Good morning and welcome.

My name is Oreen Chowdry, and I'm the chair of the Intergovernmental Relations Committee.

At this time, I'm going to call to order our regular meeting for Tuesday, September 9th, 2025.

I want to offer a friendly reminder to all committee members, staff, and the public that these meetings are broadcast live to enable greater public participation.

These broadcasts include real-time captioning as a further method to increase the accessibility of our proceedings to the community.

Therefore, all speakers need to be mindful of the rate of their speech so that our captioners can fully capture and transcribe transcribe all comments for the broadcast.

We ask all speakers to moderate the speed and clarity of their comments.

I'll now have the clerks call the roll.

Councilmember Payne, present wandsley.

Vita.

President.

Ellison is absent.

Osman.

Cashman.

Is absent.

Jenkins.

Is absent.

Chavez, present.

Chugtai.

Present.

Koske.

Present.

Paul Masano.

Present.

Vice Chair Rainville.

Chair Chowdhury.

Present.

There are nine members present.

Let the record reflect that we have a quorum.

I'll also remind my colleagues that we are using speaker management today, so please make sure you sign in.

Before we move to our published agenda, I'm proposing an addition to item number four, which is a resolution calling on the Minnesota State Legislature to take up a set of requests on gun control legislation.

That's authored by myself, President Payne, Councilmember Koske, and Councilmember Palmasano.

Is there any discussion on this amendment to the agenda?

Okay.

Seeing none, all those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Those opposed say nay.

All right.

That carries.

Um our first consent item is approving the appointment of Lauren Olson as an alternate to the Minneapolis-St.

Paul International Airport Noise Oversight Committee.

I'll now invite Lauren Olson up to kick off this item.

Good morning, Madam Chair and Committee members.

I did not know speaking to this item, but uh yeah, I'd be happy to serve as the alternate for the city.

Um Councilmember Koski is the representative on behalf of the city.

I've been on the noise oversight committee since I believe 2014.

So I would be very happy to continue if you'd like me to.

Thank you.

And we thank you for your service.

Um is there any discussion on this?

Seeing none, may I have a second on this motion?

Second.

There is discussion.

Councilmember Koske.

It's okay.

I just wanted to just commend uh Miss Olson for the support that she gives.

And there is no other better person to be our representative on this.

Like she said, she's been 20 since 2014, but was, I believe, I'm not sure when you started in Ward 12.

So this is like ingrained in her blood at this moment.

So just grateful that you're willing to be the representative in the alternative.

Thank you so much.

Awesome.

We have a proper second.

All those in favor say aye.

All those opposed say nay.

That motion carries.

Seeing no further discussion, congratulations, Lauren.

Really appreciate your service to this.

We have three items to be received and filed today, starting with receiving and filing the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board 2024 annual report, including the five-year project schedule.

I'll now invite Director Al Bangora up to kick this item off.

Or I apologize, I don't have your name up here.

You may introduce yourself.

Thank you.

Chair Chowdhury and Vice Chair Rainville and Council Members.

My name is Julie Weisman.

I am the finance director for the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, and I will be presenting this report this morning.

Assistant Superintendent for Planning, Michael Schroeder was not able to attend.

He normally presents a portion of this report, so I will present the full report.

So this is an annual report.

It is through December 31st, 2024.

The 20-year neighborhood park plan is a historic agreement that was made between the City of Minneapolis and the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board to provide additional funding for our neighborhood parks through 2026.

In 2016, the City Council and MPRB passed a concurrent ordinance that established the NPP 20 program and allocated a guaranteed amount of 11 million dollars for the next 20 years for neighborhood park maintenance rehab and capital improvements.

The park board also passed criteria-based system for capital and rehabilitation park project ordinances, and these ordinances are important because they are equity based, and they are the mechanism for which we use to select the projects and the order of which projects are completed each year.

Our current NPP 20 funding for our general fund property tax support that supports operations, maintenance and repairs for 2025.

That's 4.4 million dollars.

And for the capital and rehab for 2025, it is 12.69 million.

