Budget Committee September 24, 2026   9/24/2026

Councilmember Payne.

Present.

Rainville.

Present.

Stevenson.

Present.

That is eight members present.

And then I'll note we've been joined by Councilmember Palmisano as well.

Yeah, I don't know what's, I don't use this one.

So I need a next one.

Thank you and I will stand for questions.

I will first recognize Councilmember Wonsley, followed by Councilmember Stevenson.

So can you provide a little bit of clarification of how is this funding different from the million or so that we're already assigned to get through this opioid settlement fund?

So a lot of the programs are continuations of programs that we already have, but the way that we do the budget allocation is on a one-time basis.

So that's why I'm naming, this is not a new investment in terms of like how it's being framed today, unless is the 1.3 million that the mayor is proposing, is that in addition to the 700 to $900,000 that we already get through these funds?

This is just opioid settlement funds.

Okay, so this is money that we were going to get through the opioid settlement funds as part of that larger settlement agreement, correct?

Chair Choktay, Councilmember Wonsley, yes, that is correct.

So this is not new allocations from the general fund towards this program?

This is just the one time spending that we put together for the 2027 budget proposal.

We didn't get any of those fiscal, you know, kind of updates yesterday in that presentation, so just wanted to get a better sense of the financial outlook for that program.

We were able to do that for one year without negatively impacting the sustainability of that fund, but that money was then put back for the 2027 budget proposal.

Alright, those are all the questions I had.

Next, I will recognize Councilmember Stevenson, followed by Councilmember Chavez.

Has it stayed vacant for a long time?

and so when this became vacant we wanted to hold it because of those funding issues and then we're able to that turn around and look at you know the proposal that the mayor's made and we are going to be able to implement one of these position reductions with that vacancy.

Okay so what what impact will losing this position have on the school-based clinics program?

and my team right now is coming up with a plan to figure out what we might be able to do next year, but also it's gonna depend on Hennepin County and when they come out with their budget, what that says.

Okay, so you don't know if, right now you don't know if by not having this position, students won't be learning about sexual health opportunities or you don't know exactly what's not gonna happen right now.

We still do have a number of positions that will be working within the schools doing their one-on-ones, their lunchroom activities, and other activities throughout the school year.

Okay, so this is a management position then?

Chair, Chair, Council Member, Stevenson, it was a lead position, so it wasn't technically a management position, it just helped the manager.

Okay, in the changing gears, in the presentation, there was something about the thermal energy study, is that not happening now?

That thermal energy study is still being planned, but it will be talked about more as part of the Climate Legacy Initiative presentation.

So, do you have an idea of what contracts, external contracts, will not be happening?

But again, you will hear more about those in the CLI because the majority of the contractual service reductions are within that area.

Are there going to be less blood tests for kids at risk of lead poisoning?

Chair Chuktai, Councilmember Stevenson, that is my understanding.

Okay.

From the CDBG reduction.

Okay, so there will just be less kids getting tested for lead.

So it'll be harder for us to be able to serve those needs.

What's going on now?

Chair Chogtai, Councilmember Stevenson, for a fuller analysis of this program and the reduction, I would need to talk with the manager of that program and get back to you.

Okay, I'd be curious to know, because I'd like to know if we're just going to have kids getting lead poisoning and we're just not going to find it anymore.

Thank you.

How much of the Health Department's programming is grant funded?

So to tell you exactly what just the grant funding is, I would have to get back to you with that figure.

So you're telling me it's 48% then?

Chair Czajka, Council Member Stevenson, let me just consult my notes to make sure I have the breakdown correct.

Take your time.

So it is 48% general fund and 52% from grants and special revenue.

Are we losing any grants from the federal government that the conditions have changed or it's no longer feasible for us to get them?

We have some different status levels for different grants, but at this point, the teen pregnancy prevention grant is the only one that I can think of that has been pulled from the federal government.

Can you just talk about that a little bit?

And so there's a number of those types of initiatives where we work with Hennepin County very closely.

Okay, so when you're working with Hennepin County, you're very careful to not do the same task twice, but rather be doing complementary tasks.

So it's less about the structure and more about the function and where the resources are and whether or not we have enough resources in the region to manage and deliver on that function.

Okay, so speaking of resources, do you think if we were to cut some of these programs from our responsibility and hand them to the county, that the same resources would be available to the county to do that, that are available to the city?

And we would also have to look at what our obligations are for public health services under Minnesota law because we are governed by Minnesota statute as to what the foundational public health capabilities and responsibilities are.

that there would be less money available for Minneapolis residents?

Those are also the same divisions that have cost recovery and bring in revenue for the city.

