Budget Committee - November 20, 2024 - The meeting will recess after the second item. The meeting will then reconvene at 1:00 PM in Council Chambers to take up the third item.   11/20/2024

Roll Call

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    St Paul, City Council, Budget Committee, Budget Committee
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    City of St Paul, City Council
• • SPEAKER_04
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    City of St. Paul, City of St. Paul, City of St. Paul, City of St. Paul
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    St Paul, City Council
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    City of St Paul, City Council
• • SPEAKER_04
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    St Paul, City Council, Budget Committee
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    City of St Paul, City Council
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    St Paul, City Council, Budget Committee, Budget Committee
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    City of St Paul, City Council
• • SPEAKER_04
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    St Paul, City Council,
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    St Paul, City Council,
• • SPEAKER_03
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    Welcome back.
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    We are rounding out near the end of our presentations this budget season.
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    I want to welcome up our, first we'll hear today from our partners at the Office of Financial Empowerment, and then we're also going to hear from our partners at the Office of Financial Services on the operations they want to share with us and UN projections.
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    So let's first start with our Director of the Office of Financial Empowerment, Ikram Kaliso.
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    Welcome up, Ms. Kaliso.
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    Thank you for being here.
• • SPEAKER_05
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    Council Members, good morning.
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    Thank you for having us here today to share some updates and highlights from Office of Financial Empowerment.
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    Go ahead and jump in.
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    So you all have probably seen this before, but just kind of a overview of the Office of Financial Empowerment.
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    Our mission is to advance economic democracy that shares prosperity with all St. Paul residents.
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    And we have five key result areas that we work on and some examples of work that fall under all of those different areas.
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    Our first one is St. Paul Residence and Chief Financial Health.
• • SPEAKER_03
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    So there's something going on where it's just projecting a chair.
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    It's doing Clint Eastwood.
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    Is there a way to get the focus on the presentation?
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    I don't know what's being projected.
• • SPEAKER_05
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    So our first one is really focused on financial health and so a couple of the key areas that we have is our guaranteed income medical debt reset initiative, our financial health action coalition that we've been convening for a few years now.
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    and more.
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    And so I'll share more about some of those updates in the coming slides.
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    And then our result number two is really focused on St. Paul Neighborhoods Achieve Community Wealth.
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    And our main program right now is our local fund, which leverages $2.5 million dedicated to supporting worker cooperatives and real estate investment cooperatives through our partnership with Nexus Community Partners, which will share updates on the progress of that as well.
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    And the third is St. Paul residents live in stable, accessible, fair, and equitable housing market.
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    And so a lot of our fair housing work in this includes increasing housing access, decreasing housing displacement, and affirmatively furthering fair housing.
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    And for this, we really rely on our partnerships with PED, for example, and
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    of the City of St Paul.
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    as well and our oldest college-run participants are now actually in pre-k and so they're in school so that's a really exciting milestone.
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    And then our fifth one is that St Paul residents are engaged in public decision making and that's where our financial empowerment community council comes in which they meet quarterly and provide guidance on some of the work that we do and also
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    We get to learn about some work that community organizations are working on advancing, particularly within the policy space.
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    So to start off, just want to give you an opportunity to meet the OFE team and put some faces to those that are doing the work every day and a big shout out to them, which there are a few of them here, to their dedication and energy and everything that it takes to do the work.
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    We are a small team, but a mighty team.
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    So we have Faith Dietz, our Fair Housing Coordinator, Andre, who's our Data Management and Customer Service Coordinator for College Brown St. Paul.
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    We have Kaz, who is our Program Manager for College Brown St. Paul, myself, and then Dennis Walsh, who's our Elementary Coordinator for College Brown, which is a newer role.
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    And then Casey, who's our Financial Capability Program Manager, and then Mai, who is our Shared Ownership Coordinator.
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    So for today, I know we're here for the budget presentation.
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    We are a part of OFS, and so I know OFS already did their presentation.
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    So a big part of our budget is a part of that.
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    But the only difference for us for the 2025 budget in the proposal that was provided is moving two employees to the general fund from
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    the grant funds that we've had to help pay for those positions for the last few years.
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    And that's for the financial capability program manager and the shared ownership coordinator.
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    And so today's focus will be really focused on just providing highlights and updates of the work.
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    So starting off with College Bound St Paul, we have to date over
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    15,200 participants enrolled in the program and over $3.2 million in savings, which is made up of seed deposits, program bonuses, and also savings that families have contributed into their accounts.
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    And our largest single account right now is over $12,000.
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    And then as of recently, we have launch of College Bound Elementary as the oldest participants entered Pre-K this fall.
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    We've been partnering with the St. Paul Public Schools, had a planning process with them over the last couple of years to think through ways that we can integrate College Brown within the school day for students and also parents and caregivers for after school and workshops outside of that, which I'll share more about as well.
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    So impact of college-bound and CSAs in general.
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    So we kind of shared the number of total enrollments.
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    Our average account right now is $215.
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    And we are seeing more and more families increase their engagement with the program in terms of making their own deposits.
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    And most recently, there's research from San Francisco's Kindergarten to College, which is a program that we really looked to when we were building ours to learn some best practices because
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    They're kind of the oldest program that's around.
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    They started in kindergarten, and their oldest participants just recently graduated high school.
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    And so there's some really exciting results that came out of that.
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    And so you kind of see that on the slide.
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    But there was a 12% increase in college enrollment, a 30% enrollment gap closed, and 7% higher on time graduation.
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    rate as well as 6% more likely to enroll in college for those that were participants of kindergarten to college compared to students who were not.
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    So College Mound overall, the actual account itself is the tool and the vehicle that we use to help families connect to financial health and child wellbeing resources.
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    And so it's beyond the initial seed deposit, beyond the account itself.
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    focusing on that cradle to career support opportunities and the bonuses that are provided to help incentivize families that are already doing things like taking their children to well baby checkups or participating in WIC for example.
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    And then also families participating in financial health resources with a ton of community organizations that we are lucky to have here in St. Paul that provide.
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    kind of, you know, a lot of wraparound services when it comes to financial health.
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    And then the other piece is our guaranteed income programs which have also been connected to college bound.
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    So community embeddedness for College Bound has been really important and as you all probably remember we had a task force to help design the program for you know the first year and then when we were doing implementation we relied on community partners to help us do user experience testing and so we want to make sure that this is a program that is embedded within the community so
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    A couple of examples of things that we do to kind of get that established is we have Family Deposit Days that we hold at Bremer Bank, which is our financial institution partner that happens quarterly.
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    We have Money Action Day that we hold annually and we usually have over 300 participants that come out.
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    and participate in that.
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    The majority of them are college-bound families, but we also invite anybody else that is interested.
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    We have a community baby shower that we do, which we started during the COVID years.
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    It started as a drive-through community baby shower, and we are continuing to host that in partnership with community partners.
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    And then we have our enrollment and referral partners.
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    For example, WIC, we've been able to integrate College Bound on their forms so that their staff are talking to families about College Bound St. Paul.
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    and we use that as an opportunity to help remind participants of WIC to get, for example, their one-year-old checkup because that's usually when the annual recertification tends to fall off for families.
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    So that's an example of a really strong for a partner that we have.
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    And then we have our community ambassadors program that
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    We've had since the beginning of the program which are community members that help get the word out about College Bound And these are just some pictures from money action day as well as some deposit days that we've had so far
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    So wrapping up on the College Bound piece, so there's obviously our own program that we work on, but we also help a lot of other communities both here within the state of Minnesota and beyond to help them get started.
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    And similar to what we did, we reached out to programs to learn how they did it.
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    And so we've been providing TA and coaching to three other communities within the state so that we can hopefully work towards building a statewide program.
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    program that Youth Prize is leading.
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    So now a little bit about College Round Elementary.
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    Like I said, our oldest participants are- Sorry, one moment, Director.
• • SPEAKER_03
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    I think I saw a question from Councilwoman Naker.
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    Go ahead, Councilwoman.
• • Rebecca Noecker
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    Thanks, Council President.
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    Director, you just mentioned that we're helping these other communities with technical assistance and coaching.
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    Is that something that we're getting compensated for?
• • SPEAKER_05
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    So we do that mainly through, we are the convener of the Upper Midwest CSA Consortium.
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    Well now it's actually just the Midwest CSA Consortium through the Mott Foundation and so the funding that they provide helps with providing funding for that.
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    So we're basically doing that both for the local communities here but also hosting the Midwest CSA Consortium which convenes CSA programs twice a year in person and also virtually to
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    So for College Bound Elementary, it's really about city-wide college-going culture and building that.
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    So we went through a process, a planning process with the St. Paul Public Schools.
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    Planning on expanding it to be on the SPPS, but we had to kind of start with that as a place.
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    There's over 40 elementary schools just within the St. Paul Public Schools, and so this shows what the impact of the elementary piece will be.
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    We'll be reaching over 15,000 participants.
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    There'll be an additional $350 in deposits that will be available.
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    through the elementary years and those are going to be connected to college and career readiness programming and activities as well as whole family wealth literacy which there will be financial education that's integrated both within the school curriculum in the school day that will be provided by the school counselors and then also after school programming for students and then workshops that parents and caregivers can that can participate in around financial education and family financial health.
• • SPEAKER_03
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    Director, I have a follow-up from Councilwoman Naker.
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    Go ahead, Ms. Naker.
• • Rebecca Noecker
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    Thanks, Council President.
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    Director, can you just say a little bit more?
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    I'm not sure I understand what it means in terms of us providing prompts for elementary children or caregivers.
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    Are we designing curriculum?
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    Are we teaching in the schools?
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    Can you say a little bit more about the details of how this works?
• • SPEAKER_05
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    yeah so for the college going prompt so there will be so the schools already have a personalized learning plan that they have that they implement within the schools that starts in pre-k and so there will be college bound that will be integrated within that so that you know the students know that they have this account and that is helping them save for their future education and so as part of that they'll be doing you know in school deposit days for example or visiting
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    the bank branch on a field trip or college visits is another one that they'll be doing.
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    And so as part of those there'll be college and career readiness geared prompts that will be provided for the students to participate in.
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    And also that will be provided to parents to participate in, right?
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    For example, the family deposit base that they come to.
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    So the schools already have a personalized.
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    to partner on that.
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    And it'll all be provided through the school counselors, because they're the ones that deliver the PLP.
• • SPEAKER_03
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    Thank you.
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    I see a follow-up question from Councilmember Bowie.
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    Go ahead, Councilwoman.
• • Anika Bowie
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    Thank you, Council President Kram.
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    I just want to say I really appreciate this overview.
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    This is really personal to me just because I have seen the benefit of college readiness programs prior to the College Bound.
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    I'm pretty curious around what is the user experience, particularly around how is someone able to track what
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    of the City of St Paul.
• • SPEAKER_05
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    yeah and totally understand around Councilmember on the it being personal totally get that as well personally for me so
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    On the tracking piece, we're excited about the elementary piece because this is the first time that we're actually able to directly talk to the students because they're big now.
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    We can have a conversation with them.
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    Before, it was really about the family, and it still is about the family.
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    And so the opportunities around doing the in-school deposit days where they get to within their classroom, within their elementary school, make a deposit helps them kind of make that connection to their account.
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    Makes it tangible, makes it real.
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    And then through the personalized learning plans, the way that it's going to be set up is that there will be opportunities for both students and parents to kind of track that.
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    But it's about building engagement, right?
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    And so the bonuses that come in are also another way where it's like, all right, now you're going to have an additional $10 that you get to make into this account that's built for you that you'll be able to use in the future.
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    and so it will be through some of those engagement activities that are done both within the school day and outside of school that will kind of help the students and their parents keep track of that.
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    And then our goal is to continue to increase engagement.
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    So we want families to be logged into their savings portal where they could see a list of all the bonuses that they've earned.
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    as well as their own deposits if they've already done that.
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    And then also come to family deposit days.
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    And so there's always things that they can come to and keep track of.
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    And it is a lot of information, but our goal is to be able to kind of get them to bite off of that little by little over time.
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    But the elementary plan, I think, is a great way to really make it tangible for the students themselves directly.
• • SPEAKER_03
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    And one more from Ms. Naker.
• • Rebecca Noecker
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    Go ahead.
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    Thanks, Council President.
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    I'm just looking through the presentation.
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    I know this is a budget presentation, and I'm not sure I see the budget for any of the programs here.
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    Is that something that we have available that you can share with us?
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    And thinking about the budget for College Bound right now, but also for the other programs in the department.
• • SPEAKER_05
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    Yeah, Councilmember Naker.
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    So today, the goal is to go through updates on what all the different programs are.
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    And so, as far as the city budget, most of the funding that's provided for a lot of these programs are funds that are developed outside of the city.
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    External dollars that come in through philanthropy, corporations, our Fund for the Future campaign that we have for College Bound St. Paul.
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    we're able to and happy to share those budget items.
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    They're not city general dollars and so that's not included in that.
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    And so this presentation is really just about providing updates on some of those.
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    But if you're interested in knowing what the budget is for all of these different programs, we're happy to do that.
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    There are some that are outlined for some of the ones that include ARPA dollars that we'll be talking about.
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    But as far as college bound or the elementary piece, we can provide that information followed up.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 00:25:45
    So I'm hearing you say, overwhelmingly, a lot of the programming is philanthropically supported, where there's public funds.
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    We'll get some of that throughout the updates.
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    And then if we want more, we can follow up.
• • SPEAKER_05
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    OK. OK.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 00:25:56
    Thank you.
• • SPEAKER_05
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    All right, so now I'm changing gear a little bit to our guaranteed income pilots that we've been doing.
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    So you've already heard about Boost a little bit, but just as a refresher, it's a demonstration that we're doing to test providing college bound families with guaranteed income and asset building.
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    And the eligibility criteria is residency, of course, income, and
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    that they are part of College Bound St Paul and we're working with the University of Michigan as our evaluator for this and we're also thinking of a process that we'll be going through to do a longitudinal study around this that kind of looks at what does it look like when you provide guaranteed income to families but also help them provide
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    and the City Council.
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    that every family should have an opportunity to think about both.
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    So, boost, just a refresher, we have to date as of November 15th over $3 million that were provided in direct cash payments and almost 800,000 in progressive deposits that been provided for the college bound participants and so for those that have been
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    Part of Boost, if they were part of the guaranteed income group or the progressive deposits group, they got $1,000 in their college bound accounts.
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    And then just some demographics for the participants of Boost.
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    And then we have languages as well.
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    Over 34% of participants enrolled in a language other than English.
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    We are starting to, the pilot is going to be ending next summer and so the families that got enrolled October of last year have started to get off boarded.
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    It is a 24 month program and so we'll continue to offload families until the middle of next summer but so far I think it's going pretty smooth.
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    There is also the People's Prosperity Guaranteed Income pilot program that we did.
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    And so we do have some research from that that we're happy to share more around.
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    But the Center for Guaranteed Income Research for families that were part of the PPP program found that financial well-being health improved or stable while receiving the payments but declined after payment stopped.
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    A lot of families were able to cover $400 expense, save over $500.
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    And then there were a few symptoms of anxiety or depression and stable physical health.
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    And so we know that with a lot of the pilot programs, when they end, that does have an impact.
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    But I think that's also a big part of the learning that's coming out of the research.
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    There was also an increase of 7 percentage points in participants transitioning to better quality homes during the guaranteed income program and then there's also other outcomes that are listed for what was found and so we're happy to share some of that research in further detail if you are interested.
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    And then this last slide just shows what the spending data from the PPP participants were.
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    And as you can see, a good chunk of it is for purchases and services that families use, as well as food and groceries and other items.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 00:29:42
    And I have a follow-up question from Councilmember Naker.
• • Rebecca Noecker
  • 00:29:44
    Go ahead, Councilwoman.
  • 00:29:45
    Thanks, Council President.
  • 00:29:47
    Director, I'm just curious, I know the purpose of the pilot was to gather this research and then we knew we wouldn't be able to fund this in perpetuity or
• • SPEAKER_05
  • 00:29:54
    and the City Council.
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    what the potential is for the state involvement with that.
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    But all the different pilots that are happening right now, they all have evaluations that are tied to it.
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    There are learnings that are coming out of it and the goal is that that will continue to help inform what we want the future to be.
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    But whether it's around how do we use this as an opportunity for policy reform or policy changes or what programs could look like going forward.
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    a lot of the different programs work with different populations or they might be focused on like youth or you know housing and things like that and so there's still a lot of learning that's coming out of that but the coalition is meeting to kind of help figure out what the future of that is but for us we are planning on doing a longitudinal study of our program continuing with the University of Michigan and so I think there will also be great learning that comes out of that down the line.
  • 00:31:16
    All right, now we'll talk about the local fund, which is worker ownership and community ownership programs.
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    Just as a reminder, there was $2.5 million in ARPA investments that were provided for this, and Nexus Community Partners is the administrator, and that was done through an RFP process.
  • 00:31:38
    I know there's a lot of slides, so I'll skip forward to community ownership programs.
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    So the dollars are divided evenly down for the two different programs.
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    And so for the community ownership one, the aim is to achieve healthy and sustainable neighborhoods by acquiring, demolishing, and or rehabilitating vacant properties.
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    And so the targets for this is that it targets commercial properties on the city's vacant property list.
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    that are also located within the HUD qualified census tracts.
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    And then the activities that are provided under this program through Nexus is technical assistance, pre-development assistance, and then real estate awards that can be provided to those that are interested in either starting one or if there's already existing
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    you know community-owned programs that want to move more towards this model.
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    There is a community ownership grant review committee that's made up of people from Nexus community partners as well as community members and city staff.
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    and then for the worker ownership program, the budget is also 1.25 for this and so this one aims to sustain Paul small businesses facing financial hardships due to enduring negative economic impacts of the pandemic and the focus is on worker ownership models as an approach to mitigate the impacts of the pandemic on also small businesses and eligibility for this is that they're located in the qualified census tract
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    or they meet the SBA definition of a disadvantaged business and so for the worker co-op work co-ops activities that are under that are also you know technical assistance as well.
