Budget Committee - October 23, 2024 - The meeting will recess after the first item. The meeting will then reconvene at 1:00 PM in Council Chambers to take up the second item.   10/23/2024

Roll Call

• • SPEAKER_00
  • 00:00:02
    St Paul, City Council,
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 00:00:12
    to order.
  • 00:00:13
    Let me try that again.
  • 00:00:14
    Good morning, everyone.
  • 00:00:14
    I'm going to call our meeting of the Budget Committee to order.
  • 00:00:16
    This morning we are hearing a presentation on very coordinated work with Ramsey County, really focused on our response to unsheltered homelessness, and then a lot of the tie-ins of other work that is fundamentally a part of that.
  • 00:00:30
    So we are going to hear a presentation from Peddingholm Ramsey.
  • 00:00:34
    Our peer and colleague, Councilman Nicker, represents
  • 00:00:37
    Council at that space and our chair of that space is our Deputy Mayor, Jamie Tincher.
  • 00:00:41
    So I'm going to welcome her up to begin this presentation that will fundamentally include other colleagues from the county and other departments.
  • 00:00:48
    Thank you and welcome, Deputy Mayor.
• • SPEAKER_16
  • 00:00:50
    Thank you Council President, Council Members.
  • 00:00:53
    Today we are going to provide an overview of Heading Home Ramsey's continuum of care.
  • 00:00:58
    Heading Home Ramsey has become the place where our community comes together through a collective impact model.
  • 00:01:04
    We do this as the approach in our community to the complex work of solving homelessness.
  • 00:01:10
    At the heart of this model lies the understanding that no single organization can tackle the systemic challenges of homelessness alone.
  • 00:01:17
    Through strategic partnerships, innovative strategies, and a focus on measurable outcomes, this initiative has made significant strides in addressing homelessness in our community.
  • 00:01:28
    By aligning resources, sharing data, building trust, and fostering open communication, Heading Home Ramsey has not only achieved results, but has also created a supportive, connected network of providers.
  • 00:01:40
    And I wanted to make sure that you heard from a number of them today.
  • 00:01:42
    So I'm going to invite my colleague, Molly Jaume from Lessening House,
  • 00:01:46
    who is also the at-large member for the executive team at Heading Home Ramsey.
  • 00:01:52
    Thanks.
• • SPEAKER_15
  • 00:01:55
    Excellent.
• • SPEAKER_16
  • 00:01:57
    Thanks.
• • SPEAKER_09
  • 00:01:58
    Thank you for having me.
• • SPEAKER_15
  • 00:01:59
    So yeah, I wear a couple different hats.
  • 00:02:00
    I'm the executive director for Listening House.
  • 00:02:02
    Appreciate being here today, but today I'm wearing the hat of a governing board executive member to talk about what the COC is essentially to help sort of frame the rest of what we're talking about.
  • 00:02:16
    So the COC is a mandate, right?
  • 00:02:18
    We have to have a collective of people that's required.
  • 00:02:21
    But beyond that, we could go over what each of these things are, where they all exist.
  • 00:02:27
    But the point of this is that it is a group of members that are both engaged but also elected by each other to serve.
  • 00:02:36
    and in doing so, this is where we have the hard conversation.
  • 00:02:38
    It's where is funding needed?
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    Who's doing well?
  • 00:02:41
    Who needs space?
  • 00:02:42
    This is where we hammer that all out.
  • 00:02:46
    There's a map up there.
  • 00:02:49
    We have a vision, a mission statement, but I think what's important is that we have, this model is working.
  • 00:02:55
    The engagement is there.
  • 00:02:58
    is becoming a place that we can express our needs, express the paths we want to take, and then we do that in collaboration with everybody else at the table.
  • 00:03:08
    And this works.
  • 00:03:09
    I mean, one of the examples is the St. Paul Work Now program, Purple Vests, if you see them out there cleaning around.
  • 00:03:16
    That's a Listening House program.
  • 00:03:18
    I'm going to take my shot to talk about it.
  • 00:03:21
    But really, it was a combination of that came out of this collective.
  • 00:03:25
    and we are creating jobs for people at the most early entry level and bringing them through.
  • 00:03:32
    Continuums are continuums for people in need and this is the group that solidifies that.
• • Rebecca Noecker
  • 00:03:37
    Here is a list of the people involved.
  • 00:03:46
    and the City Council.
  • 00:04:06
    look at those who are experiencing homelessness in terms of people who are also contributing members of our community.
  • 00:04:12
    And so anyway, I just think it's a brilliant program, and I'm really glad it's going.
• • SPEAKER_15
  • 00:04:16
    Absolutely.
  • 00:04:16
    Thank you so much, Council Member.
  • 00:04:17
    Yeah, it's local government.
  • 00:04:20
    It's nonprofits.
  • 00:04:21
    It is business community.
  • 00:04:24
    It really is where this community, the Heading Home Ramsey, is really where we can all come together without having to add another table.
  • 00:04:36
    There's some stats, I'm not going to go over those.
  • 00:04:38
    I'll hand it off to the next person who's going to talk and I think that is Dave.
  • 00:04:43
    Thank you very much everyone.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 00:04:44
    Thank you Molly.
• • SPEAKER_15
  • 00:04:45
    And of course I'm going to leave brochures for you at the table.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 00:04:47
    Love a brochure, thanks.
  • 00:04:51
    Welcome Mr. Zaffran, good to see you.
• • SPEAKER_09
  • 00:04:53
    Good morning council members, thanks for having us here today.
  • 00:04:56
    My name's David Zaffron, I work for the Ramsey County Housing Stability Department and I currently serve as the continuum of care coordinator for Heading Home Ramsey.
  • 00:05:03
    I'm going to share some of the key performance indicators that are driving all of our work as a continuum and as a collective.
  • 00:05:10
    And I'm going to do this sort of section by section through the continuum of homelessness.
  • 00:05:15
    So first when it comes to eviction prevention and homeless prevention,
  • 00:05:22
    we have so much more need than we have funding that we can possibly serve folks with when it comes to with prevention needs.
  • 00:05:30
    The trend line on evictions as many of you probably know is that we had an eviction moratorium during COVID and then we saw a huge spike in evictions coming out of the end of that moratorium and that has not subsided.
  • 00:05:44
    So we are still seeing a very elevated level or number of eviction filings.
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    is set to
  • 00:06:13
    and go and drop from roughly 12 to 14 million dollars right now in this current biennium back to about two or three unless the legislature commits more dollars to the FHPAP program which is our primary source of prevention funding.
  • 00:06:31
    But right now we're serving fewer than one out of every six households or about one out of every six households that seeks eviction prevention services from one of our providers.
  • 00:06:41
    And this is an area where the county
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 00:06:44
    coordinates funding through a whole set of
• • SPEAKER_09
  • 00:07:02
    It can be a number of different things, but it is usually a level of past due rent that can help them stay stably housed.
  • 00:07:14
    Usually, and this is whether it's an eviction court or prior to or outside of eviction court, it is a negotiation between that tenant and their landlord and whoever is assisting them to see what kind of settlement can be made to help folks stay in that housing.
  • 00:07:31
    and that is often a percentage of their past two rent, but it is one time in nature.
  • 00:07:40
    This is not ongoing rental assistance.
  • 00:07:43
    This is one time eviction prevention for people that are at imminent risk of homelessness, which means really in the next three weeks.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 00:07:50
    And I will just flag as an ongoing discussion, because I think it's great that we're getting to have this whole group on the range of interventions.
  • 00:07:58
    But our council's very interested in rental assistance as one of many priorities for our local affordable housing aid that is in the mayor's proposed budget.
  • 00:08:05
    would love to, let's keep moving through our presentation.
  • 00:08:10
    But I think we want to come back to this topic with you and with the county to understand holistically how you're using those funds.
  • 00:08:15
    Because we want to make sure we're coordinating and using our funds to reach as many people as possible, both in St Paul and throughout Ramsey County.
  • 00:08:21
    So I just wanted to, in real time, make sure that you're aware of that and we may have some follow ups.
• • SPEAKER_09
  • 00:08:28
    I'll make one note while we're in between prevention and emergency services here.
  • 00:08:33
    We have a new team that the county launched in April of this year which is our shelter entry and diversion team.
  • 00:08:39
    This is a new service team directly for people experiencing homelessness in Ramsey County.
  • 00:08:43
    It's one phone number to call or it's one place that you can visit at the St Paul Opportunity Center.
  • 00:08:47
    where people can get either a shelter bed reservation for that night or if people are newly experiencing homelessness or about to be homeless.
  • 00:08:56
    So prevention is in the next three weeks or so.
  • 00:08:59
    Diversion is I'm going to need shelter tonight unless I have an intervention.
  • 00:09:06
    and because of that immediacy it is the most direct and successful form of homeless prevention so we have social workers who provide those diversion services and some funding dedicated for that and that has been a very successful strategy in the five months that it's been up and running.
  • 00:09:25
    We have a team that's been doing that with families for several years through Catholic Charities at our Family Service Center in Maplewood.
  • 00:09:33
    And now we have a team that's able to do that with single adults as well.
  • 00:09:39
    In terms of- Sorry, Mr. Zaffron.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 00:09:40
    One more question from Ms. Johnson.
  • 00:09:41
    Go ahead.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 00:09:42
    Could you just, for the sake of making sure that folks are hearing about that program for the first time, that they know the name of the program as well as the place that they would go to access those services that you just mentioned?
• • SPEAKER_09
  • 00:09:53
    Yes, it's Ramsey County's Shelter Entry and Diversion Team.
  • 00:09:57
    The phone number is 651-266-1050.
  • 00:10:01
    And the in-person team is at the St. Paul Opportunity Center on the second floor.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 00:10:08
    Thank you.
• • SPEAKER_09
  • 00:10:11
    shifting to emergency services and sheltered and unsheltered homelessness in Ramsey County.
  • 00:10:17
    This is our point in time count numbers from the last seven years going back to 2018.
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    This is a count that we conduct every winter.
  • 00:10:26
    It'll be coming up at the end of January again.
  • 00:10:28
    And our count of unsheltered homeless
  • 00:10:34
    actually spiked prior to COVID.
  • 00:10:36
    You can see that between 2018 and 2019 it almost tripled and then it has remained at that level ever since.
  • 00:10:43
    Our overall count peaked during COVID because we had a significant influx of funding from the federal government.
  • 00:10:52
    For shelter, even with social distancing and shelter, we had a whole lot more shelter beds available during COVID.
  • 00:10:58
    And then once that funding has expired, that has tapered back down and it is still tapering back down to
  • 00:11:04
    to pre-COVID levels in terms of our amount of available shelter space.
  • 00:11:10
    And as those shelter beds close with the expiration of that funding, sheltered homeless are becoming unsheltered homeless.
  • 00:11:19
    And you can see that pretty clearly from 2022 to 23 to 24.
  • 00:11:21
    The overall count has remained roughly the same.
  • 00:11:26
    But as the gray bar has decreased, the red is increasing to match that.
  • 00:11:34
    The last two years, the county has run winter warming spaces that you probably heard about.
  • 00:11:40
    Last winter, that averaged about 150 individuals per night, primarily single adults, but also some families who also are able to access emergency shelter vouchers if they're going to be unsheltered.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 00:11:57
    and I have a question from Ms. Neeker, go ahead.
• • Rebecca Noecker
  • 00:11:59
    Thanks, Council President.
  • 00:12:00
    Mr. Zaffron, it's really interesting to see this data and to see that unsheltered homelessness looks like it's almost quadrupled since 2018 and to see that that started before COVID, which is an interesting observation.
  • 00:12:12
    Do we have any sense, does Heading Home Ramsey have any sense as to what contributed to that tripling even before the pandemic?
  • 00:12:19
    I've often talked about this as a narrative of pandemic-induced
  • 00:12:22
    I don't have anything concrete for you on that.
• • SPEAKER_09
  • 00:12:35
    I haven't seen any studies that would point to causes that I can root in data on that.
  • 00:12:42
    I think that if we mapped this to the overall trend in rents, that that, I
  • 00:12:51
    that's what I see as the root cause of most of this is the overall affordability of housing and how that's translating into the number of people who are sheltered or unsheltered in our community.
• • Rebecca Noecker
  • 00:13:03
    committee.
  • 00:13:05
    Thank you.
  • 00:13:05
    How does Ramsey county or how does heading home Ramsey think about the amount of shelter that's necessary for the community given the number of folks who are experiencing homelessness because obviously we've had relatively constant numbers of shelter beds for a long time and obviously the numbers and the need has far exceeded that.
  • 00:13:25
    So is there certain, you know,
• • SPEAKER_09
  • 00:13:29
    of the City Council.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 00:13:52
    Yeah, absolutely.
  • 00:13:54
    Thanks for having me today.
  • 00:13:56
    Great answer to that question.
  • 00:13:58
    I'm going to move on to our next slide, which is talking about how Ramsey County shelters serve regional needs.
  • 00:14:05
    So even though Ramsey County has just nine and a half percent of the statewide population, we have 24% of all of the state emergency beds, and we know that our shelters serve regional needs.
  • 00:14:16
    we have the greatest density of emergency shelters in the metro area relative to our populations so Hennepin County has more shelter beds but they also have a much larger population so I wanted to demonstrate the difference in the regionality between shelter beds thanks I'm just
• • Rebecca Noecker
  • 00:14:36
    I'm just curious if that's the right ratio to be using.
  • 00:14:38
    I mean, the amount of population in an area is one thing.
  • 00:14:41
    The amount of folks experiencing homelessness maybe seems like the metric that would make sense to use.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 00:14:47
    Yeah.
  • 00:14:48
    They also have a greater proportion of individuals experiencing homelessness compared to Ramsey County.
  • 00:14:53
    We're just trying to show the level of shelter beds that we have for our geographic area, because we are the most intensely populated county.
• • SPEAKER_09
  • 00:15:01
    And I don't think the intention is to say that this is the appropriate level.
  • 00:15:06
    I think that this is simply to demonstrate that Ramsey County, relative to the rest of the metro in the state, does have a lot of emergency shelter beds.
  • 00:15:15
    To your point, Council Member, the conversation that we're having right now is how do we determine how many we need and how we get there?
• • Rebecca Noecker
  • 00:15:25
    And we'll get to that.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 00:15:28
    All right, I see Ms. Bowie and then Ms. Johnson.
  • 00:15:30
    Go ahead, Ms. Bowie.
  • 00:15:31
    Thank you, Council President.
• • Anika Bowie
  • 00:15:32
    I have a question around the density.
