Budget Committee - August 26, 2026   8/26/2026

St Paul, City Council, Budget Committee,

Mayor of St Paul

Music

Chair Johnson.

Councilmember Yost.

It's Jost here.

Councilmember Naker.

Here.

5 present, one excused being Council Member Johnson, one expected shortly being Council Member Bui.

I will hand things off to you.

I'm Ia Xiong, the Director of the Department of Safety and Inspections and I'm pleased to be here to present the Mayor's Office Proposal for 2027 for DSI.

There's still ongoing validation and we still have records that we still need to input and that will have an impact on our financing as we'll discuss later.

I'll take a question from Council Member Kim.

So do not have to answer it now, but for respectfully submitting to you, Director.

It is expected to be open later this year and being managed by the Office of Financial Services.

Council President Eaker.

I'm curious, Director, what happens with the old building?

I don't know specifically the details of that and we can let you know.

Thank you.

So it's not anything new.

It's really just reflecting historical trend.

It's reflecting what the historical trend has been and making those adjustments to reflect it moving forward.

Or are they delegated other buckets of work not related to tenant protections too?

Tenant protections and rent stabilization.

Okay, and can you talk about the impacts of what that staff reduction would mean for next year then?

I think that really right at this point in time we we are really we don't know what that would look like in cards to like the volume of it and if there is an increase in volume we reassess and reevaluate at that time.

Council Member Bui.

that person who will be the front facing position and who actually manages that position.

So the services is not going to be impacted in that way.

Can you share how many management assistants the DSI already has?

I believe these are the only ones, but we can provide that correction or update.

that role and how do we keep continuity around just making sure that we have a good responsiveness to some of our constituents.

It's currently filled by a retired person right now and expected to be vacant.

Council Member Coleman.

And so I'm curious about how we think that the resident experience might be impacted by that change.

and so that's why we propose to reduce it.

Thank you.

Talked about the recycling and organized trash of the one-time recite.

Council President Meeker.

So can you say a bit more about why is there so much new spending out of the General Fund this year?

Vice Chair Yang and Council Member Naker, I'd like to phone a friend, a friend of OFS to help explain that.

We can get details on what all makes up that.

I'd really like to understand that better because I assume they've had roughly the same number of employees for the last three years and yet the general fund really barely moved in that time so it just seems like an outlier and I'd like to better understand that

But we'll confirm.

What's the decrease in one-time funding?

Vice Chair Yang and Council Member Naker, that is a one-time thing, and I will defer to OFS.

And then this year, we're just not carrying it forward anymore.

What's happened with charitable gambling?

The state is now enforcing it and so there is no need for us to do so.

Does that not reflect in DSIs budget?

And so if I can ask for assistance in that.

There's no more revenue that's coming into DSI for that, but I can confirm about other departments.

Council Member Kim.

And I'll probably have a follow-up question.

And then I've got a question around what happens to the

So I don't want to call it new revenue, but like what happens to the invoices that we are now getting dollars for and where does that $1.8 million go?

Vice Chair Yang, Council Member Kim, my understanding is that depending on the timing, it gets accrued back to 2025.

it will just fall to the city's fund balance so it will support that but does not get sort of reprogrammed or added into the 2026 budget.

Or is the only option for us to put it into the fund balance?

So it may be that it's very close and there's not really excess revenue there that we could recognize.

Thank you.

So I wanted to recognize that other ARPA funded projects benefit us from DSI in our work and wanted to include those projects on this here.

Council Member Coleman.

I was wondering if you could share more about why we see that turnover and if there are changes that might be being considered

So there is retainage there, but there is turnover due to some of the other benefits that we don't have.

Is that the pay disparities as that is compared with other jurisdictions, so the same position in other jurisdictions?

Yeah, so I'm not sure specifically like what that difference is, but I do know that there are often times when we have made offers and it was through negotiations we were not able to match what they were expecting.

a place where we are very competitive and we can keep filling these really important positions for the city.

So that's one of the examples.

Thank you.

from the cyber incident which we just talked about in regards to limiting our access to do the invoicing and the cash receiving and working with OFS on finding the resources to help us in getting those records over and input it in so that we have that ability to do so.

Thanks, Vice Chair.

Are you just talking about property valuations generally coming into the general fund, or do these pay specific fees, usage rates, to DSI?

I think that was it.

Council Member Bui.

Thank you, Chair Yee.

I just want to learn more about the position and some of its goals.

It's a position that is, you know, we're hoping to get that going as quickly as we can to help support the poly and another technology we have.

Thank you.

Oh, Council Member Bui?

I'm sorry.

Go ahead.

essential the HEART team has been and I know they've been really really like a limited scope if there's any intentionality around just maintaining them or you know looking at like other departments I'm just curious to learn a little bit more about what your vision is for the HEART team.

trash collection the you know some of the services that are provided to the facilities here and so on a day-to-day and I don't know what I don't recall it schedule But they go out on a regular basis and do that outreach and do that cleanup So it's always a continuous thing Thank you

Feel free to come on up.

And give us a budget presentation.

Thank you, Caitlin.

being able to like be in this space to help me understand why it's so important that there are you know people caring about what's going on and also you know if I had never gotten that opportunity I would never be here so it's like seeing like you know you know right track was mentioned in the budget presentation so it's like this stuff is important and I just want to thank everyone who's here and you know all the council members and you guys as well just thank you for inspiring me and inspiring all of us thank you

So I want to personally say thank you and wanted to see if any of my colleagues have comments you want to make to our young folks in the room today and our viewers online.

You really do feel it and there's so much to be pessimistic about nowadays but you give us a lot of hope so thank you.

Thank you for being courageous enough

So I will adjourn us.