Good morning.

My name is Aisha Chugtai, and I am the chair of the budget committee.

I'm going to call to order our adjourned meeting for Tuesday, September 18, 2025.

Before we begin the meeting, I want to offer a friendly reminder to all 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 all comments for the broadcast.

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

Today we have three presentations related to the mayor's recommended 2026 budget from the 311 Service Center, the Neighborhood and Community Relations Department, as well as the Communications Department.

We will begin with the 311 Service Center presentation, and for that, I will invite Director Nizimbi to join us and begin that presentation.

Welcome, Director.

Again, my name is Wendin Zimbi, and I am the 311 Service Center Director.

Good morning, Chair Shagtai and members of the budget committee.

Today I'm here to present the 2026 Mayor's recommended budget for the 311 Service Center Department.

The 311 Service Center is part of the Office of Public Service under the communications and engagement lane, led by Deputy City Operations Officer Laura Mellum.

I want to take a moment and thank DCOO Mellum for her consistent support since joining the city shortly after the 311 service center merger.

She has helped elevate 311's visibility, highlighting our critical role in city operations and strengthening awareness of how we support departments across the enterprise.

The 311 service center has 45 employees, 43 funded through a budget, and two temporary FTEs at the Lake Street Safety Center funded by public safety aid.

Two additional positions approved in the 2025 budget remain unfilled until the South Minneapolis Community Safety Center opens.

Operations are led by the Deputy Director who oversees a 311 call center, service center, and Lakes Street Safety Center.

The support services team, currently led by a manager with three analysts, focuses on training, technology, quality assurance, data, and constituent services.

In 2026, this structure will shift to a lead analyst reporting directly to the director.

This change strengthens role clarity, supports collaborative data-driven decisions, and saves 14,260 annually without reducing jobs or service levels.

By phone, in person or online, we provide clear answers and solutions while making government accessible.

Removing barriers so residents don't have to navigate the city alone.

They clarify our role, align us with citywide initiatives, and ensure we serve residents with focus and consistency.

First is enhancing public service by delivering timely, accurate information, supporting transparency and helping residents get quick answers.

Secondly, is supporting city operations.

We partner with departments to ensure residents receive consistent information and work and that ease pressure on 911 while still connecting residents to the right resources.

We develop these priorities after the 311 service center merger to give us clear direction.

Today, they ground our work daily and directly support citywide efforts to build trust in a safer, more responsive community.

This slide highlights key management decisions made to improve efficiency and service.

FTE neutral alignment, we evaluated our roles and responsibilities to support both 311 and the service center without increasing staffing.

Appropriate use of 311 initiative.

This is a new initiative that we launched in July of this year as a final step in a two-year effort to clarify how 311 supports departments.

With a performance management and innovation department, PMI is a consultant.

We're creating clear pathways and best practices so 311 serves as a bridge, not a wall to city services.

And third is more IVR investments that we have made to expand language options.

We have improved translation notifications and added tools to screen disruptive calls, improving efficiency and service.

Some of our key achievements in 2025 under staff and stability, we strengthened workforce stability, achieving a low turnover rate of 4.49 as of August 31st.

We have expanded bilingual capacity with new Spanish and Somali speaking staff and streamlined agent training from eight months to just four months.

Ongoing refresher trainings delivered by subject matter experts from city departments, are ensuring 311 information remains current and accurate.

Under innovation and access, in 2025, we launched new services to improve resident access.

Police reports became available at the East Lake Street starting May 12th, and our virtual 311 service at the service center launched May 19th, providing residents with additional ways to connect with the city.

Additionally, we're continuing to advance the new CRM project, incorporating feedback from both residents and city departments to improve future service delivery.

These achievements reflect our commitment to building a skilled, stable workforce while innovating to make city services more accessible and responsive.

This next slide shows more achievements under community engagement.

In 2025, staff will have participated in 20 community events, strengthening outreach and visibility across the city.

We are focused on educating residents about when to call 311 versus 911.

Also, based on the overwhelming feedback we received from residents about the new CRM, it was clear we needed to create meaningful feedback loops in response.

We just created new tools, a cure codes, and online forms so residents can quickly share the experiences and help us improve.

Also, what began as a partnership with United Way 211 to explore recommendations under the Safe and Thriving Communities report has now grown to include discussions around aligning 211, 311, 911, and 988 services.

And lastly, in the fourth quarter of this year, we will be rolling out enterprise-wide training for city departments.

This training will focus on service standards, SLAs, using the 311 dashboard, and partnering with 211 and 988 to ensure more consistent service delivery.

These accomplishments show that we are not only improving our own operations in our department, but we are helping build a more resident-centered, responsive and strategic city service model for the future.

And I'll move on to highlight some of the key risks for the departments that the department is managing.

First, our current CRM, LAGAN is outdated and no longer meets enterprise needs.

This system is also costly to license on our user basis.

While we are in the process of replacing LAGEN, the new CRM will not be implemented until quarter four of 2027.

So LAGANS will remain our system for the next two years.

Second, as we continue to expand access and provide services in multiple languages, we are seeing our translation costs are increasing.

Lessons learned from the past year.

First, our work with the Minneapolis Advisory Committee on People with Disabilities reinforced the value of direct engagement.

We did two presentations to this committee, one on the new CRM and the service center, which led to practical suggestions for making systems and services more user-friendly, accessible, and effective.

Secondly, we have a focus on continuously ensuring all residents can connect to city services and information, removing barriers and wherever possible.

And third, we are reinforcing 311's role in the pub in public safety.

People don't always see the connection between 311 and public safety.

Reporting issues such as street lights that are out, IC sidewalks, blocked storm drains, or other non-emergency concerns helps keep communities safe.

Now we will take a closer look at our outcoming Yapolis performance measures.

These measures align with the department's priority objectives I mentioned earlier, which define the co-mission and daily work of the service center, 311 service center department.

While our priority objectives remain constant, the specific performance measures can evolve to reflect changing resident needs, department initiatives or city priorities.

For priority number one on enhancing public service, we're tracking three measures.

First is the interaction service quality.

We review two calls and two emails per agent per week to ensure accurate and complete information.

This helps residents get the right help faster and improves overall customer service.

The second measure is a percentage of service requests resolved within the service level agreement or SLAs, and this tracks how quickly requests are completed according to expected timelines.

And lastly, we are tracking the percentage of service center interactions that were resolved within a single visit, which ensures residents can get what they need efficiently without multiple trips.

This slides breaks down the performance measures for that first priority, enhancing public service.

Measure one, we improved from 91.1.21 in 2023 to 91.89 in 2024, with a target of 94% in 2025, which we are already meeting.

It shows a steady focus on accuracy and quality in every interaction.

Under measure two, as of August 31st this year, we are at 88.8% and targeting 90% in 2026.

For measure three, um, this measure was newly tracked starting 2025 for the service center.

As of August 20, August 31st, we are at 95.33% with a target of 96 in 2026.

Under our second priority of supporting city operations, we are tracking two key performance measures.

First, the percentage of service requests reassigned.

This shows how effectively requests are routed to the correct department by our agents on the first attempt.

Lower reassignment rates indicate clear intake processes, saving staff time and reducing resident frustration.

The second measure is a percentage of referrals to subject matter expert counters at the service center with complete and accurate information.

This ensures residents arrive prepared and at the right place, reducing repeat visits and improving the overall experience.

Under this priority, measure one, in 2023, 3.32% of requests were reassigned, improving slightly to 3.18% in 2024.

As of August 31st, the rate is down to 3.31, 3.13 with a 2026 target of 3.1.

While these numbers may look small, even a fraction of a percentage represents hundreds of requests.

So this incremental improvements matter for both residents and departments.

For priority three, while 311 is not an emergency response service, we play a key role in supporting the city's broader public safety efforts by handling non-emergency issues and connecting residents to the right resources.

Under this third priority of promoting public safety, we are tracking two key performance measures.

First is a percentage of police reports entered by 311 agents and approved by MPD.

Reports may be rejected if they are missing key details, like a license plate number or the vehicle identification number of VIN in a car theft.

This measure reflects the accuracy and quality of the reports we take at 311.

High approval rates show that residents can rely on 311 to handle reports correctly, saving both time for the public and MPD.

Second is a percentage of public safety related interactions with complete reliable information.

For that measure, we review two calls and two emails per agent weekly, covering areas like 911, fire, police, and public works.

This helps us spot trends, respond faster, connect residents to the right help, and strengthen collaboration with law enforcement.

To the right is a QR code to access the performance dashboard on the city website.

Under measure one, for that priority number three, in 2023, the approval rate was 97.19.

As of this year, we're at 99.04 with a goal of reaching 99.5 in 2026.

For measure two in 2023, we were at 94.5%.

That improved to 97% as of August this year, and we have a target of 98% in 2026.

In this slide, you will see that our overall budget is increasing by 4.56%, which is about 308,962.

This growth is driven by an increase in higher internal service charges, primary EIT and rent.

This includes two vacant positions for the South Minneapolis Community Safety Center, which remain unfilled until the center opens.

In this slide, however, the total FTE count shows 45 FTEs filled with zero vacancies based on the two public service aid funded positions that are not included in our department budgeted FTE count as they are temporary FTEs, but we do obviously consider them part of our team.

Because of the two South Minneapolis community safety center vacancies, the department is projected to come in under budget for 2025, and we are not reallocating those funds elsewhere.

In 2026, the mayor's recommended budget shows a net decrease of two FTEs, reflecting the removal of the unfilled South Minneapolis Community Safety Center positions.

These are proposed to be restored in 2027.

Since the Lake Street positions are funded through late 2026, specifically November, and will transition to the new safety center, we will not need lead time for hiring.

If the center opens earlier before January 2027, the department is prepared to absorb the one-month funding gap.

Finally, as of the time of this report, as of the time this report was prepared, we have one additional vacancy, a 311 agent that we will start the process of filling.

And now we will take a look at department updates and we'll start with the 311 call center.

This slide shows 311 call center data from 2022 through 2025.

Beyond overall call volume, it highlights how residents are interacting differently with 311, especially since we launched our interactive voice response or IVR system.

At the May 5th, administration and enterprise oversight committee.

I did a deep dive into these numbers, but today I want to highlight the IVR.

The IVR went live in late 2023, making 2024 our first full year of data.

That's why you see a new metric in row three.

Out of 361, 749 total calls that came into 311, more than 100,000 were resolved entirely within the IVR.

As of August 31st this year, about 65,000 calls have been completed without needing an agent.

This saves residents time, reduces wait periods, and allows our agents to focus on more complex or sensitive issues.

This impact is significant.

Two years ago, 311 was severely short staffed and struggling to meet demand.

Based on workload trends, we would have needed three to more three to four more staff to keep up.

Instead, the IVR has absorbed much of that volume, stabilizing operations without compromising service.

Clearly, the decision for more investment into the IVR has paid off.

To be clear, this doesn't replace staff.

Agents remain essential for the complex high-value interactions that only a person can handle.

But IVR ensures their expertise is focused where it matters most, making this a strong example of how technology and staffing strategy together have strengthened the department.

This slide provides some additional data as part of the impacts of investing in the IVR.

Average wait time has improved from four minutes in 2022 to 1.3 minutes in 2025, and a better abandoned rates have dropped from nearly 15% to just over 3%.

This shows that residents are reaching agents faster and staying on the line, thanks in part to our VR to our IVR system.

Percent time actively handling interactions has stayed fairly steady, while percent time available to receive interactions has increased from under 4% to over 26.64%, giving agents capacity to take calls efficiently and manage their workload.

This slide shows the service center's in-person data from 2021 through 2025, including both visits and transactions.

The 2025 data is through August 2025.

We have seen a steady increase in visits from 9,748 in 2021 when we opened the service center to over 20,000 in 2024 and a corresponding rise in transactions.

This reflects the service center's role as a true one-stop shop where residents often complete multiple tasks in one visit.

This next slide shows the in-person data for the Lake Street Safety Center through August 31st, 2025.

Over this period, the center served a total of 335 residents and customers, spanning a wide range of services.

This data also highlights a safety center's role as a local hub where residents can access multiple services in one place, helping to streamline support and improve access to critical resources in the community.

This slide shows the year over year data on police reports and police records.

Residents can file non-emergency police reports online or by calling 311.

