Good morning.

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

I'm going to call to order our budget committee meeting for Monday, September 22nd, 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.

At this time, I will ask the clerk to call the role so we can verify the presence of a quorum.

Councilmember Payne.

Present.

Present.

Ellison is absent.

Osman is absent.

Cashman.

Present.

Jenkins is absent.

Chavez.

Present.

Chowdry.

Present.

Palmasano.

Present.

Vice Chair Koske.

Present.

Chair Chuktai?

Present.

Nine members are present.

Let the record reflect that we have a quorum.

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

So please make sure to sign in.

Today we have one item on our agenda, which is receiving three presentations related to the mayor's recommended 2026 budget.

Today we will welcome our intergovernmental relations, our convention center, and Office of Community Safety Departments.

We will first begin with the Intergovernmental Relations Department, and for that I will invite the director, Katie Topinka, to begin the first presentation.

Welcome, Director Topinka.

Thank you, Chair Chuktai and Council members.

Uh I'm Katie Topinka, I'm the director of the Intergovernmental Relations Department here at the city, and I'm pleased to be here today to represent, or I mean, excuse me, to present the mayor's 2026 recommended budget for our department.

So we report up to Deputy City Operations Officer Laura Mellum, and we sit in a line with 311 communications, neighborhood and community relations, and the convention center.

So we are a small department.

So we have the director and then we have five staff under the director, two senior government relations representatives, a government relations representative, a government relations coordinator for sustainability.

This is a position that was previously in the health department.

Last year you all approved transferring that position to IGR.

And so we're happy to have someone on board there, and they are monitoring closely the public utilities commission and then helping support uh other government relations work with a particular focus on regional government relations, so supporting tracking work being done at the Met Council and other uh government partners.

And then we also have an administrative assistant who supports the needs of the department.

And the way we break this down is that one of our senior government relations representatives is focused on federal issues and regional issues, uh, and then the senior government relations representative and government relations representative are focused on state issues primarily, but then also supporting uh federal and regional issues for their issue portfolios.

Um this slide includes the mission and some of the priority objectives for our department.

This mission statement is new.

Um, we just had a team workshop a couple of weeks ago and and came up with this mission statement together.

So this is the first time we're kind of sharing it publicly, but it's uh that we partner across governments and organizations on behalf of Minneapolis residents and the city enterprise to advance their needs, strengthen collaboration, and create lasting improvements in quality of life.

So we hope this reflects uh you know the work that we do, which is representing the city, which includes all the city departments, the council, the mayor, and also the people who live and work in Minneapolis and representing those interests and needs at other levels of government.

The way we do that work is we develop and advocate for the city's policy agenda by doing work that is responsive and timely.

We ensure that city leadership and staff are informed and knowledgeable about what's going on at both the state and federal levels.

I'll talk a little bit more about some of the ways we do that.

And then we also engage federal lobbyists to support the city's policy agenda with federal stakeholders and of course have work on our team where we focus on federal issues.

We are trying to explore new ways to do that work, including strengthening relationships with the National League of Cities and other cities to make sure we're really able to advocate for our needs at the federal level.

Looking at achievements and risks for our department, you know, I think it goes without saying that we're in a difficult political environment.

And so one of the things I am proud of though is our ability to continue to advance city priorities even in a more difficult political environment than we'd had the previous couple of years.

Some of the ways we did were able to do that at the state was by working with other cities and our city organizations like the League of Minnesota Cities to preserve local government aid and push back against proposed cuts to it.

We were able to work with all of you and the Office of Community Safety and the Minneapolis delegation to push back against a bill that would have taken away city authority to have a separation ordinance.

We were able to work with stakeholders to protect a lot of really good sustainability policies that had been passed in the previous biennium.

So some of those examples include there was no sunsetting of the community solar garden program, which was proposed, there was no decrease to score funds, and there were no changes to the extended producer responsibility law that was enacted in 2024.

Those were all important city priorities we had worked on.

There were some risk to those programs this past session.

We were able to work with others to help push back against those changes.

We were also able to secure some transportation funding, including the last bit of funding we needed for the Nicolet Avenue Bridge and money for traffic calming for cities of the first class.

On the federal side, you know, one of our achievements this year is really just pivoting our work where it's most needed.

And so our senior government relations representative Lauren Olson has really been doing a lot of work on the federal side, continuing work she was already doing to gather information from city departments for earmark requests, but then also working very closely with the city attorney's office, and you're getting an update later today on city attorney's office federal work as well, but working with them on grants tracking and making sure we're letting our congressional delegation know where we may be having issues with certain grants.

We've also set up a federal funds working group, which is made up of city departments.

We meet monthly to just to talk about issues around federal grants that we may be experiencing and sharing information that way.

I already mentioned we have a new staff person in IGR this year that was transferred from health, and it's already hit the ground running, helping us monitor the PUC and submitting comments and working with stakeholders around sustainability issues.

I think our biggest risk is really just the current political environment, particularly at the federal issue, but just also a lot of the challenges we've experienced here in Minnesota over this past year.

I mean, it's it's a threat to the work we do and being able to help advance city priorities, but it's also, you know, I just uh I do worry about our team and just their well-being in the stress and burnout that comes from working in a difficult environment like this.

Um, you know, we are we are a close-knit team and we do a lot to support each other.

I mentioned we had a team workshop a couple of weeks ago, which was really nice.

We spent a day off-site, worked together, talked about things, you know, that are really within our control, and how do we work together to to focus on those.

Um, and I think that helps mitigate that risk, but it is something that you know we need to be closely monitoring.

Uh this slide includes um are the things we are trying to measure in partnership with PMI.

Um, some of those things are that the city's needs are understood and advanced at the state and federal levels, that we maintain effective relationships with uh legislators and the state government, and that we maintain partnerships with regional bodies, and that the city enterprise is supported by the advice of the department, and that the city enterprise is able to engage in setting cities policy priorities.

Um, our work can be a little bit harder to measure in terms of you know, we don't have like a something we're building or you know, always have definitive ends to our projects in the same way other departments might.

So we've been working with PMI to identify ways to measure this work.

Um, one of the main things we're doing is setting up some survey tools so we can compare year over year the feedback we're getting from both departments and then some of our stakeholder partners.

So we're farther along in some of those areas than others.

Um the place where we're farthest along is this last bullet where we're looking at making sure the city enterprise is supported by the advice and support of the department and engaged in establishing our priorities.

Last year, Indiria Falana, who leads our policy liaison team process, worked with PMI to set up a survey for the policy liaison team to give us feedback for how they felt about being able to participate in the process.

We'll be doing that again this year, so then we'll get that baseline year over year data, and we can keep comparing that.

And we're working to do similar things in other areas by doing some surveys with the delegation and department heads and others.

So we do have a um impact story though that PMI published earlier this year, and that QR code on this slide will take you to that as well.

Um so this slide includes our department level budget.

Um the budget is decreasing by the proposed budget is a 2.81% decrease from last year.

Most of this decrease is a reflection of uh the removal of an IRA, IIJA budget item.

This was something that the uh you had all approved in both 2024 and 2025, uh $50,000 each of those years.

They were one-time proposals.

Um we did not seek that funding again this year because that work is ongoing, but IRA, the inflation reduction act and the tax credits that came along with that at the federal level are winding down.

Um we have been able to secure some direct pay for things like electric vehicle infrastructure and our electric vehicle fleet through the IRA tax credits, so that's been uh really good for the city, and we have some things that are still in process, but um it's not something that is really needed moving forward.

Um, the other change here is that personnel and internal services charges are increasing slightly.

Um, but you will see, and I'll talk more about this on a later slide, that there uh is a proposal to reduce the legislative aid position, which would offset those increases.

Um, and then other changes across the cost categories are really the result of base budget realignment that IGR worked on with the budget office to reflect some of the increases in membership costs we're seeing for things like the League of Minnesota Cities, the National League of Cities, um, those membership dues come out of the IGR budget and have increased slightly.