I have a bunch of questions about CLI funding, but you're telling me that we should save those for another day?

Chair Chogdai, Councilmember Stevenson, you can save them for today, they'll just be right after this presentation.

Okay, okay, thank you.

You're welcome, thank you.

Yeah, that's all for now, thank you.

Next, I will recognize Councilmember Chavez, followed by Councilmember Rainville.

If the mayor's proposal to eliminate homegrown happens, what's going to replace that?

Chair Chuktai, Council Member Chavez, I am actually going to ask Patty Bowler if you can come up and talk a little bit about just that program and what they do.

I'm not sure how much you want me to go on about homegrown, because I could.

I guess what I want to know is, would that be lost?

Chair, Chair, Councilmember Chavez, the other thing that I wanted to mention is that Homegrown runs the garden lease program and so we are talking with CPED about how that would work because obviously our leases aren't going to go away if the program goes away.

That's a big change.

Chair Chogtai, Councilmember Chavez, that is definitely something that we are in discussions with because we know that, again, if the program goes away, we still have obligations to some of the actual programming that's in place, like the garden lease program.

Is that going to end as well?

Chair Chugchai, Councilmember Chavez, I am not sure about that.

Is it not?

I don't know.

I hope not.

Yeah.

I think that's a public works initiative not coming out of homegrown.

Would that be lost as well?

That is something that we need to work on with the team to see what would be the next iteration of that program.

Is that general fund funded?

Chair Chagatai, Council Member Chavez, maybe Patty knows.

I just want to make sure that we know what is happening, but if that's being eliminated, that's 7,200 people.

It's not connected to Homegrown, ProduceRx specifically.

I guess I am seeing, well it's not connected to Homegrown, but I guess is it connected to the Health Department?

Can you repeat the question please?

I guess is that going to be connected, is that program going to be connected to the Health Department cuts?

So that should not be impacted.

What impact is that going to have?

The ones we know about are three from homegrown and then the vacancy from school-based clinics.

How many families are going to be impacted by that cut?

Chair Choctaw, Councilmember Chavez, I don't have that figure off the top of my head, but I can get it for you.

Given this division handles time-sensitive lead poisoning and pollution complaint responses I guess what what impact is this going to have?

Chair Chagtai, Council Member Chavez Those three positions are the CLI positions that we're still finalizing So just like my colleagues are asking, okay

I guess, Chair question, how do we figure this out when we want to have this information eventually?

So every department that presents us an incomplete picture of where reductions are coming from will need to come back and finish that presentation.

but some of it is not and there are decisions that are being made here that will potentially impact the life of many of our residents, the livelihood of our constituents, the healthiness of the people that I represent in my ward that I know are going to face severe implications and I could not stay silent as I heard this presentation as I know there's so many hard-working staff in the Health Department that really are doing their very best to keep people healthy and safe so thank you.

I will recognize Councilmember Rainville.

How does that work?

I could probably put together an analysis to get you closer to a percentage, but that would take me a little bit more time.

In fact, we'll just see reduction?

So we see that with the CDBG dollars, for example, that reduction is the result of an overall city allocation reduction.

So thank you.

This is work, too.

Can you give me what those foundational mandates and responsibilities are?

But those are the foundational responsibilities that we are responsible for delivering to our residents in the region.

Initiation and maintaining and closing down process within your department.

I hope that answers your question.

So if you could speak a little bit to how that transition happened.

So I'm pretty sure we've had this split for a while, this split, like almost 50-50 for a while, but I would have

If you'll first begin with introducing yourself, sir.

It's not that the grants have gone away, it's that our general fund has become more of a cost recovery tool.

or can you clarify what that, maybe that was the mayor's just adding on to the budget, was that correct?

It came over to the Health Department in 2022.

I'll find it.

I would have to go back and look at each one of them to figure out what the funding source was.

Will there be reductions once we know more about what's happening with the school board?

to see if we can get a lease with whatever that school is to provide those services.

I would think there's some overlap with schools we currently have clinics at though.

So for example, yeah.

So could you just speak to what your department is doing to do more with less and how you're doing that?

And I think we have the responsibility to do that in the most efficient and sustainable manner possible.

Did I hear that correctly?

The state also does provide some syringe exchange, clean needle programs and funding as well.

You know, I will follow up on that, but I just wanted to clarify from your perspective, we don't do any clean needle distribution then.

Okay, thank you very much.

Thank you.

Do I have that right?

Chair Chuktai, yes, you have that correct.

Next we'll continue to Councilmember Warren followed by Councilmember Stevenson.

Is that accurate?

Come on, Patrick.

