Budget Committee December 08, 2025   12/8/2025

Discussion

• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:00:15
    Good afternoon.
  • 00:00:16
    My name is Aisha Chugtai and I'm the chair of the Budget Committee.
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    I'm going to call to order our regular, our meeting for Monday, December 8th, 2025.
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    Before we begin the meeting, I want to offer a friendly reminder to all members, staff, and the public that these meetings are broadcast live.
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    We ask all speakers to moderate the speed and clarity of their
• • SPEAKER_11
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    Council Member Payne.
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    Present.
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    Wonsley.
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    Present.
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    Rainville.
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    Present.
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    Fita.
• • SPEAKER_19
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    Present.
• • SPEAKER_11
  • 00:01:07
    Ellison is absent.
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    Osman is absent.
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    Cashman.
• • Aurin Chowdhury
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    Present.
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    Jenkins is absent.
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    Chavez.
• • SPEAKER_04
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    Present.
• • SPEAKER_11
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    Choudry.
• • Aurin Chowdhury
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    Present.
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    Palmisano.
• • Aurin Chowdhury
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    Present.
• • SPEAKER_11
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    Vice Chair Koski.
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    Let the record reflect that we have a quorum.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:01:32
    I will also remind my colleagues that we will be using speaker management today, so please make sure to sign in.
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    I'll also remind my colleagues that we have a packed schedule today and we'll need to utilize our time wisely.
  • 00:01:45
    Before we resume budget markup, we have two discussion items on our agenda today.
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    The first item on the agenda is regarding compensation of the mayor and council members for terms beginning January 2026.
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    I will invite City Clerk Casey Karl to introduce this item.
• • Casey CarlCity Clerk
  • 00:02:03
    Thank you Madam Vice President.
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    May it please the committee as stated I'm here to address compensation for the city's mayor and council members for the next elective term which starts in just 26 days.
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    As indicated in your briefing materials, the subject of compensation for elected officials is the responsibility of each jurisdiction's governing body.
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    That's provided under Chapter 744 of Minnesota Session Laws of 1971.
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    Specifically, that law provides that compensation is to be set in the final year of an elective term and it becomes effective in the next succeeding term.
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    The law also stipulates no change can then be made in the level of compensation during an elective term, neither to increase nor to decrease the rate of compensation for elected officials.
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    So compensation for elected officials in all cities can only be set at the conclusion of one elective term.
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    It becomes effective at the beginning of the next elective term.
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    So unlike with our employees where we do the salary setting every year as part of the budget, there is only one time to do that for elected officials.
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    In 2019, Ordinance No.
  • 00:03:13
    201944 was enacted, codified under Section 14.60 of the City's Code of Ordinances, which prescribes the process to consider any compensation to be paid to the mayor or council members.
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    and under that part of the code, compensation is to be set by a resolution that's considered first by the council standing committee having oversight of the city budget prior to any final formal action by the full council as part of the adopted operating budget.
  • 00:03:42
    In 2021, a 2% increase in salary was approved for mayor and council members, which took effect in the term starting January 2022.
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    At that same time, council directed the clerk to conduct an analysis of elected official compensation in peer jurisdictions given the change in the city's government structure that was approved that same year by voters.
  • 00:04:03
    In response to that directive, the city engaged an outside agency, Guidehouse, to conduct the analysis of comparable peer jurisdictions.
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    Guidehouse evaluated compensation paid to the mayors and council members of those jurisdictions that shared the following key features.
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    First, each of those cities must operate under a charter that defines the elected mayor as being the jurisdiction's chief executive officer with similar scopes of powers and responsibilities as those provided for the mayor of Minneapolis.
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    Second, each jurisdiction must have a full-time legislative body, council, that has legislative policy-making and oversight powers similar to those provided for the Minneapolis City Council.
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    And third, each jurisdiction must have a population similar to Minneapolis, meaning that it has a similar gross domestic product, or GDP, a growing population, or one which is identified as a Greater Minneapolis-St. Paul Partnership peer city.
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    Under the Kahn Rule, also Minnesota Statute 205.84, the City Council experienced two consecutive two-year terms to adjust for the redistricting of population following the 2020 Census.
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    Therefore, members of City Council qualified for a potential increase again for its current term in 2024-2025.
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    However, in response to that first survey of peer jurisdictions, it was found that Minneapolis council members were paid at more than 130% of the average salary for all of our peer cities.
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    The average salary paid to council members in the pool of comparable cities at that time.
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    was $81,330, whereas Minneapolis council members were paid $109,846, a difference of just over $28,000.
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    So in response at that time, the council decided that it would not take a salary increase for the 2024-2025 term.
  • 00:05:56
    In preparation for considering salaries for the next elective term, that which begins in 2026, the City once again engaged Guidehouse to conduct a very similar survey of select peer cities to inform recommendations for compensation to be paid to the Mayor and members of City Council starting in 2026.
  • 00:06:14
    This presentation will summarize the results of that survey and present recommendations.
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    For this year's survey, we found once again to focus on peer selections of comparable jurisdictions that shared the same characteristics.
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    That is, cities organized under a home rule charter with an executive mayor, a full-time legislative council with similar economic scale.
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    To be clear, we also did include a few cities that do not meet these criteria, but we did so for specific reasons.
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    So for example, in both the 2023 and 2025 surveys, we've included the city of St. Paul, even though that city has a part-time council.
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    We did so because of its close proximity and because it is a first-class charter city in the state of Minnesota, which offers important comparisons.
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    We've also included Denver and San Francisco, despite the fact that both of those jurisdictions are consolidated city-county governments, but it's because their essential form is a strong mayor-council system with parallels to the structure here in Minneapolis.
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    We also included Washington, DC, even though it is a completely unique government, being the nation's only consolidated city-county and state system that operates directly under the thumb of the United States Congress.
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    Another comparable city that was in both the 2023 and 2025 surveys is Portland.
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    In the first survey, Portland still operated under its Commission form of government.
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    However in 2022, Portland voters opted to change to a strong mayor system of government similar to Minneapolis, making those results even more relevant to our consideration today.
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    As you can see on this slide, a total of 22 cities were selected for the survey.
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    We received responses from 19 of those 22 cities, giving us a response rate of 86%.
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    The accompanying map on this slide shows the location for all of the cities and uses colors to distinguish between those where responses were received.
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    So I'll move to the next slide, which starts the compensation analysis for mayor.
  • 00:08:17
    As this table shows, the Minneapolis mayor has a salary of $140,814, which was set in 2021.
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    Among the 18 cities that were part of the comparative pool, the average mayoral salary is $197,565, which means that the Minneapolis mayor is about $56,000 shy of the average paid in the list of peer cities, which puts the mayor in Minneapolis at the bottom 15% of the responding cities.
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    That's using today's data.
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    Guidehouse also inquired about known or anticipated salary increases for these same cities that would start in 2026.
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    And as shown on this slide, 16 of the 19 peer cities, which is the vast majority, have reported known or anticipated increases for their mayoral compensation that would take effect either in 2025, 2026, or 2027.
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    In fact, in 10 of those peer cities, that rate has already been defined
  • 00:09:12
    ranging between a 2 and 3 percent increase.
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    The largest increases in mayoral salaries in the comparative cities are for Atlanta and Boston at 16 percent and 20 percent respectively.
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    Based on those known or anticipated salary increases, the adjusted average salary that will be paid to mayors in comparable cities will increase to about $205,998 in 2026.
  • 00:09:35
    That means that the Minneapolis mayor would be more than $65,000 below the average if no change in compensation is provided for the next term.
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    This slide highlights the salary data for comparable cities in 2025.
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    So these are the current salary rates paid to mayors and our select peer jurisdictions.
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    The cities are listed by salary from lowest to highest along the x-axis with amounts shown on the y-axis.
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    The callout here indicates the average salary in 2025 is about $198,000.
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    You can see that Minneapolis is second from lowest in this list with only Omaha's mayor being paid a slightly lower amount.
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    The Omaha mayor is paid a 2025 salary of $136,942, which is a difference of about $3,800 for the Minneapolis mayor.
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    At the other end of the spectrum, of course, you see San Francisco.
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    The mayor there in 2025 has paid a salary of $320,831, which is more than $180,000 difference from the Minneapolis mayor.
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    And even across the river in St. Paul, the mayor's 2025 salary is $153,579, which is about $12,000 more per year than the Minneapolis mayor.
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    Here we've summarized the known or anticipated increases in mayoral salaries starting in 2026, which I referenced earlier.
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    And as stated in the callout on this slide, you can see the average mayoral salary for peer cities will increase to about $206,000 next year.
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    This differential is shown in the lighter green hash marks on the slide for those cities where it's known.
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    and again at the lowest end the Omaha Mayor is anticipated to receive an increase for a salary to $140,788 which puts the Omaha Mayor nearly equal to the Minneapolis Mayor current salary starting next year.
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    At the other end of the spectrum the Columbus Mayor is anticipated to receive an increase that will raise that salary to more than $274,000 which is more than $133,000 greater than the current rate paid to the Minneapolis Mayor.
  • 00:11:40
    So based on current salary, as known and as anticipated with these increases among the list of peer cities, the Minneapolis mayor is compensated at significantly lower levels in comparison to those mayors in these other jurisdictions.
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    Here the comparison is between mayor and council salaries for each peer city using current data for 2025 in all cases.
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    So this slide then shows the differential between an executive mayor and their council member salaries in our comparable jurisdictions.
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    Mayoral salaries are shown in green, while the council salaries are shown in blue.
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    At a glance, you can see that mayors are compensated at higher amounts in all jurisdictions, including Minneapolis.
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    This is to be expected for these types of government structures in which the mayor is designated the chief executive officer with control over the jurisdiction's bureaucracy and its day-to-day operations.
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    However, the difference between the salaries varies amongst the responding cities.
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    At the extreme in San Francisco and Columbus,
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    The difference between mayoral and council salaries is $184,937 and $152,460 respectively.
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    Closer to the middle of the range in Atlanta, the difference between salaries is about $119,629 with the Atlanta mayor making $195,390 and each of their council members making $75,761.
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    At the other end of the spectrum, in Omaha, the mayor makes $136,942 per year, while each of their seven city council members make $51,609.
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    So that difference between mayor and council is in excess of $85,000 per year.
  • 00:13:20
    Portland here makes an interesting case, as I noted earlier, because it also transitioned to an executive mayor model in 2022, which was based on a voter-approved amendment to its charter, exactly as happened here in Minneapolis the prior year in 2021.
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    Due to its voter-approved government structure change, an external salary-setting commission was appointed to consider appropriate compensation for the mayor and council.
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    and because the mayor became the city's chief executive officer, that commission increased compensation for the mayoral position by almost 19%, from approximately $149,000 before the restructuring to more than $177,000 today.
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    Both before and after the restructure, the Portland mayor was paid more than the Minneapolis mayor.
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    And for comparative purposes, the commission set pay for council members at $135,000, a difference of about $41,000 between mayor and council in Portland today.
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    As shown here, even in St. Paul, there's a marked difference between mayor and council pay, noting again, however, that the St. Paul City Council is a part-time position and Minneapolis is not.
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    But even in St. Paul, the difference between mayor and council pay is approximately $76,000.
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    among all the comparative peer cities, the difference in salary between mayor and council in Minneapolis is the smallest.
  • 00:14:37
    Again, with the mayor making about $140,000 and council members making $109,000, that means the difference in salaries here is $30,968.
  • 00:14:48
    This slide switches our focus to City Council, showing an overview of pay for councils included in the 2025 survey.
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    As the table on this slide shows, Minneapolis City Council members receive a salary of $109,846, which was unchanged from the prior two-year terms covering 2022-2023, and which was actually set clear back in 2021.
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    Among the 15 cities that were part of the comparative pool, the average council salary is $105,908.
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    And what that means is that the Minneapolis council members are about $4,000 above the average salary paid to our peer cities, ranking in the top 60% of all of our responding cities.
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    and as with the mayoral comparison, that's using today's data.
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    Guidehouse also did inquire about known or anticipated salary increases for councils starting in 2026.
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    And as shown on this slide, starting in 2026, the average salary for councils will increase to about $112,000 per year.
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    So that's just slightly more than the current rate paid to City Council members.
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    and that suggests that the salary for City Council members will still be in about the middle of the overall range of our peer cities at the beginning of the next elective term in January.
  • 00:16:01
    As indicated on this slide, seven of the responding cities indicated that the known pay increase for their councils had already been defined and would be less than 5% of the current rate.
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    Just like with mayoral comparisons, the largest increases for council salaries are in the cities of Atlanta and Columbus at 38% and 13% respectively.
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    This slide shows the range of council compensation amongst comparable cities, with jurisdictions listed from lowest to highest at the bottom.
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    The callout indicates here that the current average salary in 2025 is roughly $106,000, as I've already stated, so you can see that the Minneapolis Council ranks at the upper end of the middle of this range.
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    At the extremes, the Washington, D.C. Council pays all 13 of its members $150,308, while in Seattle, the nine council members each make $148,000 per year.
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    In contrast, the nine council members in Columbus make $88,000.
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    in Atlanta, the 16 council members receive $75,000 in compensation.
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    And then in Omaha at the other extreme, the seven council members each make $51,609.
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    So there's quite a range represented amongst the peer cities for City Council.
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    This slide shows the same data, but starting in 2026, showing both known and anticipated increases, again from lowest to highest along the bottom axis.
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    You can see in the call-out here that the average to be paid in 2026 is going to be roughly 112,000.
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    dollars.
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    As previously stated, we did include St. Paul here despite the fact that they're a part-time council.
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    I think the key takeaway here is that if no increase is planned for council members in Minneapolis, the current pay rate would mean our officials here, who are currently in the middle of the range, would slide to the lower end of that middle.
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    So we would go almost a full decade with no change in pay for council, and we would be moved to the bottom of the middle of that range if we don't make a change now.
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    and over the next four years, if there is no program change in pay, council members will slip amongst the ranking of their peer cities.
  • 00:18:11
    So based on that analysis, Madam Chair, of comparable jurisdictions and evaluating both current and known or anticipated future pay rates for mayors and council members, staff respectfully submits the following recommendations for your consideration.
  • 00:18:26
    For mayor, the salary be set at $187,000 for the next elective term, which begins January 2, 2026.
  • 00:18:33
    It should be maintained at that rate for each of the following years in that term.
  • 00:18:38
    This change would reflect the significant increase in the scope of authority, powers, and responsibilities that voters gave the mayor when they adopted the executive mayor structure in 2021.
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    It would also put the mayor in the mid-range of the salaries for selected peer jurisdictions, which aligns with similar actions taken in Portland when that city transitioned to a strong mayor system like in the City of Minneapolis.
  • 00:19:00
    For Council, we recommend the salary should remain unchanged for the first two years of the next elective term, which begins January 5, 2026, which would mean that the pay rate would remain at $109,847.