When this responsibility shifted from 911 in 2021 to 311, we received 10,789 calls, reports, which is about 37% with it with agent 311 agent assistance.

By 2024, reports grew to 19,619, which is an 82% increase.

At the same time, fewer residents needed agent help, showing residents are getting more comfortable with online forms.

This trend improves efficiency while freeing agents for more complex needs.

Through though many reports still start with a quick 311 call for guidance.

For police records, which must be handled in person at the public service building, demand is also rising in 2024.

We process 6,596 transactions, which is 25% of all service center walk up activity, underscoring the continued importance of in-person service.

This next slide outlines the proposed reductions in the 2026 mayor's recommended budget.

First is a budgeted position adjustment, which is a one-time reduction of the 197,302 for the two South Minneapolis Community Safety Center positions delayed until January 2027.

As I mentioned, the current Lake Street staff are funded by the public safety aid through 2020, November 2026 and will transition to the new center when it opens.

If the center opens before January 2020, January 1st, 2027, the existing, the department will cover December 2026 with existing resources.

This delay has no impact on service levels.

Reduction number two is professional services.

This is a one-time reduction of 21, about 21,000, which will scale back some outreach and staff training activities.

Co-services will remain unaffected.

Reduction number three is budgeted position reclassification.

This is an ongoing reduction of a little over 14,000 from realigning roles discussed earlier.

This improves clarity and efficiency without affecting access or service delivery.

And lastly, reduction number four is the Lagan contract transfer to IT department, which is an ongoing reduction of 80,000 shifting CRM contract funding to IT, where most of the legend budget resides.

There is no impact to performance or service levels.

Thank you for that presentation, Director.

Before we continue to discussion, I'm going to ask the clerks to call the role so we can verify the presence of a quorum.

Councilmember Payne.

Present.

Ellison is absent.

Osman is absent.

Cashman.

Jenkins is absent.

Chavez, present.

Chowdry is absent.

Palmasano.

Present.

Vice Chair Kosky.

Present.

Chair Chuk Time.

Present.

There are seven members present.

Let the record reflect that we have a quorum.

I will remind my colleagues that we will be using speaker management today.

Please, so please make sure to sign in.

With that, I will ask if any members of this committee have questions related to this presentation.

I'll first recognize Councilmember Cashman, followed by Vice Charkowski.

Thank you, Chair Chang Tai, and thank you so much, Director Nzimbi, for this presentation and all of the metrics that you've shown here.

And so I really thank you and your department for your leadership on this and all the great progress that you've made this year.

I wanted to follow up on a couple of of the metrics, but before that, I wanted to ask if there's anything that you wish we were tracking that we're not, or something that you'd like to track in the future, and you had to you have to set up a mechanism to be able to track it.

Sorry.

Councilmember Cashman, thank you for the compliments and um and for the question that you asked.

We have been building the plane and flying it for the most part for the last two years.

So we are tracking, we've been tracking a lot of things at the same time.

For the time being, we feel like we are tracking what we need to be tracking to where we have brought stability to the department.

And uh we're looking forward to the new CRM because we've um we expect to have a finalized contract by the end of this year, so we can start the build out in 2026, and that will come with a lot of as we see what the capabilities of a new system will come up with a lot of uh ideas of what else we need to track, but for the time being, we feel we are tracking what we need to track.

Thank you.

And then as far as resolutions that are available to 311 agents, are they sufficient or are there any types of problems that constituents contact you that go unresolved because there is not a clear resolution to it?

Um Chair Shek Tai, uh, Councilmember Cashman.

Um again, we feel like we are doing our best to resolve all the issues that come to us and pointing residents to where they need to go.

Um, as I said, uh as we had we've been looking at the needs assessment for for the departments in the last two years, there's a lot of things that we have done, a lot of gaps that were existing, and we've been working very closely with departments in figuring out where to get answers or how to get answers and what the timelines are, and making sure that everything that comes through us is resolved.

That was a gap that was existing where when stuff was coming to 311 and we passed it on to the department, there was no one to bridge that gap, and so we stood up and said we will be the lead with this work, and so we're following up.

So our goal really has been when a request comes into 311, we are following it through all the way back until it gets back to the resident as much as we're able to with the system that we have and the process we have in place.

Okay, thanks.

On page nine, under risks, you mentioned increased translation costs.

Is there an investment in translation technology?

Maybe similar to the interactive voice response or IVR technology that you mentioned that could mitigate those costs.

Um, Cheshek Tai, Councilmember Cashman, that's a good question.

Uh we don't have a system yet.

We are leveraging the IVR as much as possible.

Uh we just hired, as I mentioned, we just hired uh two bilingual Spanish and Somali staff, and those are the two main ones that the costs that we're increasing.

So we'll they just started early this year.

So we'll be tracking to see like um, you know, what impact that has.

Uh, but for the most part, we don't have a system that helps us with that.

Okay.

And I will mention too that we leverage the master contract, the NCR master contract, it has the translation services, and that's what we use for translation.

Perfect.

Uh, page 20 has the call center data and shows that the average wait time dropped from four minutes in 2024 to just 1.3 minutes in 2025.

So I wanted to compliment you on that.

I think that's a huge uh huge uh accomplishment.

Um are there any industry benchmarks for these numbers that you are able to compare to?

Um, Cheshik Tai, Councilmember Cashman.

Uh we have been looking, our support services team uh analysts have been working closely to see as we are trying to bring stability to the department, looking at the numbers, and also we're trying to look at what the benchmarks are, industry averages.

Um and we have to compare them with the private sector uh call centers, but also we have some metrics for 311 call centers in the country.

So currently the average wait time for um the average wait time is about 60 to 90 minutes um right now.

So we are about there, and that's 60 to 90 minutes for uh 70% to 80 percent of all the total calls.

Did you mean seconds?

Seconds, yes.

Sorry, yes, seconds.

Got it.

Yes.

So at least six 70, 70 to 80% of all total calls should be around the 60 to 90 minutes.

Considering that the needs, the calls that come in vary.

The support that is needed varies.

So, like for example, police reports take 30 to 45 minutes for one.

Okay.

Thank you.

And then last question was about the Lake Street Safety Center.

Looked like the largest number of services provided were through other city services and other outside services.

Could you explain what those categories encompass?

Yes.

Through the chair, Councilmember Cashman.

Other city services are services that are not provided at Lake Street but are provided at the service center in downtown.

So Lake Street is being a temporary space.

We were not we don't have a full service center where we do uh like the service center, the PSB, we take payments, we do way more than uh at Lake Street.

So those are other city services that we refer them to uh the service center in downtown, and for some of the processes, we've found ways the managers have found ways of just not referring people to come to downtown but helping them uh but connecting, directly connecting with uh with downtown to get the solutions.

Um other outside services.

The space that we are in right now at Lake Street was a former dentist office, so we're still seeing people coming in looking for the dentist office, or people coming in to ask for napkins or to one use a bathroom.

So it just speaks to uh we need to do more engagement to create awareness of what we are doing in that space.

Is there a public bathroom available?

No, there's not.

Okay.

Interesting.

Okay, thank you so much.

Wonderful, thank you.

Next, I will recognize Vice Chair Koski, followed by Councilmember Palmasano.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Uh thank you so much, Director, for the presentation, and thank you so much for your partnership and hard work.

Uh I can say as a council member, you know, I've only been here for four years, but there is a significant change and feel um in the in the way that 311 team has been able to deliver and how we feel it.

And so I you can see that the statistics, you know, we we see the data, but we really feel it.

And so thank you so much for all of your hard work and everything that you've done to make sure that this has happened.

Um it does not surprise me to see those numbers like the call weights, for example.

Um, and so I just think that it's just been incredible to watch the progress and see the difference.

So thank you so much.

Um I just had a couple other questions.

Um I just was curious to know, you know, thus far, you know, have there been any key learnings from the Lake Street Safety Center that you will incorporate or maybe not incorporate in the South Minneapolis Community Safety Center.

Um, through the chair, Councilmember Kosky, thank you for your kind words.

Yes, we are learning a lot even just by looking at the data.

Um, and one of the things that we know for sure is that we need a full service center in the new space.

Uh, looking at the other city services that are being asked for in this space that we offer at the service center in downtown.

Um so that's one of the things that we are considering, then we already considered it, but then also how do we improve the services so that um we can provide more?

But also the other thing that we are noticing lessons learned from this space is um is to work even more uh consistently with the partners to make sure that we have a cadence on when they're gonna be on site to meet with residents that come in.

Um, and um then also the outreach uh too, in so we can know people can know exactly what we are doing in this space um to know that it's not just a partial service center, that it's a full service center.

So um, so we could they can know what we're doing there.

So we don't have that category of other outside services that are not part of what we're doing.

Great, thanks.

That's helpful to learn and exciting as the next year unfolds and you have more time to gather that information too.

This is more of a specific question around the I'm not sure what slide number it was, but it was around the contact and how people are contacting 311.

So I noticed I I believe in 2023 it looked like the email and mobile app was significantly there was a bit of a jump there.

Um and then now we've kind of seen it fall off.

What was that increase caused by?

Through the chair, Councilmember Kosky.

Um in 2023, yes, the emails and um some of the other channels were high than in 2024.

And in 2023, this is we were still we were in the thick of things, we were trying to figure out what our processes are.

Those are already a lot of frustration out in the public with the service delivery or delays because we were either short-staffed, we had a high turnover rate.

And so we were seeing people just repeat calls or they they've called us and then they're emailing us or they're submitting through different channels because of that again, frustration of the delayed response.

So as we started working with departments, clarifying uh definitions around the SLAs, um, uh around processes.

We also did a lot of uh taking looked a lot a lot of the business processes and took a lot of what through one was directly supporting residents and put it online because we realized that uh knowledge base had a lot of information, but the information was not online for departments.

So we started doing that, uh shifting stuff online, um tangling our process, and that's why we see we start we are starting to see uh downward trend in emails in the different channels.

So I would say it's because of streamlining and efficiency is a lead factor in that.

Okay.

And I I don't see on here, at least not that I understand, like duplications.

Do you track that too of and have those then decreased over the course of the years as well then?

Um, Chair Shektai, Councilmember Koski, yes, we've been tracking those, and now we are intentionally making sure that we are eliminating any duplications.

Uh we've included that in our process moving forward that we are looking for those.

Gotcha, those are all the questions I have.

But again, just thank you so much.

This is really um just very exciting to see the progress, and it's fun to see you know how your leadership has shifted and changed the department over time here.

So thank you.

Thank you.

And next I will recognize Council Member Palmasano.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Director Nizindi.

Um, couple quick comments and questions.

First, is I think it was just last cycle that we approved a position for deputy director, and I'm curious about your timeline for hiring that position.

Um, member Palmesano.

Uh yes, we did approve um the deputy director position was approved the last cycle.

Uh, it is not a new position.

We reclassified the existing operations manager position into the deputy director position.

So it is we already have that transition is already happening right now with uh with HR.

Ah, okay, so it's already filled.

Yes, we already had an operations manager.

Great.

Um, something I hear over and over again is misunderstanding of when to call 911 and when to call 311.

So I appreciate your increased outreach on that topic.

Um we want people to feel comfortable and confident when they call the city, and you're you're helping us do that.

Um another piece is your outcome Minneapolis results are are really impressive.

And I'm curious, how are you learning from those cases and situations to um that maybe didn't quite meet your goals to get better?

Uh through the chair, Councilmember Palmezano, it has been very interesting for us to look at this data and being because we're being more intentional and now tying it to a new priority objectives.

Um it has been helpful to see where we're at.

It gives us a good snapshot of where we're at.

Given all the work that we have done in the last two years, it shows us where we started at and the increase the impact of the work that we have been doing, and it's helping us set uh what our goals, realistic goals for 2026, but it also shows us how we can uh continue working with departments to improve service delivery, and the metrics are helping us with a case when we come to departments to say this is what we have seen.

These are the numbers.

So we need to work together in these different areas.

Um I think uh the metrics are also helping us prepare for what is yet to come.

For example, the the uh public safety metrics have been uh specifically important for us as we prepare.

We know with the Safe and Thriving Communities Report, one of the recommendations was to transform more of the public safety, non-emergency uh work to more of it to 311.

And this shows us the success that we have had in this area, and then the numbers being as high as they are, started at 97% when the work was transferred from 911, and now we are about 99 or close to 99 in the 90s.

