Budget Committee - November 06, 2024   11/6/2024

Roll Call

• • SPEAKER_00
  • 00:00:13
    St Paul, City Council, Budget Committee
• • 00:01:41
    St Paul, City Council, Budget Committee
  • 00:02:04
    City of St Paul, City Council
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 00:02:56
    St Paul, City Council,
  • 00:03:21
    City of St Paul, City Council
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 00:03:56
    to order.
  • 00:03:57
    Good morning, everybody.
  • 00:03:58
    I want to appreciate you for being here, coming off yesterday, and what I'm sure is a lot for people to process.
  • 00:04:04
    I think that for today, what we want to do is continue doing what we do every day, which is showing up as caring local government for our constituents.
  • 00:04:11
    Toward that end, I really want to thank every single person who's here today.
  • 00:04:14
    On the staff side, our council members who show up every day for our community, everyone here making this broadcast happen.
  • 00:04:22
    We're here in chambers together, and we're going to take it an hour at a time today.
  • 00:04:25
    I want to offer that care and thoughts ahead of our conversation.
  • 00:04:28
    What we're doing this morning is that we're going to continue in our budget process.
  • 00:04:32
    We've been having these weekly meetings with departments to understand the proposed budgets and how that fits into our work every day for St Paul.
  • 00:04:39
    We will first hear from our regional water services board proposed budget, then we'll move to the city attorney.
  • 00:04:44
    So with that, I'd like to turn it over to our partners at the water board.
  • 00:04:47
    Thank you for being here.
  • 00:04:47
    Good morning and welcome.
• • SPEAKER_07
  • 00:04:49
    Good morning, thank you for having me.
  • 00:04:51
    I've met most of you.
  • 00:04:52
    Some of you are on our water board, so thank you for being willing to hear this all over again and for all the feedback that has brought us to today.
  • 00:05:01
    My name is Raquel Vasky.
  • 00:05:02
    I'm our General Manager.
  • 00:05:03
    First time here, first year in this role, so appreciate the opportunity and excited to share with you the product that our team has been working on for many months.
  • 00:05:14
    A very quick overview, I know like many of the other city departments right now, it is very much a time of change.
  • 00:05:20
    There's a lot going on, a lot of significant projects, and so you will see some of those throughout our budget, but want to highlight really our highest priorities and where our attention are going.
  • 00:05:32
    Two large ones that I hope you're aware of are our lead-free program and our McCarran's treatment plant is two-thirds of the plants being rebuilt right now.
  • 00:05:39
    In addition to that, we have a significant amount of other aging infrastructure that is also reaching the end of its useful life.
  • 00:05:45
    So that's not unique to us.
  • 00:05:47
    That's very common across the entire water industry right now, and it's something we need to be paying attention to.
  • 00:05:52
    We also have meters in every single one of our 96,000 customer homes, and those meters are also reaching the end of their useful life.
  • 00:06:00
    So we will need to get into every customer's home over the next seven years to replace their meters.
  • 00:06:05
    That's another large capital investment and necessary product.
  • 00:06:09
    We have a brand new customer portal launching for those of you who live in St. Paul and have had to bear with us through our existing one.
  • 00:06:16
    Thank you for the patience.
  • 00:06:18
    We regularly hear it's from the 90s because it is, and the technology and the options available to customers are very limited.
  • 00:06:25
    We are aiming for a mid-January launch of that portal, so that will be very exciting.
  • 00:06:30
    We also, unlike some of the other city departments, are a regional entity so we serve not only St Paul but 13 other communities as well and there is a lot of talk in the Northeast Metro about the need for our help potentially as they experience issues so the potential of further expanding our service area is very real and will be into the next few years.
  • 00:06:51
    Affordability is a huge topic for me.
  • 00:06:54
    Our boards very aware of that and I'll talk about that later today It's one of the biggest pieces and changes in this budget that I'm proposing Cybersecurity as well as well as PFAS which has been all over the news luckily for us PFAS are not currently in the Mississippi River at a concerning level which is what our water source is, but it's something we'll have to watch into the future and
  • 00:07:15
    And last but not least, over 40% of our workforce has been with our organization less than five years.
  • 00:07:22
    So we are very green, we are very young, which is exciting.
  • 00:07:26
    There's a lot of energy, but it's important that we focus on that.
  • 00:07:30
    I just add this slide so that you can see our focus is aligned very deeply with what the water industry as a whole is going through.
  • 00:07:36
    The aging infrastructure and need for investments there is not unique to us.
  • 00:07:42
    During each budget cycle with our Board of Water Commissioners, I try and pick out a few larger topic debatable items to really dig in and look for feedback.
  • 00:07:51
    The two that we dug into this year, the two biggest changes are additional investments into our capital as well as a Water Works commitment.
  • 00:07:58
    Water Works is our low income assistance program.
• • SPEAKER_01
  • 00:08:01
    These are our two large topics.
• • SPEAKER_07
  • 00:08:04
    I hope that you have a budget letter in front of you.
  • 00:08:06
    It should look something like this.
  • 00:08:07
    This document is what we'll pretty much walk through today and really outlines the budget itself and the big changes.
  • 00:08:15
    Pretty straightforward though, obviously spending equals financing.
  • 00:08:18
    Our budget would be around $100 million if it weren't for our LED program.
  • 00:08:23
    So LED represents about $35 million on each side of the budget in this year's proposal.
  • 00:08:29
    The great news is that that $35 million is completely grant funded through the state, so it does not have a rate impact on our customers.
  • 00:08:36
    We are able to provide the LED-free program at no cost.
  • 00:08:40
    The right side of the budget talks about the rate changes specifically.
  • 00:08:43
    Of course in presentations we look at the real numbers but it equates to a nine and a half percent across the board on the consumption fee and on the base fee.
  • 00:08:53
    You can see in the bottom right and on the back side of the budget letter we break that all the way down for what that means for our customers.
  • 00:09:00
    So ultimately a nine and a half percent rate increase equates to a three dollar and twelve cent per month increase for our customers.
  • 00:09:10
    First and foremost how we finance the majority of our work is that we are an enterprise unit and we fund it through the sale of water.
  • 00:09:17
    This chart just shows that the consumption of water has remained very steady when we do a five year look back and so we used a constant consumption projection.
  • 00:09:26
    I will say that obviously the population of our area is growing but conservation efforts are as well and they seem to be offsetting each other very well.
  • 00:09:35
    High level budget overview.
  • 00:09:37
    I'll plan to skim through a lot of this and have plenty of time for questions if you have them.
  • 00:09:42
    Salaries and fringes is where our largest increase is coming.
  • 00:09:46
    As you're aware, because we're in our third year now of this contract, these were pre-negotiated wage increases, certification pays, incentive pay.
  • 00:09:54
    A lot of exciting things to really focus on building and retaining our staff, but 9.5% is obviously significant in next year's budget.
  • 00:10:02
    Services, we worked really hard to cut where we could.
  • 00:10:05
    One significant thing worth noting is that we do have $120,000 in this budget to pay a consultant to work with them on a rate study, which I'll talk about more as tied to our affordability work.
  • 00:10:18
    And the last category of O&M obviously is materials.
  • 00:10:22
    We have one specific material that we can't really work around, and that is our chemicals for treating our water.
  • 00:10:27
    And then all of the last three years, we have seen significant price hikes
  • 00:10:32
    on the chemicals that we use to treat water.
  • 00:10:35
    So again, you'll see a pretty significant increase there.
  • 00:10:38
    Overall, a 7.4% increase on O&M.
  • 00:10:43
    The biggest piece of this budget that we really have control over, besides what I showed on the last slide, is how much money we're going to invest in our capital.
  • 00:10:52
    So to walk you through that decision making, obviously when we're talking about two sides of the budget, you have O&M on one side, you have capital investments on the other.
  • 00:11:01
    capital assets are anything more than $5,000 that's projected to last more than a year and our plan is supposed to help us have an outlook of 10 years at a time you know we're talking about assets with long useful lives and so how are we prioritizing and investing money in those assets one of the largest projects tied to capital is the capital of our service lines which we know 26,000 of the 96,000 in our service area are composed of lead
  • 00:11:27
    The great news here, as I mentioned, is we've been able to obtain first ARPA funds and then now state revolving funds to fund this program, therefore being able to offer the full line replacement to customers for free.
  • 00:11:39
    So you will not see that led free, even though a very expensive $400 million project does not ultimately have an effect on our budget at all, including all of the salaries, wages, fringes tied to the employees doing this work.
  • 00:11:53
    The second large capital project that we're doing right now is rebuilding two-thirds of our water treatment plant.
  • 00:11:58
    We've been talking about this one for years, but we will finally be pushing water through that new plant this coming spring.
  • 00:12:04
    So this is a long way in the works.
  • 00:12:07
    You can see that the bulk of our debt is tied to that.
  • 00:12:09
    So currently, St Paul Regional Water Services is sitting on about $214 million in debt.
  • 00:12:15
    We watched that closely.
  • 00:12:16
    We've worked worked with the OFS office to maintain a triple-a bond rating as we've done that But you can see that about 16 million dollars a year We spend on our debt service to pay off that loan and that's intentional We want to spread out who's paying for that plant over the next 20 years Pretty straightforward again can answer more questions if we haven't
  • 00:12:36
    Well those are two very exciting projects each three to four hundred million dollars they are only a fraction of the assets that we manage as a water department so this pie chart helps to show that while it's easy to think wow they're gonna have a brand new plant things are great you can see in the light blue the plant is only a small section of our total assets
  • 00:12:54
    The large blue, a good chunk of that is the water mains, so not the services coming off the main into individual homes, but the mains that take the water from our plant out to every street of our city.
  • 00:13:06
    That's really where we're having the largest issue and where we'll talk about capital investments.
  • 00:13:12
    A water main is expected to last 100 years, and while St Paul Regional Water Service has done a wonderful job of maintaining low water rates and low rate increases,
  • 00:13:21
    The investments being made into mains in the past have not been at the level that they could have been.
  • 00:13:26
    You can see on this pie chart that a significant percentage of the water mains in our system right now are already past that hundred year useful life.
  • 00:13:35
    And so you're playing a little bit of a gamble there waiting for those assets to fail, which we know significant main breaks can shut down.