  • 00:19:12
    However, in order to keep Council members at the midpoint of their salary range, we recommend that the salary starting in January 2028 be increased by the percentage of the cost of living adjustment, or COLA as it's known, that's approved for the majority of the City's collective bargaining units
  • 00:19:30
    in the prior year to become effective in the next year and that that should be repeated in each subsequent year in that term.
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    Those exact rates would then be calculated by the Human Resources Department based on budgetary decisions made by Council as part of the salary schedules for those years and would be programmed into the City's budget.
  • 00:19:48
    In closing, I'd like to make just a few points.
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    The mayor and council have acknowledged that this is a challenging budget year.
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    Certainly we've all heard the projections for both 2026 and the forecast into the next five.
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    Like all local governments, Minneapolis continues to take on increased levels of responsibility as federal and state governments push more and more down the chain, often without the requisite funding.
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    Our revenue streams are limited.
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    and of course local governments continue to adapt and attempt to meet the needs and priorities of their communities and these differ from place to place.
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    Still, Minneapolis is the most populated city in the state of Minnesota.
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    It is the state's economic engine, its population center, and a hub of its cultural life.
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    Minneapolis blends big city amenities with an above-average sense of community and civic engagement.
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    It has abundant, top-rated parks and public green spaces, and it's known for its high ranking in terms of quality of life metrics, including overall livability and happiness amongst residents.
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    And of course, like every community, Minneapolis has its share of challenges, but we, the people, elect our mayor and council to take on the burden of planning and preparing our community for the future, to ensure that our core services and our shared infrastructure remain strong and can support a growing and diverse population.
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    These elected positions have a significant impact on the day-to-day experiences of the roughly 430,000 people who choose to live, work, worship, and play in Minneapolis.
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    And that extends to the nearly 3.6 million people who live and work within the larger Twin Cities metro region, which is anchored by the city of Minneapolis.
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    All this to say that compensation for elected officials should reflect the scope of authority, the actual responsibilities and duties of those positions, and the impact they have on the lives of the residents of the community.
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    The Minneapolis Mayor and its City Council have significant and important jobs, and their compensation should reflect those facts.
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    Of course, the issue of elected official compensation is, for obvious reasons, a sensitive subject.
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    And I don't want to give the impression that I don't understand that.
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    But there also is no union that advocates for increased pay for mayor and council.
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    There are no exact apple-to-apple comparisons between jurisdictions, not within a state or even across the nation.
  • 00:22:02
    The best that we can do is to examine approximations and try to level that field by adjusting for differences in costs across cities, states, and regions.
  • 00:22:11
    Compensation analysis for elected officials is essential to ensure that public service remains accessible, competitive, and aligned with the real demands of modern governance.
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    By evaluating the pay for elected officials relative to their workload across peer jurisdictions and cost of living trends, the City is better positioned to attract and retain qualified leaders to reduce the potential financial barriers to public service and to maintain institutional stability.
  • 00:22:38
    A data-driven approach like the one we followed here in Minneapolis, both in the past and present, also helped to promote transparency and public trust by showing that compensation decisions are based on objective standards and not mere politics.
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    Ultimately, compensation analysis directly affects the quality, accessibility, and stability of our democratic governance.
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    In very practical terms, it helps ensure fair compensation for those elected to provide effective, ethical, and sustainable leadership for the community.
  • 00:23:08
    I'll also note the City of Minneapolis has good overall pay rates and total compensation for its workforce.
  • 00:23:15
    We're recognized as a good employer locally in the metro region and in the state, and we regularly update our surveys to ensure we remain competitive in the public sector
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    for relevant jobs across our peer jurisdictions.
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    These types of surveys are routinely done to ensure that Minneapolis remains a competitive leader in local government for a wide variety of its jobs, and our employees benefit from that approach.
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    It's only fair that we take a similar approach in thinking about how to fairly and equitably compensate our elected leaders, the City Council, and the Mayor.
  • 00:23:44
    And with that, Madam Chair, I've completed my prepared remarks.
  • 00:23:47
    Staff recommends the draft resolution be forwarded for action by the Council tomorrow at its adjourned meeting when we will act on the 2026 budget.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:23:56
    Thank you for that presentation, Mr. Carl.
  • 00:23:59
    Colleagues, are there any questions or discussion from the committee?
  • 00:24:05
    I'll recognize Councilmember Wonsley.
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 00:24:07
    Thank you, Council Vice President Chuktai.
  • 00:24:10
    I did just want to thank our clerk staff, specifically Clerk Carl, for giving this presentation.
  • 00:24:17
    I know you do it every term as required and for giving us a data
  • 00:24:24
    and other elected positions within our enterprise.
  • 00:24:34
    That said, I do want to note follow up just going into next term conversations that I would like to have with Council President, our clerk staff further, especially as we're already in conversations with the charter commissions about how to protect our authority.
  • 00:24:50
    I did find it kind of concerning the letter that
  • 00:24:53
    was just forwarded to council that's being passed on to the charter commission by Mayor Frey essentially asking for the authority in which we have to set compensation be removed and placed within the scope of authority of the charter commission.
  • 00:25:07
    I don't know where this is coming from.
  • 00:25:09
    I think
  • 00:25:10
    no one has voted down these increases before because again they're standard and you do a tremendous amount of preparation working with credible experts in order to get credible information in front of this body to make that decision.
  • 00:25:24
    So I don't know where that's coming from and if that is going to be part of our continued conversations with the charter commission I would love to be a part of that and of course hold the line on having our authorities
  • 00:25:37
    I'm not seeing anyone else in queue, so I will move approval of this item.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:25:57
    Do I have a second?
  • 00:26:00
    All those in favor, please signify by saying aye.
  • 00:26:04
    Those opposed, say nay.
  • 00:26:06
    Any abstentions?
  • 00:26:09
    That motion carries.
• • Casey CarlCity Clerk
  • 00:26:11
    Thank you.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:26:12
    Thank you.
  • 00:26:12
    Our next item on the agenda today is receiving a presentation on the 2025 Third Quarter Financial Status Report on Select City Funds.
  • 00:26:25
    I will invite City Controller George Hargrove from the Finance and Property Services Department to begin this presentation.
  • 00:26:33
    Welcome.
• • George Hargrove
  • 00:26:35
    Thank you Chair Chugtai, members of the Budget Committee and the City Council.
  • 00:26:41
    Thank you very much for allowing me to come here and talk about our third quarter financial report on the financial status of the City of Minneapolis.
  • 00:26:50
    In just a sec here, I'll start the presentation.
  • 00:27:17
    Okay, so just to start off here, this is our financial status report as of the end of period 9, which is September 30th of 2025.
  • 00:27:27
    It's a point in time report.
  • 00:27:29
    We based our forecast shortly after we closed the accounting month in September and made most of those in October.
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    So this is as of pretty much the end of October.
  • 00:27:40
    So the information is unaudited and won't be final until the 2025 year is closed.
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    Final numbers will be available in our annual financial comprehensive report.
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    which I can come back and talk a little bit about I believe in April sometime or so when we do our fourth quarter report as well.
  • 00:27:57
    Again, things have changed since then and obviously we're getting near the end of the year.
  • 00:28:08
    So moving on, the quarter two report does show that we have several fund balances, we have several funds in the city, and we see them being spent down, especially the general fund, which is forecast to be down about 60 million dollars from where it ended up at the end of 2024.
  • 00:28:28
    But that's not really the only fund, we've seen some spend downs in the downtown asset fund, the convention center,
  • 00:28:34
    property services, as well as intergovernmental and IT.
  • 00:28:40
    So our latest forecast, I believe we initially forecasted at 60 million for the general fund going down.
  • 00:28:49
    Now it's got up to about 67, almost 68 million or so.
  • 00:28:53
    So it kind of really brings the city to a crossroads at this point.
  • 00:28:59
    Certainly, as you can see by the next bullet point,
  • 00:29:01
    We've maintained our AAA bond ratings from Fitch, Moody's and Standard & Poor, which brings a lot of prestige to the city.
  • 00:29:09
    But we are worried about the sustainability of the spend down, especially on the general fund.
  • 00:29:14
    In addition, property taxes are about $17.4 million under the fully levied amount that was planned for 2025.
  • 00:29:25
    We do know that some amounts are uncollectible or there's delayed collections on that as well too, but that still is a little higher than what the city has experienced in the past.
  • 00:29:36
    In addition, as I mentioned last time I was here to talk about the second quarter, we did at that time notice a little softening in the
  • 00:29:44
    Downtown Asset Fund, which is financed mainly by sales, taxes, entertainment taxes, restaurant liquor taxes, things like that.
  • 00:29:52
    Now we've kind of seen that a little bit more pronounced now.
  • 00:29:57
    For example, the September collections are down about almost $2 million from where they were at in 2024, which does suggest perhaps a softening in the economy.
  • 00:30:06
    In addition, the police and fire department are projected to be over budget by about $25 million.
  • 00:30:12
    In 2025, that's about a 3% or 9 million dollar increase from what we forecasted back at the second quarter.
  • 00:30:22
    The self-insurance fund does continue to improve and is well above the minimum policy of 117 million minimum by about 85 million dollars.
  • 00:30:32
    Again, we try to have enough funds in there to pay off potentially large litigation settlements and so we do get closer and closer to being fully funded there as well to
  • 00:30:44
    Then, of course, we monitor the federal grants as well, too.
  • 00:30:49
    There hasn't been huge changes in the last few months, but again, certainly especially with the government shutdown and everything, we do have to monitor that, and we do expect the funding levels to go down a little bit there as well, too, and certainly lots of uncertainty, too, as far as what will happen with the federal government.
  • 00:31:12
    Moving on, more highlights here.
  • 00:31:14
    In terms of our cash and investments as of September 30th, 2025, we're at about $1,186,000,000 or so, which actually is an increase of $140,000,000 from this time last year.
  • 00:31:28
    Again, most of that is made up of the self-insurance fund and the enterprise funds, which have accumulated more cash since then, so that's the main driver behind the increase in our cash and investments.
  • 00:31:43
    Most almost all city funds are meeting their cash reserve minimums and fund balance minimums But a few I did want to mention a few of those as well to our self insurance as I mentioned before does does have a negative net position due to to to large potential claims for litigation however, it is exceeding our short-term short-term goals and our financial policy to cover our
  • 00:32:09
    the workers comp, medical, dental, things like that as well too.
  • 00:32:14
    Fleet, well technically meeting our requirements by about 1.4 million.
  • 00:32:20
    We have had, we've been spending quite a bit of time looking into the fleet budget.
  • 00:32:27
    We are worried, the only reason really it's meeting the above the reserve requirement right now is because the
  • 00:32:32
    The department has cut back on purchasing new vehicles, which we do worry could increase the maintenance cost as our vehicle fleet ages or so.
  • 00:32:41
    So something we're keeping an eye on.
  • 00:32:43
    Again, it does meet the short-term limit right now, but could go down from there.
  • 00:32:52
    Our IT fund is projected to be about $8 million at the end of this year versus our target of about $9.3 million.
  • 00:32:58
    So ongoing discussions about that.
  • 00:33:00
    Our parking fund is below the cash balance by about 2 million dollars or so, but it continues to improve and hopefully barring any kind of economic downturn that will get back into compliance with its fund balance requirement in the next year or two.
  • 00:33:18
    Property Services is projected about $2.2 million right now, which is below our $4.6 million target balance.
  • 00:33:28
    And then finally the Convention Center is projected to be below the target balance.
  • 00:33:33
    However, we believe that's really more of a technical item that we do need to probably transfer some more money from the downtown asset fund there to make up for a transfer that was done before.
  • 00:33:42
    So hopefully that could be addressed at some point.
  • 00:33:50
    Now at this point, I'd like to introduce and invite Deputy Controller Robert Lang to come to the podium here.
  • 00:33:56
    And he will go over, Rob specializes in the General Fund, and he'll go over and talk more about how the General Fund is doing.
  • 00:34:02
    Thanks, Rob.
• • SPEAKER_22
  • 00:34:07
    Good afternoon, and thank you very much City Council for your time to go through the General Fund today.
  • 00:34:13
    As a reminder, the purpose of the fund is to account for all financial resources except for those required to be accounted for or reported on in another fund.
  • 00:34:23
    Year end 2025 balance for the cash is projected to be $166 million in the general fund.
  • 00:34:29
    It was $234 million at the end of last year.
  • 00:34:33
    This is a $67 million use of cash projected by year end.
  • 00:34:37
    Actual cash at the end of quarter three was $92 million and at the end of quarter three last year was $148 million.
  • 00:34:45
    Again, showing a use of cash of about $56 million compared to the two days, two years.
  • 00:34:53
    For fund balance, you'll see a similar story.
  • 00:34:56
    Ending balance is projected to be $141 million.
  • 00:35:00
    The Quarter 2 forecast did project $149 million, so about a $7.5 million increase in the use of that fund.
  • 00:35:10
    Overall, it is projected to be a $67 million decrease in fund balance year over year.
  • 00:35:17
    I do want to indicate that this use of fund was part of the budgeted aspect when the original budget included a $24.6 million planned use of fund.
  • 00:35:30
    There was rollovers of $41.8 million use of fund.
  • 00:35:34
    Approximately when you total up these along with minimal amendments during the year was a $67 million budgeted use of fund through 2025.
  • 00:35:43
    This still does exceed our 17% minimum balance.
  • 00:35:47
    It is calculated currently at $109.1 million.
  • 00:35:52
    We do have that $141 million projection, so we're $32.5 million over the 17% minimum balance requirement.
  • 00:36:03
    Of that $141 million, there are restrictions and commitments associated with that that I would like to discuss further.
  • 00:36:10
    So on the top of this chart you will see we started the year $209 million.
  • 00:36:15
    We have forecasted revenues and expenditures resulting in that use of funds down to $141 million as previously discussed.
  • 00:36:22
    Then we do have some commitments and restrictions.
  • 00:36:26
    At the time of this report's writing, the planned use of fund was $8.7 million into 2026.
  • 00:36:33
    And then we do have restricted for public safety aid in North Commons of another $14.2 million.
  • 00:36:40
    This totals to unassigned fund balance of $118.6 million.
  • 00:36:45
    Remembering the 109 minimum fund balance requirement for that 17%, this leaves us with $9.5 million in unassigned fund balance remaining.
  • 00:36:55
    At the end of Quarter 2's forecast and presentation, that 9.5 was forecasted at $15 million at the time of that presentation.
  • 00:37:02
    So this has resulted in another $6 million roughly decrease in that forecasted unassigned fund balance.
  • 00:37:11
    There are some unknowns related to this number, however.
  • 00:37:14
    What the final use of fund balance will be in the 2026 budget is still unknown yet.
  • 00:37:19
    There is the rollovers that will be requested going in from 25 to 26.
