Good afternoon and welcome.

My name is Linne Palmasano, and I'm the chair of the Enterprise and Labor Relations Committee, and I'll call to order our regular meeting for July 20th.

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

These broadcasts include real-time captioning as a further method to increase accessibility to the community, and therefore all speakers, please be mindful of the rate of your speech so our captioners can fully transcribe all comments for the broadcast.

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

I'll ask the clerk to please call the roll.

Councilmember Vita.

Present.

Present.

Stevenson.

Present.

Chavez?

Present.

Chip time is absent.

Vice Chair Waiting.

Present.

Chair Palmasano.

Present.

We have six present.

Thank you.

Let the record reflect we have a quorum, and I will remind my colleagues that we have speaker management queued up today.

So please sign in.

We'll start with our consent items, which I'll read first for the record.

Item number one is a staff direction for the city clerk's office related to legislative process reform research and recommendations.

Item number two is the low bid for the fire department training apparatus expansion project.

Item three is authorizing a contract amendment with Shawn Lundquist Associates for the City Hall Restack Phase Three Project.

Item number four is a contract amendment with SABA software, also known as Canada Inc.

for Enterprise Wide Performance Management System Support and Maintenance.

Item five is a legal settlement of Cameron Chickeny with versus the City of Minneapolis.

Item number six is the legal settlement the workers' complaints of Terrence Floyd.

Item seven is a claim settlement of the convention center against Northern States Power Company doing business as Excel Energy, but we still call it Northern States Power Company.

Item number eight is a resolution related to indebtedness and refund bond issuance for outstanding capital improvement bonds.

I'll ask Dave Wheeler to stand up and give us the five cent tour of what that means.

Items nine and ten are receiving and filing standard financial reports for the second quarter of 2026.

Item nine is a list of staff purchasing letters and joint purchase letters.

Item 10 is a report for professional services contracts between five and 175,000.

Is there any discussion on any of these items?

I put myself in cue for item one and item eight.

Are there any others?

All right.

Um I'll start with item number one.

As a legislative body, we started the complex job of legislative process reform back in 2023.

We did not get it finished in that term, and I plan to bring it back to committee to this committee in this term.

This first step is a staff directive asking for research and recommendations from the city clerk.

It's essentially give us a fresh look.

At its core, this is about better systems and more consistent rules that lead to an open, transparent, and knowable process for both us and also the public.

As our city clerk has said, we are five years into our new government structure, and we are still using processes from before in the old government structure.

This is about us, a legislative body looking at the way we conduct our own legislative policy making and oversight work.

And I firmly believe that better processes lead to better policy.

I've met or spoken with almost every council member about this.

What you have in front of you today is an updated version incorporating Councilmember Chavez's additions.

So I wanted to go ahead and do a little explainer on that one, but I'll just leave it on consent.

I don't see it as being at all controversial.

Secondly, I wanted to ask Dave Wheeler if he'd be willing to give us a it's a complicated proposal.

Could you give us a brief explanation of what's happening with this bond issuance?

I ask that because the dollar figure might raise a lot of eyebrows.

Uh the resolution request is to uh authorize the issuance and sale of refunding bonds in order to call uh certain maturities of the city's uh general obligation capital improvement bond series 2018.

Uh this issue originally financed uh the beginning construction of the public service building and the east side storage facility.

Um our advisor Ellers is indicating uh these are preliminary estimates, but uh refunding issuance could provide us with approximately 1.9 million dollars in interest cost savings over the next 10 years.

Uh these bar the 2018 issue is callable beginning on December 1st of this year.

Uh at that point, the city can call uh any of the maturities at its option for any reason.

Oftentimes you would do this uh for this exact reason to achieve interest cost savings on the bond issue.

Uh and then by uh coupling this with the city's plan 2026 various purpose bond issue that we're working on uh achieve even uh better interest cost savings on the issue and itself.

Um right now the authorization would be for us to uh be able to refund the whole amount of the issue at this point or uh at the current interest rates.

Uh we expect to only call maturities through 2036.