It shows the readiness, but also how well the departments have given us good scripts so that we are able to support the residents, and then seeing what we've learned from that as we anticipate this new um uh work that will be coming, the new forms, non-emergency online forms and support that we'll will be doing in the future when it comes.

So there's a lot of things that we can we are learning from from these outcomes.

Yeah, I'm curious if are you seeing you point out, and Councilmember Cashman touched on the Lake Street Safety Center, but my question is it still seems like the biggest number of interactions is for other outside services.

Are you seeing any increase of people coming to use our services?

Um through the chair, Councilmember Palmisano, yes, if we do the month over month, we we are seeing an increase.

Um that data for uh East Lake Street was actually important looking at the month by month because we opened in November.

And in November, we are ours were we had two days in the week, I think two Tuesdays and Thursdays, where we were opening at nine and closing at seven or eleven and closing at seven, because of the numbers and seeing that most people were still coming for outside services, other outside services were not getting a lot of people coming in for the services that we are uh we are we're providing there.

Uh about a month ago, we shifted the number the times, so now we are open nine to five every day, Monday through Thursday, just because we can see the times that people are coming in, what they're coming in for.

And so now we've started tracking this data to see, you know, what what the new impact is going to be with the new hours.

So the numbers are really helping a lot.

And I know that these are like general numbers about it, but we we also like break it down to each hour, like when so we know like uh most people coming in through uh between eight and nine or between um five and seven p.m.

So they've been helpful, but we we have seen an increase in people coming in for the services that we are providing.

And you provide in-person services there?

Um uh through the chair, Councilmember Palmisano, yes, we provide in in-person services, uh, but also for people who are coming in for services that we do not provide there.

We're able to call downtown.

A good example is people coming in for uh navigation center, yes, or or permits because we don't have the services there, we don't have uh necessarily have um we're not able to remote in departments in that space like we do.

We just call or print out the forms and uh email them to downtown, and then the downtown f uh does a follow-up with them.

I see.

Um, last question.

Could you help me understand a little bit more about the IVR system, the interactive voice response?

Because I must admit, if it's an AI phone system, I typically hang up on them wherever I call.

So then would that be an abandoned rate?

Would that be, would you think I had had my call completed?

Um how does that work and do people like it?

Because in other situations, it is really frustrating.

Through the check, Councilmember from Misano.

So the IVR system is when you call 311.

Um the first thing you hear is you've reached through uh Minneapolis 311 for English uh press.

So we go through the translation piece.

You're right away you are in the IVR at that point.

And then it goes to the question about let us know what you're calling for.

Um, and then you you either let us know or you press the number, and then it advances you to the agent.

The piece that has been super helpful with the IVR is um as you're waiting, we have these cues uh voice prompts that tell you if you're calling for police reports, you don't have to stay on the line.

We give you the website, we tell you what you need to do to fill it out.

Uh, if you're calling for um, uh this has his it's been very helpful like during emergent situation.

If we're having a snowstorm, it tells you what the parking rules are for for that for day one, for day two, depending on the day that you call.

So we have all these prompts preloaded, and we found that a lot of people are calling us, calling, waiting to talk to an agent for those prompts.

So they just listen to them and then they hang up because they have been given the information that they need.

If they're calling for uh permits, they are told where they can find more information about permits uh on on the website.

So some decide, well, that's what we're calling for, we'll go and get that information there.

So that is the larger the broad concept of the IVR and how we we are currently leveraging it.

And we know that that's the question they were calling about.

We you know that it's not just me that got frustrated on a long hold time and hung up.

Yes, we know that is a question because they're all recorded and we can go back and see what were people calling for, what did they so that's it it's also been very helpful for us now because we're able to get data on why people called before without the IVR, we only had data for for service requests because those we are logging in and we know what people have called for.

Now with the IVR, just by them giving us the prompt, we're able to go and say we got all these uh these calls on these days for um a report on a homeless encampment or on solid waste recycling or to trust trash collection.

So we know at any any one time what uh leading calls were for the week, and that's how we know if we have a lot of construction calls, we know we need maybe more information on uh wayfinding because people are calling about roads that have been closed and stuff like that.

So we usually go back and look at that data on a weekly basis to see what what the what the calls were all about and how they align.

Thank you.

This is real helpful.

Thank you.

Wonderful, and then next I'll recognize Vice Chair Kosky.

Thank you, madam chair.

Just another note of um positivity here around the outreach and helping residents know more about calling 311 versus calling 911.

I just want to thank you so much.

You've partnered with my team and Ward 11 and just so other council members, if you haven't had a chance to do this, and hopefully, this is adding more work to your plate, but um they the 91 team and 31 team came to a Ward 11 meeting and did an interactive, you know, kind of game, and we had over 50 residents there learning about the differences between calling 911 and 31, and it was really incredible that what you put together and really helpful and informative, even myself as a council member who should have known most of the things.

There was a lot of learning as well.

So just really appreciate that.

And I know that your team is also coming to the upcoming South Minneapolis Seniors Fair and doing a workshop breakout uh session for that, and we have probably over 100 seniors that will be coming to that event.

So again, just slowly and surely, you know, like Councilmember Palmasano said, that is one of the things and kind of frustrations we get for residents is that I don't know when who to call when.

And so the work that you are doing is also been so helpful.

So thank you so much for partnering on all of that.

Wonderful.

And just I want to close out your presentation with just a brief question.

I am wondering, and I'm sorry if I missed this in your presentation, the the login transfer to IT.

Can you just help explain the context there and why that's happening or types of impacts it could have on implementation of Shekhtai?

Thank you for the question.

So over time, the 311 budget, those funds that were appropriated to the 311 budget for Lagan for system updates and or licenses over time.

So it came up to 80,000.

However, the majority of the legum budget is in IT.

So it became very complicated when I came on board to like manage like how much of it is within IT, and some of it is within 311.

And so when IT would be paying the invoices, they would uh charge the 311 budget because we that 80,000 was there.

So what happened with this uh with this reduction, we're taking out that 80,000 um and moving it back to IT, yeah, so that it can all of it be in one place, so that is reducing basically IT is taking on that stuff, those few licenses and that uh those funds that were appropriated to us, so we're reducing that money from our budget.

So it has no impact because it now goes into the IT allocation.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

It sounds like just uh an efficiency that you were able to identify just to make day-to-day work a little bit easier.

Um thank you so much.

And then I believe that Vice Chair Koske has one more question.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Director, my apologies.

Another question.

I was just curious to know about your partnership with other departments.

So I'm just gonna use this as an example.

But let's say you see a trend in your data of uh increased graffiti.

How do you, what does that look like, and how do you utilize those that data across departments to help one another?

And what have you been doing to, I guess, maybe foresee future, like trends and how does that look?

Um, through the chair, Councilman Bukoski, that's a very good question, and it speaks to the work that we have been doing in partnering with departments.

First, first of all, uh helping them understand what the role of 311 is, uh, but also talking about the trends and what we are seeing because we have a front view to you know stuff that is coming into the city uh for the departments.

So, what we have been doing as part of increasing our collaborations.

We have tiered uh meetings with departments.

I meet with the department my colleagues, the department uh directors in the departments regularly to update on what we are seeing, but the managers uh also meet have cadences in with departments to talk about data that we are seeing, trends that we are seeing on a quarterly basis.

We run the SLA reports uh through uh by them, uh, not only to show them what is coming in, what are the top trending categories for each of the departments, but how they are meeting the SLAs, the percentages, and then we're asking for explanations for percentages that are below um the thresholds that we have set for the year, and then we work together to uh figure out what we could do better.

Is it because of our processes uh that we have in place?

Is there anything that we could do better to make sure that we uh the departments are being more responsive, more information that we need to provide to them?

Uh so we're having a lot of conversations and uh that's how we even came up with an SLA policy.

So we are uh as we're doing that, we're also creating a nomenclature for what stuff means, like definitions for what SLA policy means, what close means, what uh closing a request means, so that we're all on the same page.

But there we have multiple levels of collaboration, depending on the department to their departments where we have biweekly meetings, others we have monthly meetings.

It just depends on what the trends that we are seeing.

Thank you.

That's super helpful.

Wonderful.

Thanks.

Wonderful.

So with that, I'm not seeing any further discussion, and I will direct the clerk to file that presentation.

Thank you again for your presentation and for answering so many questions for us.

With that, our next presentation is from the neighborhood and community relations department.

For that, I will now invite Karen Mo, the director of neighborhood and community relations, to join us and begin that presentation.

Welcome, Director.

Good morning.

Good morning, Chair Chuktai, Council members.

Thank you for having me.

My name is Karen Mo.

I'm the director of neighborhood and community relations.

And I'm here today to present on the mayor's proposed budget for 2026 for the neighborhood and community relations department.

As I get started, I say this every presentation.

I'll be using a shortened term for our department.

I use the acronym NCR as we move through this presentation.

First, as Director Zimbi noted, neighborhood and community relations falls under the Office of Public Service and under the lane of communications and engagement under Deputy COO Laura Mellum.

I do want to note that this works out well for us as 311 just presented, and you may note, following us as communications, the three departments actually work quite collaboratively.

We have historically, and this alignment under Director Mellum has worked out well for us in terms of being able to leverage all of the resources and values that we bring across all three departments.

NCR similar to 311 is also somewhat external facing, but a lot of our work actually is internal facing as we support all city departments as they develop their engagement work.

The slide before you here is a representation of how our department is structured, and this shows how we get our work done.

Along with myself, we have five different teams.

The deputy director oversees the programs administration team.

That's four staff that work to support all of the work of the department, all of the teams.

In addition, we have the neighborhood programs.

There's five staff that make up that team, including one manager and four neighborhood specialists.

There are two neighborhood specialists one and two neighborhood specialists, too.

We have a team of community engagement specialists that includes eight staff, a manager as well as seven community engagement specialists that work to support our city staff on understanding how to most effectively engage all of our community members.

We also house the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs, and this year we're happy to say we have two full-time staff working in that along with Director Rivera, we have a community relations specialist.

And new this year as well, we have the body of work that supports our LGBTQIA plus community members.

NCR believes that when residents are informed, connected to their community, and feel represented in city government, they are empowered to influence decisions that impact their lives.

We do this by making sure that all residents are engaged equitably about issues that impact them on a local level by addressing and removing barriers to civic participation and meaningful engagement in city programs, services, policy development, and activities, and by supporting the citywide network of strong, vibrant and functional place-based engagement or engagement organizations known as our neighborhood organizations.

As we moved into 2025, when we thought about some of the priorities for our department and how we use our resources.

One of the things that I'm sure you're all familiar with was really looking at how our city was prepared to continue to welcome all of our residents.

And that meant both for city staff as well as our residents themselves.

We also had a new program area that we had to implement, including hiring staff, and then implementing a whole new program focusing on our LGBTQIA communities, including implementing the Trans Equity Summit.

We also wanted to make sure that we continue to celebrate and nurture our relationship with our community of people with disabilities.

This was a significant year, and so we wanted to make sure that was a priority for our department and for the city.

As a service department, we also wanted to make sure that we continue to look at how we improve supporting all of the engagement efforts, all of our city colleagues.

And then lastly, we have been looking at over the last three, five years, how to increase the efficiency internally within our department.

I'm gonna touch on a couple of the things that we are finalizing through the 2026 budget.

But this is something that we've been initiating by looking at positions within our department, restructuring positions, utilizing vacancies to analyze are we uh meeting, are we most effectively managing our department?

Um, and so that was another priority as we moved into this year.

I want to highlight a few of the achievements just this year, and I'm gonna note that I actually have a couple more.

I'm gonna add just because uh we have some more things we want to celebrate.

But first and foremost, the community connections.

This year we had the highest attendance at the community connections conference with over 1,300 people attending.

We also implemented the 10th Trans Equity Summit.

This was a great uh a great achievement for us, I would say.

We had over 350 people that attended the Trans Equity Summit, and I think more importantly, we had 12 community partners that came to the table to help organize and implement, including including the summit, including our space, rare productions, formation healing arts, security, outfront, tigers, family tree clinic, twin cities quorum, and I have to put my glasses on, and the aliveness project.

This was really a fabulous event.

If you were able to attend, if not, I hope you heard from some of your residents that it really was a meaningful event.