  • 00:37:24
    As a reminder, last year there was 41.8 million dollars in approved rollover and
  • 00:37:31
    comparing that to what we're currently seeing on a signed fund does mean there could potentially be difficult conversations ahead through the rollover process.
  • 00:37:39
    And then finally, the last unknown would be the market, economic, and frankly political unknowns going into 2026.
  • 00:37:49
    So let's look at the general fund revenues first.
  • 00:37:51
    On this chart down here, you will see major revenue categories with what was budgeted and what is projected to your end, as well as the budget deficit or budget overage.
  • 00:38:03
    First, I'll point out property taxes is projected to be $17.5 million.
  • 00:38:08
    under budget.
  • 00:38:09
    This is a result of less property tax collections over the last few years.
  • 00:38:14
    It has been decreasing from about 98 percent down to 97 two years ago, 96 approximately at the end of 24, and a little under 96 forecasted into 25.
  • 00:38:26
    Service charges is projected to be over budget by 3.9 million dollars.
  • 00:38:30
    This is a result of the efforts of Public Works and their charges for services, both to internal and external customers.
  • 00:38:38
    We go to franchise fees as under budget by $2.8 million.
  • 00:38:42
    While franchise fees is collecting more than they did last year, the budget had a higher growth estimate than what's actually coming in.
  • 00:38:51
    We get to licenses and permits are under budget by $4.5 million, as a result mostly related to building permits.
  • 00:38:58
    The end of all of this indicates that revenues are going to be $18 million under what was budgeted.
  • 00:39:04
    So how does that compare to prior years?
  • 00:39:08
    We go to the next slide and we'll see this bar graph here shows blue is twenty five and green is the three-year average and the last comparison that's in the forecasted December shows that historically the three-year average has been ninety nine point nine percent of revenue collections and what we're seeing here in twenty five is ninety seven point three percent revenue collections a primary driver being the property taxes so let's look at the other side we have expenditures
  • 00:39:38
    Here again, we show major expense categories, what was budgeted, what is actual, and the over-under.
  • 00:39:45
    Importantly, I want to show that of all these categories, the two that are over budget is Public Works by $3.6 million.
  • 00:39:53
    Remembering revenue and service charges was $3.9 million over as an effort of Public Works.
  • 00:39:59
    These are very close to offsetting each other.
  • 00:40:03
    and then we move to public safety as a whole is $12.8 million over budget.
  • 00:40:09
    The remaining expense categories are coming in under budget.
  • 00:40:15
    and how does this compare to the prior three years?
  • 00:40:18
    Similar bar chart you will see here that over the past three years we've had 91.6% expenditures to budget and going into 25 we're at 97.6%.
  • 00:40:29
    So revenues are coming in less than they have in the prior three years and expenses are coming in higher than they have in the last three years resulting in what we're seeing here today in this use of fund as departments are spending more and more to their budget.
  • 00:40:47
    And here is the detailed report.
  • 00:40:49
    It is in your 70 page report that accompanies these presentations.
  • 00:40:54
    However, I wanted to pull out specifically the details related to the expenditures within that report.
  • 00:41:01
    There's something similar for revenues as well, but I believe expenditures is where we want to focus in today.
  • 00:41:07
    In blue is the current budget, the first blue column.
  • 00:41:10
    And the second blue column is the year-to-date projections.
  • 00:41:13
    These year-to-date projections are worked on by an accountant that's assigned to the department, a budget analyst assigned to the department, as well as by the department head or representative of the department head.
  • 00:41:26
    There are, if you include public works as one department included together, there are 26 departments in the city.
  • 00:41:34
    of which six are currently projected to be over budget.
  • 00:41:40
    Of those six, I will quickly mention the ones that are forecasted to be over budget.
  • 00:41:49
    So we do start off with the attorney's office is projected to be over budget by $490,000.
  • 00:41:55
    There is an explanation for which is related to effective law enforcement for all, which is a required term of the settlement agreement, and these are their efforts towards that.
  • 00:42:04
    Moving on to Assessing Department, they did have some costs related to their CAMMA projects.
  • 00:42:11
    That went into 2025, an overage of about $200,000.
  • 00:42:15
    They have been diligently tackling that overspend with operational savings of $82,000, resulting in a still over budget due to the CAMMA project.
  • 00:42:24
    Office of Public Service is forecasted to be $50,000 over budget, primarily driven by a COLA raise that was unbudgeted.
  • 00:42:36
    Then we move into public safety.
  • 00:42:38
    Here we see the groupings that make up public safety.
  • 00:42:41
    Fire is forecast at $5.5 million over budget.
  • 00:42:44
    This is not uncommon.
  • 00:42:46
    Over the last five years, fire has been coming in over budget, primarily due to overtime.
  • 00:42:53
    and then police.
  • 00:42:54
    We are forecasting total expenditures of $246 million.
  • 00:42:59
    This is a 3% increase from what we presented for the Quarter 2 financials, or forecasts I should say.
  • 00:43:08
    This results in $19.5 million in projected overspend.
  • 00:43:15
    Moving down to public works, as mentioned previously, they are $3.6 million overspend, offset by the service charges that we received.
  • 00:43:25
    Very bottom line showing that of the $729 million that was budgeted for expenditures, the city has spent $712 million, about $17.5 million less than budgeted.
  • 00:43:42
    The General Fund is the beating heart of this city and I believe it needs to get the review it's due to ensure the health and rating the city has enjoyed.
  • 00:43:53
    So I really appreciate you guys letting me speak today on the General Fund and the review of this and I will be passing this back to George to go over our special revenue funds, our enterprise funds and our internal service funds.
  • 00:44:05
    Thank you.
• • George Hargrove
  • 00:44:10
    Yeah, thanks.
  • 00:44:11
    Thanks, Mr. Lang.
  • 00:44:12
    Yeah, thank you.
  • 00:44:13
    Before I move on to the special revenue funds, I just wanted to kind of back up just a little bit here.
  • 00:44:20
    Just to make kind of a point here I mean this is really the key slide that I look at to just kind of gauge the general fund health.
  • 00:44:29
    I just wanted to point out just one more time that if you look at the total above target you know the nine and a half million which actually is I think down about nine point two million now or so
  • 00:44:40
    I mean that would be like the maximum that we could roll over next year.
  • 00:44:44
    And if you look at like what we did from 24 to 25, we rolled over almost 42 million dollars.
  • 00:44:50
    And what the rollover really does is it kind of buys extra time for the departments to finish up their 25 budget.
  • 00:44:58
    So we just undoubtedly won't be able to do quite as much as we did the year before.
  • 00:45:03
    So just wanted to just kind of go further that point.
  • 00:45:10
    So moving on, the next category of funds that I'll just talk about briefly is the special revenue funds.
  • 00:45:18
    They're used to report revenue and expenses for funds that have restrictions on them.
  • 00:45:26
    Our significant special revenue funds are the convention center
  • 00:45:31
    the Target Center Arena, the downtown assets, the police department has a forfeiture and gambling proceeds account, Red Lake Historic Services has some restricted funds as well as grants of course are kind of the classic restricted funds for the city as well as CPIT has quite a few too.
  • 00:45:53
    So just in summary, we project our cash balances to go down by about 3.1 million or so from the 2024 year end, about 393 million.
  • 00:46:05
    However, that is up about 21 million from the second quarter and that's mostly due to CPED fund balances being forecasted higher as well as the arena.
  • 00:46:15
    And then conversely, cash, again, is forecast to be at $360 million at year end.
  • 00:46:20
    That's a $4 million decrease from 2024.
  • 00:46:24
    That's also up $26 million from the second quarter.
  • 00:46:27
    Again, mainly CPED and the downtown asset arena, because fund balance and cash often moves at the same rate.
  • 00:46:36
    So anyway, decreases from last year, like I say, is mainly due to the downtown asset fund as well as CPED.
  • 00:46:43
    Again, these funds are set aside for a specific purpose and generally it is difficult to move them or move spending anywhere else in the city.
  • 00:46:52
    So you can think of these as the city's restricted funds.
  • 00:46:57
    And then looking at the details here, again you can see on the far right here that shows how much we're projecting the fund balance and the cash to go up or down from last year at the end of last year.
  • 00:47:11
    And so you can see, again, the Convention Center downtown assets we expect to go down, but that's offset by the grant funds that are projected to be up a little bit, as well as CPEDS funding as well, too.
  • 00:47:27
    Next category of funds is our internal service funds.
  • 00:47:31
    These are funds that support departments that generally sell their services to other areas of the city.
  • 00:47:38
    That includes certainly Public Works' engineering materials and testing lab, our fleet department, property services, Public Works storerooms, our self-insurance funds are certainly some of the bigger, covers most of our internal service funds.
  • 00:47:55
    Again, in this case, our net position, we expect to increase about 21, 22 million from 2024 at year end.
  • 00:48:03
    That's up about a million dollars from the second quarter when I was here.
  • 00:48:08
    That's, again, our equipment.
  • 00:48:10
    Property services are forecasted up a little bit whereas our IT department's forecasted down so Fairly similar to last time the second quarter cash projections are at 226 million another again another 21 and a half million from last year same departments that account for the difference between now and the second quarter and
  • 00:48:32
    So anyway, we are hoping that property services and intergovernmental services can meet their cash balances by the end of this year.
  • 00:48:45
    But it still remains to be seen whether we can quite make it or not.
  • 00:48:52
    And then looking at the balances again, you can see on the right-hand column there, on the right, we expect fleet as well as engineering materials to go down, a little bit down, as well as IT as well, too.
  • 00:49:08
    And then self-insurance up quite a bit from last year, as I mentioned, as we accumulate cash to cover legal liabilities.
  • 00:49:19
    And finally, the enterprise funds are used to account for operations in the city that sell their services outside of the city primarily.
  • 00:49:27
    That would include our sanitary sewer, storm water, the water department itself, solid waste, recycling, parking.
  • 00:49:35
    CPIT has a small enterprise fund as well, too.
  • 00:49:38
    So in this case, the net position is forecast to be about, just under 1.2 billion.
  • 00:49:43
    It's about $34 million last year at this time.
  • 00:49:47
    Most of that is driven by the sewer and stormwater areas.
  • 00:49:51
    They're up about $20 million from when I was here for the second quarter.
  • 00:49:56
    Cash-wise, we're projecting cash to be at $128 million, about a $35 million increase from 2024.
  • 00:50:04
    Again, that's up about $20 million from the second quarter, mainly due to the sewer and stormwater areas.
  • 00:50:10
    and then this tends to be the most stable of all our operations because these are truly they're selling services that are you know probably necessities and things like that so not affected by the economy quite as well.
  • 00:50:23
    We'll mention parking at the end has come a long way since the pandemic and we're hoping to get to its targeted cash balance shortly.
  • 00:50:33
    And then finally just looking at the details here again you can see as I was mentioning this on the right hand side there that has the difference between how 24 will end up and 25 is projected.
  • 00:50:43
    You can see we have about drop on sewer and stormwater a little bit on water and parking down a little bit on waste or so as well too and CPED is fairly similar.
  • 00:50:56
    So, with that, that concludes my formal presentation today.
  • 00:51:01
    At this time I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:51:06
    Thank you for that presentation, Mr. Hargrove.
  • 00:51:09
    Colleagues, are there any questions from the committee?
  • 00:51:14
    I will first recognize Council Member Cashman.
• • Michael Cashman
  • 00:51:18
    Thank you, Madam Chair.
  • 00:51:19
    Thank you, Mr. Hargrove.
  • 00:51:21
    Thank you, Mr. Lang.
  • 00:51:22
    A couple questions about some numbers that I'm seeing here.
  • 00:51:25
    One is that property taxes are projected to be $17.4 million under budget due to the non-collectible amount.
  • 00:51:33
    Can you explain that a little bit more?
• • George Hargrove
  • 00:51:34
    The amount in the budget there is the total amount that the council levied for 2025, but we know that
  • 00:51:49
    Some of it, not all, but it's going to be collectible because not everyone can pay their property taxes.
  • 00:51:54
    In addition to that, there sometimes is legal judgments or court actions that result in it being lower.
  • 00:52:00
    So we do know, we don't expect it to ever collect 100% of what we have, but it is less than what we've experienced in prior years.
  • 00:52:08
    I think normally, Rob, do you want to add to that?
• • 00:52:14
    Sure.
• • SPEAKER_22
  • 00:52:15
    Yes, so a history of our property tax collections is actually shown in the ACFR on schedule 8 and you'll see the past 10 year collections within that.
  • 00:52:24
    And so you will see that historically it's been 98-99% collections and that the last three years it has been decreasing.
  • 00:52:33
    Thank you.
• • Michael Cashman
  • 00:52:33
    Okay, thank you, that's helpful.
  • 00:52:35
    Second part was the neighborhood safety budget coming in about $10 million under budget.
  • 00:52:43
    This may be a question for Commissioner Barnett, or maybe you two know about why the Neighborhood Safety Department was $10 million under budget.
• • George Hargrove
  • 00:52:53
    Yeah, thank you, Council Member Kastner.
  • 00:52:56
    Why don't we have Todd come up and maybe explain in a little more detail.
• • Todd BarnetteCommissioner of Community Safety
  • 00:53:03
    Through the Chair, Chuck Todd, Councilmember Cashman, I believe that there'll be a significant amount of money asked to be carried over.
  • 00:53:14
    They will encumber some expenses that I don't think are there right now.
• • Michael Cashman
  • 00:53:22
    Okay, sounds good.
  • 00:53:25
    And then can you speak to the 19.6 million dollar overspend in the police department?
• • Todd BarnetteCommissioner of Community Safety
  • 00:53:32
    through the chair Chuck Tye to Councilmember Cashman.
  • 00:53:39
    Specifically when we look at that in the number breakdown, I would have to ask MPD to give you all of the details that I think you're asking for in order to answer that question for you.
  • 00:53:51
    So just give me a second here.
• • Michael Cashman
  • 00:53:53
    Sure.
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 00:54:02
    Council Vice President, Council Members, so the question is the details between the projection from Quarter 2 to Quarter 3 and what accounts for the change that was not projected.
  • 00:54:14
    Is that correct?
• • Michael Cashman
  • 00:54:15
    Yeah, I mean how did we result in the 19.6 overspend?
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 00:54:19
    So the 19.6 is different from what, excuse me, Council Vice President, Council Member, the 19.6 is the total 8% over budget.
  • 00:54:33
    much of which was anticipated through the course of the year.
  • 00:54:36
    The difference is in this last presentation is there was expenditures that were not anticipated from quarter two that are new now in quarter three.
  • 00:54:48
    And those come down to three things.
  • 00:54:51
    What was not anticipated included back pay that was contractual.
  • 00:54:55
    that was given out in quarter three.
  • 00:54:58
    It was not budgeted.
  • 00:55:00
    Settlement agreement expenditures that were not budgeted.