  • 00:13:42
    So that takes us to the biggest request which is to invest more in capital.
  • 00:14:01
    This chart here is the 10 year capital investment plan of our prior leadership team.
  • 00:14:08
    they were taking a very set level of capital and just placing an inflationary cost on it but not looking at actual project needs, actual useful life of specific assets.
  • 00:14:19
    This was the Water Worth model.
  • 00:14:21
    So we use a nice water finance system to really help us design rates.
  • 00:14:26
    What I want to point out on this chart is the black solid line is our cash balance.
  • 00:14:30
    And what it needs to be is above the dotted line.
  • 00:14:32
    So you can see that our cash balance is actually pretty steady and actually has a tail that's increasing at the end, which is not what we'd like.
  • 00:14:40
    That means that we have cash on hand that we could be investing.
  • 00:14:43
    And meanwhile, we know we have assets that need to be invested in, so trying to balance those two.
  • 00:14:49
    So we've completely revamped our entire asset management plan.
  • 00:14:52
    The ten year plan went from being a one page spreadsheet to a 100 page document that calls out every asset.
  • 00:14:58
    Those water mains, the pump stations, the water towers, the mains that bring the water from the Mississippi River to our plant.
  • 00:15:05
    And now we're actually looking at risk factors, useful lives, and designing a plan that's project specific instead of just bucket specific.
  • 00:15:14
    this is just a snippet from that new hundred page document obviously there's a roll up but there's pages and pages of the projects we actually want to prioritize over the next 10 years
  • 00:15:24
    So once we did that, we identified all the projects.
  • 00:15:27
    We came up with two models for our board to review as far as how we do that.
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    One is the accelerated implementation, everything that we think needs to happen right on time aggressively handling this backlog of asset infrastructure.
  • 00:15:41
    The other is a more progressive transition, building up instead of such a drastic increase.
  • 00:15:47
    I'm going to walk you very quickly through both of those.
  • 00:15:51
    The first way to do our work in the aggressive method would have required pretty significant rate increases.
  • 00:15:58
    You can see an 11%, two years of 11%, so significant rates and more than we wanted to put onto our customers.
  • 00:16:07
    The second alternative would have been to lean into that cash balance and try and keep rates a little bit lower.
  • 00:16:12
    you can see that our solid cash balance line dips below the dotted line so in both scenarios doing the dream list of all the work that we wanted to do wasn't going to be reasonable it would either be too high of rates or too much demand on our cash which leads us again into scenario two which is the pitch that we made and was approved by our Board of Water Commissioners
  • 00:16:34
    and what that required us to do was pull back on the capital dreams.
  • 00:16:37
    So what were some things that we could stretch out to life a little bit further?
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    You can see that what we landed on here, we have the rate projections of what we will need to fund our utility into the future and actually meet those asset needs the way that we need to ensure our system continues running.
  • 00:16:53
    this chart just shows you know capital investments is 28 million dollars a year so these are significant by charts here blue is what the old plan was yellow would have been the aggressive plan and green is the compromise that we think is the right answer to meet the needs of the infrastructure but also monitor the impact on cash and rates
  • 00:17:14
    I won't go through these, but you can see these were not insignificant cuts.
  • 00:17:18
    It was delaying projects that our team would love to do now, but just trying to be reasonable and stretch things out as far as we can.
  • 00:17:26
    That's it on capital.
  • 00:17:29
    Investing a lot more money in capital is a huge, again, like I said, there's two big topics in this budget.
  • 00:17:32
    That's one of them.
  • 00:17:34
    I can answer more questions.
  • 00:17:35
    The second piece of it is our Water Works funding program.
  • 00:17:38
    So for about 20 years now, St Paul Regional Water Services had been putting
  • 00:17:43
    and the City Council.
  • 00:17:44
    We put $50,000 a year into a low income assistance program.
  • 00:17:48
    Customers apply through community action and they are eligible for up to $300 a year of assistance.
  • 00:17:54
    That $50,000 that we were putting into it was gone by April of every year.
  • 00:17:59
    And then the rest of the year people were not getting the help that they needed.
  • 00:18:07
    and we saw our customers use $400,000 in 2023 of low income assistance.
  • 00:18:13
    So people were qualified for it and needed the help and were able to utilize that.
  • 00:18:17
    That's what the orange bars are, is the LIHWAP funding.
  • 00:18:20
    The federal government stopped that program.
  • 00:18:23
    We've been advocating to get it back.
  • 00:18:25
    I have a feeling that advocating will get a little bit harder, which is why we're really proud of this program that we're putting through, which is a commitment for us internally to fund that program.
  • 00:18:36
    we will continue to advocate for state and federal assistance but if it doesn't come we can't wait our customers need assistance we have to make sure water stays affordable for all and so my proposal is that we tie a half a percent of the revenue we generate from the sale of water we take that half a percent and we put it into the Water Works funding program for this year's budget in this proposal that's $375,000 so a significant increase from the $50,000 that we had been doing previously
  • 00:19:03
    that allows us to ensure that everyone qualified hopefully can get the help that they need to make their bills more affordable.
  • 00:19:10
    I will note that there were some flaws in my opinion on the old program.
  • 00:19:14
    If your water bill was $150 Q1, you applied for help, you could wipe out your whole water bill until you had used the 300.
  • 00:19:21
    So in theory, your first two quarters could be wiped out.
  • 00:19:24
    By quarter three and four, your assistance was gone and now you were stuck with your full bill.
  • 00:19:28
    and we saw a lot of those customers continue to either get shut off or certified to taxes.
  • 00:19:33
    So my proposal here is not to wipe out the bills using that $300 but rather help make them affordable for our customers.
  • 00:19:40
    So for the math it ends up being that a customer would get a one-third, a 33% reduction on their water bill each quarter to ensure that the assistance is actually available throughout the entire year.
  • 00:19:51
    we project that a quarterly bill will be about $200 next year so the customer would get a $67 reduction by us paying from the Water Works program and that will help make the bill again affordable opposed to wiping it out so we can help them throughout the whole year.
  • 00:20:07
    Two ways, and we've worked very closely with the attorney's office on how we do this, we'll be the first in the state to be doing a program like this.
  • 00:20:14
    And really proud of it, obviously there's some risks that come with this, so I wanted to make sure that we thought this through early.
  • 00:20:19
    Two ways, and one way we've been funding that program historically is we allow cell phone companies like Verizon and T-Mobile to put their devices on top of our water towers.
  • 00:20:28
    It's a revenue source that's not tied to our rates.
  • 00:20:31
    And so it's a revenue source that the attorney's office feels comfortable with us using that to fund a program like this.
  • 00:20:36
    So while we're using the half a percent of revenue to figure out how much to use, we're actually taking it from that bucket.
  • 00:20:42
    The other thing worth noting is this is tied to a commitment by our organization to stop water shutoffs permanently.
  • 00:20:48
    We stopped them during COVID.
  • 00:20:51
    Everyone did across the country.
  • 00:20:53
    Many have returned to it.
  • 00:20:54
    But in the state of Minnesota, we have the ability to certify unpaid utility bills to property taxes at year end.
  • 00:21:00
    and so because of that protection that we have we would like to commit to never going back to water shutoffs as long as the data continues to support that decision.
  • 00:21:10
    We were spending about a million dollars a year rolling trucks out, fixing infrastructure that would break when we were turning water off and we're also losing public trust and putting people in their homes at risk by turning their water off.
  • 00:21:21
    So instead of spending that million dollars a year reactively to people not paying,
  • 00:21:26
    let's spend money
  • 00:21:47
    When I say that we were starting with affordable bills, we really were.
  • 00:21:50
    And so while a 9.5% rate increase is significant, the great news is because they hadn't been doing rate increases for many, many years.
  • 00:21:58
    You can see here that this calculation is an industry standard.
  • 00:22:01
    It takes an industry standard for how many gallons of water a household would use and comes up with the cost for the year versus the lowest 20th percentile income earners in our exact service area and gives us a household burden.
  • 00:22:16
    you can see on the chart up above the goal is to keep that burden well below seven in the 2024 budget we're at two and a half and with this increase of nine and a half percent we're still at a 2.6 so again significant rate increases to make sure we can invest in the capital to keep the water moving but good news is according to industry standards we are well below an affordability concern I don't want to take that for granted which is why at the same time we'll also be investing in our water works program
  • 00:22:46
    I cruised through that, so happy to lean in more to any topic if there's questions.
  • 00:22:51
    Thank you.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 00:22:52
    Thanks, Ms. Baski.
  • 00:22:53
    So I'm sorry if I missed this at the beginning of your presentation.
  • 00:22:57
    One thing we've been doing throughout our presentations by department and
  • 00:23:03
    is an overview of just funding sources.
  • 00:23:07
    So for all the operations you described, all the investments, all the capital infrastructure, is there a overview where you could start?
  • 00:23:13
    And I think I just honestly must have missed it.
  • 00:23:16
    What portion is user fees that they're paying?
  • 00:23:19
    What portion is state and other sources?
  • 00:23:21
    What portion is city funds?
  • 00:23:23
    Could you help us understand that?
• • SPEAKER_07
  • 00:23:24
    I just want to focus on that for a sec as a grounding overall fact.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 00:23:27
    That would be helpful to go over again.
• • SPEAKER_07
  • 00:23:29
    Wonderful, thank you for the question.
  • 00:23:30
    It would be most helpful if you grab the first page of this budget letter.
  • 00:23:34
    You can see that we equate spending to financing.
  • 00:23:37
    So on the financing side of the equation is where we break that down.
  • 00:23:41
    And so the first three categories are the ones most specifically tied to a rate increase that we have control over.
  • 00:23:48
    So sale of water is consumption based.
  • 00:23:50
    So based on continuing to sell 12 billion gallons of water at the rate that we're setting, that's our largest income source.
  • 00:23:58
    The second is a water service base fee.
  • 00:24:00
    for Risk Minimization, Water Utilities use a base fee.
  • 00:24:03
    So regardless how much water you consume, we collect a base fee from every home for having the infrastructure available.
  • 00:24:09
    Next is a water mains surcharge.
  • 00:24:11
    This was implemented about 10 years ago now when they first identified that that investment in water mains was not what it needed to be.
