Budget Committee - October 08, 2025   10/8/2025

Roll Call

• • 00:00:06
    City of St Paul, City Council
  • 00:03:04
    City of St Paul, City Council
• • SPEAKER_07
  • 00:04:30
    I'm calling the St. Paul City Council Finance and Budget Committee to order.
  • 00:04:34
    We've got two presentations today.
  • 00:04:37
    One will be at 10 and the other will be at 1 o'clock.
  • 00:04:40
    And so we will have a short recess.
  • 00:04:43
    The first presentation that we have up today is from everyone's favorite department, the City Attorney's Office.
  • 00:04:49
    And we have none other than our St. Paul City Attorney Lindsay Olson in the house to present to us today the City Attorney's Office's budget.
  • 00:04:59
    So, with that, are we all ready to, presentation ready?
• • SPEAKER_04
  • 00:05:06
    I am.
  • 00:05:06
    Good morning, Vice President Kern, Council Members.
  • 00:05:11
    Thanks for your time today.
  • 00:05:19
    Quick agenda here.
  • 00:05:20
    Our slides follow your basic outline.
  • 00:05:24
    With the exception of we combined recent initiatives and arbor projects together to talk about updates there
  • 00:05:33
    So the executive summary just shows our divisions.
  • 00:05:36
    Just one quick note there, we are combining the CAO and the Office of Neighborhood Safety presentation today.
  • 00:05:41
    I'll be doing the bulk of the brief for that.
  • 00:05:46
    Our Director of Neighborhood Safety Brooke Leggi is also here today.
  • 00:05:51
    If you have really specific questions for that work, she might be able to jump in on a couple of things.
  • 00:05:58
    Here's the mission and values of the office.
  • 00:06:00
    We want to highlight one update that we made this year, which is adding equity to our rise values.
  • 00:06:08
    And equity has always been a baseline of everything that we do, but we felt that, especially given where we're at in our community and in the world, that we needed to add equity in specific, and so we incorporated
  • 00:06:23
    Here's the city attorney organizational chart.
  • 00:06:35
    Again, this does include the Office of Neighborhood Safety.
  • 00:06:38
    Here's the ONS org chart.
  • 00:06:40
    It's very high level.
  • 00:06:42
    They are adding several new positions, which we'll talk about in more depth.
  • 00:06:45
    And if you have questions on that, please let me know.
  • 00:06:51
    Our 2025 budget recap, the $23.1 million dollar number is both CAO Maine as well as the Office of Neighborhood Safety.
  • 00:07:00
    CAO is about $14 million of that and the Office of Neighborhood Safety making up the rest of that and that is all of our different types of funds and grants.
  • 00:07:10
    We took a budget reduction of $300,000 that was implemented for this past year.
  • 00:07:16
    We added the designation for the Ethos program funding so we actually have a line item in the budget for the first time.
  • 00:07:23
    The program has operated for about seven years without its own budget on a combination of money that we got from the City Council as well as some grants that we had that we don't know will be renewed so we wanted to make sure that that program continued to have an operating budget.
  • 00:07:44
    We received
  • 00:07:45
    budget will be $70,000.
  • 00:07:54
    We also were able to shift last year one victim witness coordinator from our victim witness unit that has been on a crime victim service grant, and several of those grants are ending as well.
  • 00:08:05
    We've had them for several years.
  • 00:08:07
    That's another unit in our office that's funded primarily by grants that we want to make sure is able to continue its statutorily required work.
  • 00:08:18
    So updates on recent initiatives.
  • 00:08:21
    Ethos was expanded last year.
  • 00:08:23
    We have had a goal to keep expanding it every year.
  • 00:08:27
    We were able to increase referrals by 60% from 2023 to 2024, so we wanted to show the full year number.
  • 00:08:34
    We don't have a full year number from 2025 yet, but we increased from 120 cases into the program into 2002 cases in 2024.
  • 00:08:48
    And I wanted to include a quick reflection.
  • 00:08:50
    I know you guys like those.
  • 00:08:51
    We did also provide a whole document with several of the reflections.
  • 00:08:55
    They were just really fun to read.
  • 00:08:57
    All of our participants in Ethos, or most of them, do reflections as part of their work with the circles.
  • 00:09:04
    So we always have those coming in and they just show how much impact this program has.
  • 00:09:11
    We like this one a lot because it
  • 00:09:14
    It talks about the fact that this participants, their experience was that this was as close to justice as they could get to in our type of system.
  • 00:09:26
    They felt that that was just what justice was supposed to be.
  • 00:09:30
    They didn't feel ashamed or diminished and they wanted this type of program to be a model for how people go through the justice system and we're really proud of that.
  • 00:09:39
    That's what we want to see from people and we hope to keep expanding this.
  • 00:09:44
    for folks in our community.
  • 00:09:48
    Project Peace updates.
  • 00:09:50
    They launched a new case system that's called Apricot and that's a case management system that some other cities use in their gun violence reduction programs.
  • 00:09:59
    It's a comprehensive case management system and it's really helped the team to organize their work, especially between the work of the Project Peace folks in ONS and then the Aspire folks in
  • 00:10:13
    the police department and we're also exploring additional public safety uses for the Apricot app as well.
  • 00:10:22
    We do have a client success story from ONS, from Project Peace specifically that we wanted to share.
  • 00:10:28
    We do have to get permission for these, so if you are interested in hearing more of these, we are collecting them and we can share more of those as well.
  • 00:10:38
    Jay is an individual who began with ONS Project Peace in 2024.
  • 00:10:44
    and he was in the Red Wing Juvenile Center.
  • 00:10:47
    He's worked with a life coach and he's been able to consistently attend a St Paul secondary school.
  • 00:10:53
    He earned enough credits to stay on track for graduation.
  • 00:10:56
    He's participating in the construction program, gaining hands-on training skills.
  • 00:11:01
    and he's become more independent and he's making progress towards achieving personal and professional goals and so this is somebody who was pulled out of a cycle of violence and is on the right track now to become successful, to have skills for a job and remain law abiding and the team has been making those types of personal success stories happen for the last couple years but I think this is the first time we really started publicly sharing those stories
  • 00:11:30
    so we'll continue to do that.
• • SPEAKER_07
  • 00:11:32
    And I've got a quick question for you.
  • 00:11:34
    What are sort of the key differences then because there are obviously very key like value similarities like methodology similarities but what are sort of the differences between Ethos and Project Peace?
  • 00:11:47
    Is it age?
  • 00:11:49
    Is it what sort of the distinguishing factor between the two of those?
• • SPEAKER_04
  • 00:11:52
    So Ethos is a program for is a restorative justice program that's an alternative to traditional prosecution so it's a
  • 00:11:58
    It's a diversionary program within our Criminal Division in the St Paul City Attorney's Office.
  • 00:12:06
    So when a criminal case comes in,
  • 00:12:08
    from the police, we review it and if it is a case that can fit into the programmatic guidelines for ethos, we then ask a participant if they would like to do that instead of traditional court.
  • 00:12:25
    They have to agree to that and seek counsel for that before they enter into the program.
  • 00:12:32
    So it's a completely different type of track.
  • 00:12:34
    The Office of Neighborhood Safety's project piece is what's called a gun violence intervention, community violence intervention hybrid program.
  • 00:12:46
    It takes aspects of the gun violence intervention program.
  • 00:12:50
    We use a model primarily from John Jay, although we also have worked a lot with the research and works of Thomas Abt, who run gun violence intervention for New York.
  • 00:13:06
    And he has a book that has a model in it that we also came to place into our hybrid model.
  • 00:13:15
    The community violence intervention piece of that is more working with people in the community and community organizations to help intervene with folks in the community that can act as trusted messengers and help support people and pull people out of violence along with city officials.
  • 00:13:36
    Do you have anything else you want to add about that?
• • 00:13:39
    Sure.
• • SPEAKER_07
  • 00:13:40
    Welcome, Director Blakey.
• • SPEAKER_10
  • 00:13:42
    Good morning, City Council.
  • 00:13:45
    Did not have plans on attending today, but was able to show up and do this and talk about the labor of love of the Office of Labor Safety.
  • 00:13:54
    Project piece was started three years ago when we started, so it is part of the, as City Attorney Olson said, it's part of the gun violence reduction strategy that we have here for the City of St. Paul.
  • 00:14:05
    It is a work with Operation Aspire, so SBPD,
  • 00:14:09
    and several other community-based organizations.
  • 00:14:14
    And so it's the strategy that we have been working with that has bought down our crime statistics and our gun statistics that you see most of the time the police department talk about and their non-fatal gun units.
  • 00:14:26
    So it's a collaborative work between all of us that really have been driving down those numbers, which is in the next slide.
  • 00:14:34
    So I'll let you go.
• • SPEAKER_07
  • 00:14:36
    does that answer your question Council President?
  • 00:14:38
    It answers my question.
  • 00:14:39
    We've got a follow-up question from Council Member Johnson.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 00:14:42
    Not a question more so helpful like a nod and also I'm really glad that you're here Director Blakey and then also I really appreciate the additional slides from the Office of Neighborhood Safety on project piece like in the appendix piece as well just the demographic
  • 00:14:58
    I think also just being able to hear a little bit more about both programs.
  • 00:15:03
    I know personally for me, I know you have to get permission for the success stories, but I'm personally interested in reading a little bit more about that, and especially the feedback that we're getting from Ethos, knowing that I think the 2025 funding was the first
  • 00:15:18
    committee.
  • 00:15:36
    are really in many ways setting a tone for how the city responds to some of the pieces that I think would really eventually be in a space where it can help really divert from future interactions with our commercial system for some of our neighbors that would normally have maybe a more chance of re-entry.
  • 00:15:55
    So I just appreciate that and wanted to note that because that was something that I had asked at the pre-meetings and so it's just great to see the questions answered.
  • 00:16:04
    So thank you.
• • SPEAKER_04
  • 00:16:06
    Thank you, Councilmember.
  • 00:16:08
    This slide is really great.
  • 00:16:09
    It has a lot of information on it.
  • 00:16:13
    We have a 33% reduction in gunshot victims, which is a huge number, really great.
  • 00:16:20
    Our average age of victims remains pretty young, about 25 and a half, so our split of folks in the program is about 50% juveniles, 50% adults.
  • 00:16:33
    It's pretty evenly split.
  • 00:16:36
    We have over 50 community interventions.
  • 00:16:39
    We still have a majority of black folks that are coming through, majority male as well.
  • 00:16:45
    And we have six partner departments in the work.
  • 00:16:52
    Murders by gun have gone down significantly as well and I think you're tracking that.
  • 00:17:00
    We have nine this year and that is a significant reduction from previous years and you can see that here in the chart as well.
  • 00:17:14
    We also have a focus that we are looking at for prevention on the prevention side, looking at working with folks earlier and that commitment has really been built out by adding the new team members that are coming on
  • 00:17:38
    in life coaching as well as case management folks that can really step in and build out those wraparound services.
• • SPEAKER_07
  • 00:17:49
    And I think while you're moving to the next slide, the thing that I do really, really appreciate is seeing sort of what the caseload is.
  • 00:17:56
    And I know for some folks, if you think about case management, 202 folks through Ethros in 2024 might seem like a small caseload given what we know about
  • 00:18:09
    and the City Council.
  • 00:18:27
    and so you know at first blush you might think oh that's quite a small number but the amount of work that you are doing to take someone from someone who's caused harm to both restoring and healing themselves like our framework through our Public Safety Committee and also then in turn healing the person that they've harmed and being sort of a much more positively can pop someone who positively contributes to their community so I just I really want to lift up that that case management pieces
  • 00:18:56
    is just so instrumental but also is the bulk of this work.