It was a day filled with a lot of love and celebration.

We also had new staff that joined our department, and we're hoping by the end of this year that we'll be fully somewhat fully staffed, but we're always excited to welcome new people into the city of Minneapolis and into our department, and we've had some fabulous hires this year, and we're gonna have a couple more coming in front of us.

The NCR staff presented at the neighborhoods USA conference.

They presented on their body of work with the neighborhoods 2020, specifically the partnership engagement fund, and it's always exciting when we see our staff presenting at national conferences, sharing the best practices from the city of Minneapolis.

I'm also gonna add on just a couple more that have come up.

So, first I mentioned that this was a big year for our community of people with disabilities.

This was the 35th anniversary of the signing of the American with Disabilities Act.

That's a significant piece of civil rights legislation, and we were excited to partner with community and host an event honoring that as well.

We had their support from council and the mayor and resolutions and proclamations, really honoring the work of our community members and what they're doing to make our city accessible for everyone.

Next year we'll be coming back to you to probably present some updates that we've been working on in terms of working with our partners in communications and IT, the city attorney's office, making sure that the city meets all of the federal requirements with the web content accessibility guidelines that are gonna be put into effect next year.

We've been leading some of the work on our internal work group on that to make sure that all of our web content is accessible for all of our residents.

I'm also standing here with you with my beautiful button.

Our Office of Immigrant Refugee Affairs, along with the rest of the NCR department has launched the welcoming week this past, we're actually in the middle of it right now, that includes our all our welcome here and know your rights campaign.

You can get buttons and lawn signs, but more importantly, you can make sure that all of our residents and our staff know what their rights are as residents in our city and how to make sure that we continue to welcome all people here.

And then lastly, I want to acknowledge that in the last couple weeks in response to multiple incidences that have impacted our community members, NCRs, been supporting of all of the city's efforts and responding to those, and specifically, I want to name that we have staff from our neighborhoods team that have leveraged the relationship with our neighborhood organizations to step in and help support some of the assistance centers that have been set up, including volunteers as well as additional resources.

So, really want to acknowledge that those relationships have been very beneficial for all of us.

Every year we look at what are the risks for our department and not just for our department but also as we support all city engagement efforts.

And I have to acknowledge that the increase in violence that our trans, queer, and immigrant residents experience, whether it's physical or verbal violence, has increased in recent years, and we continue to experience that and hear that from our community members.

We also know that not all of our residents experience safety at the same level, specifically our communities of color have higher rates of lack of safety that they experience.

And the reason why this matters is I'm sure all of you know that as our city goes out and does engagement, it either impedes our residents' interest in engaging with us, or at times it becomes a priority in the conversation, even though we may be wanting to discuss some of the other activities the city is hosting.

These are things that we just track and make sure that our colleagues across the city understand that these are dynamics that we need to understand as we move to engage all of our residents.

Additionally, 2025 was a transition year for NCR.

I mentioned earlier that we welcomed new staff, but we also welcome new programs into our department, and we welcomed we made a move into a new office.

We are now just below City Council and City Hall, and we're very excited for this shift.

Yep, we are.

We're very excited.

We'll be running into you in the hallways.

But as you know, when you're managing a department and managing managing staff, things like adding new people in, adding new programs in, and making moves can have an impact.

And these are exciting challenges for us, but they do pose risks that the leadership team continues to manage.

We also are tracking federal enforcement and policies that are targeting the rights of our immigrant, trans, queer, and people with disabilities.

Some of these are probably much more known, but we are also tracking some of the lesser known issues that are coming up at the federal level that may impede or undermine the lack of stability for some of our community members, and that's just something for us to track as a city in terms of how it impacts our residents.

Lastly, this is something that we've mentioned in the past, and it's not just NCR.

I think the auditor's office has also brought in that as we move into taking advantage of opportunities of online or digital engagement.

There are risks involved in that.

One of the risks we've identified in the past is we still are lacking the consistency in terms of the tools that we're using across the enterprise.

And at times that inconsistency then can result in kind of inconsistent ways that residents engage with us or a lack of consistency across database sets.

But in addition to that, there's also just security risks.

I think that's what the auditor's office has brought forth is as we want to move to utilize these tools and engage more of our residents, there's also threats that some of the data that we're receiving may not be as reliable as we want it to be.

And what I want to acknowledge to all of you is that with new programs, and 2025 was not just the first year that we've had new programs over the last couple of years.

We've welcomed new staff, new positions and new programs, and with that, we have some catching up to do to make sure that all of our metrics are up to date.

I will say that we have been actively working with the performance and management innovation team.

You'll remember that we used to have a dashboard that was housed on our department's webpage, and that has been updated to meet the city standard with PMI, the performance management innovation team, and we're excited about that opportunity to have a more up-to-date dashboard.

But we have a little bit more work to do in terms of really updating some of our metrics or adding in some new metrics for some of the new program areas.

I would welcome you and all of our residents to go to our webpage.

You can find a link to the dashboard to get a more in-depth update on all of our metrics, and I'm just going to touch on a couple here.

First of all, one of the priorities as I referenced is that NCR works to ensure that all city departments are well equipped to conduct public uh effective public participation.

There are a handful of measures here that we use to track that information.

And here I'll just highlight a couple.

One of them, as I referenced, is the ADA Grievance System.

We run this in collaboration with our partners in 311, but we also work across the entire enterprise to receive those calls from our residents.

In 2024, you can see that we received a total of 91 calls and the breakdown between complaints and inquiries.

One of the things that we do proactively to make sure that all of our city colleagues have access to information about how to most effectively engage all of our residents is offer a series of learning labs.

We've been doing this for a number of years.

This really breaks down not just the basics of community engagement, but most specifically how to engage our Native American community effectively, how to engage our African American community, how to engage our people with disabilities effectively.

What you can see is in 2024, our the total number of people, this is a unique number that completed learning labs or participated was 301.

Our goal in 2025 is 350, and we'll continue to increase that goal in 2026 as we hope to have 400 people across the enterprise and community members participate in these learning lab series.

Another way that we meet this goal is through partnering with community-based organizations to provide direct services to some of our community members that have specific needs.

This includes our immigration legal services and those services for our seniors.

I want to note here that the chart in front of you includes numbers from 2024, and then the target numbers are for 2025.

Those are not up-to-date numbers.

We will hopefully come back to you soon as we wrap up 2025 with more in-depth numbers.

What I can share as of right now is that for the immigration legal services, including the funding that we had in our budget in 2025, the one-time or additional funding from January 1st through May 31st, I can report that 1,281 people receive services, and that with based on that, we're projected to serve over 3,000 people in 2025.

I want to note here for both of these, the numbers actually reflect unique number of people served, not necessarily services.

So as we look at the numbers, what I will note for both people that are receiving legal services and for our seniors, many of them are actually receiving more than one service.

Oftentimes someone comes for one thing and then they're able to access additional services.

This is the unique number of people that are served.

In 2024, for our senior services, in addition to the 1,988 unique seniors that were served, we also had 358 unduplicated adults that received transportation services for a total of 3,226 rides.

We have some funding available to us in 2025 and beyond for those services, so we'll add one of the things that we'll have to do is add that metric in onto our dashboard on an ongoing basis.

You can see here there's a handful of metrics that we've used.

We've used these over a number of years.

Many of you are familiar with these.

Normally I highlight things like the number of volunteer hours and the dollar leverage bar neighborhood organizations.

But this year I actually want to take a moment to highlight a couple of the services that our NCR staff provide to support our neighborhood organizations.

You can see here two of the services that staff offer is financial touch points.

This means we support our neighborhood organizations in completing some basic financial paperwork, but in addition to that, we can do anything around a ray of services, including up to agreed upon procedures.

This really makes sure that these organizations are highly trusted by their residents as well as us in the city in terms of assuring that they're good stewards of these public dollars.

In addition to that, NCR staff provide board trainings.

This can be anything from a basic board training up to anything specifically needed by an organization in response to what they request.

In 2024, you can see NCR staff provided 91 financial touch points and 249 board trainings.

You'll notice both of those numbers are a little bit high from 2023 and 2024, and that was really just a result of NCR staff prioritizing some additional financial touch points and board trainings as we transition into a new program year.

NCR staff felt like it was necessary to spend a little bit extra time making sure that neighborhood organizations, as they implemented the new neighborhoods 2020, felt supported and had the resources that they needed.

As you'll see, both of those targets kind of level off.

So as we move forward in 2026 and beyond, those targets are going to remain consistent.

I will note that of course NCR staff are always able to respond to needs from and requests from our neighborhood organizations.

Um I'm going to move into our budget, and I'm I'm going to point out a couple things that may jump out to you just to make sure that we can that you're fully aware of what's going on here.

What you'll see is from 2024 to 2025, when we look at all of the funds in our department spread across how we use those funds.

It looks like there's quite a jump from 2024 in how much we actually spent into what was the projected budget for 2025, and then there's a drop down into 2026 for the recommended budget.

I want to note that all funds include not just general funds, but we also have some remaining neighborhood revitalization program funds.

We often refer to those as NRP funds.

Those have already been obligated to neighborhood organizations, but they do run through our department.

And so what you'll see here is not just at new funding that came into NCR in 2025, and that would include the new program areas, the new staff, and any ongoing or one-time funding in our department in 2025, but it would also include what was projected in terms of the what we anticipated neighborhood organizations would be spending out of the NRP funding.

In addition to that, there was just a little bit of community development block grant funding, often referred to as CDBG funding.

I think I'm gonna move forward into really just focusing on the general funds.

I think this might give a little bit more of an accurate picture in terms of thinking about how our the general funds support the activities of our department, including both the staff and the program areas.

You'll still see there was a little bit of a jump from the 2024 actual spending into the 2025 adopted budget.

And as a reminder, we did have some new programs move into our department, some ongoing and additional funding that we received.

We'll move forward into talking about the 2026 budget in just a moment.

This chart here again shows all of the funds and how they're spread across the different program areas in our department.

I'm gonna take a moment here to acknowledge that a number of years ago when I came in as a director, one of the things that we did is started to look at kind of internally the structure of how we assigned our staff and how we defined our program areas.

And as our department has grown in the last few years, I'll acknowledge we've added in the Office of Immigrant Refugee Affairs and now the LGBTQIA work.

In addition to that, we've had some new staff assigned to our department or some new positions that we've been able to take advantage of, including the language access coordinator and the community specialist for people with disabilities.

These are all good things, but it also posed a little bit of a challenge for us in terms of how we were dividing up our work between the different program areas that already existed.

And we managed kind of internally through that, but it started to get a little bit murky, and so one of the things that we did is we started working with the budget office about a year ago and started introducing some concepts around how we could reorganize the program areas in our department to more effectively meet and address kind of how we actually do our work on a regular basis.

What I'll name to you is one of the program areas that existed is called access and outreach support.

And this was a little bit of a weird area for us.

It was really about access into the city.

It included the work that we did with people with disabilities and our language access.

It also included at some point some of the other bodies of work, and over time it just became a little bit complicated to distinguish between that body of work and the coordinated engagement services.

When the Office of Immigrant Refugee Affairs was established, it was put under access and outreach, and again, it just became a little bit wonky to figure out exactly where and what percentage of people's time was reporting to access and outreach and coordinated engagement services.

Ultimately, what we did is we're we've we're eliminating the access and outreach support.

We're not eliminating the positions or the funding, we're moving it into the coordinated engagement services.

And I point this out because if you're looking at the budget book, you may look at access and outreach support, and it may look like there's a zeroing out of some of those staff or programs.

And trust me, there is not all of that money, it's just been shifted over to the coordinated engagement services.

So what you'll see in the difference between the 2025 adopted budget and the 2026 recommended budget is the elimination of outreach and support, but all of that money is shifted into coordinated engagement services.

You'll also notice that historically, by far, the uh three quarters of the funding in our department is under the neighborhood and engagement support, and that really is the money that goes passes through our department and goes out to support our neighborhood organizations.

It does include the staff that support that body of work, but that really is the main bulk of that work is contracts out to our community members.

Moving forward to the next slide, we look at the number of staff that make up our department, and we currently have 23 staff in our department.

According to this slide, it looks like we're dropping down from 23 to 22.5 in the recommended budget for 2026.