  • 00:15:34
    When you say that Ramsey County has the greatest density of emergency shelters in the metro area, is there a map of just where that density exists in St. Paul?
• • SPEAKER_09
  • 00:15:46
    We're building it.
  • 00:15:47
    Councilmember, we don't have a map built, but what I can tell you is that almost all of our emergency shelter is located in the city of St. Paul.
  • 00:15:57
    We have the Family Service Center family shelter in Maplewood.
  • 00:16:02
    But the overwhelming majority of our emergency shelter is in St. Paul.
• • Anika Bowie
  • 00:16:07
    And also, if you can just follow up with, is that due to zoning?
  • 00:16:14
    Yeah, if you could speak a little bit more today if you know more.
• • SPEAKER_09
  • 00:16:18
    Councilmember, yes, and Deputy Mayor could go into much more detail on this, but we know that due to zoning specifically, there are very few places in the county as a whole where emergency shelters are allowed to be and operate.
  • 00:16:34
    And most of that location is downtown St. Paul.
  • 00:16:40
    and that is a significant reason that emergency shelter operators, our provider partners, face difficulties when it comes to locating their services and expanding those services.
• • Nelsie Yang
  • 00:16:51
    Thank you.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 00:16:53
    Thanks.
  • 00:16:54
    And before I pass to Ms. Johnson, I'll just take my point of privilege to say we are keenly aware of the specificity and that we should be
  • 00:17:03
    making those distinctions when holding our suburban counterparts accountable for their role in this crisis.
  • 00:17:09
    It's easy to say Ramsey County, and then what we really mean is within one square half mile of our community.
  • 00:17:15
    And other municipalities should be held accountable for their policy choice to make taking care of homeless people illegal through the laws that they have the power to change.
  • 00:17:26
    So that's just my soapbox for 10, 19 in the morning.
  • 00:17:30
    And with that, I go to Ms. Johnson.
  • 00:17:31
    Go ahead.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 00:17:32
    Well, your personal privilege definitely echoed my thoughts.
  • 00:17:38
    I think it's really important for what I would actually like to see is where that density relies, not just in Ramsey County, but within the city of St. Paul specifically.
  • 00:17:45
    I'd love to see the data as it relates to the city of St. Paul in comparison to the other options that you place there.
  • 00:17:51
    I think that comparison is super important.
  • 00:17:55
    And I would love to see that in a data point at some point.
• • SPEAKER_16
  • 00:17:59
    I'll just quickly, DSIs doing that analysis right now so part of it is the definitions for the different types in our zoning code of services that are provided so there's a difference between emergency shelter and overnight shelter but all of those types of shelter services are only zoned and allowed in the core of our downtown right now
  • 00:18:24
    of the City of St. Paul.
  • 00:18:24
    The only safe space where they are now is because the council and the city allowed for in our zoning code, if it is related to a religious institution, you can have 25 beds.
  • 00:18:37
    So outside of the core of downtown, those emergency overnight shelter services are not allowed anywhere else unless it is connected right now to a religious institution.
  • 00:18:54
    if you look at any of the other jurisdictions outside of St Paul, those services are not allowed by code anywhere else in the county.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 00:19:05
    Thank you.
  • 00:19:06
    As a follow-up, I appreciate that clarification and distinction.
  • 00:19:12
    I think it goes into the relation to how these slides are presented.
  • 00:19:17
    I also would like to see if there's data around the eviction rates as well as it relates to the city of St. Paul, because I'm curious as to whether there's a disproportionate amount of evictions actually taking place in our city.
  • 00:19:27
    and I know just like as a result of some of these spaces like we talked about the density but if there's anything that you have on just like regardless of the density as well as just knowing if the shelter beds we do have are full at capacity
  • 00:19:42
    I'm still not meeting the need.
  • 00:19:44
    I'm assuming that that's the case but I would love to see if there's something that supports just how many people are actually serviced by those shelter beds and in Ramsey County and probably primarily in St. Paul.
  • 00:19:56
    So if there's something specific that we can see when it comes to like eviction rates as well so as the shelter spaces and numbers as it relates to our city just because I know that that's a majority of
  • 00:20:08
    the shelter beds but also probably a pretty high population of the evictions as well.
• • SPEAKER_09
  • 00:20:13
    Councilmember we do have some of the eviction data I think it was from our emergency rental assistance dollars by zip code that we can share and that's not I don't think we have the real-time eviction data by zip code but we do have that data set by zip code and I
  • 00:20:32
    City Council.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 00:20:53
    Thank you.
  • 00:20:54
    I think that's something that I just really would love to see, what our increased responses have been from across the board, just as someone who doesn't, who's not as, I don't sit on the Heading Home Ramsey team and I don't have a direct connection yet to the county as far as the unsheltered responses, but I do have, I do represent Ward 7, so I include the Bruce Rental Trail encampment as well in my ward, and would love to see what we're doing and what the numbers are currently looking like.
• • SPEAKER_09
  • 00:21:24
    I know that the HART team will be presenting a little bit later tonight that they have that data more specifically for the city.
  • 00:21:32
    I have one more slide before I'm going to turn it over to Mary Jo, which is our racial disparities and homelessness in Ramsey County, which we are very well aware of.
  • 00:21:41
    Black people are 7.4 times more likely to be homeless.
  • 00:21:44
    They are also numerically the largest group of people experiencing homelessness in Ramsey County.
  • 00:21:49
    Native American people are 14 times more likely to be homeless than white people and then people of multiple races are also significantly more likely to be homeless and this is something that we have front of mind throughout all of our work as we make sure that our work is not just being effective in general but that we are seeking to reduce these disparities.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 00:22:16
    Great, and I'll talk a little bit about our affordable housing crisis and coordinated entry.
  • 00:22:20
    Coordinated entry is the system in which people experiencing homelessness get access to supportive housing or the housing programs that we provide as a part of Heading Home Ramsey.
  • 00:22:29
    So I just wanted to start a little bit with the need for affordable housing and our gap.
  • 00:22:32
    We currently have a gap of about 18,000 affordable housing units for those below or at the 30% area median income.
  • 00:22:39
    in Ramsey County.
  • 00:22:41
    And then as we look to coordinated entry, as of August 26th of this year, so this is fairly recent data, we have an average of 112 households that are assessed each month.
  • 00:22:51
    I say households because that includes singles and families.
  • 00:22:54
    And then we have 2,255 households on the wait list, or the priority list, which is significantly long, right?
  • 00:23:02
    the average wait time is 220 days between when a person is assessed and when they are given a referral for coordinated entry 220 days is about seven months so if we think about how long that is in time that means someone who got assessed back in March is now probably likely getting their referral to housing
  • 00:23:19
    and so we're asking individuals during that time to essentially wait until there's a vacancy open.
  • 00:23:26
    In the next couple slides I have some infographics to show the flow of individuals within our system and kind of describe the inflow outflow that we currently have in Heading Home Ramsey and the Ramsey County Continuum of Care.
  • 00:23:38
    At the bottom there you can see sort of how that flow goes, assessments to the wait list or priority list and then the average wait time to vacancies.
  • 00:23:47
    What questions do we have on this slide?
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 00:23:50
    I guess for myself I'm wondering, and I recognize you might not have this information immediately, we talk a lot at the HRA and in other conversations at the council and at the city about
  • 00:24:03
    what the gap of affordable and deeply affordable units is and what St Paul's role is in that and in addressing that and how we're making progress toward a goal so that we're thinking about our work not just project by project which we're working to make happen and get built and get people into but towards something and so I'm curious if there's a policy conversation happening that is parallel to that within the county and that you're a part of that's about what
  • 00:24:29
    is each municipality responsible for or what is a reasonable breakout of responsibility to meet the dire crisis of deeply affordable housing.
  • 00:24:39
    And looking at that gap, it's like we know the big picture, right?
  • 00:24:43
    We know the top line is 18,000, but
  • 00:24:46
    committee.
  • 00:24:46
    How do we better coordinate a regional conversation within Ramsey County about who has to make progress and how to do that.
  • 00:24:56
    That would be something I'm very interested in at a high level and if you have any awareness of policy conversation underway I would love to know about it.
• • SPEAKER_09
  • 00:25:07
    That policy conversation happens primarily between our economic development departments, both at the city and at the county.
  • 00:25:13
    We are adjacent to that team in this work.
  • 00:25:17
    And the piece where we are in the closest coordination with them is in the development of specifically supportive housing, so housing with services for people that need them.
  • 00:25:26
    Primarily people with disabilities, but additionally people with service needs that go beyond a level of rental assistance.
  • 00:25:37
    those teams would be much better able to speak to that question.
  • 00:25:40
    I know that that is something that every city and county is responsible for and their comprehensive plans with Metropolitan Council.
  • 00:25:49
    But I know that it's a much more lively conversation than just that.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 00:25:56
    Thank you.
  • 00:25:57
    You can keep moving, I appreciate it.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 00:25:59
    Next I have an infographic and I'm demonstrating this inflow outflow specifically with coordinated entry.
  • 00:26:05
    So this last year we had around 13,000 individuals get assessed or join the list and during that same period of time we had 425 referred to housing.
  • 00:26:15
    So if we look at it for every three people who are on the list two are joining as one is leaving.
  • 00:26:20
    which means that our inflow or our demand on our system is much higher than our supply or our ability to assess people and get them referred to supportive housing.
  • 00:26:27
    Next I wanted to demonstrate that those 425 individuals are then referred to one of many different types of programs that we have in the COC.
  • 00:26:37
    All together we have 2,763 units.
  • 00:26:39
    And those units can be comprised of family units, they can be comprised of single units, youth units, all the units from different types of housing programs that we have.
  • 00:26:49
    Each housing program is going to have different specifications, different policies and procedures that they follow, but wanted to give an overall number of the amount of units available for individuals to go to.
  • 00:27:00
    This is the overall capacity.
  • 00:27:02
    This is not demonstrating what's currently vacant.
  • 00:27:04
    As I said last year we had 425 individuals referred to housing to fill 425 vacancies.
  • 00:27:12
    after they are in those programs.
• • Anika Bowie
  • 00:27:14
    I'm sorry, I just saw a question from Ms. Bui.
  • 00:27:16
    Go ahead.
  • 00:27:16
    I was going to let you finish your point before I ask a question, because you might answer it.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 00:27:20
    Sure, yeah.
  • 00:27:21
    So the length of time in individuals in those housing programs can also vary.
  • 00:27:25
    For two of our programs, the average length of time is about two years.
  • 00:27:29
    For another one of our programs, the average length of time is about four years.
  • 00:27:33
    So even though we're talking about annual inflow outflow, those individuals may be in those programs up to four years, which, again, causes some of that
  • 00:27:40
    the issue with the turnover or the churn or vacancies within our units.
  • 00:27:44
    Following those housing programs, we hope that they will all exit to stable housing.
  • 00:27:50
    At this moment, around 57% of individuals in our programs exit to stable housing, and then of those, 2% end up returning to homelessness in our system.
  • 00:28:00
    And that 2% is within a two-year period.
  • 00:28:03
    If we break it down to six months or a year, those numbers increase.
• • Anika Bowie
  • 00:28:07
    Thank you, Council President.
  • 00:28:08
    I have a question around the exit to stable housing.
  • 00:28:11
    So what forms of stable housing are you tracking?
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 00:28:14
    Yeah, excellent question.
  • 00:28:15
    Exits to stable housing include folks who are staying with friends or families in a permanent tenure, folks who are moving into another affordable unit, so a unit with some sort of rent voucher or rental subsidy, as well as full market rate units.
• • SPEAKER_13
  • 00:28:32
    those are all considered permanent destinations.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 00:28:51
    Yeah, excellent question.
  • 00:28:52
    Thank you, Councilmember.
  • 00:28:54
    Those other 41, 43, 42% of folks are either going into a myriad of settings.
  • 00:29:01
    They may be staying with friends or family but in a temporary tenure.
  • 00:29:05
    So that is not considered stable housing because it's temporary in nature.
  • 00:29:08
    They may be going to institutional settings.
  • 00:29:10
    They may be going to other places in our community.
  • 00:29:13
    And as you said, there are some individuals who are going from one program type to another.
  • 00:29:17
    And so that's not considered permanent housing because it's still
  • 00:29:20
    and one of the programs within our umbrella programs.
• • SPEAKER_13
  • 00:29:25
    So for those folks, do you keep track of them in any way or follow up with them just to see if there's any other ways to help them find that stable housing?
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 00:29:41
    Yeah, another excellent question.
  • 00:29:42
    Thank you, Council Member.
  • 00:29:44
    Those individuals are
  • 00:29:46
    of the city of St Paul, City Council,
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 00:30:08
    Right.
  • 00:30:08
    We can keep it moving.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 00:30:09
    Thank you.
  • 00:30:10
    Yeah, absolutely.
  • 00:30:11
    So I wanted to show this inflow outflow because as you'll see on the next slide, we've got sort of the whole system demonstrated here on this little infographic.
  • 00:30:19
    So it shows each part of the systems we've talked about today or each part of our system that we've talked about today.
  • 00:30:24
    We start with eviction or homelessness prevention.
  • 00:30:27
    We move into diversion.
  • 00:30:28
    Then folks go to emergency shelter most likely.
  • 00:30:31
    from there they are connected to services and connected to an outreach worker or services and then complete a coordinated entry assessment that's our third or fourth sort of pillar there from coordinated entry they're referred to supportive housing they stay in that supportive housing for either a year, two years, four years and then are hopefully exited out into affordable or rent supported housing
  • 00:30:52
    this infographic has lots of different numbers all around it those numbers are ones we likely have talked about already today but just wanted to give the picture of what that looks like so as a part of our strategic plan we're kind of looking at this overall system and trying to determine where we're going to go next with each of these components
  • 00:31:09
    So there's currently already a work group or a few plans together on shelter capacity and planning.
  • 00:31:14
    There's also a prevention work group that we're working with to determine where the next steps are gonna be at the end of our needs assessment and where we're gonna take this system once we know where we are after the needs analysis.
  • 00:31:26
    Is there anything else I missed about strategic planning?
  • 00:31:29
    Okay.
  • 00:31:35
    Myself and Ellen Waters are leading that work.
  • 00:31:39
    This is the strategic planning for the shelter.
  • 00:31:50
    So they're working to ensure that all providers have access to the physical and programmatic resources they need to and addressing some of the gaps that I will be identifying within our needs assessment.
  • 00:32:00
    That needs assessment work will be completed in November of this year, so just three short weeks.
  • 00:32:04
    and then we're looking to identify short, medium and long term strategies to ensure that capacity for all shelter programs is increased and we're able to meet the need of our community.