  • 00:55:03
    But the largest share of that is this third category which is new hires.
  • 00:55:10
    So we have hired 174 people for sworn positions this year.
  • 00:55:17
    Every year that I've been here before this, the police department has gotten smaller month after month after month.
  • 00:55:24
    We bottled out, bottomed out sometime in the middle of last year.
  • 00:55:26
    This year there has been a very, very dramatic increase in new hires.
  • 00:55:31
    We were budgeted for, I think 20, 23 community service officers.
  • 00:55:39
    We currently employ 74.
  • 00:55:41
    We're hiring more next month.
  • 00:55:44
    We added an entire class of cadets over the last year.
  • 00:55:50
    So what happens when you have 174 new people, the overwhelming majority of which are not licensed police officers.
  • 00:56:00
    Community service officers, those 74, they're going to go to college for at least two years, in some cases three.
  • 00:56:06
    The whole time we're going to be paying their salaries and paying their tuition.
  • 00:56:10
    and because there's so much more of them, those expenses are greater.
  • 00:56:14
    At the same time, you don't actually have more police officers, as many more police officers on the street.
  • 00:56:21
    There's about 614 total sworn officers, 540 some odd are actually, you know, full duty on the street.
  • 00:56:32
    And so that is by far the largest
  • 00:56:36
    What compounds that is at the same time this is the first year now that because we've hired so many people we've had a reduction in
  • 00:56:53
    the salary accruals.
  • 00:56:54
    So in other words, there's fewer vacancies, there's a reduced vacancy savings through which we used to use from people that just weren't employed here.
  • 00:57:05
    That is reduced because we've hired 174 people.
• • Michael Cashman
  • 00:57:10
    Okay, I guess I'd like to ask the Commissioner who's ultimately responsible for keeping the budget in check.
  • 00:57:23
    Where does the oversight come in and to making sure that we're planning for and then accommodating for new expenses that come throughout the year?
• • Todd BarnetteCommissioner of Community Safety
  • 00:57:31
    Yes, through the Chair, Chair Chuktai, and then Councilmember Cashman.
  • 00:57:37
    We have started those conversations internally to shore up this process to make sure that along the way all of us
  • 00:57:50
    are lockstep in where we are and also that means from finance, me, the chief and I as well.
  • 00:58:02
    And so we think that the next couple of weeks we'll have a really good process of making sure that we're lockstep as we go through this and that there is oversight.
  • 00:58:14
    We had a meeting
  • 00:58:16
    I think last week with some of the staff and finance.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:58:23
    Councilmember Cashman, your time has expired.
  • 00:58:25
    Oh, I didn't realize we were doing time.
  • 00:58:27
    We are.
  • 00:58:28
    Commissioner, if you want to wrap up the thought.
• • Todd BarnetteCommissioner of Community Safety
  • 00:58:30
    Just to let you know, Councilmember Cashman,
  • 00:58:33
    just to make sure that we're all on the same page as we move into 2026.
  • 00:58:38
    We did meet with finance to just make sure we're all on the right path to making sure that we have all the information in the right place and that all of us are aware.
• • Michael Cashman
  • 00:58:50
    Okay I just want to make sure that we're understanding the repercussions of this to potentially our AAA bond rating and other controls that the city has and I'll allow others to ask about it but want to hear from you as Commissioner you're taking some responsibility for this.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:59:07
    The council members time has now expired for quite a bit so we're going to move on and continue with Q. Councilmember Cashman you're certainly welcome to get back in Q.
  • 00:59:17
    Before we continue with discussion I see several colleagues getting in Q. I will note we have been joined in this committee by council members Osman and Jenkins.
  • 00:59:28
    We've got about five additional
  • 00:59:31
    members in queue right now.
  • 00:59:32
    So, starting with Vice Chair Koski and then we'll go to Council Member Rainville.
• • Emily Koski
  • 00:59:38
    Thank you, Madam Chair.
  • 00:59:39
    I just have a few more questions for the finance team, so not for MPD.
  • 00:59:45
    In the General Fund Balance Details page, I know you talk about the total above target is at 9.5.
  • 00:59:51
    I think the document we have in LIMS says 15.3, so I just
  • 00:59:56
    I want to make sure that we get an updated document and presentation in the file, but I see that yours says 9.5.
  • 01:00:07
    Could you give us a bit of a look back?
  • 01:00:09
    What's the average that we've had over the course of the five to ten years of this target number?
• • George Hargrove
  • 01:00:16
    Oh, yeah, Chair Chigtia, Vice Chair Koski.
  • 01:00:21
    Yeah, getting back to your original question, I think the third quarter report is on there.
  • 01:00:27
    I also think there was the second quarter report as well.
  • 01:00:29
    Tucson, maybe.
  • 01:00:31
    I think they're both there, because that's what it was last time when we were here, it was 15 million.
  • 01:00:36
    But if not, I can certainly get the presentation.
• • Emily Koski
  • 01:00:39
    That is what it is, but if you could just, the second part of my question is just, what has been the last five to ten year average, or do you have that by year?
• • George Hargrove
  • 01:00:49
    I only really offhand, I can only remember the last year or two, but we can get that information, it's readily available.
  • 01:00:57
    So, year end, you know how we finished each year for the last five years or so?
• • Emily Koski
  • 01:01:01
    Yeah, what that target was and then what the end was, if you could, what offhand do you have for the last two years?
• • SPEAKER_22
  • 01:01:11
    I will say that the ACFR does represent unrestricted fund balances, so after this we can pull the 24, 23, 22, however many years we want of the ACFR and provide that information fairly easily for you.
  • 01:01:25
    Okay.
  • 01:01:25
    I just don't know off the top of my head, I apologize.
• • Emily Koski
  • 01:01:26
    No, that's totally fine.
  • 01:01:27
    I didn't think you probably would.
  • 01:01:28
    So if we could just add that as a memo, but if we could go back 10 years, that would be great.
  • 01:01:32
    And then another question, if you could pull up the general fund, I think it might be the next, where we see the whole list of the underspending and overspending.
• • SPEAKER_22
  • 01:01:57
    Oh, it's okay.
• • Emily Koski
  • 01:01:59
    I think what I would just and again this I can add this as a memo but I see there are, I know that Council Member Cashman asked about some of the underspending but if we can work with some of the departments to talk a little bit about you know their underspent projections and get an answer of the why.
  • 01:02:17
    So if we could just add that to a memo that would be great as well.
  • 01:02:21
    And then my last question actually is for the fire department if there's someone from fire.
  • 01:02:29
    Thank you Chief.
  • 01:02:36
    Thank you.
• • SPEAKER_01
  • 01:02:37
    Good afternoon.
• • Emily Koski
  • 01:02:38
    Just a quick question.
  • 01:02:39
    I know that you are five million over and my understanding is it's due to overtime.
  • 01:02:44
    Yes.
  • 01:02:44
    Is that correct?
  • 01:02:45
    Okay.
  • 01:02:45
    Primarily.
  • 01:02:46
    My question would be how many firefighters would we need to add to the department in order for us to reduce that over on overtime spending to zero?
• • SPEAKER_01
  • 01:03:03
    Through the Chair to Council Member Koski, I don't think we could ever reduce it to a complete zero because of contractual obligations such as staff meetings, coverage for special events and things like that.
  • 01:03:15
    But for most of it, what we're talking about to maintain a minimum level of coverage, and I think I've reported this in different committee meetings, I would believe that we would need in addition of, at a minimum, 45 firefighters.
• • Emily Koski
  • 01:03:31
    Okay.
  • 01:03:32
    Thank you.
  • 01:03:32
    Thank you.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:03:37
    Wonderful, thank you.
  • 01:03:38
    And then next we will continue with Councilmember Rainville followed by Councilmember Chavez.
• • Michael Rainville
  • 01:03:46
    I have two questions, one for finance first and then the chief.
  • 01:03:55
    Of the $17 million that were undercounted for the property tax, you say some of that is court ordered, so I take it that means a building objects to the levy and then they get it reduced?
• • George Hargrove
  • 01:04:09
    Yeah, Chair Chugtai, Council Member Rainville.
  • 01:04:13
    Yeah, that's exactly correct.
  • 01:04:15
    We get notified regularly by Hennepin County that, hey, you know, there's been an adjustment in someone's property tax.
  • 01:04:22
    Certainly I can remember the railroad, one of the railroads at one point, you know, got a huge judgment, you know, to have their property tax lowered.
  • 01:04:31
    So that does happen regularly.
• • Michael Rainville
  • 01:04:34
    Of the 17 million undercount, how much of that is the court ordered undercount?
• • George Hargrove
  • 01:04:39
    Councilmember Rainville, I'd have to get back to you on that.
  • 01:04:44
    We don't have a breakdown at this point in time, but they do track it, Hennepin County does track it, so we can get back to you on that.
• • Michael Rainville
  • 01:04:50
    Wonderful, thank you.
  • 01:04:52
    My second question is for the Chief.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:04:53
    If I can just quick, let's make sure that was noted for administrative follow-up so we actually get an answer.
  • 01:04:58
    Continue.
• • Michael Rainville
  • 01:04:59
    I didn't mean to interrupt.
  • 01:05:00
    Thank you.
  • 01:05:02
    Chief, I just kind of a compliment in that question.
  • 01:05:06
    So this amount of new recruits is phenomenal.
  • 01:05:10
    No one would have anticipated in 2020 that the force would be growing so quickly.
  • 01:05:15
    So congratulations on that.
  • 01:05:19
    But what do you anticipate going forward?
  • 01:05:21
    Are we going to see this fast-paced?
  • 01:05:24
    Is it going to be slower, faster?
  • 01:05:25
    It seems like we're well on our way back to the number we had in 2020.
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 01:05:31
    Council Vice President, Council Member.
  • 01:05:34
    You know until this year at the the number of people we were hiring versus the attrition rate even with the slight increase that we did have in 2024 if we stayed at that rate we could go to infinity
  • 01:05:52
    and never hit 731, literally, with the amount of people that we were hiring.
  • 01:05:58
    So it was a very, very dramatic increase this year in people that we're hiring.
  • 01:06:03
    Well over 100 more people we've hired for sworn positions than what we've lost.
  • 01:06:08
    We've had 48 sworn members separate and we're already plus over 100 from that.
  • 01:06:14
    The problem is the bigger financial issue for the city is
  • 01:06:19
    there's no financial plan really to deal with having this many people come in the door this quickly and still have the operational need.
  • 01:06:30
    It's very difficult in Minnesota to hire someone off the street and have them become a police officer.
  • 01:06:37
    There's a very specific college course that people have to go to.
  • 01:06:41
    Even in the case we've hired about
  • 01:06:44
    There are about 71 people this year that are cadets, so they have college degrees already.
  • 01:06:50
    We still have to send them to the two-year college here for several months before we can then send them to the police academy for four months and then train them in the street.
  • 01:07:03
    So, again, it is a
  • 01:07:06
    it is a good problem to have and this is a success on the part of the city when you consider all the way up until this point we were just getting smaller and then even the little bit of the increase that we had last year was not enough to ever get us to 731 so this is a good problem to have
  • 01:07:23
    But the larger issue again is it's very expensive to pay the salaries for these folks, to pay for their tuition, and then still not get the operational benefit of actually having police officers on the street for the city.
  • 01:07:36
    That's the problem.
• • Michael Rainville
  • 01:07:39
    Thank you for that explanation, and keep up the good work.
  • 01:07:41
    You're doing a great job recruiting, so thank you for your effort.
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 01:07:44
    Thank you, Councilmember.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:07:46
    Thank you.
  • 01:07:47
    Next, I'll recognize Councilmember Wonsley.
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 01:07:54
    I just had a couple of questions and a few comments.
  • 01:08:03
    I wanted to start off in this
  • 01:08:06
    actually digs further into the 70 page report that you included.
  • 01:08:10
    But I would like to better understand the police special revenue fund that has an ending cash balance of $3.2 million and states that the funding from this also supports police being additional services at the request of other city departments like public works.
  • 01:08:25
    I noticed that in 2024 in this report it says that the fund had about 3.5 million dollars and now it's at 3.2 million.
  • 01:08:35
    I'm curious to know what was the $300,000 spent on and actually quite more specifically if it was spent or tied to the motorcycles that MPD recently posted about.
  • 01:08:47
    So probably you can't speak to this but maybe someone from OCS or MPD.
• • George Hargrove
  • 01:08:53
    Yeah, yeah, Chair Chigatai, Councilmember Wansi, I know we can certainly bring them up too.
  • 01:08:59
    I do know that there is, getting back to kind of court judgments or actions, they sometimes have to refund money.
  • 01:09:06
    I believe that's like forfeiture dollars that come in when the police, you know, seize cash or things like that from people, and then sometimes we have to give it back.
  • 01:09:15
    So I can answer part of your question, but I'll bring up the police department to respond further.
• • SPEAKER_21
  • 01:09:24
    Vicki Troswick, MPD Finance Director to the Chair, Council Member Wonsley.
  • 01:09:28
    I don't have the details so I think I'll have to respond in a memo but the motorcycles were purchased with forfeiture funds.
  • 01:09:34
    Forfeiture funds can only be used for items that were not budgeted so not as part of our regular operating budget and it can't be part of our budget reduction so if the budget was reduced for a certain thing we can't use forfeiture to then purchase that so it needs to be supplemental.
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 01:09:52
    So that would be a qualifying expense under this police special revenue fund.
• • SPEAKER_21
  • 01:09:57
    Pardon?
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 01:09:58
    So that would be a qualifying expense under this police special revenue fund.
• • SPEAKER_21
  • 01:10:02
    Through the Chair, Council Member Wonsley, the motorcycles were purchased using forfeiture funds.
  • 01:10:07
    That is correct.
  • 01:10:08
    But there is a list of other things too, like teams rooms for the facilities was a technology upgrade that we used forfeiture funds.
  • 01:10:16
    And the list is long, so I think I'd prefer to be more accurate with the memo, because the list is more than $300,000.
  • 01:10:23
    We do get income from the forfeiture funds, so the net of $300,000 I think we probably spent more than that.
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 01:10:30
    Yeah, no, I was more so interested in the $300,000 and also just wanting to dig a little bit more deeper into this of seeing there's additional resources in addition to MPD's general operating budget that we're also talking about now has exceeded through our cash balance and our general fund balance.
  • 01:10:49
    So there's all these different funding sources that's going to
  • 01:10:52
    supplement NPD's quote-unquote needs.
  • 01:10:55
    So just getting clarity on what those needs are and you answer that at least in this piece.
  • 01:11:01
    The next question that I had was related to a conversation that we've been having in the Administration Enterprise Oversight Committee related to the vendor that's doing contract management for the city's parking lots and ramps.
  • 01:11:15
    That contract that was recently
  • 01:11:17
    to garner a lot of debate amongst council and I think further conversations in the next term around its inclusivity of off-duty officers to work in those ramps and that was a component of that contract.