And this is a little bit wonky, so I'm gonna take a moment here to explain this as well.

Um, we're not actually uh reducing a full-time position to a part-time position.

Um, this is an accounting measure to accommodate that we are going to delay the hiring of the one vacancy that we have left in our department, which is for the trans equity coordinator.

We will not hire until July of 2026, which means we can proceed with the process, we just can't hire until 2026.

That will result in six months of salary savings, which is reflected by a 0.5 reduction.

If you were to look at 2027 and beyond, what you'll see is we bounce back up to 23 full-time positions in our department.

We currently, this notes that we have three vacancies.

Um, we're hoping to announce shortly that we have uh just one vacancy left, and that is the trans equity coordinator.

Um we're close to finalizing that information.

By the end of this year, we should be nearly fully staffed, except for that one vacant trans equity coordinator.

Moving into program updates, um, coordinated engagement services, as I said, and as highlighted here, includes the access and outreach programs.

Again, we've already talked through a number of these things.

Um, these are the objectives.

What I'll point out is what many of you are familiar with is the activities that fall under this, which would include language access support for the entire enterprise, the office of immigrant refugee affairs, including the staff in all of the program areas, such as the welcoming week campaign, the Trans Equity Summit, the coordinated community event participation where we bring city departments out to various community events, the learning labs that we offer, all of the work around our ADA Title II compliance, the memorandum of understanding that the city holds with the American Indian community, the cultural media program that we run in partnership with the communications department, along with a whole handful of other things.

These are just some of the main programs that we offer.

As I said, um there's some metrics here.

I'm gonna kind of jump through these.

The one I do want to point out is that legal service the OIRA worked with a urban scholar this year.

There's a much further in-depth report that I'm gonna defer to that urban scholar.

Hopefully, to come back and present to you themselves that includes a lot of information about not just the types of services but where people are coming from and information from our community partners and those people being served about the value of those services.

I will note here some of these numbers are a little bit out of date.

My apologies, that's an error on my side.

The other body of work is the neighborhood engagement support.

Again, these are the objectives that we referenced earlier.

Some of the key project or activities that we do is to implement the neighborhoods 2020 program that includes the neighborhood network fund and the equitable engagement fund, the collaboration and shared resources, the partnership engagement fund, and then the ongoing support of our neighborhood organizations as they utilize the neighborhood revitalization phase two and phase phase one and phase two dollars that continue to exist.

Here are some of the metrics I mentioned earlier.

Again, you can find more of these on depth in depth on our website.

I'll spend the last moments I have here to walk through the recommended budget changes as we move forward.

The first budget change is uh ongoing reduction of food and beverage costs.

This is something that's happening across the entire enterprise.

We understand.

We'll move forward with with this.

I don't believe there will be implications in terms of the ability for us to manage our work on a daily basis or a great impact with this area.

The second is to eliminate the community connections conference conference, which will reduce NCR's budget by 123,000 on an ongoing basis while this program is being eliminated, and CR staff will continue to work to identify ways that we can meet these goals through alternative strategies.

The partnership engagement fund will be reduced by $500,000.

This is a cut in half.

NCR will continue to manage the partnership engagement fund, and we will continue to utilize the community based process that we use to assure that all of our community members are involved in identifying which projects to fund.

In this case, this is a reduction in half, which means NCR intends to not necessarily reduce the total cost of that's available to community members, but instead to reduce the number of contracts executed.

So we'll cut the number of contracts in half, the number of those that receive the contracts.

The fourth line item is a little bit wonky.

It is uh it includes both an ongoing and a one-time cut to our legal services.

And I want to point out here that this is legal services that we provide to neighborhood organizations.

This is a service that we've had for a number of years to assure that neighborhood organizations and their boards have access to professional legal advice.

An ongoing basis, NCR will reduce our budget by 25,000.

Um, and so moving forward in 2027, we'll have um $50,000 available in that pool that is available for neighborhood organizations to tap into professional legal services.

But in 2026, we'll have a one-time cut in addition to that bringing it down an additional $18,000.

What this will result in is um, I think for us what we're looking at is uh one is to mitigate the requests that are coming into our department to see if there's alternative strategies or alternative resources that neighborhood organizations can tap into.

We believe for the most part um there will be a minimal impact except for potentially a delay as we refer people to other services.

We won't be able to control kind of kind of uh the timeliness of the response, but we believe that they should be able to access some of those resources in other places.

And lastly, NCR will reduce our budget one time in 2026 by 40,000 that is tied to a database that we utilize with our neighborhood organizations.

So again, this is in the neighborhood program area.

The neighborhood organizations pre-dating coming into the city of Minneapolis identified a con uh external contractor.

We have a service called Plan Net that uh tracks the utilization of the NRP dollars.

Um we've identified a number of years ago that there was some concerns we had just around the long-term sustainability of the Plan Net model.

In addition to that, there's some security risks with it.

So we've been working with IT over the last couple of years to identify alternatives for moving forward.

This one-time cut, I think is gonna um prioritize the need for us and IT to work to identify uh alternative moving forward, and so we'll really treat 2026 as a transition year as we move forward, and again, this funding will be available back to us to uh utilize in 2027 and beyond.

With that, um I wrap up our presentation of the mayor's proposed budget and I say thank you, and I stand for questions.

Thank you for that presentation.

Um colleagues, are there any questions or comments related to Director Mo's presentation?

I will recognize councilmember Chavez, followed by Councilmember Vita.

Uh thank you, Chair Chuck Time, and thank you, Director Mo for the presentation.

Uh, can you please speak to the impact of the mayor's recommendation to cut the community connections conference and what that means to our community?

I would love to understand.

I know when I go to the community connections conference, I see my constituents show up from all walks of life.

And it's an opportunity for them to give input on city policy for them to show up and give the city their thoughts and their opinions on specific issues.

And I'm not sure how we're gonna be able to replicate that if we're not able to hear from constituents, particularly in that manner.

So I'd like to hear that.

Chair Tuktai, Councilmember Chavez, thank you for the question.

Um I think uh I think as I said before, NCR staff will continue to look at the goals, and I think you just referenced some of the um one of the main goals for us, which is how are we connecting our community members with all of our city services and make sure we're providing opportunities for all of our community members to have their voices heard.

Without the community connections conference, NCR staff will um we have not yet, but we will actively work to make sure that we identify some creative strategies to continue meeting those goals.

It may not be a one-day event, and we'll just have to find out some um other strategies.

Uh thank you.

I'll just know from my colleagues, I don't think that cutting the community connection conference is something that will actually improve the lives of our residents when we know that this conference is an important part of the city in general, where our residents literally show up and droves, thousands of people, I believe at times come and give input to the city on policy, on engagement efforts, and um I hope that as we talk about the budget in the coming weeks, this is something that we can actually fund because I don't think it's good to be cutting this from the budget, especially when I believe that we can find the dollars for this.

So I just want to at least name that publicly, and I'm glad to hear that there are different strategies possibly in place to fill in that gap, which I think is important, and this event should still be happening.

So thank you.

Thank you.

I'll next recognize Councilmember Vita.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Director Mo.

I just had a quick question about you were um talking about a cut in the legal services for um neighborhood groups.

I know North Side usually asks for those services a lot.

And so just wondering have you ever went over budget for those services and needed more money, or is the number that you're leaning towards more closer to you know, like the service level being met?

Um Chair Tuck Dai, Councilmember Vita, thank you for the question, we appreciate it.

We know it's a valuable service for our neighborhood organizations.

Um we uh I think we've managed the contract in a way uh w within the constraints of the budget.

So I don't believe necessarily that we would need additional funding in that area.

I think we can manage through the reduction in that.

Um, and as I said, what we will do is continue to work with our neighborhood organizations to identify alternatives so that those services continue to be met.

Yes.

So I've been working with legal aid in my office a lot, and they have way they have way more services than I knew they even had available, and they do wonderful presentations.

Um, I work with a woman there named Patty.

If you want me to connect you to her, I'll be happy to.

I mean, there's just services that like specific to senior fraud and like things that I I mean I don't think about in that way, but it was much needed services in in just the senior high rises and uh senior living facilities that were necessary and they were able to go in, do the presentations, help them sign up for the legal services they needed, you know, a lot of things that go into probate, and you know, so they've helped with things that are not necessarily NCR things, but I know a lot of times the requests from the services come from the neighborhood groups.

They usually say to a resident, call the council person and ask if you can help, and then we have to connect them to legal aid, but maybe the best way to do that is to have this service as a part of um the work you do in NCR, and then they can connect, you know, connecting the neighborhood groups in that way.

But it was it was highly sought out.

We had a lot of requests for legal services from residents.

Chair Tuktai?

Um, thank you, Councilman Vita.

And and I appreciate that.

Actually, we partner with legal aid quite a bit as well.

Um, and I know that we've also not just partnered with them in terms of having contract with them to provide direct services, but also in terms of making the match with our neighborhood organizations or other partners as they're hosting events.

I will point out in this case, I think one of the unique natures of this legal service contract actually is it's for the neighborhood organization itself and their boards.

And part of the need to do that really is the historical complexity of the neighborhood revitalization program and the unique relationship we have with these neighborhood organizations.

That historically they've the type of legal advice that they need really needs to be someone that kind of understands not that they're just a nonprofit organization, but this unique nature of them managing these funds.

And so that's what this contract is for is actually for the organizations, their board members.

For example, if they're making bylaw changes, if they have an employee handbook or an issue with uh in their board or with staff, um sometimes they have to seek out nonprofits, have to seek out legal counsel, and this was a resource that's utilized in that way.

Yeah, understood.

I totally understand.

I was just giving you more work because they're more legal services needed.

I was taking it off my place.

That's good.

I appreciate that, council member.

We will take that one off.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Um we've got a few more uh members in queue, so I'll recognize Vice Chair Koski followed by Councilmember Palmasano.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Director, for the presentation.

And uh I can see how difficult it is to have to present some of the decreases in your budget for some of the beloved programs that I know you and your staff have.

So I know for the the better of the entire or you know, enterprise, you had to dig deep to do that.

So thank you.

Um I also just want to say thank you so much to your team for showing up for our residents in these last few weeks.

Um, the community uh feedback that I've received has been you know unbelievable.

They have just said that your team has showed up, and they are beyond grateful for um your support.

So I just wanted to note that.

So thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Thank you.

Um, and then I'll recognize Councilmember Palmasano.

Thank you.

My question is about senior programming on one of your slides.

It seems to show a decrease in um uh in senior programming in-home and on-site services, and I was just wondering if you could say a little bit more about that.

I think it's slide eight.

Yep.

Okay.

So the target on the senior programming appears to go down next year.

Can you say a little bit?

Yeah.

Chair uh Chucktai, Councilmember Palmasano, thank you for asking, and thank you for noting that.

Our senior community services has had some fluctuation in our funding in the last couple years, including in 2025, with some um one-time and new funding, and so uh what I can share at this point is that all of the funding in 2025, including the ongoing and the one-time funding, has currently been contracted.

But after 2025, moving into 2026, we'll be losing some of that one-time funding that we have in 2025.

Um moving forward, we will still have the new program area, which includes the 25,000 in transportation services.

And what um what this is failing to represent or reflect to you is actually I think some more meaningful metrics.

And I know you've asked in the past about some more meaningful metrics around these program areas.

We had one-time funding for transportation services in the past.

This in 2025, that money was granted to us on an ongoing basis.

And so this is the year when uh to be transparent, we're just a little bit behind on getting all of the metrics identified in the dashboard and collecting the data for the 2025 and beyond.

So next year, what I'm hoping to do is come back with a little bit more clarity around the senior program services on the ongoing basis and that new metric for the transportation.

This number, the target for 2026, at 1500, is a drop, you are correct, um, from the previous years, and that's something that we um we'll have to continue to evaluate if that's the right target.

But that again reflects kind of um the decrease of some of that one time funding that we had in those previous years.

I see.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

Wonderful.

I'm not seeing anyone else in queue, so thank you very much for your presentation, Director.

And with that, I will ask the clerk to file that report.

Our final presentation for today is from the communications department.

And for that, I will invite Adam Fetcher, our communications director, to join us and begin that presentation.

Welcome, Director.

Thank you, Chair Chugtai, members of the committee.

My name is Adam Fetcher.