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    The role of the city with the local fund with the Office of Financial Empowerment is that we're lead project manager and we also receive funding from Living Cities who's like a national intermediary
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    that's helped provide funding for the staffing for the first couple of years.
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    And then we do work closely with PED on the advisory board that they're on, as well as a connector to help us connect to helping get the information out there.
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    And then also they're a key decision.
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    They're at the table as a key decision maker as well.
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    Update so far.
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    So for the worker ownership program, we have store house brochures that's being provided some TA right now for transition to worker owned model.
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    And that's kind of the main thing, to be a part of the.
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    And then there's also a couple of other businesses you can see listed here Twin Cities Impact Cooperative, The Improve Group, and then Break Bread.
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    and all of those are either receiving some type of TA, the emergency assistance grant or other support from Nexus.
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    There is one, the Co-op Minnesota, which is a worker owned ride share model that maybe some of you remember people reached out to us about, but we have been supporting them as well through the local fund.
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    as they are hoping to start.
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    But for all of these, they have to be businesses that are within the City of St Paul or they have to be started here if they're a new business.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 00:35:25
    I saw a question from Council Member Bui.
  • 00:35:27
    Go ahead.
• • Anika Bowie
  • 00:35:27
    Thank you Council President.
  • 00:35:29
    My question around the worker ownership program updates, so it seems like, so are we investing into the technical assistance or are we investing in this co-op to go out and receive technical assistance because I'm just not understanding the translation between
  • 00:35:47
    the program budget and the outcomes not really the outcomes but it seems like you're tracking it based off of technical assistance that they're giving is that the city providing their technical assistance or we're funding that to receive from other people.
• • SPEAKER_05
  • 00:36:03
    Excuse me.
  • 00:36:04
    Yeah, Councilmember, good question.
  • 00:36:06
    So the city is providing Nexus community partners who's administering the program the funding to provide the technical assistance and to provide some of the grants that are available both for the worker co-op and for the community-owned program, community ownership program.
  • 00:36:23
    So the funds that are at Nexus are the ones that are providing help pay for the time for the technical assistance or the actual capital.
  • 00:36:33
    that those qualifying businesses qualify for.
• • Anika Bowie
  • 00:36:37
    So for the budget for 1.25 that is going to Nexus to provide that technical assistance?
• • SPEAKER_05
  • 00:36:48
    So the budget is, yes, is provided for the technical assistance as well as the dollars that are available that the businesses, either whether a worker co-op or a community-owned entity, can access.
• • Anika Bowie
  • 00:37:03
    Okay, thank you.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 00:37:06
    And then I saw in line Council Member Johnson and then Council Member Yang, so let's go to Ms. Johnson then Ms. Yang.
  • 00:37:11
    Thanks, Director.
  • 00:37:11
    Go ahead, Ms. Johnson.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 00:37:13
    Thank you for just the presentation.
  • 00:37:16
    I've actually heard, I'll get notifications about the events and things, but I don't actually think I've had a full-on briefing with you yet this year.
  • 00:37:27
    That's something that I genuinely have a lot of interest in.
  • 00:37:31
    But looking at the worker ownership program updates,
  • 00:37:34
    So the budget was 1250 but like how much has been spent like what is like I guess I was just kind of looking for just some of the kind of this is what we spent up to date here's how we've been able to utilize the initial investment like some of the takeaways from the initial investment and then just like what if any for the upcoming budget cycle is included at all it's a little hard to find that within the
  • 00:38:01
    budget space, so I'm just kind of trying to really grasp being that I wasn't a council member that was a part of some of the initial ARPA discussion investments.
  • 00:38:10
    I haven't really been involved as much into just some of the program overall, even though there is Ward 7 beneficiaries of some of the resources that
  • 00:38:19
    have been allocated so I'm just trying to better understand that so if you could just share a little bit about like of the initial investment here's what we've been able to do here's how much we've been able to spend here is how that looks and I think as I follow through from Council Member Bui's question just so I understand is so is Nexus providing the technical assistance or are they just the financial distributor of the funds so the business will be able to get an outside technical assistance vendor?
• • SPEAKER_05
  • 00:38:48
    Council members.
  • 00:38:49
    So I'll start off with the last piece.
  • 00:38:50
    So yes, technical assistance is provided by Nexus and they also provide the capital to the businesses as they qualify.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 00:39:00
    Okay.
• • SPEAKER_05
  • 00:39:01
    Yep.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 00:39:01
    And just like on average, what are they, I guess I'm just kind of trying to financially hear of the budget that was initially invested.
  • 00:39:09
    Here's the money that we've been able to get out of the door and how that's translated to these four entities that are there.
  • 00:39:15
    Like here's how they've been helped.
  • 00:39:16
    What is their financial
• • SPEAKER_05
  • 00:39:18
    and the City Council.
  • 00:39:33
    Over the last few months they've been going through an inquiry process where people can apply for the program, either the worker co-op or community owned programs.
  • 00:39:43
    And so now they're still in the inquiry process and the inquiry process will continue.
  • 00:39:48
    But so far the expenditure for the community ownership one is almost 100,000 that's to date.
  • 00:39:55
    And that's for the technical assistance that they're providing for
  • 00:40:01
    for these existing businesses right now.
  • 00:40:04
    And then a lot of them still have yet to get capital, right?
  • 00:40:09
    and so if they get capital, for example, they have up to $500,000 that a community-owned entity can get.
  • 00:40:16
    And so the funds, they're going to dwindle real quick, but as of right now for the community ownership one, there's $100,000 that's been spent.
  • 00:40:25
    And then for the worker ownership, it's a similar amount, $107,000 that's been used up so far, and that's for supporting
  • 00:40:37
    these current businesses which a lot of them, they're still in the process of getting incorporated or receiving some of that initial TA, but it takes time for a transition, right?
  • 00:40:47
    And so as they continue to get technical assistance for that, more of that funding will be
  • 00:40:52
    and the City Council.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 00:41:08
    And just out of curiosity, do we have a collective list of eligible entities for this?
  • 00:41:17
    I know it's kind of like a unique fund.
  • 00:41:19
    And so I'm just curious as to here in the city, how many entities do we actually have or cooperatives do we actually have that are eligible for funding?
  • 00:41:29
    What is our sense of just how many are we talking about?
  • 00:41:35
    How many cooperatives do we actually have in the city that could be eligible for these resources?
• • SPEAKER_05
  • 00:41:42
    Councilmember, great question.
  • 00:41:43
    So for both of them, especially the worker ownership one, there's not really a list out there of who qualifies, because it could be any business that wants to transition over to worker-owned co-op, right?
  • 00:41:58
    and then it could also be new startups that want to start up as a co-op and so you know we don't really have a sense of like what that's out there but for the community ownership right now what Nexus has estimated is that there would be up to six that will be awarded with the funding that's available and then for the worker ownership program it would be up to nine that would be awarded based on the budget that's available.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 00:42:22
    Thank you.
  • 00:42:24
    And then I saw Councilmember Yang with questions.
  • 00:42:26
    Go ahead Ms. Yang.
• • Nelsie Yang
  • 00:42:28
    Thank you.
  • 00:42:29
    I have some comments here I wanted to make and then some questions I have.
  • 00:42:32
    First, I wanted to share, Director, I love our College Bound program.
  • 00:42:36
    I only ever hear great things about it.
  • 00:42:37
    Both of my kids are a part of it.
  • 00:42:38
    And I just wanted to let you know the marketing for it has been really great.
  • 00:42:42
    And also the mailers, so your team is doing a really wonderful job on that.
  • 00:42:46
    And I hope to continue seeing that program be successful and grow.
  • 00:42:51
    I just wanted to echo the questions from Councilor Nieker.
  • 00:42:55
    As I was looking through the slide here, there weren't any slides really specific to the budget other than the request that you had, which is to move the two employee positions from the general fund, or no, to the general fund from the grant fund, which I am supportive of.
  • 00:43:11
    something I did just want to note for my colleagues is that the trend that I have been seeing is that usually there is always an ask for those grant positions to be moved to the general fund and so that's something I wanted us to be really cognizant about.
  • 00:43:23
    I think Council Member Neger, you have been doing a really great job always asking, well what's going to happen next after these grant funds run out?
  • 00:43:31
    and we should continue asking those questions and trying to get a better picture of what the long term vision is for some of these programs that come in short term but tend to stay here long term.
  • 00:43:44
    So getting that information about the budget would be great.
  • 00:43:47
    I know it lives somewhere here in OFS because your slide here says that your budget is a part of OFS, is that right?
  • 00:43:52
    Yeah, so it's just hard to get that
  • 00:43:55
    get like a slice of the picture that's really specific to OFE and I do feel that getting that refresher even for myself as a council member who's been here for a term already would be really helpful because I don't recall how much of the funding for OFE is general fund and then special fund.
  • 00:44:12
    Do you have those numbers at all at the top of your mind that you would be able to share?
• • SPEAKER_05
  • 00:44:18
    Yeah, so for the first council member, we love that you're a College Brown family, so thank you for sharing that.
  • 00:44:28
    And we love that you love all the materials, so shout out to the team that works on that.
  • 00:44:32
    And then regarding the budget for College Brown, yes, we can share those details.
  • 00:44:38
    Most of that is, like I said, external funding that we fundraise in partnership with the St. Paul Minnesota Foundation.
  • 00:44:46
    We have a fund there.
  • 00:44:47
    And so as far as the city general budget, in 2023 what was adopted was, I believe, $530,000 and that helps provide some of the staffing.
  • 00:45:02
    and then the addition would be the newly requested and so with that one that's added in there it would be you know I think a little over 700,000 close to 800,000 that would be the total for the OFE general city.
• • Nelsie Yang
  • 00:45:18
    budget.
  • 00:45:37
    there's that partnership coming into our city.
  • 00:45:41
    I got a chance to attend the Shared Ownership Equity Summit and your team again did a really great job hosting that and it was really amazing seeing so many non-profit leaders be at the table for that too.
  • 00:45:55
    I attended because I was really supportive of the local fund, the community and worker ownership program, but I wanted to get more information.
  • 00:46:06
    I don't know what the experience has been for my colleagues, but for me I did feel like going to that I was able to get a lot more information that
  • 00:46:13
    to even learn about the RFP and the requirements for it.
  • 00:46:18
    I don't know if I didn't attend the summit if I would understand as deep what was happening within those programs.
  • 00:46:25
    So this is just all to say you all are doing really amazing work within OFE and I encourage you to come to the council and present about that more.
  • 00:46:34
    One of the challenges about our annual budget process is that I do feel our budget season
  • 00:46:41
    sort of turns into more of like an update session from departments and then we don't really get to dig deep into the budget the way that we want to and so I think that's something that within the Council we should figure out so that we can get you all in front of us more and we can ask questions and see more of the really great work happening within your departments.
  • 00:47:04
    let me see here and so my last question here is I'm wondering all of the basically the programs that are funded through ARPA dollars which it's the local fund program and the medical debt program too I know you're gonna cover that soon but basically are we on track to exhaust those funds yeah okay that's great that's all I have for now thank you
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 00:47:28
    Thanks, Councilmember.
  • 00:47:30
    Ms. Caliso, is there anything you wanted to respond to within that?
  • 00:47:34
    Yeah, okay.
  • 00:47:35
    I was going to go on to my remarks.
  • 00:47:36
    If not, I'll let you go, and then I'll go.
• • SPEAKER_05
  • 00:47:38
    I'm putting myself in line.
  • 00:47:39
    Thanks.
  • 00:47:39
    Yes.
  • 00:47:40
    Thank you, Council President Dilawe and Councilmember.
  • 00:47:42
    Yeah, thank you for attending that.
  • 00:47:44
    It was great.
  • 00:47:45
    We have, I have it on the slide up here, but had over 65 attendees from cross-sector organization at our shared ownership.
  • 00:47:52
    and the City Council.
  • 00:48:14
    and now it feels like it's like holding ground.
  • 00:48:17
    And so that's really exciting.
  • 00:48:19
    So thank you for y'all's support on that.
  • 00:48:22
    And then on the piece on the college bound funding, I think one piece of information just to throw out there, like I said, we can send more details is that we have our Fund for the Future campaign which has a committee.
  • 00:48:36
    Our goal for that is to raise $35 million to
  • 00:48:39
    and the City Council.
  • 00:48:53
    We've raised over $22
  • 00:49:02
    to close in on that in the next couple
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 00:49:26
    I think from my own experience working with the Midway Investment Cooperative what has been really important and challenging in the learning is that a lot of the technical assistance pieces are actually vital to help the
  • 00:49:46
    and City Council.
  • 00:50:04
    to identify a vision for that property, scope out what they would take to purchase it, organize the capital from within the neighborhood, stay consistent as the market is sometimes moving around or doing things.
  • 00:50:16
    There's so much, and I've honestly been part of two different attempts within my ward where we had co-ops and they came really close to getting a building.
  • 00:50:26
    And it was just really challenging with the different situations.
  • 00:50:34
    like Blackstack area as I'm sure you know with Taproot Investment Cooperative and it was a big building owned by like a company out in California and there were something like 49 tenants in there all very unique companies and the community was trying to buy the building and then you know these things are like often challenging transactions with risk involved and if the entity
  • 00:50:59
    is
  • 00:51:13
    to be really important for the community to have power in that transaction and to actually make local ownership come to life.
  • 00:51:20
    In the midway, we're going to have a whole update on this on Thursday night at the annual meeting.
  • 00:51:25
    And so I want to just thank you for your perseverance with the local ownership co-ops.
  • 00:51:30
    When it comes to the community organizing, wanting to buy a building, and then being able to actually do what it takes to do that, there's actually so much involved with that.
  • 00:51:41
    I hope that we have these one-time funds to spend down and I hope that as a result it will have stabilized these entities so that they actually can continue organizing resources beyond but that we've actually used it as I think what our intention was which is to help build it so that it can be strong and sustain
  • 00:51:58
    I just wanted to thank you
  • 00:52:17
    and if we don't find a way to actually support our community and local ownership, we will continue to be, I think, at the mercy or at the whim of out-of-state property owners that do not have our community's best interests at heart.
  • 00:52:33
    So doing new good things is hard.
  • 00:52:36
    I appreciate you for engaging with that and using these funds toward that, and I've seen firsthand where the help is coming in, so I just wanted to draw that piece out.
  • 00:52:45
    I think that when we get the budget information all in one spot as that composite, because I know we're getting programmatic updates that show the public funds in action.
  • 00:53:02
    OFEs regularly, as you know, on our agenda to get grant acceptances, so like approvals for different professional development cohorts you're part of and philanthropic funding.
  • 00:53:13
    another good thing to see is like how are the public dollars we are putting in leveraging private dollars and I know that's a lot to compile but I do think that it's worth it for this department specifically because so much of the way you're able to do your work is to take the funds we put in and then like leverage it to get all of the resource so just some thoughts on how we move forward from here yes to more discussion more regularly and with that I'll pass it to Miss Johnson if that works for you go ahead Miss Johnson
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 00:53:45
    Yeah, I was just going to kind of echo, in short, the same kind of sentiments of it.
  • 00:53:50
    I think it's awesome.
  • 00:53:51
    I love hearing about just how much you've been able, how much external capital you've been able to raise in the fundraising efforts.
  • 00:53:58
    I know this is something that I heard about at my time at the St. Paul Minnesota Foundation, just as something that was a potential piece that I know that there's been a lot of fundraising efforts and a lot of ability to
  • 00:54:12
    to raise a lot of funds outside of the city.
  • 00:54:14
    So I think that's just really great and sort of testament to your team.
  • 00:54:18
    As a new council member this year, I genuinely would love to just kind of get the basic level of understanding of like where with the funds that you all have or the different type of programs that OFE oversees, including like the local fund, the community ownership program, the worker ownership program,
  • 00:54:41
    and the
  • 00:55:04
    of St Paul.
  • 00:55:20
    I'm glad to hear Councilmember Yang's young ones have been able to access it.
  • 00:55:31
    I'm just wondering also, I haven't actually seen as much from the marketing standpoint of I'm just wanting to have access to information.
  • 00:55:41
    I'm sure it's just like more me having to catch up it's just an area that's intriguing and I'm really excited about it and I would like to uplift the work I just feel like I'm catching up a little bit so if there is something that you have that you could send I'd appreciate it especially I know you guys will be at the Greater Eastside board meeting this evening I was I have a double schedule so I wasn't able to attend that but I I'm curious as to like the information that is going out and how to best be of support so
  • 00:56:09
    I just genuinely appreciate all of the work that your team is doing.
  • 00:56:13
    It's incredible that you've been able to raise that much.
  • 00:56:18
    $22 million is not a small feat, and especially not in a few years.
  • 00:56:21
    So that genuinely is awesome to hear.
  • 00:56:24
    And I think it's because of the need and also people really recognizing that that's a program that's worth investing in.
  • 00:56:30
    So I think it's just I want to make sure that I'm best able to support and have the information.
• • SPEAKER_05
  • 00:56:37
    Councilmember, thank you, yes.
  • 00:56:39
    And we would love to follow up, share more information.
  • 00:56:42
    And I think you all can be echoes and help get the word out around all of these things that we want our community members and families to take part in.
  • 00:56:51
    So excited that you're excited to learn more so that you can help get the word out as well.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 00:56:58
    So I'm going to go to Councilwoman Naker, and then I do think we should help you wrap up so that we can transition to the part two with OFS.
  • 00:57:05
    But let's go to you, and then we'll keep it moving.
  • 00:57:07
    Thank you.
  • 00:57:08
    Thanks, Council President.
  • 00:57:08
    I'll keep it short.
• • Rebecca Noecker
  • 00:57:09
    I just want to reflect what I'm hearing, which is I think it would be useful to have another presentation specifically on the budget of OFE.
  • 00:57:14
    And I think to your point, Council President, it's
  • 00:57:17
    It is so impressive how much the department has been able to bring in from other sources that are not the city's general fund.
