The Duluth City Council convened on Monday, January 26, 2026, at 6:00 PM in the Council Chambers. The meeting was dominated by public testimony regarding federal immigration enforcement actions, with over 25 speakers calling for city ordinances to limit collaboration with ICE. The council also adopted a large consent agenda (with one item pulled and tabled), received a presentation on HUD funding from the Community Development Committee, and heard administrative remarks.
Counselors, we'll start our committee the whole in thirty seconds here. So that's five thirty on my clock. Um good evening. Um Mr. Van Tassel and Company, will you be coming forward for the committee of the whole? We'll get started if you're ready. Oh remind me of your name, please. Um remind Uncle or Nephew, um excuse me. Counselor Kennedy, President Nephew, and all the other city counselors. My name is Suzanne Kelly, and I'm a planner of the planning department, and I am here with um uh director of planner Hannah Fagans, along with the community development committee members are Chair Steve Wick, Annie Schwartz, Will Wilson, and Shannon Lang. And each one will give a presentation, um, a brief presentation on these recommendations. Um first, we are very grateful to be here. Um, and also very grateful for all the work this committee has been doing. This committee has been reviewing over five hundred pages of applications and seeing what best needs the community needs for twenty twenty-six. Um they have reviewing it based on our consolidated plan needs that was described with public hearings and um a previous year's that we'll talk about and also what are currently needed. Um last year with these funds, they were able to provide um the community developed block grant funds, the home funds, and these G funds were able to provide um over two hundred units of affordable housing, provide job training to over four hundred people, assist six low income businesses, provide eighteen thousand meals, provide child care to ninety-one families, and provide shelter or housing services to over two thousand people who are either homeless or at risk of becoming homeless. The committee has worked hard this year, as I said, reviewing and scoring applications and um to make sure we best meet the best needs for twenty twenty-six. And with that, I will introduce Chair Steve Wick. Thank you, Suzanne. Good evening, counselors. So my name is Steve Wick, and as chair of the community development committee, I want to thank you for giving the committee this time tonight to present our work over the past year and our recommendations for funding. Before we begin, I want to provide some context to our process. So HUD requires public participation, especially outreach to low-income populations when determining the funding priorities. We accomplish this through community meetings, surveys, public hearings, and agency questionnaires among other opportunities. A five-year consolidated plan was adopted last year after a lengthy public input process. The previous consolidated plan represented 2019 through 2024, and the current consolidated plan covers 2025 through 2029. The consolidated plan, for those of you who are not familiar with it, is a very prescriptive document, developed to HUD's requirements and is incredibly bureaucratic. If you do get a copy of it, reading the executive summary is a good place to start. Our current con plan funding goals are affordable housing, neighborhood revitalization, increasing incomes, public services, creating living wage jobs, homelessness services, health services, food access, child care access, and community development facilities. HUD also requires that the five-year consolidated plan be reviewed annually to examine what was accomplished during the previous years of the existing consolidated plan and determine the funding priorities for the next year. This is called an action plan. Tonight we'll be presenting the action plan. The funding priorities being recommended tonight are for this 2026 action plan. HUD requires that these funding priorities also have public input, which we gathered via again, community listening session sessions and input from current agencies that serve the community. This year, we also had some special emphasis on four areas. Providing additional innovation or enhancement to downtown, and establishing collaborative partnerships and co-location of services. So multiple of these additional goals are seen throughout the proposals that we have recommended for funding. As a note, this year the committee received almost six million dollars in application requests, and we expect to receive just over three million dollars in funding from HUD. Should there be a variance in the expected award, uh we are asking for the adoption of the contingency plan at the each of the uh funding uh proposals tonight that you have. Um put in long hours as volunteers to provide input on the application process. They've worked over information provided by city staff and community partners and reviewed the applications submitted by local organizations. The recommendations that we are presenting tonight came after months of effort, long hours of discussion, and with the full understanding that with limited funding, not every need would be met. So, to start off, uh we're gonna dig into the community development block grant funding recommendations. I'm going to uh review three of those and I'm gonna hand it off to some other community community members. So to start um with our housing um recommendation. Uh this one is receiving the most funds at $623,000. Um notice that the committee had uh made a pre-commitment of funds to the Union Gospel mission. Uh unfortunately they were unable to secure the low-income housing tax credit funds necessary to complete that portion of the project at this time. So the silver lining there was that actually freed up funding to uh be moved around to other community development block grant areas, um, including our public facilities. Or actually, what I should note also uh within the housing, there are 70 new units that will be created with the funds uh being recommended tonight.