  • 00:19:00
    So I just really, really appreciate seeing those numbers.
• • SPEAKER_04
  • 00:19:03
    Thank you, Council Vice President Kim.
  • 00:19:05
    Yeah, those numbers I just spoke about were from the project piece portion of the team's work.
  • 00:19:13
    But there is a crossover program that you may be thinking of, which is our gun violence.
  • 00:19:18
    It's a gun reduction, gun violence reduction alternative to traditional prosecution.
  • 00:19:25
    Yes, that has an ethos component.
• • SPEAKER_07
  • 00:19:28
    Thank you.
• • SPEAKER_04
  • 00:19:30
    Here's another project piece success story that we wanted to share.
  • 00:19:34
    It's a little bit longer.
  • 00:19:35
    I won't read it out verbatim, but please take a moment to read it.
  • 00:19:40
    This is from a family member.
  • 00:19:41
    One of the things that has been really great about the work of the Office of Neighborhood Safety team is that they work not only with an individual that
  • 00:19:52
    is involved in
  • 00:20:11
    things happening in the homes.
  • 00:20:13
    We look at what are the causations of that criminality, what's underlying traumas happening, things like that.
  • 00:20:24
    So that we can really assist somebody in not only changing their own path, but having the supports to keep moving in that positive direction.
  • 00:20:34
    So this is really important.
  • 00:20:38
    as well.
  • 00:20:40
    And I wanted to call that out because sometimes it's not exactly clear, like, why are you helping a family member?
  • 00:20:46
    Why are you spending this time on a person who isn't the justice-involved person specifically?
  • 00:20:50
    And this individual was also, you can see, out on the streets, did not have a good direction, and really, really benefited from the work with the life coach and considers that person to be a support in their life that helped them get on a path to get their GED.
  • 00:21:07
    and he was saying without Andre, my life coach, I would just be another guy out on the streets trying to figure out his life.
  • 00:21:16
    And so this is the real work that's happening with those folks every day.
  • 00:21:27
    This is a continuation of the recent initiatives, specifically the ARPA projects that ONS has been working on.
  • 00:21:35
    As mentioned, they onboarded three life coaches, and those are specifically for the project piece GBI-CBI Work, and they're working with the group violence intervention folks.
  • 00:21:47
    The NSCC hosted three Goals Not Guns campaigns in partnership with Face to Face Academy,
  • 00:21:55
    also St Paul City School and youth on board St Paul Rec Centers is hosting the final campaign and that's going on right now and those contest winners are going to be announced shortly I was trying to get them here today but they're not announced yet so I don't want to give away any of the secret information at this point but we'll be getting I think three new shirts right so that's exciting they're always really cool and
  • 00:22:23
    will be putting that information out so that folks can support these organizations.
  • 00:22:29
    The money does go back to those organizations.
  • 00:22:34
    They also piloted outreach with Boots on the Ground Community Patrol and in partnership with SPPD and they went to priority locations through one of the micro grants that the NSCC does and they have also been hosting the ONS podcast which I hope you've had the opportunity to listen to.
  • 00:22:50
    They have partnered with a broadcast organization as well that can carry up to
  • 00:22:59
    This is just a little more on the three schools that have been working on the Goals Not Guns campaign.
  • 00:23:25
    I thought this was really fun.
  • 00:23:26
    These are the shirts from the April campaign that had been announced.
  • 00:23:29
    Unfortunately, you can't purchase them anymore, but if you're excited about these shirts, you'll be excited about the new shirts.
  • 00:23:39
    We also have an update for data practices.
  • 00:23:41
    We'll be bringing in a centralized group to handle data practice requests.
  • 00:23:47
    That group will be housed in the city attorney's office, and we will
  • 00:23:51
    have three FTEs at this point that will directly support that work.
  • 00:23:55
    One is a supervising attorney that will supervise folks in HR law as well as the folks in data practices.
  • 00:24:05
    And then the addition of two data practice specialists which are on the proposed budget for this year.
  • 00:24:11
    And we're working also on building workflow with the council director, the city clerk, yourselves, OTC, and folks from the mayor's office.
  • 00:24:24
    Here's some brief information on the criminal backlog.
  • 00:24:26
    Now if you remember that's an ARP funded project as well and that there are 6.5 ARP funded attorneys and staff that are currently in the office that will be ending their time this year.
  • 00:24:44
    You can see the backlog has come down quite a bit.
  • 00:24:47
    We still have 250 cases that are in a backlog status.
  • 00:24:52
    The reason that it's so hard to clear these backlogs is because the backlog is flowing at the same time as regular caseload work.
  • 00:24:59
    And during COVID, those numbers went down significantly, but now they're back up to pre-COVID numbers.
  • 00:25:06
    So we have prosecutors taking on a large amount of cases, that is.
  • 00:25:11
    well over the recommended amount of cases for each individual prosecutor by the ABA.
  • 00:25:16
    So we're struggling with large caseloads.
  • 00:25:23
    In 2026, here are our proposed changes.
  • 00:25:26
    As mentioned in the last slide, we've promoted a senior attorney to supervising attorney to build that data practices group as well as supervise the HR attorneys.
  • 00:25:37
    We have two data practice specialists that are in the proposed budget.
  • 00:25:41
    We're eliminating a law clerk that has been housed in the litigation division and we took an attrition adjustment as well for a total of 165,784.
  • 00:25:56
    and we also took a reduction from the travel and training budget of $9,752 and an ONS reduction from their subcontractor budget of $154,000 for a total of $163,752.
  • 00:26:20
    And this is a proposed change for the reduction in staff that's happening in the Criminal Division.
  • 00:26:26
    These are all FTEs that are funded by ARP and the ARP will be ending for 4.5 of those folks as of the end of 2025.
  • 00:26:41
    We're able to keep one attorney on in an ARP status.
  • 00:26:45
    for into 2026.
  • 00:26:49
    And then we're a victim witness coordinator will also be ending their time and would be shifting them to the victim that the grant service on the victim witness Grant.
  • 00:27:04
    So we'll be able to keep them for another year as well.
  • 00:27:11
    And this is just a deeper breakdown of that.
  • 00:27:20
    Here's a budget summary on our spending by fund.
  • 00:27:29
    You'll see the grants are taking a large reduction and we are still applying for some grants.
  • 00:27:37
    We've had several grants for several years that probably won't renew and you're also aware that the federal government is treating grants quite differently at this point, so grants are harder to get.
  • 00:27:52
    and then the 79% reduction in the criminal backlog project is about the ending of the ARP money and those staff.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 00:28:11
    Thank you, Council Vice President.
  • 00:28:15
    City Attorney Olson.
  • 00:28:16
    I have a question.
  • 00:28:17
    Can you help me further quantify just some of the work that is captured in the criminal backlog project and the victim witness coordinator, the kind of roles that we're referring to and just the work that they do?
  • 00:28:32
    It would be helpful just to fully capture.
  • 00:28:35
    I hear the funding pieces of it, but I don't actually know how that turns into the work that is being done that wouldn't be done if we aren't able to find alternative funding sources in the future.
• • SPEAKER_04
  • 00:28:45
    Yeah, thank you, Councilmember Johnson, for that question.
  • 00:28:48
    The work that is being done by those five prosecutors has concentrated largely on reducing that backlog.
  • 00:28:55
    So you saw those numbers go from over 3,100 down to 250 cases.
  • 00:29:00
    But there's still those 250 cases that are there.
  • 00:29:05
    The addition of those five attorneys has helped shift the caseload across the office as well.
  • 00:29:12
    We've had a huge problem over time with really burdensome caseloads for our folks.
  • 00:29:20
    The ABA recommended caseload for prosecutors about 400 cases.
  • 00:29:25
    Our folks carry anywhere from anywhere between five to 600 cases.
  • 00:29:33
    and then it will shift to even more when these prosecutors leave.
  • 00:29:38
    Is that right, Jos?
  • 00:29:40
    Okay.
  • 00:29:40
    That's numbers off the top of my head.
  • 00:29:44
    And we do have some numbers in here, and they're specifically in the appendix, a breakdown of, you can see court appearances have gone up per prosecutor, court appearances have gone up per victim witness coordinators,
  • 00:29:57
    and you can see their individual caseloads and we listed out both with showing with the ARP addition as well as what will happen to those caseloads when those folks are no longer supporting us.
  • 00:30:14
    And one of the things that has been an ancillary
  • 00:30:19
    to being more rightsized and staffing with prosecutors has been that we're able to focus more on the ethos work and building that.
  • 00:30:31
    The ethos work is not something that is required.
  • 00:30:35
    We do it because we feel that it's important.
  • 00:30:36
    Those diversion programs are kind of taken out of hide for us and we think it's important.
  • 00:30:43
    We are committed to that work.
  • 00:30:48
    but having the supports to have attorneys going into court for these cases every day which is our statutorily required work has allowed us to have other staff that has been building out the ethos work and so that has been a real ancillary benefit that we're going to be struggling with and figuring out how to keep the staff that we need to support ethos as well as staff cases.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 00:31:18
    Yeah, I think as a follow-up, one of the common things of this budget cycle I feel like that has been articulated from multiple presentations is trying to capture, you know, the cost of doing business.
  • 00:31:29
    And I feel like some departments, especially the two that we're here from today, there's a lot of work that goes into it with the staffing.
  • 00:31:36
    There's a lot of the staff numbers that we see that reflect the work that
  • 00:31:39
    and the hours spent on that case.
  • 00:31:43
    And so I would really encourage the conversations for next year to be proactive, especially with the City Attorney's Office around what the impacts that we are seeing in that.
  • 00:31:53
    Because I know with the criminal backlog piece,
  • 00:31:56
    I'm glad that ARPA was able to afford an opportunity to get kind of caught up with that.
  • 00:32:01
    It does make me wonder about what happened when we didn't have ARPA money to do so, like how we managed.
  • 00:32:06
    And then also just how do we prevent from getting to a place where we have 3,100 cases backlog in the future if we're not able to fund those.
  • 00:32:14
    And so I consider that a part of the business conversation.
  • 00:32:16
    And so I just, I want to say that I welcome that conversation in advance of the 2027 budget cycle knowing that we
  • 00:32:24
    have this potential, I think, to plan ahead a little bit.
  • 00:32:27
    And this may not be the most, it's not the shiny budget topic that fosters the headlines in different spaces, but it's incredibly important.
  • 00:32:38
    And so I just wanted to echo that and share that that raised my eyebrow a little bit when I was going through that and wondering what some of the work would be for the funding if we aren't able to get the grant funding.
  • 00:32:50
    so just some pieces but wanted to articulate that to you just to let you know like that that is actually something that I slightly raises concerns to me but also think that we can plan accordingly and so there are a few places that I see opportunities for that this is one area and so I'm hoping that we can have that we'll continue those conversations as we head into 2026 and I welcome the feedback that you all are either having or the real-time numbers and stuff that you're seeing knowing that the case law has pretty much stayed
  • 00:33:19
    Thank you Councilmember for those words and that support.
• • SPEAKER_04
  • 00:33:41
    Yeah, we are really concerned about it as well.
  • 00:33:44
    The numbers that I was mentioning start on page 39 in the appendix, and then there are a few different slides that show numbers there and information on the caseloads where we're at.
  • 00:34:03
    So unless you have other questions specifically on those numbers, I will definitely be updating you and continuing to let folks know what we're experiencing.
  • 00:34:14
    Because we are committed to doing individualized justice and ensuring that we're giving prosecutors the time they need to thoughtfully review cases and really work with folks in the right way to get great outcomes.
  • 00:34:29
    So they need space to do that, and I appreciate your recognizing that.