  • 00:57:22
    It's remarkable.
  • 00:57:24
    And I think it's important for us to know how many dollars those are and also what the long term commitments are for that kind of funding so that we know are these commitments in perpetuity?
  • 00:57:36
    How much work are we going to have to do to keep those going?
  • 00:57:39
    I know that Director Carcharamos worked really hard to create, I think, an endowment for college bound, which is really exciting.
  • 00:57:44
    is that self-sustaining or are we going to need to keep adding to it?
  • 00:57:47
    So just kind of understanding the long-term prospects for these programs since they are the beneficiaries of so much community generosity.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 00:57:58
    And Ms. Caliso, as you worked through the end of this, I think that for sake of just what, like things we've been asking all departments is what is your ask going into 2025 for the budget?
  • 00:58:10
    also making sure that we land in a place on that.
  • 00:58:13
    And then I think I agree with Councilman Naker in general of we do have a lot of exciting pilot work happening and I would like to collaborate with you and with the council on how we can support sustaining it.
  • 00:58:23
    So I'll let you keep going through the rest and then help us get to the transition here, but thank you.
• • SPEAKER_05
  • 00:58:28
    Great, thank you.
  • 00:58:30
    So just next I want to share a bit around the emergency financial empowerment project that we've been working on, which is a partnership between OFP and the Emergency Management Department.
  • 00:58:41
    And it's a grant that we got from the Cities for Financial Empowerment Fund.
  • 00:58:46
    We're part of a learning community with a few other cities around the nation to think around.
  • 00:58:52
    what is the
  • 00:59:12
    is helping our residents prepare for disasters and emergencies and beyond just what the natural disasters are.
  • 00:59:21
    So right now we are in the planning phase of that project and there are a couple areas of work that we are kind of honing in on through the stakeholder engagement that we've done with community organizations as well as
  • 00:59:35
    and City staff as well.
  • 00:59:39
    So more to come on that.
  • 00:59:40
    We are just, you know, at the beginning, but we're excited to share more about that as more of it comes out.
  • 00:59:46
    So next we'll move on to medical debt reset initiative, which we do have some updates on.
  • 00:59:53
    As of last week, there was
  • 00:59:58
    Just to give a little bit of background for those that are newer.
  • 01:00:02
    So the overview of the Medical Debt Reset Initiative is that St Paul residents hold an estimated $110 million in medical debt that can qualify for a cancellation.
  • 01:00:11
    And so the city has invested $1.1 million in ARPA funds to help relieve some of those debt that's owned by our residents.
  • 01:00:22
    And so there's $100 per $1 return on investment.
  • 01:00:28
    And the criteria for that, there's an income qualification as well as the residency requirement as well.
  • 01:00:37
    And then to date, right now, last week we had a press conference with Mayor and Attorney General Keith Ellison, and also a resident who was able to kind of share their story.
  • 01:00:50
    They weren't a part of this first purchase, but they have experience around medical debt.
  • 01:00:55
    but there was 4 million in debt that was abolished in the first batch and that was for over 32,000 St. Paul residents and the average debt forgiven per debtor is a little over 1,000.
  • 01:01:09
    And the thing that was a new learning for us is that a lot of times individuals actually have more than one account.
  • 01:01:16
    Depending on how they get billed and so average number of accounts per debtor is a little over four and the average debt forgiven per account was 268 dollars and the largest debt that was forgiven for a single account was a hundred and four thousand and the largest aggregate for given for one person was
  • 01:01:39
    over 200,000.
  • 01:01:40
    And so that's pretty big.
  • 01:01:42
    So the way that that program works is that those letters are being mailed out.
  • 01:01:46
    And so it's not anything that residents apply for.
  • 01:01:49
    It just is based on whatever health system they were a part of.
  • 01:01:52
    So our first one that we worked with was Fairview with more partnerships to come.
  • 01:01:58
    And so they'll receive a letter in the mail that says, hey, your debt has been forgiven.
  • 01:02:03
    And we work with Undue Medical Debt, who is the nonprofit that helps facilitate that purchase,
  • 01:02:09
    and our next steps and goal is to engage the additional health systems like children's health partners as well as Alina.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:02:23
    and I see a question from Council Member Naker.
  • 01:02:25
    Go ahead.
• • Rebecca Noecker
  • 01:02:25
    Thanks, Council President.
  • 01:02:27
    Director, I know that shortly after we approved this allocation of ARPA dollars to what was then RIP medical debt and is now undue medical debt, there was an article that came out of the New York Times on the National Bureau of Economic Research study on RIP medical debt basically saying that there's no evidence that this works to improve mental or physical health or finance or access to credit and just sort of some disappointing conclusions but also some
  • 01:02:52
    recommendations for how our IP medical debt could change its model to be more effective.
  • 01:02:57
    I'm just curious what conversations we've had with undue medical debt about that study and about changes that they're making as a result of those findings.
• • SPEAKER_05
  • 01:03:10
    Council members, so good question.
  • 01:03:14
    I think when it comes to medical debt, right, there's still that
  • 01:03:19
    and the City Council.
  • 01:03:34
    and so I think that was a study that came out and so we looked at it as well but didn't find that it would really impact the work that we're doing with undue medical debt.
  • 01:03:44
    I think some of the recommendations that might have been provided to them is great and helpful but we believe that having that debt forgiven really will make a difference for our residents and so we can connect back with them and just see if they have any thoughts around
  • 01:04:02
    for the City Council.
• • Nelsie Yang
  • 01:04:14
    I see Council Member Yang, go ahead.
  • 01:04:17
    Thanks, Council President.
  • 01:04:18
    I got a chance to see the press release you all put out recently about the launch of this, and it was really successful.
  • 01:04:24
    So I just wanted to say, again, congrats to your team.
  • 01:04:26
    You're doing really amazing work.
  • 01:04:28
    I was wondering if you could talk a bit about any challenges you have faced along the way in this program.
  • 01:04:35
    And then also, after some of the debt has already been paid off, can you talk about maybe
  • 01:04:44
    to check in on the
• • SPEAKER_05
  • 01:04:56
    Councilmember, great question.
  • 01:04:58
    So the letters are currently going out right now, and so we don't have any stories as of yet of people that have benefited.
  • 01:05:05
    But that letter is coming in partnership from the city and undue, and so I think we will be hearing stories down the line.
  • 01:05:13
    And so we can share more of those as it comes about.
  • 01:05:16
    We're not doing any particular evaluation on the program.
  • 01:05:19
    of the City
  • 01:05:36
    we're happy to share some of those external stories but as far as like our own residents coming to us around like the that that we abolished all of that is is yet to come and I know you also had the question around like the ARPA funds and do we plan to use all that up from our communications with undo it sounds like that yeah we will be able to use all of that to make the purchases once we engage all the other large healthcare systems
• • Nelsie Yang
  • 01:06:03
    Okay, yes, the first part of my question was if you could share any challenges you all have faced along the way.
  • 01:06:09
    I've been hearing about the successes, which is really good.
  • 01:06:12
    I just wanted to see if there were challenges too.
• • SPEAKER_05
  • 01:06:14
    Yes, council members.
  • 01:06:15
    So as far as challenges, I think it's just around the process and the timing that everything takes, right?
  • 01:06:21
    We're at the city, so we know that things take a while.
  • 01:06:24
    It's similar when it comes to the hospital systems and their billing processes.
  • 01:06:29
    after the press conference when I was talking to the representative from Undo, she was saying that a lot of them are going through kind of changes within their billing process and so that provides some delays.
  • 01:06:41
    But I would say that's really kind of the only challenge that has come up and then we'll learn more around what
  • 01:06:47
    Once families and individuals start getting the letters, if there are any things that come around that, we'll know.
  • 01:06:54
    But we have yet to learn and hear about that.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:06:57
    Thank you.
  • 01:06:59
    I thought I saw Ms. Johnson in line.
  • 01:07:01
    OK, go ahead, Ms. Johnson.
  • 01:07:02
    And then I want to make sure we can get to the summary on budget and then get to OFS.
  • 01:07:08
    So go ahead, Ms. Johnson.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 01:07:10
    OK.
  • 01:07:11
    So yeah, when I read through the article, because I also found out about the press release and the kind of overview on the news, and I was like, OK, great.
  • 01:07:22
    If I am just an everyday person, which I am, I'm just like, OK, how does it translate from that dollar that's been invested until we've alleviated $32 million of medical debt?
  • 01:07:34
    I'm just, what is the basic level of,
  • 01:07:37
    Here's what the process has been like.
  • 01:07:40
    I know we work through undue medical debt, but are the residents know that they're a part of getting their medical debt swiped?
  • 01:07:50
    Are they getting the letters to notify them of that?
  • 01:07:55
    When you say the broker, what do you mean?
  • 01:07:57
    And then just from a lens of, this is how this basically works.
  • 01:08:02
    Could you just barebone it for me?
  • 01:08:05
    I'd appreciate it.
• • SPEAKER_05
  • 01:08:06
    Yes Council Members, so as far as a lot of the direct communication with the patients, we don't have a lot of that and then with undue kind of facilitating the purchase of the debt that they do through their process and because of HIPAA and everything like there's not much you know contact or communication that happens and yes this is not one where you know residents will apply for it it just depends on like if they already have a debt out there and so
  • 01:08:34
    I think getting a letter surprise is a little bit different where it's like that's something that nobody expects, right?
  • 01:08:41
    Imagine getting a letter that says your $100,000 in medical debt is forgiven.
  • 01:08:45
    That's pretty incredible and can be life changing from stories of experiences that we've heard of, of others that have experienced this who aren't necessarily a part of this.
  • 01:09:01
    Yeah, I'll pause there and see.
  • 01:09:02
    Was there something else you wanted to get clarified within that?
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 01:09:07
    So no, I just think it's more of a resident doesn't have to do anything.
  • 01:09:11
    There's no onus or ask of any St Paul residents to do anything particularly.
  • 01:09:16
    It looks like Undo Medical does doing a lot of the background work of things.
  • 01:09:21
    But do we know how they identify eligible situations?
  • 01:09:27
    What is that that they would deem redeemable?
  • 01:09:30
    What does that mean?
• • SPEAKER_05
  • 01:09:33
    Council members, so the eligibility criteria that they use is based on income as you can see here.
  • 01:09:41
    So the patient or household income is between zero and up to 400% of the federal poverty guideline.
  • 01:09:50
    And then the medical debt burden criteria is that the medical debt being assessed represents 5% or more of annual household income.
  • 01:09:58
    and then there's also the piece on residency as well.
  • 01:10:02
    And so those are kind of the key things that they use to help identify that.
  • 01:10:07
    But that's information that they get from the health system that we don't directly have access to.
  • 01:10:18
    Thank you so just the last slide is some updates on some fair housing work that's been done so this past summer we were able to expand social media presence with the fair housing and home ownership campaigns that happened in April and June and then Faith from our team continues to support and be part of
  • 01:10:41
    PIRC, which is the Partnerships for Equitable and Resilient Communities.
  • 01:10:45
    And the collaborative table continues to meet.
  • 01:10:47
    And there's a few different areas that they focus on, including housing, home ownership, civic infrastructure, and economic development.
  • 01:10:57
    And then Faith has also been working with ONS on coordination of resources for Dilawri tenants.
  • 01:11:05
    And then also working with HERO and DSI
  • 01:11:08
    on a Presentation for Increased Tenant Outreach and Education that will be getting done.
  • 01:11:14
    And the HERO has secured a vendor for that outreach, but a lot of our work in the fair housing space involves partnership with other city departments and external partners, which is similar for all of our work, but especially this work.
  • 01:11:30
    All right, that is all.
  • 01:11:31
    I know that was a lot of information, so we'll pause there.
  • 01:11:34
    I think just to bring it back to the budget piece,
  • 01:11:38
    Like I said, at the beginning of the presentation, the main budget change for OFE and the proposal that was put forth is that there would be two employees that would be moved from the general fund to the general fund from the grant fund.
  • 01:11:53
    And that's the financial capability program manager and our shared ownership coordinator.
  • 01:11:58
    And that's really the only other additional changes or additions that have been requested for the budget year.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:12:11
    All right, any other questions for Director Caliso today?
  • 01:12:14
    I'm not seeing any we may follow up, but thank you for closing on that.
  • 01:12:19
    It makes it very clear.
  • 01:12:20
    And thank you for the updates on all of the work that a small team has been doing with much passion and significant additional support from the private sector and other sources.
  • 01:12:31
    So more to come.
  • 01:12:33
    I appreciate you being here this morning, Director.
  • 01:12:34
    Thank you.
• • SPEAKER_05
  • 01:12:35
    Thank you.
  • 01:12:36
    And yeah, shout out to the team that does all the work.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:12:42
    All right, so we're going to take a minute here to transition.
  • 01:12:45
    We're going to turn it over to our partners at the Office of Financial Services who are going to highlight their budget as well as the year end projection.
  • 01:12:54
    And I think they might need a minute to get set up.
  • 01:13:35
    All right, Director, whenever you want to take it away, I turn it over to you.
  • 01:13:40
    Thank you.
• • SPEAKER_10
  • 01:13:42
    Thank you.
  • 01:13:43
    Good morning, Council President Jilali, Council members.
  • 01:13:45
    We are here today to present the projected 2024 general fund spending and revenue projections.
  • 01:13:52
    I will say right away that these are based on the best information that we have at this time.
  • 01:13:57
    I recently heard a presentation from someone at the state demographer's office who said that the thing about projections is that they are always wrong.
  • 01:14:05
    We work really hard to make them as least wrong as possible, but there are still a lot of transactions.
  • 01:14:11
    to be processed so these numbers will certainly change their best estimates that we have right now.
  • 01:14:17
    And as you will hear throughout this presentation, we use these numbers to inform our recommendations for future budgets.
  • 01:14:24
    So many of the places where we have variances have already been adjusted and realigned for the 2025 proposed budget.
  • 01:14:33
    So I won't bury the lead here.
  • 01:14:36
    We are projecting to almost exactly break even with a $2 million projected positive variance between spending and revenue.
  • 01:14:43
    That's less than 1% of our budget, so it's closer than we usually like, but it's still a good outcome.
  • 01:14:49
    Most departments are projected to come in on average around 3% under budget, with the exception of five departments that are expected to come in over budget.
  • 01:14:59
    That includes DSI, emergency management, fire, parks, and police.
  • 01:15:04
    I know you've heard a lot in these meetings from both the fire department and the police department about the challenges that cities are facing in hiring for public safety positions.
  • 01:15:12
    We are certainly seeing the impact of those challenges in this year's projections, where the largest budget overruns we have are driven by overtime and work comp costs in our public safety departments.
  • 01:15:24
    But we are also really lucky to be receiving a significant boost in our pension aid revenue from the state and our interest earning revenue that will allow us to balance out that overspending.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:15:34
    Ms. Mitchell, can I just ask a very 101 question on this here?
  • 01:15:37
    When it says 2 million positive variance projected, I think I'm just mentally exhausted right now.
  • 01:15:42
    What does that mean?
  • 01:15:43
    It means we're going to overspend by 2 million?
  • 01:15:46
    What does that mean?
• • SPEAKER_10
  • 01:15:48
    That is in the good direction.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:15:53
    So it means that we have saved 2 million from what we budgeted, or what is that meaning?
  • 01:15:58
    OK.
• • SPEAKER_10
  • 01:15:59
    I think this slide will be OK.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:16:02
    Yeah, I'll let you keep working through it.
  • 01:16:04
    I think I just was trying to de-jargon that for my own comprehension.
  • 01:16:07
    Thank you.
  • 01:16:07
    Let's keep going through it.
  • 01:16:08
    OK, thank you.
• • SPEAKER_10
  • 01:16:10
    So that number you will see in sort of two ways at the bottom of this slide.
  • 01:16:15
    Their first number is the projected variance from budget.
  • 01:16:20
    So that is showing versus what we have budgeted, we are coming in between spending and revenue, $2 million to the good.
  • 01:16:28
    And then the next number on there, which is also about $2 million, is
  • 01:16:31
    of 2020-2023.
  • 01:16:36
    The adopted budget in column one is the budget as adopted by the city council in
  • 01:16:48
    The amended budget in column 2 includes any changes to the budget that have happened in the last 11 months.
  • 01:16:55
    That includes budget amendments and then any carry forward needed for purchase orders that were open at the end of 2023 and expected to be spent in 2024.
  • 01:17:05
    Projected actuals in column 3 are a combination of actual spending that has already occurred and revenue.
  • 01:17:11
    Actual spending and revenue that has already occurred and posted in our financial system.
  • 01:17:16
    and then any additional spending that we are anticipating for the remainder of the year.
  • 01:17:22
    The projected variance in column four is the difference between the projected actual spending and revenue and the amended budget.
  • 01:17:31
    So a positive number in the projected variance column is a good thing.
  • 01:17:36
    On the spending side, it means a department or the city has not overspent their budget.
  • 01:17:40
    On the revenue side, it means that we've collected more revenue than budgeted.
  • 01:17:46
    Column 5 here is the total that we are projecting to spend or receive in revenue as a percent of the amended budget.
  • 01:17:56
    This is a high-level summary of spending in revenue.
  • 01:17:58
    We're expected to overspend the general fund budget by around $6.7 million, so that's the first number in column 4, which is then balanced by an additional projected revenue of $8.7 million
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:18:12
    meeting.
  • 01:18:35
    in the past.
• • Saura Jost
  • 01:18:52
    committee.
  • 01:18:54
    Thank you for that, council president.
  • 01:18:55
    I was looking at the next tables, I'm sure you'll get to them, but when you say a good thing with these numbers, basically in the next table a negative number means overspending in percentage and a positive number means underspending.
  • 01:19:10
    Council President, Council Member, yes and then same thing with like in column four things in the parentheses that was a 6.7 million dollar overspend and so parentheses means negative basically yes okay thank you thank you for that clarification so the next two slides will show spending by department
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:19:30
    Can I just, while you're working through this, Ms. Mitchell, also preview something.