Again, the results of this report is through December 31st, 2024, and the information included in this report is 2023, 2024, and 2025.

There are adjustments that are made to this guaranteed annual amount every five years.

Here in 2025, we need to set the amounts for 27 to 2031.

And the park board has submitted its proposal to the city, and we hope to begin negotiations soon as that guarantee minimum amount needs to be approved by December 15th of 2025.

So our capital improvement program, we we schedule a six-year program, and that is adopted during our annual budget process.

We utilize that equity ordinance again in to select the projects and the order in which they are selected.

All neighborhood parks will benefit from the first round of improvements prior to the conclusion of NPP 20.

For rehabilitation, we establish and maintain the inventory of all the park assets, we assess their condition, we rank them, and we prioritize the rehabilitation projects.

What's important about rehabilitation is that those are the dollars that are invested in parks to do those items to get them through until the next major investment.

So it's ADA improvements, roof, siding, all of those type of activities.

So for our rehabilitation categories, those dollar amounts are funded and allocated within the same year.

And some of the dollars need to roll over into the next year for larger, for example, larger roof projects or larger ADA improvement type projects.

Again, some of those dollars needed to roll over into 2025.

And in 2025, because this is a 1231 report, this is just a report out of what was planned for 2025.

For capital investments, what's important to know is we have a typical phase for capital improvement projects.

Year one is the scoping and community engagement.

Year two is the um is the preliminary and final design and going out for bid for the projects, and then year three is usually the construction with the warranties and completion of the projects.

So for 2023, we have 38 percent allocated.

This is the second year of these projects, so they are in the uh final plan and bidding part of the process.

In 2024, we have 9% allocated, and again, these are the first year of these capital projects, so these are in the community engagement and preliminary design portion.

And then this is the plan uh for the CAPO projects in 2025.

This is not required as a part of our report, but we like to show uh there are a few projects that are prior to 2023 that are not that finished up in 2025 or or um will be finished up in 2025, and at the bottom you'll see the budget allocated uh for 2020 is 89 percent, 21 is 91 percent, and 22 is 54 percent.

And that is the end of the presentation, and we stand for questions.

Thank you so much.

Is there any questions or discussion on this item?

Councilmember Wansley.

Thank you, Chair Chowdhury.

Uh, thank you for the presentation.

I did want to ask a clarifying question, going back to slide three just around the different ordinances that brings in uh revenue to the parks.

Is any of those specifically the ordinance that uh mandates park dedication fees?

I think from new construction, if that's part of it and if that's coming up for expiration soon.

Chair Chowdhury, I'm gonna introduce um director of strategic planning, Adam Arvinson to help respond to some of these questions.

Welcome, Adam.

Thank you, Chair Chowdery.

Uh Councilmember Wansley.

Again, my name is Adam Arvidson.

I'm the director of strategic planning at the park board, and I oversee our capital program and also the park dedication program.

Um so the park dedication ordinance is also a concurrent ordinance between the park board and the city council.

Um, it doesn't have an expiration date.

Um the funding that uh comes in through that ordinance is allocated through the park board's capital improvement plan.

So it's not really part of NPP 20, it kind of augments what we're able to do under NPP 20, um and uh and those numbers actually show up kind of in our in our CIP.

Uh there is also an online tool available through the park board webpage where you can see each fee paid and whether it's been expended or allocated.

And you can even click by neighborhood to find out what's available in each neighborhood area within our city.

So that's a resource that's available at Minneapolis Parks.org.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Are there any other members who want to get in discussion?

Councilmember Payne.

Thank you, Chair Chowdhury.

I was curious if you could speak to any impacts of the expiration of COVID stimulus on the Capital Plan, and what plans we have for moving forward with any of those fiscal cliffs.

So if I understand the question, we did receive ARPA dollars for North Commons Park.

Those were reallocated to city general fund dollars.

So those aren't impacted by anything federally.

We do have a $2 million.

We have a federal allocation of $2 million for North Commons.