  • 00:32:20
    Cool.
  • 00:32:20
    I think that's it for me.
  • 00:32:22
    Thank you.
  • 00:32:22
    Next is the art team.
• • SPEAKER_16
  • 00:32:26
    And I'll turn it over to Kahari.
• • SPEAKER_01
  • 00:32:40
    Good morning, everyone.
  • 00:32:41
    I've had the pleasure of meeting one or two of you, but I have not had the pleasure of addressing all of you at once, so thank you for having me.
  • 00:32:52
    I'll try to keep the updates generally brief.
  • 00:32:56
    I know that you had recently got a presentation from DSI
  • 00:33:00
    I believe some of Hart's information was provided in that meeting, so I'll try to give a general overview and provide questions as they come.
  • 00:33:08
    Introduction, my name is Kahari Smith.
  • 00:33:10
    I'm just realizing that the font is blending into the background.
  • 00:33:14
    The slides were updated this morning, so the slides you see in the handouts are probably slightly different, but a lot of the information is the same.
  • 00:33:23
    My name is Kahari Smith-Brewer.
  • 00:33:24
    I am the new program coordinator with HART.
  • 00:33:28
    Previously the position was held by Andrea
  • 00:33:32
    I was repositioned in July of this year and we're currently, since I was repositioned, we had an open outreach position as well and then our current
  • 00:33:48
    our outreach worker was also transitioned into another part of the city so we are currently looking for two outreach workers so we're in the process of hiring for both of those positions hopefully to be filled soon but we're still dedicated to providing outreach to the various encampments and managed sites still trying to provide them with resources and offer shelter or referrals and other resources as well in leaning on our other providers for that assistance.
  • 00:34:20
    So some of the demographics for our sites currently are managed sites that are currently 26 total active sites across the city of St. Paul based off our assessments.
  • 00:34:31
    Yeah, this is an updated slide, so that's why it's left.
  • 00:34:34
    So there are currently 26 active total sites in the city of St. Paul currently, around 210 total occupants at those assessed sites.
  • 00:34:43
    and the City Council.
  • 00:34:53
    While each stat there is a slight increase relatively between 10 and 60% increases based off the stat, the total active sites year to date is down nearly 50%.
  • 00:35:08
    You might ask why that may be.
  • 00:35:11
    Previously there was more assessed sites across the city.
  • 00:35:15
    In that time between last year and this year, a lot of the individuals have more so concentrated into
  • 00:35:21
    of the City of St. Paul.
  • 00:35:43
    Yes.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 00:35:44
    Thank you.
  • 00:35:44
    Mr. Khare, I see Ms. Bowie in line and then Ms. Johnson.
  • 00:35:49
    And we'll take her from there.
  • 00:35:50
    Go ahead, Ms. Bowie.
• • Anika Bowie
  • 00:35:50
    Thank you, Council President.
  • 00:35:52
    Thank you, Coordinator Khare.
  • 00:35:54
    I have a question around the map to the right.
  • 00:35:56
    Is that a map of where people are?
• • SPEAKER_01
  • 00:36:01
    Yeah, it's a breakdown of where people are located based off of the agency.
  • 00:36:07
    Yes.
  • 00:36:07
    So City of St. Paul parks, where a camp or a site was assessed,
• • Anika Bowie
  • 00:36:13
    If I could follow up real quick, how are you assessing for private property?
• • SPEAKER_01
  • 00:36:20
    Private property?
  • 00:36:21
    Well, we have a map that when it's on private property, we are able to signify who owns that property.
  • 00:36:28
    So when the dot is pinned for that camp and then closed later on, we are able to assess that.
  • 00:36:33
    So that's how we know.
• • Anika Bowie
  • 00:36:34
    And is that private properties that are including businesses or residentials?
• • SPEAKER_01
  • 00:36:39
    Businesses primarily, but it will include residential as well.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 00:36:43
    And then I saw Ms. Johnson, I think had a question.
  • 00:36:45
    Go ahead, Ms. Johnson.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 00:36:47
    Yeah, so you mentioned that there's like 26 active sites across the city.
  • 00:36:53
    I'm assuming based off of the data, like the graph that's presented, that of those 26 sites, the distribution of land, like who owns it.
  • 00:37:00
    And so in regards to that, could you also share, like,
• • SPEAKER_01
  • 00:37:05
    and the City Council.
  • 00:37:27
    but the largest site currently is Bruce Vento, which you're familiar with but approximately, based off our current assessment, 45 total occupants and around 39 tents.
  • 00:37:39
    You'll see a large concentration of larger sites in the downtown area because that's where all the resources are located so people tend to want to stay where they have the most access to resources.
  • 00:37:52
    Council.
• • Rebecca Noecker
  • 00:38:09
    that the camping is not allowed in the city of St Paul anywhere and that one of the things I admire most about the HEART team is that it takes a really relationship-based approach to approaching people who are encamped and rather than just saying you have to leave trying to build a relationship that is what will eventually allow them to accept the help that we want them to accept.
  • 00:38:30
    At the same time I also know that we've been clear that once encampments reach a certain size they can be dangerous and
  • 00:38:38
    I have not known how to
• • SPEAKER_01
  • 00:39:00
    I know that it's currently on county land which makes how we engage with them and the resources that we're providing.
  • 00:39:16
    It changes how much we're trying to engage with them especially with the sale of XL land currently so that alters a bit but for the most part we try to engage with each camp
  • 00:39:28
    Committee.
• • Rebecca Noecker
  • 00:39:42
    I know there have been criteria in the past where once a camp reaches a certain size because it tends to become more dangerous, more of a nuisance that we do move to closure but it doesn't seem like that's the case at Vento and I'm curious if that's because there's a different consideration there.
• • SPEAKER_01
  • 00:39:58
    Yeah, it's a different consideration because we do try to lean on Ramsey County to engage and provide more resources to those individuals while we continue to engage with them on our
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 00:40:11
    of the City
• • SPEAKER_16
  • 00:40:25
    is a conversation, an internal, multiple departments in the city that impact and work around supporting encampments where we have them in the city.
  • 00:40:35
    So there's a number of departments that every week they get together and they do work with Khari and the team to do an assessment and where we at with those locations.
  • 00:40:45
    And then every other week, there's a conversation that includes all of our service providers.
  • 00:40:51
    and the City Council.
  • 00:41:04
    of the
  • 00:41:27
    In St Paul, our approach has always been that we don't want to close encampments and displace people.
  • 00:41:34
    We want to secure resources.
  • 00:41:37
    We want to move people indoors and that's how we reduce encampment locations.
  • 00:41:42
    With Bruce Vento, one of the challenges that we found in that location is that the ability to connect people to resources has been more strained there.
  • 00:41:54
    Sometimes a person may be banned from a shelter resource because of behaviors that they've exhibited.
  • 00:42:02
    City Council.
  • 00:42:20
    and then we start to look at what are those conditions that you're speaking to.
  • 00:42:24
    We had a fire there last night.
  • 00:42:27
    We have different incidents of violence or crime that may happen to, frankly, it more often happens to the individuals who are residing in the location.
  • 00:42:42
    There's a lot of predatory behavior that happens for our residents that are surviving in encampments.
  • 00:42:48
    when those types of behaviors are happening sometimes we have to take the action of the heart team is going to need to close that location even if we haven't secured all of those connections.
  • 00:43:01
    With Bruce Vento, I think what is really going to trigger us needing to close that is because winter is coming and so
  • 00:43:10
    it's sort of a double-edged sword because sometimes for the individuals who aren't ready or haven't been accepting those services the drop in temperatures sometimes will help them go ahead and take advantage of those services so I say all of that to say that
  • 00:43:26
    And so it's a very complicated web, and I think you and your team do a really fantastic job, so thank you.
• • SPEAKER_01
  • 00:43:55
    Yes, and to add on to that, so yes, we do have weekly communications with Ramsey County.
  • 00:44:00
    We are currently in the process of coordinating, not an event, but an attempt to engage the occupants and transport them to Catholic charities to get access to resources, housing resources, housing assessments, things of that nature.
  • 00:44:16
    Because a lot of them are not necessarily ready to accept shelter beds, which is usually what we are offering as an immediate response to their need.
  • 00:44:24
    but a lot of them want affordable housing.
  • 00:44:26
    A lot of them want GRH units.
  • 00:44:28
    They want to be able to reside on their own without being in shelter.
  • 00:44:33
    So we're trying to meet them at where they're at and organize an event to kind of correlate with that as well.
  • 00:44:39
    But it does become trickier depending on size, location, and all of the resources that are available and whether or not they're at that moment ready to accept them.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 00:44:51
    Thanks.
  • 00:44:52
    So the line is now Councilmember and Vice President Kim and then Councilmember Johnson.
  • 00:44:56
    Go ahead Councilman Kim.
• • SPEAKER_05
  • 00:45:01
    I appreciate that.
  • 00:45:02
    So I've got a question around space.
  • 00:45:06
    It looks like throughout 2023 there is an average of over 40 families waiting for space.
  • 00:45:11
    and family shelter, county warming centers, regularly hosted more than 150 adults and youth every night.
  • 00:45:19
    I'm just trying to connect some of the dots here, but I'm just wondering about yes to all the work that you're doing, and is there actual beds available?
  • 00:45:27
    like when you make the referral is there not just a guarantee because they're connected to you all but I'm I'm interested in sort of like the overall systems gaps of beds but also like you do all this work to encourage and in a lot of ways convince someone to take the autonomy to go seek assistance is there actually a bed available like I get that you bring them to Catholic Charities which is huge but when they walk into Catholic Charities is there actually a bed available for them that night yes of course would you want to speak to
• • SPEAKER_09
  • 00:45:58
    Councilmember, that's an excellent question.
  • 00:45:59
    I think the answer to that question is there can be from night to night, but there is certainly not an abundance of shelter availability, to put it that way.
  • 00:46:10
    For families, yes, there is a family shelter wait list.
  • 00:46:14
    It is also the case that if there are families in Ramsey County or with a strong connection to Ramsey County who are otherwise going to be unsheltered, families will get an emergency shelter voucher
  • 00:46:28
    for shelter placement at a hotel effectively.
  • 00:46:32
    So we are not allowing families to go unsheltered.
  • 00:46:37
    In terms of single adults, however, your point is very well taken that we do not have an abundance of available shelter beds for people who would be seeking them from night to night.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 00:46:51
    And then I saw, did you have a follow up?
• • SPEAKER_05
  • 00:46:54
    I just have a really quick follow up.
  • 00:46:55
    I'm sorry, thank you.
  • 00:46:56
    I think what I'm really interested in is sort of understanding along the continuum of care where the gaps are for permanent shelter for folks experiencing homelessness.
  • 00:47:10
    It seems like all this data to me is translating that there are never enough beds any given night, but I think without understanding
  • 00:47:17
    you have the wait list data and you intimately know how many beds are available any given night.
  • 00:47:24
    I would actually be very interested in seeing what the actual gaps are because there's so much to be said about the work that you do.
  • 00:47:33
    But if every single night that person still has to scramble, stand in line, figure it out, right?
  • 00:47:39
    see their friends, go to a doctor's appointment, figure out resources, and then have to stand in line with no guarantee that there's housing that night.
  • 00:47:47
    I would be very interested in what that gap is for families, for individuals, and what is even in the ecosystem that is available to us now.
  • 00:47:55
    So if you know that offhand, that's great.
  • 00:47:57
    But I really would, I think, appreciate sort of the types of beds available to whom
  • 00:48:03
    and what the gaps are across the board.
  • 00:48:05
    Because to me, the solution that I'd love us to come to the table with all of our partners is investing in more permanent shelter for folks experiencing homelessness.
  • 00:48:18
    How do we change the ecosystem of that gap as a city and as a county?
  • 00:48:21
    So that's kind of where I'm leading that question.
  • 00:48:23
    So I just appreciate all the work that you're doing.
  • 00:48:25
    And at the same time, it just sometimes feels
  • 00:48:28
    like the work that you're doing is putting people into a thing that just isn't growing to respond to the need.
• • SPEAKER_09
  • 00:48:36
    Councilmember, you're absolutely right and you're pressing on exactly the right question that we are all contending with as a COC every single day, week, month.
  • 00:48:49
    At a broad level of strategic planning, that's what we have to figure out, both in terms of how to get the funding that we need in our county to build the services that we need, and then
  • 00:49:04
    where do we put those dollars and those are the really hard choices because I can make a case for every single phase of this continuum that we've talked about from eviction prevention where we're on the verge of seeing a dramatic drop in state funding to emergency services where we have people in encampments and 400 people unsheltered who we do not have 400 shelter beds available or into permanent supportive housing or other forms of
  • 00:49:34
    Council, City Council,
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 00:49:55
    Hello Council President and Council Members.
  • 00:49:58
    I would just add, I'm going to be up next for the familiar faces conversation.
  • 00:50:03
    I'm Chris Michaels with the City of St. Paul.
  • 00:50:04
    I've been here for about a year prior to my role at the city.
  • 00:50:08
    I've worked in the homeless response system in both Hennepin and Ramsey County for 14, 15 years.
  • 00:50:13
    So I've really had a front row seat to what has and what hasn't worked.
  • 00:50:18
    I think the question that you asked, Council Member, is complicated.
  • 00:50:22
    And we were in a meeting yesterday where we were,
  • 00:50:24
    is addressing that, right?
  • 00:50:25
    So I think the answer to your question goes far beyond a simple supply and demand question, right?
  • 00:50:33
    There's complexities behind that.
  • 00:50:35
    I think very high level, some initial answers to where the gaps are in the system.
  • 00:50:41
    I think we have a challenge in our current system with the diversification of type of bed, type of shelter space, type of permanent supportive housing option.
  • 00:50:52
    So if an individual isn't
  • 00:50:55
    we just keep kind of putting them in the exact same situation expecting a new result so I think we have to broadly look at our continuum it's all connected it's all interrelated and really assess and identify the spaces and the reasons why people are falling through the gaps and part of my work over the last year and when I get to when we get to familiar faces has been doing some of that system mapping work so I feel like
  • 00:51:19
    we don't
  • 00:51:38
    shelter spaces is the funding model that we've operated off of for many years and that's becoming an outdated model.
  • 00:51:46
    But to do something different requires more funding and that's just, it kind of always comes back to that.