  • 01:19:34
    I think that I'm curious as to, let's dig into the department over spending and what we need to, but also on the revenue side, I'm curious as to how we ended up getting more than we anticipated and the themes and trends driving that.
  • 01:19:47
    So let's work through this, but also at some point would like to add that back in.
  • 01:19:51
    Thank you.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 01:19:52
    Thanks, Council President.
  • 01:19:53
    John McCarthy, Director for Office of Financial Services.
  • 01:19:57
    So as Ms. Mitchell noted, the majority of departments came in under budget, kind of in that 3 to 4% under budget, which is really a great target.
  • 01:20:03
    That's kind of where we're shooting.
  • 01:20:05
    We want to come in a little bit under budget, a little bit to the good.
  • 01:20:08
    But also she noted there were some departments where we're projecting we're going to come in over budget.
  • 01:20:13
    So I want to provide some additional context.
  • 01:20:14
    on what's happening with those departments and explain what we're doing to address those issues in the 2025 budget.
  • 01:20:21
    First off, DSI, we're projecting that they will come in about 1.4% over budget.
  • 01:20:27
    This is almost entirely related to the change in the way that the city is now contracting for nuisance abatement work.
  • 01:20:34
    So this is the work where we are clearing tall grass and weeds and ice from private properties.
  • 01:20:38
    as an example.
  • 01:20:41
    Previously that work was performed by park staff, but more recently we are now contracting outside the city.
  • 01:20:47
    This is the first year where we have been doing that in full and it is coming more than budgeted.
  • 01:20:53
    We are currently working with DSI staff to understand how that impacts the budget and to potentially make adjustments still for 2025 to their budget.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:21:02
    just to remind myself of how we got there if I recall correctly was it that in order to actually get to stuff faster we said let's
  • 01:21:12
    I'm just literally trying to remember.
  • 01:21:20
    I remember talking about it, but I can't remember how we got there.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 01:21:23
    Council President, it's a good question.
  • 01:21:24
    Parks and DSI could probably answer it in a little bit more detail, but I would say at a high level that's right.
  • 01:21:28
    I think there was a backlog of that work.
  • 01:21:30
    I think also staffing challenges for the teams doing that work.
  • 01:21:36
    It's not what people get into parks work for is to be, you know,
  • 01:21:40
    and the
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:21:57
    we hear about that stuff on our side of the table.
  • 01:21:59
    We hear about the weeds and the nuisance and the stuff.
  • 01:22:02
    And it's the everyday person level things they see.
  • 01:22:05
    And so I can, okay, this is helping me reconstruct my memory.
  • 01:22:08
    Okay, thanks, that's all.
  • 01:22:09
    I just wanted to process in real time.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 01:22:10
    Council President, one other thing I'd add on that is that we are also working on the revenue side of that.
  • 01:22:15
    We have changed fees to try to more closely cover the cost of providing that service.
  • 01:22:21
    But those are typically assessed, they come in over time.
  • 01:22:25
    you know having tall grass and weeds or unshoveled sidewalks is a symptom of a property that has other issues sometimes those properties go tax forfeit and we may never collect those or we collect them over many many years so there isn't a one-to-one revenue necessarily offset for this but that's again something that we're working on with DSI for 2025.
  • 01:22:46
    Next up is the Fire
  • 01:23:04
    First off, we have to pay the medical treatment for those staff, and then we also need to backfill for those staff with overtime shifts.
  • 01:23:12
    So the fire department is kind of double hit with their budget impact on having staff who are out injured.
  • 01:23:19
    The 25 proposed budget, we have some measures in place to try to improve these issues.
  • 01:23:24
    First, the proposed budget adds six new firefighters.
  • 01:23:27
    Having more staff means more staff are available so that there's less need for overtime shifts.
  • 01:23:32
    but second the proposed budget is increasing the department's work comp budget by about 5% to help catch up with that cost growth that we're seeing and then lastly fire is trying a new pilot with an outside vendor which the way I understand it at least it's kind of like a concierge service to connect injured staff with medical treatment right away what we hear from fire is that often people have to wait significant amount of time to get the treatment that they need
  • 01:23:59
    the service connects those injured workers with doctors and medical providers very quickly so that they can get you know treated fully recovered and back to work as quickly as possible.
  • 01:24:10
    Fire has looked at there's other large city departments large city fire departments that have worked with this vendor and found that it has been successful in reducing that kind of timeline when people are out injured so we're working on it as a pilot for this year and seeing if it's something that could work more broadly more long term.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:24:28
    Thanks, and I see Ms. Johnson had a question.
  • 01:24:30
    Go ahead.
  • 01:24:31
    Did you not?
  • 01:24:32
    I thought your hand was up.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 01:24:33
    I could have a question, but I don't have a question right now.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:24:39
    Ms. Jost actually has a question.
  • 01:24:43
    My hand was not up.
  • 01:24:44
    I was trying to manifest a question from you, apparently, while Ms. Jost was trying to ask her question.
• • Saura Jost
  • 01:24:48
    Go ahead, Ms. Jost.
  • 01:24:49
    Thank you, Council President.
  • 01:24:50
    I'm Director McCarthy, and I'm also digesting this table, like Councilmember Johnson's.
  • 01:24:56
    A lot of information.
  • 01:24:57
    I really appreciate you putting this together.
  • 01:24:59
    If I'm reading through column four,
  • 01:25:03
    overspending coming from, I mean, mostly coming from police, fire, a little bit of parks, also DSI, also emergency management, but not very much.
  • 01:25:16
    And then that basically is offset by the underspending of the other departments.
  • 01:25:21
    I guess my bigger picture question is, I mean, this is my first year here really paying this much attention to the budget.
  • 01:25:28
    But in past years, if we didn't have
  • 01:25:31
    or do we typically get this underspending from the other departments such that it offsets the overspending and if we didn't I guess you know that would be that would also be a concern and I guess what is what is the plan looking forward for for mitigating that because my concern would be we've got overspending when you add police fire and parks you know that's way more than 6.7 million and if we didn't have the underspending by the other departments you know what would we do like the libraries for example underspent by
  • 01:26:00
    of the city of St Paul.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 01:26:12
    Council President Scholle, Council Member Jost, that is something that we deal with every year and often we know kind of early in the year particularly in the winter months if all of a sudden you know like we did a few years ago have six or seven snow emergencies between January and February we know we're already starting the calendar year in the hole and that's when OFS works with all of our department partners and says
  • 01:26:35
    We know we have a budget challenge already.
  • 01:26:37
    We need to slow spending.
  • 01:26:38
    We need to slow hiring so that we can make sure we land within budget.
  • 01:26:43
    And so that's where often we are really directly working with departments to mitigate those bigger issues.
  • 01:26:50
    We've had major issues that come up throughout the year.
  • 01:26:53
    I mean, the biggest, most recent example, of course, was 2020 when the COVID pandemic hit.
  • 01:26:57
    And we knew all of our revenues were kind of falling off the table.
  • 01:27:00
    We worked with departments on sort of a daily basis to really
  • 01:27:03
    budget to come in and still meet budget in 2020.
  • 01:27:09
    So those are, those, I mean, you know, we have unforeseen challenges nearly every year and we work with departments to track where they're spending and making sure on balance we come into the good.
• • Saura Jost
  • 01:27:20
    So if you're seeing that a budget or a department is on track to be overspending, like if there's an unforeseen circumstance, for example, then you look to the other departments to try to see if they can make up for that.
  • 01:27:35
    Is that correct?
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 01:27:38
    Council President Jalelli, Council Member Jost, I'd say it kind of depends on the scale of the problem.
  • 01:27:42
    Often there is some level that we feel like we can kind of in general manage within, you know, the city.
  • 01:27:48
    We track revenues very closely too to see where they're coming in, but when we have, you know, some of these huge things like, again, I think it was 2019 with
  • 01:27:56
    and City Council.
  • 01:28:11
    these are large unplanned for hits to the budget and those are things where we say you know we meet with the entire leadership team and communicate as early as possible we need to slow spending and we need to to manage this I'd say some of the bigger departments that are very kind of climate and weather related like Parks and Public Works in particular
  • 01:28:30
    They are very well prepared for that.
  • 01:28:34
    One or two extra snow emergencies is something that they know how to handle where they can kind of slow temporary staffing and things like that to try to balance that within their budget.
  • 01:28:44
    But it's these bigger sort of unexpected big hits that we have to take that more global view to really try to slow spending to balance.
  • 01:28:53
    I would say the more structural issues are the ones that we're trying to address in the 2025 budget and we visit every year to say okay this is a new cost or this is a new trend that we hadn't seen previously and we were trying to address that so those are the ones that I'm trying to make sure that I hit on today because we did incorporate a lot of those fixes in the 25 budget where we could
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:29:23
    I actually have a question.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 01:29:34
    When you talk about fixing some of the budget
  • 01:29:39
    I think my question really is looking at the police budget and some of the major increases.
  • 01:29:55
    This year, their increase is pretty significant, and I'm just wondering if a part of remedying the overspending was budgeting more, and then also if
  • 01:30:05
    that's the case then what were other things like what are other avenues because I don't really know if if if I'm at the fact that that's the that's the way we remediate yet so I'm just kind of wondering what are the ways like what are the ways that in that one in particular I know you haven't gotten to it but I want to make sure just with time that we do talk about that because I have a lot of being that they're coming to present today I may have more questions for them specifically but what were the like how in what ways has
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 01:30:33
    Council President
  • 01:30:50
    and the City Council.
  • 01:31:20
    you know Parks is the next one you know coming in about three percent over budget as I kind of noted they deal with kind of variety of unbudgeted issues every year probably more than most other departments with you know we get calls about the log jams on the Mississippi River that they have to address we get calls about you know this year in particular there are a number of storms that blew down branches all across the city they have to respond to that
  • 01:31:46
    and the copper wire theft that everybody is familiar with was a big, unbudgeted cost this year for parks.
  • 01:31:53
    In general, parks does a great job of managing within budget by, you know, they have a lot of flexibility with sort of temp and seasonal staffing and they hold back on some of that staffing to be able to offset some of those costs, but we're seeing other challenges that are more structural where we're adding budget in 2025, including about $400,000 to the utilities budget because
  • 01:32:16
    to address that in the budget.
  • 01:32:37
    I'm done with parks, but I've just got a few other notes.
• • Rebecca Noecker
  • 01:32:44
    Thanks, Council President.
  • 01:32:44
    I had two questions about this graph.
  • 01:32:48
    One is about the city attorney's office, and this gets to sort of how you project the variance, because I know they had about 9.5 FTEs vacant this year, which seems like that's a lot of savings, but you're only projecting 104,000 in variance.
  • 01:33:00
    So are you assuming that everything is hired up by the end of the year, or how does that come to be?
  • 01:33:07
    public works, I notice you made me think of it when you were talking about unforeseen events.
  • 01:33:12
    They show 1.5 million to the good variance, but we know this was a year with zero snow, and those emergencies are, I think, each, I don't know how much they each are, but very expensive.
  • 01:33:22
    So I would have expected that maybe they would have higher variance to the good.
  • 01:33:27
    So can you speak on both of those fronts?
• • SPEAKER_10
  • 01:33:30
    Council President and Council Member, I can speak to the City Attorney.
  • 01:33:33
    So they did have some vacancies this year.
  • 01:33:35
    There was also a change to the attorney contract mid-year that was unanticipated that bumped those salaries up.
  • 01:33:43
    So those two factors kind of balanced each other out, the vacancies and then the increased salary costs.
  • 01:33:48
    We have built those increased salary costs into the 2025 budget.
  • 01:33:53
    So the attorney salaries increased mid-year?
  • 01:33:55
    Yes.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 01:33:59
    and then Council President Shelly, Council Member Naker, on the public works side they, similar to parks, have sort of levers that they can pull.
  • 01:34:07
    Obviously there's always maintenance needs within public works and so when we have fewer snow emergencies in the first half of the year they are then able to ramp up things like skim patching, pothole patching, things like that because it's the same sort of teams and staff that are doing that.
  • 01:34:23
    But they also always want to make sure
  • 01:34:25
    I've heard that there was a blizzard on Halloween in Minnesota once, so they need to plan for the end of the calendar year as well.
  • 01:34:34
    I have a follow-up about that.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:34:38
    About the blizzard?
  • 01:34:39
    No.
  • 01:34:41
    About how recent was it that you heard of this blizzard?
  • 01:34:44
    I'm going to need another conversation.
  • 01:34:46
    No, I'm just kidding.
  • 01:34:47
    I do remember the blizzard of 1991.
• • Saura Jost
  • 01:34:54
    So I think my question was about the overspending.
  • 01:35:05
    So it seems like the overspending, there are some situations where it's unforeseen, some situations where it is
  • 01:35:11
    for the unforeseen circumstances around probably parks and public works, which public works didn't overspend.
  • 01:35:23
    But there isn't necessarily a built-in contingency dollar amount, but the departments are prepared to adjust their operations as needed.
  • 01:35:34
    Is that my understanding for how they make up for that?
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 01:35:39
    Yeah, Council President Jollily, Council Member Jost, that's exactly right.
  • 01:35:41
    And I think, I mean, Parks and Public Works are, you know, for better or worse, they're very good at managing to those unforeseen, you know, weather events and other events like that where they adjust spending.
  • 01:35:53
    And again, they can ramp up maintenance work or ramp it down.
  • 01:35:57
    And so it just depends on, you know, what is happening with weather typically is what impacts that the most.
• • Saura Jost
  • 01:36:02
    Committee.
  • 01:36:16
    I guess it would be police and fire I guess I would be curious to you know the adjustments you made in the 2025 budget and I don't expect you to have the answer to this but what do we would we anticipate for overspending with those adjustments that were made to try to try to mitigate that because I mean those are just such such large amounts that I just think my concern is just you know
  • 01:36:40
    that those will continue moving forward and there are things that we would expect.
  • 01:36:43
    And then other departments it sounds like would have to adjust accordingly to make up for other departments overspending and that's just a general concern that I have.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 01:36:53
    Council President Jollily, Council Member Jost, I would say that we know that the changes that are in the 2025 proposed budget will move the needle in the right direction.
  • 01:37:02
    Some of these are large and structural.
  • 01:37:04
    I'm going to get to the police ones in a minute.
  • 01:37:05
    I think those are the ones that are most challenging and kind of external to our city or broader than just our city.
  • 01:37:12
    And so, yeah, again, it's hard to make
  • 01:37:17
    I think it's significant enough changes to completely wipe those out year over year but we want to continue moving in the right direction so that's the goal with 2025 is that in some places they're in kind of inflationary increases to get us closer to budget and then others we hope that they will kind of address the issue and completely go ahead miss naker thanks council president maybe just to drill down a little bit more on the questions miss jost is asking because I have those questions as well I guess I'm wondering so
• • Rebecca Noecker
  • 01:37:45
    We're looking now at the end of the year and what you're forecasting, but as the year's going along, police, fire, DSI, whoever has a budget, and as they look like they're going to be overspending it, possibly by many millions of dollars, I guess, A, is there any ceiling on the overspending that they are able to do?
  • 01:38:03
    At some point, do they get cut off?
  • 01:38:07
    Second of all, if the other departments don't happen to underspend to cover their overspend, I assume this comes out of fund balance, ultimately?
  • 01:38:17
    Or where does that get made up?
  • 01:38:20
    And as a last question, what is fund balance right now?
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 01:38:24
    Council President Scholle, Council Member Naker, so the answer to the first question is yes.
  • 01:38:28
    If we overspend and our revenue comes in under the two combined as a negative number, then that would come out of our general fund fund balance.
  • 01:38:38
    I don't have with me today what our fund balance is, but I can report back to you on that.
  • 01:38:44
    and then to the ceiling question, like are they just kind of, they keep going and so we have there's within our finance system there are controls in place where for kind of salary or I'm sorry for services and materials, contracts and goods and materials, things like that, there is like a sort of a cap where departments if they're overspent in those areas have to get permission from the finance department to be able to continue to spend over budget on those.
  • 01:39:11
    For salaries and benefits we don't have that same
  • 01:39:13
    Committee.
  • 01:39:31
    I think with the public safety emergency response departments in particular, we are making steps to improve that situation for their budgets and also we know that those are critical services that would be very hard to change mid-year.
  • 01:39:47
    And the last thing I'll say I mean percentages are higher than we'd like at four and five percent but I think that's an important number to look at as opposed to necessarily you know flat dollar amount when you're managing a hundred plus million dollar budget four percent over four or five percent over again not ideal but but it puts it in a little bit of perspective that's a significant budget that is almost entirely staffing
  • 01:40:14
    Thanks.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:40:16
    I didn't mean to cut you off, Director.
  • 01:40:18
    I'm going to go to Ms. Johnson, who I saw get in line.
  • 01:40:21
    Go ahead, Ms. Johnson.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 01:40:23
    So what kind of reporting does your office receive from those departments that are overspending on mid-year?
  • 01:40:29
    I know you mentioned that you are in regular communication with them, but what actual documentation do you receive from them?
  • 01:40:36
    What are they required to provide in those cases?
  • 01:40:40
    What currently are we collecting at the city level?
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 01:40:43
    In terms of collecting materials, this is mostly towards the end of the year the most formal process that we do where we do this projection to see where we think we're going to land for the end of the year.
  • 01:40:56
    And departments work closely with us and we have a kind of formal set of documents that we prepare drafts of and then departments complete them and we kind of go back and forth with multiple revisions on that.
  • 01:41:06
    Committee.
  • 01:41:07
    Throughout the rest of the year, I'd say it's much more informal.
  • 01:41:09
    Each of our departments have budget analysts assigned to them.
  • 01:41:12
    They're working with their departments closely throughout the year to understand as issues are coming up throughout the year.
  • 01:41:17
    And so that's more of kind of a weekly and daily sort of ad hoc basis without necessarily like a formal status report.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 01:41:28
    And I'm just kind of curious, do we know about how many?
  • 01:41:32
    So we have the five department projections, but I think the general fund projections are annually.