  • 00:24:17
    And so this money specifically has started to help us invest in mains the way it needs to be.
  • 00:24:22
    So that 3.6 is a full commitment to capital.
  • 00:24:24
    The other two buckets could be hitting either side of the budget.
  • 00:24:28
    From there, it's worth noting that we do collect revenue that passes to other city departments.
  • 00:24:33
    So we do all of the billing for the City of St. Paul's sewer department.
  • 00:24:36
    So some of what's on our bill is theirs.
  • 00:24:38
    The right-of-way fee is one of those.
  • 00:24:39
    So we collect that, but then it goes right back out to the City of St. Paul.
  • 00:24:45
    Miscellaneous revenues is where that grant funding is.
  • 00:24:47
    So of that 40 million, 35 of that is the state grant for the lead program this year.
  • 00:24:55
    did you say that was miscellaneous revenues?
  • 00:25:12
    those are the other large buckets within that 40 million but again that 35 is our largest chunk.
  • 00:25:17
    It is important worth noting and I'm sorry I didn't cash reserve you can see there that we're spending down 7.8 of our cash next year.
  • 00:25:23
    We've done that intentionally so when we first decided to build the water treatment plant we started putting through rate increases before the loans were even issued and we built up a cash balance that we could dig into that to offset rate increase needs
  • 00:25:37
    as we've brought that plant online.
  • 00:25:39
    So last year we dug down $7.5 million, this year we'll spend down $7.8 million.
  • 00:25:44
    We're sitting on about $70 million of cash currently, so that's about a 10% decrease.
  • 00:25:49
    And in those water worth models we're watching that very closely to ensure that we keep enough cash on hand but also spend it down to offset the need for rate increases on our customers.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 00:25:59
    So in terms of, I see members might have questions, I just want to finish up mine quick.
  • 00:26:03
    In terms of where our constituents directly pay in with their dollars, is the main area the top category, sale of water, where they're just paying their water bills and creating financing for you that way?
  • 00:26:14
    Or where are the ones where our constituents' city dollars directly go?
• • SPEAKER_07
  • 00:26:18
    Great, thank you.
  • 00:26:19
    The top three categories there.
  • 00:26:21
    sale of water, the base fee, and then that water mains surcharge are the three that, again, each of those categories is increasing by 9.5% in this bill, which equates to $3.12 per month for constituents.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 00:26:35
    Thank you.
  • 00:26:35
    That's very helpful for just understanding how the people we represent fit into the information we're getting.
  • 00:26:41
    Are there other questions from members right now?
  • 00:26:44
    Go ahead, Councilman Naker.
• • Rebecca Noecker
  • 00:26:45
    I'm curious when you talked about the capital investment models and you talked about the moderate version of the three.
  • 00:26:56
    Can you tie that back to the financing source?
  • 00:26:59
    So what does the increase look like to afford the moderate capital investment scenario and where does that come from?
• • SPEAKER_07
  • 00:27:06
    great question thank you on the left side on the spending side you can see that we have the three large categories O&M is what we think of salaries fringes material services the debt is the debt we owe on the plant project primarily and that third category of capital investments is where we're proposing to increase so last year that number was 23.7 million the proposal is to increase that towards 28 million with really a 10-year goal to get that up to 40 million
  • 00:27:34
    So there's a huge increase there.
  • 00:27:36
    That's being funded through the sale of water.
  • 00:27:38
    So by increasing rates, we're able to take that money and allocate part of that increase has to cover the O&M increases that we walked through.
  • 00:27:46
    But part of that goes to covering the increase in capital expenditures.
• • Rebecca Noecker
  • 00:27:50
    As a quick follow up, do we make those investments using debt, using bonding, using cash, because I noticed there's no additional
  • 00:27:58
    Thank you.
• • SPEAKER_07
  • 00:28:00
    Another great question.
  • 00:28:01
    It's important as a forever business that has ongoing capital investment life cycles that we attempt to build those ongoing life cycles into our ongoing budget.
  • 00:28:12
    So you'll see that we will focus on taking debt only when we're talking about assets that are significant such as the water treatment plant to try and spread those costs out.
  • 00:28:21
    Otherwise the goal would be
  • 00:28:23
    a water main is supposed to last 100 years so in theory if every year we could replace 1% of the 1200 miles we have you get on this cycle where every year you're replacing the right amount and that will go on forever in a forever business so the goal would be to not use debt unless it's a significant project that would really really change that number significantly.
• • Rebecca Noecker
  • 00:28:45
    Thank you.
• • Saura Jost
  • 00:28:48
    Go ahead Ms. Jost.
  • 00:28:51
    Thank you Chair, and thank you Ms. Vaske for being here.
  • 00:28:55
    I think I just have a couple comments.
  • 00:28:58
    I just, also I'm on the water board and I just want to thank you and all your staff for all your hard work.
  • 00:29:03
    I know you've been working on this, I think it was April, maybe even before that.
  • 00:29:06
    The year's gone by really fast and we worked on this quite a bit at the board.
  • 00:29:10
    and I just want to say that this has just been really great to work with you and to kind of go through all this information.
  • 00:29:20
    I'm especially appreciative of all of our discussion around the decision to eliminate water shutoffs.
  • 00:29:27
    I think that that was the right thing to do and also around our Water Works program.
  • 00:29:33
    The one comment I was going to say just kind of in response to Councilmember Naker was the, you know, some of the rate increases and the decision to go with like one scenario or the other.
  • 00:29:41
    My understanding was also tied to like our capital investment program and trying to transition from a 180 year replacement cycle on our distribution system transitioning from that to 100 years and that takes a significant amount of investment and so I'm really glad that we're doing that.
  • 00:30:00
    That's super important, so thank you.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 00:30:03
    Thanks.
  • 00:30:03
    I'm going to go down to Ms. Johnson.
  • 00:30:04
    Go ahead.
  • 00:30:06
    Well, thank you for that, Clarity Councilmember Jost.
  • 00:30:10
    I also had a chance to briefly, for a short stint while Councilmember King goes out, serve on the water board.
  • 00:30:15
    And I know that there was several discussions regarding some of the capital investments and got a chance to learn way too much about pump stations and water tanks.
  • 00:30:26
    just genuinely really understanding I guess of just some of the steps we're taking towards those capital investments and I think I shared this at the at the board but I think it's really important that we uplift the work that is invested in your team to have a multi-year strategy I think that's a really unique approach and also really vital to maintaining the quality of our water but also like making sure that
  • 00:30:51
    I appreciate the multi-year approach to it.
  • 00:31:01
    The one question that I just wanted clarity or further context behind just because I was wanting to know the change for the, excuse me, I'm going to go to a slide.
  • 00:31:13
    The Water Works funding, the program structure.
  • 00:31:17
    Could you just share a little bit about what steps you guys took to inform that process?
  • 00:31:22
    Was there more interest in seeing that support over time versus having that 300 at the beginning?
  • 00:31:28
    I'm just kind of wondering what different factors played into making that change.
• • SPEAKER_07
  • 00:31:33
    This has been a year long process of a deep dive to understand affordability.
  • 00:31:42
    I think that we can all make assumptions about what that means, but when you actually start diving into it, that means something different for every single household.
  • 00:31:49
    It's not a specific number.
  • 00:31:50
    And so we have actually built out, it's a very robust, a member of our team has spent a year on it.
  • 00:31:57
    Affordability dashboard where we have sliced and diced what's going on with our customer base.
  • 00:32:03
    Who and where are the customers who aren't paying?
  • 00:32:06
    of the city of St. Paul.
  • 00:32:07
    How much are they ending up having to pay in late fees and fines when that happens?
  • 00:32:12
    What' s happening to those getting tax certified?
  • 00:32:15
    How long does it take to get revenue back after someone' s been certified to taxes?
  • 00:32:20
    Really slicing and dicing that information as much as we can as well as working with the community action partnership groups that administer
  • 00:32:30
    we also I joined a fellowship for the Center for Water Security it's a national group that's working on this topic together and so would be happy to share it but we have a pretty robust access and affordability plan this is one step of focusing on affordability for our customers but there's a five-year roadmap of a variety of different goals that we have to really focus on affordability
  • 00:32:54
    and ensuring those in need have the support that they need.
  • 00:32:57
    The biggest factor for me in wanting to change to require the match along the way was that a significant percentage of the customers who were receiving Water Works funding in quarters one and quarter two were still getting shut off or still getting certified to taxes because they weren't paying their bills in Q3 and Q4.
  • 00:33:16
    So while we helped wipe those bills out at the beginning of the year,
  • 00:33:19
    we weren't helping them budget and balance and keep things affordable long-term.
  • 00:33:24
    One of the things on the five-year roadmap is moving to monthly billing and we have to get our meter technology replaced first long story short but within five years my goal is to move us off of quarterly billing into monthly because that in and of itself helps a lot from an affordability standpoint.
  • 00:33:40
    Bills that show up once every three months surprise all of us and are larger opposed to learning how to budget a monthly bill.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 00:33:48
    Thank you.
• • SPEAKER_07
  • 00:33:50
    Did that answer your question?
  • 00:33:51
    There's a lot there and I could talk about it all day because it's probably the topic I'm most passionate about.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 00:33:56
    Yeah, it does.
  • 00:33:57
    I think it just raises, when I looked at this slide itself, I'm just a little concerned about the continued growing of both the amount, I guess I'm glad that we have an increased amount of people being assisted when it comes to just our ability to be able to assist more people.
  • 00:34:15
    I'm just a little concerned about that never continuing to climb and what that kind of says overall for people's inability to pay for basic needs like water in their house.
  • 00:34:23
    And so just overall, that's something that
  • 00:34:26
    I think that answers my question and I appreciate it.
• • SPEAKER_07
  • 00:34:36
    Thank you.
  • 00:34:37
    The bottom chart is the one that I lose sleep over when it comes to this and went back and forth on the decision to stop water shutoffs.
  • 00:34:46
    Water shutoffs are 99% effective.
  • 00:34:48
    Within 24 hours people pay you, but what have you forced them to give up to get their water back on?