• • SPEAKER_05
  • 00:51:54
    And I think just one last thought is then you know lots of departments and we're hearing from departments we asked like what is the ask I actually would love to get an ask from the folks that presented today along the continuum if it is if it is eviction prevention is one of the greatest early investments we can make to ensure families don't slip through the cracks great make make an ask if it is we need a an alternative to instead of like mass
  • 00:52:21
    that we should be investing in now so we're building out a better infrastructure for the future, that sounds wonderful.
  • 00:52:33
    Please come to us with that ask.
  • 00:52:35
    I would love to hear what those alternatives are.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 00:52:38
    In response to that, Councilmember, I'll just add we're taking steps in that direction.
  • 00:52:43
    Dave Zafran highlighted it in his slides.
  • 00:52:46
    A big investment in our infrastructure was the single point of entry.
  • 00:52:50
    And part of that single point of entry is doing diversion type services.
  • 00:52:54
    Oftentimes, individuals believe that prevention or shelter is the front door to your system, but really it's diversion.
  • 00:53:01
    It's diverting people away from even needing the system.
  • 00:53:05
    So we're collecting data points to better understand.
  • 00:53:08
    what the diversion needs are specific to single adults so through the great work that's been happening at the single point of entry that work has already started.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 00:53:17
    All right, so I'm going to go to Councilmember Johnson.
  • 00:53:19
    Go ahead, Ms. Johnson.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 00:53:21
    Yes, thank you.
  • 00:53:23
    So I have a question for Mr. Zaffron, too, I think, as a follow-up regarding the Bruce Pinto Trail encampment.
  • 00:53:30
    But separately, I just wanted to reiterate, I think as we are continuing to have those county and city conversations and that partnership,
  • 00:53:38
    I think it should definitely not only I think include members of this body, but I think just really being able to hear and be provided those updates to know what that really translates to as it regards to numbers, where the investments are, what is the response.
  • 00:53:54
    Those things for it I think would be really helpful for us, at least for me when we are getting asked about what we're doing jointly.
  • 00:54:00
    I think it would be great to be able to provide that as accurately as possible by actually knowing the responses.
  • 00:54:07
    As it relates to the upcoming presentation that's coming before the HRA on November 6th, I think it would be really important for folks to be able to share.
  • 00:54:18
    I know within the county there was just a approval of the local affordable housing aid resources and one million of that is
  • 00:54:26
    I believe in some way shape or form connect to the evictions preventions work.
  • 00:54:31
    If that's not a part of the presentation at this time, I'd really love to have that as a means to really understand what that program and what kind of the goal is in that direction.
  • 00:54:40
    The other side of things is like with the Bruce Vental Trail and with the data that's presented here, simple mathematics, like about 20% or more
  • 00:54:51
    is located on Ramsey County land and at the Bruce Vento site of occupants that we have currently listed on this data point, just plugging in some numbers, plucking it through.
  • 00:55:01
    And I'm kind of wondering, is it possible to get an understanding, especially hearing from the Deputy Mayor just now around the concerns around winter coming?
  • 00:55:11
    there being potential conversations around closures.
  • 00:55:14
    This, in my eyes, I go past the Bruce Vento Trail every day, as many of my neighbors do.
  • 00:55:21
    I know that at some point there has to be a conversation about what that will look like.
  • 00:55:26
    I know that there has been many, much work gone into that site from both city and county staff.
  • 00:55:31
    I'm definitely not insinuating that there hasn't.
  • 00:55:34
    I am insinuating that we are running out of time.
  • 00:55:36
    and I'm wondering what the kind of response is to that and I'd really like a formal understanding from the county's perspective as well as the city.
  • 00:55:45
    I was on the phone with three different county commissioners this morning because we all have seen the six fire tents that was overnight.
  • 00:55:54
    While no one was injured, I am really concerned about what that looks like if that continues and I'd really like to see some sort of joint response to the fact that we have a growing encampment
  • 00:56:04
    is representing 20% or more of the current total active sites data that's put in here with occupants that we know have multiple means and diversion and multiple different layers of challenges and problems and related to getting into permanent shelter.
  • 00:56:22
    And they are seeking shelter at this encampment.
  • 00:56:26
    And while I understand that for a lot of my neighbors, it's around the nuisance that
  • 00:56:31
    they feel that it brings.
  • 00:56:33
    That's not my position.
  • 00:56:34
    As a council member, I think I represent the folks that are also unsheltered.
  • 00:56:38
    And when I think about homelessness and when I think about the continuum of care, it includes deciding what we're going to do together as a body to ensure that 20% of our unsheltered population, all of our unsheltered population for that matter in the city, but primarily in an encampment that we know exists and that we know has multiple challenges to housing, I'd like to see a joint response.
  • 00:56:59
    and not just heading home Ramsey, not just joint continuum of care but like a genuine like what are we doing and I'd like to know what that is and I know that I shared that via email this morning Deputy Mayor and I do appreciate just being able to make that formal ask for the record and I'd love a formal response.
• • SPEAKER_09
  • 00:57:17
    Councilmember, I appreciate your comments.
  • 00:57:18
    It's not something I'm able to speak to directly on behalf of the county.
  • 00:57:21
    It's not the team that I work on.
  • 00:57:22
    I know that the department leadership for housing stability is actively working on this encampment specifically on a daily basis right now.
  • 00:57:31
    And I'll be sure to take that back to them.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 00:57:33
    Thank you.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 00:57:34
    I appreciate it.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 00:57:35
    Thanks.
  • 00:57:36
    I guess to kind of transition here, I think that the Bruce Vento situation from listening to it and listening to my peers who are working on it and administration partners, it does kind of expose where the challenge points are in the system.
  • 00:57:53
    And just from a human centered place, I'm thinking back to people that I've met in camps who
  • 00:58:00
    who exemplified
  • 00:58:18
    I think that there's that subset of our neighbors outside who, when we're talking about person by person solutions, they want to get into services, but they can't for some disqualifying reason about another personal challenge.
  • 00:58:39
    or sometimes they've disqualified themselves from resources because of their actions and that is like the most extreme end of their own instability like creating that and so I just want to get down to a person by person level as we talk about person by person solutions not in a way to at all like make excuses for us as people who wield these systems to help people but to really get our arms around like how are we getting to a human centered approach for a site that
  • 00:59:05
    I think we all are hearing around the table has become untenable and exemplifies a lot of what else is going on.
  • 00:59:11
    So I believe that transitions to, I guess, familiar faces.
  • 00:59:17
    So hearing the request from council members for more on this site and then also working through the presentation on the rest of the continuum's work.
  • 00:59:26
    And so I would like to welcome you back, Chris, to take us through this portion of the presentation.
  • 00:59:31
    Thank you.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 00:59:32
    Once again, hello, I'm Chris Michaels with the City of St Paul.
  • 00:59:36
    I've been before you previously a few times to talk about Familiar Faces.
  • 00:59:41
    I feel like both of those previous experiences have been kind of brief and rushed, so I'm really appreciative to have an opportunity today to go a little bit more in depth and answer questions.
  • 00:59:51
    Familiar Faces has been a program that's been conceptualized at
  • 00:59:57
    Ramsey County COC for many years, like six or more years.
  • 01:00:02
    I often get asked, what is familiar faces?
  • 01:00:05
    How is it going to be different?
  • 01:00:08
    I think for me, the real important work that has transpired over the last year in the system mapping is one way that it's going to be really different.
  • 01:00:19
    The desire and the design and fleshing out the design to be person-centered,
  • 01:00:24
    offering integrated care to an individual who's a familiar face with the idea and the importance of stopping that cycle that our familiar faces find them in.
  • 01:00:35
    Council President Jalali, I think you spoke to it, right?
  • 01:00:39
    When you meet with individuals and encampments and they're in that cycle.
  • 01:00:43
    Familiar faces are individuals who are having high touch points with
  • 01:00:47
    our entire spectrum of emergency response from traditional emergency response to our homeless service provision emergency response to hospitals and they're not getting traction.
  • 01:00:58
    They're kind of repeat cyclers, so through this very intentional
  • 01:01:03
    I think the other thing that makes Familiar Faces really different is that we're going to onboard an intensive care management team.
  • 01:01:14
    That's going to be a team of about ten, and it's going to be kind of an integrated team of outreach, behavioral health practitioners, and case managers.
  • 01:01:24
    At the city, we have outreach professionals.
  • 01:01:27
    At the city, we've had social workers in place.
  • 01:01:31
    I don't know how integrated those services were and the piece that's been missing is case management.
  • 01:01:36
    I think previously when the Saint Paul Police Department's COAST team has been before you talking about the work of their social workers and they talk in terms of high volume assessments being completed.
  • 01:01:47
    That's great work and that's ensuring people get connected and assessed for care.
  • 01:01:51
    But once that assessment happens, we don't have any idea what happens to that person.
  • 01:01:55
    so there's not ongoing case management services to ensure that a complete circle of care is happening.
  • 01:02:03
    So familiar faces on the slide you'll see is going to focus on three components, an intensive care management team that will be city staff, a dedicated transitional facility, space, shelter, supportive environment for individuals to stay 24 hours a day, and then the system reform work.
  • 01:02:23
    How are we going to
  • 01:02:24
    get to the system reform work is recognizing that this is not completely the city's responsibility to do all on our own.
  • 01:02:31
    We're going to be in strong partnership with all of our referring partners who are named on the slide.
  • 01:02:38
    Law enforcement, St. Paul Fire, City of St. Paul Optimal Response Teams, Ramsey County and COC partners, our city attorney's office, the Ramsey County City Attorney's Office, and hospital emergency rooms.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 01:02:52
    I want to make sure I'm connecting the dots here appropriately.
  • 01:02:56
    I believe there's an item on our council agenda at 3.30 today about a joint powers agreement in order to support this work.
  • 01:03:04
    As you go through your section, can you please essentially connect the dots between what that does and how that fits into this work.
  • 01:03:10
    It doesn't have to be right this second.
  • 01:03:12
    It's my understanding that the staff report around that is actually right here and what we're talking through.
  • 01:03:18
    I would like to at some point help you connect that to any action required of us, including today.
  • 01:03:23
    So I'll let you keep moving, but that is something that I want to make sure we are very clear on before being asked to decide.
  • 01:03:28
    Go ahead.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:03:32
    So getting right to Council President's question, here's the familiar faces timeline and kind of brief budget narrative.
  • 01:03:41
    You are correct, there is a resolution that will be for you this afternoon.
  • 01:03:45
    to support the execution of the joint powers agreement with Ramsey County, which is the Department of Justice dollars on this screen.
  • 01:03:56
    Those funds will specifically support the intensive care management team, as well as there's part funding for that to support shelter operations at the new building once that opens.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 01:04:09
    and then do you mind explaining when you say intensive care management team, who that is and then for the facility you just talked about what that is.
  • 01:04:17
    Just get down to the, what is it?
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:04:19
    Yeah.
  • 01:04:19
    Sure.
  • 01:04:19
    The intensive care management is that team of ten that I referred to.
  • 01:04:22
    It will consist of two outreach professionals that will be city staff, be clinical social worker and two licensed behavioral health practitioners, so three individuals and then
  • 01:04:36
    case management support, so I believe it's two case managers, in addition to program management administrative roles.
  • 01:04:45
    And then the building, we are looking to purchase a building located at 268 Marshall.
  • 01:04:51
    You see it listed a few different ways, 268 Marshall or 286 Marshall.
  • 01:04:56
    It's currently being operated by Catholic Charities as a 70 unit single room occupancy rooming house.
  • 01:05:05
    So the city is proposing to purchase that building, ideally close on that property in the first quarter of 2025.
  • 01:05:12
    There would be a rehab period associated with getting the building to be compliant with the funding source used to purchase.
  • 01:05:20
    We're going to be taking down walls, making rooms bigger.
  • 01:05:23
    So for the intensive care management team, is that with the DOJ grant funding and that's why we need a joint powers with Ramsey County?
  • 01:05:54
    Yes, Ramsey County was actually the recipient of the award from the Department of Justice, so we're entering a joint powers agreement so the city can facilitate payment for the intensive care management team.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 01:06:05
    OK, good.
  • 01:06:06
    Thank you.
  • 01:06:06
    That really helps me get my head around what you're proposing here.
  • 01:06:09
    And then I'll go to Ms. Bui.
  • 01:06:11
    And I know you're working through presenting this still, so I appreciate you just fielding the questions in real time.
  • 01:06:17
    And frankly, I don't mind if we cover it a couple of times, because repetition helps learn.
  • 01:06:21
    Go ahead, Ms. Bui.
• • Anika Bowie
  • 01:06:21
    Thank you, Council President.
  • 01:06:23
    Yeah, on that point, I definitely, this is the first time I'm hearing, at least on the record in city chambers, about this 268 Marshall project.
  • 01:06:31
    This has been brought up quite a few times from my constituents.
  • 01:06:37
    I definitely would like to have more partnership and collaboration, especially if the city is seeking to acquire such a large property like this and using
  • 01:06:48
    of City Council.
  • 01:07:04
    are we working with community partners?
  • 01:07:05
    As you can see with the series of questions that I have, I think when we talk about the familiar faces, it feels very disjointed from the council and even the council member who serves in this ward.
  • 01:07:18
    And this is right across the street from St. Paul College.
  • 01:07:22
    I serve on the President's Advisories Board and they have a lot of questions as well, too.
  • 01:07:27
    I think with this type of approach, we want to make sure that the community
  • 01:07:31
    is engaged and also that we have strong partnerships, particularly around where this area is.
  • 01:07:40
    Early on, we talked about how St. Paul is zoned and majority, if not all of our shelters, large shelters are downtown.
  • 01:07:49
    I'm not sure if this would require some zoning changes, so I just at least wanted to share with you that those are some follow-ups in terms of actions that need to be taken, as well as relationships that need to be built for it.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:08:07
    Thank you, Councilmember Bowie.
  • 01:08:08
    I've been really trying to be proactive in my approach.
  • 01:08:12
    We've met with the district council.
  • 01:08:15
    We are going to zone this as supportive housing, as it's going to be a 24 hour facility.
  • 01:08:20
    People will not have to pay rent to be there, nor will they be leased.
  • 01:08:24
    But because of the supportive services that will be offered there, people will be able to stay for as long as they want.
  • 01:08:31
    Ideally, I'm expecting to transition people on anywhere between six and 12 months.
  • 01:08:36
    the goal will then be to transition
  • 01:08:53
    of the city of St. Paul.
  • 01:09:13
    I'm here today to talk about the profound uptick in staff presence at the building.
  • 01:09:16
    There will be staff coverage there 24 hours a day.
  • 01:09:19
    The intensive care management team will be office out of that building.