So we moved some funds from contractual services to operating costs to reflect that.

And then here is our FTE summary.

Um, as I just mentioned, um, there is a proposal to reduce uh the FTEs from 6.35 to 6.

So that's a reduction of the seasonal legislative aid position.

We don't have any vacancies currently.

The seasonal legislative aid position is only filled during session, so there's no one in that position right now that will would be that we'd have to lay off or anything as a result of this reduction.

We just would not fill that position moving forward.

So the six uh FTEs reflect what I talked about earlier in the organizational structure slide.

And I'll talk a bit more about the seasonal legislative aid reduction on a later slide.

So IgR's program is really the work of our department.

It's advocating at the regional, state, and federal levels for the city's policy agendas and making sure that the work we do is quality and responsive and timely, and then ensuring that city leadership and staff are informed about policy updates.

We also oversee the work of the city's state and federal contracted lobbyists.

So some of the ways we do that are we collaborate to develop the city's policy agenda, we offer regular updates for council leadership and the mayor and staff during session.

We have a policy newsletter, and then we provide policy updates to departments across the year.

And then as I mentioned, the mayor's 2026 recommended budget includes the reduction of the seasonal legislative aid position.

This reduction absorbs the costs of internal service charge increases.

And while we really value the work of the seasonal legislative aid, and um, you know, it's been great to have that position.

Um we recognize that uh in the environment we're in, there we have to find ways to absorb cost increases.

And we do have other ways that we can manage the work that has been done by the seasonal legislative aid, including relying on our contract lobbyists to track committees during session and give us notes.

Um, and then um we have a regular newsletter we put out during session, and we can transfer some of that work to our government relations representatives and our administrative staff to help make sure that continues to get out on a regular basis.

We may have to reduce the frequency with which it goes out.

The seasonal legislative aid worked to get it out weekly during session, might be something that becomes biweekly or monthly as a result of the reduction.

Um, so with that, that concludes my presentation.

I just want to conclude by saying we're I'm really grateful for the intergovernmental relations team.

Um, I think even in this difficult environment, we continue to find ways to innovate, build strong relationships, and just work through really challenging situations, and I think we we represent the city well to other levels of government, and I'm just grateful for the commitment that the team continues to show to the city of Minneapolis.

So thank you.

Wonderful.

Thank you for that presentation, Director Topinka.

Um, first I will note that uh we have been joined in this committee meeting by council member Wandsley.

Um with that, colleagues, are there any questions or discussion items um related to the intergovernmental relations um uh presentation?

I see council member wandsley.

Thank you, Chair Chekta.

I also I did have a comment, but one to know for the clerks that there is not the speaker management set for us, the gate in queue.

At least, and I'll try refreshing minds.

Okay, it's it's I see that it's working for me and Vice Chair Koski, but um it looks like we have okay.

Wonderful, excellent.

Um, thank you, Director Topinga.

Specifically, I'm going to slide six.

Um, and again, this is just a comment or some more feedback.

So the city's needs are understood in advance at the state and federal level.

I think this is actually an area where we could use a lot of room for improvement regarding the specificity of our needs as it relates to how we're um communicating that to our state government partners, especially through our individual IGR process and how that also even relates to the executive process.

I say that because something that I've seen as a pattern for the past uh last few sessions is um actually confusion around what are the priorities from a united sense of council mayor, basically overall city.

And I think of an example, for instance, many of us wanted to see uh funding be devoted to homeless related service providers this past uh session because we all got the SOS around those service providers approaching a financial cliff.

Um, yet when we would go or staff will go to approach, there was not specific specificity around programs that we're looking to advocate for, figure amounts, even the data was not cohesive in terms of the city reporting at one point that we only have 27 folks unhoused on the streets, whereas Hennepin County is using their data that they report to our federal partners saying there's over 300, 400.

Um, so for us to not be on the same page around even the number of uh unhoused residents on the streets, the significance of needing services like a vivo, um to agate, and being able to come in as a united front behind those service providers so that we could have secured that funding, and now we're in the space where it's gonna be unclear how are we providing supports needed to get people housed and to stay off the streets.

I think there is a disconnect in regards to how that priority even got commuted communicated or advocated for this past legislative session.

Um, and again, I often see we have to go up there individually and lobby for our own projects uh that we don't see the executive administration staff do, even though it's adopted by this body through our IGR report.

So I think there is again just how do we get on the same page around what are those core city priorities, how do we then leverage our relationships so that partners at the Capitol have a clear sense of what are the city priorities?

There's detail around it, um, and we're aligned with even other partners at the table because I often hear amongst this body that they're saying, you know, we need to have state and county folks.

They are coming to the table.

Sometimes we're not just on the same page for some reason on the city size with those partners.

So I would love to see more clarity of how we do our like adoption process of um of specific IGR amendments that we then say is the city's priorities, and then how do we hone in on that for a legislative session?

And how do we show up more as a united front with our other key partners?

Uh excellent.

Um we've got two additional members in queue right now.

Um, so I'll first recognize council member Palmasano.

Thank you, Director Topinka.

Just a couple quick comments.

Um, last year I had joked that it was a tight race between you and arts and REIB for who is the smallest department, and even with these slight reduction in personnel and cuts, you're still not quite the smallest.

Um, but even though your team is small, I think it's fair to say everybody up here sees you as being mighty.

Um, and you might just have one of the difficult one of one of the most difficult jobs in the city right now.

Um, I really appreciate that we all face an uncertain future on the federal and state levels, and you and your team do it with optimism and with grace, and we really appreciate that.

I'm sure there are a lot of days that you um go home feeling defeated, and I saw that you noted staff stress as one of the risks of your department, but we all know how hard you work to represent the city of Minneapolis, and we thank you.

Wonderful, thank you.

Um, and then next I'll recognize Councilmember Chowdry.

Thank you so much, Chair Chug Tai, and thank you, Director Topinka, for your presentation.

Um I share similar sentiments as councilmember Palmasano.

Uh it's been really uh a privilege and a joy to get to be the chair of IGR and to have a closer relationship to the IGR team and see you in action at the Capitol through some very uh tough legislative motion moments.

And for me, I've seen two legislative sessions as the chair of IGR, and they both have been very, very unique in their own way and difficult in their own way.

And even through the difficulty, there have been objective wins that your team's been able to deliver.

And I know that this legislative session isn't going to be any easier, right?

There's a lot of grief at the state capitol, and also we are kind of waiting to see if there's going to be a special session that is going to bring your team into action earlier than anticipated.

And so I just wanted to say thank you for that, and I look forward to working with you into this next legislative session and the rest of your team to figure out how we can kind of it just seems like we're artfully figuring out how we can find opportunities for the city of Minneapolis and our community and artfully figure out how do we stand tall on our values and communicate that even as we're taking on the headwinds from the national level coming into our state.

A question that I did have, and maybe it's for you and maybe it's also for um DCCO Mellum is one of the risks that you mentioned, or the risks that you mentioned was staff stress and burnout.

And I think in this moment, especially since you are so frontline to the political work at the state capital, it's there's a lot of trauma to hold and experience, and that trauma is oftentimes very difficult to metabolize, like these last three, four months have been a great example of that.

Um I kind of wanted to get a better understanding of what type of supports are there for your team, yourself, and even other city staff that have to experience this to ensure that yeah, people aren't burning out and they have an opportunity to go through this and as it is a part of the work at this present moment.

Hi.

Thank you, Councilmember or Chair Chuktai, Councilmember Chowdhury.

I'll just say something briefly on internet over DCOM.

I'm um I think you've you know hit it on the head of kind of how hard this past few months have been.

Um, you know, I think one of the things that helps is that um, you know, we try to support one another and talk through things together.

We have a very open and collaborative team, and I think everyone's pretty comfortable sharing uh sharing issues and concerns with each other.

