Good afternoon and welcome.

My name is Lene Palmasano, and I'll be chairing the Administration and Enterprise Oversight Committee today.

So I'll call to order our regular committee meeting for September 29th, 2025.

Before we begin, my friendly reminder to all committee members, staff, and the public that these meetings are broadcast live to enable greater public participation.

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 their rate of speech so that our captioners can fully capture and transcribe all comments for the broadcast.

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

I'll now ask the clerk, Rachel Bowton, to call the roll.

Councilmember Payne.

Present.

Vita?

Present.

Cashman.

Present.

Chugtai.

Present.

Vice Chair Palmasano.

Present.

Chair Winsley is absent.

That is five present.

Thank you.

Let the record reflect that we have a quorum.

I'll ask my colleagues to use speaker management today and I'll sign into that.

So go ahead and sign in or let the clerks know that you need assistance.

We're gonna start with just signing into speaker management here.

We'll start with our consent agenda items today.

There's one gift acceptance from the Milan Urban Food Pact Global Forum of Airfare and Lodging for five days for Allison Babb.

That's item number one.

Item number two is a grant application to the Secretary of State for accessibility improvements to polling places for people with disabilities.

Item number three is a grant from the Minnesota Department of Public Safety Office of Traffic Safety for a traffic safety resource prosecutor to support our drug evaluation and classification program.

Item number four are contracts with various organizations for partnership engagement fund projects.

This actually simply updates the contract for teaching bike-based sculpture art and free workshops by listing Epic East Phillips Improvement Coalition is the contractor who's serving as a partner and fiscal agent for bike alleybreaks project.

Item number five is contract with GovWorks for real-time quality assurance software for 911.

Item number six are contracts with various vendors for the U.S.

Department of Agriculture's Forest Service Urban and Community Forestry Grant for Tree Outreach.

Item number seven is a contract amendment with Meyer Contracting for the Hennepin Avenue South Street Reconstruction Project.

Item number eight is a contract amendment amendment with Midwest Art Conservation Center for Public Art Maintenance and Conservation Services.

Item nine is a contract with Shaw Linquist for City Hall Restack Phase 3C project.

Item number 10 is a contract amendment with Birch Tree Care and Precision Landscape and Tree Inc.

for hazardous tree removal services.

Item 11 is a contract amendment with U.S.

Bank and Elevon for merchant card and related services.

Item 12 is a bid for large diameter storm main inspection and televising for this year, Southwest section.

Item 13 is a bid for the convention center, second floor public space painting.

Item 14 is a legal settlement.

The next two are workers' comp claims legal settlement of Mark Meninger and legal settlement of Aaron Banks.

Item number 18 is a professional services contracts ordinance.

It actually sets the public hearing for October 14th.

Let's see.

I will move all of those for approval and ask if there are any questions or comments on our consent agenda.

Are there any questions or comments?

I'll quickly put myself in cue just to mention.

Item number three, that grant from the Department of Public Safety, is really great.

We have a special level of expertise in our offices, and drug enforcement, like DWI type offenses can be very complex from a prosecution standpoint.

We have this resource in our office.

It's important for us to both showcase our expertise and help other jurisdictions across the state.

I'll point out that our Minneapolis City Attorney's Office prosecutes the largest number of driving while impaired DWI cases in the state, including the largest number of DWI drug cases.

So this will help us to do more and do better in this sort of complex and very exacting work.

I will, since there's nobody else in Q.

Also mention the partnership engagement fund.

As my colleagues know, in general, I object to dispersing funds in this way.

And I've struggled for several years now to understand how some of these partnership grants are benefiting a community.

I would rather they be given out by neighborhood associations.

This one sounds like it might be better offered in community ed or parks programming, but this action is only to add a fiscal agent.

The money is already appropriated, so I will be voting to approve this project.

Are there any other comments or questions about our consent agenda?

Seeing none, all those in favor, please signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Nay, none.

Um that motion carries unanimously.

Thank you.

The final item on our agenda today is related to property maintenance services with the network for better futures.

Councilmember Wansley, the chair of this committee, had asked for um a to make this a discussion item.

So I'll ask Nareen Shi Havong, our CPED project coordinator, to come up and speak on this item, and I hope I've pronounced your name partially correct.

I'm sorry.

That's pretty good.

Pretty good.

Councilmember uh Chair Promise Allen's Narin C.

Havong.

Director Si Havang.

Thank you.

Yeah.

I also have a PowerPoint presentation that you have copies of too.

We have that in front of us and okay, yeah.

So I can begin.

Good afternoon, community chair Palmasano and Council members.

My name is Narin Sihavong.

I'm a supervisor with the CPED real estate services in the housing division.