• • SPEAKER_07
  • 00:34:34
    We've got a question from Chair Yang.
• • Nelsie Yang
  • 00:34:37
    Thanks, Council Vice President.
  • 00:34:39
    I have a couple of questions here.
  • 00:34:41
    Thanks so much for your presentation today.
  • 00:34:43
    I'm looking at the 2026 proposed changes slide, and I'm wondering if you can explain a bit more about what the data practices specialists will be doing, and also how did you all make the decision to
  • 00:34:59
    to fund those two additional positions rather than continuing some of those attorney positions in the office overall, the ones that were funded by AARP.
• • SPEAKER_04
  • 00:35:12
    Council Member Liang, Council Members, thank you for your question.
  • 00:35:16
    So the data practice specialist, the data practice centralization was a priority for the mayor's office and in shifting the work really from the work of departments so right now the data practices is
  • 00:35:32
    has done in a more decentralized way by department.
  • 00:35:36
    Each department has a person in their department who is assigned to that work and the data practices work may be their full job or it may be
  • 00:35:47
    of the city of St. Paul.
  • 00:36:06
    and most other cities have groups that do data practices for the city that focus on that work all the time so they have training and background and specifically working on the requests and then also working with our city clerk as well in that process of course.
  • 00:36:27
    I would say for us in the process it wasn't a question of prioritizing those specialists over our attorneys.
  • 00:36:37
    We did request that we are able to keep, actually for several budget years we made requests then to keep the folks that were on ARP because of the reasons that we've talked about just in terms of the caseload and the effect to the work.
  • 00:36:54
    and the Data Practice Specialists were placed at a higher priority to build that program for this budget year in the conversations that we had with the mayor's office and that's where we landed.
  • 00:37:06
    I know this year is a particularly difficult year for a couple of reasons.
  • 00:37:12
    that's where we landed out of the process with the mayor's office is bringing those two new positions in and those are non-attorney positions that would be folks directly supporting the centralization of that work.
• • Nelsie Yang
  • 00:37:29
    Okay, thank you.
  • 00:37:29
    I appreciate that explanation and I know that the
  • 00:37:33
    and the proposed spending
  • 00:37:50
    see grants for positions and just programming overall.
  • 00:37:54
    I want to thank you for that and encourage you all to keep doing that too because it is a significant decrease that we see there, the $2.8 million.
• • SPEAKER_07
  • 00:38:03
    And then I have another question too.
• • Nelsie Yang
  • 00:38:05
    I'd like to go to the slides about the NSECE goals, not guns campaign.
  • 00:38:11
    So just one thing that stuck out to me is that the St. Paul Parks and Recs that are a part of this, they're all in Ward 1.
  • 00:38:22
    And so I'm wondering, is this supposed to be Ward 1?
  • 00:38:25
    Is this a campaign that is Ward 1 specific?
  • 00:38:29
    or not?
  • 00:38:30
    And if it's not, can you explain why it's so concentrated just in that area?
  • 00:38:35
    Is that something you can talk to?
  • 00:38:36
    Great.
  • 00:38:37
    Perfect.
• • SPEAKER_10
  • 00:38:40
    Thank you for the question.
  • 00:38:41
    I can expand on that.
  • 00:38:43
    These were the rec centers that had youth that were interested in attending.
  • 00:38:48
    The youth on boards represent all of the wards.
  • 00:38:53
    So that second group represents all of the wards.
  • 00:38:55
    And then St. Paul City Schools has a representation of students from across all of the wards in the city.
  • 00:39:03
    And so that is how those were selected.
  • 00:39:06
    So I know that they show up in Ward 1, but those were the rec centers.
  • 00:39:10
    that had young people that were interested in engaging with the program not from lack of recruitment or engagement with other wards but those were the wards where young people were also more likely affected by gun violence but were also ready to engage with the work and so we continue the recruitment through the NSCC but also because we have circulars and a lot of other things that are happening we have youth
  • 00:39:35
    that don't necessarily live in a specific ward, but come to these rec centers because that's where their support and friend groups are located.
• • Nelsie Yang
  • 00:39:45
    Just a question for clarification.
  • 00:39:48
    Are you saying then that there were no use in other wards that were from rec centers and other wards that were interested in being a part of this?
• • SPEAKER_10
  • 00:39:57
    I can repeat that, I'm sorry.
• • Nelsie Yang
  • 00:39:59
    So rec center used to attend rec centers and other wards, they showed no interest in being a part of this?
• • SPEAKER_10
  • 00:40:05
    I would say that the recruitment showed that there was no one that was currently interested to have a cohort in that space but that recruitment is still happening in various wards and I would encourage you if you're interested in making sure that your ward is represented to reach out to manager Jacobson and she can provide and you can help recruit young folks in your ward to participate in the program.
• • Nelsie Yang
  • 00:40:31
    Okay, thank you.
  • 00:40:32
    I just have one last comment to make on it.
  • 00:40:35
    I'm bringing this up because for me
  • 00:40:39
    I do want to have an interest in making sure that programming that is funded by the city, that the work is spread out.
  • 00:40:45
    And I'm hearing what you're saying, Director Balicki, about the interest, the concentration being in Ward 1 here.
  • 00:40:50
    But I'm just recalling other conversations that we've had, even at the library board, where even in one of our library programming for youth, it is Ward 1 focused.
  • 00:41:02
    there were many of us at the table who were like, hey, we're really interested in bringing that to our Ward 2.
  • 00:41:07
    I think it was around one of the bus vehicles transporting kids to the programming that was offered in Ward 1.
  • 00:41:15
    And it is really important to spread out the programming and yet there's even incidences over in Ward 5.
  • 00:41:24
    This was really recent where a youth carried a gun to school.
  • 00:41:27
    It's so common for us to be hearing stories like that and so
  • 00:41:31
    and our youth to be a part of these.
  • 00:41:37
    And if the recruitment is being done, I think that's really great.
  • 00:41:40
    But I think we should have larger conversations and be more strategic about how we can have the work be more spread out knowing that there are other areas in our city that have very deep disparities too.
  • 00:41:50
    And I just want to name the east side and north end areas being part of those.
• • SPEAKER_10
  • 00:41:55
    It should be noted that a lot of our work does include other wards.
  • 00:42:02
    Again, as City Council Olsen stated, a lot of that information, those individuals don't like to be recognized in the work.
  • 00:42:11
    and so it's very hard to come in front of the City Council and put things out for individuals that aren't prepared to have their name recognized in that space but the young gentleman that took the gun to school we are working with that family so the work that ONS is definitely represented outside of Ward 1 and other representation but I would encourage you to engage a little bit more with Director
  • 00:42:37
    Council, Jacobson, and the Neighborhood Safety Community Council.
  • 00:42:41
    And then, therefore, you would be a little bit more clearly informed about the members that are in your ward that participate in activities in ONS.
  • 00:42:48
    And so it would be welcoming to have a little bit more interaction from you, Council Member, so that when we come and talk about individuals, you'll be more clearly informed about the individuals that participate in your ward.
• • 00:43:01
    All right, thank you.
• • SPEAKER_07
  • 00:43:02
    Yeah, I also really appreciate that invitation.
  • 00:43:04
    I was at the Rec Center last night and saw some of the GVI programming stuff there.
  • 00:43:08
    And advertised, but again, it's like the interest of the kiddos that are showing up too.
  • 00:43:13
    So I agree and very interested in, interested and appreciate the open invitation.
  • 00:43:22
    We have Council Member Coleman, back to Council Member Johnson, and I see Council Member- I'm just going to respond to, but we can talk offline.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 00:43:31
    That sounds great.
  • 00:43:32
    Thank you, Vice President Kim.
  • 00:43:35
    Thank you, City Attorney Olson, and thanks for this presentation.
  • 00:43:38
    It's been very helpful.
  • 00:43:39
    I just want to go back quickly, sorry to bounce us around, but back to the Data Practices Specialist.
  • 00:43:43
    I'm curious about, that strikes me
  • 00:43:46
    I see a lot of
  • 00:44:05
    to prevent litigation as a result of things slipping through the cracks around data practices.
  • 00:44:09
    I'm just curious if there's been any attempt to quantify that or any reflections on, you know, I don't expect that we'll recoup those costs directly, but where we might see a kind of tangible value in other ways as a result of consolidating that work.
• • SPEAKER_04
  • 00:44:26
    Thanks, Council Member Commin, for that question.
  • 00:44:30
    Yes, I would anticipate that that's the case.
  • 00:44:31
    I think that's one of the reasons that we're looking at the centralization of it.
  • 00:44:36
    I don't know that we have historical data on how many hours are spent by PIOs across the departments on gathering information.
  • 00:44:47
    We have done some preliminary work
  • 00:45:03
    In thinking about the idea of centralizing and what that work would entail, we had recommended a few more staff than we're initially getting.
  • 00:45:16
    And I do anticipate that we'll see the need for additional staff because our data practice requests have continued to increase just in volume as well as number.
  • 00:45:29
    So that accounts for just a trend line that's going up for people's time and attention to these requests.
  • 00:45:41
    And I think having folks that do the work all of the time and maybe a closer coordinated system between the functionalities of OTC, so how we can pull data and where data is stored,
  • 00:45:58
    I think is also something that can be closer coordinated.
  • 00:46:03
    There is an OTC staff member who has pretty much been dedicated to data practices work throughout the city.
  • 00:46:13
    And this would be a way for that person then to support into this team rather than taking
  • 00:46:17
    direction from 14 different points of contact in all those different departments.
  • 00:46:23
    So we expect to see some streamlining in that work as well and we continue to work with OTC on kind of centralizing where the data is held and how it's held so that it's easier to pull than it is now.
• • SPEAKER_07
  • 00:46:38
    Thank you.
  • 00:46:41
    Council Member Johnson.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 00:46:42
    I guess my question is related actually to Council Member Yang as a follow-up on the front of gun violence prevention.
  • 00:46:51
    I was just curious and wondering if we're working with at all the World Youth Connect and their safe streets, safe lives.
  • 00:47:01
    campaign in any way, just more so out of curiosity of other avenues for potential partnership.
  • 00:47:06
    And I know that some of the young folks are pretty involved on the east side in particular.
  • 00:47:11
    And so I just was more curious if that was any sort of outreach to them or coordination that way.
• • SPEAKER_10
  • 00:47:19
    Thank you Councilmember Johnson, Councilmembers.
  • 00:47:20
    Yes, we continue to work with World Youth Connect and they are engaged with, we help them secure a grant, that grant because they did the community based indicators work with Harvard and so we help support their application to that and we continue to work with them.
  • 00:47:38
    We are currently working and they're presenting with us with Vera Institute next week and so our continued work with World Youth Connect and
  • 00:47:46
    and the City Council.
  • 00:48:02
    on that end of the ward.
  • 00:48:06
    Again, like I previously said, a lot of them don't want that recognition because they are trying to protect and not glorify the work that they're doing with young folks that are in places of struggle right now.
  • 00:48:18
    And so we really try to recognize who and what we talk about in the public eye because as they transition into individuals later on down the line,
  • 00:48:29
    we don't want somebody to be able to Google them and Google this presentation and see that information so we're very particular and making sure that when we engage and tell stories that it just it makes a lot of sense about what we're doing it's very intentional.
• • SPEAKER_07
  • 00:48:45
    I just have a quick add-on to
  • 00:48:49
    Council Member Johnson's earlier point around staffing, so I am really bad at math.
  • 00:48:54
    But just based on my first blush, based on the excess caseload, and the number of caseload that each lawyer should have.
  • 00:49:02
    By my bad math, it appears that you would need 12 more lawyers to be at more of the manageable standard.