I'm the city's chief communications officer, and I'm here to present the mayor's 2026 recommended budget for the communications department.

On a personal note, I'll just say I've been on the job here for about 10 weeks.

And it is an honor to be here in front of you in front of the public, sharing the space with members of my team who are here and watching online.

So thank you for the opportunity to serve our entire community in this capacity.

Let's first start with just situating communications again within the Office of Public Service, Communications and Engagement Services under the leadership of DCOO Laura Mellum.

As Director Mo said, it is really convenient to be part of this unit working in close collaboration with our partners at 311 and NCR and the convention center for that matter.

I want to appreciate DCOO Mellum's leadership.

She's been an incredibly patient teacher as I've come in to this role, showing me the ropes.

She also served as an interim leader of the communications team over a pretty significant period where there was no leader for communications, and so she knows the team, she knows our opportunities, she knows our challenges inside and out, and she's just been an incredible ally as I've come in and worked to further the big picture effort of where we're headed as a team, and also work to address some of the very specific challenges that our community has faced just over the past several weeks.

So thanks to DCOME.

So I want to start just by uh setting a little bit of context for what you'll see today in terms of the budget recommendation, which is uh a look at where we're going as a department, because we are definitely in an evolution phase at the moment, full of change, and I think really exciting opportunity.

Um, and this can be uh depicted within this mission that I'm sharing, which is to build a modern communications function capable of meeting the needs of community while building a sense of trust, goodwill, and relevance with our audience.

So that's kind of what we've bitten off as a mission for how we want to evolve, grow uh the communications department, and the service that we provide to our community.

Now it's been clear since way before I got here that change is needed in terms of how the city is seizing the opportunity of communicating, you know, broadly with members of the public, key stakeholders, and the media.

We have heard time and time again over the past several years from the city auditor and numerous reports, outside partners that have come in and helped us take a look at where we where things stand in terms of communications at the city and the team itself, that uh as of late, the city's communications have been uh siloed in terms of work happening uh in often in duplicative nature or with information not being shared department by department, messages uh being disjointed, with no cohesive, clear message that's emanating as one voice from the city, and very little, if if any, opportunity for growth for many members of the team.

I would draw your attention to a couple of these kind of sound bites from reports that have come through over the past few years, specifically the fact that there has been more money spent outside the communications department on communications activities than we've spent within the communications department.

And secondly, just the desire among the team for opportunities for growth, professional development, and really working together in a shared unit of professionals, as you see in other departments and teams across city government.

You know, just you can see in sort of these quotes from the team itself, you know, words like unstable, disjointed, messy, you know, no doubt that has been unfortunately where communications has come to within the city.

And yet we also have a lot of hope and opportunity from the team, you know, aspiring to strategic, collaborative, um, integrated, those are words that I use a lot as well in kind of shepherding the changes that we're that we're working to achieve within the org.

Um so I want to point out, you know, the team feels the strain, and yet they show up every single day, working incredibly hard.

You know, folks are over on their laptops as we speak, even in this room, um, you know, cranking out the critical work of communicating the city's message and reaching our residents with vital information.

And uh, and I only want to build on that capacity, that opportunity by empowering the team to come together through a process of unification and strategic building.

So that gets us to the vision, right?

Where we've been kind of uh I use the term letting our org chart show to the public, you know, communicating far to department by department.

You know, we want to be audience-centric, backed by insights, um, achieving narrative cohesion with a clear message that you know flows through each of the many touch points that our residents and community uh you know uh interact with as they're out uh living their lives, integrated planning, digital first.

We've really lacked in the digital uh capacity, and so that's an area that we're really prioritizing.

Um, team engagement, strong partnerships with departments, so that we're able to really serve the the most high impact needs of department business while also being able to prioritize work so that we're less of a service provider and more of a strategic driver for the city and its uh and its business.

And then again, ruthless prioritization, right?

There are so many stories that we can tell.

Um we need a strategic framework to understand what stories we really ought to be telling that are going to achieve outsize impact for uh for our goals as a city.

So this process of unification and modernization is underway.

Um we're in phase one here, as you can see, unifying our resources.

So over the past few months, we've already brought in teams of communicators from uh various departments, including the Office of Community Safety.

Uh, there was a unit of five communicators who came into the central communications org about two months ago, and that transformation has been really successful in continuing to fulfill the critical needs of community safety messaging while also being far more closely integrated with the rest of the communications team.

Um just this week, we um uh transitioned uh folks, two folks from CPED, one uh role from regulatory services, and one role from the health department into our team as well.

Those roles continue to live in a budgetary sense within those departments for the remainder of the year, although pending budget approval from the council, they will move in formally in 2026, but they are now formally part of our team when it comes to you know uh reporting lines and uh ability to function as a unified team.

So uh in conjunction with that personnel unification process, we are also working to develop a strategy, right?

Where one has unfortunately not existed before.

Um, so we are working to develop a very clear framework for understanding what is what are the needs of community, go out, really listen, gain data and insights.

Again, something that unfortunately has been sort of lacking, and so develop real insights that can then inform what a core narrative will be for citywide communications going forward.

Again, with the goal of a cohesive message across all of our touch points and our ability to organize our team to serve that messaging strategy rather than serve individual department by department.

So yeah, happy to go into this further, but it just gives a sense of our timeline and the work that's underway, and obviously the budget consideration here within council is a critical part of that as well.

Our org chart, you'll see there's many direct reports to myself at the moment.

That is a reflection of the integration effort and the unification effort that is underway.

And this is where we would be if the mayor's budget recommendation is approved by council.

However, I want to point out that in early 2026, with a strategic vision and in hand, we anticipate making some further transformations to the organizational model to then serve that strategy.

If the funding is formally approved by council, but we do anticipate, you know, further evolutions of the org to better serve the strategy and again to better resource a modern communications function with digital and social communications really at the forefront.

Okay, just getting into some sort of core responsibilities of the communications function.

This will be no surprise to many of you.

We develop and implement the city's public messaging strategy with the goal of enhancing life for our community, building trust in government, and contributing to the success of city initiatives.

We make news, we tell stories, we share content and calls to action.

We get critical information into the hands of people when they need it.

We make government accessible and we invite meaningful connections and engagement with our audiences.

I want to emphasize that the work of the communications department is really about what we've been calling big C communications.

Obviously, there's communications happening across government, both internally and externally all the time, on a programmatic level, on a policymaking level, on a sort of interpersonal level.

But our team is really charged with managing the formal official channels of the city and broadcasting information to the largest audience, sort of mass communications.

So that's kind of a distinctive factor that has helped guide us in expressing sort of where the line is drawn between what our team is responsible for and what can continue to exist in departments when it comes to programmatic or other internal communications.

I want to emphasize this piece around audiences.

I think we have room to grow more audience-centric, as I mentioned, you know, but in terms of large buckets, we do work to engage residents and community writ large.

We do focus obviously on the media, which continues to be our vital conduit for information for the end user, but is also an audience in and of itself.

We work to reach partners and stakeholders of various kinds that have critical partnerships or other business with the city.

We work to reach cultural and opinion leaders and city employees.

Again, internal communications within the city, another area for opportunity and growth within our team.

But we do have some really amazing success over the past year, you know, and that's depicted both in metrics and in stories.

We've achieved a 225% increase in organic social media impressions across our social platforms over last year, which is really, I think, a testament to growth within the kind of content that we're deploying and its relevance within the algorithms that drive who sees what on social media.

We also have achieved 188 media stories that are secured through proactive pitching, which is 26% of our media opportunities.

I'd like to see that number increase.

Of course, we're going to get incoming media inquiries, you know, left and right every single day.

But our goal is definitely to shift onto a more proactive footing and again be driving the media narrative, driving the story and discourse whenever possible.

But I think that's a very impressive result, given the more reactive posture that we've been in, generally speaking.

And I would also draw your attention to 107 hours of cultural media broadcast across all five of our cultural media partners.

Again, this is a program that we're really proud of in partnership with NCR.

And these cultural media partners allow us to reach communities that are often not tapped into sort of the broadest of communications channels of the city, but are obviously vital stakeholders and parts of our community.

So yeah, that's that's been a real success story as well.

I'll note that I did not share in this deck the table of kind of key outcomes that you're seeing in other presentations, and that is because we are in the process of building a new strategy to guide us.

And so objective setting and understanding how we'll measure success in line with that strategy is part and parcel of that work.

Um so I look forward to returning here to share with you where we've come within the next you know, four to six months in terms of building that strategy and setting uh key objectives and how we'll measure those measure our success there uh accordingly.

Um I will share also that um, you know, generally speaking, while I think these metrics that we've been tracking do speak to you know this relevant information.

I want to be looking at metrics that are more about growth of our reach and engagement with community versus just sort of impressions and one-way, you know, omnidirectional um communications.

Okay, I'll just go through a few highlights of the past year, really testament to the team's work, and I'm very proud of everyone that's contributed to this work.

The first is uh a 360 degree effort to support the police department's recruitment campaign, as you're all very familiar.

Um, you know, we faced a real shortage of MPD personnel over the past few years.

Um, and uh we drove communications in partnership with MPD and the OCS uh group, uh, drove a really integrated uh campaign, leveraging paid media, um, organic opportunities, uh, print placements, brochures, flyers showing up at events, uh, email marketing, uh, promoting MPD as a choice employer, and uh the impact has been really impressive in terms of restoring the ranks uh at MPD and recruiting, you know, a new a new set of talent within the force that is reflective of the direction that the department is heading.

Um yeah, so we're really proud of this image here is uh uh one page, a full page media placement within one of the professional sports teams yearbooks, which we negotiated a very deep discount to secure a good deal on that, and that's reaching thousands, if not, you know, millions of sports fans across the metro area.

Um next, I just want to highlight communications team culture.

So I described the unification effort, uh, which is a lot of change, right?

It's not without real challenges, uh growing pains, uh, the need to come together as a team and add people to uh to the group and shifting folks from departments within our central communications team is isn't easy, but the team has really rallied at the vision and the opportunity that's presented and what it can look like to have a real professionalized modern communications core for the city.

Um, and uh we're already seeing signs of increased uh vibrance in our culture internally as a team.

Um I think greater stability, you know, having leadership, obviously uh is incredibly helpful.

So there's someone setting the agenda, the tone, the direction.

Um, and I'll just uh I was really hoping that this image could be a team photo, but I wasn't able to get it in in time.

So I'll just hold up this team photo to reflect the fact that I'm really proud of this group of professionals that come to work every day and just work tirelessly to communicate in the smartest, most strategic ways possible.

And I'm I'm only here to support their work as much as I can.

Another success story is obviously the fifth anniversary of George Floyd's murder.

This was a uh another moment, uh yet another moment where Minneapolis was under a global spotlight, and our team really stepped up to meet the moment, creating uh content, a holistic public engagement plan, a really compelling video that featured Council President Payne.

Um, you know, we shaped wall-to-wall media coverage that really offered a I think a nuanced retrospective of the work that's that's taken place here in Minneapolis within government and also across our community.

Um we had a really innovative uh program that allowed people to share their stories through a partnership with Story Core, which we had nearly 100 people participate in.

So yeah, really proud of how the team uh met the interest in that moment and was proactive in driving our story forward.

Uh and then finally uh in response to an absolutely horrific tragedy just a few weeks ago at Annunciation Church and School.

Our team stepped up instantaneously as news of that shooting broke, stood up a joint information center and began sharing vital, you know, public safety information and community support information with the media, with community, with city council, with stakeholders within minutes of that first 911 call.

And I'll just say, you know, I've worked at the federal level on a lot of emergency response at the Department of Homeland Security through other agencies with the BP oil spill.

So I know the national incident management system quite well, and this team's fluency with that system and ability to execute and really meet the needs of community and the media at a time when you know the entire world turned its eyes to Minneapolis was just very, very impressive.

We managed more than 500 press inquiries over a short few period of days.

Um, and we really saw no criticism in the media or otherwise as it relates to the city's public information, ability to get out in front of the story, put elected officials and other public safety officials out to share information.

Just really, really impressed with the team's ability to do the really hard work and also carry a huge emotional load as everyone has uh related to that incident while staying focused on their jobs.

So kudos to the team for all the work there.

I'll note briefly a few kind of risks slash future opportunities.

