The Duluth City Council met on Monday, September 8, 2025, at 6:00 PM in Council Chambers. Prior to the regular meeting, the council sat as a finance committee to hear 2026 tax levy requests from the Housing and Redevelopment Authority (HRA) and the Duluth Transit Authority (DTA). The regular session included public comments, a unanimous consent agenda, tabling of four 2026 tax levy resolutions, a contentious debate on a Pride resolution, and adoption of an ordinance creating a Transportation Commission.
Good evening. We will begin this evening with the report from the director of HRA. Director Keppers, do you want to come forward, please? Thank you. Thank you, President Tomonik and City Councillors. It's nice to be here this evening. Ah, excellent. Hopefully, I'll know how to use the clicker properly. And it's nice to be here this uh evening to talk to you about our twenty twenty-six tax levy request. Uh as you know, our organization uh is um set up with a seven-member board that's appointed by the mayor and approved by city council, and they serve five-year terms. Uh, we have three primary departments, our rent subsidy department, owned housing department, and rehab and real estate department that includes development. And then also our finance department continues to grow as our programs continue to grow. And then we have the um our central office with IT personnel, uh HR, admin assistance, and um whatnot. Uh core programs uh supporting households in Duluth. So the HRA owned housing continues to grow in the city. Uh currently we have one thousand two hundred and twenty units of rental housing. I'm gonna apologize for uh my frog in my throat. Battling a cough. And we have varied subsidies these days. As you know, uh, as I've presented in the past, or most of you know we've been transitioning away from public housing and to a section eight platform. So we have public housing, project-based rental assistance, project-based vouchers, uh, workforce on subsidized housing and tax credit units. Uh rental assistance through the housing choice voucher program and other rent subsidy programs has also grown. We're up to two thousand one hundred and thirty-seven housing choice vouchers. Thirty-five of these are set aside for non-elderly and disabled households. We also have assistance to help homeless veterans through twenty-two veterans administrative supportive housing vouchers, and more assistance to end homelessness through coordinated entry, tennis basant-based rental assistance, and the emergency solutions grant. We manage the city's housing trust fund, and this department also does development. So overall, we house approximately 3,300 households and families every day. We bring in over $16 million of rental assistance that goes into the hands of local landlords, over $2 million in funding for capital improvement projects that is used in publicly owned housing projects for local using local labor and projects, and over 200,000 in state resources for rehab projects providing local construction work. Other things that the authority does to support the city of Duluth is we provide funding for up to two full-time police officers. We operate both the North Point Resource Center, the Lincoln Park Center, and the Harbor Highlands Community Center. And we support the city staff through co-funding the senior housing developer position, which is Tom Church. For development and redevelopment and community initiatives, Fairmont Cottages, we built 18 units in the Fairmont neighborhood, which is mixed income rental housing. Skyridge Flats opened in January, a 70 unit 55 plus, 50% and 30% AMI housing units. Tract B, the homeownership phase in partnership with OneRift Community Housing is currently we're trying to get that off the ground. Keeps, you know, with development, you kind of run into one thing after another. So we have a couple more hoops to jump through. But we're determined to get that one off the ground, probably now push to next spring. The homeless warming center, a permanent site for us that we did substantial rehab that opened in February 2022. Our construction training program continues to operate, which supports about six to twelve students a year, taking people with barriers to employment and training them in the construction trades and also taking houses that are in blighted conditions and selling them for affordable homeownership. And then our new partnership with Union Gospel Mission for an engagement center to address assistance for those experiencing homelessness along with 40 units of supportive housing. And we applied for Minnesota housing funding and state bonding. And the early no's came out, and we did not get an early no, so we're still in the running for that project. Very excited. So I always like to start with some background and then we'll get into the numbers for our levy. So the calendar year 2026 tax levy request looks like this. 490,000 for the owned housing and rent subsidy program support. So we're looking to spend 150,000 in funding shortfalls for any HUD programs, and also at the Harbor Highlands Phase 1 development. 300,000 for our high-rise security contract, and 40,000 for HUD housing preservation programs. So that'll help us convert our remaining 150 units of housing out of public housing and into a rent subsidy platform. 132,633 for the warming center and other community center operations.