  • 01:09:24
    I feel like we have been pretty deliberate in our approach to designing a program that addresses some of the gaps that we are currently seeing and reasons why individuals are becoming
  • 01:09:36
    but also very happy to sit down and have a one-on-one with you and kind of work through all of the concerns that you have and questions that you have.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 01:09:45
    Thank you.
  • 01:09:45
    And I'm also happy to support those conversations.
  • 01:09:49
    It sounds like there'll be zoning and some other work that would come before us and would involve us and so we'll work to support this shared effort here with our councilmen in the ward and also all partners because fundamentally I believe that if I understand as you're describing it, this facility will
  • 01:10:06
    to serve and have relevance for individuals throughout our city who we might encounter or hear about and need to support in all of our wards.
  • 01:10:14
    I was just in a 350 person town hall that you were also at.
  • 01:10:18
    Ms. Michaels talking about the needs in the midway around having a more focused plan for individuals with severe challenges who when I look at
  • 01:10:29
    who Familiar Faces focuses on.
  • 01:10:31
    It is those individuals who are frequent utilizers of emergency response.
  • 01:10:38
    The small group of folks that are intensely needing a lot of the most resources repeatedly without a plan to break that cycle.
  • 01:10:47
    I'm looking to see if we have questions.
  • 01:10:55
    I saw Ms. Johnson and then Ms. Naker.
  • 01:10:58
    We'll go that way in line.
  • 01:10:59
    Go ahead, Ms. Johnson.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 01:11:02
    Thank you for going through the timeline and the budget.
  • 01:11:06
    My question was a little bit more specific because during the HRA PED budget presentation,
  • 01:11:13
    there was a moment where we asked a question about familiar faces and it was because there's a $500,000 line item for the housing trust fund and Director Goodman shared with us that we would hear a little bit more about what that would be going towards.
  • 01:11:27
    Oh, is that separate?
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:11:29
    Yes, it's for another program.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 01:11:31
    Familiar families.
  • 01:11:34
    She said that we would hear about it during this presentation.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:11:37
    I mean I know enough to be dangerous I can share what I know.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 01:11:40
    Okay so I'm just wondering if someone could touch on that because I'm kind of you know I'm getting familiar things mixed up in that capacity no pun intended but I also I didn't see it on the presentation and we were told that we'd hear about it so I just wanted to be able to.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:11:53
    So I think the concept of familiar families came out of the work and the partnership and the collaboration at the COC.
  • 01:12:03
    It is a similar approach to familiar
  • 01:12:06
    I think it's a concept and an approach that we do see this kind of same cycle of families happening and the adult or the family work group within the COC has fleshed out programming and recommendations to support the familiar families program so I don't think there's been as much traction
  • 01:12:35
    I think they're just in the advancing stages of flushing out how that program will look and operate.
  • 01:12:41
    So I think there's more to come on that.
  • 01:12:45
    But it is a similar approach, similar concept, similar ideas, but serving families and not singles.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 01:12:53
    OK. Just as a follow-up, and I think as we're adding to our pieces there, I think it would be really helpful to just kind of see that.
  • 01:13:03
    of the City of St Paul.
• • SPEAKER_16
  • 01:13:26
    Interfaith Action and the school district.
  • 01:13:29
    And so what we see is we have families, when you look at the families stays of homelessness, we have families that are six, seven, eight years in cycling through homelessness because of the complexity of challenges that that family experiences.
  • 01:13:46
    And so because of all the work and familiar faces,
  • 01:13:50
    that work group came together and said if we had targeted resources addressing the varied and complex needs of those families that are staying in homelessness for so long, that would be a really good approach to it.
  • 01:14:05
    Because Mayor Carter proposed the $500,000 in city resources, the St. Paul and Minnesota Foundation pledged to match that to start that pilot work.
  • 01:14:18
    to do that.
  • 01:14:20
    So I just wanted to add that piece.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 01:14:25
    Thank you, Deputy Mayor.
  • 01:14:26
    That's helpful context.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 01:14:28
    And we'll go to Ms. Naker.
  • 01:14:29
    Go ahead, Ms. Naker.
• • Rebecca Noecker
  • 01:14:30
    Thanks, Council President.
  • 01:14:31
    I'm glad that I let Vice Chair Johnson go first because, as usual, she asked the question that I was going to ask, and I had the same familiar confusion.
  • 01:14:37
    I'm looking forward to getting
  • 01:14:44
    that detailed information as well.
  • 01:14:45
    I think the more to come needs to come before we adopt our budget, as I know you understand, Ms. Michaels.
  • 01:14:51
    And to a similar point, I'm sure knowing you that there is a lot more detail behind this program than is able to be shared on two slides.
  • 01:14:59
    I would like to see the detailed budget breakdown for the first couple of years to the extent that you know it.
  • 01:15:04
    And in particular, I'm wondering the breakdown between county, state, and city funding going into this project.
  • 01:15:09
    and the City Council.
  • 01:15:28
    I'm not sure what the thinking is behind the ongoing operating of 10 new individuals after grants expire, for example.
  • 01:15:35
    So that's something that I think is important for us to know.
  • 01:15:38
    And then I'm just right now curious, how many individuals, I'm sorry if I missed this, do you think this program will be able to serve?
  • 01:15:44
    And how great is the need?
  • 01:15:47
    How many familiar faces do we have?
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:15:50
    I think given everything that we're seeing in our communities and the information that we've seen on the slide shared by our partners at Ramsey County, the need's pretty profound.
  • 01:16:01
    I think the center will be able to serve 35 people in one time, right?
  • 01:16:08
    So my goal is to kind of have a revolving door that's kind of constantly moving, right?
  • 01:16:15
    Like that people aren't getting bogged down and stuck there for long, long periods of time.
  • 01:16:20
    and then really to kind of plug individuals once that stabilization period has happened back into permanent supportive housing in the community or something else that meets their needs.
  • 01:16:32
    I think that at one given time we'll be working with at least 70 people.
  • 01:16:38
    The intensive care management team will be a portable team so they'll be able to work with people in whatever settings they're in.
  • 01:16:46
    Whether that be encampment or shelter, either at Catholic Charities or Safe Space.
  • 01:16:56
    everyone receiving services has to be at the stabilization.
  • 01:16:59
    Some familiar faces might say I'm fine where I'm at and I don't want to go there.
  • 01:17:04
    So I would anticipate on any given time we'd be working with about 70 individuals and as we graduate individuals out of the stabilization center we'd be taking on new intakes and referrals.
  • 01:17:17
    And then a significant amount of people will be moving through the phases of engagement with outreach before they are officially admitted into the program.
  • 01:17:26
    our outreach workers can be touching many more people on it on any given day while they're working through that engagement strategy with individuals.
• • Rebecca Noecker
  • 01:17:34
    So 70 people at a time.
  • 01:17:35
    35 was a different number.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:17:38
    35 is the projected number of beds or spaces that we'll have at the building, yes.
• • Rebecca Noecker
  • 01:17:45
    And one last question, Council President.
  • 01:17:47
    For the beds, I know we've talked in the past about there sometimes being a need for a
  • 01:17:54
    for there's voluntary facilities and there's involuntary facilities.
  • 01:17:57
    And I know there's been discussion about court diversions where a crime has been committed, but there aren't great places for folks to go and jail is just completely unacceptable.
  • 01:18:08
    Is this seen as potentially one of those diversion opportunities, or is this a completely voluntary open facility so it wouldn't be a good fit for that?
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:18:19
    I think anything's possible in the first year of operations.
  • 01:18:23
    I would say it would not be an involuntary space for individuals.
  • 01:18:28
    I think that the whole premise of the program is that relentless engagement piece that we learned from our partners at heart.
  • 01:18:38
    That person-centered approach, right, that is based off of critical time intervention and really empowering the familiar face at the center of the care to kind of
  • 01:18:49
    to kind of get to that stabilizing point
• • Anika Bowie
  • 01:19:18
    I have a question particularly around why the city is approaching this as an acquisition and management versus just say
  • 01:19:39
    you know maybe subsidizing the cost for Catholic Charities and also you know overall there's about estimate around nine million dollars to not only purchase it and run it but we're reducing it by half in terms of
  • 01:19:57
    of how many beds we'll be able to provide.
  • 01:20:01
    And I know Councilmember Naker had touched on this about just the maintenance.
  • 01:20:06
    And since we're already facing a fiscal cliff when it comes to providing services for the unsheltered communities, can you share why the city is looking to not only own and manage this property versus just partnering and providing funding for the renovation?
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:20:25
    Sure.
  • 01:20:26
    Happy to answer that question, Council Member Bui.
  • 01:20:32
    I think, and I don't want to speak for my partners in the room, but I think that doing an overall needs assessment, our partners who normally perform this work are stretched real thin.
  • 01:20:49
    I think I look at all of our homeless response sites currently.
  • 01:20:54
    they're all having profound challenges and I think that the city was looking to build transparency and do the work in a different way.
  • 01:21:04
    When you look at the challenges that are happening in our city and you look at the tools that the city has to respond to those challenges they're all largely enforcement based and we're looking to build out our infrastructure of how we respond that goes beyond enforcement.
  • 01:21:24
    So Familiar Faces is kind of at the, is an integral part of our Community First Public Safety Framework.
  • 01:21:33
    And I think really where Familiar Faces fits into this right now is in that crisis intervention slot, right?
  • 01:21:40
    Having professionals who are focused on being an engagement tool that right now, that differs in the sense that if we're an enforcement tool, we have the enforcement,
  • 01:21:53
    I think that it is a significant investment, but in the long run I think it is going to position us to have a much more efficient, humane response to individuals in our communities who are often living most in the margins.
  • 01:22:15
    And I don't know if the Deputy Mayor wants to add anything.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 01:22:18
    would just also say that we need to be done at 1140 in order to do pre-council and then other business today and so I do want to make sure we can wrap this item up not to end the discussion but just kind of get it to a pause point and much to come and then also we're going into the big picture and kind of what Councilman Naker was saying which is what's the big picture of this is a lot of what the city is stepping up to do and how is that fit into
  • 01:22:43
    I defer to you now Ms. Michaels and Deputy Mayor for moving us through the rest of the presentation but I do want us to all have that time check in mind.
• • SPEAKER_16
  • 01:23:00
    Well, just because of the 1140, I'm hoping that we can go to funding.
  • 01:23:07
    And so I just wanted to set this conversation up.
  • 01:23:11
    One of the reasons we wanted to go through the continuum of CARES partnership, the strategic planning that we're doing, in direct response to Councilmember Kim's request for, what does the funding ask?
  • 01:23:24
    What we've learned over the years, there are new business lines that the City of St. Paul has taken on in response to COVID.
  • 01:23:32
    We didn't have a heart team prior to COVID.
  • 01:23:36
    We realized that there was a need and a gap.
  • 01:23:38
    And because that work is so connected to that emergency response and land management, it really makes sense for the city to be the lead on that.
  • 01:23:49
    But we do that work.
  • 01:23:51
    very much in coordination with the Continuum of Care.
  • 01:23:55
    And Familiar Faces came out of the Continuum of Care, but because of the population it needs to serve, it made a whole lot of sense for the city to lead in that space.
  • 01:24:06
    The way that all of the partners at the Continuum of Care do all of our work is a rubric of funding that boggles the mind.
  • 01:24:18
    When you think about the federal funding sources and
  • 01:24:21
    the city
  • 01:24:39
    is to work with the continuum of care, get into a cycle of funding requests that allow us to say the heart team and familiar faces, the things where we're the lead, where the city is the lead because of the partnerships we need with the city attorneys and the crisis response teams that we have here, that we, on the front end of our budget process, we say how are we going to fund those and we use our city resources there.
  • 01:25:07
    then we have the process and Dave has a lot of detail and knowledge about this but the federal funding streams come in and we know where they're going to be utilized and how the continuum of care partners want to use those dollars and they vote on where those dollars go.
  • 01:25:23
    Then we have general workers here.
  • 01:25:26
    We have a continuum of care legislative request to the state that says this is how much our community needs from the state.
  • 01:25:35
    Once we get those after the legislative session, I think that it would be most strategic for the City of St. Paul to go to the Continuum of Care and say, once all those resources have come in and you've done your strategic planning,
  • 01:25:48
    where are the gaps that still exist for the City of St Paul and where would we be most strategic in putting any of those resources that are available to us.
  • 01:25:57
    So that is our goal.
  • 01:26:00
    We're kind of at the moment where we would be starting that process but that's why I wanted to make sure we talked about the heart team and familiar faces because it's like let's make sure that we're doing
  • 01:26:10
    City of St Paul's contribution to the Continuum of Care and then let's let the Continuum of Care come back to us after all those other funding streams have come in and tell us, hey, we still have some gaps.
  • 01:26:22
    Could you partner with us in that space?
  • 01:26:25
    So that was my setup.
  • 01:26:25
    I know that we're running close on time.
  • 01:26:27
    So we could give more details either now or in the follow-ups.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 01:26:32
    So we've got about 12 minutes unless I don't know how to do math, which is concerningly impossible.
  • 01:26:38
    I have Ms. Yang and then Ms. Naker and then Ms. Kim.
  • 01:26:43
    So let's go to Ms. Yang, Ms. Naker, and then Ms. Kim, and then we'll keep working through this.
  • 01:26:47
    Go ahead, Ms. Yang.
• • Nelsie Yang
  • 01:26:47
    I want to say thank you to you Deputy Mayor Tincher for always being at the presentations here.
  • 01:26:54
    I'm really glad that we have you as chair serving on this really important committee because this is an important piece of work in our city that I know we've always really valued and been putting investments into.
  • 01:27:08
    and the City Council.
  • 01:27:24
    meeting about about heading home Ramsey one of the things I uplifted was really my frustration around around well one look I'm really really supportive and and just grateful for all the work that we as a city are putting into assisting our homeless population but the thing that is always giving me a lot of attention is that you know we do we like give so much but we also don't see that reciprocated within other cities in the county and there's a
  • 01:27:54
    and I'm not sure if like for the Ramsey County portion if it's staff members or if it's other elected officials from other cities who are not being listed out one by one.
  • 01:28:20
    and the City Council.
  • 01:28:26
    We are questioning the equity in funding.
  • 01:28:36
    and we're really pulling money into the pot too because what I'm seeing is that because we as in St. Paul are a hub for social services, then lots of folks who are experiencing homelessness are coming to our city to seek those services.
  • 01:28:50
    And I remember at one point there was a question that came up from the Council in the past years about how many St. Paul residents who are experiencing homelessness are actually the ones that we are serving.
  • 01:29:01
    And it's hard to verify that
  • 01:29:03
    of the City of St Paul.