  • 00:34:54
    so choosing to rely on this ability to certify to taxes is it's better right or is it just kicking the can down the road for these customers who now have a larger property tax bill and so we've really been working on this internally I don't want to just take that for granted that oh we'll get paid and so our team has some pretty significant goals set for ourselves to stop the climb of that bar
  • 00:35:18
    it's going to be more like more people will get certified to taxes if we don't do shutoffs but we don't want to let that number grow out of control which is why that this five-year roadmap involves a lot of education awareness making it easier to apply working with other utilities and organizations so when you qualify for one thing you also qualify for our thing like we want to get as many people the support that they need to stay on top of their bills because I too don't want to just rely on that and let it continue to climb.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 00:35:48
    Thank you.
  • 00:35:49
    Great questions and great insights here.
  • 00:35:51
    Any other questions from council members on what we've heard so far?
  • 00:35:55
    So Ms. Vaskey, just in like a closing summary way, could you share what your main ask of the council is today or what you want us to be thinking about as we head into the rest of budget season?
• • SPEAKER_07
  • 00:36:05
    I think my biggest focus again with this budget we see water utilities all over the news right now when infrastructure fails it is dangerous it is detrimental to businesses and so choosing to support this investment to get ahead of our aging infrastructure to start climbing the mountain that we've been
  • 00:36:28
    and the water works program that we are left with is an important investment and one that will be paid one way or another and doing it proactively and not waiting until things fail is a more cost effective way to do it and as well as your support in helping ensure that the water works program people are aware of it and actually utilize it.
  • 00:36:48
    we plan to continue to monitor that program and adjust it into the future maybe we add more money maybe it's $400 a year instead of three and so would love your feedback from what you're hearing from your customers as bills will rise with the rate increases for the infrastructure needs.
  • 00:37:04
    I appreciate your questions and having me here today.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 00:37:07
    Thank you Ms. Baski and we have a lot of council representation on the water board so I'm grateful to my colleagues who serve there to help us inform those discussions and we'll be taking that to heart and in our deliberations.
  • 00:37:18
    Appreciate you being here this morning.
  • 00:37:19
    Thank you.
  • 00:37:20
    All right, our next presentation is from our city attorney's office who supports our work and upholds the interests of the city in so many avenues and arenas through their work as our official attorneys.
  • 00:37:34
    So I want to welcome our city attorney herself, Lindsay Olson.
  • 00:37:38
    Thank you for being here this morning and we welcome you for your proposed budget presentation.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 00:37:44
    Good morning, council president and council members.
  • 00:37:47
    Lindsay Olson for the City Attorney's Office.
  • 00:37:49
    I'm going to let Jay log in here quickly.
  • 00:37:51
    He says he needs just a minute.
  • 00:37:53
    No problem.
  • 00:37:54
    I don't want to get too far ahead of him.
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 00:38:01
    Sorry, I put you right up there.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 00:38:05
    Situated, thanks.
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 00:38:38
    All right.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 00:38:43
    So I believe we have presentation capability set up.
  • 00:38:49
    So go ahead, Ms. Olson.
  • 00:38:51
    We look to you for the next steps here.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 00:38:58
    Quick agenda here.
  • 00:38:59
    And that's based mostly on the request that we got from council, how we lit things out.
  • 00:39:07
    Quick review on our mission and values.
  • 00:39:09
    I won't read that to you.
  • 00:39:10
    You're probably familiar with that.
  • 00:39:12
    We redid those in 2018.
  • 00:39:14
    We're very proud of that and believe that our priorities reflect our values and our mission.
  • 00:39:23
    Our priorities remain community first public safety initiatives like our gun violence reduction, we'll be talking about that a lot here and ethos and genesis which is new and procedural justice remains a huge focus for us in everything we do in every division and specifically within the criminal division and how we prosecute and how we think about review of our cases.
  • 00:39:49
    building prosperity is our other main focus and that includes the development projects, our legislative initiatives, our immigrant and refugee program and leading just deeds for the city and I'll put a plug in for that today and I hope that you all will leave here with a plug for your constituents to review their property deeds as well.
  • 00:40:16
    our challenges we have six ARP funded positions that will be will be losing that funding within the next year those positions have been really key in reducing our backlog and and reducing the caseload for an ever-increasing caseload in our judicial district and our challenge is
  • 00:40:42
    We have several grant-funded positions as well and we'll continue to search and apply for grants, of course, but we are continually in danger of losing those funds.
  • 00:40:59
    and one of our key goals was shifting services that we are statutorily required to do over to FTE positions so that we're not continually relying on grants that may not continue for supportive victims.
  • 00:41:19
    Technology is also a huge
  • 00:41:22
    issue that we face.
  • 00:41:24
    So as you can imagine, the more we rely on video for each case, the volume of that evidence becomes a lot bigger for our teams that review and want to be really sure that we see and understand all the evidence.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 00:41:44
    And just so I understand the acronyms, BWC is body worn camera, ICC.
  • 00:41:48
    What's ICC?
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 00:41:50
    ICC is the in-car camera.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 00:41:52
    In-car camera, got it.
  • 00:41:53
    I haven't seen that one yet.
  • 00:41:55
    Thank you.
  • 00:41:55
    And then city cameras.
  • 00:41:56
    Just wanted to make sure I knew what the acronyms are.
  • 00:41:58
    Acronyms, sorry, not the acromands.
  • 00:42:00
    All right, go ahead.
  • 00:42:01
    Thank you.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 00:42:02
    Thanks for that clarification.
  • 00:42:04
    I'm sure there are other people that had that question too.
  • 00:42:08
    But because we have such a focus on procedural justice, this is really important for us.
  • 00:42:15
    And it's something that takes our staff a lot of time.
  • 00:42:17
    and that has changed and put and place a higher burden on folks to ensure justice in each case.
  • 00:42:26
    And along that line staffing continues to be one of our challenges.
  • 00:42:32
    And I'm sorry Ms. Olson, I saw Council Member Bui with a quick question.
• • Anika Bowie
  • 00:42:34
    Go ahead.
  • 00:42:35
    Thank you, Council President.
  • 00:42:35
    I have a quick question around the city cameras.
  • 00:42:37
    Are these police cameras?
  • 00:42:39
    Are these like city attorney cameras?
  • 00:42:41
    Do they share that information?
  • 00:42:43
    Who has access to those city cameras?
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 00:42:45
    Yes, thank you Councilmember.
  • 00:42:47
    So the city cameras that we have right now are the cameras that the police department has, anything from those mobile cameras that you see down on 5th and Cedar to other cameras that might be around facilities, things like that.
  • 00:43:08
    We don't have any cameras in the city attorney's office that are
  • 00:43:14
    running or accessed by the city attorney's office on any regular basis.
  • 00:43:19
    We get access to camera footage for cases.
  • 00:43:27
    and then finally in our challenges column is implementation of new programs so as you guys are all aware there have been several programs implemented throughout the city that our lawyers do support both in our civil division as well as litigation when necessary and we have not added any staff along with those new programs even though it's added work and added support for our team.
  • 00:43:53
    Our opportunities are grants and funding from outside sources that we continue to work on.
  • 00:44:01
    We're continually working on technological innovations and getting out into the community more for community engagement.
  • 00:44:14
    Here's a brief org chart.
  • 00:44:15
    Nothing here has really changed.
  • 00:44:17
    Just a note for the council.
  • 00:44:20
    As you know, Brooke was previously here and gave you a separate briefing on her work in ONS.
  • 00:44:28
    ONS continues to be a part of the city attorney's office, but I won't be speaking about her work since you've already heard from her.
  • 00:44:37
    if there are questions that go into that program I will do my best to answer those questions for you or we can come back on anything that you have questions about.
  • 00:44:48
    So I will
  • 00:44:50
    clarify when some of the monetary pieces include ONS because we worked with OFS to try to really make it as clear as possible.
  • 00:45:03
    So what is CAO Main and then what includes ONS.
  • 00:45:08
    So just note as we go through.
  • 00:45:12
    So here's our CAO Main and that means that this does not include ONS.
  • 00:45:17
    and this is just a summary snapshot here of our growth.
  • 00:45:28
    Same here at in dollars instead of people.
  • 00:45:31
    So the vast majority of our budget is salaries and court funding, supplies and other internal requirements.
  • 00:45:42
    We don't have
  • 00:45:46
    We don't take in any revenue.
  • 00:45:49
    So any cases that we have, either criminal or otherwise, none of that comes into the budget for the City Attorney's Office.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 00:46:00
    Thank you.
  • 00:46:01
    And I have a question from Councilmember Naker.
  • 00:46:02
    Go ahead.
• • Rebecca Noecker
  • 00:46:03
    Thanks, Council President.
  • 00:46:04
    Director Olson, on the previous slide you showed a growth of 15 FTEs in the department since 2020.
  • 00:46:10
    Can you clarify where those FTEs have been added in terms of the org chart and the different divisions within the City Attorney's Office?
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 00:46:18
    Thank you, Councilmember Naker.
  • 00:46:21
    Those 15 FTEs have come from all divisions and programs.
  • 00:46:29
    It includes the Immigrant and Refugee Program, it includes
  • 00:46:34
    of the City Council.
  • 00:46:35
    Primarily a few attorneys, several special fund or central service fund attorneys, so our development group has grown substantially over the past six or plus years from one
  • 00:46:54
    I think six staff and a manager that manages that group specifically.
  • 00:47:03
    So that accounts for a big portion of that.
  • 00:47:06
    We also have an extra attorney that now is funded through DSI and a few that
  • 00:47:14
    and Water also has this year added an attorney as well, added funding in for an attorney so we have that position.
  • 00:47:27
    We have added support staff in the Criminal Division as you'll see when we get into those slides our caseloads there and our court appearances and
  • 00:47:37
    and the City Council.
  • 00:48:10
    This is our general fund budget actuals and just historic through the last couple of years.
  • 00:48:17
    You'll see our variances there are always in the positive.
  • 00:48:20
    As a note, this does include ONS and so you'll see a very large number there for FY 2022 which accounts for several open positions that ONS was working to hire at that point and that money
  • 00:48:37
    did come back in as a surplus into the city that year.
  • 00:48:48
    And here's our composite budget summary for the fund lines.
  • 00:48:55
    through different FYs.
  • 00:48:58
    You will see a change to salaries and that was coming from this year.