  • 01:41:40
    How often is this the case?
  • 01:41:42
    How many years consecutively are we looking at where we have the same?
  • 01:41:48
    Again, it's not to pick on these departments at all, but just in this case, we have DSI, Emergency Management, Fire, Parks, and Police, and I'm just wondering,
  • 01:41:56
    Is that something that we've seen continue year after year where there's overspending in that category?
  • 01:42:00
    Are there other departments that maybe are consistently doing that?
  • 01:42:04
    I'm kind of wondering, how long?
  • 01:42:07
    How long has that been going on?
  • 01:42:09
    And then just kind of, what is the attention there?
  • 01:42:15
    And I guess, is the variance level, the percentage going down over time?
  • 01:42:20
    Has there been progress made?
  • 01:42:21
    I just kind of wanted to get your sense of,
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 01:42:24
    Council President Jollily, Council Member Johnson, in general we have come in overall underspent on the general fund for the last several years.
  • 01:42:33
    So this is, you know, that we're overspent this year is unusual.
  • 01:42:37
    That's not typical.
  • 01:42:39
    Police and Fire, the two emergency response departments, because of some of these bigger structural staffing challenge issues and work comp issues have been overspent for most of the last few years.
  • 01:42:50
    Parks is atypical this year that they're overspent.
  • 01:42:55
    They're usually underspent or very close to budget.
  • 01:42:57
    Same with DSI.
  • 01:42:58
    DSI almost always has savings.
  • 01:43:01
    I think, again, this year with this new contractual change is unusual.
  • 01:43:04
    So, again, we're working with them to understand how that change has impacted their budget.
  • 01:43:08
    so I think you know again the two large emergency response departments that are almost all staffing we continue to work with them to improve but that they have been the two that have been overspent
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:43:20
    So to kind of weave this together naturally, I think what I'm hearing you say is we have in the previous years underspent.
  • 01:43:29
    We're looking at an overspending this year.
  • 01:43:32
    There's department specific reasons why that's breaking out that way.
  • 01:43:36
    DSI, it was due to a practice change we all agreed was better and we're learning things from that and are working to correct.
  • 01:43:45
    members, fire and police are
  • 01:43:54
    and then Parks naturally overseeing so much of the actual like built environment in public spaces is more prone to the like flood response and million-dollar storm and just the the things that go wrong in the natural world and so then there's those challenges so less I guess I'm trying to find I'm verbalizing in real time but it's like
  • 01:44:19
    I'm not seeing the issue with parks over time.
  • 01:44:22
    It's not workforce.
  • 01:44:25
    It's the external things that the workforce is responding to.
  • 01:44:28
    Whereas there's unique workforce issues with the emergency responders department that require a structural look at how we address that.
  • 01:44:37
    I guess I see Madeline nodding.
• • Nelsie Yang
  • 01:44:39
    I feel like I'm just trying to think out loud and make sense of this.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:44:42
    okay okay this is just for my own thank you everyone for indulging the way I learned sometimes is to just play it back and make sure that I'm understanding but I think that it's really important to have a nuanced and specific understanding of this because I think overspending concerns all of us the the the causes of that need to be examined deeply and then we need to work in the coming weeks to make responsible choices so this is helpful and just beginning to surface
  • 01:45:12
    And I appreciate your question, Ms. Johnson, because it kind of gets at what is the nature of the issue?
  • 01:45:17
    What are we trying to address going into next year?
  • 01:45:19
    How does it compare?
  • 01:45:20
    So I'll let you keep moving, Director.
  • 01:45:23
    I just saw some multiple connections I wanted to weave together.
  • 01:45:27
    Thanks.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 01:45:28
    The last department projected to overspend is police, about 4.8% over budget.
  • 01:45:36
    Again, as we've touched on, the biggest causes here are salary and overtime costs.
  • 01:45:40
    I know you're going to hear more from Chief Henry this afternoon, but police departments across the country are struggling with recruitment and retention.
  • 01:45:46
    St Paul PD is currently below our authorized sworn staff, which means they need to bring officers, investigators, and supervisors in on mandatory overtime to provide emergency response services.
  • 01:45:59
    Again, overtime staff are paid a time and a half, so that eats up all of the vacancies, savings, and more with those overtime costs.
  • 01:46:07
    and also like the fire department, police department is also experiencing challenges with work comp costs and then again backfilling with overtime to offset those staff who are out injured.
  • 01:46:19
    And then finally another significant contributing factor to police this year relates to the city's contract for body cams and in-car cams.
  • 01:46:28
    The department contract for that service
  • 01:46:31
    of 2020-2022.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:46:58
    I see Ms. Yang in line.
  • 01:46:59
    Just on that first, I just want to make sure I understand.
  • 01:47:04
    What is the issue with it expiring?
  • 01:47:05
    Is it an anticipated expiring?
  • 01:47:07
    Is it an unexpected expiring?
  • 01:47:08
    What exactly was happening?
  • 01:47:09
    I just didn't quite hear and I want to understand it.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 01:47:12
    Go ahead.
  • 01:47:13
    Council President Scholle, our contracts don't line up perfectly with budget years.
  • 01:47:18
    This one happened at a challenging time, kind of outside of the budget process.
  • 01:47:22
    I think it was actually right after the budget wrapped, maybe for the 24 budget.
  • 01:47:27
    was not something that we had anticipated and didn't have added to the budget for 24.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:47:35
    I guess if it's a contract, how do we not know when it's...
  • 01:47:40
    I don't understand the logistics of that.
  • 01:47:42
    Can you help me understand that?
  • 01:47:43
    How do we not anticipate?
  • 01:47:45
    a contract if there's a scope of it.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 01:47:47
    So, Council President July, I wasn't directly involved in all of our contract negotiations here.
  • 01:47:51
    As I understand it, I think it was partially that the new contract with this vendor combined several different services that maybe hadn't been in place before.
  • 01:48:01
    And so, I think it was more the increase was anticipated that it was going to increase as significantly as it did, but it provides much more
  • 01:48:08
    of service than what we had previously.
  • 01:48:10
    So I think the department thought it made sense to go with this higher level of service, but there's an added cost to that that we had to capture for 2025.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:48:18
    and I know we have them coming back at once so this is helpful to just get a starting point to ask more about.
  • 01:48:23
    And I want to be clear that that's technology that our community has asked for that matters, that is important.
  • 01:48:30
    I think we need to get a handle on what is the process by which we're managing the cost of that technology within SPPD.
  • 01:48:38
    It's expensive to store.
  • 01:48:40
    of the City Council.
• • Nelsie Yang
  • 01:49:00
    Council President, I just wanted to share feedback that this is a really great presentation.
  • 01:49:05
    I think this is the first time we've had a rundown like this within the council, so I feel that we should always have this be a part of our budget presentation.
  • 01:49:14
    So this is to say OFS, we would love to have you back and share these projections every year.
  • 01:49:19
    I wanted to just point out, I know in the Council here we've talked a lot about, well we brought up the overtime, our overtime concerns for a fire and then also for the police department and I don't know if this is something that
  • 01:49:35
    I would like
  • 01:49:55
    is related to that salaries bucket of money overall or expenses.
  • 01:50:03
    So I would like it for both of those departments.
  • 01:50:07
    Are there any other departments that we should know about for over time and that we should get to?
  • 01:50:14
    Those are the only two I can think of.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 01:50:17
    Council President Jalali, Council Member Yang, I think those are the two that come most to mind.
  • 01:50:21
    And I think fire especially is unique.
  • 01:50:24
    And so we'd even think about how we break this up because if you're working a 24 hour shift and you're doing a few of those back to back, you end up going into overtime status just with your regular schedule.
  • 01:50:37
    you know kind of Federal Labor Standards Act overtime, FALSA overtime they call it and then like what we think of as traditional overtime where someone is called in to work a shift that they weren't previously scheduled for so we can break that down even more detail because that is not discretionary in any way and that doesn't have anything to do with people who are out injured or sick that's literally just if you work two days back-to-back you're at 48 hours of work so you go into overtime status but the department has a lot of stats on that.
• • Nelsie Yang
  • 01:51:05
    Thank you.
  • 01:51:05
    Thanks for that explanation, Director McCarthy.
  • 01:51:08
    Yeah, I know that we're coming so close to the final date for the budget, which is December 4, so if we can get those numbers before the end of Friday business hours, I'd really appreciate it, just so that we can have more discussion about that within the Council.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:51:24
    And I'll work to support getting information where deep in these discussions and so this is helpful to bring it back out to full council and keep working through this and I'm deeply grateful to you all for that.
  • 01:51:36
    I think I lost track of the line.
  • 01:51:39
    I'm so sorry.
  • 01:51:40
    Who else is in line?
  • 01:51:41
    Or do you have more, Ms. Yang?
  • 01:51:42
    Okay.
  • 01:51:42
    All right, Director, I'll hand it back to you to keep moving us through this.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 01:51:46
    I think the next slide here is just overall where again kind of where the general fund landed on the spending side with you know about 1.7 percent overspent again higher than where we'd like to be but the majority of departments came in under so overall that that was good news but we want to get that below budget obviously.
• • SPEAKER_10
  • 01:52:09
    On the revenue side, we are expecting to come in a little low on our franchise fee collections due to the especially mild winter and mild summer that we had.
  • 01:52:19
    Also included in the franchise fee category is our cable franchise fees that have been steadily declining as users switch from cable services to streaming services.
  • 01:52:28
    We've already decreased that budget for 2025 to reflect this shift.
  • 01:52:32
    The $7.4 million in additional revenue shown in that next line includes about a million in additional paramedic fees from increased run volumes.
  • 01:52:42
    Also almost 4 million in additional public safety pension aid and disability insurance.
  • 01:52:48
    So fire pension aid is based on home insurance premium costs.
  • 01:52:52
    and police pension aid is based on car insurance premiums and also the number of police officers we have.
  • 01:52:58
    We receive all these aids from the Minnesota Department of Public Safety and the amount we receive for disability insurance is based on the number of employees on duty disability under the age of 65 and the cost of health insurance.
  • 01:53:14
    So this increase here is driven by more people going on duty disability and rising healthcare costs.
  • 01:53:19
    also in the past we've submitted our eligible expenses to the state for reimbursement but the state has only been able to provide a portion of that reimbursement for the first time this year or last year the legislature fully funded this program resulting in significantly more revenue to help us cover those costs
  • 01:53:39
    We are expecting higher than budgeted revenue on the interest on city investments in part due to high interest rates in recent years.
  • 01:53:46
    We expect this to be a pretty short term bump as this revenue is really closely correlated with interest rates and those have started to decline and unfortunately we do not have control over those.
  • 01:53:58
    We made adjustments in the 2025 budget to reflect all of these items where appropriate.
  • 01:54:05
    In the DSI revenue section, we're expecting building permit revenues to come in higher than expected and a slight positive variance in our business license revenue.
  • 01:54:14
    These have also been adjusted for 2025.
  • 01:54:17
    And then hotel tax revenue is also up a bit over the adopted budget, which is great news.
  • 01:54:24
    And it's approaching a return to the pre-pandemic high.
  • 01:54:28
    I believe this projected number is actually higher than our pre-pandemic high.
  • 01:54:35
    that's really exciting news for St Paul.
  • 01:54:38
    Again, this all adds up to an expected $8.7 million of additional revenue over budget, leading us to that net balance of around $2 million.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:54:52
    I see a question from Ms. Jost.
  • 01:54:54
    Go ahead.
• • Saura Jost
  • 01:54:55
    Thank you, Council President.
  • 01:54:56
    For the longer table with the projected revenue, what is all other revenue
• • SPEAKER_10
  • 01:55:05
    Council President, Council Member Jost, that is sort of everything that is not included above.
  • 01:55:10
    So there's a lot of smaller department revenues in there, like some of our parks fees are in there.
  • 01:55:17
    That's where a lot of our internal transfers are.
  • 01:55:20
    It's really a mix of a lot of different things.
  • 01:55:24
    And in this particular case, on the amended budget side, that also reflects
  • 01:55:29
    the amount that we carried forward from the 2023 budget into 2024 for purchase orders that were open at the end of 2023.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:55:41
    For the investments that the legislature passed that are like
  • 01:55:57
    there's a few different sales tax.
  • 01:56:04
    There's non-local option sales tax coming to us, like the housing one, the transit.
  • 01:56:10
    Sorry, there's a couple.
  • 01:56:12
    So does that all go into the levy category?
  • 01:56:14
    I guess I'm like, where does that go?
• • SPEAKER_10
  • 01:56:17
    Council President, all of the different sales taxes go into special funds, so they're not reflected on this at all.
  • 01:56:28
    and the same with the local affordable housing aid.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:56:33
    Got it, thanks.
  • 01:56:36
    What other questions do council members have right now for our colleagues at OFS?
  • 01:56:41
    I think this has been a very fruitful conversation.
  • 01:56:44
    I really appreciate just getting the chance to work through this with you and found this incredibly valuable.
  • 01:56:49
    Helps, I think, set up to have a productive discussion at 1 o'clock when we start to dig into some of these issues with SPPD.
  • 01:56:58
    Want to do the diligent work to meet those challenges responsibly and
  • 01:57:02
    and also try to turn the tide of the trend and find out ways we can do that together.
  • 01:57:08
    So I guess I'm looking around to see if there's anything else members want to ask right now or if you Director and Ms. Mitchell would like to add.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 01:57:17
    Thanks Council President.
  • 01:57:19
    One note that I neglected to mention and I know it would likely come up this afternoon with Chief Henry is on the solution side an important piece for the police department is that we added funding again this year for a second police academy.
  • 01:57:31
    The best way to address overtime costs in police is to just hire more staff to get closer to our sworn complement and so I wanted to make sure that that is highlighted because I know that's something that the chief is trying to do aggressively bring in more people to the department.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:57:45
    I certainly respect and understand that.
  • 01:57:52
    I think what I'm trying to get my head around, and we'll talk with SBPD more at one, is are we keeping the folks that we're investing in?
  • 01:58:01
    And I'm concerned about where they're going to other agencies, other departments.
  • 01:58:05
    and I do think St Paul does this.
  • 01:58:07
    We train a workforce and we don't get to keep them all the time and how much of that is just like the way the world is versus what else we need to be doing.
  • 01:58:15
    I think that's tough stuff to grapple with.
  • 01:58:17
    I don't know the answer individually.
  • 01:58:18
    I think it's our collective charge to figure that out together but I want to just speak to that piece a little because I think
  • 01:58:26
    We want to find the best ways forward with the constraints on us and on our residents.
  • 01:58:31
    Ms. Bui, I think you have a question, and I'm looking around to see if anyone else has any other comments before we recess.
  • 01:58:37
    We're not going to adjourn.
  • 01:58:38
    We're going to recess.
• • Anika Bowie
  • 01:58:39
    So I saw Ms. Bui, Ms. Naker, and Ms. Jost, and then will take us to recess.
  • 01:58:44
    Go ahead.
  • 01:58:44
    Thank you, Council President.
  • 01:58:45
    It might have been mentioned earlier, but I know it's just been a lot of information.
  • 01:58:50
    But I do have a question around the franchise fees.
  • 01:58:53
    for the projected revenue that's on the screen right here.
  • 01:58:57
    Right here says the projected variance is $1.1 million.
  • 01:59:01
    Does that need to be updated based off of the vote that we took, particularly to the gas and electric franchise fees?
• • SPEAKER_10
  • 01:59:14
    Council President, Council Members, no, the vote will impact next year.
  • 01:59:20
    So that doesn't take effect into the next year's budget where we have included additional revenue for franchise fees.
• • Anika Bowie
  • 01:59:27
    So the projected actuals for line three that's already taken into account the projected revenue for next year that we voted on.
• • SPEAKER_10
  • 01:59:40
    Council President, Council Member, no, this is only for 2024, so it's only this year.
• • Anika Bowie
  • 01:59:45
    Got it, got it.
  • 01:59:46
    Okay, sorry about that.
  • 01:59:47
    So there isn't any projections, and at least in this, like, slideshow or in this budget presentation, that includes 2025?
  • 01:59:54
    Correct.
  • 01:59:54
    Okay.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:59:56
    Thank you.
  • 01:59:57
    Ms. Naker and then Ms. Jost, go ahead.
• • Rebecca Noecker
  • 01:59:58
    Thanks, Council President.
  • 01:59:59
    I know we're focused here on general fund projections, but, well, two questions.
  • 02:00:04
    One, when will we see the 2023 final closeout of what actually happened?
  • 02:00:10
    for 2020.
  • 02:00:13
    What are your projections in terms of sales tax for 25 over budget and 23 and 24.
  • 02:00:18
    I know that is usually a source of year-round star.
  • 02:00:22
    So curious what those projections are.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 02:00:25
    For 2023 we are very, very, very close.
  • 02:00:31
    I think if we were to run a report today it probably has all
  • 02:00:36
    and the general fund.
  • 02:00:51
    The second question was related to sales tax.
  • 02:00:56
    There's a few complicated factors with sales tax.
  • 02:00:59
    One is with 2024 the Department of Revenue changed the way that they do what was called the true-up payment where they kind of gave us an advance payment and then every month kind of came in after that.
  • 02:01:13
    They stopped doing that and so we have January looks much lower than it is historically.
  • 02:01:18
    Overall we will
  • 02:01:19
    budget for 24 collections because of that change that DOR did this year.
  • 02:01:33
    I have asked over and over again to have it explained to me and it is one of these questions that doesn't totally make sense to me but the way that finally someone explained it that makes sense is that
  • 02:01:42
    they've kind of pushed this payment into the future so that when sales tax finally ends in the city we would get one more payment after that and so it's like we're missing a 24 payment but it is kicked to the end of our collections of all time essentially so 2058 yeah right exactly right so 24 will be a little low 25 would be back on budget but we're working to finalize those because our collection numbers are always two months behind so we should have better information on that soon
• • Rebecca Noecker
  • 02:02:10
    and you have 23 star now.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 02:02:12
    23 is completed, correct.