And we have one other federal grant that's not coming to my mind exactly right now.

So those two we are watching what's happening at the federal government, we have not been notified that they have been canceled.

So we are moving forward as if they are not canceled.

Thank you.

Willard Park is the other park that has federal dollars.

Great, thank you so much.

I am not seeing any other members in queue, so I will just say thank you so much to the park board for coming to the intergovernmental relations committee today and giving your annual presentation.

We do look forward to it every year.

Next, we will be receiving and filing an update of federal and state actions affecting the city of Minneapolis.

I'll now invite Director Topinka to kick off this item.

Thank you, Chair Chowdery and Council members.

Um, IGR team is here today to give an update on state and federal uh legislative items.

Uh so I'm gonna start with just an overview of um some a couple of things related to special elections, discussion around a special session, um, and then I'll turn it over to Steve Huser to go over some information about uh the bonding uh the capital investment process for 2026, and then after that, uh Laura Nolson will give an update on federal issues.

So there are several special elections happening this fall for state legislative seats.

Next Tuesday, September 16th, is the special election for House District 34B.

Um that is the seat that was held by uh Speaker Emerito Melissa Hortman.

Um so that election will take place next Tuesday, and after that, the House will be back to its full uh membership.

Currently, there are 67 GOP members in the House and 66 DFL members.

Um I'm sure many of you saw that the House DFL caucus did meet last night, and they selected a new leader, uh Representative Zach Stevenson from Coon Rapids.

Um so uh we'll talk a little bit more about that when we talk about uh the special session discussions.

Um in addition to the special election in the House.

Uh there are two special elections in the Senate on November 4th.

One is for Senate District 29, which was a seat that was vacated after the passing of Senator Bruce Anderson.

Uh that district represents cities including Buffalo, Monticello, Maple Lake, and a couple of others.

Um, and then additionally, Senate District 47 uh was the seat vacated after the resignation of Senator Nicole Mitchell.

Um that's primarily Woodbury and a couple surrounding cities.

Currently, the Senate has 33 DFL members and 32 GOP members.

So they are there are two vacancies in the Senate, those will be filled after the special election in November.

There is some discussion currently happening about a potential special session.

Governor Walls has indicated that he's interested in calling a special session in response to the shootings at Annunciation Church in Minneapolis a couple of weeks ago.

The Republican caucus last week released a list of proposals that they would like considered in a special session that was the Republican House caucus.

It included things like school security, mental health supports, and was primarily focused on those two items.

Many of you attended a press conference the day after the shooting at Annunciation here, where there were a number of DFL legislators from both the House and Senate who were supporting a call for an assault weapons ban and high capacity magazine ban.

So there are discussions ongoing.

MPR reported this morning that the governor and legislative leaders, including new DFL leader Zach Stevenson, are meeting this afternoon to discuss what the agenda for a special session could look like.

So that is ongoing, and we will stay tuned to find out if if there is a special session that is indeed called.

Our understanding of what those discussions are about that are ongoing.

Just as a reminder, this and I know you this is a the next agenda item, so I'm not going to go into a ton of detail here, but the city does have a number of positions related to gun violence and gun safety on our legislative policy priorities.

Some of them are here on this slide, including banning the statewide sale of assault weapons and bump stock silencers and extended magazines and a few other things listed here.

You can find these on our legislative policy positions, which are linked here on page 16.

And so these are items that you all have previously approved as city policy positions.

And so maybe I'll pause there briefly, Chair Chowdhury.

I don't know if you want to take questions as we go.

I'm sort of shifting topics here, but I'll pause for a moment.

Yeah, I will ask members if they have any questions or comments for Director Topinka or anything related to this part of the presentation.

I'm not seeing any, so you're free to move on.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Chowdhury.

So next, I just wanted to remind you all, and we shared this when we were last presenting to you in June, but we are in the midst of our 2026 policy liaison team process.

So this is the process that the uh city enterprise uses to help inform new items for the legislative agenda for the following year.

We started this process in late June.

It is led by Indiria Falana on our team.