Um, you know, we also have a lot of uh people we work closely with who also work at the Capitol, and so I think everyone has sort of their different um uh sources of of support in that way.

Um, but certainly there are also resources that the city has available, and so maybe I'll turn it over to DCO Mellum to talk a little bit more about that.

But um, you know, I think I think we do try to, you know, continuously check in on one another, make sure we're all doing okay, and um I try to encourage people to take time off and be off and not look at their emails and their texts and just and take that time to to kind of um uh restore, you know, do what they need to do to have a break.

So I'll turn over to DCO Mellum.

Thank you.

Good morning, Chair Chuck Tai, Councilmember Chowder, members of the committee.

I'm Laura Mellum.

I'm the deputy city operations officer over communications and engagement.

Um I really appreciate the recognition for the impact that that some of the events over the last several months have had on our staff, particularly the IGR staff.

And I just wanted to note too that um, you know, through a lot of the planning that we've done related to the national incident management system, IGR now does have a seat in the Joint Information Center.

So not only are they experiencing this with colleagues that they've worked with at the state level, but they're also have a role in communicating with stakeholders at all levels of government for many of the emergency events that have happened.

Um I would just note, you know, we are trying to ensure that our employees across the board and especially those who have had to really play a major role in these response efforts, are aware of the resources that are available to them through the employee assistance center.

Um that information is all on City Talk for anyone who might be watching.

There are um a number of mental health resources that are available to employees through um through the employee assistance program.

Thank you so much.

I really appreciate it.

That's it for me.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

And then I'll recognize Councilmember Cashman.

Thank you, Chair Chugtai.

Thank you, Director Tapinka.

Yeah.

Appreciate all of your work and the strong communication with council on our priorities.

I just wanted to make a note or something to suggest to our IGR chair and vice chair as well as you as we head into this year.

Is I think that with this new position moving into IGR with a focus on regional work, I would really like to emphasize some of our priorities to the Met Council as a body that does have a lot of power over the region and just some of what I think should be our priorities are strengthening the urban growth boundary in the region, advancing, you know, fair housing proposals so that all the suburbs and all everyone in the region is building as much affordable housing as we are.

And then also on the transportation side, you know, making sure we're not expanding the highway network anymore so that we can actually reach our transportation goals.

And so I think the Met Council does have a lot of power and that we need to be in closer dialogue with them.

So I'll be bringing some of that to our IGR this fall and hoping that we can find some ways to strengthen that coordination and communication with them as a as a decision-making body.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm not seeing anyone else in queue.

So with that, I will ask the clerk to file that presentation.

Thank you again, Director Topenka.

Um, our next presentation is regarding the convention center and downtown assets.

For this, I will now invite uh Jeff Johnson, the convention center director, to begin that presentation.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Chugtai, and Vice Chair Koske and Council members.

Good morning.

My name is Jeff Johnson.

I'm the general manager of the Minneapolis Convention Center, and today I'm here to present the mayor's recommended budget for the Downtown Assets Fund.

I also want to take some time to introduce uh some of our partners that are in the room from Meet Minneapolis.

We have President and CEO, uh Melvin Tennett, Senior Vice President of Destination Development and Public Affairs, Abby Posky, and Senior Vice President Finance Administration, Sandy Christensen.

We also have some members from Minnesota Sports and Events, Chief Operating Officer John Klinkenberg, and then Tyler Boykke, who is the executive director of the local organizing committee for the 2026 WWE SummerSlam event.

We appreciate their support in what we do every single day.

So our department resides in the Office of Public Services in the Communications and Event Engagement Work Group under the supervision of Deputy City Operations Officer Laura Mellum.

We oversee programs for the convention center, the Target Center, PV Plaza, and we fund the Kohl's Center program for the Department of Arts and Culture.

This slide highlights the purpose of the Downtown Assets Fund and its role and the role it plays in to delineate the use of the local option sales taxes, provide predictable support to the general fund, and to support our hospitality assets.

It is important to understand where the majority of the downtown assets funding comes from.

In 1986, the state authorized the city to collect local option sales taxes to support hospitality in Minneapolis.

The taxes are a 0.5% sales tax, 3% tax on whole hotel lodging, 3% tax on restaurants, 3% tax on liquor sales, and a 3% tax on live event tickets.

These taxes bring in about 100 million dollars a year, with about 20 million of that going to the city's debt payment on U.S.

Bank Stadium, and the rest supporting the General Fund, convention center, meet Minneapolis, Target Center, PV Plaza, and the Coal Center.

The taxes have rebounded from the devastating economic effects of the pandemic, but they haven't come back equally.

The power of the live event is driving our entertainment tax to be very strong, and that trend is continuing into 2025.

Unfortunately, though, a downward trend in spending is showing up in our other taxes and will be a theme of my discussion about 2025 performance.

Let's jump into talking about the convention center.

Our mission is something that we live every day.

To be the best is not just a slogan, but a challenge to make sure that we continue to provide economic benefits to the residents of Minneapolis through jobs, generating taxes, and providing customers for our local businesses.

We do this in a sustainable way with a service mentality.

These graphs speak to who we are.

We are the face of Minneapolis, and maybe even the smiling face of Minneapolis.

We continue to have a majority of our staff showcase the diversity of our city.

We are making strides and increasing opportunities for leadership positions with our BIPOC and female employees, as well as improving our female representation in all parts of our organization.

When you say that you want to be the best, sometimes it's hard to know when you've achieved that level of success.

For us, being the best means that each day we come to work dedicated to give our best efforts to be great co-workers, customer focused, and community-driven.

When you do this consistently, people notice.

I'm proud to let you know that the staff and programs of the Minneapolis Convention Center have been recognized by our peers at the International Association of Venue Managers as a venue of excellence.

This is our third time that we have received this award, and it speaks to our consistent quality work over many years.

For us, this is kind of like winning the Oscars or a Grammy or maybe even a Super Bowl championship.

And really the best part of this award is that it recognizes the accomplishments of our employees and sets the bar for how we show up to work each and every day.

As highlights of some of our work, our sustainability programs continue to have real and positive impacts on our community.

We save natural and financial assets by focusing using our resources responsibly, to the tune of over $7.7 million in savings since we started our programs.

We've also reduced our greenhouse gas emissions by 85%.

Building a great staff also takes us effort.

Our staff is dedicated to each other because we have programs in place that let them grow.

We now have several programs that allow employees to gain skills at assistant or lower grade positions and then have a pathway to a higher grade and higher paying position.

We hire people who have the hospitality skills that we desire, and then we give them the opportunities to build those skills to have a great career.

Everything that we do is with a purpose and in order to represent our city well.

I could tell you stories all day, but I thought it would be nice to hear from a customer who took time to post on social media how she experienced the convention center.

The post talked about how we use our facility to market Minneapolis to visitors.

I won't read it all, but they ended the post with this comment.

This is a master class in marketing.

I left with a feeling of a fantastic customer experience.

That is our goal with each guest who enters our facility.

2025 is bringing to light some risks that will challenge us going forward.

The convention center faces competition not only from the facility needs of our customers, but from the experience attendees have in our downtown at our hotels and with our visitor amenities.

Many cities are investing in their convention centers and creating districts that help energize the area around centers with hospitality assets.

We can see that cities that have not been competitors like Milwaukee and Cincinnati are raising the level of their convention centers and their downtowns.

Our time to act is now.

We have the opportunity to not only help the hospitality industry, but to activate our city, which aligns with many of the community plans that have been built over the last few years.

2025 is also bringing with it financial challenges.

The pressure to keep expenses down is immense.

Costs increase faster than we can increase our prices to our customers.

Providing services and space that clients desire is our goal and is essential to remaining competitive.

In 2025, we have seen economic instability affect our business.

There are multiple factors at play, like international and nationwide travel declines, consumer confidence in spending declines, problems with federal funding of nonprofits, which nonprofits are a huge source of national conventions, and also just problems with federal staff that used to be able to go to conventions and travel and now they're not able to.