  • 01:11:31
    The description of this fund, the special revenue fund for police, seemed like it could have addressed the costs and also managed the personnel needs for those parking ramps.
  • 01:11:41
    So I'm just curious as to why this fund was not used as opposed to the
  • 01:11:47
    I believe it was the parking fund which we've also talked about as needing to have some stability in the coming years.
  • 01:11:54
    So I just wanted to know why this fund was not used instead of that.
• • SPEAKER_21
  • 01:11:58
    Through the Chair, Council Member Wonsley, so a portion of the Special Revenue Fund, that's where we use officers and we charge, say, Target, and so those are equal expense, equal revenue.
  • 01:12:11
    And if we, if Public Works' ABM contract changed to using the Special Revenue Fund, that is where it would hit.
  • 01:12:20
    That's at ABM or Public Works discretion.
  • 01:12:22
    We did meet about that several times, but I would have to defer to Public Works on what their decision is regarding that.
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 01:12:27
    I see Commissioner Tim Sexton here because we had robust debates around this component and also around what it felt to be duplicative in terms of us paying twice so to know that there was a potential other funding alternative, why did we not pursue that as opposed to just looping that into the ABM contract?
• • SPEAKER_16
  • 01:12:53
    Yeah, Chair Choctaw, Councilmember Wonsley, Tim Sexton, Public Works Director, and Councilmember Wonsley, I apologize that those conversations are still ongoing.
  • 01:13:01
    We committed to having those discussions with MPD about the use of sworn officers for security, and we're still having those conversations, so I apologize we don't have a resolution yet.
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 01:13:12
    Do you know proactively, because before it came to council for consideration, there was at least a rationale as to why it should go through ABM.
  • 01:13:22
    I would like to know if there was even knowledge or awareness about this special revenue fund for the police as an option.
• • SPEAKER_16
  • 01:13:30
    Chair Ching Hai, Council Member Wansley, I am not familiar with the use of the special revenue fund for this purpose other than parking, the parking fund.
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 01:13:37
    as a way to
  • 01:13:51
    just going to the presentation on slide four.
  • 01:13:54
    It's noted that fleet services needed to cut back, and you highlight this, on needed purchases in order to meet the cash balance.
  • 01:14:02
    And I do want to note, this is just a comment before I move on to the next question, that
  • 01:14:07
    had MPD implemented the off-duty fees, this is one of the ways in which we could recoup costs that's associated with off-duty officers using our fleet to do their side gigs.
  • 01:14:20
    And I don't understand why there was an operational choice to slow walk that, but I know we're going to budget markup where we're literally talking about off-duty, and this is why I want to reference that, just on slide four in itself and the negative financial position that we're putting our other services in.
  • 01:14:37
    But staying on that slide, it does note that the self-insurance fund has that forecasted negative position of about $57 million.
  • 01:14:46
    And I'm not sure if this includes, by this the figure, future police misconduct lawsuits.
  • 01:14:54
    I'm thinking specifically of
  • 01:14:57
    Davis-Maturi and Amer Locks family who have already publicly stated that they plan to take civil action against the city.
  • 01:15:03
    And I know that those cases will have tremendous amounts of impact on the cities.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:15:11
    Your time has expired.
  • 01:15:12
    Would you like to continue to your second speech?
  • 01:15:15
    Perfect.
  • 01:15:15
    Thank you.
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 01:15:16
    Awesome, so I wanted to know if those or like are there anticipations of significant liability claims coming forward as a factor as to why we have that negative position forecasted?
• • George Hargrove
  • 01:15:31
    Yes, Chair Chung-Thi, Council Member Wonsley.
  • 01:15:35
    Yes, I do believe any, we do work with our city attorney department, any potential claims that we know about, we do try to put in a liability for that if it does seem serious.
  • 01:15:48
    I can find the exact information by conferring with the city attorney's office, but that is the idea behind the self-insurance fund that we do estimate.
  • 01:15:57
    It's based on known actions that may be taken against us or people that have indicated
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 01:16:01
    you know they may seek legal action against the city yes if we get a staff memo on that too based off of your follow-up conversation with the city attorneys around what is being factored into that let's this looks like you're looking potentially for someone okay I don't know if city attorney Abelson also is aware again this can be noted in the staff memo
• • SPEAKER_02
  • 01:16:25
    Chair, Council Member Wansley, I think this is best left for a staff memo and we can talk generally about how we set reserves in the staff memo, but the amount of reserves that's set for a specific case would be attorney-client privilege and reflect our analysis of the case so we wouldn't be able to provide information to the public about specific cases.
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 01:16:44
    But we could request a closed session to get more details on that in terms of the piece that's client-attorney privilege, correct?
• • SPEAKER_02
  • 01:16:52
    I think at the appropriate time to consider the litigation to talk about the exposure is something we could have closed sessions on.
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 01:17:00
    So once the litigation is initiated?
• • SPEAKER_02
  • 01:17:03
    You can also have a closed session when there's a claim as well on threatened litigation.
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 01:17:10
    Okay.
  • 01:17:11
    I definitely want to follow up there again knowing that some members of the public have made those claims and getting clarity on if that has happened and if that's part of this figure so I think it is actually timely but it sounds like follow-up staff memo on that piece and also I just want to note too these are one of the reasons why I'm working with Council President Payne to bring forward
  • 01:17:33
    and to create that Executive Risk Management Office just so we can make sure that we have someone on the executive and administrative side that is doing that proactive risk reduction and mitigation and implementing measures so we're not constantly put in positions like that.
  • 01:17:48
    But just a couple takeaways from this presentation that is very eye-opening.
  • 01:17:55
    I think it is knows however you want to dress it up being 20 million dollars over budget when MPD already has one of the largest budgets in the city like that is of grave concerns as much as you want to frame it around staffing and we've talked to MPD at least through public health and safety multiple times about a staffing study follow-up
  • 01:18:15
    around how we can reappropriate MPD's existing resources to make sure that we're implementing actually like proven methods that doesn't also lead to this overspending pattern that we're seeing so that we're maximizing efficiency.
  • 01:18:29
    Like there are so many things that could have actually not led us here and I think that's going to be a continuous conversation of how we're making sure that we're not just treating taxpayer dollars as like a bottomless pit and especially knowing that
  • 01:18:44
    every dollar that we spend towards over overspending for this one department that means one less dollar available for other critical priorities.
  • 01:18:53
    We've often just talked about in this budget markup people want to see us doing more robust things towards addressing homelessness towards improving walkability and accessibility amongst our sidewalks and those type of priorities become compromised when we're put in these positions where we literally have to bail out one department time and time again.
  • 01:19:10
    So I really look forward to figuring out how
  • 01:19:14
    So with that, I have a couple of staff memos and I look forward to getting that information from the, mostly it's MPD and some of the other departments like the City Attorney's Office.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:19:43
    Wonderful, thank you.
  • 01:19:44
    I will next recognize Council President Payne.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:19:49
    Thank you Vice President Chagtay.
  • 01:19:50
    This is on the MPD overspend and I'm curious, do we have a breakdown on how much of that was critical staffing overtime versus standard overtime?
  • 01:20:02
    And then I'd like to know more about the critical staffing details.
• • George Hargrove
  • 01:20:08
    Yeah, Chair Chia, Council Member Payne, let me confer with the police here.
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 01:20:20
    Council, Vice President, Council President.
  • 01:20:23
    So I will let Director Trotsky give you the exact details, but on the higher level, critical staffing over time this year, starting on January 1st, was used to prioritize minimum staffing in all five precincts around the clock for 9-1-1 response.
  • 01:20:44
    It had not been used that way previously.
  • 01:20:47
    and so every shift that was filled in the city to ensure there was a minimum level of police officers on each shift in all five precincts was paid for with critical staffing over time.
  • 01:20:59
    So that is more than what it had been used in the past.
  • 01:21:03
    The other thing that it had been used for reliably this year was the late night safety plans.
  • 01:21:08
    That had been happening downtown for at least two years prior to this.
  • 01:21:14
    This year it had been used in Dinkytown and in Uptown as well.
  • 01:21:20
    In addition, we added the end of last year, I think September of October, we added a juvenile curfew task force that operates at night and on the weekends with juvenile investigators and other officers on a secondary assignment that assists them.
  • 01:21:35
    doing outreach to the most at-risk juvenile offenders and their family members.
  • 01:21:41
    That has been staffed all with critical staffing over time.
  • 01:21:45
    So the other thing I would add to that is I had reduced the overall hours of the late night safety plans at the beginning of the year.
  • 01:21:55
    However, there's other major incidents that happened during the course of the year that required additional spending with critical staffing overtime.
  • 01:22:03
    So the biggest of which was July 4th of this past year.
  • 01:22:09
    We spent a lot in critical staffing overtime around that day and that weekend, and I would say it was successful compared to what we had seen on July 4th, the previous years, as well as critical staffing overtime due to other
  • 01:22:24
    major events.
  • 01:22:26
    We've had mass shootings.
  • 01:22:28
    Obviously, the most high profile is the annunciation shooting, which then and in the aftermath of that, there was a significant amount of critical staffing overtime, but there were other incidents as well.
  • 01:22:37
    Staffing for masjids and synagogues, houses of worship,
  • 01:22:44
    as a result of both bias crimes and other incidents that were frightening to the community.
  • 01:22:51
    That was all used with critical staffing over time.
  • 01:22:54
    That being said, that memo expires at the end of this year.
  • 01:22:59
    which will level set I think expectations internally as shifts are filled but also will reduce I think by several million dollars the overall overtime expenditure so that's the higher level and I just ask the director she can give you the specifics with the numbers.
• • SPEAKER_21
  • 01:23:19
    Through the Chair, Council President Payne.
  • 01:23:22
    So, overtime and CSOT, I do have the total amount for each year, but we do look at overtime and the aggregate because we don't budget that separately.
  • 01:23:31
    So, for 2025, CSOT was $16.5 million.
  • 01:23:36
    In 2024, it was $15.6 million.
  • 01:23:43
    Over time and CSOT is 31 million in 2025 and 27.1 in 2024 so that's a 12% increase year over year and the budget for overtime in 2024 was 13.7 million and the budget for overtime in 2025 is 5.9 million
  • 01:24:05
    and that represents the intention to use vacancy savings to pay for overtime as we've done in the past.
  • 01:24:10
    So this is the first year that we've been over budget due to the influx of the recruiting.
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 01:24:19
    Chair and Council President, one other thing I forgot to mention with
  • 01:24:22
    With prioritizing 911 response and adding managerial controls, there's really a negligible gain in sworn personnel on the street over the last year.
  • 01:24:35
    We have significantly reduced response times, especially to this point now.
  • 01:24:40
    is we're about two minutes, more than two minutes faster responding to priority one calls, which are the highest, you know, the emergencies, emergency calls.
  • 01:24:51
    Priority two calls are several minutes faster in terms of response.
  • 01:24:56
    Again, without a dramatic change in either the sworn staffing allocation in the precincts or the call load, the workload.
  • 01:25:06
    So I think that's both
  • 01:25:08
    a result of having filled the shifts and also adding additional managerial controls to ensure that we're responding as fast as possible.
  • 01:25:17
    So I think there has been a gain to the residents of the city.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:25:22
    Does the mayor's current recommended budget take into account the operational changes that you have put into place?
  • 01:25:31
    Meaning, are we assuming vacancy savings that won't be there and we're going to be off the mark again come one year from now, or are we accurately forecasting the amount of overtime that we're going to need given our actual staffing reality?
• • SPEAKER_21
  • 01:25:46
    Chair Chuck Type, Council President Payne, we are concerned about the 26 budget for sure because there was not change in the overtime budget, it wasn't increased and we weren't aware of the influx of this recruitment so we do have to regroup and rediscuss and create some projections on what 26 is going to look like and what those mitigation efforts will be.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:26:08
    Let's start that work now because I think the outrage that you might be getting from the dais right now is that it was We shouldn't have been surprised by a 19 million dollar overage.
  • 01:26:18
    We should have known this for months, right?
  • 01:26:20
    Like if we know today that there's gonna be another overage Let's not pretend that it's gonna be a surprise a year from now So that's like let's get on top of that.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:26:29
    Let's be very transparent not just with us but with our community Thank you Next I'll recognize council member Choudry
• • Aurin Chowdhury
  • 01:26:38
    Thank you vice-chair, not vice-chair, chair Chuck, vice-president Chuck.
  • 01:26:45
    I don't want to extend our conversation too long so I'm just gonna ask for administrative memo.
  • 01:26:55
    I want to just get in writing the reasons for the overages across the departments that had a larger spend on their budgets and then specifically
  • 01:27:07
    for the Minneapolis Police Department.
  • 01:27:11
    There are three areas named back pay, settlement agreement expenditures, new hires.
  • 01:27:17
    And if there are any other categories to kind of get into the details of how that was spent, same for fire.
  • 01:27:25
    I think that would just be helpful to understand more in numbers how we ended up here.
  • 01:27:33
    I'll just say I think something that I'm pondering is as we're hiring more CSOs and that is causing a larger increase in budget spend and we're also spending more in critical staffing over time there needs to be a clear explanation to
  • 01:27:59
    when are we going to start seeing overtime go down if we're seeing newer hires what's our financial plan into the future and I think that falls on the Office of Community Safety to articulate and I was also troubled to hear that that review and oversight conversations have quote-unquote just started I think it should have started as soon as we started to see
  • 01:28:24
    an overage just continue to increase and increase and at what point and at what point does a department start kind of internally having those conversations is that the five million mark is that the seven million mark
  • 01:28:41
    because watching a 19.6 million overspend is a lot to absorb.
  • 01:28:47
    It is really surprising and this can't be a trend that continues year after budget year.
  • 01:28:54
    It's a significantly different picture than it was during last year's third quarter financial report.
  • 01:29:03
    So those are all my comments.
  • 01:29:04
    Thank you, Chair.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:29:07
    Thank you.
  • 01:29:07
    And Clerks, let's make sure that we've noted the follow-up from Councilmember Chaudry.
  • 01:29:14
    Put myself in queue, just a couple questions.
  • 01:29:17
    I want to, this is for the Police Department, I want to understand this back pay issue.
  • 01:29:24
    Tell me about where that's coming from, as one of the contributors of the overage.
• • SPEAKER_21
  • 01:29:29
    Chair Chagtay,
  • 01:29:32
    I had been aware of some back pay, but it was the numbers I had heard originally at the beginning year that I was projecting was 350,000.
  • 01:29:39
    So I was surprised at the 2.5 million.
  • 01:29:43
    It did include, and I don't know if those contracts weren't settled, like at what point
  • 01:29:50
    Those contracts were settled because it is a new contract, a new unionized group.
  • 01:29:57
    And there was also some back pay from the Federation.