  • 01:29:24
    I think in St Paul we serve our residents in need better than
• • SPEAKER_16
  • 01:29:55
    a whole lot of other places I've seen and I think for us the people who do this work day in day out it's not about for us it's not about saying somebody else should serve people.
  • 01:30:10
    I think that for a city that what we experience as a city
  • 01:30:16
    because we are the place where people are getting services.
  • 01:30:19
    One, you have to fund those services, but there is also an impact to the community just in terms of mitigation around those spaces, right?
  • 01:30:30
    So we have, and you all hear from our businesses and our residents that if there are individuals who are intense or if there's
  • 01:30:42
    Committee.
  • 01:31:02
    sort of seen as much in
  • 01:31:22
    We serve this community really well in St. Paul, and I think that we should continue to innovate and do that job for the people who are coming to St. Paul.
  • 01:31:32
    I think that we need to be recognized for the actual total cost of being that place where people are being served.
  • 01:31:39
    And I know at one point, Councilmember Naker and I had talked a lot about
  • 01:31:45
    We fund education per pupil.
  • 01:31:49
    So the students, the dollars attached to the students follow where the students go to school.
  • 01:31:57
    That's not how homelessness is resourced in the state of Minnesota.
  • 01:32:02
    There might be some other ways that we could think about that so that we could get to that equity that you're talking about.
• • Rebecca Noecker
  • 01:32:09
    I'll keep it quick and as usual it seems like I'm mind molding here because what you just said, Deputy Mayor, is exactly what I wanted to come back to.
  • 01:32:19
    But first I want to thank you for the way that you described how to think about the city's contribution to funding.
  • 01:32:24
    I do think it makes sense to first have the COC go through that exercise and then see what the gaps are.
  • 01:32:28
    I also just want to acknowledge though that we have already stepped up quite a bit and both
  • 01:32:34
    and now Familiar Faces are significant expansions of city responsibility where previously the county was solely responsible.
  • 01:32:41
    So I don't want to come in as a blank slate to that conversation either given the significant increases that we are putting in.
  • 01:32:49
    and to your point, all of the other mitigating factors with police and fire that we don't even talk about as part of our homeless services program, but absolutely is.
  • 01:32:57
    I wanted to come back to the conversation that you and I had about, because I think what keeps happening at the legislature with so many needs, right, is that there's not enough funding.
  • 01:33:05
    We go and we ask for more funding.
  • 01:33:07
    and we get either a portion
  • 01:33:33
    I would love for us to have a model in which we do provide the services and we get paid for it by everyone else who chooses not to provide the services.
  • 01:33:55
    So I'm just curious if we can move that.
• • SPEAKER_11
  • 01:34:01
    Thank you, Madam Chair.
  • 01:34:02
    Jennifer Rourke, Director of Government Relations for Ramsey County.
  • 01:34:04
    If I could ask you to just repeat the last sentence or two of your question.
• • Rebecca Noecker
  • 01:34:08
    It might be a separate conversation, but there's been this discussion that the Deputy Mayor and I have had and others have had about a per person funding formula for homeless services similar to K-12 education funding.
  • 01:34:20
    And rather than asking for a lump sum, asking for the legislature to enact that funding model.
  • 01:34:27
    which would less pit cities against each other and prioritize St Paul or Minneapolis and more just share the burden and any city that wants to provide the services can also get the funding.
• • SPEAKER_11
  • 01:34:36
    Sure, I'd be glad to address that somewhat.
  • 01:34:39
    This is probably our third year coming forward asking for specific funding in this area.
  • 01:34:46
    The Heading Home Ramsey Governing Board decided with a unanimous vote to proceed with our friends across the river in a coalition type bill for this coming session so we're working on the details of that right now and I think this is a good time to bring up the concept of a per person kind of funding approach in that.
  • 01:35:06
    We're really
  • 01:35:08
    I'm excited about this approach this year.
  • 01:35:11
    The Minnesota Coalition for the Homeless is at the table with us so that's a whole lot of service providers that we all work with and have been active with us even last year testifying on our bill at the Capitol.
  • 01:35:23
    It's a frustrating area to work with and a lot of our legislative partners are in the space too.
  • 01:35:33
    I look forward to it, working with more of you in terms of advocating for that and involving you in the process moving forward.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 01:35:39
    Thanks.
  • 01:35:39
    I love when the discussion is like, you know, just that.
  • 01:35:43
    All right, go ahead, Ms. Kim.
• • SPEAKER_05
  • 01:35:45
    I just want to pick that thought up.
  • 01:35:46
    In the past, large coalitions have been very successful at the capital, asking for larger investment across statewide investment.
  • 01:35:54
    So I think that's really exciting.
  • 01:35:57
    the questions that we have and I'm glad that this slide is up because it sort of addresses I think not a lot of the questions but it's like what is next and what's kind of the strategy behind what we heard the Deputy Mayor speak to.
  • 01:36:09
    The only thing that I want to lift up in this is just addressing the fiscal cliffs.
  • 01:36:14
    that we are expecting and that one feels I think on the note that Councilmember Naker lifted up and kind of the one that I'm asking around like what's the ask and like where are the gaps but to look at this and say there's we are actually anticipating a fiscal cliff to the end of federal pandemic relief funding I'm sort of you don't have to answer this in this moment but
  • 01:36:36
    to me that is very alarming recognizing I think such robust programming that we have here at the city recognizing that you know we feel like we are doing our fair share across the Ramsey County to make sure that we are providing not just like services but robust and quality services so I just want to lift that one up and I don't know if you can speak to that but I'm just sort of wondering if you have a dollar amount that's connected to what that fiscal cliff could look like for the city
  • 01:37:06
    since we're on the topic of money.
• • SPEAKER_09
  • 01:37:08
    Councilmember, thank you.
  • 01:37:09
    I'm going to direct you to this sheet that I think was in your packet.
  • 01:37:12
    These are all the federal and state funding sources that the COC is actively involved in as an overview, and I'll be correct.
  • 01:37:19
    I don't think we're going to have the time to walk through it in detail here.
  • 01:37:23
    I think where we have the best sense of that fiscal cliff is on prevention.
  • 01:37:27
    I mentioned that earlier.
  • 01:37:28
    It's at the bottom of the backside, Minnesota Housing FHPAP.
  • 01:37:32
    that's our primary source of prevention funding.
  • 01:37:35
    And in the last two years, the current biennium, there's been approximately $15 million coming to Ramsey County for that work.
  • 01:37:43
    Our historic baseline level for that program has been about $3 million, between $2 and $3 million.
  • 01:37:49
    And that's what's in the next biennium's base budget if the legislature does not change that in the upcoming legislative session.
  • 01:38:01
    The other cliff that we face that we know about is the one just above that, the one that's labeled Direct Emergency Services, DHS OEO grants.
  • 01:38:10
    Those are the funds that came to providers in Ramsey County directly from the advocacy that we all did as a COC in the last budget session, so coming up on two years ago.
  • 01:38:23
    And that was $11.4 million total over the two years.
  • 01:38:26
    of the city of St. Paul.
  • 01:38:27
    This is an example directly to a set of providers that included the city of St. Paul for familiar faces and included Ramsey county for our shelter and diversion team and winter warming spaces and included catholic charities as well as other providers listening house.
  • 01:38:41
    These are the two we know of that are going to significantly drop in the next budget barring legislative change.
  • 01:38:50
    The other
  • 01:38:53
    Committee.
  • 01:38:56
    It is simply not commensurate with the
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 01:39:10
    all right so that's actually we're basically at the end of our time but not the end of this conversation by any stretch I do need to recess us because we have to get to pre council meeting and then additional business for the day but what I want to do right now is just take a minute to first just say thank you to all of the good conversations here really really appreciative of this time in this direct dialogue with us as council members who represent our wards
  • 01:39:38
    who are on the receiving end of so much of this, who have a role in funding it and then setting policy to expand that work.
  • 01:39:43
    And then to our partners at Ramsey County and the administration who are really helming this with our voices there to continually get to a more proactive place instead of a reactive place.
  • 01:39:53
    I can see that growth in the time since I started as a councilwoman and we really have, I think, transformed.
  • 01:40:00
    committee.
  • 01:40:02
    I know we'll all remain committed to that work and this has really helped surface, at least for me, the systemic investments underway but also what's asked of us this budget cycle.
  • 01:40:21
    and so we'll be planning to talk in depth with you, Deputy Mayor and your administration partners in the county on how we can set us up going into 2025, knowing this is an iterative process.
  • 01:40:32
    So, I feel like we could talk about this for another hour.
  • 01:40:34
    There's so much, but very worthy discussion for now.
  • 01:40:37
    If there's nothing else to come before us, we are in recess.
• • SPEAKER_13
  • 01:44:13
    2023, St Paul.
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 01:45:25
    City of St Paul, City Council, Budget Committee
  • 01:45:56
    City of St Paul, City Council
• • 01:47:10
    City of St Paul, City Council
  • 01:47:33
    St Paul, City Council,
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 01:48:25
    St Paul, City Council,
  • 01:48:54
    City of St Paul, City Council
• • 01:50:10
    City of St Paul, City Council
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 01:50:28
    I am going to resume our meeting of the Budget Committee and call us back to order.
  • 01:50:34
    We are back for another departmental presentation.
  • 01:50:37
    I'm going to welcome our partners at the Department of Human Rights and Equal Economic Opportunity, which we regularly refer to as HERO.
  • 01:50:45
    So welcome to Deputy Director Beth Commerce.
  • 01:50:48
    Why don't you kick us off today?
• • SPEAKER_10
  • 01:50:50
    Thank you, Council President, Council Members.
  • 01:50:52
    It's nice to see you again.
  • 01:50:53
    I'm going to flip through these slides for you.
  • 01:50:57
    You've seen this one many times.
  • 01:51:00
    I'm going to go right to our, Council President, is there something you were going to add?
  • 01:51:04
    Nope.
  • 01:51:05
    I'm sorry.
  • 01:51:05
    I want to go right to our department overview.
  • 01:51:07
    You see our mission there is to serve residents and businesses by advancing justice and equity.
  • 01:51:13
    The things that I want to point out is that we have education, advocacy, and enforcement.
  • 01:51:17
    Education's really important to HERO.
  • 01:51:19
    that's how you can actually get lifelong compliance through education instead of you don't necessarily get that long-term fidelity with compliance through enforcement.
  • 01:51:30
    2024, you can see our goals up there.
  • 01:51:34
    We're going to dive into them a little bit.
  • 01:51:37
    2025, similar goals, staff retention, budget stability, and our core functions.
  • 01:51:45
    This is our org chart.
  • 01:51:49
    It's pretty detailed, so to speak, or it's pretty chaotic.
  • 01:51:53
    It kind of depends on your perspective.
  • 01:51:55
    HERO has many different functions.
  • 01:51:57
    We're a pretty diverse department.
  • 01:51:59
    We do work like procurement, the procurement team, all the contracting and purchasing that the city does runs through a centralized team of buyers.
  • 01:52:07
    we've got contract compliance which works on prevailing wage and they also do some it's called the VOP supplier diversity program vendor diversity program on my side of the house oh I didn't even tell you I'm here with my colleague Andrea Ledger I'm so sorry I'm so sorry on my side of the house we often talk about it as Andrea's side and Beth's side so my side of the house
  • 01:52:33
    We have the Labor Standards Division which we're in front of you last week and again today for Wage Left.
  • 01:52:40
    We also investigate Earn Sick and Safe Time and minimum wage.
  • 01:52:43
    We have human rights investigators.
  • 01:52:45
    We have the PCARC, the accessibility coordinator for ADA and language access.
  • 01:52:51
    We have a new public information specialist and then we have our administrative arm.
  • 01:52:57
    So just to give you the overview of HERO, we do a lot of different things.
  • 01:53:02
    I would just like to highlight our turnover rate and how much it's decreased.
  • 01:53:12
    We've been doing amazing things in HERO and I told Andrea that I could just do a victory lap on our hiring and our retention because you'll see that our turnover rate has declined rapidly.
  • 01:53:26
    We're nearly at staff capacity.
  • 01:53:28
    I just want to let you know that when I started
  • 01:53:31
    there were four employees who are still there today and all but one are new positions of the four on my team my side of the house of 16 of us right so we've been doing a lot of hiring
  • 01:53:48
    on my side.
  • 01:53:49
    We only have two positions open in HERO.
  • 01:53:52
    It used to take us up to a year to hire and now it takes us like four to five months.
  • 01:53:58
    We've really been intentional about improving our onboarding.
  • 01:54:03
    We've developed a whole slew of SOPs.
  • 01:54:07
    we've been working on training and we've really been working on promoting hiring retaining and promoting as a way to meet successfully meet our equity goals
  • 01:54:22
    I want to turn the page for you and really talk about some investments that you made in 2023 and 2024 public information specialists I'm going to tell you about first I'm going to go out of order a little bit because I just I want you to hear that we created a new position in HERO right in our department and we were able to post do all the different
  • 01:54:45
    steps through human resources and have our colleagues start four and a half months later.
  • 01:54:51
    And that was with her giving notice to her previous employer, right?
  • 01:54:55
    That timeline was based on her notice.
  • 01:54:56
    So I think that's pretty awesome.
  • 01:54:58
    We figured out how it works really well.
  • 01:55:02
    The Human Rights and Labor Standards Manager was a position that you approved in 2023.
  • 01:55:06
    And then in 2024, you invested in some more labor standards investigators.
• • SPEAKER_16
  • 01:55:12
    did you want to jump in?
  • 01:55:14
    No?
• • SPEAKER_10
  • 01:55:15
    Okay.
  • 01:55:15
    The result, we've had really better training under Kyle Derriff, our manager under Human Rights and Labor Standards.
  • 01:55:21
    It's pretty amazing.
  • 01:55:22
    We've been getting much stronger investigations, more consistency in work product, and we've also been getting a little creative with our public interest terms.
  • 01:55:34
    One thing that we've been really intentional about all across the enterprise and specifically in HERO is developing the KPMs, the key performance metrics.
  • 01:55:43
    I don't have as many of them for labor standards because we just hired those last two positions and they started in May, right?
  • 01:55:51
    So when I started there was one labor standards investigator and now there are five.
  • 01:55:56
    So that team we've really been building, Kyle's really been building the team and investing in SOPs, them figuring out their processes so we're consistent.
  • 01:56:06
    But I just want to give you some high level numbers for the labor standards team.
  • 01:56:10
    You'll see that they've recovered over $100,000 in back pay.
  • 01:56:15
    This is pay that employees should have been given and they weren't.