  • 02:02:14
    Yeah.
  • 02:02:15
    So we can report out on all that.
• • Rebecca Noecker
  • 02:02:17
    That'd be great.
  • 02:02:17
    Thank you.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 02:02:19
    Ms. Jost, did that cover your question?
  • 02:02:21
    Okay.
  • 02:02:22
    All right.
  • 02:02:23
    She had a similar question.
  • 02:02:25
    Well, I am really grateful to you all for all of your support of all of us in this budget season.
  • 02:02:32
    So thank you.
  • 02:02:33
    I think we're going to pause there for now.
  • 02:02:36
    We are going to head to pre-council.
  • 02:02:37
    We'll be back at one o'clock.
  • 02:02:38
    So if there's nothing else to come before us for now, we are in recess.
• • SPEAKER_04
  • 02:05:14
    City of St Paul, City of St Paul, City of St Paul, City of St Paul,
• • 02:06:45
    St Paul, City Council
  • 02:07:09
    St Paul, City Council, Budget Committee
• • SPEAKER_04
  • 02:08:01
    St Paul, City Council, Budget Committee
  • 02:08:32
    St Paul, City Council
  • 02:09:45
    St Paul, City Council, Budget Committee, Budget Committee
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 02:10:09
    I'm going to reconvene us and call our Budget Committee back to order from recess.
  • 02:10:14
    So I want to appreciate and thank our partners and colleagues at the St. Paul Police Department.
  • 02:10:20
    We asked for a follow-up presentation.
  • 02:10:21
    We first heard from St. Paul Police on their 2025 proposed budget in September.
  • 02:10:28
    And we have been working to suss out and understand what's being proposed for next year.
  • 02:10:33
    I'll frame up this conversation with
  • 02:10:37
    just the general objectives of what I think this follow-up is trying to focus in on which is recognizing all of the work that our St Paul police are doing every day.
  • 02:10:47
    We are working to understand what are the root causes of what
  • 02:10:52
    is increasingly clear is an overspending due to different structural issues within the department, within the workforce, within the world that isn't unique to our police department.
  • 02:11:03
    And then we have some questions that we sent to Chief Henry as a follow up to work through today.
  • 02:11:07
    And I think that the point of this is just to get more shared understanding around what we're really dealing with so that we can make decisions going into 2025 that address those.
  • 02:11:16
    So I want to welcome up and thank Chief Henry to really just
  • 02:11:22
    and the City Council.
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 02:11:40
    members, thank you for the opportunity to come up here.
  • 02:11:44
    As you stated accurately we were sent a list of six follow-up questions in an effort to go through that I' m happy to start with those and read them off and start to talk about
  • 02:12:00
    I want to make sure that I'm answering the questions you have not trying to just say the things that I think are important.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 02:12:14
    thanks and I think what would really help is to work through the questions first and then I think that really helps us inform how we can continue working toward a shared proposal with you so let's let's talk through the questions at the rate you want to it sounds like you have them in front of you so I'll let you start working through that
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 02:12:32
    I do, so for the benefit of everyone here, Council President, thank you so much.
  • 02:12:36
    The first question was, are there specific metrics or data that you use to guide staffing, e.g.
  • 02:12:40
    crime rates, population size, community needs, and workload?
  • 02:12:44
    And so there are, and there's a contextual piece of this that I think is very important for us to all understand as we dive forward.
  • 02:12:50
    There are ratios that are typically used, and you can look across the country, for populations that match our size, cities that are matching to us, that you have per thousand residents ratios.
  • 02:13:03
    The national average for cities our size is 2.4 officers per 1,000 residents.
  • 02:13:09
    So if you do the math on that, whether you use what people say is probably the more accurate population number of 315,000 or the census number of 303,000, that puts you north of 700 officers.
  • 02:13:20
    and I bring that up only because our ratio is much, much lower.
  • 02:13:24
    We are a very lean police department and we do this job.
  • 02:13:29
    Our authorized strength here is 619.
  • 02:13:30
    That number remains where it's at.
  • 02:13:33
    It previously was at 620 and we dropped one because we civilianized one sworn position.
  • 02:13:39
    But we have not in the past added back in the new positions.
  • 02:13:42
    For example, we have a special operations unit here that deals with protests, big events, issues around when we just had a vice president candidate that lived in our town, those types of things.
  • 02:13:52
    And although the needs of the city necessitated creating a unit and adding 12 positions, those were never tacked on to the 619 number.
  • 02:14:00
    Now I'm not here to politic for increasing that number, I just want to explain the context of that.
  • 02:14:04
    So at 619 sworn positions, obviously we have a bunch of professional staff, those are civilian employees, those are very lean numbers.
  • 02:14:13
    So what we look at is we have an overall population and we look at our calls for service and we look at our crime rates and when those crimes are happening and the types of crimes that they are.
  • 02:14:22
    and we set up our staffing model around that.
  • 02:14:26
    So 50%, actually just a touch higher than that, of our entire workforce works patrol.
  • 02:14:32
    So there are the people that the men and women of our city see out on the street every day, mark squad cars, uniforms, those types of things.
  • 02:14:39
    Our city is divided into thirds and you may have experienced this as a council member because you'll think, well, why when I have a problem
  • 02:14:46
    of the City of St Paul.
  • 02:15:04
    Senior Commander or District Chief and you also deal with whether the West or the East and some deal with all three.
  • 02:15:10
    And so that's the way the city is set up into three different kind of smaller police departments that are run and they're displayed.
  • 02:15:16
    Our officers are deployed on three shifts and that's part of one of the future questions that's there.
  • 02:15:21
    We have a day shift that starts at seven o'clock and it's a ten hour work shift and it goes till five in the afternoon.
  • 02:15:26
    We have an afternoon shift that starts at four o'clock and goes till two in the morning and then we have a midnight shift that starts at ten o'clock and goes to eight in the morning.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 02:15:34
    the idea behind that.
  • 02:15:48
    So for the things that you're going through right now, the different shifts, are you saying that that 50% are who's doing these shifts that you're talking about?
  • 02:15:56
    Like- Correct.
  • 02:15:57
    Okay.
  • 02:15:58
    And then, and I'll let you keep walking through it, but just as like a understanding of what the other half of the force is doing, do they have a different shift schedule because of the type of work they do?
  • 02:16:09
    How do we understand the two halves of the police workforce in our city and then how they're incurring?
  • 02:16:15
    Council members
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 02:16:25
    So those shifts are set up and they're designed that we have minimum staffing.
  • 02:16:29
    So you can imagine that it wouldn't be okay if on the day shift in the Eastern District we had two officers working.
  • 02:16:35
    You'd have to have a minimum.
  • 02:16:36
    That's been established over years and years of moving that number backwards and forwards to figure out where we'd be at.
  • 02:16:42
    There are optimal numbers that we would say we are always much more comfortable if the number would be at, let's say, 18 officers for that shift.
  • 02:16:49
    the minimum for a shift like the day shift in the Eastern District or in the Western District is 12.
  • 02:16:54
    We will not schedule a shift less than 12 because it just simply isn't safe for the call load and the workload that we have.
  • 02:17:00
    We need calls where multiple officers need to go to it and those types of things and we you obviously when an emergency is happening it's not the time to pick up the phone and call someone in overtime to come in you need them there.
  • 02:17:11
    So we have that minimum which is not optimal but it is where we would say we wouldn't ever go below that floor.
  • 02:17:17
    and so those shifts then overlap and so one of the things we've done in the last few years is the afternoon shift as I said started at four but we saw a call bulge that happened we were seeing more calls coming in right in and around the floor at four o'clock hour and so we took part of our afternoon shift and had them be what we call early start afternoons and they start at two o'clock that way we have of course then they get done at midnight but that way we are able to spread those assets out over
  • 02:17:44
    over the times where the call load itself dictates when the people are the most needed.
  • 02:17:49
    And we always have an overlap.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 02:17:51
    So again, and I'm asking, I've been doing this a lot today is like back and forth to make sure I'm understanding.
  • 02:17:57
    So this is all from a place of understanding.
  • 02:17:59
    What I heard you just say is we know that peak time becomes around 4 p.m. To be ready, instead of having group A goes away, group B starts in the middle of rush, you are having
  • 02:18:12
    this is the shift that goes till four but the next shift also comes on at two so that there's overlap going into the rush or can you help me understand what you just said I just want to make sure that I'm tracking.
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 02:18:22
    Council President that's correct I wouldn't say that the peak time for calls during a 24-hour cycle is 4 p.m. but we saw what I would describe as a bulge in there so we decided that we needed to push back some of the afternoon officers to start a little earlier so we had this overlap that was there.
  • 02:18:37
    Most if you hear about or you watch television shows what you see is that there's
  • 02:18:41
    First watch, second watch, third watch and that's a 24 hour day divided into three shifts which is of course eight hours per shift but if you did that there'd be a time three times a day where everyone was coming in and dropping off their vehicles so that the new officers could take those vehicles and go back out and we obviously don't want that and so we every one of the shifts overlaps with its proceeding and and incoming shift.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 02:19:05
    Go ahead, Ms. Kim.
• • SPEAKER_09
  • 02:19:07
    Just, and I appreciate the like, just for the sake of understanding.
  • 02:19:09
    So that makes sense that there's overlap of the shifts.
  • 02:19:13
    And each shift is ten hours.
  • 02:19:14
    Is that ten hours of regular time, or is it eight hours of regular time with two hours of overtime?
  • 02:19:20
    Can you talk us through when, in that scenario, does overtime kick in at all?
  • 02:19:25
    Or is a regular, schmegular, rated, hourly shift ten hours for police?
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 02:19:31
    Council President, Council Vice President, thank you for that question it's a great question and it's a perfect example of the kind of things that we hope to answer today because I work in this world so that is a very like assumed thing that people know so how the federal law works in relation to this and how state our state and then our contract works in relation to this is you um federal law says that any hours over 80 hours in a pay period that you have to pay overtime that's a minimum most places do it you and some places will say anything over 40 in that week have to be paid overtime
  • 02:20:00
    In St Paul, the rule is anything beyond your scheduled hours.
  • 02:20:04
    So to answer your question, the 10 hour shift is all straight pay.
  • 02:20:07
    That's their hours.
  • 02:20:08
    So if for some reason the nine and a half hours into my shift I got sent to a very violent domestic call or something and I was there for another two hours, that tacked on addition to the 10 hour shift would indeed be overtime.
  • 02:20:21
    But all of those scheduled hours are for straight time.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 02:20:33
    So I know that members are, we're also absorbing and appreciate this time with you to just really work through it, so thank you Chief.
  • 02:20:40
    I want to just, I'm tracking the questions we're working through.
  • 02:20:44
    We asked you any specific metrics or data you used to guide staffing decisions.
  • 02:20:49
    I heard you say it was population size and comparative ratios,
  • 02:20:59
    I'm so sorry, I haven't slept very many hours today.
  • 02:21:02
    But I heard you give some metrics to that.
  • 02:21:04
    So I feel like we've started to cover that.
  • 02:21:07
    You talked about here's our general specific tool or system for scheduling shifts.
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 02:21:11
    So I appreciate you helping us.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 02:21:13
    And then, how are you allocating personnel across different units?
  • 02:21:18
    I think we got a better picture globally that half are on patrol, half are in other units, which we can break out and get into.
  • 02:21:24
    How do you manage shift rotations and assignments to ensure adequate coverage at all times?
  • 02:21:30
    So that's what I heard you just saying is that you've come up with a system where you have the overlap for part of it.
  • 02:21:36
    and why that is.
  • 02:21:37
    And then we have a couple more to work through, but that feels like we've covered at least to start.
  • 02:21:43
    So I'm just tracking progress through here while fielding questions from you all in real time.
  • 02:21:47
    So with that, if you don't mind, I'd like to, let's go to Councilwoman Jost, Councilman Naker.
  • 02:21:52
    I'm working to facilitate this discussion because I think this is very critical information and I want to make sure that we can all be heard.
  • 02:21:59
    So go ahead Ms. Jost and then Ms. Naker.
• • Saura Jost
  • 02:22:00
    Thank you, Council President.
  • 02:22:02
    Chief Henry, so you mentioned that if it would be over time if it was beyond their scheduled shift, which is typically 10 hours, it sounds like, and so is that over a two-week pay period or just maybe over a week, is that usually like 80 hours over two weeks, like on average, or what is the time allocated for a scheduled shift?
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 02:22:27
    Council Member, if I think I'm hearing your question correctly, I also want to clarify one thing.
  • 02:22:31
    If your schedule shift is 10 hours long, then if you stayed longer than that, that's when your overtime would start.
  • 02:22:36
    We have employees that work nine hour days, and we also have employees that work eight hour days.
  • 02:22:40
    And so if their eight hour day ended, they were Monday through Friday,
  • 02:22:43
    8 hour person, if they went beyond that 8 hours, that would be overtime for them because it's their scheduled shift, not the, you can imagine if you work 2,080 hour work here and you work 10 hours a day, you work less days per year than the person who works an 8 hour day.
  • 02:22:57
    And so those get added on there.
  • 02:22:58
    If I heard your question correctly, is how often does that actually happen?
  • 02:23:03
    It isn't that often on patrol, but it does happen where there's carryovers, a call goes through.
  • 02:23:08
    and the City Council.
  • 02:23:25
    these are the taxpayers dollars and we're in a really tight spot right now with staffing needs that we need to be as fiscally responsible with those hours as possible.
  • 02:23:34
    So I don't have actual data on how many actual shifts a day but I would say it is not the norm for you to come to work and expect to stay over but it does happen.
  • 02:23:43
    Unfortunately when it does happen it's usually around a very big incident and so it would likely be more than one person that stayed a little bit longer.
• • Saura Jost
  • 02:23:51
    does that help?
  • 02:23:52
    yeah I mean it sounds like it's on a shift by shift basis for for overtime and just because you worked extra hours on a shift doesn't mean you're working a few hours on the next shift for example you still have to do the 10-hour shift at a minimum is that right?
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 02:24:05
    Councilmember that's correct so I think some people who work salary jobs think well I put in 14 hours today so I will put in four hours less somewhere else later in the week that's not how that works for us
• • Rebecca Noecker
  • 02:24:18
    of the City Council.
  • 02:24:37
    First question.
  • 02:24:38
    And second, I'm curious, I don't remember when the shift was made, so it might have been within the time period we're looking at on this sheet.
  • 02:24:45
    But the switch from off duty officers doing private events to on duty overtime, which we made, when did we make that shift?
  • 02:24:54
    I don't remember.
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 02:24:56
    that was that was happening that happened under Chief Axdell and it was completed under Chief Axdell so I want to say it was 2020 but I'd be going off my memory there.
• • Rebecca Noecker
  • 02:25:05
    Okay so that was before what we're looking at so I'm just curious did we see overtime costs change since then not the contracted overtime that those private parties are paying because my understanding is they are fully covering the costs of that over time but
  • 02:25:23
    in that those officers are now being taken off of their normal duty from their normal shifts to do that work.
  • 02:25:29
    Are we paying others overtime to make up for that lost labor or is that not how it works?
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 02:25:36
    Councilmember, I appreciate the question.
  • 02:25:38
    That's not how that works.
  • 02:25:39
    So you don't go work at Target, let's say, for example, in lieu of working for the city.
  • 02:25:44
    You do it on only your time off.
  • 02:25:46
    So the only time you can do that is when your time off.
  • 02:25:49
    As a matter of fact, because it's now department overtime, you couldn't take vacation from here.
  • 02:25:55
    from the City Council.
  • 02:26:13
    of the City of St. Paul.
  • 02:26:14
    There is not an overlap there.
  • 02:26:16
    No service is being diminished to the city by working a job like target or off duty job.
  • 02:26:23
    I think it is important to note that the city gets a huge benefit from it and this is how this happens.
  • 02:26:29
    I will use the target example because most of us have shopped a target and seen a police officer there.
  • 02:26:34
    Target is paying the bill for
  • 02:26:40
    the fact that there's a police car there and a uniformed officer in Target is deterring crime and it is now having another police officer in our community that's not being billed to the city.
  • 02:26:49
    Secondly, if there's a shoplifter at Target that employee being paid by Target is now handling that call and an officer who otherwise would be called into that location to take that call is now free to continue doing what they're doing and answer calls for service in the city.
• • Rebecca Noecker
  • 02:27:03
    Thank you and that's really helpful Chief because I think the Fire Department maybe does this a little bit differently but it's and so this clarifies my understanding
  • 02:27:10
    They are off duty officers.
  • 02:27:12
    They are not on duty when they are being pulled to do this private work, but they are being now paid through the city's overtime system rather than the way that they were being paid before when they were off duty.
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 02:27:24
    Councilmember, that is correct.
• • Rebecca Noecker
  • 02:27:25
    Okay.
  • 02:27:26
    Thank you.
  • 02:27:27
    My first question is just about what the department is doing to constrain overtime costs while trying to hire up.
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 02:27:34
    Council Member, thank you for the question.
  • 02:27:35
    So one of the things we have done if we were to bring in a staffing chart for all of you and show you all the units is we have
  • 02:27:43
    We're already very lean to begin with.
  • 02:27:44
    We have gone through and picked away all these kind of positions where we thought, right now, given the staffing challenges that we're dealing with, it's a much bigger benefit to pull you as a specialty officer out of that assignment and put you on patrol.
  • 02:27:58
    So first and foremost, we've reallocated from non-patrol assignments back into patrol because that's the number one driver for overtime.
  • 02:28:06
    Secondly, I want to be clear that we work three 10-hour shifts.
  • 02:28:10
    So as I explained before, if the afternoon shift or the day shift ends at 5 p.m., and the afternoon officers come on at 4 p.m., and we find out that we're going to go below minimums for the afternoon shift,
  • 02:28:22
    we don't bring you in for a 10 hour overtime shift we bring you in for when the shortage actually is so you'd work from 5 to 10 or 11 which is really that window before the midnight officers come on that we're actually short so that we're not at minimums now are there times where I could get called in for an overtime shift and be told you'll get out of here probably at 11 and then the city gets so busy that we keep you yes that happens but we don't just do a trade for trade on those things we're always looking for ways to make it
  • 02:28:51
    of the City of St Paul.