  • 01:30:00
    They were still working out premiums and some shift differential from 24 that I didn't have a value for.
  • 01:30:06
    So that is one.
  • 01:30:08
    And I did want to add clarification that we do meet monthly with finance and so the overtime projection has not changed through the whole year.
  • 01:30:18
    The settlement costs are not included in the projections and so that's why you continue to see an increase.
  • 01:30:24
    It's a city-wide approved CFO approval process and they're one-time costs and so that's not included in the projections as we move through the year because I don't know what that'll be.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:30:35
    Gotcha.
  • 01:30:36
    So, I mean, okay, first clarify, what did the actuals end up being for back pay?
• • SPEAKER_21
  • 01:30:44
    2.5 million.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:30:47
    2.5, sorry, I didn't have that written wrong.
  • 01:30:52
    Then moving into
  • 01:30:58
    So, new from the beginning of the year, came up in monthly meetings that you have with finance, that over time, the reality of over time would look the way it does.
  • 01:31:09
    And that this would result in this large overage for the department's budget.
  • 01:31:15
    what other types of choices were made or did you bring to the, when did you bring this to the leadership team of the police department as something that was happening and were there any discussions to your knowledge at any point over the course of the year about how to make adjustments in other parts of the department's budget to accommodate such a significant overage?
• • SPEAKER_21
  • 01:31:44
    Chair Chug Thai, in quarter two I believe the projection was 12 million and that was related to overtime and that was before I knew the level of influx of the recruitment so the payroll is what jumped greatly from quarter two to quarter three that now we need to do something different which would be connect to HR and know how many people are coming on board in order to kind of calculate that that wasn't originally included in the projection
  • 01:32:10
    So I would say in Q2 everybody was at the table regarding that historically the police department has been able to use vacancy savings to fund that so originally we weren't too concerned We did have mitigation efforts in place for saying no to property services projects, having approvals in place
  • 01:32:32
    We did not we and that was before some major incidents happened.
  • 01:32:37
    I also didn't wasn't aware that we were gonna contract with the State Patrol To the level that we did we knew about 4th of July that's kind of a standard that is not in the budget but we didn't know that the we would have to continue to have enforcement details and
  • 01:32:52
    at synagogues and churches, etc.
  • 01:32:54
    So there was many things that happened emergency related that we didn't really talk about how are we going to scale back with the reduction in crime.
  • 01:33:02
    We would have to, and that's something that we need to consider when we're looking at mitigation, how far can we scale back over time without affecting crime, which is one of our goals.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:33:11
    absolutely that's helpful to know so I'll leave the remainder of my questions for administrative follow-up as well out of an interest in time and then chief I'll come to you to add what the thought that you have right now so it'd be helpful for administrative follow-up to know if any regular overtime was used within the police department so there was an earlier question by President Payne about critical staffing over time
  • 01:33:37
    and so it'd be helpful to get back from the department total number of hours in overtime and a breakdown of critical staffing versus regular overtime.
  • 01:33:48
    The next thing is it'd be helpful to understand
  • 01:33:52
    So I believe the department currently has 155 vacancies for sworn personnel.
  • 01:33:58
    What is the total cost of those vacancies and then how was that used in the department's budget?
  • 01:34:07
    Really what I'm trying to get at is what's the real number of how much overtime
  • 01:34:15
    costs are driving what's happening with the budget.
  • 01:34:18
    So how much did you use vacancy savings versus what was budgeted for overtime and then the additional overage on top of that.
  • 01:34:27
    And those are my questions for Administrative Follow-up Chief to you and then I have one minute on the clock.
  • 01:34:35
    Then we'll have to wrap up.
• • Brian O'Hara
  • 01:34:37
    So Chair, Vice President, thank you.
  • 01:34:41
    I did issue an order at the beginning of the year, January 1st, with listing out significant changes to supervisory review and managerial control both over critical staffing over time and regular over time.
  • 01:34:53
    So I believe that did have an impact to ensure greater levels of accountability.
  • 01:34:58
    As Director Trotsky was stating, we have had
  • 01:35:08
    During the course of this year, we're going to finish this year with the north side of Minneapolis having the fewest number of shooting victims since the city of Minneapolis has tracked shooting victims, literally.
  • 01:35:20
    And historically, the 4th precinct had the majority, more than half, of shooting victims.
  • 01:35:25
    So that's significant.
  • 01:35:26
    What has also been happening that we've needed to respond to are problems on the south side of Minneapolis.
  • 01:35:35
    Over the second half of this year, we had a lot of street crime, a lot of robberies, a lot of violence concentrated on the south side, including multiple victim shooting incidents.
  • 01:35:49
    And so we did concentrate a lot of our additional resources with overtime and critical staffing overtime, but then also
  • 01:35:55
    lobbied the state to provide additional patrols and additional resources and that both of which was not anticipated but was obviously needed in response to the changing dynamics of street crime.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:36:11
    Wonderful, thank you.
  • 01:36:13
    With that, I'm not seeing any further discussion.
  • 01:36:17
    I'll ask the clerk to file this report and we are now ready to move to our next item.
  • 01:36:23
    Thank you.
  • 01:36:25
    All right, back to markup.
  • 01:36:29
    We will now continue considering revisions to Mayor Frey's 2026 recommended budget.
  • 01:36:36
    A reminder to the public that the Council will be hosting the final public hearing for the budget tomorrow, Tuesday, December 9th at 6.05pm.
  • 01:36:46
    This is our statutorily required Truth in Taxation hearing.
  • 01:36:50
    We made excellent progress last week on the market packet finishing review of amendments number 1 through 26 with the exception of number 16 which we postponed.
  • 01:37:02
    As we work through the budget today I'm going to remind all of us once more to be respectful of each other and the process.
  • 01:37:10
    Speeches, as a reminder, will be limited to two per motion.
  • 01:37:14
    The first speech may not exceed seven minutes and the second speech may not exceed five minutes.
  • 01:37:19
    Do my colleagues have any questions before we begin?
  • 01:37:22
    I'm not seeing any but I do see that everyone has their binders.
  • 01:37:27
    That's excellent.
  • 01:37:30
    So with that we are ready to begin progress on the amendment packet.
  • 01:37:36
    I will recognize the author of each amendment to introduce their motion and then we will open the floor for discussion on the amendment before taking a vote.
  • 01:37:45
    Staff from the budget office is on hand to answer questions that may arise during our discussions as well as the departments whose budgets are being considered for changes.
  • 01:37:54
    I will note that we have a hard cut off today at 4pm, but we do have some time tomorrow morning along with time tomorrow after the public hearing concludes for any business that we don't get to today.
  • 01:38:10
    I am aware of some revisions to existing amendments that authors want to go back and make, so
  • 01:38:15
    or are being worked out at the request of the administration, so we'll plan to take those up in one of those two additional times.
  • 01:38:24
    So we will begin with the amendment that we tabled on Friday, amendment number 16, and then pick up where we left off with amendment number 27.
  • 01:38:34
    Amendment number 16 is related to MPD off-duty fees and for that which is presented by Councilmember Wansley and Council President Payne.
  • 01:38:44
    Councilmember Wansley, will you please reintroduce your amendment and make a motion.
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 01:38:50
    Thank you, Council Vice President Chuktai.
  • 01:38:54
    This amendment related to MPD off-duty fees is a one-time allocation to MPD for the implementation of the off-duty program.
  • 01:39:02
    This figure is taken directly from MPD's presentation on off-duty fees that took place in the Public Health and Safety Committee just this past May.
  • 01:39:11
    On Friday,
  • 01:39:13
    Many of us learned that MPD is nearly $20 million over its already large $255 million budget, one of the largest in the city.
  • 01:39:23
    And the presentation that we just received from Finance also confirmed this.
  • 01:39:27
    That alone underscores
  • 01:39:33
    That alone underscores the need to keep this amendment intact as it provides MPD with the resources needed to implement off-duty fees in 2026 and route COOP up to 1.4 million dollars to offset the cost of taxpayer dollars who have been subsidizing officers MPD
  • 01:39:52
    sorry, Officer's Off-Duty Program at that tune and would actually give those taxpayers a modest relief.
  • 01:40:00
    Although this is an earmark, again, this full amount can be recouped through the fees once MPD implements the program, which council has already given them authority to begin collecting in 2026.
  • 01:40:12
    again this year we've passed several ordinances to allow MPD to implement fees starting in 2026 and that goal has been communicated to the administration throughout this past year as we've advanced that legislative work forward.
  • 01:40:26
    Council even passed off-duty fees in the 2026 fee schedule and if the mayor had issues with that, he had time to make them known or even vetoed that action as he's done with other measures like PCAR
  • 01:40:40
    this year, but he did not do that.
  • 01:40:43
    I've also heard from the COO that there is an enterprise-wide technology change that departments have and are going through that they anticipate MPD will be part of and that will start in 2027 and while that's great, this amendment is about allocating the resources needed to implement off-duty fees in 2026.
  • 01:41:02
    And a solution is needed for that and this amendment allows for that.
  • 01:41:07
    So once again,
  • 01:41:09
    There's been lots of conversation around how we're addressing the overspending that we just heard of.
  • 01:41:15
    This presents the opportunity for MPD to recoup 1.4 million dollars starting in 2026 and not allow taxpayers to subsidize this program, especially as we're having to contemplate a budget that's growing tighter and tighter.
  • 01:41:30
    So that said, I will motion approval of this amendment and ask for a second.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:41:36
    Second.
  • 01:41:39
    This amendment has been properly moved for approval.
  • 01:41:42
    Is there any further discussion?
  • 01:41:44
    I'm not, oh Council Member Palmisano.
• • Linea Palmisano
  • 01:41:52
    Madam Chair, MPD did give a presentation on this in committee.
  • 01:41:58
    They also talked about the costs to run the program, not the implementation costs of the program.
  • 01:42:06
    It's my understanding, we're dealing with a motion that was originally in our pockets, there isn't any change to this.
  • 01:42:13
    The source of that is public safety services, and that's mostly precinct operations and staffing, and so I'm curious what kind of impact will this cut to operations, and earmark is a cut, what kind of cut would this be, what would be the impact of this cut?
  • 01:42:32
    If this is going to impact precinct operations and staffing I have to tell you that I share a lot of residents concerns that They show up to a precinct with a particular need and it's very hard to find somebody there because everybody is on duty Does anybody want to help us understand what this means I
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:42:57
    Well, I see the commissioner just walked out of the chamber, so I'm not sure if he's going to grab someone.
  • 01:43:02
    Yes, he's going to grab someone who can answer your question.
  • 01:43:05
    If we can just pause Councilmember Palmisano's timer.
  • 01:43:10
    Let's wait so that we don't use up all your time.
• • Linea Palmisano
  • 01:43:13
    Thank you.
  • 01:43:13
    Actually, you don't have to pause the timer yet.
  • 01:43:16
    Look, I can kind of share some of my other.
  • 01:43:18
    On the other hand, given that professional staff made it clear that they can't achieve compliance with this ordinance next year anyway, that was something that was said in the committee, so not everybody heard that.
  • 01:43:32
    Why would we be making this cut now based on their own decisions and their own timeline
  • 01:43:38
    We should be making this cut for the following year.
  • 01:43:42
    Staff made it clear that an IT system to do this work is already in the works.
  • 01:43:48
    But I am concerned about what kind of an impact this cut would be to operations.
  • 01:43:56
    for Ms. Trauswick.
  • 01:43:58
    I believe that as you're just walking into this conversation, the source of this amendment is a cut to public safety services and my understanding is that's precinct operations and staffing.
  • 01:44:11
    I'm curious what kind of an impact that would have.
  • 01:44:13
    The amount being cut is $329,000.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:44:17
    We're talking about MPD off-duty fees right now.
• • SPEAKER_21
  • 01:44:20
    Chair Chardtay, Council Member Palmisano, I would say the $300,000 cut is minimal.
  • 01:44:28
    It's still a very tight budget in that area.
  • 01:44:30
    That's where I thought that they had point, well, if it's the public safety budget, while that's a very large budget, the majority of the budget is personnel.
  • 01:44:40
    And then jail fees is about $1.3 million of it.
  • 01:44:44
    So there's not a lot of discretionary spending in that area.
  • 01:44:47
    The concern I have with the impact of this really relates to amendment number 17 that was passed and that if the revenue isn't generated, the one million dollar cut to public safety is a larger issue than this 364 that has the same source.
  • 01:45:06
    And our response in the memo is that it's possible it could result in civilian layoffs.
  • 01:45:13
    We only have I believe 12 civilian vacancies right now to look at and most of those are in progress.
  • 01:45:20
    So it is concerning trying to figure out what we're going to do with the impact to that.
• • Linea Palmisano
  • 01:45:27
    I see.
  • 01:45:28
    Thank you.
  • 01:45:30
    Thank you for the answer to that.
  • 01:45:33
    I guess we're getting the answer that it's both minimal, but then it also could result in civilian Layoffs are not filling open FTEs And then next I see councilmember Wonsley
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 01:45:51
    Yes, thank you so much.
  • 01:45:54
    Just want to note again, there is literally a presentation that MPD did themselves after several years of trying to get them to do the study in the first place on off duty that we took this number from.
  • 01:46:05
    It says 329
  • 01:46:07
    is
  • 01:46:23
    a 2026 implementation
  • 01:46:40
    of the
  • 01:46:56
    we're pretty much holding firm on a collection to start in 2026 as opposed to 2027 you have the ability to bring in revenue via this fee and actually reduce the burden of financial strain that's being placed on taxpayer dollars hence by the conversation we just had about MPD going 20 million dollars over
  • 01:47:16
    head.
  • 01:47:16
    Also, I want to address this IT, which we heard that from the administration, the IT need.
  • 01:47:21
    This actually has been cited as an excuse or a rationale for why they have not been able to do implementation of off-duty, actually quite frankly since Councilmember Palmisano, your time when you were leading quote-unquote on off-duty fees back in 2019.
  • 01:47:35
    That has not happened.
  • 01:47:36
    We've seen this be recycled time and time again.
  • 01:47:39
    MPD has the ability and I know this because we've been contacted by vendors who said we can give them this software today if they do a bid and this does not conflict with the work that they're doing with IT to do an overall database haul.
  • 01:47:53
    They can still go forward with that work and buy software needed to track off duty which they said they are not doing um so this gives them the resources to do all those things and collect those fees and actually take
  • 01:48:06
    a financial barrier off the place of thousands of taxpayers for one program that I think we've all collectively agreed, because the ordinances tied to this have been usually passed with near unanimous support, that we want to see regulation of this program.
  • 01:48:20
    This gives them the resources to do so.
  • 01:48:22
    So with that, I will ask for my colleagues' support.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:48:26
    Director, did you have anything else to add?
  • 01:48:29
    I saw you come back.
• • SPEAKER_21
  • 01:48:34
    I think you should be good.