We've also seen our corporations cut back on their spending for events.

And if we look back in time to generally our booking schedule is about five years, and so we are right now working on 2029 and 2030.

So if you look back to 2020 and 2021 when we were looking at booking our 2025 events, obviously we were right in the middle of the pandemic and other social unrest, and so that those effects are showing up today.

All of these factors have caused our revenue to underperform projections by over 5% this year.

This is significant because we did predict a difficult 2025, but these challenges have impact our community more severely than we even predicted.

As we look forward, there are bright days ahead.

We are predicting a better 2026, but those predictions will only come true if our economy normalizes and spending confidence returns.

So what can we do to move forward?

Well, we need to be able to adapt and change.

The event business evolves, client expectations change, and we need to be able to reach those.

Investment in the convention center is needed to meet the needs of our clients who have a new demographic and generation to serve.

We are losing market share and competing with new competitors.

I will be working with Meet Minneapolis to provide strategies and options for rising to this challenge over the coming months.

As we encounter these industry competitiveness challenges, we are also going through a major transition in our workforce with many individuals retiring or soon to retire.

Hospitality is a wonderful career, but it also can be non-traditional in its hours and demands.

Hiring the next generation of leaders at MCC is a critical focus for us over the next two years.

Our legacy of good service can only continue if we recruit and keep great people.

We're going to move now into our outcomes.

The entire downtown assets budget continues, though, to grow modestly.

Vacancies are typical in our work because of the part-time and temporary staff that help sustain us during our busiest event times.

Also, we see vacancy results, the vacancy results of some retirements this year, and us now working to try to replace those positions.

Next, I'm going to go through our specific programs.

We continue to try to manage the expenses of the convention center.

The majority of our increases in expenses have come from city derived expenses through increased labor costs and other city charges.

To help cushion those increases, we have worked hard to try to decrease operating costs.

A highlight of 2024 was that the MCC had no reportable injuries for staff, which meets our goal of having a safe environment for staff while also saves the expense of lost work hours and medical bills.

We do hope though, as we said, that 2026 is going to bring stronger revenue to our building.

Now moving on to our events program, this is how we pay to service our customers.

About a half of this budget is given to Meet Minneapolis for marketing and sales activities, which feed our revenue growth.

These graphs show the weak performance that we are experiencing in 2025 and the forecast of better days to come in 2026.

We do survey our clients after their event, and this slide shows some data points from those surveys.

The first graph shows a net promoter score that consistently places the experience of the client inside the convention center higher than their experience in Minneapolis as a destination.

The good news here is that the destination score has risen significantly from some very low numbers the past few years.

The reputation of the city and the experience of visitors when they come to our city is improving, but we must work to keep this momentum going forward.

The second graph speaks to the number of problems that a client has while at the convention center, and if our staff is empowered to fix those problems.

Through second quarter, we continue to have very few problems, which is great, and we are really close to our goal of resolving 66% of those issues in the moment.

This graph really speaks to the excellence of our staff.

As we seek to make a positive impact on our community, these graphs show the strength of the hospitality jobs in our community and the growth of those jobs through 2024.

We are a human-centered industry that provides careers to many people in our community.

Our next convention center program is the facilities program, which maintains our building infrastructure.

Some people don't like to talk about their age, but I always mention to our clients that our building is 35 years old because we take great care in providing a competitive and well-maintained facility.

Our clients score the convention center highly, but we're seeing in 2025 numbers through the first half of the year are down a little bit on the quality question.

This could be due to comparing us to our competitors, or it could be that some of our aging infrastructure challenges are catching up to us.

We are reviewing this information and making sure that we understand where we might be coming up short.

Resting on our packs, past success will not ensure success in the future.

Using our resources responsibly is an important part of our mission.

Investments in our facility and dedication from our staff shows that consistently over time we have made our facility less wasteful.

We now use 50% less water than we did a decade ago, and we consistently recycle over 60% of our waste.

Utility expenses are a huge factor that drives up our costs.

Our energy efforts have saved $7.3 million in electricity costs and $402,000 in water costs.

We've reduced our overall energy usage by 25%, which has resulted in an 85% decrease in our greenhouse gas emissions.

Now moving on to the Target Center.

Most of our resources go towards capital projects to maintain the 36-year-old building and to support the operation of the building through our operator, Legends Global.

2024 was a historic year for the Target Center with a wonderful lineup of events like USA gymnastics and the big 10 men's and women's basketball tournaments, along with great playoff runs from the Lynx and the Timberwolves.

Roll in an impressive lineup of concerts, and you can see that the Target Center produced a lot of tax revenue and activity for Minneapolis.

We also measured the amount of capital projects that we complete that are critical to the success of the arena.

It was very challenging to find time in 2024 to complete projects due to how busy the arena was, but we were able to fit projects into the calendar and continue to make progress now in 2025.

Many of these projects don't get completed in one calendar year and must roll to the next.

As part of the success for 2024, the Target Center is nominated for a prestigious award from the International Entertainment Buyers Association as the arena of the year for 2024.

We may not have the newest arena or the biggest arena, but I think one of the great things that we can know as a city is that the different artists and promoters that come to the arena are treated well and want to come back and are prioritizing coming to the Target Center through all of the very, very strong work that Legends Global is doing.

We should know in October if we are winning this award.

It's the International Entertainment Buyers Association Arena of the Year Award for 2024.

2025 has been a more difficult year though than 2024, same as at the convention center.

There haven't been as many large events, and there has been some weaker consumer spending.

Luckily, though, our concerts are remaining strong, and our Lynx and Timberwolves teams are among the best in their leagues.

Both teams are drawing large crowds and adding more games through long playoff runs, and this is really helping out our economy.

The additional games bring that additional economic benefit to the businesses and generate more taxes through all of that spending.

The Target Center is a major reason for the success in our strong entertainment tax collections.

Now moving on to PV Plaza as our next budget area.

PV Plaza is currently maintained and operated by the downtown improvement district.

It has been a great year at PV because it has been a safe and clean year at PV.

I'm very thankful for the efforts that the DID has put into making sure that PV Plaza is a welcoming and beautiful area for all.

As you can see, some of our programming frequency has been reduced.

Part of the reason for the reduction in 2024 was that we had a lot of event rentals that took up space and time at PVE.

It was also a planned reduction as we really wanted to use 2023 as a reintroduction of the new PV plaza for those that had not been downtown for a while.

Going forward, the DID will coordinate programming so that it has the best effect and works well with the programming that they are doing on Nickelit.

2025 has been a slower summer with very few rental events at the PV Plaza.

Again, very similar to what's happened at the Target Center and very similar to what's happened at the convention center.

The positive though out of PVP is that this summer there's been some new security protocols put in place and it has been very, very successful in maintaining a safe atmosphere at PV Plaza.

Moving forward now, the Mayor is recommending two budget additions for the Downtown Assets Fund, totaling $600,000.

The items are $500,000 in support of the WWE SummerSlam event and 100,000 to explore the convention center's competitive climate to determine future priorities.

I'll start with the competitiveness funding.

The convention center is at an important juncture in its history as a major investment in the facility has not happened in 25 years.

Our competitive climate continues to evolve, and this funding will be used to help gather information to make informed, smart, and strategic plans that specifically identify actions we could take.

We want to be proactive, and these resources will allow us to help act now to remain competitive, and we'll really follow up on the work that Meet Minneapolis did through their destination management plan and be able to put those actions into play and make sure that we're moving forward to have results.

The $500,000 one-time expense to support the WWE SummerSlam event in the summer of 2026 was part of the bid that Minnesota Sports and Events put together several years ago to draw the event to Minneapolis.

We ask that this money would be added to the Meet Minneapolis contract to help pay for event expenses.

If you don't know about SummerSlam, you should know that it is a very large event that will be held at U.S.

Bank Stadium, at the convention center, and then some possible events at the Target Center.