  • 00:49:09
    Okay, I'm seeing nods, so I'm not that bad at math.
  • 00:49:11
    I was trying to text her and be like, can you do this math for me?
  • 00:49:16
    Can you just check?
  • 00:49:17
    But it's to say that as we think about, again, what is the cost of doing business, that is a number that I'm interested in.
  • 00:49:27
    I don't think any department would find that and any department director would find that acceptable to be 12 staff short given the caseload that they're working on and I think we see that across the city for varying sort of services that we're providing but I just want to lift that up I really appreciated that point and I thought well how many lawyers would that be and I came up with no less than 12 so we will hand it back to you and I think I mean we're still doing really great on time so we'll just keep having questions as they come
• • Anika Bowie
  • 00:49:54
    I just had a three-prong question before we got too far, but first I just want to say I am so happy to see you.
  • 00:50:03
    Director Blakey, thank you so much for your commitment and your dedication to building this foundation of this work.
  • 00:50:08
    My three-prong question is really for ONS just to get a refresher.
  • 00:50:14
    I also will be following up with questions if there's more detail.
  • 00:50:18
    but the three questions is based off of like staffing and capacity just getting an update because I remember last year we talked you were committed to creating unionized positions and I know that had took a while so just curious around if we have met if you have met the fully staffed goals and also just any impact
  • 00:50:42
    on Program Delivery.
  • 00:50:43
    And then my second question is around funding with the impact and the reduction of federal funding.
  • 00:50:50
    What does that mean?
  • 00:50:51
    How is that impacting current services?
  • 00:50:53
    Are we going to see potential cuts in services?
  • 00:50:58
    And then my last question is just connected to the second question, which is what is the strategic plan for 2026, just with the adjustments, and especially with
  • 00:51:10
    You know, we're seeing like temporary closures of like the library on the corridor.
  • 00:51:15
    There's going to be a lot of need.
  • 00:51:17
    I'm just, you know, wondering around what is the strategic plan for 2026, especially with, you know, the challenges of the deep reductions that we're seeing in this budget.
• • SPEAKER_04
  • 00:51:32
    Thank you, Council Member Bailey, for your question.
  • 00:51:34
    Council Member, Council Members,
  • 00:51:37
    can I just clarify are you asking about CEO across the board or specifically with regard to the particularly yeah I think my colleagues really covered some of the staffing questions but I'm just particularly around like the old Office of Neighborhood Safety okay we can both probably answer
• • SPEAKER_10
  • 00:51:57
    Council President, Council Member Bui, that is a real in-depth question that I think we don't have a lot of time to go in-depth and so I think a follow-up would be more appropriate to answer all of those questions and we can share the ONS strategic plan.
  • 00:52:14
    It's located on our website and so you can look at what the strategic plan
  • 00:52:18
    for those are as far as funding and funding gaps go as you see there is a $154,000 reduction to subcontractors that the office will be absorbing in this cut and just as we said the price of doing business is
  • 00:52:33
    Committee.
  • 00:52:49
    that is where that lies.
  • 00:53:10
    the city has jumped in and done those things because we've seen a gap.
  • 00:53:14
    ONS has filled that gap to the best of their ability with the capacity and staffing that we have.
  • 00:53:20
    We are reaching our staffing quota based on the dollars that we have through ARPA that we reallocated and so we have, if you see in the slide, I think it's a couple more slides over, it'll talk about the vacancies and the
  • 00:53:35
    the feeling of those things.
  • 00:53:37
    We are still looking to bring on three additional life coaches for familiar faces as well.
  • 00:53:43
    That looks at the whole cross section of the ecosystem.
  • 00:53:45
    So not only gun violence, which is in Project Peace, but also familiar faces, which is also housed in ONS, which is housed in CAO.
  • 00:53:54
    So as we continue to look at what that is across the board, we are onboarding individuals in that space.
  • 00:54:00
    as far as being able to provide the services to the level that we have in the past.
  • 00:54:07
    Yes, it will be a strain.
  • 00:54:08
    No, we don't have funds.
  • 00:54:10
    Yes, we are looking at how do we diversify the funding platforms.
  • 00:54:15
    But as we're talking about cuts and things like that, yes, there will be cuts that will happen and it will impact the city about the capacity, just as we talked about the number of caseloads.
  • 00:54:25
    of the City of St Paul.
  • 00:54:43
    and the
  • 00:55:05
    the impacts of all of those different things ONS is addressing.
  • 00:55:09
    We have Chris Michaels who has a staff of three that has been just killing it as far as I can say in doing the work with our unsheltered and our folks experiencing mental health and chemical dependency.
  • 00:55:22
    Our life coaches have been balancing showing up at hospitals, rec centers.
  • 00:55:26
    of the City of St. Paul.
  • 00:55:32
    I think it requires a further conversation and I'm pretty
  • 00:55:50
    one side depart will be able to provide you with some of that additional information if you can provide them with some pointed questions in an email that would be great.
• • SPEAKER_04
  • 00:56:01
    I'm happy to follow up with you if you have additional questions on any of that.
  • 00:56:09
    I also want to note along that same line the federal grant landscape has changed quite significantly and in specific with supports from OJP which used to fund significant grants for
  • 00:56:24
    programs like GBI, CVI that really have a lot of data behind them for success not only in St Paul but in many cities and that work has just almost completely gone away from the federal level.
  • 00:56:37
    They're just not funding the work, they're not supporting the work.
  • 00:56:41
    and so that is a direct impact that the city is going to feel because we had been in the past receiving a lot of support in training and in grants through the White House, through OJP and supporting the great results that we've gotten so far.
  • 00:56:58
    The team across the city is tracking where grants are at.
  • 00:57:02
    A lot of language is being inserted into those grant
  • 00:57:06
    applications that we find to be illegal, to straight up illegal, unconstitutional in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act.
  • 00:57:16
    The city has filed two lawsuits so far with a coalition of other cities that are currently in process.
  • 00:57:23
    We have injunctions on two of them allowing us to proceed.
  • 00:57:26
    in applying for grants for various departments across the city and we expect to file additional suits in the not too distant future so we're really tracking a lot of those effects not only to ONS and the work that they do and the support that comes through there but also to other departments across the city for just you know fighting for the money that's due to our communities.
  • 00:57:55
    So this slide here begins our budget to actuals historically through the general fund and CAO as the first slide.
  • 00:58:03
    You can see from 2021 forward we've normally had a bit of overage.
  • 00:58:08
    That's pretty standard historically.
  • 00:58:10
    We do kind of run a tight ship here.
  • 00:58:13
    We try to be very responsible with public dollars and just keep doing more with less.
  • 00:58:20
    And with the exception of 2024, we did, as you are aware, raises across the board for attorney salaries that was a market-based shift.
  • 00:58:30
    and really helped with our retention and recruitment and in 2025 you see a big percentage left.
  • 00:58:40
    That variance is just due to the fact that most of those dollars are salary dollars and fringe dollars and so they'll continue to come out.
  • 00:58:48
    This is as of September so we still have a lot of money going out the door there and we'll end up somewhere in that same percentage rate at the end of the year or less.
  • 00:59:06
    This one is the Budget to Actual General Fund for ONS and the office started in 2022 so that's why you see it only back to 2022.
  • 00:59:20
    The original variance there is from positions that we've been trying to hire.
  • 00:59:28
    A lot of these positions are new to the city, I know you've heard this before, but
  • 00:59:32
    They've been challenging to hire to find the right background, the right experience with the right individuals to fill those positions.
  • 00:59:40
    So some of them we've had to build from scratch with HR, their new classifications as well.
  • 00:59:46
    So a lot of that work is kind of behind the scenes work that has pushed out the timeline on our ability to hire.
  • 00:59:52
    and we've also shifted from the general fund due to the budget this year in specific money into special funds that were coming out of general fund accounts so that is that's the variance that you see this year has to do with some of that kind of looking at you know how are we supporting the budget freeze and you know and trying to recoup for the city that was a request from OFS.
  • 01:00:28
    This is our FTE summary.
  • 01:00:30
    I know we've spent a lot of time talking about some of our FTEs already.
  • 01:00:33
    I don't want to spend too much time here unless you have specific questions.
  • 01:00:36
    You'll note again the reduction on the 5.5 and that is the criminal backlog project that represents the prosecutors there and the grants account does have a change for FTEs as well.
  • 01:00:56
    They've been hiring
  • 01:00:57
    The Life Coaches and some other folks.
  • 01:00:59
    Is Life Coaches correct?
• • SPEAKER_10
  • 01:01:01
    Yes.
• • SPEAKER_04
  • 01:01:05
    And this is some detail on our personnel budget.
  • 01:01:07
    It's a break out of where we have the salaries and wages versus benefits.
  • 01:01:13
    And then an attrition number which reflects just cyclic vacancies that happen within the department.
  • 01:01:23
    And then the same for ONS here.
  • 01:01:27
    you'll notice a large shift in the O&S grants fund numbers and that is because the grants are decreasing as well as folks you know we've shifted some folks off of grants but there are still several O&S staff that are also
  • 01:01:43
    that will come up again before this body and future budget years as we look at how we commit to this really successful work.
  • 01:02:00
    Here's our current unfilled positions.
  • 01:02:02
    We have a senior attorney position that is in criminal.
  • 01:02:07
    We've asked to fill these positions with the administration, even though we're on a hiring freeze.
  • 01:02:13
    We had a retirement and as we've talked about, the prosecutor numbers are low for the work and so
  • 01:02:21
    Feeling that position especially considering where we're at with ethos is really really important so that we can continue all the work there The supervising attorney is in the civil division.
  • 01:02:30
    That's the position that will be the be running the The work for data practices and Then the two specialists would be the new ad and so those were vacancies pending the approval of those two positions and
  • 01:02:54
    The unfailed positions, and I want to ask, I know that I think Councilmember Johnson had a question about some specifics on these vacancies and we will be following up with you as well to make sure that your questions are answered, but the three that are vacant, the three different classifications are the project manager for GBI and the outreach specialists for Project Peace as well as life coaches.
  • 01:03:19
    and those have been in process of hiring.
  • 01:03:22
    They've done interviews, they have several offers out, so we're hopeful that those positions will be able to be filled up quite shortly.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 01:03:34
    I think just for context pieces, I know the different positions that were established through the Office of Neighborhood Safety have been taken a little bit longer when it comes to setting it up through the
  • 01:03:53
    HR process and all of the things.
  • 01:03:56
    Do we feel like that's the precedence for, is that the setup piece that's taking the longest?
  • 01:04:02
    Or do we kind of foresee some of those continued challenges if we are able to get additional funding for more staff in the future?
  • 01:04:11
    Is this kind of like, since we're doing this for the first time, but afterwards it'll be a little bit more easier?
  • 01:04:16
    Or do we kind of foresee just it continuing to take a little bit more time through the traditional
• • SPEAKER_04
  • 01:04:23
    Councilor
  • 01:04:42
    in any other department that hadn't been contemplated previously.
  • 01:04:47
    And that is a process that you're probably familiar with.
  • 01:04:52
    It takes a while just in terms of looking at where the classifications go and doing the research and working with unions and things like that.
  • 01:05:02
    I think we've, and Brooke I'll look to you to see if there's any additional classification that we would need to add that's not reflected.
  • 01:05:10
    But the life coaches and the outreach specialists, I think that's been a bit of a heavy lift just kind of to get to a place where these folks are being recognized for the level of complexity of the work that they do in an appropriate salary band and an appropriate classification that
  • 01:05:30
    of the city of St Paul.
  • 01:05:49
    as well as
• • SPEAKER_10
  • 01:06:06
    are mental health and behavioral health folks that we will be hiring for familiar faces.