You know, as I get to the numbers here, um a lean budget is a good thing, and that it reflects very excellent stewardship of taxpayer resources, but it also does leave us lacking certain tools or capabilities that I think would set us up for even greater growth and success in the future.

I think about our ability to really be smart around listening to the conversation on social media.

Um, we aren't budgeted for uh a really robust social media listening tool or really anything that serves that purpose.

So, you know, what we do is mostly kind of uh, you know, elbow grease, council broadcast operations.

Um, you've all experienced some of the gaps there, which we're working tirelessly to fix, but that's another opportunity uh and potential gap.

Um research and insights.

I spoke briefly to the strategic planning process and then and the need to really go out and understand what kinds of messages will be relevant and will matter to our community.

Um we don't have budget for uh for you know an ongoing and robust effort to um to be out collecting that data.

Um, growth in team learning.

You know, always wish there were more opportunities to, you know, bring the team to uh conferences, opportunities to learn from other professionals, you know, share information with peers, travel, et cetera, but understand reasonable limitations there, and then lastly, digital content.

Our team is doing an amazing job bringing to life stories of the city.

Um we're only going to enhance those capabilities through you know more talent at the fold, but um there are also you know resources that uh could be brought to bear to uh expand the breadth of content that we can develop and make it more customized by platform.

Okay, here's a snapshot of uh the total communications uh budget.

Uh you'll see a 47% increase over uh last year, and then you know flat the years prior.

Um I want to just emphasize and I'll emphasize this a few times.

This increase is entirely attributable to uh the addition of personnel from within other departments into the communications team, and so it's entirely budget neutral as a regards as a result.

So you'll see that uh yeah, the increase is is fully in uh personnel categories as salaries and wages and fringes.

And here's a snapshot of uh programmatic breakdown.

We just have two programs, first being communications, which is basically everything I've already described, and then secondly, public access TV.

So you'll see public access TV is um almost flat uh from years past, um, and then communications again.

We're seeing that jump because we are bringing personnel over from other departments.

This slide simply kind of dives into uh the communications program and emphasizes again what I've already explained.

Um, the mayor's recommended budget uh reflects the communications unification effort.

Um again, this additional spend is budget neutral in terms of bringing personnel over from the departments that I've mentioned.

Our non-personnel discretionary budget from 25 to 26 is relatively flat and it's comprised mostly of modest contracts.

We have 112,500 for cultural media programming, uh $70,000 for professional services, uh, which again is basic tools for media tracking, um, media relations contacts and social media management, giving us the ability to share the ability to you know post on our social platforms across you know multiple uh internal personnel, including you know council staff.

Um, and then there's 26,402 for all other department expenses, which is just a few contractual services and operating costs.

When it comes to our second program, public access TV.

Um I just want to emphasize, I'm really proud of uh the Speak Minneapolis program, which not only enables public access TV, and sort of the uh the community service aspect of you know allowing folks to broadcast and enabling freedom of speech in that regard, but also um they provide you know much more to the community through educational programs, training programs, um, pro programs for youth, um, really about learning uh the ins and outs of multimedia, and so it's a good way to use the peg fees uh that we get from uh the cable providers to fund uh organization that's really in the community doing excellent work.

Uh I don't think I think I neglected to mention that this slide obviously covers the additional personnel, again, budget neutral coming over from other departments.

Um we do have zero vacancies at the moment for the first time since 2024.

Um, so I I think that's a real success and testament to our ability to retain talent.

And then reductions.

Um so we have two two items totaling uh $25,000 in general fund reductions, you know, a modest discretionary budget uh presents opportunities, I think, for modest reductions, but we're doing our part in uh shepherding uh taxpayer resources effectively and efficiently, um, so there's uh two proposed reductions.

The first in cultural media adjusting downwards uh 12,500, which really accounts for actual spend in 2025 based on our capacity to really leverage those partnerships.

So the majority of the total funding for cultural media goes to the programs that we partner with these five providers to bring to life, and then there's a smaller number uh of dollars that are for things like PSAs, and so uh we wanna look at the entire cultural media program in partnership with NCR to figure out how we can continue to grow it over time, but for 2026, we've made a small adjustment simply to reflect the team's capacity to take advantage of those sort of opportunistic moments.

Uh and then, secondly, public access TV, we've adjusted downwards uh twelve thousand five hundred dollars again for the purposes of effective taxpayer dollar stewardship.

And with that, I will close.

Um, Chair Chugtai, members of the committee, thank you for your time, and I welcome any questions.

Thank you for your presentation, Director.

Uh, we actually have several members in queue.

Um so I will first recognize Councilmember Cashman, followed by Council President Payne.

Thank you, Chair Chugtai, thank you, Director Fetcher.

Um this is one of the few departments that's bringing forward a pretty substantial increase in the budget for 2026.

Well, most departments are bringing like a one to five percent reduction.

Uh so kind of wanted to understand a little bit more about the outcomes you're trying to achieve with the additional funding that you're asking for on a broad scale.

What's the return on the investment for residents?

Thank you, Chair Chugtai, Councilmember Cashman.

Um, yeah, really appreciate that question.

Again, it's a budget-neutral increase citywide.

So these are personnel that are moving into the communications budget, but for but previously and currently exist in other departments' budgets.

So that's you know, personnel that have come have come from OCS, Reg Services, CPED, and the health department.

And so that's part of this effort to unify the team and unify the department so that we can then operate with a single strategy, a single voice, consistent, cohesive message, and really be more efficient and I think mutually supportive of the entire city uh operating as one central, you know, uh communications department on behalf of all of our priorities.

Okay, can you tell me a little more about the cultural media programming?

Because I did see that was increasing and then also was part of the reduction.

So I think I got confused as to whether how much it is increasing and for what, and then what's reducing and why.

Thank you, Council uh Chair Chugtai, Council Member Cashman, thanks for the question.

Uh it's not increasing, it's only reducing.

So there's a reduction, $12,500 for the 2026 budget.

Um so it's been a critical program.

We're keeping in place uh the full program partnerships that we have with our cultural media partners.

Um there is some additional funding, and Justin, if I get this wrong, please come and help me, that covers opportunistic media placements on the airwaves of those partners.

Um, and so there's a small reduction of 12,000 that really accounts for staff's capacity to take advantage of the opportunities for, say, you know, promoting PSAs on cultural media partner airwaves.

Okay, thank you.

Um page six was a digital integration and strategy to occur in 2026.

Can you say a little more about what that looks like or what you're envisioning?

Yeah, uh, Chair Chugtai, Councilmember Cashman, thanks for that question.

Um, it really speaks to the need for increased capacity and really shifting the resources of the existing team more towards digital communications.

Um, so as this fall, we are going about building a strategic framework to guide our communications uh going forward.

Uh, a big part of that will be how does that central strategy come to life on digital channels and an emphasis on social media, which obviously, as we all know, is where you know residents and community are engaging with the world, and where there's a live active conversation about the city that we're currently not really a part of.

So as we look towards bringing you know personnel resources into the department, you know, uh in line with the 2026 budget, the next step will be shifting the model and the organization of those folks to better resource digital capacity so that we have more people engaged in uh how we show up on digital channels and social media, and more people and more uh resources looking at how we create compelling relevant content for those channels.

Right now we spend a lot of time uh thinking kind of media relations first, right?

Um, and so I want to shift the balance of how the team, the existing team is oriented more towards thinking digital first and our overall mindset.

Is it a little more like owned media versus earned media so that we're we're giving primary information instead of through our media partners?

Yeah, that's a good way of looking at it.

Owned and and social.

So owned would be like our website, uh email, newsletters, social would be yeah, our ability to amplify.

But you your point is exactly right, Councilmember Cashman.

Um, you know, it's about forging a direct relationship with community so that we can build trust, you know, through our own voice versus that intermediary.

And then do you see that happening through individual departments having their own social media handles and pages?

Uh I see probably less of that than there exists even today.

Um I would really like to focus our efforts on growing um the core city channels where we'll really be prioritizing the city's talent and creativity to bring to life compelling content that is relevant in the discourse and grow grow the community of followers that we have there and increasing engagement versus proliferating more separate social channels.

Right, that's right.

I've seen uh the arts and cultural affairs department has created their own channels and they have very trusted relationships in community that have been very effective in getting the word out about their programs, and I really appreciate that, and would actually like to see other departments, uh, for example, some in public works, huge department, lots of stuff going on, um, maybe not as much communication with those impacted by their policies through social media and even on like solid waste and recycling, for example, there's so many tips and tricks and resources available to help people recycle more and make the switch and get composting bins, but that information is not being told through you know the places that people are looking for that information.

So I, you know, I can see why centralization is compelling to get more impressions on those accounts that would have more interaction, but I also think if they're developing trusted audiences within those subgroups of people in the city who really care about those issues, like arts and cultural affairs with the arts community, you can really create like authentic engagement with those audiences there.

So I'll be interested to see you know what what you bring forward on that, and I think it's good to be considering it.

I've also seen a lot of cities be very silly with their communications, like New York is going above and beyond.

I know, like a city in Latin America developed a mascot that they started using on all their platforms.

So there is room to be uh playful and engaging, I think, and um you know, try to make people proud of Minneapolis and proud of government.

So I hope that's part of your um imagination here.

Just a couple more questions about the council's role in all of this and and how we relate to one another.

So uh I think a big barrier to council being able to tell our story about what legislation has been passed in the past two years, which is more than ever before, has been that we don't have a comm staff for the 13 council offices.

And so we don't have a point of contact for media inquiries.

We're not able to do what the mayor's office, for example, is able to do because they have a dedicated staff member for media relations.

So I'm wondering what your vision is for who's your point of contact with the legislative department on this and how do you envision that improving.

Chair Chugtai, Councilmember Cashman.

Thanks for that question.

Um so yeah, I'm I'm of the mind that we can be doing more together, and I want to be looking for those opportunities.

So I'll just say that first and foremost.

I think there are many cases in which there are shared priorities, shared victories, you know, news that's really you know reflects um, you know, shared vision for uh the city's future where um our team can be supporting, you know, uh moments where all voices, including council, mayor's office, city officials, uh, are sharing that news collectively and engendering uh more of a I think understanding of how much territory is under sort of the banner of shared priorities than you know the current uh I think misconception, which is that it's all fighting all the time.

Um so I'd like to get away from that.

Um secondly, uh, to your put your question about uh staff.

We work closely with uh clerk Carl.

Um there is a communications position uh that is being created and will be filled within the clerk's office that will be a very close partner of the communications department um looking to uh yeah work work more closely in uh any as many ways as possible to to share the the totality of the story of city government working on behalf of its community.

Okay, thank you for mentioning that.

And yes, this position for the legislative department has been budgeted for for years, so I will be very excited to actually see this person hired and be available to us, and thank you for recognizing that you'll be willing to work with them on telling shared stories again.

Residents really want to see our city government be productive, and so finger pointing through our official communications channels to me is just not at all what residents deserve, and I don't I don't want to see that happening to the extent possible.

And then lastly, uh just on being honest in our communications and making sure that we're fact-checking because I think this is something that's happening in government and leading to the loss of trust in government when all these federal departments are putting out non-scientific information and spreading conspiracy theories.

We obviously want to do the opposite of that and tell tell the truth in our comms.

And so I just have one example.

Um, that you know, a few months ago we got a report on on the cost of doing encampment closures, and it compared a six-month period in 2024 with a six-month period in 2025 as a one-to-one, and then a city press release came out that said look at how great we're improving on this.

Um, but it wasn't fact by fact because the two data sets were not comparable in terms of the time span that they were looking at.

So I'm wondering whose responsibility from the comms team it would be to actually fact check the city itself.

Uh Chair Chugtai, Council Member Cashman.

At the end of the day, that would be my responsibility.

So I could take responsibility for the any discrepancy there.

I would need to look more closely into that specific case and would be happy to get back to you on how we can prevent that exact example from happening in the future.

We do care deeply about verified information, accuracy, and so certainly anything that is going out that does not feel accurate or fully vetted should be brought to our attention.

Okay, thanks.

Lastly, I just want to thank you and DCO O'Mellum for handling the crises this summer with such grace and strength.

And I know the emotional toll is a lot.

I know you were on the scene at Annunciation right away with with some others, and that it was not easy to be carrying that load and to be telling that story over and over again.