About a hundred and fifty thousand people from 50 states, all 50 states, and about a dozen international markets will travel to Minneapolis, eat in our restaurants, sleep in our hotels, and enjoy themselves.

Much like the Super Bowl and the Final Four, the event also gives back to our community through its youth programs.

We have data from other cities that have hosted this growing event, and Minneapolis can expect over 100 million dollars in economic impact.

With that, that concludes my uh presentation, and I would be happy to stand for any questions.

Thank you for that presentation, Director.

Um colleagues, are there any questions or comments related to um Mr.

Johnson's presentation?

I will first recognize Councilmember Rainville followed by Council President Payne.

Thank you.

I'm in cue for Councilmember Cashman.

Go ahead, Councilmember Cashman.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Director Johnson.

Um, pretty familiar with these facilities, given that I think most of them, if not all, are in Ward 7 except U.S.

Bank Stadium, and just the benefit to having these public facilities for residents and for the economy.

So just reiterating that there are tens of thousands of hospital hospitality jobs that depend on the strength of these facilities, including with unions like AyATC, Unite Here, Teamsters, and others.

And also for the residents who live downtown, um, the amenities that these facilities provide are really important.

For example, convention center is our emergency um destination during a heat wave or a flood, et cetera.

So for a lot of downtown residents, that is an important place to be able to go.

And then just the amenities like the public bathrooms, the P V Plaza public bathroom trailer is something I get a lot of positive feedback about because it's very hard to find a public restroom in this city, and the few that we do have are really useful.

I think we need a lot more of them.

Um but just wanted to thank you for those benefits, you know, to the residents and and to the city.

I would like to just ask for you to share a little more at this point about your plan to recoup in 2026 because I'm hearing some hope and optimism for 2026 recovery, but not how we're actually going to get there.

And I believe in our last Meet Minneapolis meeting, we did talk about focusing a lot on the regional tourism, people from the suburbs, people from the Iron Range, people from Fargo coming to the city and um appreciating Minneapolis and just being a tourist within their own state as a really powerful way to uh to recoup this these losses, but can you say a little more about what the plans are looking like?

Yes, through the chair, Councilmember Cashman and Councilmember Rainville for passing it through.

Um there are a lot of things going on.

Everything from uh the details of us as a staff uh getting together and really re-looking at how we're uh charging for our services and trying to say is there a different way for us to do this?

Uh can we do things differently that will help us uh drive revenue in our building uh from investments uh in our food and beverage at the convention center to make sure that we're uh providing the types of food and beverage that people desire to uh monthly, it's been about monthly meetings with Meet Minneapolis to just brainstorm on revenue and what we can do going forward.

So that's kind of the smallest level, but then as you start to go out to the larger level, we know that 2026 uh right now is looking better because we have uh again that five years of of work that have gone into scheduling uh for 2026, and so we know that we have better uh national events uh coming in 2026, and so that's why this work on that small level to make sure that we actualize uh greater revenue uh when those events do come to town is something that's very very important to us from a marketing and sales uh standpoint.

Obviously, Meet Minneapolis is working on that and and working forward.

The regional work is something that is very important as we as I talked about in my presentation that travel right now is is difficult uh both international travel and national travel, and so uh we may become a more regional destination for the short time, and so uh making sure that we're reaching out to those uh regional um areas like the the and and really when you look at Minneapolis, we are a regional hub of hospitality.

People love to come to Minneapolis because we have the amenities that they are desiring, and so being up being able to go out and tell those stories through the marketing plan.

I don't have specifics on how much is going to be spent or or anything, but that is definitely something that we're going forward on for those national conventions.

If you remember uh in uh 2025, when we uh brought the new Meet Minneapolis contract through, we added some additional resources uh to them for help in the sales process uh through additional money to help attract uh those uh bigger events to Minneapolis.

And so it takes time to do that, and we'll start to see some of uh the benefit of that that those additional resources in 2026.

But we will most likely see more of the benefits as we get out into further years where that those additional resources can really help us uh market the city, but also help uh with costs so that uh events in a competitive climate will want to come to Minneapolis.

Okay, thanks.

And also on the new expenditures, the six hundred thousand dollars.

Um can you detail out what the five hundred thousand dollars investment uh would be in the WWE event, as well as you know, the study for 100,000, um, what exactly we're hoping to get out of that and what the RFP would look like.

Uh I think you know, 100,000 is pretty high for a study, so wondering what exactly would be encompassed in that cost.

Through the chair, uh councilwomer Cashman.

Um, for the $500,000 for the SummerSlam event, it would really go towards event expenses.

A lot of those expenses are uh city costs.

Uh so if there are any costs for shutting down roads or anything, permits, things that they would have to pull.

Also potentially costs of the facilities that they are using in order to come here.

And so that money helps incent a big event again that's going to bring over $100 million in economic benefit to our city to come here, and um and so that is generally what uh those uh those dollars will be used for.

The hundred thousand dollars that the mayor is recommending uh is a little flexible at this time, and I don't know that it's gonna be just for a study, it's really to help us with that competitiveness and try to understand what are the things that we need to do in order to be competitive.

Um that component really ties into how we've said, you know, and I've said this many times uh today is that there needs to be some investment in the convention center.

We need to be able to follow uh the lead of what the destination master plan from Meet Minneapolis has talked about and what we do to ensure that a convention center district is something that really provides the opportunities for our clients and guests when they come to Minneapolis to engage with Minneapolis and spend their money and have a great time while they're here.

And so I'm asking for a little bit of flexibility with the exact details of what that $100,000 will be used for.

There'll be components of it that will be helping us get that information so that we can come forward and and uh say to this body, these are the things that that we need to do, and these are the things that we need to activate in order to be successful and in order to respond to the information that we learned through the destination master plan.

Okay, thanks.

Just wanted to um thank you for your presentation and also give a special shout out to Ms.

Polski, who I know is new and has been doing an amazing job and has been just really collaborative on these efforts to increase signage and wayfinding downtown and working with partners to pilot out what that can look like, as I know it really benefits tourists when they visit here to know where they're going in the skyways in particular, but also really benefits the residents who live here and also want to be able to navigate the city.

So thank you for that.

Thank you.

Next, I'll recognize Council President Payne, followed by Councilmember Pomasano.

Thank you, Vice President Chuck Tai, thank you, Director.

I was just curious if you could speak to the degree to which uh we use uh debt financing for maintaining uh capital or for capital improvements for the convention center versus direct appropriations from the downtown asset fund if there's any strategy to that.

Through the chair, council president Payne.

Uh debt financing historically has been used.

And so there would be an opportunity to have to think about if another investment is coming or needed as far as debt financing, as far as year-to-year capital improvements and using debt financing for that.

That has not been something that we have used in the past.

Obviously, it is a financial tool that could be used.

I think in the past, generally those that make the financial decisions have decided that it made more sense to use the resources that we had versus to go into debt for those year-to-year costs.

And then in the instances where debt financing was used for a major project, did it just go through the standard click process or did we have a different approach to that for the convention center?

Through the chair, Council President Payne.

Generally, it was always a different process.

Even looking back to the target center renovation in 2017, that was a different process where I came before the council at that time with the request.

It did not go through the click process because it was not general fund dollars and because it was from a special revenue source.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And then next I'll recognize Councilmember Palmesano.

Thank you, Director Johnson, for this update, and you're absolutely right.

I have a bit of a learning curve on worldwide wrestling events, but I promise to get up to speed if I need to.

Through the chair, Councilmember Palmisano.

So we have been bringing forth uh some projects for our meeting room renovations, and uh the phase two project is complete.

There's a few punch list things that they're they're working on.

Uh phase three of the meeting room renovation uh starts uh in November of this year and goes through about April 1st of 2026.

Thank you.

When you mentioned risks and competition, is there a way you could make it really tangible for us?