  • 01:06:13
    And again, as City Attorney Olson said, these are not positions that are readily available in the city, so they have to be designed to make sure that
  • 01:06:24
    we are getting the appropriate certification levels that we need for some of the referral work and pieces that we have found necessary as well.
  • 01:06:34
    The other sticking point that we have found is also making sure that we are hiring people that have lived experience and going through that process so we have individuals.
  • 01:06:42
    that yes have had previous criminal backgrounds or other types of social determinants that make it very difficult to do a traditional civil service hiring process and so the city and ONS have been committed to making sure that we hire
  • 01:06:59
    residents from St Paul that are representative of the work that we do.
  • 01:07:02
    And so it has taken just a little bit more time, but I think thought and carefulness and planning has been put into it.
  • 01:07:08
    And so it's kind of worth the growing pain and just making sure that we are giving people livable wages for the work that we do.
  • 01:07:15
    A lot of the individuals and the work that we're doing are very similar to those that we find in our police department and trying to make sure that we
  • 01:07:22
    and so on.
  • 01:07:39
    It's worth the growing pains.
  • 01:07:40
    It's been a lot of growing pains in that sense, but I think once we get it all solidified that it won't be a continuing thing.
  • 01:07:47
    So we will gladly take all of the funding and money that you give us to fill those positions.
  • 01:07:51
    And we'll be able to fill them once we have the funds to do that.
  • 01:07:55
    I think also just some of the uncertainty of where city people hear about hiring freezes and things like that.
  • 01:08:02
    And so they're just looking for some stability.
  • 01:08:04
    And so we want to make sure that if we're bringing people in to do this work,
  • 01:08:07
    that we have the supports and the right pay that they deserve to do this work.
• • SPEAKER_04
  • 01:08:12
    I know we've got a little bit of time here so I'll move into the appendix.
  • 01:08:25
    and we have a few more additional slides on ONS.
  • 01:08:28
    This is more of just some of their day-to-day work that they're doing, updates on what's happening with the partnership with XPIRE, building out the case management support we've talked about, building out a referral mechanism.
  • 01:08:42
    They continue to partner closely with SPPS as well as Ramsey County Juvenile Probation and implementing the new case management system as well.
  • 01:08:55
    Here's a slide on client demographics.
  • 01:08:57
    I spoke a little bit about this earlier, just in terms of the clientele that is coming into ONS.
  • 01:09:04
    You can see there's a large percentage of that client base is black or African American and descent.
  • 01:09:13
    And the client age, we have almost an even split, but more juveniles than adults, as well as more males than females.
  • 01:09:26
    Here's the outputs in terms of what folks are achieving.
  • 01:09:30
    Mobility has been a huge one as you can see, but the folks continue to work with them in kind of all aspects of stability and community engagement and education and family life.
  • 01:09:47
    So we're truly doing a wrap around
  • 01:09:51
    process and the interactions you can see are pretty high here 521 and that's just client contacts working with folks and 250 total hours along with 47 custom notifications in the GVI process.
  • 01:10:12
    for Familiar Faces, and this is the work that Christy Michaels leads.
  • 01:10:19
    She is working with a charter group of unsheltered residents who are our most frequent folks that we see out within the community.
  • 01:10:28
    and have frequent interactions either with our paramedics, police or in our justice system.
  • 01:10:35
    These folks are also coordinating closely and you may have seen a recent article that talked about the partnership between Familiar Faces and the police department in that work as well as working with DSI and St. Paul Fire.
  • 01:10:52
    They have hired two additional outreach specialists that are coming on board and still working on best practices to integrate into a coordinated system for Community First Public Safety that would build out the capability of familiar faces as well as provide a more coordinated support for the homeless work that the city's been engaged in for these past few years.
  • 01:11:19
    and here's the output so you can see how busy Chris has been.
  • 01:11:22
    She's got 343 individuals outreached since September 2024 and she's been slow to build staff.
  • 01:11:31
    She has a couple of folks now but a lot of that is just Chris.
  • 01:11:36
    So the work that you're looking at is often middle of the night work, it's 24 hour work, it's weekend work, it's holiday work and that's what Director Blakey was referring to when
  • 01:11:48
    it's very similar to the work of our other first responders and I think we should be considering our folks that are on the front lines of gun violence reduction and homeless outreach to be first responders as well in terms of coming to these difficult, stressful, tragic events that happen for folks in our community and the toll it takes on them for doing that big work.
  • 01:12:16
    Her interactions are at 975, so close to 1,000 individual interactions.
  • 01:12:21
    You can think about what's happening, where that puts her on a daily basis around the city.
  • 01:12:26
    And she's working with 25 active folks and 23 individuals housed through those efforts just in the short time that she has been here.
• • SPEAKER_07
  • 01:12:38
    I'm really interested in hearing about the neighborhood safety community council, but I think at that point we'll hold for questions after that.
  • 01:12:50
    I do want to share the success story.
• • SPEAKER_04
  • 01:13:07
    We have many success stories and many of these hopes.
  • 01:13:11
    You know don't want their stories shared publicly, but this one is a particularly heartwarming one too that we were able to share that an individual and his brother were both housed through familiar faces and They sent this communication forward to to the team to just say how much it had changed their lives they were you know unsheltered and they
  • 01:13:35
    were moved from an encampment that was unsafe and they were able to be housed and this individual has been stable in housing and you can see just through his words that we're both here safe warm because of your work and thank you from the bottom of my heart and that's that's what every you know every interaction every effect can lead to housing folks off the streets in our community and so that's that's just the really important work that's done every day in that team
  • 01:14:08
    The Neighborhood Safety Council runs that work with a 15-member group that
  • 01:14:17
    is selected through the leadership of the city and represents all of the wards across the city and they have been doing grant work.
  • 01:14:28
    They have some current grants that I think are listed on the next slide and they have an open application on grants right now that goes through the end of this week.
  • 01:14:36
    So I know that there's been encouragement to put forward any
  • 01:14:42
    of the City of St Paul.
  • 01:15:01
    These are some of the things that they have been working on and we've had a slide earlier as well about a lot of the things that they had done with some of the ARP funding that had been provided.
  • 01:15:10
    They've done nine meetings to date as a council and they have been involved as Safe Summer Nights as well.
  • 01:15:17
    And they've done a listening session.
  • 01:15:20
    that happened last year at the Unideal Library and there was a report that came out about the work there and some of the conversation that happened with the community in that space.
  • 01:15:34
    They've also had discussions and done research on zoning and
  • 01:15:40
    work with the libraries and rec spaces as well as the Goals Not Guns work and the podcast.
  • 01:15:50
    So here are the three current contracts that are coming up to an end, either at the end of 2025 or beginning of 2026.
  • 01:16:00
    These are three of the contractors that they've been working with, Boots on the Ground and Quemora,
  • 01:16:09
    they've done the OMS podcast and been able to help us put that out and then the hired organization has youth gun violence prevention events and we've served almost 200 participants, youth participants across the city and they sign safe gun commitments as well and work with youth on gun safety.
• • SPEAKER_07
  • 01:16:37
    Great, thank you.
  • 01:16:38
    It looks like we've got a question from Council Member Bui.
• • Anika Bowie
  • 01:16:41
    Thank you, Vice President.
  • 01:16:43
    Thank you so much, City Attorney Olson.
  • 01:16:46
    I have a question, particularly around, it was like the 52 signed gun commitments.
  • 01:16:51
    Can you explain a little bit more what that means?
• • SPEAKER_04
  • 01:16:54
    Sure, I'll have Brooke come and give you some of the details of that work.
• • SPEAKER_10
  • 01:17:02
    Council Members, Council Member Bowie, the gun commitment is basically a commitment to not carry a weapon on their persons.
  • 01:17:15
    These are youth that have made a pledge.
  • 01:17:17
    It's kind of the same as you see in Dare to stay drug free.
  • 01:17:20
    It is pretty much a signature from young folks that have participated in their program where they have vowed to not carry weapons.
• • Anika Bowie
  • 01:17:28
    I have a quick follow-up.
  • 01:17:29
    So with the youth who have made this commitment, and I think that's really profound, are these youth have formerly had possession of a gun?
  • 01:17:41
    Or are these just youth just in general?
  • 01:17:43
    I'm just wondering in terms of, like,
• • SPEAKER_10
  • 01:17:45
    It's a combination of that.
  • 01:17:48
    There are young folks that we have gotten referred to us from various different organizations and have worked with hired in various different spaces and so they have listened to some of the work.
  • 01:18:03
    that World Youth Connect has done, that Charlie Adams has done, that some of the work that, I'm going to misrepresent it so I'm not going to say it, but another organization that has engaged with the young people and so with that they've put that pledge together to really not to stay gun free.
• • SPEAKER_07
  • 01:18:28
    Council Member Coleman.
• • SPEAKER_06
  • 01:18:29
    Thank you.
  • 01:18:30
    This goes beyond the scope of the presentation today, so it might be more appropriate for follow up.
  • 01:18:35
    But I just wanted to ask about the joint immigration legal defense fund with the county and if that's something that city attorney office resources, either in terms of time or direct financial investment, are going to.
  • 01:18:46
    And if so, what that might look like for 2026 as we experience what we expect will be more deportations and more need for that fund.
• • SPEAKER_04
  • 01:18:54
    Sure.
  • 01:18:54
    Thank you Councilmember Coleman for that question and I can absolutely follow up with you and I don't know if you've had a chance to meet Unmutha Laho who's in our office.
  • 01:19:02
    He's the director of our Immigrant and Refugee Services Program.
  • 01:19:07
    That work is actually only funded by the city at this point and that funding will run out the end of this month.
  • 01:19:13
    So the county hasn't joint funded that for a couple of years.
  • 01:19:20
    It began as a joint program with some funding from Vera as well.
  • 01:19:23
    And over the years, the funding streams have just changed.
  • 01:19:28
    The council recommitted to that work along with the mayor's office the last couple of years.
  • 01:19:34
    Chair Yang, thanks.
  • 01:19:41
    Can you remind me how much we put into that for this year?
  • 01:19:59
    I will probably have to get back to you on that.
  • 01:20:01
    I don't recall.
  • 01:20:04
    I don't think there was a new.
  • 01:20:06
    I'm not sure that there was a new amount put forward last year or not, and I will check on that.
  • 01:20:14
    I know that we've had funding that was rolled over.
  • 01:20:17
    So I'll make sure that you get a direct answer to that.
• • Nelsie Yang
  • 01:20:22
    Thank you.
  • 01:20:23
    Just a comment I want to make and I really appreciate Council member Coleman for bringing that up.
  • 01:20:30
    I agree that the need for that, we need it even more compared to years before especially with this really horrendous Trump administration and we know that deportations are happening all across our city and that people have already been taken in Ward 5 recently that was really just traumatizing and there were many neighbors who witnessed that as well and elected officials and I'm glad that they were there to
  • 01:20:57
    to speak up
  • 01:21:14
    and the City Council, I would be really interested in figuring out how we can tweak numbers a bit to provide continued funding for that next year.
• • SPEAKER_04
  • 01:21:29
    All right.
  • 01:21:30
    I will do that for sure.
  • 01:21:31
    Thank you, Councilmember.
• • Nelsie Yang
  • 01:21:33
    Just one last thing.
  • 01:21:34
    It would be helpful to hear from the City Attorney's Office what would be a meaningful amount to for next year if the Council were to support funding it.
  • 01:21:43
    Okay.
• • SPEAKER_04
  • 01:21:44
    Thank you.
  • 01:21:44
    I appreciate that.
  • 01:21:45
    We will definitely get that to you.