  • 02:29:12
    members, members of the committee, members of the committee, members of
  • 02:29:29
    and the City Council.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 02:29:48
    So I think the line was Ms. Jost.
  • 02:29:52
    I'm looking around.
  • 02:29:54
    So I see Ms. Johnson and then Ms. Kim.
  • 02:29:57
    And we got through most of the questions that we already sent, so I'm going to keep us moving through it.
  • 02:30:04
    We'll go to Johnson then Kim, and I'll come back to that because this time with you is really valuable, Chief, and I appreciate you working through it with us.
  • 02:30:10
    Go ahead, Ms. Johnson.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 02:30:12
    Thank you so much, Chief Axel, for the
  • 02:30:17
    or Chief Henry, excuse me, for the updates.
  • 02:30:20
    If I were to ask you just basic, which sworn officers are you seeing?
  • 02:30:30
    At what level are their paid overtime being?
  • 02:30:33
    Or how much overtime?
  • 02:30:34
    Which officers are getting overtime?
  • 02:30:36
    For what purpose and how often?
  • 02:30:37
    How are you currently tracking that?
  • 02:30:40
    And what information would be shared or could be shared with council members?
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 02:30:44
    Thank you for the question Councilmember.
  • 02:30:46
    So all of the overtime in the city is tracked.
  • 02:30:48
    It's tracked initially for a first purpose which is we have a limit on how much you can work.
  • 02:30:53
    So we can't have you being working so much overtime that you end up being detrimental to your health and also the fact is that we don't want you to work so much additional work that it impacts your actual primary assignment.
  • 02:31:05
    So it all gets tracked from that lens from an employee wellness lens first.
  • 02:31:09
    and then it gets tracked secondarily by the fairness, what I would call the fairness model which is our contract is very clear and we have a very robust federation union in our city that watches this so even if I chose not to watch it
  • 02:31:25
    we do they would watch it for us and the contract is very clear all overtime has to be given out in a fair and equitable way so how that really starts with is let's say we have i sign up as an employee to work five forecasted overtime shifts shifts that we know in advance are going to need to be filled and i'm the most senior officer in the city i'm going to get my first choice and then it's going to go up the line to all the people
  • 02:31:49
    through the
  • 02:32:07
    so no one person can be collecting overtime shifts or getting more shifts to make sure that they're kind of padding their wallets or whatever.
  • 02:32:15
    The issue we have right now, given our staff shortage and given the number of employers in the City of St Paul that would like to hire contractual overtime being the target shift that we're talking about is there is more overtime
  • 02:32:27
    than our employees want.
  • 02:32:29
    For the first time in my entire career, other than when we've had a national emergency or a civil unrest situation, we've had mandated overtime, meaning we've had to tell employees, I'm sorry you can't be off on Saturday, we're forcing you to come back to work.
  • 02:32:44
    and an example of that would be a 4th of July weekend when you have an event at Allianz, you have a concert at the XL Energy Center and you've got a baseball game at CHS Field.
  • 02:32:52
    We don't have enough people interested in working and our folks want to spend time with their loved ones like we do too.
  • 02:32:58
    That we've had to actually do that in reverse.
  • 02:33:00
    Other departments that are at a worse staffing platform than we are, and you can only look across the river to see examples of that, have that built in.
  • 02:33:07
    Right now in Minneapolis, my understanding is from talking to their chief is every week they have a mandated
  • 02:33:12
    10 hour overtime shift, every person has to work.
  • 02:33:16
    So they're getting that happening on a weekly basis.
  • 02:33:18
    We've had to do it I think seven or eight times this year.
  • 02:33:21
    It's affected 150 of our employees.
  • 02:33:23
    So we haven't even gone through the entire litany in one year of every sworn employee that would be forced to work those shifts.
  • 02:33:29
    They get paid to work them of course.
  • 02:33:31
    But we have more overtime opportunities than we have takers.
  • 02:33:36
    Does that help clarify that a little bit?
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 02:33:39
    yeah and I guess just the piece of like would we be able to see the records that you were talking and we're kind of referring to when it comes to like how how overtime is allocated and like how much and just kind of being able to actually see that
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 02:33:53
    Council member yes you would be able to we have a software system and then we have a full-time professional staff employee that was hired for this purpose who by the way is billed that's a part of the billing that goes into those labor hours so that the city is not incurring that actual cost that runs that program so if that would be beneficial for
  • 02:34:10
    I'd love to take you up on that.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 02:34:40
    Thank you.
  • 02:34:41
    So I think the line now goes to VP Kim.
  • 02:34:43
    Go ahead, Ms. Kim.
• • SPEAKER_09
  • 02:34:46
    So holding space for some of these questions together, we just heard you say there's more overtime available than what folks even want to necessarily fill.
  • 02:34:56
    And last year we saw your line item budget for overtime to be around $2 million.
  • 02:35:01
    It ended up being around $6 million.
  • 02:35:03
    We're kind of wondering,
  • 02:35:06
    Committee.
  • 02:35:25
    I think it'd be really good to hear a little bit more on like how is it really those five hour shifts that add up every single week that equals to the millions of dollars that we see in overtime costs or is it really special events that we're doing or like can you talk us through or special incidents that happen talk us through what that what that looks like
  • 02:35:45
    yeah can you just give us maybe like trends that you see if you can name a handful or a few of them what is the greatest producer of overtime for your staff is it really those like couple hour shifts here and there or is it more rapid large-scale response like what does that look like in your department
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 02:36:03
    Council Vice President, Council Members, I appreciate that question.
  • 02:36:06
    So a couple of things I think just to get clear so that when you hear the answer we don't get things sometimes mixed up and one of my faults is sometimes I assume people know what I know and I really don't want to do that in this case.
  • 02:36:18
    So I think a word that gets bantered about a little bit is discretionary overtime.
  • 02:36:22
    I can tell you right now we have no discretionary overtime in St. Paul.
  • 02:36:25
    we have had it in the past where a district or a unit would have a budget that they are allowed to spend the way they want to and they decide I'm going to do this or this program is going on or even I'm working with one of my council members and we want to run an event.
  • 02:36:38
    We don't have a budget for that.
  • 02:36:40
    All that money is going to get burned away.
  • 02:36:42
    So three big sources that I want to make sure we clear and put aside in another pile are going to be grant funding, contractual overtime, and I'm losing the third one here.
  • 02:36:56
    What was it?
  • 02:36:57
    Oh yeah, special events.
  • 02:36:58
    So special events would be grand old days.
  • 02:37:02
    It would be a big issue at the XO Energy Center, those types of things.
  • 02:37:06
    Those get billed back to either the vending site or the event.
  • 02:37:10
    So those get offset.
  • 02:37:11
    So the city is not paying for those events.
  • 02:37:14
    I mean, we do incur some cost in the planning and development of it.
  • 02:37:17
    and some gas use and vehicle use and those types of things.
  • 02:37:20
    But for the actual labor hours themselves, we all want to erase those things.
  • 02:37:24
    That absolutely for sure happens with contractual overtime.
  • 02:37:27
    And then for grants, for example, you may have seen in some of your reports some of the TZD work, the traffic and safety work that happens around DWIs, texting and driving, seat belt enforcement and those types of things.
  • 02:37:38
    We get a grant and the grant says, we will pay your department to do this, but it has to be spent doing those things.
  • 02:37:43
    and all of those events create some benefit for the city in that there are more police officers working visible in the community and available if there was a real emergency but aren't coming at any cost.
  • 02:37:54
    So that basically tells you those aren't impacting the numbers that you're talking about.
  • 02:38:01
    Where those numbers come from is we are short about 75 employees but we are not short 75 employees labor.
  • 02:38:10
    We are not producers of widgets.
  • 02:38:12
    We're not selling cars.
  • 02:38:13
    So if we have less salespeople, we're selling less vehicles.
  • 02:38:16
    We are first responders.
  • 02:38:17
    And the key word there being responding.
  • 02:38:19
    So we are responding to these things and we have to maintain a minimum strength posture when we do that.
  • 02:38:24
    And we sometimes get held over on those shifts.
  • 02:38:27
    That's where that happens.
  • 02:38:28
    Now you think, well, there's got to be an easier way than hiring people back to solve that problem.
  • 02:38:34
    Here's why those lean numbers that I spoke of earlier with our authorized staff are so important.
  • 02:38:39
    St Paul over the years has become leaner and leaner while the work amount has grown bigger and bigger.
  • 02:38:44
    That works if you're fully staffed or close to it and the number should actually probably go up but again I'm not here to make that argument.
  • 02:38:51
    That works.
  • 02:38:52
    How we solve when we have a bulge in calls or we have an increase is if you can imagine if we added in a month a thousand extra hours or a year a thousand extra hours of labor
  • 02:39:04
    it would cost us a time and a half, 1,500 hours of pay to offset that 1,000 hours of labor.
  • 02:39:11
    Well, that's way cheaper than hiring one more employee because the employee I have to pay 2,080 hours of labor and I have to pay 21% on top of that for their benefits, their pension, all those things.
  • 02:39:23
    So if I'm every year experiencing anywhere from 1,000 up to 1,500 extra labor hours
  • 02:39:30
    I'm cheaper just paying my current staff overtime than I am hiring a new employee.
  • 02:39:35
    But when you're down 75 employees and all that work is still out there, we are spending $1.50 for every dollar's worth of labor trying to offset just the minimum amount of people we have to have to deal with those numbers, and those numbers grow exponentially.
  • 02:39:51
    What you find is on a normally staff-sized police department,
  • 02:39:54
    we can probably go down if you go in and I apologize I have an accounting degree so I speak in numbers quite a bit if you have an actuary look at those numbers there's a sweet spot and it's interesting I asked our accounting group to look into those numbers to say if you had to pinpoint at what level of staffing loss do we go from
  • 02:40:12
    that
  • 02:40:30
    The 619 number is smaller than the work we've been asked to do.
  • 02:40:35
    So our staffing number, really, if you just added on all the jobs that were added to us in the last three years, and you reduced the ones we took away, we'd be at about 640.
  • 02:40:44
    We're currently 13% below authorized strength.
  • 02:40:48
    If you took us to where the number should be, we'd be 19%, 18% down below.
  • 02:40:53
    And if you took us to where the national average was, we'd be
  • 02:40:57
    for the City Council.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 02:41:17
    So I'm looking around because I see Ms. Jost, then I see Ms. Yang, and then I see Ms. Naker.
  • 02:41:23
    So let's go Jost, Yang, Naker.
• • Saura Jost
  • 02:41:25
    Thank you.
  • 02:41:27
    Thank you, Council President, and thank you Chief Henry for elaborating on that.
  • 02:41:30
    I think what I'm trying to understand is the, so we are budgeting for 619 officers for 2025, is that correct?
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 02:41:43
    Council member, that's correct.
• • Saura Jost
  • 02:41:44
    That's the authorized strength number that's on there.
  • 02:41:48
    But we don't actually have that many.
  • 02:41:50
    We're short 75.
  • 02:41:51
    So then when we have to pay our officers overtime, then that kind of is where
  • 02:41:59
    I think that those FTEs that aren't filled, that money goes to pay for their overtime is my understanding but then also there's additional money for overtime being spent and then there's overspending and is all of that basically as a result of trying to capture all of that overtime or is because I'm just trying to get an understanding of what all of that I see three parts of that spending and I'm trying to understand kind of what's going where
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 02:42:27
    Yes Councilmember, just to be clear, the special events, the contractual overtime and the grant money is not making us go over.
  • 02:42:34
    It's actually a net positive for us because we're getting police officers out on the street making our community safer and running events but it's not costing the city any money for that.
  • 02:42:44
    All of that overtime overage is coming from the staffing shortage that we have.
  • 02:42:48
    We don't have a work shortage, we have a people shortage and a labor hour shortage.
  • 02:42:51
    So what we have is a bunch of labor hours
  • 02:42:53
    that if we're left unattended would create a huge problem and we've seen this happen in other cities where they shrunk their department from the bottom up so instead of for example in the Eastern District on the day shift their minimum number to be safe is 12 officers.
  • 02:43:08
    we've played around with those numbers over the years trying to figure out the right spot and they have grown but also the call loads have grown that is a legitimately good solid number that's safe most many days when the officers work in the Eastern District on the day shift and this is true for all the other shifts that number is not enough they're running call to call to call to call and they come in and they're tired and they haven't had a break but the minimum number has to be maintained in there so we are we are hiring
  • 02:43:35
    We're buying back our employees to work the labor that hasn't gone away simply because the position has gone away.
  • 02:43:42
    And it's incredibly expensive once you get beyond a certain point.
  • 02:43:47
    That would be a completely different conversation if we were, it wouldn't be one for one percentage increase or decrease if we were at 600 officers.
  • 02:43:54
    but at 552 sworn with 539 of those deployable and that just means that the difference between 539 and 552 is paternity leave, military leave, an injury that's going to keep them off the street for a long time those types of things we have to buy back to do the work that is still there whether or not the employee works for the city or not
  • 02:44:14
    and the benefits saved by not having an employee who gets benefits, sick time, pension pay-ins, those things gets eclipsed very quickly and it's roughly at that 8% mark.
  • 02:44:24
    Once you go beyond that, it gets worse and worse the more and more we spend.
• • Saura Jost
  • 02:44:29
    okay I think I understand that I guess what I'm asking is the it's just it sounded like you said there was a sweet spot for the number of officers such that you know there's a really high cost to overtime but you only have so much ability to you know hire to fill these positions is if we were to add up like the dollar amounts for the 75 FTEs that are being paid for but are that not filled and then the overtime that is a cost to the city and then the overspending that we've had and have anticipated are we were just looking at for this year
  • 02:45:00
    are all those dollar amounts from just this overtime basically or what are they otherwise what are they from?
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 02:45:08
    Councilmember, I guess I didn't track what which dollar amounts are you referring to for the total overtime overage?
• • Saura Jost
  • 02:45:15
    yeah like the total overtime overage if that is a certain number does that equal you know that because there is money that is allocated to FTEs that aren't filled and then there's overspending so like does the money for the FTEs 75 FTEs plus the overspending equal this overtime
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 02:45:34
    not directly in the way that
  • 02:45:56
    you know
  • 02:46:13
    We aren't hiring back the labor that's lost by not having 75 people.
  • 02:46:18
    We're not hiring that back at a direct hour for hour.
  • 02:46:21
    We're making that smaller by finding places to absorb it or move people to fill those jobs and have them not do another job over here, but also making those shifts shorter.
  • 02:46:30
    So if we went straight up and just said, every employee that I'm short, I'm going to fill them with 2,080 hours a year of work.
  • 02:46:38
    we would be spending what you're talking to.
  • 02:46:40
    We aren't coming close to that because we aren't doing that.
  • 02:46:43
    We are trying to be as fiscally responsible and we're only spending those labor hours in areas that we have that are unforgiving that we can't turn away from.
• • Saura Jost
  • 02:46:50
    So if we had 619 officers' positions filled, does that mean that we wouldn't have any overtime or overspending?
  • 02:46:58
    Or just not any, but to quite the percentage that we've seen in the last few years?
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 02:47:04
    Councilmember, thank you for the question.
  • 02:47:06
    That is the best question on this issue.
  • 02:47:12
    how the staffing model works and it works the same way with the fire department is you figure out the right number of people to have and you don't want to have people standing around doing anything but you also don't want to be so short that it costs too much money to hire employees back if you're fully complimented and I would actually argue that the 619 number is probably a little low for that but let's just assume that it's not
  • 02:47:34
    you can be very forgiving if we can hire back people to fill that gap which we're going to have.
  • 02:47:39
    Officers are going to get held over on calls, they're going to get called into court on their days off, they're going to get called in to investigate crimes in the middle of the night when it's not cost effective to have them working the night shift but it is much cheaper to have them just respond in for three or four hours.
  • 02:47:52
    when the crime is happening at night, we are always going to have overtime.
  • 02:47:56
    But it's not going to look anything like it looks today.
  • 02:47:59
    It's going to be a completely different picture because we're hiring just to get back to even.
  • 02:48:03
    And the situations that you're describing, if you were fully staffed, will still happen and are on top of that pile of money that we're spending.
  • 02:48:10
    But if you get rid of the big juggernaut that's driving that fund, you get rid of it through that.
  • 02:48:15
    And so it ends up being cheaper and it ends up being much healthier
  • 02:48:20
    for our officers and it makes way better community contacts with the city because you can imagine we have employees right now that are being forced to work overtime and they are working sometimes 70 hours in a week or something and my guess is they're probably not on this cheeriest side of life when they run into a young kid at a store.
  • 02:48:41
    Our officers are very good at those things but that's not a sustainable model for long term and we're going to burn out and lose people at those rates.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 02:48:49
    So the line that I have is Ms. Yang and then Ms. Naker and then I'm actually going to put myself in line after Ms. Naker.
  • 02:48:57
    Let's go to council member Yang.
• • Nelsie Yang
  • 02:48:58
    Thanks, Council President.
  • 02:49:01
    Chief, thanks so much for being here.
  • 02:49:02
    I really appreciate you explaining to us more about your operations and really like the challenges that you all are experiencing.
  • 02:49:08
    I really hear you on the importance of meeting the authorized strength of 619 officers.
  • 02:49:14
    And I do agree with you because to me, as somebody who's at the table here making budget decisions, it seems like it is in our best interest to
  • 02:49:23
    I have a couple of questions and if anything I'm seeing here is like inaccurate like feel free to correct me so I see here there's a
  • 02:49:45
    a section in the 2025 proposal labeled current service level adjustments and it's for six and a half million dollars.
  • 02:49:54
    And there's a blurb here saying that it's for salary and benefit costs, contract negotiations, and adjustments to department contributions to city wide services such as property insurance and telephone monthly charges.