Every department in the city has representatives who participate in this process.

It's kind of similar to this the budget process where we have a forum departments submit proposals and then we consider them through a series of meetings with all of the departments who are participating in the process.

And that helps inform what we then bring to you all for consideration for the next legislative agenda.

So we are having our second meeting today, and we will be presenting recommendations to you in November.

This year we are gonna wait to do the ask you for approval of the 2026 legislative agenda until January because the session does not begin until February, mid-February next year.

But we will be updating you with the items that come through the PLT process in November.

Now we will shift to the 2026 capital investment process, and I'll turn it over to Mr.

Huser in just a moment.

But this process is really dictated by Minnesota management and budget in even numbered years.

They ask local governments to submit items for consideration for the capital budget.

And so they set the deadlines for us.

Early submissions were due in June, and then final submissions are due in October.

We will be bringing a resolution to you all that MMB asks us to include a resolution of support from our governing body.

We're going to bring that to the October 7th COW meeting.

We've worked with Chair Chowdry on that given just the MMB deadlines, and when your meetings are, that's that's when it worked out to do it.

And so the items that were included in our early submission, with the exception of one, are all projects that were already on our legislative agenda for this past session.

They are primarily public works projects, and Mr.

Heather will walk through them in a little bit more detail.

And we do have some staff from public works here available to answer questions as well.

The community safety training and wellness facility is new this year.

You are going to be receiving a presentation from the Office of Community Safety about that facility at your September 22nd count meeting.

So we're not going to cover it here because you will be getting an in-depth presentation on that item and some of their other facilities plans then.

So we will just be covering these public works proposals.

So I did just want to sort of give the distinction here too.

What we're talking about here are projects that are the city's uh asks for geo bonds, general obligation bonds for uh, you know, city-owned facilities and projects that we want MMB to look at as part of the capital investment process that goes into to the governor's capital budget process.

Um there will be an opportunity as well through the legislative agenda setting process to discuss um potential other items that may be of interest to council members.

But um so I just wanted to to make sure it's clear that we're specifically talking about the process through which we submit items to MMB for consideration.

So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Steve Huser to talk more about the projects.

Welcome, Mr.

Huser.

Thank you, madam.

Chair, members of the committee.

Um I'm Steve Huser.

I'm a senior government relations representative with the IGR department.

Um the first project that we have on our draft list for this upcoming session is a structural renewal of a 36-inch water main.

This is a 12.36 million dollar ask of the legislature, but a total project cost of 24.8 million dollars.

Um, this would be a structural lining project that would rehabilitate 2.6 miles of primary water supply line uh in a geographical area that connects uh near north to downtown Minneapolis.

Um these pipes are being rehabilitated.

The pipes that are being rehabilitated are from the 1880s.

Um there has been uh uh a burst in this part of the system in the past, and so this lining project is of high importance to the city.

Um it does serve uh uh you know a lot of people in near near north and downtown.

So this is a it's a very big supply line, water supply line for our water water system.

Uh the next project we have is the um the ADA uh Americans with Disabilities Act Transition Plan Implementation Project.

Um our ask of the legislature would be five million dollars.

Um, however, the the scope of the amount of work that the city is still continuing to work on is about 400 million dollars.

Um this will allow the city to continue our work to address the required uh ADA accessibility improvements within the city.

Um the type of work that this will include will include things like curb cuts and other improvements that will help with ADA.

Uh the next project is the 13th Avenue stormwater project.

Uh this is a $13.5 million dollar ask.

Um this project is located in the Sheridan neighborhood of Northeast Minneapolis.

This would mitigate some flooding issues that are currently impacting about 27 properties at near this intersection.

Overall, this project would replace 2,100 feet of stormwater infrastructure and would include a new outfall into the Mississippi River.

In addition to the stormwater improvements in the flood mitigation portions of this project, streetscape improvements and ADA improvements would also be a part of this project.

The next project is a 35th Avenue North Flood Mitigation Project.

The ask on this project is 25 million dollars.