I'm here to provide information on our request for authorization to fund additional occasional property maintenance services on city-owned properties in the CPED inventory.

I'd like to start by clarifying that this contract is for occasional property maintenance services rather than services specifically related to formal uh former homeless encampment sites.

CPED has about 370 properties, and approximately 95% of these properties are vacant lots.

They're green lots with no structures.

So we have four contracts with vendors that do property regular property maintenance.

This regular maintenance is for snow removal, lawn care.

However, there's a need for occasional maintenance services.

The service primarily includes illegal dumping, rubbish removal, secure and board up of houses or buildings, fence installation or repair on city-owned properties in the CPED inventory.

These contracts do not extend to private owned properties.

The vendor that currently provides services for this occasional maintenance is Better Futures, Minnesota, also known as Better Futures.

They're a nonprofit basin, Minneapolis.

Mr.

Shihavang, I think you mean to be advancing the slide on there so that people that are watching live can see.

Yeah.

The contract is a two-year contract with an option for a third year at 120,000 per year, not to exceed 360,000.

CPED is seeking an authorization to increase the contract with better futures in the amount of $80,000.

So the request of $80,000 is uh if it's authorized, the contract will be up to $440,000.

This request is due to contract cost overruns in the contract, as more than 50% of the cost is addressing illegal dumping, rubbish removal, securing properties, which have increased substantially more than previous years.

As you can see from the slide, there's a detailed table, and then the subsequent slide is a pie chart.

This talks about the same services for the past 20 months.

This shows that we have less than $4,000 left for these services for the remaining three months of uh 2025.

Should this not be approved, we would we would not be able to provide the occasional maintenance services during this period.

And I can go into details of line by line if you wish, but uh uh just do the top three.

The first items is more most important, illegal dumping and rubbish removal, uh, securing properties.

Uh we do have vacant buildings and homes uh that get broken into sometimes, and also if there if there are fences, we would repair the fences.

Um removing the next line, removing vegetation, um services, trimming of brushes and trees, uh the the fourth fencing repairs and installation.

The pie chart um says the same thing, but in just in different form.

So illegal dumping and rubbish removal is the largest cost of this contract um within this category are posting camping closure costs, which account for at least 50% of the costs.

Um, I said uh I apologize with the RCA, it was written erroneous in my part, which had the homeless encampment as it should say for occasional uh maintenance, but because that's the bulk of the work is for occasional maintenance services, and these these costs are the ones that are related to post-encampent closures, these are the ones that are um least predictable.

And that's um, here are some pictures of uh two properties that we've done uh rubbish removal.

Uh the first one is the quarry, it's at 13 1513 Arthur Street Northeast.

It's in the back of the parking lot near right off Highway 35.

Um, and besides removing rubbish, um our contractors routinely visit the properties on a essentially on a weekly basis and report back, and they're authorized to do rubbish removal and and work with city different city departments on trespassing issues also.

This is another side, it's a vacant uh structure, 818 44th Avenue North in the north side.

It recently was uh had some fire issues.

Um there is continuous dumping.

Um it's in the process of being demolished, but we continuously monitor it, put up fencing, uh, remove rubbish, though.

And this concludes my presentation, is there are any questions.

Thank you.

Um, I don't see anybody in queue yet.

Um, but we appreciate being able to call out better futures to help us maintain these vacant lots across our city.

Um, thank you for this presentation to help us better understand what this work is about.

Uh I'll go ahead and move this forward for approval and call on Councilmember Vita.

Thank you, Chair.

Um, thank you for the presentation.

I um illegal dumping is a huge issue in board for the pictures you showed in North Minneapolis is in the ward that I represent.

And it, I mean, it is just a huge livability issue and a public health.

We it's it's a crisis that's happening and it's something we're dealing with every day.

When I learned of the partnership with Better Futures and how they were helping to maintain the city um property, it was such a relief.

It's really a lot of dumping that people can't even imagine how much dumping happens.

And that site that you those photos you have, I know that site also well.

I mean, it it's literally you would think it was a garbage site, the way people just find one spot that they can dump on, it gets cleaned up.

And to have that that partnership with better futures has helped us out so much on the north side with um the amount of illegal dumping we deal with on a regular basis.

So thank you for this presentation.

And um, I I mean you have my support in making sure that they get the funding because we need the help.

Thank you, Councilmember Vito.

I'll relate a message to Better Futures, and they'll be very happy to hear that.

Not seeing anybody else in queue, I'll go ahead and ask the clerk to please call the roll.

Councilmember Payne.

Aye.

Vita.

Aye.

Cashman.

Aye.

Choktai.

Aye.

Vice Chair Palmasano.

Aye.

That is five ayes.

Thank you.

And now with that, we've concluded all business to come before committee today.

So without objection, we stand adjourned.

Thank you.