  • 02:50:06
    In addition, revenue adjustments were made to better align with that actual revenue history.
  • 02:50:11
    So I think that last line is the one that throws me off because that can mean a lot of things.
  • 02:50:15
    So I was wondering if you would be able to break down that six and a half million more so that we can understand basically like what is that amount?
  • 02:50:24
    And it sticks out to me a lot just because it is a really large number, like more in comparison to any of the requests that we've seen from all the other departments and frankly like in past budget presentations that I've been a part of too.
  • 02:50:35
    So my big question is, you know, is a lot of the
  • 02:50:39
    the ask basically to cover overtime spending and but overall like I just want to understand more like what what is the breakdown of that six and a half million and it is I do feel it's important for us to cover this because it wasn't different information that was shared in that last budget presentation so I think that this really is one of the biggest reasons why we wanted to get a follow-up presentation
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 02:51:00
    Council Member, thank you for the question.
  • 02:51:02
    So I think it's important at this point that I just highlight one thing that I kind of wish I would have inserted earlier.
  • 02:51:07
    When the mayor asks us as directors, and that means all of us, to work on the budget for the year, we break out into groups and they're assigned for us so we get kind of cross discipline stuff.
  • 02:51:19
    And a big part of what goes on with that whole thing is that we all start to learn about the needs of the other directors.
  • 02:51:25
    and what happens invariably is someone says I've got this thing that's like eight on a scale of one to ten that I've got to get done.
  • 02:51:31
    And then they're in a group with or they're in the final big discussion with other directors and they realize oh my goodness this other group has this ten on the scale of ten thing that has to happen and that director will say listen I'm going to back my proposal
  • 02:51:44
    and the City Council.
  • 02:52:04
    Right now we're in the perfect storm and we're in the middle of it with what's going on.
  • 02:52:10
    But it could get worse.
  • 02:52:12
    We are weathering it better than most places and it's these two things.
  • 02:52:15
    In 2019 and 2020 we saw a big influx of folks deciding not to be police officers at a level that has basically shut down the colleges and schools that were training cops.
  • 02:52:24
    They are closing their programs because they have no students.
  • 02:52:27
    So we don't have any on ramping.
  • 02:52:28
    I've said this before in community meetings, some of you may have heard it,
  • 02:52:31
    that when I applied for St Paul in 1995, there were 2,500 applicants for 30 positions.
  • 02:52:35
    The last time we posted officer positions, we had 70 applicants.
  • 02:52:39
    and all those people, we don't realize them.
  • 02:52:42
    Some don't pass a background, some can't pass a physical, some can't pass a psychological exam and we certainly can't be in a position that we lower our standards and bring in someone because you think it's expensive to not have an officer, hire a bad one.
  • 02:52:55
    And we know how bad that is.
  • 02:52:57
    On top of that issue, so the people coming, gravitating towards this profession has fallen to historic lows.
  • 02:53:04
    But it is starting to trend back, which is good news.
  • 02:53:06
    we are right now in a cycle and so we and I had this conversation once with John McCarthy and was interesting I bring it up because he said oh that was my dad post-vietnam war municipalities hired a ton of workers they were garbage collectors they were police officers they were firefighters those types of things and that happened here in St Paul and so what happened was under the old pension rules that people worked usually for 20 or 25 years then in the mid 90s a whole bunch of people left all at the same time
  • 02:53:32
    So that means that in St Paul we hired a ton of people from 1995 to 2002.
  • 02:53:37
    Well now we're where as far as that time clock.
  • 02:53:40
    We're right back where that was before.
  • 02:53:42
    So we have a whole bunch of folks that are going through attrition.
  • 02:53:45
    For our younger officers there couldn't be a better time on earth to get promoted and move their way up.
  • 02:53:50
    But for the city as a
  • 02:53:52
    a situation when without new people coming in and a bunch of folks coming out we're working very diligently to find ways to get people on board in untraditional ways but also to retain the workforce that we have because that six and a half million dollar number we are rapidly approaching the point that we're gonna have to decide as a community
  • 02:54:12
    to say, what stuff do you not want the police department to be doing?
  • 02:54:15
    Because there's a number that we'll get to that it won't matter if we have the political will and the desire to pay that bill, we won't be able to pay it.
  • 02:54:22
    And then we're going to be asking ourselves, the labor's not going anywhere, the demand, the call for service is not going down, it's going up, so what are we going to do to solve that problem?
  • 02:54:31
    And it's a precarious place to be.
  • 02:54:33
    I'm very optimistic that we can find our way through it.
  • 02:54:35
    I think if any place can, it's St. Paul.
  • 02:54:37
    I think that we have the ability to do that.
  • 02:54:39
    We are weathering this storm.
  • 02:54:40
    way better than most places.
  • 02:54:42
    The national average for departments our size is down 17%.
  • 02:54:45
    We're doing better than that.
  • 02:54:47
    Minneapolis is down 40%.
  • 02:54:48
    We're obviously way better than that.
  • 02:54:51
    But we are looking at ways right now to retain people.
  • 02:54:54
    The number one thing we hear for employees that leave our law enforcement here and go to practice law enforcement other places is we lose very, very qualified investigators in the sweet spot of their careers.
  • 02:55:05
    Really,
  • 02:55:06
    you used a sports analogy would be when you're at your very height of your abilities we lose them to the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.
  • 02:55:13
    Part of the reason why we lose that is that they want to go study
  • 02:55:20
    They want to go do a specific style investigation.
  • 02:55:24
    But the biggest issue is, and we've polled a lot of them, we do exit interviews and we reach back out to them, is the state offers something that no city does and we've had the conversation with Tony Newborn and the Deputy Mayor and the Mayor that we should consider doing it here is they leave because when they retire at 55 they are on the hook for family health insurance until Medicare kicks in at 65.
  • 02:55:43
    The state pays that for you.
  • 02:55:45
    I'm not a fan of bonuses, I think it feels a little bit mercenary when we hire someone and we say we're going to give you a bonus but I am a fan of wellness and I am a fan of saying if we're going to be the best city to live in we should be the best city to work for and I think that's a way to incentivize people to stay so my argument has been maybe we should explore the idea that if you're going to leave at 55 anyway that's still very young if you would stay to 57 or 58 and you've got 20 years employed for the city we'll cover your health insurance for that next seven years and that we know from
  • 02:56:15
    the information we've collected from our workforce people have said if that happened I wouldn't leave and so I think we have to retain those that we have we have to extend the shelf life of the ones that we're retaining and we have to find new ways to develop people to drive those numbers down to make sure it's there
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 02:56:32
    Thank you.
  • 02:56:33
    I just have a few things to follow up on.
  • 02:56:35
    And I want to flag, we have about ten minutes and the line is to close out with Ms. Yang, go to Ms. Naker.
  • 02:56:40
    My item is quick and I'm looking to see.
  • 02:56:42
    So I want to keep us on track, but go ahead Ms. Yang.
  • 02:56:45
    Thank you.
  • 02:56:46
    That hour went by so quick.
• • Nelsie Yang
  • 02:56:47
    So I hear you on all of that.
  • 02:56:50
    I think that you brought up some really great points that I agree with.
  • 02:56:56
    I'm not hearing the breakdown though of the six and a half million.
  • 02:57:00
    Is that something that we can get?
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 02:57:02
    of the Senate.
  • 02:57:22
    members, members of the committee, members of the committee, members of the committee, members of the committee, members of the committee, members of
  • 02:57:45
    it's what they make so if it's a hundred bucks an hour let's say they don't make a hundred dollars an hour but if it was just to make the math easy you'd get billed 121 because we can't have you getting paid from an outside source and then expect the city to pick up the cost of your pension your health care all those other pieces if we're going to offset it and make it a net neutral expense to the city and the taxpayer it has to cover the entire piece
• • Nelsie Yang
  • 02:58:06
    Okay, awesome.
  • 02:58:07
    I really appreciate that just because it's all lumped together here.
  • 02:58:09
    If you can send us the breakdown though, that would be much appreciated.
  • 02:58:13
    I know I made a request earlier when we had the OFS presentation too.
  • 02:58:16
    I have just a question about the St Paul Police Academy.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 02:58:20
    Yep, let's go there and then to Naker and then mine is out of...
• • Nelsie Yang
  • 02:58:25
    I know that there's an ask to have a second police academy for next year just to try and get us to that authorized strength number and I know like during my time on the council we've had about one to two police academies every year.
  • 02:58:46
    Can you talk a bit about about like the success rate for this and how I define success rate just in this context is how many
  • 02:58:53
    of the graduates are actually coming back and working for our department.
  • 02:58:57
    And then how many are actually graduating and going elsewhere?
  • 02:59:00
    And if you can talk about what incentives we have to actually keep those graduates here, that'd be really great.
  • 02:59:06
    Because I'm invested in making sure that they do come back and work here in our city.
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 02:59:11
    Councilmember and Councilmembers, thank you for the question.
  • 02:59:14
    So our academy is for our employees.
  • 02:59:16
    So it isn't an academy process that we push people through and then put them out into the job market and let other police departments hire them.
  • 02:59:22
    Does that mean that every graduate who graduates from our department who then becomes a police officer couldn't possibly end up in another department?
  • 02:59:28
    No, it doesn't.
  • 02:59:29
    But that happens quite rarely, to be honest with you.
  • 02:59:32
    Our issue right now is that we're having to have more and more academies because we're not getting, if we could get, if we were in the 90s,
  • 02:59:39
    We would have three academies in a row.
  • 02:59:41
    They'd have 35 or 40 people in them and we would be out from underneath this issue almost instantly.
  • 02:59:47
    The issue we're having now is that we're having actual academies that have 12, 13 people in them and our attrition rates are more severe than that.
  • 02:59:54
    In 2023,
  • 02:59:56
    with all the academies we had and we started a very first of its kind program for laterals meaning they came over with we didn't just if you you had to have more than just base experience you had to have experience that we felt was comparable so if you worked in a city where you took 300 calls a year and you would work there for two years our officers get those that number of calls in four months so we wouldn't we didn't count that as equal to us we also had basically accelerated shorter for lateral transfers to come in even with all those efforts
  • 03:00:23
    and that those cost us money to develop those employees and make them into St Paul police officers, we netted net minus one.
  • 03:00:30
    We had more people retiring than we were able to hire on.
  • 03:00:34
    And as I've explained, the more that number gets lower, the bigger the problem it is.
  • 03:00:38
    We are taking advantage of almost every opportunity that we have out there.
  • 03:00:41
    The state post has created a post thing that basically allows if you're a midlife person like me and you have a degree in business administration accounting, you say,
  • 03:00:50
    I don't want to do that anymore.
  • 03:00:51
    I want to go serve the public and I want to be a police officer to convert you into that.
  • 03:00:54
    We had more applicants for that scholarship here than we were allocated while some cities didn't get any and the state then gave us two more slots and the state is paying to send those people from our community
  • 03:01:06
    back to college to get basically a minor in law enforcement and go through the skills program and then we are going to hire them on in our spring academy.
  • 03:01:13
    There isn't one solution, there's ten.
  • 03:01:16
    We have to have onboarding systems, we have to all these pieces.
  • 03:01:19
    The big area that we lose folks to in the way that you're describing it is, is through our parking enforcement officers and our community service officers.
  • 03:01:27
    That is the number one way that we're able to onboard neighborhood kids into these jobs and one of the expectations is you're in school,
  • 03:01:36
    to be a police officer
  • 03:01:59
    for the City of St. Paul.
  • 03:02:20
    They will go to college, they have a job getting paid by us, and when they're done they'll be ready to make a $90,000 a year career.
  • 03:02:29
    That is generational wealth changing experience for those folks.
  • 03:02:32
    And it's something that we need to do a better job of utilizing.
  • 03:02:36
    And it's one of the things I'm very proud of, to give you an example.
  • 03:02:38
    You've seen examples in the other budget presentations.
  • 03:02:41
    Right now, Parks and Rec has a very tiny three-person park security program.
  • 03:02:48
    the Public Works Department is trying to figure out legally how they can empower people to write tickets and do these things.
  • 03:02:54
    So Shawn Kirshhoff in Public Works and Annie Rodriguez came to me and said why don't we try to grow the number of parking enforcement officers you had and then we'll just franchise them out to them when they need it because
  • 03:03:05
    is a great example of how the enterprise, as you hear the Mayor sometimes refer to it as, actually works.
  • 03:03:19
    It isn't just something we say so that someone prints it in the paper or it makes a nice sound, but it's what we live by and what we do.
• • Rebecca Noecker
  • 03:03:27
    Thank you.
  • 03:03:44
    Committee.
  • 03:03:59
    It doesn't sound like we're having that budget conversation this year.
  • 03:04:02
    That's the budget conversation I want to have next year, because I'd so much rather be paying more for health insurance or more to make sure that we're not losing out to Woodbury, of all places, rather than paying millions of dollars in overtime that we don't have.
  • 03:04:14
    So I thank you for that, and I want to make sure we're talking about those things as part of the budget process.
  • 03:04:21
    The follow up I'd like to request, in terms of the police academy, my understanding is the cost driver of the police academy is paying
  • 03:04:28
    the recruits who are in the police academy for their time.
  • 03:04:32
    There's probably some fixed cost, but there's also a cost for each recruit.
  • 03:04:35
    And I'm curious if you can follow up on how many recruits you're estimating would be in each academy, because I know you've said the number of recruits seems to be going down each academy.
  • 03:04:44
    And the cost of the academy, as far as I can tell, hasn't changed much since when we started a second police academy a couple of years ago.
  • 03:04:50
    So I'd like to see how many recruits you actually have seen in the academies and how many you're budgeting for in terms of that.
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 03:04:56
    Councilmember, with your permission I'll go ahead and I can answer part of that very quickly and it's not an exact answer about classes but right now we're very lucky if we actualize anywhere from 12 to 17.
  • 03:05:08
    17 or 18 people in Academy I'd be dancing around my office because of the numbers been so low.
  • 03:05:14
    Here's the number I think it's important to you and you can apply this to the past and the futures.
  • 03:05:18
    Right now here's how this looks and I'll use the easy numbers because then we can all do the math together.
  • 03:05:22
    If we had 100 applicants, typically on average, we realize about 50% of those, so 50 people end up surviving the background.
  • 03:05:30
    And it isn't a background that you would be stunned by.
  • 03:05:33
    The things that you would hope wouldn't disqualify for someone, and certainly would have disqualified me in 1995 for it, don't disqualify for people anymore.
  • 03:05:40
    We're talking about things like marijuana use, things like that.
  • 03:05:43
    Those aren't big deals anymore to most places, and they certainly aren't here.
  • 03:05:46
    Of those remaining 50, we lose another 50%, so now you're down to 25, in the psychological
  • 03:05:51
    and the City Council.
  • 03:06:12
    So it's very important that we need more and more people in our community doing it.
  • 03:06:16
    And one thing I will just take, I'll steal a couple seconds of your time.
  • 03:06:19
    Some of you have heard me talk about this before.
  • 03:06:21
    We would love to partner with you.
  • 03:06:23
    We are creating a video talk about join our department.
  • 03:06:26
    And everyone knows what the Chief of Police is going to say.
  • 03:06:28
    I want you to join our department.
  • 03:06:29
    We're trying to get community leaders like yourself to shoot short little video clips saying join the department.
  • 03:06:34
    So other officers who work in other jurisdictions want to come to a place where they're appreciated, they're wanted.
  • 03:06:39
    No one dislikes bad police work more than good cops.
  • 03:06:42
    We're all in agreement on those things and that's something we would love to partner with you to say so we can do promotional videos and do things at our recruiting stations to say listen it isn't just the chief of police or the other police officers that want you working here.
  • 03:06:53
    The City Council here wants good cops.
  • 03:06:55
    Our Mayor wants good cops.
  • 03:06:57
    Our community leaders want good cops.
  • 03:06:59
    I think that's a way we can all partner together and that costs us very little if not nothing.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 03:07:04
    Thank you Chief.
  • 03:07:07
    I guess my follow-up question that I'll take offline but I'll put it here for now is that as we were talking about the
  • 03:07:17
    I think this discussion has really helped clarify what's running up the overtime, what's not, how does that connect to hiring.
  • 03:07:24
    This has really helped get clearer and I want to thank you for that.
  • 03:07:27
    My follow-up question that I'll get offline is just I'm curious how the vacancies distribute from patrol versus non-patrol.
  • 03:07:35
    If you already know that off the top of your head, that's fine.
  • 03:07:37
    If not, I think that's just one more thing that will help me understand what we're talking about.
  • 03:07:40
    And then I know that goes really specific and we're working to wrap up.
  • 03:07:46
    What I'd like to say is that I've been around this table for six years now, and this is, I think, the most specific conversation I've ever gotten to have with our police chief about what's really going on.
  • 03:08:00
    And in the past, we've tried to have an operational conversation.
  • 03:08:03
    We've tried to ask questions our residents want to know about how we're addressing these challenges, how we're running up costs, how we're keeping a lid on that, and often have been met with more rhetoric.
  • 03:08:13
    I actually really want to personally thank you for your professionalism, your passion and your specificity and dedication to this discussion.
  • 03:08:21
    I think ahead of us are tough conversations about how are we going to actually rein in those costs while also trying to address them by making investments that are smart and demonstrated to actually solve what we're trying to solve.
  • 03:08:34
    So that's the conversation I'm committed to with you.
  • 03:08:35
    I think this has helped me personally get on a much better foundation.
  • 03:08:39
    and I want to thank you very much for this additional time with you as we make important decisions together so I know we're over time I will take my one-off question to the follow-up email and much more to be discussed from here but this is the end of this meeting is not the end of this conversation and we appreciate you thank you Chief.
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 03:08:57
    Council President, Council Members I appreciate and I find it equally as rewarding and again I encourage you if there's ever anything we can ask we're an open book and we're a partnership so that's how we view it and that's how we want it to continue.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 03:09:08
    Thank you Chief.
  • 03:09:10
    Okay so that brings us to the end of our budget