And maybe that's not something you want to do in public, but like what other cities do you see having that competitive advantage over Minneapolis for some of these events?

Through the chair, Councilmember Palmisano.

Uh it's hard to say that because I feel very strongly about Minneapolis, and I think that we can compete with everyone, but also I think uh the two that I I mentioned uh Milwaukee and Cincinnati Milwaukee because they had a smaller convention center that for years we never really heard about uh and and they have put in I think it was 350 million dollars into a uh convention center expansion, which almost mimics the exact size of our building, and so um it now they are on our playing field and a very similar as far as central to the country, similar size uh city.

Uh I like our city a lot more, but uh they have now stepped into the competition with us uh when you know generally we did not see them in those rooms.

When you look at Cincinnati, they actually are shutting down their convention center and remodeling it completely.

But I guess I call out Cincinnati for some of the cool things that they're doing in their city to activate their city.

Uh Ben Johnson, uh our director of arts and cultures, comes to me all the time and talks to me about some of the things that Cincinnati is doing to really make that city a place that people enjoy visiting, and I think that those are the components to what I want to look at is how do we again help the city become more active?

What role do we play to make sure that the city is more active?

And we we know and we've seen that uh some of the hospitality assets have moved away from the convention center.

They're they're moving more towards the river, which is fantastic.

I love the river, I love to be by the river.

So we know that is happening.

Now, how do we respond to that?

How do we engage with that?

How do we connect to that?

We talked about wayfinding as potentially a component of that.

Um, and then how can we add to our area to make sure that that we continue that energy all the way to the to the river for people?

And so um, it it's really trying to build off of all that uh everyone has been talking about, and try to say how can we actually affect it and how can we actually get something going to really make sure that we have a tangible product.

Thank you.

Wonderful, thank you.

And then I will recognize Vice Chair Koske.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you so much, Director, for the presentation.

Um, really appreciate it, and really it's been clearly a hard road to move up, but you and your team have done an incredible job doing that.

I just had a question kind of piggybacking on Councilmember Palmasano's.

Uh, you know, when you think about the future of the convention center, and you describe um it being far more robust than just the building itself.

Um so I was wondering if you could just share a little bit about that vision and that connectivity, like you said, to the river and what that could look like for us.

Through the chair, uh Vice Chair Koske.

There's a lot of dreams, right?

I mean, everybody has dreams.

Dreams are free.

Dreams are free.

Uh the the actual plan uh is not.

And and I think when you look at the convention center, you know, we have a great opportunity because even locally, very close to the convention center, we have control of a lot of the space.

So we have this beautiful plaza that is right out in front of our building, something that is an amenity for uh our residents.

We see dog walk walkers out there every single day, but also an amenity for our uh visitors and and the people that are in conventions to be able to go out and and you know live the brand of city by nature.

We bring that brand to them in reality.

And so I'm really trying to look at that plaza and say how do we uh use that in a different way in a better way?

What can we do and what can amenities can we bring to that plaza to make sure that it is something that is an attractor for the neighborhood, but also an attractor for our our um our clients and our visitors.

Uh I can't remember where I heard it, but it was someone who was really really smart said that that when you invest in something for your city, you should do it so that the residents enjoy it, but also that visitors enjoy it.

You shouldn't necessarily from a hospitality perspective, not from a public works perspective necessarily, but from a hospitality perspective, uh, you should do something that both uh groups will enjoy and want to be at, and really that's my vision for uh at least the local area right outside of the convention center is that we become this place where our visitors and our residents are intermingling, telling each other where the great uh places to eat are and and really enjoying and we see a lot of these great spaces across the the world and the country in the great cities of our world, and I want to bring some of that to uh the area around the convention center.

Thank you, appreciate that.

Thank you.

I'm not seeing um anyone else in queue, so um, with that, thank you for your presentation and for um answering uh questions today.

Um I will direct the clerk to file that report.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um we'll now move to our third and final presentation for today, which will be from the Office of Community Safety.

For this, I will invite Todd Barnett, uh, the commissioner of community safety to join us and begin that presentation.

Welcome, Commissioner.

Good morning, thank you, Chair.

Good morning, um Vice President, Council President Chekhtai, other council members, good morning.

Todd Barnett, the commissioner of community safety for the city of Minneapolis.

Uh I'm here today to present on the recommended 2026 budget for the Office of Community Safety.

Joining me today in uh the audience is the deputy commissioner Jared Jeffries, also the Chief of Staff, Andy Schootman, Director of Design and Implementation, Will Christensen, and also our Director of Administration, Myrn Anderson.

For a sense of scale, the five departments under OCS are responsible for more than 1,500 employees citywide and a combined budget of roughly 35 million dollars.

Looking specifically at OCS, the office itself is proposed to have eight FTEs in 2026.

The deputy commissioner position, as you know, was added this year in 2025 to strengthen the leadership capacity.

Um that the communications uh staff are not, here we go, are not included in the um 2026 slide.

It's a recommendation that we move them to the city communications department in 2026 to better align with the city communication plan and strategic planning.

As been noted many times before, uh, the mission of OCS is to provide a coordinated comprehensive and equitable uh safety services for all of our residents and visitors.

Our goals continue to be to build a comprehensive and cohesive community safety ecosystem, implement the settlement agreement and consent decree provisions, also strengthen the city's ability to respond to emergencies and large-scale events.

As we look at some of the achievements for 2025, we've launched a Safe and Thriving Community Work Group.

We put into practice recommendations from the Safe and Thriving Community Report and the NYU SS and GAP analysis.

We made measurable progress in year one of the settlement agreement and have identified areas for us to focus on.

Though we've made progress, there's still a long road ahead of us.

We've conducted citywide exercises and improved coordination during large-scale incidents.

We've enhanced our collaboration with our partners at the county, state, and federal levels on crime.

And also when we've looked at the late night safety plans, we've expanded that coverage beyond downtown into Deakin Town and Uptown.

Look at our challenges and lessons learned.

Although overall violence is uh, I mean, violent crime is down overall, property damage continues to go up.

We look and we know that when it comes to juvenile crime, sustenance abuse and behavioral uh health issues that requires a different response and resources, and we continue to do better at that.

During these times where resources are tight, that does uh restrict our flexibility, but also creates opportunity for us to be a little bit more creative.

We know that um progressive cities like Minneapolis continues to face uh federal funding challenges.

Uh, Minneapolis, in particular, similar to other uh cities, um, look at their funding as far as federal grant funding as a key source start to decline.

In 2026, we expect our OCS departments to depend on about 3.5 million dollars in federal funding.

Look at some of the lessons that we've learned within this last year.

We know that our large-scale events or emergencies continue to increase.

Each response requires the city to review what's worked, what we need to improve on, and make adjustments to close gaps.

For example, we have recently added to the joint information center, our intergovernmental relations director, and that's to help with us to ensure accurate timely information flow to our state stakeholders.

Year one of the settlement agreement has taught us that organizational change is steep and requires a sustained focus.

We have made progress.

Like I've said earlier, we still have a long way to go.

And that's a goal that we have is to be able to deploy resources where they are when they're needed.

When we look at our outcomes, Minneapolis, we've focused on three key areas.

Those areas include implementation of the settlement agreement, responding effectively to emergencies and planned events.

Also advancing the work in the safe and thriving community recommendations.

Year one of the settlement agreement that Alifa put out their report in March of 2025 of this year and shows significant implementation steps, but also highlighted that time and staff capacity is needed for full adoption.

We anticipate that Alifa's mid-year report would be out by the end of this year.

OCS has also strengthened Minneapolis's emergency response capability, as you see in that second graph.

We've had more than 180 staff members be trained in advance incident command and NIMS protocols.

That training continues to be led by our emergency management leadership team and has proven to be critical in managing large-scale events.

Looking at the ECOS system developments, OCS has advanced 80 recommendations from the Safe and Thriving Community Report.

Many remain in progress, as you can see on this slide, and a lot of them in particular require deeper system change for us.