  • 00:49:08
    We did a salary change for several attorney classifications that happened during the year.
  • 00:49:14
    It resulted in an MOU with the union based on equity and keeping pace with the different cities for attorney salaries.
  • 00:49:27
    We were falling quite behind and having a hard time recruiting.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 00:49:37
    I see a question from Ms. Naker.
  • 00:49:39
    Go ahead.
  • 00:49:40
    Thanks Council President.
• • Rebecca Noecker
  • 00:49:42
    What's Fund 211?
  • 00:49:43
    It looks new in 2025.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 00:49:49
    I believe it's ARP.
  • 00:49:52
    Yeah, so I thought I didn't want to say that wrong.
• • SPEAKER_07
  • 00:49:55
    Yeah, those are our ARP attorneys, so that's the 6.5 ARP.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 00:50:00
    It has a different name than it used to, so it used to be ARPA.
  • 00:50:05
    And now we're calling it something different.
  • 00:50:11
    So here's our 2025 proposed budget highlights.
  • 00:50:14
    We're requesting to add a victim witness support staff.
  • 00:50:18
    Now to be clear, we're not adding a new FTE in terms of a new body in the office.
  • 00:50:24
    This individual already works here.
  • 00:50:26
    What we're doing is shifting an individual from a grant funded position to an FTE position.
  • 00:50:31
    And this is part of a strategy that we would propose that would
  • 00:50:36
    to incrementally move these folks from grant-funded positions into FTE positions to ensure that we don't fail in our statutory duty to support these victims.
  • 00:50:49
    And as you'll see when we get into some of the numbers in the criminal division, those supports are continuing to increase both in the number of contacts with each victim and the number of cases.
  • 00:51:02
    our other proposed budget highlight is Ethos and we've requested a line item for that and I know you all are familiar with that project.
  • 00:51:13
    We included a separate, you look like you have a question.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 00:51:17
    So I saw Ms. Bui with a question and I think Ms. Yang, no okay so we'll go to Ms. Bui.
• • Anika Bowie
  • 00:51:22
    Thank you, Council President.
  • 00:51:23
    I had a question around the victim witness support staff.
  • 00:51:26
    Is this person already hired or is this a vacancy or is this just going to continue on with the same staff but just transfer everywhere there's sorts of funds coming from?
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 00:51:34
    Yes, Council Member.
  • 00:51:35
    So there's a person currently in that position that is the method of funding their salary is being shifted.
• • Anika Bowie
  • 00:51:41
    Okay, thank you.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 00:51:44
    For the ethos line item we're requesting to actually have a line item added to the budget as you know We began this program in 2019 and we never had a line item for it.
  • 00:51:56
    So we did the best we could to Have it funded by grants We generously received money from the council
  • 00:52:05
    In a previous year that was one-time funding and That grant money is going away.
  • 00:52:12
    We have used up the money that was granted to us from Council and we really want to see this program continue and grow and the way to ensure that is to make sure that we have a continuing line item in the budget and so $70,000 is our ongoing ask and then we have a one-time 30,000 added to that for this year and
  • 00:52:34
    so that we can move towards shifting more of that work in-house which helps save money for the program over time.
  • 00:52:49
    Here's some specific information for our Criminal Division.
  • 00:52:53
    I want to highlight our Community Justice Unit because we shifted how that unit did work in 2019
  • 00:53:04
    and that unit and those folks guide our non-traditional prosecution efforts which go directly to our mission for procedural justice and ensuring that we give folks maximum opportunity to reintegrate, to, you know,
  • 00:53:29
    to help them face the substantial challenges that they have in the system in a way that's most beneficial to the community.
  • 00:53:37
    And having these folks dedicated to reviewing those cases has helped us to incrementally over time continue to grow those programs.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 00:53:50
    Can I ask as a follow up on this?
  • 00:53:52
    Sure.
  • 00:53:53
    What does it look like for someone to interact with the Community Justice Unit successfully?
  • 00:53:57
    And then how does this?
  • 00:53:59
    I think I just need a refresher since it's been a minute since I talked about this.
  • 00:54:02
    How does this work with the County Attorney's Office, if at all, to actually help divert people?
  • 00:54:08
    I just want to understand it a little better.
  • 00:54:09
    Could you remind me how this works from a person perspective?
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 00:54:14
    So the Community Justice Unit primarily
  • 00:54:20
    does case reviews and determines whether or not cases can be shifted to any kind of non-traditional prosecution and that includes ethos, our gun diversion genesis program, more traditional diversion or specialty courts.
  • 00:54:41
    I would say in terms of interacting with the county attorney's office,
  • 00:54:47
    We have a continual relationship throughout the office with them when we need to.
  • 00:54:53
    Based on case work, we do a lot of work with them around gun violence reduction as well as the specialty courts.
  • 00:55:02
    In the specialty court, our city prosecutor sits with the county prosecutor and they do a lot of those cases together.
  • 00:55:11
    but as far as Ethos or other programs that have city jurisdiction, our jurisdiction is separate from the county's jurisdiction so we don't often interact with them in terms of case review necessarily unless we have an offender that might have multiple cases.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 00:55:33
    And within that structure
  • 00:55:34
    What type of offenses would a resident end up interacting with CJU with?
  • 00:55:40
    What are they potentially being non-traditionally prosecuted for?
  • 00:55:45
    I just am having trouble coming up with what are the examples of offenses that we try to do.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 00:55:50
    So there's a wide variety of offenses that might come into any one of those programs, anything from thefts, petty thefts, assaults,
  • 00:56:08
    this year.
  • 00:56:19
    and again the screening of those cases the community justice unit prosecutors might not always be who the members of the community would interact with so the members of the community that are coming through the system would interact with all of our prosecutors in different ways.
  • 00:56:37
    People who come through ethos
  • 00:56:40
    of the City of St. Paul, City of St. Paul, City of St. Paul, City of St. Paul, City of St. Paul,
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 00:57:09
    for the update on the CJU.
  • 00:57:14
    I just have a question particularly around the budget.
• • Anika Bowie
  • 00:57:30
    Like do you have numbers connected to how much this unit costs on an annual basis?
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 00:57:38
    We don't have them broken out that way, but we can certainly provide you with that information as a follow up.
  • 00:57:45
    I will say that non-traditional prosecution does cost more in time and personnel than traditional prosecution.
  • 00:57:56
    but our belief is and what we see is that particularly in recidivism rates so if you look at ethos recidivism rate is about 9% meaning only 9% of those folks who have gone through that program come back through as opposed to about 30%, 32% in regular prosecution
  • 00:58:19
    and those numbers I think we would see the cost of running these programs still gives us a substantial savings and a much better public safety outcome for our communities than traditional prosecution.
• • Anika Bowie
  • 00:58:44
    I agree.
  • 00:58:45
    Can I follow up with another question?
  • 00:58:47
    Can you explain just the model?
  • 00:58:49
    Is this like an RFP partnership, or do we have assigned staff to this?
  • 00:58:56
    and I really, really prioritize this.
  • 00:59:00
    I've actually seen it in live action of how our community justice unit was formed years ago in 2019 and how we use like non-traditional practices as peace circles and a lot of the restorative practices that we see adopted.
  • 00:59:17
    Can you just share just like what are the range of community partners and how is the city
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 00:59:23
    of the city of St. Paul.
  • 00:59:48
    of the state of
  • 01:00:06
    We use restorative justice practices in gun diversion and we are the only program that the American Prosecutors Association is aware of that does this work the way that we are doing it.
  • 01:00:24
    and we've grown that work from our initial pilot into what is now the Genesis Project and that is our partnership with Urban Ventures which allows really comprehensive wraparound services to be added to that alternative to traditional prosecution.
  • 01:00:44
    and so we're really excited about the outcomes for folks and our ability to work also with ONS and our police department to identify and off-ramp folks from a trajectory into gun violence.
  • 01:01:01
    and we also have worked for years with Dispute Resolution Center that has deep roots here in St Paul and really helped us to build Ethos as a neighborhood based program.
  • 01:01:17
    Our goal remains with that program that we have a real good cross section of this community that can serve on these circles.
  • 01:01:30
    and that the cases that come before those circles that we can have community, impacted community in those circles and that does include folks with lived experience, those that have gone through the justice system.
  • 01:01:49
    We often have people that go through the Ethos program and really want to get trained to participate in that program as a circle member.
  • 01:01:58
    so that's a bit about our community involvement with those programs.
  • 01:02:08
    Another note on the traditional diversion side, Justice Point has a piece of the wraparound service programming for that and that is a district-wide program from a contract that's out of the county and that's by statute.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 01:02:26
    I just want to give a time check to folks that we have at least 30 minutes left and we have I think over a dozen slides to get through and want to really be able to dig into our areas of interest for the budget.
  • 01:02:37
    So I find the updates very helpful, City Attorney Olson, I really appreciate that.
  • 01:02:41
    I also think we could spend maybe a little more time as just, what are you asking for this year from the council and the budget?
  • 01:02:49
    I don't want to breeze through the programmatic updates.
  • 01:02:51
    I think that helps us get a sense of how that informs that.
  • 01:02:54
    and then if folks don't mind holding questions or just helping us get through this a little further so we can keep it moving.
  • 01:03:00
    Thank you.
  • 01:03:01
    Go ahead.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 01:03:02
    Thank you.
  • 01:03:05
    So the proposed budget highlights slide are two asks for this year and that includes the shift for the victim witness staff.
  • 01:03:13
    the one FTE to shift to general fund and then also the ethos, establishing the ethos line item.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 01:03:20
    And is that, so that I understand, the victim witness support staff is a currently grant funded position that we want to continue to offer support to victims.
  • 01:03:29
    that is just going into general fund and then ethos is just to continue one time the program operating or I just want to make sure what that means in terms of operations and people doing this work.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 01:03:42
    Yep, thank you.
  • 01:03:43
    So the ethos line item is a request for ongoing funding and that's the $70,000 to establish an ongoing line item.
  • 01:03:50
    in our budget yearly, that would be at least $70,000.
  • 01:03:55
    And then in working with the mayor's office, because we had proposed our $100,000 and part of that was $30,000 in one time and then $70,000 in ongoing.