• • SPEAKER_07
  • 01:21:50
    Sounds great, I don't see any other questions.
  • 01:21:55
    So I just really appreciate the time.
  • 01:21:56
    I think I'm just going to use a few moments to embarrass our now exiting Director Blakey.
  • 01:22:05
    I just, I said this to you right before the meeting started, and of course I encourage my colleagues to join in on the fun.
  • 01:22:12
    I saw a former city staff member and director, Munir Karcher-Ramos, and I had the opportunity to tell him this last night as well.
  • 01:22:20
    But it's not often that you get to be the first to start a department in a city, and certainly a city like St Paul.
  • 01:22:27
    It's not every day that you get to establish legacy programs that have just a positive ripple effect through my neighborhood, neighborhoods like mine, the ones I represent.
  • 01:22:37
    and even though we haven't had a ton of time to get to know each other I can absolutely tell you for certain that the programs that you ran stood up and now will be you know I'm hoping and I believe to be the goal just sort of the pillar programs of ONS
  • 01:22:53
    My constituents feel it and they know it and they see it.
  • 01:22:57
    And so I just really have such a deep gratitude for your work.
  • 01:23:01
    It's this quiet but steadfast commitment to values that are really hard sometimes to implement in big systems and values to implement in systems that intersect with our carceral system and our justice system.
  • 01:23:16
    And so I just really commend the work that you've done and
  • 01:23:21
    you will be missed.
  • 01:23:22
    Yeah, so I couldn't pass up the opportunity when you're in chambers to commend you on the work and yeah, you'll be very missed and best of luck to everything that you have in the future.
  • 01:23:31
    I can only imagine wherever you went will just be incredibly lucky to have you.
  • 01:23:35
    So thank you so much for the service to our city.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:23:38
    Yeah.
• • Nelsie Yang
  • 01:23:41
    Chair Yang.
  • 01:23:41
    Thanks, Council President.
  • 01:23:43
    I want to echo everything that you said to Director Blicki.
  • 01:23:46
    And Director Blicki, I really commend you for the work that you do in the Office of Neighborhood Safety.
  • 01:23:51
    It is really tough to build something from the ground up, but you came in with a determination to do that.
  • 01:23:56
    And I really appreciate how every time you are here in the chambers and your staff are here too, you all uplift those stories of people who you work with directly.
  • 01:24:04
    And for us council members who are not there day in and day out doing the groundwork,
  • 01:24:11
    It is so important to hear the impacts that the Office of Neighbor Safety does have to people in their community, which I know that the situations in which they are in, sometimes find themselves in, are some of the toughest too.
  • 01:24:24
    So you really came here determined to deliver and I know that there were a lot of challenges along the way, but I do believe that you and your staff have
  • 01:24:33
    have really overcome a lot of huge hurdles, whether it was bringing on a staffing capacity, hiring them on, or even building out the programs.
  • 01:24:42
    And I really look forward to seeing the Office of Neighborhood Safety continue to grow.
  • 01:24:47
    And I know that there will be more hurdles for us to overcome, but we have a will to figure it out, so thank you.
  • 01:24:54
    And I know there's probably more
  • 01:24:57
    and the City Council for the opportunity to honor your work and your service here to the city.
• • SPEAKER_07
  • 01:25:01
    I wish you all the best as you transition out.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:30:19
    We go about our lives every day, especially in the public sector, trying to do our best.
  • 01:30:24
    And one thing that I've come out of with this recovery and coming out of this incident is a renewed love for the city.
  • 01:30:31
    My colleagues here, our colleagues here are top notch.
  • 01:30:36
    When we were going through this, if I went to any single director,
  • 01:30:40
    If I needed something, if they needed something from me, they came to me with, what can I do to help you?
  • 01:30:46
    We're okay, everything's fine.
  • 01:30:48
    And I know that everything was not fine, but I just want to highlight how critical it was to have these really close partnerships and relationships.
  • 01:30:56
    And I just, I absolutely love being here and I'm so glad to be in front of you today and not right there.
  • 01:31:03
    We will get started.
  • 01:31:07
    Okay.
  • 01:31:10
    Our Executive Summary focuses on our three-year strategy.
  • 01:31:15
    OTC remains fully committed to our 2024-2026 three-year strategic plan.
  • 01:31:21
    From the outset, this plan was designed to be forward-looking, deliberately aligned to the major changes needed to improve our security posture, modernize city technology, and strengthen resilience.
  • 01:31:33
    That foresight matters.
  • 01:31:35
    Even in the face of this summer's digital security incident, we are not changing direction.
  • 01:31:40
    Our plan anticipated the challenges ahead, and it positioned us to respond with confidence.
  • 01:31:46
    Now, as we enter year three, we are doubling down on the same strategic priorities honoring our people, powering city services, and securing city data, while ensuring our budget reflects both fiscal responsibility and targeted future-ready improvements.
  • 01:32:04
    Honoring our people is about investing in the people who make our city work.
  • 01:32:08
    We're rolling out a talent and performance management platform to support and develop our workforce.
  • 01:32:16
    We embarked on a reorganization plan that highlights career pathways for our talented staff.
  • 01:32:21
    We're expanding AOTC with a self-service chatbot, giving staff easier ways to find answers and resolve issues quickly.
  • 01:32:29
    And we're advancing Title II ADA digital accessibility, ensuring city digital services are inclusive and compliant.
  • 01:32:38
    Powering city services is about strengthening the backbone of city operations.
  • 01:32:43
    We're completing a timekeeping system modernization.
  • 01:32:45
    And we can connect to the main if that's easier.
  • 01:33:21
    Nick came over and helped me get set up and if we can just push if we just pull it up there I think Kamud can help us get it on here so it's yeah it's super easy to do that I think
  • 01:33:46
    Of course technical difficulties during the technical presentation, inevitable.
  • 01:34:24
    You can get in there?
• • SPEAKER_08
  • 01:34:26
    Yep, perfect.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:35:16
    Back in action.
  • 01:35:23
    I was talking about honoring our people.
  • 01:35:24
    I was moving over now to powering city services and the work that we've been working on, including our timekeeping system modernization, implementing enterprise reporting, our enterprise reporting platform, enterprise technology governance framework, and really this is all about bringing alignment and accountability across city departments.
  • 01:35:45
    I want to focus on our optimization of stpaul.gov, which is wrapping up right now.
  • 01:35:50
    That's about modernizing the city's digital front door for residents, businesses, and staff.
  • 01:35:55
    We've improved six departments' web presence, including Hero, PED, Police, Public Works Garbage and Recycling, and Parks.
  • 01:36:02
    In November, we'll launch the new version of stpaul.gov that will include improved navigation and wayfinding for the site, responding to user feedback about the site using data-driven and a user-centered approach.
  • 01:36:14
    and we're providing critical support of enterprise priorities via the Community First Public Safety and downtown revitalization efforts.
  • 01:36:23
    Safeguarding city data has always been at the heart of this plan.
  • 01:36:27
    We are advancing network and infrastructure modernization, building resilience into the city's technology environment.
  • 01:36:33
    We are completing network event recovery and hardening, ensuring lessons from this summer's incident lead to long-term defenses.
  • 01:36:40
    We are working toward a data governance framework for the city that will strengthen security and privacy while enhancing departmental collaboration, operational efficiency, and AI readiness.
  • 01:36:50
    And we're formalizing identity and access management, the framework for secure, reliable access across city systems that was previously distributed across our OTC teams.
  • 01:37:02
    I'll provide additional details about our budget in the coming slides, but here's a quick 2025 to 2026 snapshot, which includes net reductions in both years with the addition of a 1 FTE proposed reduction in 2026.
  • 01:37:16
    However, there are some critical investments being made for 2026.
  • 01:37:19
    A $60,000 special fund investment on part of a joint initiative between OTC and OFS to audit and plan for a consolidated and more efficient enterprise mobile data management plan.
  • 01:37:32
    Cybersecurity investments totaling $1,081,000 added to strengthen the city's ability to prevent, detect, and respond to cyber threats.
  • 01:37:44
    That includes a $700,000 one-time investment and $381,000 in ongoing funding for enterprise digital security technology in the central service fund financed through a general fund transfer.
  • 01:38:03
    Our 2025 budget recap this year is focused on the digital security incident, the work we were doing leading up to it to secure the city, the work we are doing right now on the post event to continue and to protect our data and our systems.
  • 01:38:18
    Council members, it's important to understand that this response didn't start on July 25th.
  • 01:38:23
    It started years earlier.
  • 01:38:26
    We had already been investing in modern defenses like endpoint detection, operating system upgrades, and secure by design methodology.
  • 01:38:34
    We had consistently maintained offline backups.
  • 01:38:37
    I just want to give one more shout out to David and the amazing server admin team who do that work every single day.
  • 01:38:44
    They did that so we could restart our recovery immediately after eradicating the threat actor from our system.
  • 01:38:52
    We had worked to build a culture of security across the enterprise.
  • 01:38:55
    Citywide multi-factor authentication, email system protections, tighter credential controls, phishing awareness training, and our firewall newsletter.
  • 01:39:05
    Most importantly, our dedicated staff have developed deep knowledge of the city's infrastructure over many years.
  • 01:39:11
    That expertise meant we could adapt quickly and contain the incident.
  • 01:39:15
    That experience mattered.
  • 01:39:18
    We did make the hard call to shut down the city's network.
  • 01:39:21
    That decision, while disruptive, was the only way to fully contain the threat and prevent further spread.
  • 01:39:27
    We engaged in a national incident response team and partnered with federal and state experts.
  • 01:39:31
    The Minnesota National Guard's cyber protection team was mobilized to work alongside our teams to expand capacity and sustain our operations.
  • 01:39:40
    We implemented a citywide reset of more than 3,000 employee accounts, spearheaded by Mary Gleick Matthews right here
  • 01:39:47
    a job that no under normal circumstances would probably take months of planning and she did it in like three days.
  • 01:39:55
    That massive undertaking not only restored security but it built in back stronger controls for every single user in the city.
  • 01:40:02
    At the same time we deployed advanced endpoint detection across every workstation and server.
  • 01:40:07
    Verifying that the systems were clean and putting in place world-class protections for the future.
  • 01:40:13
    These were bold, decisive steps that required coordination across every department in the city.
  • 01:40:18
    And because of our preparation, we could execute them swiftly and effectively.
• • SPEAKER_07
  • 01:40:24
    We're coming back stronger.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:40:25
    The recovery has been remarkable, and it's not by accident.
  • 01:40:28
    We had clean, unencrypted backups so systems could be restored with confidence.
  • 01:40:33
    We implemented a structured check-in, check-out process for employees for the devices, ensuring that no compromised machines were led back onto the network.
  • 01:40:41
    Modernization efforts already underway, like PAULI, the WAX Asset Management System, the WFM Timekeeping System, and HeyOTC.
  • 01:40:52
    meant that we had new cloud-based resilient platforms ready to support critical operations.
  • 01:40:57
    Instead of slowing us down, they accelerated recovery.
  • 01:41:00
    This was a coordinated citywide event.
  • 01:41:03
    We have a top-notch emergency management department led by our Enterprise Maximizer, Director Rick Schutt, who has been a collaborative partner and leader every step of the way.
  • 01:41:13
    That partnership was key to our swift action and recovery.
  • 01:41:17
    Every department leaned in.
  • 01:41:18
    More than 3,000 employees were supported through new security protocols, and partners at every level have helped accelerate our timelines.
  • 01:41:26
    The result?
  • 01:41:27
    We're not just recovering, we are coming back stronger.
  • 01:41:30
    Our network is more secure, our defenses are hardened, and our modernization roadmap is moving faster because of what we've accomplished together.