Also the testing when we say testing is also part of the when there is a lead poisoning To do the follow-up testing to ensure that the levels are going down as we're doing the remediation work in the home To ensure that those levels are going down and doing the follow-up testing so that that is part of that and this the CDBG Funding allows us flexibility in ways that a lot of other funds don't

Yeah, I got you.

So absolutely everything that you mentioned is absolutely correct.

Right?

Chair, Chuck Tai, Councilmember Warren, like I said this is a compared to all of those programs this is a small gap and or we address we try to use these funds to address the gap so what you're talking about is correct but it does not catch everyone and we test a lot of kids that don't get tested.

You want to comment on it?

But I think we do a lot of collaborative work in that space.

So how much of the services that the Health Department provides would you say are duplicated or replicated in multiple other facets of programs throughout Hennepin County?

Are you talking about housing?

How many of, what is your rough number?

But I don't think we have any duplicative work in the work that I oversee.

Thank you for sharing it.

I'll recognize Councilmember Stevenson followed by Councilmember Chavez.

Is there a list of those and which ones may not be operable next year?

Chair Chokzai, Council Member Stevenson, we can certainly get you a list.

And do you have an idea that some won't be operating next year?

So I think that's the first step we have to take is to assessment of the properties to see what their status is.

Would they be at risk of being shut down?

Chair Chugchai, Councilmember Stevenson, I think it's too soon for me to speculate, but in my initial conversation with CPED, we did not talk about shutting any of the active gardens down.

Will they get the services somewhere else?

We are again having conversations with other partners and other departments to see how we might be able to mitigate or make more efficient some of the work.

Are the lead blood testing events finding lead in kids in our city?

Go ahead.

Okay, and are these kids... We can follow up with those numbers.

Thank you.

You first, okay, welcome back.

Thank you.

Some of this funding and then a number of stakeholder engagements So making sure that the community is aware of what the city strategy is around zero waste as well And that is my last slide and so I can based on these numbers and I can go back to any one of those slides if there are questions

I will recognize Councilmember Stevenson, followed by Councilmember Chavez.

You went into some specifics, but I guess what is mostly being delayed and what is mostly being scaled back?

and I laid out in each of those individual slides where where we think those reductions are going to take place and to be honest that we're just going to have reduced service as a result result of these cuts and so I can go back to this that first budget slide I think you can anticipate whatever the budget cut is that's where we're gonna have probably that level of cut of service as well

So with that in mind, how are we doing on our climate goals here in the city?

And so that's where we stand right now.

in our emissions report next year.

But again, just starting to see those.

How will reducing our investments in the green cost share in the EV charging, how will that affect general affordability in the city?

We can talk more about that at that committee.

Do you think that your work has had an effect, a more generalized effect on affordability for folks living in our green zones?

I'm sure Director Horry behind me has it but looking at the amount of affordability and the cost burden that people have with their energy bills is one of our targets and again, that is a piece that I don't think that we're working at the level of scale to say that we're moving that one direction or another but we do have a lot of evidence to show that we are reducing people's burden in the projects that we work on.

And have we measured that?

So we may not be impacting the overall soup, but for the people that live near those facilities, there is a reduction.

Okay, so you think for people living in these green zones where most of the money has gone in, you said, particularly Northside, that the air is cleaner today because of these?

Okay.

Do you think that if this was funded at the level that you said, the four, five, eight times, that we would see the measurable change in air quality?

Okay, so you mentioned the federal government pulling back.

given who's in power, what do you think the best, like your opinion, what do you think the best path forward for cities is given that scaling back?

and so we can lay out what those programs look like, but we are not up here making budget requests at this committee.

What type of vision do cities, the City of Minneapolis, need to be looking at in order to be ready for future investment or taking over certain investments ourselves or programmatic changes

The commissioner pointed to a continuous improvement process where we're looking at where we can get results and how we can drive towards these big targets year in and year out.

Is this going to reduce the geography that it operates now, or is this reducing the geography that we were planning on adding in?

We'd be adding a new site, EV charging site within the existing service area and making funding available to help subsidize the car share operations.

It's mostly translating into a reduction of expansion.

This year we are adding two new sites with some marginal impacts to the service area in North Minneapolis and in Northeast Minneapolis, but next year the service area would not be impacted at all, it would be static.

Or is this revenue generating in that it'll offset the cost of running this?

and then we're also going through a carbon credit process of being able to sell the credit so that the city would have the decision to sell those credits which have value on the open market or to keep those credits to help meet some of our own greenhouse gas reduction targets.

This would be a new source of money for the city.

Chair, Chair, Council Member Stevenson, yes.

Do you know how much the total revenue for Centerpointe and XL franchise fees bring into the general fund for 2026?