As you will notice here, and I mentioned it earlier in the presentation, there is a drop in the funding you can see for 2026 because we're moving the comms uh staff to the city communications department, and the one-time funding in 2025 will drop off, which included MPD background check funding and nighttime safety plans.

This slide shows that uh we'll have in 2026 eight field positions uh that will remain with us, even though five of those positions will transfer to the city comms uh department.

Our budget reductions or changes uh in order to meet our target budget uh for OCS.

We've reduced the $50,000 that we've had uh for more discretionary funding.

Um we've uh enabled to meet our budget and also to meet the goal of the mayor for not uh laying anyone off in our office.

We moved uh one of the vacant positions out of MPD, which is an intelligent analyst.

Uh and so we eliminated that position to meet our target budget, but MPD still has 13 analysts there.

In any budget time like these, uh this will limit, of course, uh flexibility, uh, but does not stop us from meeting our mission and goals as we move forward in 2026.

That's the end of my presentation.

Uh stand for questions.

Thank you very much for that presentation, Commissioner.

Um colleagues, are there any questions or comments related to this presentation?

I will first recognize Council President Payne, followed by Councilmember Wandsley.

Thank you, Vice President Chuck Tire.

Thank you, Commissioner.

I was curious if you could uh distinguish the role of the chief of staff in uh the community safety office versus under MPD.

And I know that our the same gentleman is here that was in that role, but I don't know now that it's been elevated to the OCS role.

How is that gonna be distinct from the role of a chief of staff under the chief?

So um through the chair, uh Council President Payne.

MPD still has a chief of staff position.

Um that chief of staff position, I believe, is vacant right now.

Um that role in that position hasn't changed.

What has occurred uh a couple of months ago is that um since Jared Jeffries, the deputy uh Jair Jeffries moved into the deputy uh commissioner role uh from the chief of staff, andy Scootman came over to fill in as chief of staff.

So those two positions still remain there.

Uh just because it's uh Andy Schoolman doesn't change the roles for for each of our departments, if that's helpful.

Yes, I'm just curious about um how I'm trying to identify if there's duplication of roles.

No, there's not duplication of I'm sorry, chair through the chair.

Uh Council President Payne, there's no duplication of roles.

Um there is um you know MPD, as you know, is 24-7.

I mean, the chief of staff uh for MPD is plenty business busy with that department in particular.

Um the role for chief of staff here uh for OCS, totally different.

Um, although the chief of staff is in contact with all of our departments in other departments uh within the enterprise itself, uh that role is just completely separate.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Um next, I'll recognize Councilmember Wandsley, followed by Vice Chair Koske.

Thank you, Chair of Chuck Ty.

Commissioner Barnett, uh you mentioned in the slides that part of OCS role is to also execute not only the settlement agreement, but also the consent decree, which you're aware of, is now dismissed.

Um we have not been presented a plan either by Fryer or the city attorneys of how to operationalize those 300-sum provisions, one of which was you mentioned this of bringing Alifa on in the oversight of those consent decree terms as originally planned.

There was $750,000 put in the budget originally for that, under the assumption that we would have an active consent decree and not anticipating uh overturn of that.

Where is that reflected in the budget right now and kind of the update of working with the city attorneys on how you actually operationalize that so you can execute the where we're doing it anyways?

So I didn't see that in this presentation or the budget book, so I want to know what's going on with that.

Through the chair.

Uh council member Wandsley.

Um the $750,000 is not in my budget in particular, but when you look um, I'll go back several months.

Um, even though the um federal consent decree uh was dismissed in federal court, we have continued to work as though those positions will eventually be um part of the overall plan for implementation unit in the other departments within the city.

So some of the background or update, if you um haven't been briefed on this, is that our implementation unit, our city attorney's office, all those departments connected um with this work have um looked at where the um federal consent decree precisions overlap with the settlement agreement.

They're looking at um where there are differences with that, um, where there are uh situations where we can continue the work and not make major changes.

We continue with um looking at the federal consent degree as implement implementing it, even though I believe the city attorney's office and um the Minnesota Department of Human Rights Department continues to work out um ways in which hopefully uh we can meet some agreement that would um in the long run uh have us with one um independent monitor for all of the provisions of the settlement agreement and the consent decree.

So just to take a step back with the $750,000, is that then located in finance?

Because I know there's an overall $3 million budget for the settlement agreement or consent decree.

I'm assuming the $750,000 was a part of it.

If it's not OCS, where is that being housed?

Through the chair.

Um council member Wandsley, I would have to ask someone else because I'm not sure where the $750,000 is.

Let's have uh Director DeSenza come up and help address that.

Good morning through the Chair, Councilmember Wandsley.

We might need to confer offline because I'm not totally certain where the $750,000 is coming from, but I have heard you mention the settlement reserve a few times, so I wanted to talk about that a little bit.

So the settlement reserve is distinct from any funding that's been added for excuse me, for ongoing staffing needs related to settlement agreement or consent decree.

It's essentially the general fund balance.

And so that's meant for one time one time.

And then we don't have to confer about the $750,000, it's actually in the consent decree, the Department of Justice.

So it mandated if we were going to have a consent decree, we will pay a leafa or independent monitor $750,000 to oversee that.

Where I'm asking is that is no longer on the table.

I know before the federal consent decree was put in action, we always said we're going to make sure we, you know, monitor progress of both, support and finance both, but right now there is no legally binding agreement.

And for my understanding, if we were proceeding with that, we would then need to revisit the MDHR settlements to be able to unlock bringing in Alifa to do more oversight over the federal consent decree provision.

So that's why I asked about the 750K.

It sounds like you said that's just part of a general budget appropriation or one time, said one time was the settlement agreement appropriation.

If you would clarify again.

Sure.

So through the chair, Councilmember Wandsley.

Right now, Alifa's contracted with the city for to implement the settlement agreement, as we know.

Um the cap for that in the settlement agreement is is 1.5 million to my understanding.

Because the Alifa contract is something that will only be with the city throughout the terms of the settlement agreement, the city made a decision to not put that on the property tax levy, but instead, because it's a legally required payment to pay for it with the settlement reserve, which is just the general fund balance, a portion of which is designated to support the settlement agreement implementation.

And so there are some other expenses as we've talked about throughout the years that are also being covered by that reserve, and those are things that are like required trainings, one-time trainings, or um external support for investigation backlogs.

Those are the kinds of items that are being covered through the settlement reserve.

So I just want to emphasize that that is distinct from the ongoing commitments that the city has made, which are substantial for staffing and ongoing needs to reform.

So those are all highlighted in past budget books.

You're saying the settlement budget is just or the appropriation that you're talking about is just for the MDHR settlement agreement.

Through the chair, Councilmember Wansley, I I think we're kind of talking past each other.

There are a number of funding streams that are supporting broadly police reform in the city.

So there are ongoing funding strategies, and then there is a pool of funds within the general fund balance that we've set aside for emerging one-time needs.

And so the Alifa contract right now is my understanding is contracted just to implement the settlement agreement.

So I don't think we're talking the clarification in 2025, this council received a budget presentation that overlooked or overviewed line by line the provisions needed for the settlement agreement.

I'm not relitigating that.

What I'm asking is we were also told that appropriation or reserve would also cover anticipated costs coming from the Department of Justice Consent Decree, one of which is fixed, 750,000.

So get the general, I'm saying where does that fit in to this reserve?

So through the chair, Councilmember Wansley, because we are not under the terms of the settlement agreement, that reserve fund balance is not an available source for uh consent decree.

It's an available source for legally required items only.

Oh, that's good to know.

Okay, we were told that again, this was going to be implemented and supported regardless.

That's why I was looking for it as a line item budget.

I thought it would have been reflected in OCS, but you just provided lots of clarification on that.

Um Commissioner Barnett, going to slide six, risk and lessons learned.