  • 01:04:10
    That is due to us working to bring more of the work in-house, which brings the cost down.
• • Rebecca Noecker
  • 01:04:21
    I'm trying to understand, Ethos is a current program, so how has it been funded to date?
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 01:04:36
    It's been funded through a grant that we received from the DOJ as well as a one-time funding grant from the Council in a prior budget year.
  • 01:04:47
    We also have taken some money from other line items in the City Attorney's Office as needed.
  • 01:04:55
    We've never had an operating budget for this program.
• • Rebecca Noecker
  • 01:05:00
    And the reason why that can't
  • 01:05:04
    continues because the grant is expiring?
  • 01:05:06
    Correct.
  • 01:05:08
    It would be helpful to just see a breakdown of the, as Councilmember Bowie asked for, of the ethos budget and then just where those dollars have been coming from to date so we can understand the proposed shift.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 01:05:20
    Sure.
  • 01:05:20
    I can get that for you guys.
  • 01:05:22
    Thanks.
  • 01:05:23
    I see Councilmember Johnson, go ahead.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 01:05:25
    Yeah, and sorry that this is also redundant, but could you just again remind me of the size of the FTE capacity for the program?
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 01:05:34
    How many people support Ethos?
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 01:05:37
    Yeah, like how many FTEs are currently for Ethos?
  • 01:05:39
    Is it just the one?
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 01:05:41
    We have one paralegal position that does administration for that program, yes.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 01:05:48
    Okay, and then just kind of looking at the updates of the amount of people being served by the program, is that paralegal also a part of that or is that the services that have been provided by Urban Ventures?
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 01:06:02
    Urban Ventures is brand new this past year.
  • 01:06:05
    The ethos numbers are all ethos and the paralegal does administration for all of those cases that you see numbers for there.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 01:06:18
    okay and then the just a follow-up the total served since 2020 does that add on cumulatively or is that like is it 58 2020 and then cumulatively 112 so inclusive of the 58 year after year yeah those are by your numbers okay okay thank you
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 01:06:40
    I wanted to just add just a thinking out loud thing that so it's my understanding with ethos too because I know you're gonna give us a breakout of the budget and all that and I appreciate that that part of the value of this program is that it actually enlists community members want to participate in restorative justice to build relationships and literally through the circle model they go through a restorative justice process with the person who committed an offense and they create accountability and
  • 01:07:08
    and the City Council.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 01:07:32
    yes yes so all of the folks that serve on the circles are community members within the community of St Paul from various different neighborhoods and walks of life and they volunteer their time they do get stipends for circle but they are volunteers that sign up to get trained and there have been trained thus far by dispute resolution center
  • 01:07:56
    and we have a contract with Dispute Resolution Center to do that work.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 01:07:59
    Thanks.
  • 01:08:00
    Helpful to just reground myself in what it is and for all of us.
  • 01:08:03
    Go ahead, Ms. Johnson.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 01:08:05
    Thank you.
  • 01:08:08
    City Attorney, I guess my question that I would love to see, and I think it's more of a follow-up, is just you mentioned that the Council previously had approved a grant as well, I believe, from the City Council, from our previous Council, and I'd just love to
  • 01:08:25
    I have to find out more about that.
  • 01:08:27
    I have to head out for a Gold Line Corridor Commission meeting, so I will have to head out a little bit earlier for your presentation.
  • 01:08:34
    But I just would love to get some follow up on what that was and what the decision was made so I can learn more about that allocation.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 01:08:43
    Sure.
  • 01:08:43
    Thank you.
  • 01:08:44
    So a couple of years ago, we received $100,000 from Council that we that the Council had decided to provide for support to build continue to build the program.
  • 01:09:02
    And that was during COVID.
  • 01:09:05
    And so we were able to kind of stretch that money out to a couple of years.
  • 01:09:11
    And so the remainder of that money
  • 01:09:13
    I think we had a little bit left at the beginning of this year, but we shifted it, I think, from 22 to 23.
  • 01:09:20
    We used part of it in 22, part of it in 23, and then a little tail of it at the beginning of this year, if I'm correct.
  • 01:09:28
    So that was something that was extremely helpful for the program and did allow us to expand, continue to expand
  • 01:09:39
    during that time.
  • 01:09:40
    As you can see our numbers, particularly in the past year, continue to grow.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 01:09:43
    Thank you.
  • 01:09:45
    I think the importance of really diving into it, just some of the data that you provided here in the presentation.
  • 01:09:53
    And then I've been kind of skipping ahead to some of the overall backlog numbers, the amount served.
  • 01:10:00
    It just seems to be something that has been impactful.
  • 01:10:03
    So I would love to just kind of get a better sense of its financial support.
  • 01:10:11
    Thank you.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 01:10:14
    All right, and thanks for helping us understand.
  • 01:10:16
    Within all the good programmatic updates we're about to get, I just wanted to make sure we're holding what of this is resulting in a budget request.
  • 01:10:23
    But let's keep working through the programmatic updates and getting questions and appreciate you taking this at the pace we're trying to create.
  • 01:10:28
    Thanks.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 01:10:29
    Sure, sure.
  • 01:10:30
    I'm trying to move forward here.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 01:10:32
    Yep.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 01:10:35
    Okay, I just want to spend a minute on this since you guys had questions on the impact and amounts here.
  • 01:10:40
    So what Councilmember Johnson was mentioning, our total service since 2020.
  • 01:10:46
    So we did get the program up and running in 2019.
  • 01:10:48
    And then of course, we ran into COVID in 2020.
  • 01:10:51
    we started out small there at 58 and then you can see that we've we've had a mission to continue to grow and even through the challenges of COVID we continue to do that and now we're up at 192 so that's pretty exciting we want to continue to move as many cases into the program as we can
  • 01:11:17
    We did give you guys all a separate handout that we knew there wouldn't be time to go over but there's so many exciting participant reviews and each person who you see in here, we did get permission.
  • 01:11:30
    Obviously names aren't attached but we did get their permission to share that but we frequently ask participants about their experience.
  • 01:11:39
    and we really want to make sure that this program is highly relevant for people so it's a good news story to share and I hope you enjoy reading those at the time that you have later.
  • 01:11:53
    This slide does include both a participant, a victim and a community circle member to kind of share the perspectives of each of those folks in working through in that program.
  • 01:12:07
    I'm gonna skip through to our overall diversion stats.
  • 01:12:12
    So this is Diversion this is the diversion program that the county runs for the district.
  • 01:12:18
    This is the program that councilmember boy I mentioned Justice Point does the wraparound services for and we do refer also as many folks as we can into that program as
  • 01:12:32
    as we can and you can see our by the year numbers and those are all cumulative so that's each year the amount of people that go through
  • 01:12:46
    I did mention something here.
  • 01:12:48
    This is the gun diversion that is now called the Genesis program As a reminder last year there was money that was granted both for This the Genesis program from the mayor's public safety aid As well as on us to partner on this for 84,000 in a year to 250,000 that goes into it for three years to build that portion and
  • 01:13:14
    and just to be clear the Genesis program is separate from Ethos so while it uses an Ethos component of restorative justice circles it is a separate diversion.
  • 01:13:30
    and here's a little bit more on our gun diversion stats.
  • 01:13:33
    This program, as you know, is fairly new and we've worked in conjunction with the SPPD to identify appropriate cases and review those cases for inclusion.
  • 01:13:50
    So our status of approved cases here is a total of 31 and we've had 13 complete the program so far.
  • 01:14:02
    And here's a breakdown from gender, race and age.
  • 01:14:07
    You can see that both the amount that we review in total and approved cases and declined cases come majority from young black males.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 01:14:19
    Can I ask a basic question as we understand this data?
  • 01:14:24
    And this is just meant at trying to understand the gun diversion program.
  • 01:14:30
    So it says, to keep low-level non-violent gun offenders from re-entering the system, what is a low-level non-violent gun offender?
  • 01:14:39
    What does that mean?
  • 01:14:40
    What offenses are they committing that are gun-related but non-violent and low-level?
  • 01:14:46
    Possession.
  • 01:14:48
    So they're basically, they haven't like fired their gun at someone, they haven't committed any type of gun violence, but they have illegal possession of a gun.
  • 01:14:59
    And they are just in violation of that.
  • 01:15:00
    And then, so what we're doing here with this initiative is we are, instead of sending them into a criminalization route, we're saying we're just going to divert you from that and from that nonviolent offense.
  • 01:15:15
    make sure that you're not incarcerated or caught up in that cycle.
  • 01:15:19
    Yes, that is the intent.
  • 01:15:21
    That was the missing foundational piece I was having trouble understanding.
  • 01:15:24
    Thank you for helping me understand that.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 01:15:30
    Oh, Council Member Johnson.
  • 01:15:33
    Thank you.
  • 01:15:34
    And is that, like, is it fair to assume that maybe potentially the declined cases are because it's more than the offenses more than that?
  • 01:15:43
    Or like what kind of leads to the growing decline cases?
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 01:15:48
    There might be a number of reasons why cases are declined.
  • 01:15:54
    and I can set up a separate time with you to kind of dig into that too if you're interested and we have a document that we use with SBPD where we go through and look at what might qualify someone to be in the program and we started that out pretty conservatively so there were a lot of people that
  • 01:16:19
    if they had a prior offense for instance I think and I don't know this for sure but a lot of what you're seeing is probably if people had another prior offense they wouldn't have initially been eligible.
  • 01:16:31
    Now we're expanding that criteria so right now with Genesis we're beginning to expand that criteria and what was really important to us was to prove this concept and to prove it in a way that was
  • 01:16:43
    for Public Safety.
  • 01:16:46
    And the reason this program is important is the same reason why we started out really conservatively, which is there's a high correlation and this information is from independent research done by Joyce Foundation, Yale, places that are really involved with looking at gun violence statistics.
  • 01:17:06
    And what we know is that
  • 01:17:08
    almost every single person who ends up firing a gun in street gun violence has started out with a possession charge that doesn't mean that everyone who has a possession charge ends up in street violence right we know that but our hope with this program is that working collaboratively with our police department with ONS who's really in the community and working with those folks that are in gun violence that we can
  • 01:17:37
    helped to identify people who are on the edge, who are moving into that life, moving in those circles, and really helped off-ramp them.