This is located in North Minneapolis in the Cleveland neighborhood.

This project would replace uh 1900 feet of inadequately sized stormwater uh pipes.

It mitigates flooding issues that are currently impacting about 100 properties in the area.

Um this would also include as part of this project some traffic calming elements that would try to address some speeding issues that are in that area as well.

Um the overall total project cost for this project is 29 million dollars.

And the last uh proposed project is the Aldrich Avenue South Sanitary Rehabilitation Project.

So, not a stormwater project, but this is a sanitary sewer, so wastewater project.

Uh our ask is six point six million dollars on a $7 million total project cost.

Uh, this would be a slip lining project that would rehabilitate 3,300 feet of city-owned sanitary sewer pipes that do eventually feed into the regional wastewater system.

Um, the method of using slip lining for this project will uh reduce some of the impacts that would otherwise have on local traffic if you were to dig up a whole trench to replace the whole pipe.

Um, this project will reduce the risk of sewer backups and other environmental impacts to this part of the neighborhood.

Um it will also include new maintenance access points and will allow public works to then have better access to do continued maintenance on this into the future.

Madam Chair, that's uh the end of my uh presentation.

Yeah, are there any questions or comments from members?

I'm not oh there we are.

Uh councilmember Cashman.

I will also recognize Councilmember Cashman and Councilmember Jenkins has joined the meeting.

Thanks.

That's what I wanted to um note to you, Chair.

Thank you.

Okay.

Appreciate it.

Councilmember Vita.

Thank you, Chair.

Um, thank you for the presentation.

Just a question about the 35th Avenue project.

What are the specifics on that?

We've started that project already.

So, what's the um the 25 million dollar asked including if you know?

If you if you have to get back to me later with it, that's fine too, but just wondering what the specifics are.

Yeah, Madam Chair and Councilmember Vita.

Um, some of the project needs that are being addressed, in addition to what I mentioned.

Um, so the street flooding, flooding, building flooding, the traffic speed reduction, and also like the stormwater quality treatment, so making sure that the water that's actually like coming in into the ends up in the Mississippi is cleaner than it would be otherwise.

Um, trying to read ahead.

I have um you know, and part of this is like the low low-lying nature of it.

So trying to improve some of those streetscapes, I believe is also part of the this project.

Um, in terms of like the actual, it's mostly a pipe issue, so size of pipe.

So the the mitigating the the volume of water that that we're getting in some of our rain events would be a part of this project.

There are staff from public works that are available, I think, in the overflow.

Okay.

Potentially that we could have otherwise.

Here they come.

And here comes the cavalry to answer some of the more details on this.

This is definitely the cavalry.

Yeah.

So I'll turn it over to Public Works Chair.

Great.

Welcome up.

Please introduce yourself.

Hi, I'm Matt Ali, professional engineer in surface water and sewers division of public works.

Um, the construction for the 35th Avenue project is planned to start next year.

So we're still finishing up design work on that.

So any funding that would be available through this would still uh be able to contribute to paying for the construction of that project.

Okay, so the 25 million is to help with finishing up like what because we've had neighborhood tours and all this stuff saying to people we're doing it, it's coming, it's happening.

So this is just to help pay for it if we get this funding.

That is correct.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I don't know if we have any other questions regarding that part of the presentation.

I put myself in queue.

I had a question on just like how we decided on the uh bonding ass for the ADA infrastructure compliance, because five million is very small compared to the 400 million necessary.

Yeah, Madam Chair, members of the committee.

I I wouldn't say that there's like a magical formula that we use to arrive at that number.

I think it's it's an acknowledgement that we have can continued amount of work over many years to get this done, and so doing it in at an incremental way that we have the capacity to do the work, I believe is one of the major considerations that we had.

I don't think we have anybody else from you know that would want to like come up and I don't think it's anything more complicated than that.

Um it is a large problem.

I mean, a large amount of money and a large amount of work that we are looking at doing over the next 15 years to try to address what we have left to do.