  • 01:41:38
    Let me be clear, while Wi-Fi is back, applications are up, network drives are available, that doesn't mean that everything is back to normal.
  • 01:41:47
    We already had a backlog of critical projects prior to the incident, and our recovery does continue.
  • 01:41:53
    We are still actively rebuilding deliberately, carefully, and strategically to ensure long-term resilience.
  • 01:42:06
    You've requested updates on recent initiatives.
  • 01:42:09
    I'm going to focus on our modernization in flight.
  • 01:42:13
    Our modernization efforts are strategically aligned.
  • 01:42:16
    We are powering city services, safeguarding city data, and telling St Paul's story in ways that strengthen trust and improve how the city delivers every day.
  • 01:42:24
    I won't go through each of these, but I'll highlight just a couple.
  • 01:42:27
    I'll start with the Infor Cloud.
  • 01:42:29
    Because we had already moved many departments onto Infor's workforce management platform, payroll and timekeeping continued uninterrupted during the digital security incident.
  • 01:42:39
    Departments on this platform didn't have to revert to manual paper-based processes.
  • 01:42:43
    Now we are accelerating the move so that all departments are in secure cloud platforms for payroll, procurement, and vendor payments.
  • 01:42:52
    And then the bottom item, Civic Newsroom.
  • 01:42:55
    Modernization also means rethinking how we communicate.
  • 01:42:59
    The Civic Newsroom is our effort to tell St. Paul's story every single day using the talents of our incredible and award-winning communications and digital media team, led by Chase Maxwell.
  • 01:43:09
    It showcases the work of staff across departments and ensures residents see themselves reflected in the work their government is doing.
  • 01:43:18
    Safeguarding city data, I'll focus on HeyOTC, our new service platform.
  • 01:43:24
    It was just launched last week, I believe.
  • 01:43:27
    These weeks still seem a little bit long here.
  • 01:43:30
    Hey OTC is our secure front door for IT and communications services.
  • 01:43:35
    At launch we already have over 30 catalog items and 60 knowledge articles and those are going to continue to grow as we work to get more help directly to our users.
  • 01:43:48
    Additionally, a new implementation we're focusing on is the Esri GIS Addressing Platform.
  • 01:43:54
    Modernized addressing data is foundational for the city, supporting public safety systems and the next generation of service delivery under Community First Public Safety.
  • 01:44:04
    We are excited for our latest project to modernize addressing data across critical systems and departments.
  • 01:44:11
    I also want to mention what isn't up here.
  • 01:44:13
    I always talk about it as our top priority is honoring our people because without our people, we can't support the city.
  • 01:44:23
    A couple modernization efforts we have on that side include, number one, monitoring our systems and platforms so we can take advantage of automation, reduce some of the repetitive work that our teams are doing, and have them focus on higher level work.
  • 01:44:38
    Revising our job classification system, which is over two decades old Technology has changed a little bit in that time And formalizing our career pathways for everybody so that whether you're new to OTC You've been an OTC for decades or you're a new city employee or you're a city employee who's moved into OTC We want to be able to support your career and professional development in technology Now to the fun stuff
  • 01:45:07
    This budget year is about absorbing reductions and making one-time strategic security investments.
  • 01:45:14
    The cuts are ongoing and build on reductions from prior years.
  • 01:45:18
    They represent our commitment to being disciplined and responsible stewards of public funds even as we lead recovery from a major digital security event.
  • 01:45:26
    The reductions include 1 FTE, reducing support for StPaul.gov, and trimming some mobile costs.
  • 01:45:36
    at the same time we're making a targeted addition the move work service automation platform to better support our 3,000 employees who need technology support and guidance at hand.
  • 01:45:48
    This year's budget also includes
  • 01:45:52
    about a million dollars of new security investments which include recurring ongoing costs for endpoint detection and new one-time funding that will be used for continuing our security recovery, security tooling, staffing and other ways that we are going to protect our city.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 01:46:14
    Council Member Johnson.
  • 01:46:32
    This is where we're going to use the funding for.
  • 01:46:35
    Just noticing that most of the million dollar funding is actually coming from the SPON 211 government special projects.
  • 01:46:41
    So ARPA funding instead of like fund 710 for innovative technology.
  • 01:46:46
    I'm just kind of curious like what went into the thought process about deciding that was going to be the use for it.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:46:53
    Chair Kim and Councilmember
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 01:47:09
    I'm not either.
  • 01:47:10
    So I would say I wasn't in those conversations when they happened so I would say we should follow up with that.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:47:16
    Apologies that Madeline Mitchell is out sick today.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 01:47:19
    Yeah, no worries.
  • 01:47:21
    And also as a caveat and additional, I'd be curious to know on the side of Office of Financial Services as well, other efforts that we took to potentially find a more compatible funding source.
  • 01:47:33
    I'm sincerely thinking that some of the cybersecurity pieces, the $700,000, for example, in this piece or this capacity could be important.
  • 01:47:42
    So definitely not coming from a place of not understanding fully what the magnitude of it is.
  • 01:47:48
    I'm curious as to if we have other funding sources that also could be able to be utilized for that as well.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:47:56
    Absolutely.
  • 01:47:56
    We'll work with our partners in OFS to get you that information.
  • 01:48:00
    Thank you.
  • 01:48:04
    So really briefly, we are very appreciative of the million dollars of additional funding.
  • 01:48:18
    We really do believe it's going to help support our recovery, help secure the city of St. Paul.
  • 01:48:25
    One of the difficult parts is that platforms today are not one-time funding, right?
  • 01:48:31
    It takes recurring funding.
  • 01:48:33
    We need to be very thoughtful to ensure that these one-time funds can lead to enhanced security for years to come.
  • 01:48:44
    Our history of budget to actual shows our dedication to fiscal responsibility.
  • 01:48:49
    We're projecting a balanced budget based on assumptions we've received from the budget office regarding the use of salary savings to cover our needed staff augmentation and reimbursements for overtime for the security incident.
  • 01:49:07
    For our spending summary, our general fund increase is due to the investment in cybersecurity.
  • 01:49:22
    Our historical spending, but I may just kind of gloss over this.
  • 01:49:26
    I talked to Council President Kim about this, and the instructions we received might
  • 01:49:33
    of the City of St Paul.
• • SPEAKER_07
  • 01:49:38
    I can just say one more thing about it that you know we sent over the form to all the department directors and certainly with really good intent and assuming like that we want to see these historical trends but it's not the most dynamic way to present the information so we're going to be going back and asking for a different way for this information to be presented to us because for the most part every presentation we've seen the line is just very flat but we know that's not necessarily true it doesn't illustrate the amount of changes changing that is actually happening year over year so
  • 01:50:06
    is just to note that is why it is not as dynamic of a visual as we had initially thought.
  • 01:50:12
    So thank you for the flexibility and just for the context of the council members.
  • 01:50:16
    We're going to be asking for this to be in a different form for all the presentations we get just to have a better sense.
  • 01:50:21
    But yeah, I think this is a great example of why this image is not the most dynamic one to use.
  • 01:50:26
    So thank you.
• • Nelsie Yang
  • 01:50:30
    I appreciate your presentation in front of the Council today.
  • 01:50:36
    I just have a question about the history of the budgeted actuals.
  • 01:50:40
    So it looks like for this year the department has exhausted the funding for this year already.
  • 01:50:47
    And so do you have any thoughts on what the projection will be for how much is spent in the department by the end of the year?
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:50:55
    yes we are working on that right now when it comes to the response to the cyber incident we are still working on those numbers we are you know willing to talk to you all offline about that but for right now we don't have that information ready to go public
• • Nelsie Yang
  • 01:51:18
    I know we're getting bits and pieces of the proposed budget for next year through all these different presentations.
  • 01:51:26
    As you all are working on it, if you can explain, here's what we're thinking the end of the year will look like for OTC and where we may be spending dollars from other departments from, that would be really helpful.
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 01:51:43
    I think on the slide you're referring to, the historical budget to actuals, the $11.8 million in that column is a projection based on spending trends.
  • 01:51:56
    So I don't know what the actual is right now.
  • 01:51:58
    It's probably like $8 or $9 million year to date.
  • 01:52:01
    Gotcha.
  • 01:52:02
    Thank you for clarifying.
  • 01:52:03
    And their own internal projections that otherwise have indicated they're very close to that.
  • 01:52:07
    Now, the cyber incident is still a big question mark as to what we're reimbursed and that sort of thing.
  • 01:52:13
    Yeah, they're projecting to come in very, very close to it.
• • Nelsie Yang
  • 01:52:16
    Oh, great.
  • 01:52:16
    Thank you.
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 01:52:16
    In the general fund.
• • Nelsie Yang
  • 01:52:20
    All right.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:52:20
    Thank you, Brian.
  • 01:52:26
    Here's our FTEs summary.
  • 01:52:28
    This year we are being reduced, or going into 2026, we are being reduced by one FTE.
  • 01:52:34
    That continues a mostly downward trend from our peak at 2020 of 76 FTEs.
  • 01:52:47
    OTC currently has 10 unfilled positions.
  • 01:52:52
    In June, after a targeted initiative to rethink our teams and how we work, OTC presented our organizational and service modernization plan to our partners in talent and equity resources.
  • 01:53:03
    The plan focuses on three things, streamlining technology services, embedding cyber security into daily operations, and aligning our workforce around specialized roles.
  • 01:53:15
    Filling these critical positions is very important.
  • 01:53:19
    These are key positions and we still have several critical leadership promotions that remain unfilled.
  • 01:53:25
    That means that modernization work may be slowed, we can't complete all the essential security work we want to complete, and our existing staff who got us through this summer's emergency can't get a break.
  • 01:53:38
    With continued reduction in our resources, it's imperative that we fill the right specialized roles that make the most of the staff we do have.
  • 01:53:46
    These positions aren't discretionary.
  • 01:53:48
    They were deliberately identified in June as essential to sustaining our progress.
  • 01:53:53
    Leaving them unfilled means the city continues to carry risk, prolongs recovery timelines, and delays promised modernization benefits.
  • 01:54:02
    And for another view of what that looks like for within OTC, here is an updated org chart.
• • SPEAKER_07
  • 01:54:10
    We've got a question from Council Member Johnson.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 01:54:13
    Thank you.
  • 01:54:15
    I just was wondering, you know, so what would you say to someone who's like, okay, listening to some of that feedback, as well as the openings, and then saying, okay, so then what's the barrier to filling them?
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:54:25
    The barrier to filling the positions?
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 01:54:27
    Yeah, like, you know, if they're vital, they're part of the work, they're kind of a part of the planning in future years, including some of the things that you kind of shared with us about the goals and where we would like to see us go in 2026.
  • 01:54:40
    So it's more simplistic of just like, so then,
  • 01:54:43
    What is the plan to fill the positions?
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:54:45
    What is the plan to fill the positions?
  • 01:54:47
    Yeah, absolutely.
  • 01:54:48
    I believe Council Member Johnson and Council Members, Chair Yang, we are currently in a budget and hiring freeze that started a few weeks ago.
  • 01:55:00
    We are working with the administration and with Talent and Equity Resources to
  • 01:55:08
    put forward a plan to continue this hiring.
  • 01:55:10
    Like I said, we did bring this to Talented Equity Resources in June.
  • 01:55:14
    We weren't able to make any progress and steps, too many steps there in terms of getting those hires out there, the recs out there.
  • 01:55:22
    I know we do have a couple of recs out there that we're hoping to complete that were there before the hiring freeze.
  • 01:55:29
    and the City Council.
  • 01:55:49
    The majority of them aren't really easy to fit in there because they are so much more advanced or nuanced or different than that.