  • 01:56:19
    and the City Council.
  • 01:56:38
    you can see the increases all around, whether it's inquiries received, formal complaints, complaints investigated, and closed cases.
  • 01:56:47
    So the team is really knocking it out of the park.
  • 01:56:51
    The next slide, I just want to walk you through a couple KPMs that we're tracking for our human rights investigators.
  • 01:56:59
    And just to level set, our investigators investigate allegations of discrimination under Chapter 183.
  • 01:57:05
    I put up there, since we haven't really talked about the specific work we do in HERO yet, you can see the protected classes.
  • 01:57:13
    It is against the law in St Paul to discriminate based on those protected classes and then you can see the areas we can investigate.
  • 01:57:22
    I have underneath the left, I think it's the left side, it's my left side, you can see the number of inquiries and then charges that we have filed.
  • 01:57:31
    We get a lot of inquiries but that doesn't mean we always open up a case because something might not be substantiated.
  • 01:57:39
    you can see a deeper dive under the KPMs everything that we've been tracking from quarter one, quarter two, quarter three we have similar KPMs for the labor standards team each team decided their own KPMs with with Kyle and my guidance and you can see from my perspective the team is also nagging it out of the park if you have any questions about those we can go back to them at the end
  • 01:58:08
    One of our core functions is around communications and outreach.
  • 01:58:12
    If you just take a look at the graph and you see how many outreach and engagement activities HERO did in 2022 versus 2024, we have a radically different mindset in the department than we did previously.
  • 01:58:24
    It's really important for us to talk to the community we serve, and that's what we do.
  • 01:58:30
    We've been improving communications as a team inside HERO among the enterprise.
  • 01:58:36
    I know you all have gotten many of my messages about the PCARC, about positions open, about the RFP that we went out with.
  • 01:58:45
    We're also communicating a lot better with our partners like DSI and PED and OFE, things that really weren't happening to the same degree.
  • 01:58:55
    before.
  • 01:58:57
    We are also communicating with the public better, especially with Mariela, our new public info specialist.
  • 01:59:04
    Andrea is going to do a little deeper dive in a little bit into some of her things around the supplier fair and training that she's been organizing for other departments.
• • SPEAKER_02
  • 01:59:20
    I wanted to stay on this slide because although Beth and I supervise teams that provide numerous different functions for the city,
  • 01:59:35
    we're both really aligned on those core functions and that is staff training and staff retention and executing our core functions including communications and outreach.
  • 01:59:45
    So for Beth's teams, that can look a little different than what it looks like for contracting and purchasing.
  • 01:59:52
    But I wanted to lift up on our supplier fair, which is our annual event that we do for suppliers in the city where we showcase the city's projects and give suppliers.
  • 02:00:01
    and the City Council.
  • 02:00:10
    We have also been deliberately focused in procurement and contract compliance on internal training and resources for our internal customers which include all of you, includes our departments, providing as much information as we can about how best to engage with
  • 02:00:27
    Council, City Council, Budget Committee, Budget Committee, Budget Committee, Budget Committee, Budget Committee, Budget Committee, Budget Committee, Budget Committee, Budget Committee, Budget Committee, Budget Committee, Budget Committee, Budget Committee, Budget Committee, Budget Committee, Budget Committee, Budget Committee, Budget Committee,
  • 02:00:53
    So let's say you're in need of a consultant or an accountant or something like that.
  • 02:00:59
    We would use typically the request for proposals process.
  • 02:01:03
    And in 2022 that took approximately 108 days between the posting of that solicitation and execution of the contract.
  • 02:01:12
    We've managed to reduce that by 30 days over the past several years.
  • 02:01:18
    You can see we've also increased the number of responses to our solicitations, so it's essentially who's bidding on these projects.
  • 02:01:26
    And so we've ticked that up, which is good for a couple reasons.
  • 02:01:30
    One, it means we're reaching a wider group of vendors who want to bid on our projects.
  • 02:01:35
    And two, because from the city's perspective, it gives us more opportunity to choose a vendor to get better value, better price, etc.
  • 02:01:44
    And then the last line here, you can see some stagnancy in terms of our spending to small women and minority business enterprises.
  • 02:01:50
    I'm going to put a pin in this because this directly relates to our budget request for 2025, so I'll refer back to this slide.
  • 02:02:01
    We have seen the number of total contracts that our team manages tick up over the past several years.
  • 02:02:07
    As the city does more projects, as we do more building, as we do more contracting overall, we're managing more contracts.
  • 02:02:14
    And our team size hasn't increased over those years, but the contracts have.
  • 02:02:19
    We've looked at other ways to be more efficient in the way that we do our work.
  • 02:02:23
    Council, the way that we divide responsibilities.
  • 02:02:25
    So it has allowed us to manage those contracts effectively.
  • 02:02:29
    But you'll also see with regard to our budget request that that aligns with this increase as well.
  • 02:02:38
    Overall HERO budget numbers, you can see we are pretty stable.
  • 02:02:44
    Beth touched already on those FTE increases we've seen that you've approved over the past several years, primarily in labor standards and with that public information officer.
  • 02:02:55
    Again, proposing two FTEs for 2025.
  • 02:03:00
    I'll talk about those at the end of the presentation.
  • 02:03:06
    revenue overview.
  • 02:03:08
    Even though we are one of the smallest departments, we have a number of sources of revenue.
  • 02:03:12
    One is our affirmative action plan fees.
  • 02:03:14
    That's in ordinance that we require any vendor that does business with the city for over $50,000 is required to have an affirmative action plan on record.
  • 02:03:24
    We charge a $75 fee to file that plan with us.
  • 02:03:30
    That is really stable year over year.
  • 02:03:34
    Most vendors who work with us have been with us and we renew their plans year over year.
  • 02:03:41
    Procurement Administrative Fee, that is the fee that we charge our partners at the St. Paul Regional Water Service, the Port Authority and River Center for Procurement Services.
  • 02:03:56
    It's based on staff time dedicated to those entities.
  • 02:04:00
    Again, pretty consistent.
  • 02:04:02
    We saw an uptick in that when the McCarran rebuild was kind of in full procurement mode, but since then it's been fairly stable.
  • 02:04:11
    lifting up for a moment the CERT program.
  • 02:04:14
    The CERT program is a collaborative between the cities of St Paul and Minneapolis and Ramsey and Hennepin Counties.
  • 02:04:21
    We are all part of the governing board of that entity and it exists to certify emerging small businesses, small businesses, women and minority business enterprises.
  • 02:04:33
    There's some technical and legal background to that that I'm happy to talk about with any of you at any time.
  • 02:04:39
    But the CERT program does those certifications based on 15 county geographic area.
  • 02:04:46
    and different factors related to their business size.
  • 02:04:49
    Previously that program was administered by the City of St Paul as the lead agency.
  • 02:04:55
    So that meant that we were doing all the certifications, all the customer service, maintaining the website.
  • 02:05:01
    The CERT Board decided in 2023 that it made the most sense for the program to contract that out to a third party entity.
  • 02:05:10
    So that contract was awarded to Strong and Starlight Consulting.
  • 02:05:13
    They have been administering the program for the past nine months.
  • 02:05:19
    It's really been, I think it's exceeded all of our expectations in terms of both our
  • 02:05:26
    of our certification.
  • 02:05:27
    So we know that when we go to that database that those businesses have been properly certified.
  • 02:05:33
    And then also from a customer service perspective with the vendors that are seeking certification, their timelines have been greatly reduced.
  • 02:05:41
    They're being responded to within 48 hours.
  • 02:05:45
    Their hold times are less than 20 seconds.
  • 02:05:47
    So a lot of the problems that had existed in the problem have largely been dealt with.
  • 02:05:52
    So we're really excited about that.
  • 02:05:54
    It also means we're not collecting that revenue anymore because we're no longer administering the program.
  • 02:05:59
    That revenue is going to the consultant.
  • 02:06:02
    Three more things to note related to federal funding.
  • 02:06:07
    Beth's team is a recipient of both EEOC and HUD funds that are largely dictated based on the number of cases that they work on in collaboration with those agencies.
  • 02:06:19
    And then we have our section three collaborative, which is structured somewhat like the CERT collaborative.
  • 02:06:24
    Section 3 is a HUD program that lifts up minority women business enterprises on specific HUD funded projects.
  • 02:06:33
    We provide certification for those projects and we are in a collaborative with a number of other agencies to certify those businesses.
  • 02:06:44
    A few updates on ARP.
  • 02:06:45
    We did have two staff dedicated to ARP to fulfill a lot of back-end administrative work related to getting those funds out the door.
  • 02:06:54
    A temporary compliance specialist, that's currently filled.
  • 02:06:58
    we had a research analyst at point four that employee left in July 2024 and we have not filled it with the idea that we knew that the funds would not be renewed so it didn't make a lot of sense to engage in a hiring process and then we had a buyer three which is in procurement at point six that's currently being filled by a buyer two generally the same responsibility is just a slight higher grade and title and then you can see we're not planning to use any ARP funds in 2024
  • 02:07:31
    our historical budget to actual as you can see again we're pretty small it has not changed dramatically over the past several years almost all of our budget is going to staff expenses which you'll see in a chart in a couple slides the biggest thing on here
  • 02:07:49
    If there are variances, they are largely related to staff vacancies.
  • 02:07:57
    We don't overstaff in HERO.
  • 02:07:59
    You're never going to see us over our allocated budget.
  • 02:08:01
    And because we're so small, any one single vacancy is going to impact our budget.
  • 02:08:11
    Our complete budget summary, again, there's not a lot to highlight here.
  • 02:08:15
    We're pretty stable over the past several years.
  • 02:08:19
    but happy to answer any specific questions you might have.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 02:08:23
    here's that chart I don't know fully what's in the scope of the presentation just because I haven't had a chance to see it but I am wondering from a lens of the positions I did notice that like it's pretty I don't like even with the two full-time additions could you just share which positions are falling off because I don't think it changes I think it changed your account by like
• • SPEAKER_02
  • 02:08:51
    of the City Council.
  • 02:09:04
    It's not going to look exactly like Councilmember Johnson.
  • 02:09:10
    We have realigned some responsibilities, particularly within procurement and compliance, so it's not necessarily an apples to apples.
  • 02:09:17
    I'm happy to go back, though, to the org chart and kind of walk through what it looks like, if that would be helpful.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 02:09:24
    We can wait until the direction.
  • 02:09:25
    I don't know what's to come, so we can wait for that.
• • SPEAKER_02
  • 02:09:27
    Understood.
  • 02:09:28
    Thank you.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 02:09:28
    Thank you.
• • SPEAKER_02
  • 02:09:31
    So you can see employee expenses are by far our largest expense.
  • 02:09:34
    We have very little overhead.
  • 02:09:36
    If you come down to our office, you'll see for yourselves that we're not all swanked out down there, which is just fine.
  • 02:09:44
    It allows our team to focus just on their core functions, which are serving the public and serving our internal customers.
  • 02:09:51
    We do sometimes engage with services.
  • 02:09:53
    We need a graphic designer, for instance, to help with our annual report, things like that, but pretty small.
  • 02:10:03
    So this is our proposal.
  • 02:10:04
    It's a net change of zero dollars, but we are adding two staff.
  • 02:10:10
    And it's about repurposing current funds that we have used in the past for consulting, contracting, different things, and putting those towards staff to actually build this program.
  • 02:10:24
    The challenge is really, and I think probably a lot of you feel it in talking to residents and talking to business owners,
  • 02:10:31
    it is hard to contract with government entities like I feel that on our side too like there are a lot of rules we are constantly having to remind our internal and external partners of what the rules are and why we do things the way that we do but it can feel like significant for our small and local businesses and we know that because we talk to them and we work with them too we're also missing out on opportunities for innovation we know that some of these small
  • 02:10:58
    of the City of St. Paul.
  • 02:11:15
    We don't always reflect our community demographics.
  • 02:11:17
    You saw that on the previous slide, right?
  • 02:11:19
    That our spending with small women and minority business enterprises has been really stagnant.
  • 02:11:26
    We're tracking right around 10%, and so we'd like to beef that up.
  • 02:11:33
    So what we're looking at is an actual program.
  • 02:11:36
    Right now supplier diversity is kind of just, it's kind of an offshoot of procurement and that in purchasing we do work with suppliers and we do work with project managers and departments.
  • 02:11:50
    on the City of St. Paul.
  • 02:12:14
    so that's really the goal here is we need a staff person to really lead this program working closely with procurement with contract compliance with our department partners on what that looks like so in terms of a breakdown we need a program coordinator that would be the person that's doing the corralling compliance specialist we have a temporary compliance specialist right now that's being paid for with ARP funds so that's one council member Johnson that where there's a shift happening
  • 02:12:45
    that person will largely be focused on outreach with businesses on a lot of the technical data collection that we need to do and provide.
  • 02:12:54
    Our certification collaborative dues that we pay for our third party vendor.
  • 02:13:00
    And then finally our construction partnering program contracts.
  • 02:13:04
    That's a group that we support, an organization that we support that helps to match subcontractors and prime contractors.
  • 02:13:10
    so a prime contractor being the vendor that we are working with as a city that we're contracted with but we also along with our agency partners have different subcontracting goals for those prime contractors and it can be challenging on both sides.
  • 02:13:25
    It can be challenging for prime contractors to find subs that meet their needs and it can be really challenging for subs to know what projects are out there that they could potentially work on.
  • 02:13:38
    Key outcomes that we're hoping to achieve are service performance, efficiency, and then legal compliance and risk mitigation.
  • 02:13:47
    So I've talked a lot about the service performance already.
  • 02:13:50
    I think that will be dramatically improved just by having a key point person.
  • 02:13:54
    Efficiency.
  • 02:13:55
    So again, to go back to both the org chart and that workload related to procurement.
  • 02:14:04
    To have dedicated staff that are working on this supplier diversity piece of this, I think will really allow us, our procurement team, to focus on executing those technical functions, even as the workload increases, that they'll be able to still manage that work if they can work in partnership with this new team.
  • 02:14:24
    and then finally legal compliance and risk mitigation.
  • 02:14:26
    I don't know how aware you are of the legal environment related to affirmative action and diversity programs but it is, you know, I'd say fluid.
  • 02:14:38
    We're always trying to stay abreast of what's happening in the federal courts, what the Supreme Court might decide.
  • 02:14:45
    And so this is really an opportunity for us to make sure that we're positioned to contract in a way that aligns with our values, but that also protects us from risk, ultimately, to meet our objectives while also being aware of what those threats are that are out there.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 02:15:04
    Thanks.