Um I believe if I I'm gonna use a rough number, but there's about 7,000, you know, application or sites where we would need to do this type of an improvement in addition to the I think about 18,000 we've already done.

Um I believe if I saw if I saw my numbers correctly.

So and this is a many years project to to try to address this, but if even if we were to get all of the 400 million all in one lump sum, it would be very difficult then to then actually implement a plan to in a short amount of time to get it all done.

Thank you.

That's helpful.

And I'll just note um for when we get the presentations and our climate and infrastructure committee, uh, a part of the work is certainly the ADA curb cuts and ramps, and that's uh what public works is prioritizing and working on.

I think it makes a lot of sense.

But there's a piece of the work with the consideration of funding that we haven't been able to really get started, and that's ADA compliance on the sidewalks and doing an inventory, and I think it would be helpful this legislative session to kind of um go a little bit more in depth with members about what we have to do as a city and why we're incrementally asking for funding, but what it what it would mean at the end result for all of our community members in Minneapolis if we were able to do um the curb cuts and the ramps, but of course the sidewalks as well.

I've had many constituents, especially constituents who use a wheelchair or are uh have um different visual needs that have reached out specifically about the sidewalk and would love to see the city of Minneapolis take tackle that and I've shared um it's about prioritization and the resources that we have the city to address it.

So I just want to make that comment and really appreciate it.

I will recognize Vice Chair Rainbow.

Thank you.

Uh Matt, I just want to say thanks for all your help with 13th Avenue, the neighborhood group uh meeting that you came to the other was really good.

I've gotten such positive feedback from you and the other presenter.

So thank you very much.

Katie was great as well.

Thank you.

I'm not seeing any further discussion on this part of the presentation.

So we can move to the federal update.

Welcome back, Ms.

Olson.

Thank you.

Uh good morning, madam chair and council members.

I'm Lauren Olson, senior government relations representative with the IGR team.

Um today's topic um is going to just kind of focus on the federal budget process because that's going to be a major uh topic of conversation over the next month and beyond.

So the fiscal year uh for the federal government ends September 30th.

So that's fast approaching.

Um, basically, at this point, Congress can either agree on a FY26 budget, or they can pass a continuing resolution to temporarily continue to fund the government, or we potentially face a situation where the government is not funded and we have a government shutdown and and everything that comes with that.

Um the budget process requires at least 60 votes in the Senate to bring that budget to the floor, which is um important to note because some of the other processes we're gonna talk about do not, but right now with the normal budget process, they need um hefty support from the Senate.

Generally right now, people are focused on probably a stopgap measure to avoid a shutdown, although I think some people are are keeping the potential for a shutdown in mind to.

It's not being honored because through a number of different tools and tactics, um their appropriations are being interfered with.

This will all play out very shortly.

Um, and the idea there is that if the White House suggests that if the money is nearing it its termination date, so it's ending at the end of the year, they can start that rescission process, and if Congress doesn't act on it within the time frame, they believe that they can unilaterally take the money.

People, you know, there's a lot of people very strongly disagree with that with that and say no, you need affirmative action by Congress to rescind money.

So that's something we'll be watching play out.

Another challenge is that the White House budget office has sometimes not been like distributing the funds in the way that Congress has expects them to do through, so they're basically not even they're withholding it from the agencies themselves by saying, Hey, um, I'd like a report first about how these programs are consistent with our administration policies or they'll add other conditions.

So sometimes the White House's budget office is is being alleged to not get the money out.

Of course, another challenge that we've seen as a city is attempts to like freeze funding or attempts to add new conditions onto funding that again prevents the money from getting to where it was intended to go.

So Democrats are trying to seek a way to try to get some kind of commitment or something that gives them any confidence that what they indicate through appropriations is meaningful and won't be threatened.

So that they're trying to figure that out, and we'll see how that we'll see how that goes.

Just some big picture things before we go into some more details.

Sorry, Miss Olson.

Yeah, I need to cut you off.

We lost captioning, so we are going to need to take a 10 minute recess.

Okay, thank you.