  • 01:55:58
    So it really is about trying to work within a system that has been around for decades as technology evolves very quickly and trying to match our needs to this old system.
  • 01:56:09
    But again, we're going to be focusing on working with our partners and talented equity resources as soon as we can get those recs out and get these vital critical positions hired.
• • SPEAKER_07
  • 01:56:20
    We have a follow-up question with Council Member Yang.
• • Nelsie Yang
  • 01:56:23
    Thank you.
  • 01:56:23
    I just want to make sure I'm on the same page with you.
  • 01:56:25
    All of the positions under the unfilled positions list, you'd like to see them continue to next year's budget, is that right?
  • 01:56:33
    Yes.
  • 01:56:36
    I see two positions that have been unfilled since the end of 2024.
  • 01:56:43
    Can you just explain a bit about what you're hoping to see with those two positions, especially since they've been unfilled for almost a year now?
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 01:56:51
    Absolutely.
  • 01:56:52
    So we undertook, under the leadership of Mary Gleich Matthews, a review of our org chart, of our work, of our strategy to figure out how can we do more with less, how can we continue to modernize and provide the daily support every day.
  • 01:57:07
    And so that work started at the end of 2024 and went through the first quarter or two of this year.
  • 01:57:13
    so we held a couple of positions knowing that we wanted to make sure we were making the exact investment that we believe the city needs and so that's why we do have a couple that have vacancy dates that are older.
  • 01:57:24
    I am by no means an expert in
  • 01:57:29
    of the City of St. Paul.
  • 01:57:30
    So I think that's a really important part of how we hire and how we track these things.
  • 01:57:32
    One thing I do know also, though, is that in order to promote people in the city, you have to have an open position, and so I don't know if one of those positions could have potentially been held for a promotion and then kind of moved forward.
  • 01:57:48
    So it is complicated, and I probably should just not say anything else because I don't know all the details, but yes, they are very critical positions, and we wanted to make sure that we were making
  • 01:57:58
    the right steps that we needed for the city instead of fast tracking and just throwing people into a team where we knew we were doing really strategic modernization efforts across our teams.
• • SPEAKER_07
  • 01:58:13
    please.
• • Nelsie Yang
  • 01:58:15
    This is just a general question and it would probably be something more for OFS and HR, but I just want to make sure that all of the unfilled positions that are being proposed to go into next year, that there is an adjustment to the
  • 01:58:33
    and the City Council.
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 01:58:55
    of the City Council.
  • 01:59:14
    of the City of St Paul.
• • Nelsie Yang
  • 01:59:36
    I just want to reaffirm that I do feel it's really important for us to make sure that the proposed amounts, or at least for the Council before we vote on our final budget, we really hone in on that and get the numbers to be accurate.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 01:59:56
    I feel like there's, when I look at this sheet, I see the vacancies, I think about the financial dollar amounts allocated for these budgets and then I kind of have a similar question to Council Member Yang about, you know, when I look at this slide and assuming, even if we're being fair, like if we said
  • 02:00:14
    Committee.
  • 02:00:32
    the pieces that we're trying to do right now actively at the city for the budget solve.
  • 02:00:36
    So I guess I'm just wondering like how much are you, how much of your budget that you have allocated right now for staffing positions or wages is not being utilized?
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 02:00:51
    Thank you Council Member.
  • 02:00:53
    I think I will defer to OFS but essentially in light of the security incident we are utilizing every penny
  • 02:01:01
    I'm assuming because any positions that are unfilled, that funding I'm assuming is going to be going toward filling the security incident.
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 02:01:13
    Yeah, Chair Kim, Councilmember Johnson.
  • 02:01:15
    I don't have the numbers in front of me because they're dynamic and evolving, but I regularly check in with OTC staff on personnel, like current year personnel projections.
  • 02:01:26
    In those projections, they account for vacancies, like for example, this position has been vacant for three months, we project two additional months of vacancies before we hire.
  • 02:01:36
    we will save X number of dollars from this particular projected vacancy.
  • 02:01:42
    So we compare those numbers with the attrition budget that is already built in.
  • 02:01:48
    So don't quote me on this, but the last time I checked in on this they were coming in pretty close.
  • 02:01:54
    The attrition budget was matching up pretty closely with their projected savings in fiscal year 2025.
  • 02:02:00
    I haven't checked in on that in a few weeks, so like I said, those things change regularly.
• • Cheniqua Johnson
  • 02:02:06
    Yeah, as a follow-up, I've been a helpful note and something that I'm really, really supportive of the budget to actuals conversation with our city and how we do our budget process and even just being able to track some of the numbers that people are asking for and has come up in this budget cycle.
  • 02:02:22
    I really hope that we can overall, as a city, continue to strive towards that.
  • 02:02:28
    budget to actuals more than twice a year.
  • 02:02:32
    Especially during the time when we should be talking about some of those pieces, not necessarily to the piece of the responding, but planning for one thing that was very clear to me in several of your presentations and just how passionate you are about planning for some of the
  • 02:02:49
    I think some of the cyber security issues that we are seeing and planning ahead in years in advance is planning for catastrophe and for the times in which something happens that we don't account for.
  • 02:02:58
    And it's something that I actually think that we could do as a city better in ensuring that we have it actually allocated in the budget that we plan for.
  • 02:03:06
    And so I am really supportive of thinking ahead of what that could look like in future years, especially going back to this aspect notion that when something happens or a city is
  • 02:03:17
    and the City Council and the City Council and the City Council and the City Council and the City Council and the City Council and the City Council and the City Council and the City Council and the City Council and the City Council and the City
  • 02:03:44
    budget for next year if we put all these in.
  • 02:03:53
    And so that is something that like from any department as well, like something that I've just raised as like initial feedback for us all, but when I look at that and then I see some of the proposals for some of the things that are one-time funding that are more immediate, like things you could move on,
  • 02:04:07
    and the beginning of the year.
  • 02:04:08
    I do wonder how important it might be to fill that HR consultant role if you've operated without it for a year and survived a cyber attack and been able to do so much with your team capacity.
  • 02:04:23
    it gives me pause I think and I think a reason to dig further but for the pieces of from for OFS and I think some of the follow-up pieces when we have not just your department there's other vacancies and other places that are on food if realistically the timeline for those filling of positions especially with the current state of where we're at with the hiring freeze isn't until the middle of next year I hope we are also taking that into account of our actual expenses as well
  • 02:04:47
    and the City Council and the City Council.
  • 02:05:08
    of the City of St Paul.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 02:05:29
    Thank you, Councilmember Johnson.
  • 02:05:30
    Councilmembers, quick response to that.
  • 02:05:33
    First, OTC every single year has to give back $400,000 of salary savings as attrition, right?
  • 02:05:41
    So I can't hire all ten positions next year because I have to give that money back to the city to shore up the budget deficits, right?
  • 02:05:50
    That's an ongoing thing.
  • 02:05:52
    Second, I think you mentioned the $700,000 that we're getting could go towards staffing, but again, that's just one time, right?
  • 02:06:02
    We need recurring staffing.
  • 02:06:04
    A really quick story to tell you about a couple of the positions here.
  • 02:06:09
    So we have an identity and access management lead, a network administrator, and a server administrator.
  • 02:06:15
    Oh, and a server storage and database lead.
  • 02:06:17
    So four really, really key positions.
  • 02:06:21
    A lot of the work across those four positions is being done by one person, a lot of it.
  • 02:06:28
    We're in public service, we know when someone leaves, we have to take that on.
  • 02:06:31
    But a lot of that is one person.
  • 02:06:34
    and in the first couple of days of the security incident when we were working 17 to 20 hours a day fighting for our city's data, our systems.
  • 02:06:45
    One comment that came to me that I shared with my team in that room we were in way too long every day was
  • 02:06:53
    Wow, now I know what it's like to be Brian every single day.
  • 02:06:57
    Because Brian plays those four or five or ten roles every single day in the city.
  • 02:07:04
    And that is not sustainable.
  • 02:07:07
    We are seeing impacts of these long hours, of the responsibility and duty that these people feel.
  • 02:07:18
    And so we can't keep working at that pace.
  • 02:07:20
    We can't
  • 02:07:22
    of the City of St Paul.
  • 02:07:32
    We are doing all of the work and more without these positions.
  • 02:07:37
    But heck, if I could have saved one to two hours a day during those 17 hours by not having to schedule my own meetings, which I had to do.
  • 02:07:47
    And as you know, if anyone who's scheduled meetings before, it is a lot of work to get people in a room.
  • 02:07:53
    and I had to do it on the fly with third party law firms and incident response planners.
  • 02:08:01
    So again, we are here because we love public service, we love this city, but we can do better and really shore up our security and provide better modernization if we do fill these positions.
• • SPEAKER_04
  • 02:08:19
    Thank you.
• • SPEAKER_03
  • 02:08:21
    just a really quick view I wanted to show you of what this looks like and I wanted to just talk about the work that Mary Blake Matthews led
  • 02:08:31
    We're moving to something called a demand-developed service model, and that's what this org chart shows.
  • 02:08:37
    So on the demand side, it's about engaging departments to understand business needs, gather requirements, and prioritize work that aligns with city goals.
  • 02:08:46
    That's what you see with the executive team and the office of the CIO.
  • 02:08:50
    We just have one FTE open right now.
  • 02:08:52
    We're able to work on that pretty well once we're further on in our recovery.
  • 02:08:58
    The develop is where our teams design, build, and test IT solutions.
  • 02:09:04
    Everything from software development to systems integration.
  • 02:09:08
    That is the team under enterprise applications and digital experiences.
  • 02:09:13
    and then finally service.
  • 02:09:16
    We ensure reliable day-to-day support, managing infrastructure, resolving security incidences and keeping our systems running smoothly.
  • 02:09:25
    And that's where we see the majority of our open FTEs.
  • 02:09:29
    for FTEs under infrastructure and security for under our service management that those are the people that help the city run every single day answer questions provide guidance so that's just a really brief picture to show where we are right now and just to go back to our strategic priorities
  • 02:09:48
    In honoring our people, we are building up the teams that perform critical infrastructure and security work to deliver our services.
  • 02:09:56
    To reduce that strain, we really want to see these vacancies filled, both on the infrastructure and security team and on the IT service management team.
  • 02:10:10
    Reduced staffing really reduces our capacity to meet our strategic goals.
  • 02:10:18
    All right, now we get into the revenues.
  • 02:10:23
    Here is our revenue overview for the general fund.
  • 02:10:27
    As the story has been over the past couple of years, our cable TV franchise fee is decreasing annually as residents move away from cable TV service.
  • 02:10:44
    Our council chamber technology and PEG grant funds
  • 02:10:48
    Again, those peg-franchise fees continue to decrease as the cable subscribership goes down.
  • 02:10:58
    And then our final revenue overview is really about the phone and employee computers that are internal charges for OTC.
  • 02:11:14
    And that covers our budget for this year and going into 2026.
  • 02:11:20
    Any other questions or discussion?
• • SPEAKER_07
  • 02:11:22
    Any additional questions from my colleagues?
  • 02:11:29
    Our Budget Officer Kamud is taking notes for follow-ups, so any additional questions that we ask later, they'll be sent to you through Kamud.
  • 02:11:38
    Thank you so much for the time today.
  • 02:11:40
    Extremely informative.
  • 02:11:42
    Thank you for sticking to our format and just giving us a little grace on that one slide.
  • 02:11:48
    But just really appreciate all the context and information you provided on OTC today.
  • 02:11:52
    So thank you so much.
  • 02:11:53
    And with that, the Finance and Budget Committee of the Council is adjourned.