We have the full numbers for 2025.

the CLI portion of that right kind of that earmarked portion that's one of the most challenging and most volatile elements of the franchise fees so we don't have a good idea on where we're going to end 2026 on that and we're still working on exactly what that's going to look like in 2027 but that's as we are currently projecting and what the controller is projecting for the current fiscal year.

Sorry I guess direct Deputy Commissioner How concerned are you about the impacts of climate change and what impacts can the residents of Minneapolis expect in their daily lives?

There will probably be a host of other things I could go on with but I would say that the impacts will be, we're seeing the impacts of it now and we will continue to see the impacts of it.

That's all for me, thanks.

Thank you, next I will recognize Council Member Chavez.

I'm not asking for it today, but if we can get the follow-up of 300 fewer weatherization and efficiency programs and what that means on cost savings for residents Sure, sir.

I customer of a shop as we can produce that cool.

So last year was described as the highest level of greenhouse gas reductions in the history of Minneapolis based on this presentation What will be the impact of these cuts for next year?

Sure Chuck, Councilmember Chavez or if I can ask a clarifying question on in terms of greenhouse gas reduction.

Yeah

But I don't know an exact number for you.

What is the specific impact and what will that look like?

We will simply just have less trainings to offer We contract out with partners to provide those trainings and we will have less money to do those trainings So there will be less people trained.

I guess if you can explain to the public what that impact will mean for our residents.

And so that just gets us further away from our greenhouse gas reduction targets.

What does that impact?

Chair Chuck Tai, Councilmember Chavez, it's similar to the Green Careers question is that there's going to be less money so they'll be able to offer less trainings, less connections, less pathways for folks to connect with jobs and so it's a very one-to-one relationship of the dollars to the cut and people they can serve.

I have a lot of concerns about this and appreciate you giving this presentation.

Next, we will continue with Councilmember Wansley.

or health can't propose capital funding in order to cover the facility needs for the biochar facility.

possibly this project to have a conversation around it.

So capital funding could be explored let's say if there's breakdowns and grants to cover whatever is not provided of that 1.8 million dollar gap.

I don't know the answer for you right now.

So this is a staff memo to follow up in and probably also for our city attorneys to know is there any legal barriers that presents itself or I see someone okay budget yes

Our understanding at this point is that biochar as a project doesn't meet what the eligibility would need to be for us to do bonding to have it as part of the CIP or the capital program, but we can still confirm that and provide kind of a written follow-up on what that requirement is versus how biochar may not fully fulfill that requirement.

I'll recognize Councilmember Vitaw.

And that's what a lot of people rely on to actually create the jobs.

I think in working with our partners that those jobs are still necessary, but absolutely the pull back from the inflation reduction act where we could have been getting close to operating at the scale of the problem is off in the future somewhere.

Right, I mean just reduce greatly and I mean I have a feeling that it's just going to get worse like how can it get better when we're not making investments as a nation and I certainly believe as a city we have to but I don't know I'm sorry I had to step away for a little bit I don't know if you said this but did you say how much the department is going to be reduced because of possible federal pullbacks or

as a city and I think the goal and the priority of a number of the staff and I think the mayor's office as well is to be able to stay in this fight and so even with this impossible budget that you're faced with to be able to keep these programs alive when that opportunity arises again where we can scale and we still have the programs in place to do that.

I mean, you two have been around for a really long time and you understand.

Easy.

Not just think about the next three and a half years, but like if something does change and the resources come back in four years, how do we continue this work at a pace where we can pick back up, but certainly how is it that, like how we scale back if we need to in areas that can be scaled back in this moment.

And so that was just one note that I would add to the culture in the health department and the programs that I oversee.

I see why you're the mayor of Hopkins.

Is there like a position in the Office of Public Service that supports your work or something?

and how do we deliver programs around transportation in a number of, when we talk about the thermal energy networks of pulling people together from the enterprise, from our property services is that position is helping coordinate a lot of that enterprise-wide work along with Director Hoy.

Can you tell me who, like, what this is?

Sure Chuck, we can follow up on the details of that and this is not part of the cuts that we're bringing forward so I feel safe in saying that this is a pretty valuable position to the work that we do on climate change.

why did we cut utility investment, or why did we cut utility assistance for poor residents?

It isn't about greenhouse gas reductions, and so it was a program that was below that list of priority lines and took a 50% cut along with the other programs that were in those categories, all of which we think are important.

How do you end up coming to the conclusion that reducing our waste is not a top priority?

And again, what waste reduction we believe as staff is important.

Thank you for your presentation.

Thank you, Council Members.

Thank you