  • 01:17:46
    So in the world of community violence intervention that we can intercede here and offer a different opportunity that gets at
  • 01:18:00
    and this is the strength of Urban Ventures is that they're working with these folks to do work on deep rooted trauma, to look at what's bringing them into that criminalization and then help them to build a better life for themselves and their families.
  • 01:18:31
    So here's just a note about victim services.
  • 01:18:34
    And again, this also goes to our budget ask here.
  • 01:18:36
    So we have a requirement to assist victims under Minnesota Statute 611A.
  • 01:18:48
    And that's part of the reason why this program is really important.
  • 01:18:52
    We want to make sure that we're meeting our statutory mission and protecting the rights of crime victims, giving them
  • 01:19:00
    is an individual in the system who can help them through this process.
  • 01:19:08
    Our current staffing is, we have two FTEs on the general fund, two FTEs that are on a VOCA grant that is expiring in 2025 and we won't have money to
  • 01:19:22
    to pay for the entirety of those FTEs with that grant through the remainder of the year.
  • 01:19:29
    And then we have an ARP funded individual as well.
  • 01:19:35
    So this is why we're looking at moving those folks incrementally over to FTE positions that are not reliant on non-renewable funding.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 01:19:47
    City Attorney Olson, as we're talking through this, just another point of understanding for me.
  • 01:19:53
    I was recently, I think it was this week or maybe last week at the SPIP annual event where they celebrate their work and recognize survivors.
  • 01:20:03
    So they were talking about their victim services.
  • 01:20:05
    So I guess my question would be how do our victim services within the city and within CAO,
  • 01:20:12
    of the City Council.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 01:20:27
    Sure, I'll try to keep this high level and just to say that SPIP's work, I mean we all work within the team in different ways to support victims, but SPIP's work is an advocacy role.
  • 01:20:40
    They are victim advocates and the victim witness role here is I would say a support role that's not advocacy if that distinction makes sense.
  • 01:20:51
    in that SPIP does work more on the community side, helping victims maybe find housing or deal with financial concerns and other safety concerns.
  • 01:21:08
    Our role would be assisting that person in understanding the system and understanding their role in the case.
  • 01:21:19
    in supporting them in court and often our victim witness folks are sitting with a spit person performing a different support function alongside of them.
  • 01:21:33
    And so we're helping them to really guide them through
  • 01:21:40
    that process and also I think create a bridge between our staff and the victim and prosecutors.
  • 01:21:49
    Sometimes it can be really intimidating and scary for a victim to speak to an attorney, speak to a prosecutor and try to understand that.
  • 01:21:59
    And so our victim witness folks do a really good job at assisting those victims to understand that and to
  • 01:22:08
    to kind of take it to a more interpersonal level, someone that they know they can call.
  • 01:22:15
    They say Mitra is my person that I call at the city attorney's office.
  • 01:22:18
    That feels a lot better than wondering who you're going to get on the phone when you're trying to understand what's happening to you.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 01:22:25
    And SPIP is heavily focused on domestic violence.
  • 01:22:29
    Is victim services within CAO on all types of victims?
  • 01:22:33
    So not just domestic violence, but if you are
  • 01:22:36
    is here.
  • 01:23:00
    The distinction here is helpful for me because I think until this conversation I sort of unofficially thought it meant like primarily
• • Rebecca Noecker
  • 01:23:27
    of the City of St Paul.
  • 01:23:55
    can you square that with the fact that they're all funded, they're both funded through September and there's two of them.
  • 01:24:01
    I'm just trying to understand what our plan is.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 01:24:03
    Yeah, so they're not fully funded.
  • 01:24:05
    Our ask in that grant, the grant expires on the 30th of September which doesn't take us through the whole year and that doesn't fully fund both positions.
  • 01:24:18
    in any event.
  • 01:24:20
    So we had asked for almost $170,000 and we got about $135,000.
  • 01:24:26
    As far as the exact breakout of the percent of a position, I can't tell you that off the top of my head, but I can certainly get it to you if you want to see that.
  • 01:24:40
    The other problem that we have with the grant is that we can't partially fund people and then partially fund with city dollars.
  • 01:24:48
    Those grants don't work that way.
  • 01:24:49
    They take them from us if we do that.
  • 01:24:52
    and so in order to preserve one of these FTEs, we need to move them over to general services even while we have the grant.
  • 01:25:10
    If we wait until it's completely expired, we don't have a way to pay that person at all that is approved.
  • 01:25:19
    And part of those funds are also for things other than salary.
  • 01:25:24
    So they go to other supports and things like attending community events where we can get the word out about these services and things like that.
  • 01:25:36
    So part of the money that we receive goes to things like that as well.
• • Rebecca Noecker
  • 01:25:40
    And so in terms of the other FTE that will also not be funded and currently isn't fully funded by the grant, is there
  • 01:25:47
    a plan to shift that person as well or is that position just going to go away?
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 01:25:51
    Yes, we would like to shift that person as well.
• • Rebecca Noecker
  • 01:25:55
    And how will that work if we're applying for, you're talking about one FTE in next year's budget?
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 01:26:02
    Well, we're hoping that we can, we'll make the request again next year for the next individual as well as the ARP.
• • Rebecca Noecker
  • 01:26:13
    Okay, I'm curious about the
  • 01:26:14
    the gap between September and the end of the year that you were describing that doesn't work for one of them but seems to work for the other one to keep them on board.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 01:26:22
    Yes, it's a problem.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 01:26:25
    So if I'm understanding correctly, I hope you don't mind me, but like two FTEs going into next year, Grant continues to fund one of them, but under funding essentially, but continuing that work.
  • 01:26:36
    FTE from General Fund for the other, because you can't combine it.
  • 01:26:39
    Correct.
  • 01:26:39
    And then that grant will time out, and then you want to continue on so the next year's budget ask would include continuing that on.
  • 01:26:47
    So the ask here is for one.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 01:26:48
    and then the next request would be for the ARP individual and then the remaining grant individual.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 01:26:56
    So a two-year path to keep these FTEs?
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 01:26:59
    Yes, and then if we don't get them transformed into FTEs, we would end up losing those positions and so we would end up losing that support
  • 01:27:15
    for victims.
• • Rebecca Noecker
  • 01:27:16
    So just one more question.
  • 01:27:17
    So by making one of them an FTE, a general fund funded FTE next year, does that mean we're leaving some of those grant dollars on the table?
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 01:27:26
    No.
  • 01:27:27
    And Jess or Tara, they work with the grant specifically, and so could probably explain more specifically exactly the breakdown of those dollars, Jess, if you could.
• • SPEAKER_01
  • 01:27:40
    Thank you, thank you Councilmember Naker.
  • 01:27:42
    Jessica McConaughey, I am Deputy City Attorney in the Criminal Division.
  • 01:27:47
    I assure you we will not be leaving that grant money on the table.
  • 01:27:53
    The way that these federal grants work, as you all know, their grant year is different than the fiscal year of the city.
  • 01:28:02
    So the grant year is typically run from October 1st of that year to September 30th of the following year.
  • 01:28:09
    and so when they allot or approve X amount of dollars in the grant, that is at the last quarter of the city's fiscal year and then the first three quarters of the next year.
  • 01:28:25
    And so our current victim services grant that we just received that expires on September 30th of 2025, it was an X amount of dollars.
  • 01:28:38
    and that X amount of dollars does not pay for the entirety for the two FTEs that are doing this work.
  • 01:28:53
    It doesn't even pay for the full year for both of those individuals.
  • 01:28:57
    It pays a portion.
  • 01:28:58
    So we knew that there was going to be a gap there.
  • 01:29:01
    What it also does is it pays for
  • 01:29:04
    and the
  • 01:29:21
    what it also pays for is training and education for our team so that we are a victim that we employ a victim-centered approach to the work that we do so when you look at this slide what you are seeing is we're showing you the breakdown and why this this ask is is is dire okay
  • 01:29:43
    so the two FTEs that are currently being funded under this federal grant okay it doesn't pay in full for their salaries for the whole year it pays partial so we're kind of playing the shell game we also then have the situation with the ARP funded which also expires at the end of next year so the ask and the support of the mayor's office
  • 01:30:11
    was to move 1.0 victim witness position off of that federal grant and put it in the city's general fund so that we can sustain this rather than having to chase after grants.
  • 01:30:26
    And as everybody in this room knows, grants are great, but they're never a guarantee.
  • 01:30:33
    And what I will say is even over the last four years,
  • 01:30:37
    We have seen reductions in the amount of grants that have been available specifically for this work to victims.
  • 01:30:46
    I stand here as a concerned citizen and as the deputy of our criminal division that I fully anticipate that that trend is going to continue starting from today on out.
  • 01:30:58
    Draw your own conclusions.
  • 01:31:00
    So anything we can do to help support
  • 01:31:03
    of the City of St. Paul, City Council, and the City of St. Paul, and the City of St. Paul, and the City of St. Paul, and the City of St. Paul, and the City of St. Paul, and the City of St. Paul, and the City of St. Paul, and the City of St. Paul, and the City of St. Paul, and
  • 01:31:33
    and at a minimum keep the folks that we have that are doing this work.
• • Rebecca Noecker
  • 01:31:38
    Yeah, I appreciate that.
  • 01:31:39
    I think I got a very comprehensive answer to a question that was more simple, which was just what are we going to do with the grant dollars that we are no longer using to cover that position if we're making it a full-time position, not at all questioning the need for this program or the value of having it be sustainable.
  • 01:31:55
    So maybe that's something we can get follow-up on.
  • 01:31:57
    I just want to understand where those dollars are going to go if they're not going to that position.
• • SPEAKER_01
  • 01:32:01
    Thank you Councilmember and hopefully we're going to be able to pay this other person in full through September because when the grant ends if we aren't able to find other funding so thank you.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 01:32:18
    So we'll go till 1140 just to allow some additional time and then we'll have pre-council at 1145 so why don't you
  • 01:32:27
    I guess Ms. Olsen if you want to select some highlights that you also want us to understand with respect to the budget and other important updates on the work that affects our constituents I do want to make sure if there's any other time for general discussion or questions we can get to that with the time we have left
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 01:32:43
    Sure, so I want to highlight the criminal backlog for a minute because we have six folks that were brought on and we are asking to keep those folks, not this year but as you know the ARP ends within the next year and we've continued to work on the backlog but we still have, as you can see, cases that are outstanding
  • 01:33:10
    of the City of St. Paul.