  • 01:48:36
    Go ahead.
  • 01:48:37
    Thank you.
  • 01:48:38
    Just to be clear, the presentation that I gave regarding the off-duty fee, that was to calculate what the fee would be to recover to fully fund collecting a fee.
  • 01:48:49
    As stated in the presentation, it did not include the implementation.
  • 01:48:52
    So that fee is just for the work that the people does.
  • 01:48:56
    The second bullet on the second page says it doesn't include the implementation.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:49:05
    Great.
  • 01:49:06
    That's helpful.
  • 01:49:07
    Thank you so much, Director.
  • 01:49:08
    Councilmember Viton.
• • SPEAKER_19
  • 01:49:10
    Thank you, Chair.
  • 01:49:11
    I just need a clarifying question answered.
  • 01:49:15
    I'm trying to understand where the off-duty fees go because I thought they didn't go back to MPD and that they went into the general fund.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:49:26
    I'm going to invite Budget Director DeCenza to talk about where that revenue goes.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 01:49:36
    Good afternoon, Chair Chugchai, members of the committee.
  • 01:49:38
    Typically, all of the fees, unless they're in a special revenue fund, go to the general fund overall.
  • 01:49:45
    When we set department budgets, we don't take into account the number, the amount of revenue that they're bringing into the city.
  • 01:49:51
    We use the current service level method of budgeting, and so MPD would not see a budget increase to account for this additional revenue.
• • SPEAKER_19
  • 01:50:00
    Okay, thank you.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 01:50:01
    But it would alleviate pressure on the property tax line.
• • SPEAKER_19
  • 01:50:04
    Right, thank you.
  • 01:50:06
    And then the other question is, I think I'm a little bit confused about the timeline.
  • 01:50:10
    Councilmember Wonsley is saying that MPD wants this implementation next year, and then Councilmember Palmisano, you're saying the following year?
  • 01:50:20
    No?
  • 01:50:21
    Oh, okay.
  • 01:50:21
    So what's the 2026?
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 01:50:23
    I can speak to as the author.
  • 01:50:25
    The ordinances that we've passed has been for 2026 implementation.
  • 01:50:28
    The administration is trying to do a 2027 implementation.
• • SPEAKER_19
  • 01:50:31
    Right, and when we got the presentation that is what they said to us is that 2027 implementation was more suitable for what they needed, right?
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 01:50:41
    And we passed for 2026.
• • SPEAKER_19
  • 01:50:44
    Okay.
  • 01:50:45
    All right.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:50:46
    Thank you.
  • 01:50:46
    Wonderful.
  • 01:50:47
    Councilman Brosman.
• • Jamal Osman
  • 01:50:48
    Yeah, I'm trying to catch up and see where we are with the off-duty policy or ordinance.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:51:00
    The off-duty that was that's been adopted already by the council.
  • 01:51:05
    The fee schedule has also been adopted by the council.
• • Jamal Osman
  • 01:51:10
    Okay.
  • 01:51:18
    Okay.
  • 01:51:19
    No, no, my discussion is that, you know, what can we just have a conversation about the off-duty and what are the benefits of having off-duty officers?
  • 01:51:28
    Are we implementing officers not to take their squad car when they got off-duty?
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:51:34
    No, this is, Council Member Wonsley, do you want to answer the question?
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 01:51:38
    So, as you know, Councilmember Osman, the 2026 fee schedule came through Biz.
  • 01:51:45
    As part of the off-duty fees that we authorized, it allowed pricing for an officer with no squad car and with a squad car.
  • 01:51:54
    So that's what's passed.
  • 01:51:55
    I don't have the figure right in front of me.
  • 01:51:57
    So that is what's passed.
  • 01:51:58
    That allows us to collect a fee on those things.
  • 01:52:02
    again there's been robust conversation about this for over a year we've passed like at least at minimum three ordinances tied to off-duty alone with the 2026 implementation start date all tied to them okay just uh overall comment for me is that i believe if we
• • Jamal Osman
  • 01:52:24
    put officers on charging them the vehicle they take.
  • 01:52:30
    They will be taking their personal vehicles.
  • 01:52:33
    And what was told by
  • 01:52:38
    Having off duty, for example, somewhere in a business when things happen or crisis happen, then they're able to get in the vehicle, go take care of that crisis.
  • 01:52:50
    And once we implement this, and if it creates a problem where officers leave their squad vehicles behind and take their personal car, then it's not going to be the same response.
  • 01:52:59
    So that's just something to think about.
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 01:53:02
    Can I offer clarification on that?
  • 01:53:05
    That is not what's been discussed at all, Councilmember Osment.
  • 01:53:08
    What we're putting in place actually supports still officers, because not all officers use squad cars when they're doing off-duty.
  • 01:53:15
    What has been happening, there's been no fees collected because they're using city-owned resources to do this.
  • 01:53:22
    So we've just attached a fee.
  • 01:53:24
    If an officer would like to take an off-duty bid and use a squad car, here's a fee for that.
  • 01:53:30
    that's charged to whoever is soliciting those resources.
  • 01:53:34
    And that's a different fee.
  • 01:53:35
    It's a little bit higher.
  • 01:53:36
    And if an officer has an off-duty gig where they don't want to use a squad car, then there's a separate fee for that.
  • 01:53:42
    It's a little bit less.
  • 01:53:43
    So that's it.
  • 01:53:43
    It's not about pushing them to use personal cars.
  • 01:53:47
    It basically allows us to recoup the cost for an officer to use the city-owned resources to do it now.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:53:55
    And just to clarify, no one, the officer themself is not paying that amount, right?
  • 01:54:01
    Yep, that answers that question.
  • 01:54:03
    Okay, Councilmember Osmond, I believe you're in queue a second time, that must be an accident.
  • 01:54:08
    Yes.
  • 01:54:09
    Alright, seeing no further discussion on amendment number 16, MPD off-duty fees, Clerk, please call the roll.
• • SPEAKER_11
  • 01:54:19
    Councilmember Payne.
• • Jamal Osman
  • 01:54:20
    Aye.
• • SPEAKER_11
  • 01:54:21
    Wonsley.
• • Jamal Osman
  • 01:54:22
    Aye.
• • SPEAKER_11
  • 01:54:22
    Rainville.
• • Jamal Osman
  • 01:54:23
    Aye.
• • SPEAKER_11
  • 01:54:24
    Vita.
• • Jamal Osman
  • 01:54:25
    Aye.
• • SPEAKER_11
  • 01:54:26
    That motion carries
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:54:51
    all right next we are going to continue to amendment number 27 right we completed 26 um all right so
  • 01:55:06
    I'll just reorder my packet here Amendment number 27 is 30th Street Thrive implementation offered by Council members Chavez, Jenkins, Chaudry and Wonsley Council member Chavez will you please introduce your amendment and make a motion
• • SPEAKER_04
  • 01:55:25
    thank you uh... chair truck tie this uh... thirty-three thrive education program is being offered by myself council member Jenkins council member chaudhary and council member wonsley this fund gives the ability to invest collectively in stabilizing physical property and infrastructure it gives funding for events marketing and a branding strategy funding for ownership and preservation of homes and businesses for economic security
  • 01:55:51
    Councilmember Jenkins
• • Andrea Jenkins
  • 01:56:20
    Thank you, Madam Chair and Councilmember Chavez.
  • 01:56:24
    Yeah, I mean, I am thrilled to offer this amendment so that we can really begin the implementation process around the 38th Street Drive plan.
  • 01:56:37
    that has been adopted by the City Council I believe in 2019 and we still have yet to really invest in the
  • 01:56:53
    implementation.
  • 01:56:54
    I believe that, you know, 38th Street has become a destination for visitors and travelers from all around the country and subsequently around the world, and we should be investing in this process not only to improve the communities that surround
  • 01:57:20
    38th Street, but to lift it up to the significance that it has garnered as a result of the murder of George Floyd.
  • 01:57:36
    George Floyd Square has become a prominent destination and deserves this investment by the city to
  • 01:57:44
    to improve the infrastructure and businesses, homeownership, entrepreneurship in the area.
  • 01:57:56
    And I would move this amendment.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:58:00
    Is there a second?
  • 01:58:02
    Wonderful.
  • 01:58:03
    We have a proper motion before us.
  • 01:58:05
    Is there any discussion?
  • 01:58:06
    I'll recognize Councilmember Cashman.
• • Michael Cashman
  • 01:58:09
    Thank you Madam Chair and thank you to all the authors for putting this forward.
  • 01:58:13
    It's very clear from our public hearing that we had in the Climate and Infrastructure Committee last Thursday that the unanimous view of everyone in the community is that the small businesses of the area and the community resources of the area deserve more investment from the city and I think
  • 01:58:29
    We all agree with that and this is how we can put our money where our mouth is when it comes to our support for 38th Street and the Chicago corridor.
  • 01:58:38
    And I would like to ask if you'd be willing to add me as a co-author on this amendment.
  • 01:58:42
    See thumbs up from some of the authors.
  • 01:58:45
    Thank you so much.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:58:47
    Wonderful.
  • 01:58:48
    And then I'll recognize Councilmember Chaudry.
• • Aurin Chowdhury
  • 01:58:53
    Thank you so much, Chair.
  • 01:58:56
    I really appreciate it.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:58:57
    I think it just needs to move closer to you.
  • 01:58:59
    Yeah.
• • Aurin Chowdhury
  • 01:59:04
    Okay.
  • 01:59:06
    All right.
  • 01:59:07
    Thank you so much.
  • 01:59:09
    First of all, to Councilmember Chavez for your work on this and then just just taking the time to
  • 01:59:20
    really be a voice on the City Council for investment into areas of our city that have been under-invested in for a really, really long time.
  • 01:59:30
    And then a big thank you to Councilmember Jenkins for your leadership, not only as a Councilmember, but even prior to being a Councilmember as a policy aide for the 8th Ward, for 38th,
  • 01:59:48
    and 38th in Chicago.
  • 01:59:49
    I know that this has been something that you've worked on since you got elected year by year, day in, day out.
  • 02:00:00
    And I just wanted to say I'm really proud of you and your office's work to bring this big allocation forward, especially in your last budget as the 8th Ward City Council member.
  • 02:00:15
    And I think that
  • 02:00:16
    This amendment within I really encourage people to read all the steps that were taken by Councilmember Jenkins that led to this point.
  • 02:00:24
    So I just wanted to give you your flowers on that.
  • 02:00:28
    Over the last year, I know I don't represent
  • 02:00:33
    I have heard from constituents I represent in the 12th Ward and then constituents all throughout the city that there is a really strong shared North Star for making sure that 38th Street and 38th and Chicago
  • 02:00:50
    got what it deserved and what it deserved for many many years prior to 2020 and so I'm proud to bring this forward and as a council member into the next term I'm committed to ensure that we see a strong implementation and be a member on this body that will help cheer for it and help it grow.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 02:01:18
    Thank you.
  • 02:01:19
    Not seeing any further discussion, I'll ask the Clerk to call the roll.
• • SPEAKER_11
  • 02:01:24
    Councilmember Payne?
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 02:01:25
    Aye.
• • SPEAKER_11
  • 02:01:26
    Wonsley?
• • SPEAKER_04
  • 02:01:28
    Aye.
• • SPEAKER_11
  • 02:01:31
    Rainville?
• • SPEAKER_04
  • 02:01:31
    Aye.
• • SPEAKER_11
  • 02:01:33
    Vita is absent.
  • 02:01:35
    Osmond?
  • 02:01:36
    Aye.
  • 02:01:37
    Cashman?
• • Michael Cashman
  • 02:01:37
    Aye.
• • SPEAKER_11
  • 02:01:38
    Jenkins?
• • 02:01:39
    Aye.
• • SPEAKER_11
  • 02:01:39
    That motion carries.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 02:01:52
    Alright.
  • 02:02:03
    We will now continue.
  • 02:02:05
    Okay, I see Councilmember Vita.
  • 02:02:06
    Councilmember Vita, would you like to be noted on...
  • 02:02:09
    Okay, wonderful.
  • 02:02:10
    If we can note her in the affirmative.
  • 02:02:12
    Great.
  • 02:02:13
    Excellent.
  • 02:02:15
    So, and that changes to 12 ayes, no nays.
  • 02:02:20
    Great.
  • 02:02:22
    Next is Amendment Number 28, which is Downtown Street Outreach offered by Councilmember Rainville.
  • 02:02:31
    Councilmember Rainville, will you please introduce your amendment and make a motion?
• • Michael Rainville
  • 02:02:36
    Yes, thank you.
  • 02:02:37
    So what this amendment does is it funds a contractor for street outreach funding for downtown.
  • 02:02:43
    The funds would be sufficient for a team of six street outreach workers, two unarmed security guards, four ambassadors, and one late night safety dispatcher working in the first precinct to address livability issues and safety for residents, visitors, and businesses.
  • 02:03:00
    The contract would cover Friday and Saturday nights from 6 30 p.m. to 3 a.m. from May 26 through October 26 and expands the geographic area to include Nickel Mall, the theater district,
  • 02:03:13
    along Hennepin Avenue in addition to the warehouse district.
  • 02:03:19
    You have a new sheet in front of you and speaking with Councilmember Wonsley and Chavez, we made some changes.
  • 02:03:27
    This would be run through the Office of Community Safety and what it does is guarantee that the council will have a review of the vendor chosen.
  • 02:03:35
    so that we'll be in control.
  • 02:03:37
    I see Councilmember Wamsley nodding, thank you for that advice.
  • 02:03:41
    And I just want to point out that by protecting the sales tax that we get, the local sales tax from downtown, that allows us to invest in the neighborhoods.
  • 02:03:52
    We just voted to invest $1.9 million into 38th Street For the most part, those dollars came from the local sales tax in downtown So this will help us keep ongoing revenue to support neighborhood projects And with that, I'll make the motion to approve
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 02:04:09
    Is there a second?
  • 02:04:10
    Second.
  • 02:04:11
    Wonderful.
  • 02:04:14
    Great.
  • 02:04:17
    I'll recognize, is there any discussion on this item, Council Member Cashman?
• • Michael Cashman
  • 02:04:21
    Thank you so much and thank you for your leadership on this Council Member Rainville, it's super important that we have more public safety resources especially at night and especially in the downtown and the entertainment district where we have so many bars and restaurants and clubs and
  • 02:04:34
    it's it gets pretty wild around 2 a.m. around bar close and so I think it's really important that we develop our the full resource capacity around the bar close time in this area I just did have a question for city staff maybe Commissioner Barnett about the implementation
  • 02:04:50
    It's been a little difficult to implement night time services and I want to see if there's some barriers that you've cleared in conversations with the DID to be able to hire these ambassadors that do work after, you know, this goes from 6.30pm to 3.00am on the weekends.
