that gives us that greater oversight and view into our department budgets.

okay okay all right I mean I guess what the reason why I separated them is that discipline is is really a

a separate entity in itself.

When I think of budget, I think of more just regular supervision when it comes to OCS.

That's why I separate it because the way you frame your question earlier about this, I

Confusion about where the mayor sits and where I am related to the police chief.

So yeah, okay yeah, I bring this up just because You know sometimes when the rubber hits the road The reason somebody might do something is because their boss who can fire them told them to do it, you know, and so

I guess I'm just wondering about your authority or whoever follows you, their authority to actually, you know, when it really reaches the rub, stop doing this or make this change, you know, to be able to have that kind of authority.

So that's why I bring it up and you don't have to answer that right now.

I just wanted to kind of air this issue that I'm seeing.

I did want to ask you,

and again, I wouldn't have done this except for this slide that brought up more structural issues.

I did wanna ask you about access to the mayor from department heads.

So do you think that department heads, let's say fire and public safety administration, do they have a direct line to the mayor as well?

Through the Chair, Councilmember Stevenson, it depends on what the issue is.

There are occasions where a department head is brought in, I would say more than likely doing my check-in with the mayor to address a particular topic.

There's no scheduled meeting.

Now when we have staff cabinet meetings, there are

Department heads that are regular attendees to those meetings.

So normally you would think of the regular cabinet with the CEOs, my staff as the deputy

and Chief of Staff would be there.

But then in those meetings where you have large departments like Public Works, so you might have Director Saxon there as a regular attendee, Civil Rights Director would be there, also you have the Police Chief there.

If there was a specific topic

at staff cabinet or a meeting where, a cabinet meeting where the mayor was present that let's say would require more expertise conversation with Director Amanda Harrington.

She would be brought in to there for the cabinet meeting or possibly brought in when I'm meeting with the mayor or just, you know, if it's an immediate concern,

the mayor's staff will make time and we will go to the meeting.

Okay, yeah, that is helpful.

Yeah, thank you.

I'm looking forward to seeing that work chart.

Wonderful.

Oh, thank you, Chair Chigtai.

Thanks for being here, Commissioner.

I had a few questions if we can go to page, give me one second, page 12.

12.

Yep.

I'm seeing there's cuts to the Neighborhood Safety Department.

Through the Chair, Councilmember Chavez, I believe that with the proposed budget by the mayor, we're looking at cuts in contractual services.

Also, I think within those cuts, you're probably looking at an equivalent

that could be one or two FTEs.

It will all depend on where we are as we go and look at the priorities.

And what contractual services are we looking at?

I think the obvious ones that have come out in the mayor's proposed budget, I'm sorry, through the chair, Council Member Chavez, I think you'll see in the budget proposal a reduction in contractual services to balance interrupters, but an investment in the safety ambassadors.

So there will be a cut to the violence interrupter program?

Yeah, I just don't know the ex...

I'm sorry, through the...

I'm so sorry.

I'm so sorry, Chair.

Chair Tuktai, through the Chair, Chair Tuktai, to Councilmember Chavez.

I would have to go back, through the chair, I would have to go back, Councilmember Chavez, to really dig into the budget book and look and see how much that would be.

So, one thing I'll say here, very out loud and transparently, I think the Violence Injury Program and the Community Safety Ambassador Program are two different programs that serve two different purposes.

One should not be pitted against one another because it is gonna have a drastic impact on the livelihood of our residents.

Commissioner, what impact will

Through the chair, Councilmember Chavez

I would have to get back to you for that.

I mean, I really think Director Harrington, I would have to confer with her to really give you that expert answer on the impact.

Of course, you know, just thinking out loud, you know, the violence interrupters provide a service in which I think a lot of people

don't see because it's a prevention of violence.

And it's one of those things that I think Director Harrington might say can directly correlate to a reduction in violence.

But I mean, I think she's the expert that could answer

I will say that people do see it and people will feel the impact.

And crime will go up if the city approves, if the council approves the mayor's proposal to cut the violence throughout their program.

That is a fact.

And these are in specific zones across our city of Minneapolis that

is a cut to public safety, is a cut to impact our neighbors and crime is going to go up in our neighborhoods if these programs are not going to exist.

So I at least want to mention that that is a big concern that I have.

I think there was also reports that violence prevention programs are being cut.

Through the Chair, Councilmember Chavez, I don't know that all violence prevention programs are being cut.

So, maybe not all, but which programs are being cut?

I guess what I will say here and for I guess everyone to hear what my concerns are.

It feels like we got a budget presented to us by the mayor without anybody knowing what's being cut, what's being repurposed, what's being moved around.

and it feels like we're gonna have to do this over again in the Budget Committee because we need to have these answers transparently not through memos we need to hear it and the public needs to know what's being cut and it feels like we're getting some of these answers maybe in committee maybe we'll get it in two months maybe we'll get it the day before the budget vote maybe we'll get information and probably we won't and it just feels like it's not being transparent this budget process does not feel transparent to me and it feels like we're being told one thing today and it might change tomorrow

So I guess I don't know who needs to start coming to these budget meetings, but this needs to change completely.