  • 01:33:23
    stats here, and you can prove them at your leisure, but these really show that I want to highlight the amount of cases that we handle per year per prosecutor, which is well above the American Prosecutors Association and ABA's recommended 400 per prosecutor.
  • 01:33:50
    so keeping these folks is also pretty dire in terms of ensuring that we can do the work in the way that we intend.
  • 01:34:01
    I will skip through the the Civil Division updates pretty quickly.
  • 01:34:08
    We've done and continue to do a lot of work on unsheltered work and encampments, downtown livability issues,
  • 01:34:16
    problem properties, familiar faces is also a large area of work.
  • 01:34:24
    We're working on rent stabilization, cannabis legislation.
  • 01:34:28
    I think the basic thing that I want as a takeaway here for you guys to think about is that the programs that we have added as a city, which I know I think are very value-add,
  • 01:34:41
    have not resulted in additional attorneys
• • Rebecca Noecker
  • 01:34:59
    I know you skipped past the ordinance changes, but I was curious about how much time and staff resources are going into supporting the Council with legislative changes.
  • 01:35:13
    I know there's been concern about how long it's been taking to get ordinances through
  • 01:35:18
    to the city attorney's office.
  • 01:35:19
    And I'm curious if that's a metric that you use as a key performance indicator.
  • 01:35:23
    So how much legislation initiated by this council, I would say, because I think both of these here were not initiated by this body.
  • 01:35:32
    How many of those ordinances has your office worked on?
  • 01:35:34
    How many have been seen through to completion?
  • 01:35:35
    And how long has that process taken?
  • 01:35:37
    Do you measure that as a metric of performance or pay attention to changes in that over time?
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 01:35:46
    Thank you Councilmember.
  • 01:35:47
    I think we do pay attention to how long things take, but I would say that we work to a certain standard of excellence and not to a particular time frame.
  • 01:36:02
    Each kind of issue and case is different.
  • 01:36:07
    Things can be a lot more complex than they might seem.
  • 01:36:11
    And to your question, do we work on those changes for Council?
  • 01:36:21
    We should be involved in working on every single ordinance change in the city, and that's part of what we do.
  • 01:36:27
    of the City of St. Paul.
  • 01:36:46
    Partially completed ordinances or completed ordinances, it can be as complicated or more complicated to work through those and redo them as if we had initially drafted them.
  • 01:36:59
    So I think continuing to partner and work together on the best way that we can meet timeline expectations as well as ensure complete research and legal work, we'll continue to partner with you on that.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 01:37:17
    Thanks, and just to add on to that comment and just reflect back some of the budget process this year.
  • 01:37:23
    Ms. Olsen, I think you know this just from our memo we sent to the mayor back in June where we had basically taken and crystallized a bunch of different priorities across members, many of which are in the budget and we're working through that now.
  • 01:37:36
    But one of the top things I heard from members is that just more capacity to do our policy work within CAO would be incredibly valuable.
  • 01:37:44
    and we are working to hire a chief policy officer on our end who can take on a bulk of the actual like research and context data and substantiating of the public policy problems we want to solve with you and with the administration but we also won't be able to make those policies a reality without the capacity and I just say that from a place of shared concern for all our residents and that we have, I've had the chance to work with really great city attorneys in my time at the council
  • 01:38:11
    We work with Ms. Skarda very closely.
  • 01:38:14
    We've worked with previous attorneys and when our city attorney, our assigned attorney, is on vacation, gets sick, or something else happens, I often feel at risk of all our work grinding to a halt.
  • 01:38:26
    Because that one person is carrying so much and the people that support them are also carrying it.
  • 01:38:32
    that is a concern area for me and we get somebody to fill in to just help us run our meeting and helping us run our meeting is like the absolute bare minimum procedural requirement because there's so much other work that we're doing as the policy owner of the city so I'm committed to improving that with you I just wanted to say that out here in this space because I think it is another area of deep desire for members to talk through in the coming budget cycles this one and ongoing around having
  • 01:39:00
    you know there's policy capacity you have to understand the legal implications and then you also have to look at the financial implications and like no ordinance is just as simple as let's just write it on this word doc and get it here like I understand that we understand and want to work with you on that so I just want to express these sentiments as they're related to the topic because I think it's important for us to keep working through that together
  • 01:39:21
    members, I deeply appreciate all that you're fielding.
  • 01:39:25
    We're working through a lot of this.
  • 01:39:27
    We just got to civil division after talking through all the good work happening in criminals.
  • 01:39:30
    So hope you're hearing this from a place of partnership, but this is something that members, I think, really need support in if we want to be able to pass good policy in partnership.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 01:39:40
    Yes, thank you Council President.
  • 01:39:43
    You know, to that end we're looking at, you know, passing administrative citations and we're working really hard on that and really in support of that and that will take additional folks in our Civil Division as well.
  • 01:39:54
    And so, we'll be pushing hard to get additional staff for that work, to support that work throughout the city.
  • 01:40:01
    I'm certainly in support of adding individuals to the Civil Division that can help support Council and, you know, the work that you all do.
  • 01:40:09
    as you point out not in a position to be too deep into every single initiative that we're working so that you know every single time someone goes on vacation or has a medical issue or something that you know we we do have backups that are identified for everyone and that's throughout all our departments that we support but often you know there is a lead attorney or someone that's working on something and
  • 01:40:35
    If they do go out, we really, really think it's important for people's mental health and wellness that they are able to take vacations and their weekend time and have family time.
  • 01:40:45
    And we want to really support that and that they're able to do that too.
  • 01:40:48
    And so, as I said, we'll continue to partner with you.
  • 01:40:53
    You can always reach me and we're doing the best we can with what we've got at the moment, but we're always in support of adding individuals that can help do more.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 01:41:05
    Well, and that's great for me to hear, because we said very clearly at the outset of this budget process, we are very interested in that capacity, and we would like to work with you to get there.
  • 01:41:14
    So let's work through that in this cycle and the next one.
  • 01:41:18
    But thank you for being clear about where you stand, and I know there's more discussion to come so that we can get good work done for the community, including the ordinances ahead of us at the 330, which we appreciate your help on.
  • 01:41:31
    Thanks.
  • 01:41:33
    doing a time check it's 11.38 so we did say we do pre-council at 11.45 and I want people to have a chance for a break I guess are there other key updates here you want to cover in that time and then we should probably wrap for now sure I do want to do
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 01:41:52
    I just want to put a plug in quick for the Justice Initiative because I think this forum is important to be able to remind folks that this is an all-city initiative that the City Attorney's Office runs that has to do with racial covenants that are in several of our deeds.
  • 01:42:10
    of the City of St Paul.
  • 01:42:26
    of what we've got in the city and that means that racial covenants still exist in several of the city lots on people's homes and it's something that really deeply affects our community and we're committed to working with folks pro bono so that means you submit it to the city.
  • 01:42:45
    to work with you on the application and it's of no charge to homeowners within the city.
  • 01:42:50
    So I want to put that plug in but it's very easy to do.
  • 01:42:54
    There's a website online and please at your community meetings remind folks that this is out there and it's something that they can do to increase equity within our city.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 01:43:10
    Thank you.
  • 01:43:11
    We would love to get that information out to property owners who want to take that step and just expunge that systematic racism from old deeds and title certificates.
  • 01:43:23
    This is a great thing to see.
  • 01:43:25
    Are there other points you want to highlight today as we head to close, Ms. Olsen?
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 01:43:31
    We just have litigation left and I'll just give this highlight slide here about our lawsuits that we have pending.
  • 01:43:42
    You can see the breakdown of different types of cases.
  • 01:43:45
    I know we work very closely with you all on where we're at with many of these cases.
  • 01:43:50
    of the City of St. Paul.
  • 01:43:51
    This is our resolutions in 2024.
  • 01:43:53
    You can see these here.
  • 01:43:54
    Obviously, assessments is going to shift in the coming years.
  • 01:43:59
    This was a big year for assessments, but that will shift as we move off of those cases and into the new program that the city has.
  • 01:44:15
    and we continue to have a high rate of favorable decisions and pre-trial settlements and we're very proud of the work that goes into these cases.
  • 01:44:29
    As you know, we're primarily defensive litigation so we don't control what comes in but we work real hard to get success for the city every time.
  • 01:44:40
    Thank you for your attention and time this morning.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 01:44:43
    Thank you.
  • 01:44:44
    As we close, I did want to just also draw council members' attention in the presentation that over the years we've worked together to also support the immigrant and refugee program within your office.
  • 01:44:54
    And I think it's important to highlight that we've been able to build out initiatives with Edmundo and with his team on really supporting our immigrant and refugee community.
  • 01:45:07
    And I feel proud and encouraged today that
  • 01:45:11
    we have capacity to support our residents through the next four years in any way they may need in partnership with our congressional representatives and
  • 01:45:19
    I wanted to also just personally appreciate your division and the work they do and make sure our council members know, just like with Justeeds, the diversion programs, these resources for people to access naturalization, other things that the City Attorney's Office has to offer for our residents, we continue to be here and offer that.
  • 01:45:40
    So I wanted to make sure we wrapped on that and
  • 01:45:44
    to bring it more broadly to the work that your office is doing.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 01:45:47
    Thank you, Council President, for that.
  • 01:45:48
    I appreciate that a lot.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 01:45:49
    Absolutely.
  • 01:45:50
    Former immigration staffer, and then full-time Iranian-Korean, so you know, I don't get to.
  • 01:45:57
    UNO is doing great work, and I think it will become more important in the next four years.
  • 01:46:01
    It is always on the mind.
  • 01:46:03
    Well, this brings us to the close of our budget discussion for today.
  • 01:46:06
    We'll take a couple of minutes break in pre-councils at 11.45.
  • 01:46:09
    Appreciation to all our partners here in your great work.
  • 01:46:11
    We are adjourned.
• • Saura Jost
  • 01:47:29
    2023, St Paul Regional Water Services launched an ambitious 10-year plan.