• • Todd BarnetteCommissioner of Community Safety
  • 02:05:09
    Through the chair, Chuck Tye.
  • 02:05:12
    Councilmember Cashman, I think what you have before you comes from some discussions with Councilmember Rainville to try to expedite services a lot quicker.
  • 02:05:25
    There's been
  • 02:05:29
    A lot of conversations with Shane Zahn, his staff, about some of the needs and I think we're on a path to make sure that this service is available by May.
• • Michael Cashman
  • 02:05:47
    so okay yep and then uh just to follow up here is because i know that we've allocated money to safety ambassadors in the past and a lot of those resources still haven't reached our neighborhoods in uptown in particular uh safety ambassadors were budgeted for two two years ago in 2023 and still haven't been implemented in uptown and i've heard over the last couple of years
  • 02:06:10
    that it has to do with a lack of kind of operational structure in place in that area and downtown has that right it has more infrastructure to complement it with DID and so it does have you know a greater ability to get done within the confines of the budget however I'd really like to see us develop those late night
  • 02:06:33
    spots that ambassadors could operate out of in Uptown as well.
  • 02:06:38
    So I just wanted to add that comment that we have budget still for ambassadors in Uptown and I'd like to see the strategies they're implementing downtown be applied in the other neighborhoods that also have nighttime economies and big safety concerns.
• • Todd BarnetteCommissioner of Community Safety
  • 02:06:52
    Chair Chuktai, Council Member Cashman,
  • 02:06:59
    The safety ambassadors through DID, they do do a service and do a great job there.
  • 02:07:07
    You know that we have a pilot right now that's happening on East Lake Street with our safety ambassadors that are being dispatched out of the
  • 02:07:21
    Lake Street Safety Center.
  • 02:07:24
    The idea is to be able to expand that program.
  • 02:07:29
    So I hear the urgency like you business owners and other residents in Uptown want to see it there as well.
  • 02:07:39
    And so we are working towards as much as possible being able to expand our safety ambassador program.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 02:07:50
    Thank you.
  • 02:07:51
    Next I'll recognize Councilmember Choudry followed by Councilmember Wonsley.
• • Aurin Chowdhury
  • 02:07:57
    Thank you, Chair Chug Thai.
  • 02:08:00
    I'm inclined to support this amendment.
  • 02:08:03
    I think an expansion of these services is a real benefit but I do have a question maybe it's for the author or maybe it is for Commissioner Barnett and just kind of understanding the source impact I see that it's sourced from Public Safety Aid appropriation for Community Safety Center pilots and I just want to get a better understanding of what that means to shift
  • 02:08:30
    $236,000 from that to here.
• • Todd BarnetteCommissioner of Community Safety
  • 02:08:35
    Chair Chuktai, Council Member Chaudry, that was a discussion that I had with Council Member Rainville.
  • 02:08:44
    I think that's one reason that he reached out to other council members.
  • 02:08:49
    That pilot programs, that fund is there for, I believe,
  • 02:08:59
    We're at 2.4 million dollars on that fund for pilot programs once the safety once the South Minneapolis Safety Center opens up I still think we can get services there and remember still
  • 02:09:18
    We have to continue to look at what services are there but also looking at how do we continue to fund those services long term.
  • 02:09:30
    In looking at that, we are continuing to
  • 02:09:37
    be creative as possible knowing that some of the funding that we would have looked for previously would have come through federal funds.
  • 02:09:49
    Those funds as we know have some strings attached to them that
  • 02:09:55
    the city would not accept.
  • 02:09:57
    I know this council would not accept and so we look at those funds and also we continue to look at what local philanthropic opportunities are there for us to try to not only fund these type of programs ongoing but just how all of this fits together and that's why
  • 02:10:23
    the NYU folks who continue to help us navigate this area and have experience in this area.
  • 02:10:34
    We continue to talk to them about what we can do for long term funding.
  • 02:10:39
    I mean in the short term, I think we're okay.
  • 02:10:41
    Long term, I think that's something that we have to continue to talk about and build out.
  • 02:10:47
    But that affects all of these programs.
• • Aurin Chowdhury
  • 02:10:51
    Okay, thank you, I appreciate it.
  • 02:10:57
    Good to know, good to kind of understand what we're looking at into the future.
  • 02:11:01
    The South Minneapolis Community Safety Center hasn't yet launched yet and so we're still waiting on that and we still have to wait and understand what the needs are going to be and what the cost is going to be in real time.
  • 02:11:15
    So I think this time around I'm okay with the source.
  • 02:11:19
    As a council member that represents a significant portion of the third precinct area.
  • 02:11:27
    But I am worried about weary about continuing to take from this pot into the future because I know that we have Taken from this earlier in the year For Metro youth diversion, which I think that was a good use for sure but I I'm going to support this amendment and that yeah, those are all my comments just wanted to note that for councilmember Rainville and others on the body for this pot of funding and
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 02:11:57
    Thank you.
  • 02:11:58
    Thank you councilmember Wonsley
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 02:12:02
    Thank you, CBP Chuktai.
  • 02:12:04
    Just clarity on a couple of things, I did have the opportunity to have several conversations with Councilmember Rainville around this, just sharing also some of the concerns that Councilmember Chaudry raised as someone who also represents the third, well the area including the third precinct and also the ward that's going to have the South Minneapolis Community Safety Center, making sure that we're, making sure those
  • 02:12:28
    that funding for our pilots there is being preserved for longevity and I would encourage Councilmember Chaudry, the reason why I feel pretty confident in supporting this is we did receive a pretty
  • 02:12:42
    and the City Council.
  • 02:13:02
    to continue beefing up those pilots to make sure that that center has everything that it needs.
  • 02:13:08
    Just clarity around the oversight piece because this is also one of the concerns that I had and I think Councilmember Cashman raised this piece.
  • 02:13:17
    So just for clarity for either Councilmember Rainville or the Office of Community Safety to be intentional of making sure that
  • 02:13:25
    whatever vendors are selected to carry out these services for it to come through council review and consideration and ultimate potential approval or not.
  • 02:13:36
    These are going to be administered via RFP through the Office of Community Safety, not through external agency like the Downtown Improvement District.
  • 02:13:45
    I just want to get clarity on that.
• • Michael Rainville
  • 02:13:49
    Yes, and we've built it in, but Commissioner, would you like to comment on that as well?
  • 02:13:54
    Again, my commitment is strong that council has oversight on the vendor's selection.
  • 02:14:00
    I'm a hundred percent.
• • SPEAKER_21
  • 02:14:02
    More than strong.
• • Todd BarnetteCommissioner of Community Safety
  • 02:14:07
    Chair Chuktay, Council Member Wansley, you saw that the
  • 02:14:18
    there was a change and it was revised in what Council Member Rainesville proposed on this amendment so that whatever services are used we would come here probably through I'm not sure exactly what committee I think it would be through PHS but we would come forward with
  • 02:14:48
    whatever services that we would want to see implemented.
  • 02:14:53
    So yes, we would come before the committee.
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 02:14:55
    Thank you.
  • 02:14:56
    I just want to make sure that was clarified.
  • 02:14:58
    I know that was a big priority of mine.
  • 02:15:00
    As you know, we do a lot of contracts with external organizations and what we've seen this past year is we've had deep concerns by some of the vendors that have been selected by our external partners, but that does not fall under our oversight.
  • 02:15:13
    So I'm really happy that we were able to have a conversation and come to this place where we know Office of Community Safety will be administering our RFP and allowing Council to be part of that oversight and approval process.
  • 02:15:25
    And yeah, I feel pretty good in light of that supporting this amendment and thank you Councilmember Rainville for being amenable as well as you Commissioner Barnett in these conversations to get to this place.
• • Todd BarnetteCommissioner of Community Safety
  • 02:15:35
    If I could, just one second, Chair.
  • 02:15:39
    Council Member Wonsley, just to be totally clear, I'm not sure if it's a sole source or it's RFP.
  • 02:15:51
    We have to really define what the service is.
  • 02:15:55
    So I just say that we will come before you, but you said RFP and I just want to leave that option that there might be a sole source here, that's all.
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 02:16:04
    Okay, so whatever procurement process you initiate, that will move through the legislative process though.
  • 02:16:10
    Okay, awesome.
• • Todd BarnetteCommissioner of Community Safety
  • 02:16:11
    Thank you.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 02:16:11
    Wonderful, thank you.
  • 02:16:12
    I just want to put myself in queue for two clarifying questions.
  • 02:16:16
    The first is for the author.
  • 02:16:17
    In the original version of this amendment, I saw the purpose was listed as four street outreach services in downtown and then in the revised version I see to support the warehouse district live program in downtown.
  • 02:16:33
    Is that with intention?
• • Michael Rainville
  • 02:16:35
    That was with intention.
  • 02:16:36
    That allows more control by the neighborhood safety department.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 02:16:41
    Okay, great.
  • 02:16:42
    Understood.
  • 02:16:43
    And then the second piece of this is, I'm just a little bit confused about this discussion on council approval of whatever vendor is selected and that being the primary reason to move to the Office of Community Safety instead of leaving this in the Neighborhood Safety Department.
  • 02:17:01
    Is this about the master contract question or what's the, go ahead Commissioner.
• • Todd BarnetteCommissioner of Community Safety
  • 02:17:08
    To answer that question, in working with Councilmember Rainville, I felt as though to move the process faster, neighborhood safety has a lot of different contracts that move.
  • 02:17:24
    We've had those discussions before.
  • 02:17:26
    I think with my staff,
  • 02:17:31
    Although I shy away from these things, I thought with the staff and the support we could make this happen faster.
  • 02:17:40
    I know that's been a concern about services and in this case I knew that Council Member Rainville was talking to other Council Members as well.
  • 02:17:49
    So I just wanted to make sure that
  • 02:17:56
    We could get services there by May, as Council Member Rainville said, without it being in a queue in neighborhood safety.
  • 02:18:05
    Not that neighborhood safety couldn't do it.
  • 02:18:08
    Don't get me wrong.
  • 02:18:09
    In fact, I don't even think they know about this revision, which I think they'll be happy about.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 02:18:15
    Sounds great.
  • 02:18:17
    Thank you.
• • Emily Koski
  • 02:18:19
    That's helpful to know.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 02:18:20
    Okay, I'm not seeing anyone else in queue.
  • 02:18:24
    So on amendment number 28, Downtown Street Outreach, I will ask the Clerk to call the roll.
• • SPEAKER_11
  • 02:18:31
    Councilmember Payne?
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 02:18:33
    Aye.
• • SPEAKER_11
  • 02:18:33
    Wonsley?
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 02:18:34
    Aye.
• • SPEAKER_11
  • 02:18:34
    Rainville?
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 02:18:35
    Aye.
• • SPEAKER_11
  • 02:18:36
    Beto?
• • Michael Cashman
  • 02:18:37
    Aye.
• • SPEAKER_11
  • 02:18:38
    Osman?
• • 02:18:39
    Aye.
• • SPEAKER_11
  • 02:18:40
    All right colleagues, we've got about eight minutes left.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 02:18:57
    Let's try to get through one more amendment really quickly Amendment number 29 is Nicollet Avenue Public Restrooms offered by Councilmember Cashman.
  • 02:19:06
    Councilmember Cashman, please introduce and move approval of your amendment
• • Michael Cashman
  • 02:19:10
    Thank you, Madam Chair.
  • 02:19:11
    This amendment pulls $700,000 ongoing from the Streetcar Value Capture Fund to fund public restrooms along Nicollet Avenue, so as everyone is likely aware, public bathroom access is a human need that we all have, and Nicollet Mall is
  • 02:19:29
    the most active transit corridor in the entire state.
  • 02:19:32
    And as the Ward 7 council member representing a large stretch of Nicollet Mall, I know how great the need is for both residents who live there, elders going to the doctor's office, tourists coming into downtown for the very first time, workers who are moving along the mall,
  • 02:19:50
    and everyone in between, there is a big need for public restrooms.
  • 02:19:55
    And currently, Nicollet Mall also has a problem with people relieving themselves in alleyways and other spaces, which the DID does have to pay for.
  • 02:20:03
    And you'll see a map on here about the areas where there are public bathrooms, but also the areas earmarked red pins that are public urination hotspots.
  • 02:20:13
    So my amendment will improve access to public bathrooms for the transit riders who use the corridor, the transit operators who need somewhere to go during layovers, and every tourist and resident and worker who's coming through our city.
  • 02:20:27
    We received a really high quality report from our policy and research team a few months ago about the different various strategies to implement public restrooms and my proposal builds off of that.
  • 02:20:39
    So the idea here is to fund public works to procure multiple high-quality, high-tech, and climate-controlled standalone restrooms, not porta-potties, from a private provider and site them along the transit lines within the Value Capture District project area, which goes on Nicollet Avenue all the way south down to Kmart, but also north across the river into Northeast.
  • 02:21:02
    and these units would also address the public safety concerns that had arisen in the past with the porta-potties that DID implemented back in 2019 because they will have more innovative technology and features.
  • 02:21:15
    We are seeing these rolled out in cities like Ann Arbor, Michigan, Portland, Oregon, LA, and Washington, DC and they have been highly successful in mitigating various issues and the bathrooms that they've implemented have been highly cared for and cherished by the communities that
  • 02:21:30
    So the source of funding here is the value capture fund which was initially created by the state legislature to fund the streetcar which was not materialized but the funds are restricted to public space improvements in support of transit along this corridor.
  • 02:21:46
    I would hate Toilette to let this funding opportunity go to waste so I hope to have your support for this budget amendment and I'll move approval.
  • 02:21:56
    Is there a second?
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 02:21:57
    I've noted down the order in which you are in queue and we'll pick up the discussion when we come back tomorrow.
  • 02:22:09
    I want some time, we do have a real hard cutoff at 4, so I need some time in order to be able to walk through what comes next.
  • 02:22:19
    Alright, so, with that.
  • 02:22:24
    This is, we are going to pick up with amendment number 29 when we return tomorrow since we still have work to continue.
  • 02:22:32
    I'm going to forward this, and I'm going to adjourn our committee meeting to tomorrow, Tuesday, December 9th at 10am.
  • 02:22:41
    so that we can continue our work on the 2026 budget.
  • 02:22:45
    For any outstanding items that remain after that morning session, if there are any revisions that are caught, anything like that, we'll pick that back up after the conclusion of the public hearing tomorrow evening.
  • 02:22:57
    So we have time and we will get through this packet
  • 02:23:01
    with not the same type of rush that we were in last time.
  • 02:23:04
    So, without objection, we are adjourned to tomorrow, Tuesday, December 9th at 10 a.m. in these chambers.
  • 02:23:11
    Please, again, remember to bring your packets, although you can leave them in here.
  • 02:23:16
    Nope, never mind, we have Planning Commission.
  • 02:23:20
    Please take your packets with you and bring them back.
  • 02:23:22
    Thank you, everyone.