  • 02:15:04
    I see a question from Ms. Johnson.
  • 02:15:05
    Go ahead.
  • 02:15:05
    Yes.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 02:15:07
    Thank you so much.
  • 02:15:08
    I really appreciate the presentation and kind of diving in further into things that I think a lot of us share as far as like working on whether or not or how do we continue to diversify our procurement process and the businesses or places that we do contracts with here in the city.
  • 02:15:27
    And I know that that's been like an ongoing discussion at Heroes.
  • 02:15:32
    The Hero Department was actually my second department that I've worked with here at the city.
  • 02:15:36
    and I know at that time this was diversifying our procurement contracts and things was actually a part of our goals.
  • 02:15:46
    But I always would wonder and I still am kind of like wondering from a lens of just not only budget as it relates to what we're actually funding or not funding but also just in direction.
  • 02:16:00
    I think what are some of our goals and how do we measure whether or not we are moving in the right direction and I think just from a lens of the previous slides where they had the different percentages
  • 02:16:14
    it's stagnant yes but this year we had I think 10% if I remember and I'm just kind of wondering you know what is what would we consider good 8.3 for this year but 10% in 2023 what would we consider decent improvement what would we like kind of bring from like the percentage of spending like to use as a method for whether or not we're managing our success and what would that what would actually being able to
  • 02:16:45
    plan for that or have metric points taking into account all the legal things that you mentioned earlier.
  • 02:16:51
    What would success look like?
  • 02:16:53
    What would improvement look like?
  • 02:16:54
    What would be our goals there?
• • SPEAKER_02
  • 02:16:56
    Yeah, Council President, Council Member Johnson.
  • 02:16:59
    It's a great question.
  • 02:17:00
    I think one level of improvement would be that it doesn't take us days to put together this data, to be quite honest with you.
  • 02:17:06
    That the data collection and the data tracking has been a challenge.
  • 02:17:10
    And so even with the contract compliance specialist that we recently hired, she is working on a dashboard to provide more real time information.
  • 02:17:18
    And I think that's a big part of it, is honestly to be transparent.
  • 02:17:22
    to be transparent with you and the public.
  • 02:17:25
    And it's not for a lack of will on being transparent.
  • 02:17:28
    It's truly a lack of corralling different data from different sources.
  • 02:17:33
    And I think the second thing is it's going to depend from department to department.
  • 02:17:37
    And we really want to be able to take the opportunity.
  • 02:17:40
    We've done some work with public works especially.
  • 02:17:42
    But public work spending is going to look a lot different than it does at HR.
  • 02:17:47
    and they both have a lot
  • 02:18:13
    this is what our dashboard looks like right now here's where we see some opportunities based on our analysis of that data as opposed to just giving you a number right now which I don't know that I could stand by
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 02:18:24
    I think there just seems to be a lot of unique opportunities that the city is embarking on just with a lot of things that have been passed or being funded that there could be potentially opportunities that we could think about ways to make that as a part of whatever goals those end up being that could both be timely as well so as a response to
  • 02:18:47
    to try and increase that percentage of spending.
  • 02:18:51
    Just because that percentage of spending is all inclusive, not only of just minority businesses, but we're also talking about women businesses, small businesses.
  • 02:18:59
    That's inclusive of all of that, and it's still very, I'm sure that no one would be like, oh, that's a really stellar percentage.
  • 02:19:09
    That's actually quite low, but not in a way of our,
  • 02:19:12
    I would say not at the fold of anyone.
  • 02:19:14
    I think it's really just something that we could think about, even if it is construction, if it is some of these areas where we are launching into for the first time, that it could be a timely conversation.
• • SPEAKER_02
  • 02:19:25
    and the City Council.
  • 02:19:43
    funds that were previously allocated towards consultants, surveys, outreach.
  • 02:19:48
    And we've done all that work.
  • 02:19:49
    We know what the problem is.
  • 02:19:51
    We have a real guide on how to move forward.
  • 02:19:54
    We just don't have the staff to implement it.
  • 02:19:56
    So I think we're trying to be deliberate about how can we make best use of the resources we do have as a department to move ourselves forward in a substantive way.
• • SPEAKER_10
  • 02:20:05
    So I just want to add, the procurement team, they did the work, but they don't set the goals, right?
  • 02:20:12
    So they take the work from the department, and they process it, and they make it happen, right?
  • 02:20:18
    And so with what Andrea wants to do with get a staff member in, get two staff members to actually impact the work in a different way than with the processing of contracts.
  • 02:20:30
    Does that make sense?
  • 02:20:31
    we had before we hired our communication specialists there were like 15 of our staff members who edited our website just as an example okay it was a patchwork quilt of messages of tone of everything and now we hired one person to corral all of those 15 voices and our website is even shaping up it's awesome
  • 02:20:55
    That's exactly what Andrea wants to do.
  • 02:20:57
    She wants to hire a central coordinator for all of this work that happens here and there, and then put more intentionality around it.
  • 02:21:05
    So we can be a part of driving those numbers up.
  • 02:21:09
    Does that make sense?
  • 02:21:10
    Yeah?
  • 02:21:19
    I think we're back to the questions page.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 02:21:21
    I think we're at questions, yeah.
• • SPEAKER_10
  • 02:21:23
    This is where we are.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 02:21:26
    Thank you.
  • 02:21:27
    Any other questions or takeaways or thoughts from council members?
• • Anika Bowie
  • 02:21:33
    All right, go ahead Ms. Bui.
  • 02:21:37
    I have a question and excuse me for my delay.
  • 02:21:40
    This was already covered earlier.
  • 02:21:43
    But I was just looking at just some of the budget changes or lack thereof of budget changes, particularly around the PCE Art Grant Fund and even like the PCE Art Commission.
  • 02:21:56
    This is a commission that you know I really prioritize.
  • 02:21:59
    I actually my first
  • 02:22:00
    I'm Chance working, collaborating with the City of St. Paul was through the PCARC as a former commissioner and this was during a time where we were strengthening our standards and really using this as kind of like a vehicle of transparency and building trust whether it's with community members and our law enforcement and just you know just given that you know community first public safety has been a huge priority for our mayor can you just share
  • 02:22:30
    in terms of what is the vision of PCARC.
  • 02:22:33
    I know the establishment of it through different studies has been around this complaint-based system of having a complaint or a place where people can share their complaints.
  • 02:22:49
    but there hasn't really been a significant amount of funding to continue on the Commission.
  • 02:22:58
    So can you just share just what is the vision of the Commission and then how can we infuse that with some of the stuff that's happening with office and neighborhood safety or the first public safety initiatives?
• • SPEAKER_10
  • 02:23:13
    Thank you, Council President, Council Member.
  • 02:23:16
    HERO doesn't set the vision for the PCR, the Mayor does and would probably do that in conjunction with you.
  • 02:23:24
    We just make sure the process runs well.
  • 02:23:27
    The City has a review and recommend model.
  • 02:23:29
    There are several different models out there and the City has chosen a review and recommend model.
  • 02:23:33
    We were one of the first in the nation to do that back in 1989.
  • 02:23:39
    It's been my goal, my purpose to get processes outlined and clarified so we can back up and build community trust, right?
  • 02:23:52
    And so you've seen that.
  • 02:23:53
    I mentioned that on the human rights and labor standards side and PCRC is no different.
  • 02:23:58
    Right now we only need the coordinator, the one coordinator.
  • 02:24:01
    The process is really working well.
  • 02:24:05
    We coordinate with the police department appropriately and often and we talk with Internal Affairs all the time about cases.
  • 02:24:16
    From my perspective, we're going to be publishing new SOPs that are in line with what we do today.
  • 02:24:22
    Those haven't been published since 2017.
  • 02:24:25
    The Commission is also updating the bylaws.
  • 02:24:28
    But the bigger picture on what's the goal and where is the PCR going, again, that's not mine to decide.
  • 02:24:34
    It's just mine to make sure it runs well with whatever model we have.
• • Anika Bowie
  • 02:24:38
    I do have a follow-up question.
  • 02:24:42
    With our last budget where we talked about heading home with Ramsey, there's a way I'm going to loop this back together.
  • 02:24:49
    At least that last slide had showed some state legislation agendas that was attached to it.
  • 02:24:56
    I know for PCARCS at last session there was a law change to put disciplinary action back into our commissions.
  • 02:25:07
    I know some of the councils across the state have adopted that.
  • 02:25:12
    is that something that these commissioners will be are they are they authorized to adopt those bylaws or is that something a type of action that needs to be taken place for the council?
• • SPEAKER_10
  • 02:25:26
    Council President, council members
  • 02:25:27
    That's a bigger question.
  • 02:25:29
    Our review and recommend model, the model that St Paul has chosen, just makes our PCRC advisory and so it makes recommendations to the chief who then decides to uphold that recommendation in terms of
  • 02:25:44
    if something happened or not, a determination and then the chief decides discipline.
  • 02:25:51
    The state law did change, PODPA did change to never to allow commissions to decide discipline.
  • 02:25:57
    That's always statewide, that's always the chief's decision, but PODPA changed to allow a commission's
  • 02:26:04
    determination to stand or not.
  • 02:26:07
    And so again, St Paul has the review and recommend model.
  • 02:26:10
    And so under that model, what we do, the PCRC does the best work they can and we support them and we are making a much more transparent process.
  • 02:26:20
    And we are doing a lot of community outreach and engagement and I think that helps build trust as well.
  • 02:26:25
    But what we do is just make the process run as smooth as we can under the model that we have.
  • 02:26:30
    So, thank you.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 02:26:34
    All right, any other questions from council members right now?
  • 02:26:38
    Go ahead, Ms. Naker.
  • 02:26:39
    Thanks, Council President.
• • Rebecca Noecker
  • 02:26:40
    Just a real thanks to you, Ms. Comerson, to your entire team.
  • 02:26:43
    I'm really impressed with the way that you focused on key performance indicators.
  • 02:26:47
    I think the turnover metrics in particular really speaks volumes about how people are feeling working for the department.
  • 02:26:54
    And I remember way back when
  • 02:26:56
    we passed the administrative ordinance requiring the number of labor standards investigators that we we knew we needed to go along with our labor standards laws it's not enough to just pass the law and then hope maybe the department will have the capacity to enforce it but specifically giving that capacity
  • 02:27:11
    it was to do exactly what you've described and it looks like you're just continuing to make really significant progress on getting those turnaround times even better.
  • 02:27:21
    So thank you for the work that you're doing and thanks for communicating it to us in such an effective way.
  • 02:27:26
    I really appreciate the additional staff and program without any additional budget ask.
  • 02:27:31
    I find that to be a really elegant way to solve that.
  • 02:27:34
    So thank you.
• • SPEAKER_10
  • 02:27:35
    Thank you, Council President, Council Member.
  • 02:27:38
    I jokingly told Andrea that I was going to do a victory lap.
  • 02:27:41
    And I kind of mean it because I think that people like to come to work in here now.
  • 02:27:47
    And I don't know that that was always the case before.
  • 02:27:50
    I just want to say that.
  • 02:27:52
    But it's a happy, amazing place to work.
  • 02:27:56
    and we are getting the outcomes that were envisioned of HERO when the department was created in this form in 2009 and I'm just so proud of my team, our team and I'm so honored that I am allowed to do this work with the mayor, with all of you, with the department and with the public every day so it's a real honor for me.
  • 02:28:23
    Thank you.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 02:28:25
    Thanks, Council Member Johnson
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 02:28:27
    I appreciate just hearing that.
  • 02:28:30
    You radiate when you speak about these things.
  • 02:28:32
    It's great.
  • 02:28:33
    And I would just add my sentiments of just I'm grateful for the team.
  • 02:28:38
    I'm grateful for the outline and just the work that you all are doing.
  • 02:28:40
    I think it's really important.
  • 02:28:42
    As you go into what is hopefully what I would see hopefully as a positive outcome of being able to actually add wage theft enforcement to the labor standards and what the FTEs that you have,
  • 02:28:55
    I would be also curious in the future and after you know jumping ahead and also assuming everything goes well a few months of like implementation and as far as numbers and just intakes and things that will continue to come up as well so as capacity like I would really encourage for your team and all to stay in contact with their office especially just from a lens of just like I want what I would love to see and some of our departments that are maybe not always like the
  • 02:29:23
    I say this with the most respect, but the most shiny with the things that happen behind the scenes that folks don't often always talk about.
  • 02:29:35
    I think it's parts of a lot of our jobs in places where I'm sure there are many people within the city who that resonates with, where they're like, yeah, my position is not always the one that's talked about.
  • 02:29:45
    I kind of like it that way, but it's also really deep and important work.
  • 02:29:48
    I would really love to continue to see that number because what I don't want to happen is that we aren't able to serve as many people because some of the numbers and things and the progress that has been made has to be changed out from like okay but now we have to put out all of these different important equally important rights and protected spaces and so I just want to make sure that that is echoed in the support and
  • 02:30:14
    Committee.
  • 02:30:15
    While we're making these changes, while we're hopefully being able to advocate for stronger enforcement mechanisms that we're also thinking about what that does to the future staffing and capacity of our departments like yours.
• • SPEAKER_10
  • 02:30:28
    Yeah, definitely, Council President.
  • 02:30:30
    Councilmember, when we have more staffing needs, we'll be here.
  • 02:30:32
    I promise right now we're just focused on doing really well, doing the best we can with the staff we have.
  • 02:30:38
    I hear you 100% with metrics and with showing our work.
  • 02:30:45
    My side of the house, it's all complaint based, right?
  • 02:30:48
    People have not had.
  • 02:30:50
    a positive experience.
  • 02:30:52
    They're coming into us with something terrible by their definition of having happened.
  • 02:30:57
    And so it's not shiny and it's not sexy to use that word, right?
  • 02:31:02
    It's kind of over there.
  • 02:31:05
    It's not talked about.
  • 02:31:07
    And we are so pleased to talk about it.
  • 02:31:11
    We're getting the metrics and yes, yes, we will keep sending those your way and keep sharing with you.
  • 02:31:17
    Yeah, thank you.
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 02:31:19
    All right.
  • 02:31:21
    I'm looking around.
  • 02:31:21
    I don't see other comments or questions from council members.
  • 02:31:23
    I deeply appreciate this time with you today and look forward to the conversations ahead in the budget, but also all the work that you are integral to at our city.
  • 02:31:31
    That brings us to the end of our departmental budget presentation, so I'm going to go ahead and adjourn our budget committee.
  • 02:31:37
    If there's nothing else coming before us, we're adjourned.
  • 02:31:38
    Thanks.