It's not transparent.

How am I supposed to vote on a budget without knowing what I'm voting on?

And that's not necessarily for you here.

You're taking the heat today, because I don't have answers to the questions my constituents have.

The media is reporting that violence disruptors, violence prevention programs are being cut.

and we don't even have an answer to what's being cut.

How is the budget proposed without knowing what's being proposed?

That makes no sense to me.

It feels like this being done backwards.

So I guess that's what I'll say.

We're cutting, not we, I'm not putting my name on that.

There is a cut to violence interrupters and violence prevention programs, which means it is a cut to our community, which means it is a cut to the safety of our neighbors.

Thank you, Commissioner and Clerks.

I think it's safe to say that several of Councilmember Chavez's questions, as the Commissioner pointed out, will be addressed by Director Harrington when she comes to present the Neighborhood Safety Department budget.

Now let's just make sure, and because Councilmember Chavez has asked his question today,

When, by the time Director Harrington is in front of us presenting her budget, please make sure there's a real answer to the question that she is prepared to speak to.

Also, it's I'm responding to a slide that literally says summary of OCS department changes.

So you're the commissioner.

This is the Office of Community Safety that is proposing these changes along with the mayor.

100 percent.

Sorry, I misspoke.

Yeah, I'll make it quick.

I think Councilmember Chavez raised very good questions about, you know, what are we voting on?

What are some of the changes?

And if we can't answer that, then I don't really know what are we even having this presentation right now.

I will tell you the importance of safety ambassadors.

You see the Riverside had shown

Last five, four, five years, huge change, as far as change is that when

last year presented, they're like, oh, this neighborhood is too safe.

We're going to move this resource away.

And thank God for my colleagues, we were able to keep.

That was the point, is if something is working, you don't take it away from it.

So the safety ambassadors, the Violence Interrupters Program is working on Lake Street.

And it's working on a different neighborhood in our community.

And we cannot take that away.

We're working backwards.

I think what needs to be reassessed is the department of OCS, $2.1 million.

That is the department that needs to be reassessed as a Councilmember when we go through this budget.

That is something I look forward.

doing that.

But I will tell you, as a first experience, Councilmember Hu represents the neighborhood that violence interrupters had.

We have heard the neighbors come.

We have heard the providers themselves, like Touch Outreach and others, come.

We have walk on the streets with them, with Dr. Amanda Harrison.

Thanks for her leadership.

We've seen the benefit of having that so I can imagine we are going the proposal in front of us this year is to cut that program and make that go away.

So that is hard to take and I look forward to restoring that services.

and making sure that we're not letting our residents go without protection.

And the groups, they get used to it.

Definitely City of Riverside has worked and I hate to lose that program by not being responsible of the budget.

So thanks a lot, Chair.

Thank you.

Finally I'm in queue to ask you a couple questions commissioner the first I Apologize if you've already told us but the one FTE that's being cut from your department.

Have you identified?

Sure Chuck tie

This has been a very challenging situation for you to try to make budget decisions.

Some of the advice, because we are going to impact FTEs, people haven't been notified.

So I'm trying to be sensitive overall to

employees in the city enterprise who might be hearing for the first time an answer to my question that identifies in their department what an equivalent FTE loss they might have.

I believe that you and the rest of your colleagues will be provided the specific FTE that's identified.

specific to my department, I do know or have a good idea because my department is small.

It's hard for a person to see the budget book come out, have some knowledge of financial

information that they can identify what the possible cut would be.

And so I think you might see departments struggle in this area just trying to be more sensitive when it comes to the FTEs in particular.

And I'm hoping at some point we'll have the

Well, I can tell you that I look forward to that day.

And in this case, I will speak on behalf of other people.

I can promise you that every member of this body looks forward to the day when that information is provided to us.

Because just as you're saying, right, it would really, really suck.

And that is an understatement for

Someone to find out their position is being cut from looking at the budget book or from hearing it from right where you're standing.

That would really suck.

What also sucks is to sit on this side of the dais and know that a vote I'm going to take could result in someone losing their job except I have no idea who's losing it.

I appreciate that you sensed that.

OK, I am not seeing anyone else in queue, so thank you again for your presentation, sir.

Thank you.

I will direct the clerk to file this presentation.

Now, both to you and the other members of the cabinet and the budget team, I hope what you saw today at the end of our first day of departmental presentations is an incredibly engaged council.

I hope what you saw today is at the conclusion of each presentation, the discussion and the questions you're hearing from members of the council demonstrate just how engaged members are, that everyone here is paying attention to the information that you're sharing from the podium as well as the information that's already been provided to us through the budget book.

So I hope then what we're going to continue to see in the upcoming weeks and months is departmental presentations and department directors showing up incredibly well prepared to answer the types of questions you're going to hear members bring up.

With that,

We've concluded all business to come before the committee today and if there is no objection we stand adjourn until our next meeting which is Thursday September 24th, 2026 at 10 a.m. where we'll receive budget presentations prepared by the Health Department and the Climate Legacy Initiative.