So I just want to thank you for your resilience and for representing the city.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

Um, next, I will recognize Council President Payne, followed by Councilmember Palmasano.

Thank you, Vice President Chucktai.

Thank you for the presentation.

I actually would wanted to say I'm really grateful for the transparency that you brought here and highlighting some of the findings from past audits.

I think uh this institution is really quick to get defensive when we talk about challenges, but I think the point of this is so that we can get some insights to those challenges so that we can actually improve upon them.

And that's to say to kind of build on some of the questions that um Councilmember Cashman raised.

And there's even been allegations of it going too far into brushing up against the boundaries of when are you campaigning using comms, and um I feel like highlighting the disjointedness, the inconsistency, uh the messiness of it all might actually answer that question more so than any formal policy or strategy.

But I I'm just wondering if you could, you know, shifting from what the team described that were challenges to what the aspirations the team would have around being strategic, collaborative, you know, coordinated.

We see from a process perspective, it's actually very hard to engage with comms and to try to plug into what should be shaping a unified voice of not the city council, not the mayor, the city.

Um procedurally, how are you trying to address that those types of concerns?

Chair Chugtai, Council Council President Payne.

Uh, thank you for the question.

Uh I I'll be honest, as someone who's pretty new to the city, I'm still working to figure this out myself.

I sat down with uh Chair Chugtai recently and I had some of this conversation.

You know, I would love to sit down with you, Council President, to have that conversation.

Um, there's still a lot that I don't feel I understand as it relates to history, um, how our government may operate in ways that are different than say my federal experience.

Um, so uh not to offer a non-answer, but I would really welcome time to sit down and get into that with you.

Um, again, my goal would be um more collaboration, more sense of support felt by yourselves from our team.

Um, you know, I think we are promoting the sort of executive branch actions, um, but that does not mean there are not opportunities for uh reflecting the fact that it's council ordinances that often council decisions, council debates that are often leading to you know many of these things coming to life, and that we are all part of this one enterprise working on behalf of our community, and I want to see that reflected.

Yeah, I'd welcome that conversation.

I know that you've extended an email, and I think we might even have time scheduled, and if we don't, I will make sure that we follow through on that.

Um, and I'd also recommend sitting down with the city auditor.

Um, uh when we first came into office, uh, it was on the and this is a big comms piece, right?

It was on the it was on the on the back of the murder of George F George Floyd, and there was a lot of communication about the banning of no knock warrants and in our first month or two in office, Amir Locke was killed in a no-knock warrant, and there was no communication around it.

Fast forward to now, um, you know, we had an audit on the Lake Street um ice uh event.

We learned some failings around how we were internally communicating communicating, and then I actually saw from that audit uh changes to our emergency operations and to our JIC configuration that actually set us up to be much more coordinated when the annunciation shooting happened.

And so I I say all that to say that I really welcome the transparency here.

It's not about dunking on somebody, it's not about calling somebody out, it's about really finding what were the challenges, what were the failings, and how can we actually change how we operate to be better.

And I think that we have we've seen that in practice, and I would like to continue seeing more of that.

So not only am I looking forward to sitting down with you on Allen, I would also encourage you to sit down with our city auditor because he's been looking at that really closely as well.

Thank you.

Next, I will recognize uh Councilmember Palmezzano, followed by Vice Chair Koske.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr.

Fetcher, for this presentation.

Um this centralization is a long time in coming from my perspective.

Um we've had audits, large external audits that we spent a lot of money on in the past that suggested that this is an important way to get more accurate communication and more efficient and speed in our communications is this centralization.

So I'm looking forward to seeing how it unfolds.

Also, thank you for the efforts of you and your team and the Joint Information Center communicating about the mass shooting and enunciation.

That's where I first encountered you.

Um the consistent embedded information was incredibly important in the immediate crisis and also afterwards as the council member just across the street from the incident and the representative of a lot of impacted families.

I really appreciate the concise and the correct messaging that your team helped to do.

You were the one of the first city staff that many of us council members who showed up on site encountered.

Um, and you were already working with the media.

And now you've had to stand up another joint information center for mass shootings this week.

Um I recognize we can't predict when these incidents will happen, but you've certainly shown us.

I think that you are ready at a moment's notice.

There doesn't seem to be any distance there.

So I think that this embedded department comms positions under one umbrella strategy is very much necessary.

Do I understand this would all take place early next year, or is this a gradual transition over time?

Thank you for the question.

Uh it is a bit of an incremental shift in that we have uh recently shifted lines of reporting um for uh OCS communicators uh and communicators that uh were formerly embedded within CPED regulatory services and the health department uh under my leadership, while uh budgetarily those positions continue to be funded uh in those departments uh through the rest of this year.

Um so pending council approval of budget, then everything would shift at the beginning of 2026, completing that transfer.

And we did it that way based on guidance from HR and the budget team, in part to allow for a uh proximity to happen, unification to be happening as early as possible, knowing the benefits that you just spoke to, um, but also uh because there's a lot of learning um uh that needs and and discussion that needs to be happening in close collaboration with those departments who are transferring their communications folks to us around what work will come with them in terms of what's going to be absorbed within the larger central communications team and what work will need to be kind of redeployed within those departments.

So sort of that interim step of shifting reporting lines, even as budget for those positions exists in those departments for the remainder of this year, allows us to be operating as one team, you know, as soon as possible and to be working through all of that, you know, again, and then before sort of more wholesale adjustments to the org would take place in 2026.

Yeah, thank you.

I think um that's a great important step here.

Is the MPD recruitment campaign over?

Or are you still working out any remaining budgeted funds and using it for that?

Uh Chair Chog Tai, Councilmember Palmezzano, I will have to get back to you on that specific question.

I don't know.

There was rollover funds from 2024 that have been expended for this year, uh, and I I can't tell you exactly how much money may be left.

Um, but I believe they've been mostly spent through.

Specifically, I'm talking about the imagine yourself campaign.

So thank you.

We'll follow up.

Yeah.

Thank you.

And I will next I'll recognize Vice Chair Koski.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you so much, Director, for the presentation.

Uh, just have a few questions.

Has the city ever done this type of consolidation or centralization of communications in the past?

I know you're 10 weeks in, so you may have to phone a friend, but you may also know this answer.

Laura, will you come help?

Good morning, Chair Chugtai, Councilmembers.

I'm Laura Mellon.

I'm the deputy COO over communications and engagement.

No, to my understanding, this has not been centralized in the past.

I will note that the communications department has existed, and then as needs arise within departments who have larger budgets with the ability to sort of reposition individual positions.

I think that's sort of how these positions grew outside of the communications department over time, what we're really trying to do.

And I'll also just note that this is in partnership with all these departments is to bring everyone together under one roof for you know to provide better services to the residents.

Thank you.

I just have a follow-up question.

Do you what strategies or what plan do you have in place to not have that happen again so that you can continue toward your goal of a more unified team?

Yep.

Through the chair, Councilmember Koske.

Um we are working with HR and the budget team and of course across the departments to ensure that if communications positions are added to the to the enterprise over time that that happens within communications.

Gotcha.

Okay, thanks so much.

Um I think the rest of my questions, directly.

Okay.

So on the org chart, I was just curious to know, you know, kind of piggybacking on Councilmember Cashman's questions about support for the legislative department, uh, mayor's team, just that cross coordination and partnership.

What role is responsible of that?

And I also understand that it's also looks like it's a bit in flux too.

Uh through the chair, councilmember Koske, uh, yes, you're correct that it is in flux in the sense that this is what the org chart looks like today in terms of the reporting line shifts that have already occurred, which I described earlier, and what it will look like, you know, the moment the 2026 budget is in effect pending council approval of said budget.

Um, but we do anticipate uh then in embarking on an evolution to the org to support the strategy that we're in the process of building.

I actually think that really provides an opportunity to be thoughtful as I'm having conversations with council president, yourself, others uh about you know ways in which we can increase connectivity and offer better support and more clear lines of support that we will have some time between now and when that new org model is finalized to answer the question.

Right now, I'll be honest, there is not a role within that org chart that is designated to offer that support.

Um so I could see it taking many forms, and I think we have an opportunity to have these discussions now to inform that final solution.

Great, thanks.

I appreciate that.

Um, and is there anything that you see right now that the legislative department could do in order to be more streamlined with your goal of having a more um you know unified like citywide unified communication in the short term, because we're also in flux of we do not have that comms person hired.

You're in flux, but I do think that that need of partnership sooner rather than later would be helpful.

Is there anything that you would suggest?

Uh Chair Chugtai, Councilmember Kosky, thank you for the question.

I I would suggest a uh time spent together between myself and members of council, um, and I it's been a short 10 weeks here, but that is on my list is to have time with each and every one of you, and so I think uh that is one uh good step to take.

Um secondly, I think using myself as a place to call with needs or ideas or suggestions or opportunities.

Um I'm here for those conversations and would welcome that uh in my phone, my inbox any time.

Um so please reach out with needs and so that we can discuss what's realistic and what's what's possible.

Um and then third is we do have some ideas from a content perspective for how to feature stories uh on a ward by ward basis that you'll be hearing from myself soon about looking to feature sort of unknown stories again, sort of to the point of pride in like Minneapolis, we're moving that direction with our content.

We want to uh work with you to surface uh stories from your wards that may be beloved and known within a given ward, but aren't known at all outside that neighborhood or that ward to then create social content around and would partner with um you know the council member from that ward and their staff on how that content comes to life.

So maybe not a perfect answer, but those are a few thoughts on how we could get started.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

Um and I just want to say thank you so much for the support with during the enunciation shooting.

Um I could see the adjustments that your team has made, and I felt it.

It allowed me to be a leader, but also to be a mom and um and a friend, uh, and a moment when so many people around me were hurting and still are.

So thank you so much.

Thank you, Vice Chair Koski.

Um just really quick last question.

Can you tell me the so I see in the budget book that the cuts to cultural media are ongoing?

So a 12,500 uh reduction year after year.

Uh I understand like there you there you had a target you needed to meet and cuts that needed to happen somewhere.

Um but I think something that we struggle with that has been identified in after action reviews and audits in the past is is the the significant degree to which we struggle to communicate in moments of crisis with um our constituents who do not primarily uh speak English or or consume um you know more traditional uh media um as as a result of of uh language barriers or or whatnot.

So I'm I am concerned that like that with a group of people that we already struggle to communicate with, um that we are like increasing that that distance more.

Uh is there a different way that you are thinking about balancing that um through other strategies or uh just help help provide some insight there if if you're able to right now.

Chair Chug Chad, thanks for that question.

Uh what I'll say is the cultural media program is something that myself, uh Director Mo, the entire team feels very strongly is vitally important, and we agree with everything you said.

Um I want to stress that the reduction uh will not affect the every sort of regular programming that we run in partnership uh with these media outlets, community specific.

Um, we what Director Mo and I have discussed is in concert with the evolution of communications seeing the you know further evolution of NCR that we're spending time together as partners and peers working to better understand how we can get more from the partnerships we have with cultural media partners and do more across, as you say, sort of even outside the boundaries of that specific program to better reach those communities who are not otherwise connected.

Um so I what I would say is more to come.

I think it's something that's very top of mind uh for myself, and I don't want to put words in Director Mo's mouth, but I believe that's a case for her as well.

Um, you know, and as we think about uh the future of the communications org, um, and you know, how we are developing capacity for the things that really count and really matter, that will be a key priority.

Gotcha.

Thank you.

Um, yeah, I mean, this is this is something that's important to me as well.

So, and and I believe to to other members of the council, I know um, just you know, as an example, this is something I've heard uh council member Osman speak about quite extensively in the past as someone who um really struggles to be able to share um, you know, major pieces of information with constituents, if not for for his own uh language fluency.

And I think that's true for for several members here as well.

So um just noting that that you know we're we're here to um to be partners in in making sure this work continues to uh be prioritized um as it's as it's resourced.

So with that, um thank you very much for coming in for your very first budget presentation and for answering so many questions.

I'm not seeing any further discussion, so I will direct the clerk to file that presentation.

And with that, we have concluded all business to come before the committee this morning and afternoon.

Um without objection, we are adjourned until our next meeting, which will take place tomorrow, Friday, September 19th at 10 a.m.

where we will be conducting our very first public hearing on the 2026 budget.

Looking forward to seeing you all there.

Thank you everyone.