One thing I did want to get an update on, because uh here it talks about lessons learned regarding coordination of sworn or non-sworn uh responses and also just how we're being better at using existing resources, which includes personnel to meet public safety needs.

I want to get an update on the staffing study.

I think you're well aware my office has been working with deputy uh commissioner Jared Jeffries and you in conversations around okay, how do we and also Chief O'Hara around how do we revisit the staffing study that MPD or Chief O'Hara said was outdated, it needed to be um reevaluated uh with the you know thinking post-2020 kind of dynamics for the Minneapolis police department.

We had originally meant to bring that as a budget item for the staffing study to be completed by MPD last year, but we're told that was not necessary, the department was going to do it itself.

It's already third quarter almost of 2025.

When should we anticipate that coming forward?

Um, because again, seeing this is not part of your budget, if this is something that you all can already do internally, which I think we left that previous conversation thinking that that was the plan.

Through the chair, uh councilmember Wandsley, um, haven't had a recent update on that.

I'll have to get back to you with with the response.

I just don't know off the top of my head right now.

Okay, so for clerks, if you can mark update on the MPD staffing study and progress related to that.

And then moving on to slide eight.

This is great to have a dashboard.

Really, again, outcomes Minneapolis regarding the implementation and design division, uh Amanda Harrington for getting this underway.

Um while it's great to see not start it, I do want to know if you have in estimate or anticipation of for 2026 the amount of projects that you're carrying forward, knowing that we also put money in the budget for pilots that we did receive an update on from M, well PMI.

So one to get a sense of, you know, of the in progress.

What are you anticipating the execute for 2026?

Through the chair.

Uh Councilmember uh Wansley, are you talking specifically about the safe and thriving community report?

I think most of you know that um Amanda Harrington uh has moved to uh neighborhood safety.

Um will director of design implementation will Christensen uh has been here maybe a month.

Uh so we have started to uh really sit down and look at um the work that's been done, uh look at what is feasible uh as we move into 2026.

Um I can't give you specifics right now, but I would think by our December third uh update, quarterly update, we'll probably have a better sense of that.

Okay.

Right now, we just, you know, uh I think our director of design implementation has been doing a good job at trying to um make sure he understands uh the work, but also understands some of the uh concerns and um things with council.

I know he's set out to meet with council members and things like that to get feedback and really want to use that information to uh kind of direct where we go in 2026.

Okay.

I look forward to getting more clarification December 3rd.

Um, just assuming um Director Harrington is pretty thorough in her work, so uh I thought there would be a better sense of I see the in progress or planning, how many of those?

If it was 15, 20, that was already set in motion prior to her um making her exit to NSE for 2026.

It sounds like we'll have more clarity on that December 3rd.

So thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

Wonderful, thank you.

And then next I'll recognize Vice Chair Koske.

Thank you, Madam Chair, thank you, Commissioner, for the presentation.

Just a couple questions on the uh the FTE transfers.

Um the first one, the budget eliminates a vacant intelligent analyst to position that was transferred from MPD to the Office of Community Safety.

Can you clarify when that transfer occurred and whether the position was ever filled, and if not, why it remained vacant.

Through the chair, um, Vice Chair Koskey, there I think 14 of these positions um in MPD.

I know that this position was vacant with 14 positions.

Um things move around.

This is a promotional sort of position from one to two.

Um the exact date uh that it became vacant, I don't know.

Um that what was the other part of your question?

I'm sorry.

Well, so my understanding and maybe help me if I'm not reading this correctly, but I think it was transferred from that intelligence analyst to because it was vacant, I'm assuming, moved over to Office of Community Safety for, so I guess for what purpose was the original transfer for?

The purpose was uh twofold.

Um, one was to meet our target budget.

Uh and then the second one was just an overall um directive that we have from the mayor um not to lay anyone off.

You know, 91% of our budget is staff.

Uh we don't really have a lot of wiggle room.

We've had $50 uh thousand dollars, which I would say is more discretionary, where we use for supplies, um try to do um staff development, translation, for flyers and things like that.

Community engagement is what we use the $50,000 for.

So that was really the discretionary spending we had and the other funds that we had within our department were one-time funding.

That funding included the MPD background checks, also included the late night safety planning.

So there wasn't really any funding that we could use in order to meet the targeted budget.

Okay.

So when that rule was moved over from MPD to your office this year, you did not fill it.

That's correct.

Okay.

And why was that that you decided not to fill it?

And Eric, guess what was the original intent of moving that over?

And then you decided not to fill it.

I see.

The intelligence position?

Correct.

Yeah.

Through the chair, council member uh Koski.

That transfer was made in order for us to meet our tar target.

Okay, for all the other spending.

Okay, got it.

All right.

That's helpful.

And but now you're in the middle.

It wasn't it wasn't um that position was moved over that we were going to fill it and use it for anything other than for the budget.

Got it.

That okay, sorry.

That's clear.

Maybe I wasn't clear.

Sorry about that.

That's helpful.

Um other questions.

So I understand that many departments are moving um communications into where you know centralizing communications.

And in that you have two senior project managers, can you that are moving over um to the comms team?

Can you describe, or at least I'm looking now also at their new org chart as well.

So under the Office of Community Safety Director, there will be a media relations coordinator, a senior project manager, a senior project, and then a strategic communications coordinator.

Can you just tell me a little bit about what do the senior what do the senior project managers do currently for you and your comms team that will they now do on the communications team?

Through the chair, uh Councilmember Koske, you're talking specifically the comms folks that were under OCS.

Correct.

Okay.

And you have to forgive me because I don't remember who was there.

I remember their names.

I don't remember when you say project manager, because those descriptions are used through human resources.

Um I can just tell you what I believe um the two positions that you're talking about.

I can kind of go through those.

I think one of them uh the positions that you're talking about was program manager was probably Sarah's position, which was our social media person for all of our um web page, um keeping up to date with um all of our uh other departments to make sure that we're really uh uniform in the way we send out information, whether that's by flyers or how we uh do community engagements as far as um newsletters, um, like I said, making sure that when we're doing those engagements that we're doing that in different languages and things like that.

So that's part of her description.

I think the other what you call program manager would have probably been David's uh spot where he was um, he's more in charge of uh a lot of our um graphic in um video that uh was put out by our departments.

Um although um you might see um a position like this with uh MPD, that's specific for MPD.

We also needed support our other um departments as well.

Uh so a lot of this proactive work that we're trying to do for our first responders.

Um I guess things we haven't done before, like live stream our uh fire cadet graduation for those folks who normally uh or not able to attend, um, being able to proactively um you might have saw the story about the SANAs in the uh fire department, do some work like that.

Also uh they're important to some of the recruitment work that we've done.

Both Sarah and Dave has worked on MPD recruitment, they've they've been working on other recruitments uh for the departments in OCS.

So hopefully that gives you some uh insight into some of the work that they've done.

Yes, I think that does.

I think if we can just do a follow-up memo, I think it would be helpful to see just the job, the original job descriptions for those four roles.

So it would be the media relations coordinator, the senior project managers, those are that's there's two of them, and then the strategic communications coordinator.

So we can just do a follow-up on that.

Thank you.

Um and then just last question.

I so I think I believe that the budget shows that there is an FTE being transferred from the police department into OCS.

Is that correct?

That I believe would be that um intelligent analyst position that's used to meet the targeted budget, yes.

Sorry, through the chair.

Okay.

Um okay, then I think that answers I think that answers my question.

Then I was just curious how it was going to be utilized.

But all right, thank you so much.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I am not seeing anyone else in queue.

Thank you so much for coming in to present your recommended 2026 budget.

I will direct the clerk to file that report.

And with that, we have concluded all business to come before the committee this morning.

And um seeing no objection, we will stand adjourned until our next meeting, which is Monday, September 29th at 10 a.m.

where we will receive departmental budget presentations prepared by the civil rights and public works uh departments.

Those presentations will be available in LIMS later this week.

Thank you, everyone.