Uh beyond that, the savings don't actually get any better.

Um, and we actually probably uh are in a better position and to retain that flexibility of calling uh refunding the later maturities at a different time.

Uh so that's a proposal before you uh happy to stand for any questions.

Thank you.

So my layman's terms of what this is essentially like would be like refinancing a home mortgage.

Um is that accurate?

Yeah, Chair Palmasano.

Uh yes, that is uh I think the the best, the easiest uh analogy to make is that we are um just as you would refinance your home mortgage to achieve a better interest rate and save money.

Uh same thing here.

We're taking out a new loan or new debt issue.

Uh the money received from that on December 1st will then be used to pay off uh the old loan or the 2018 bonds.

Thank you.

I really like this, and thank you for your outside the box thinking um and potentially bringing us two million dollars of savings given our current financial picture.

I appreciate every small thing that we can do.

Uh, do my colleagues have any questions about that.

Seeing none, uh, I will move all of the consent agenda items for approval.

All those in favor, please signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Any opposed.

Thank you.

Um that motion carries.

Our discussion item, our next discussion item is the appointed position, director of environmental health.

Um, it's to adopt findings and pass the ordinance related to establishing this new unclassified position, and I'll invite Brenda Miller, our classification supervisor, to get us started.

Good afternoon, Chair Palmasano and members of the committee.

As she said, I'm Brenda Miller, the classification supervisor, and I'm here today to present changes to the pay and points for the uh director of environmental health.

The director was evaluated, excuse me.

Um the director reports to the commissioner of health and oversees the prevention of disease and injury at businesses regulated by the health code.

The job was evaluated at three 575 points, grade 12, and the 2026 schedule ranges from 132 to 156K, and the incremental costs of about 5K are included in the health department's budget.

If approved, changes would be effective July 30th of 2026.

The director of environmental health continues to meet the criteria of section 2010 10 of the Minneapolis Code of Ordinances.

The director reports to the health commissioner is a member of the health department's senior management team.

Um it requires leadership vision, team building and strategy implementation.

Um it leads the development and implementation of city policy goals and strategic planning for the health department's environmental health division in accordance with the goals and priorities established by the mayor, the city council, and the health commissioner.

Please find that the director of environmental health continues to meet the appointing criteria and forwarded on to city council for approval.

Thank you.

Thank you for that presentation.

Are there any questions or discussion from committee members?

Seeing none, I'll move approval of this item.

Oh, sorry, council member.

There's a couple in queue now.

Councilmember Shavis.

Thank you, Chair Palmasano.

Um, can you just thanks for being here today?

Would you be able to explain?

So this is gonna be a new position.

Kind of repurposing a position to make sure that it's an existing position that was re-evaluated.

Okay.

And the change here would be to increase the salary range then.

Yeah, about five thousand dollars, yeah.

Okay.

Less less than five thousand, but around there.

Perfect.

Okay, thank you.

I just want to better understand it.

Thank you.

Councilmember Stevenson.

Yeah, help me.

I'm just a little ignorant of this.

This is just like this hasn't been re-evaluated in 10 years or something.

How does this come about?

It's it's hasn't been evaluated in a while.

Um the position is currently vacant.

Um, and they're working on staffing the position or would like to staff the position, so ask for it to be re-evaluated.

Okay, so it's it's being reevaluated because it's vacant and it's going through the application process again.

That's correct.

Okay, all right, thank you.

Some of you remember Cindy Weckworth who retired recently and she occupied this position for a very long time.

And that's part of why we're refreshing this with this look.

But this is essentially the position previously held by Cindy Wecworth.

That's correct.

Yeah.

So seeing no further discussion, I'll move approval of this item.

All those in favor, please signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Any opposed that motion carries.

Our last item is approving the 2026 um to 2029 ELR committee work plan.

We have Dwight Miller, no relation to Brenda Miller, um, who has prepared a brief presentation.

And I will invite him up.

Thank you for being here from legislative policy and research to get us started.

Thank you very much, Chair Palmasano.

Um, hello, ELR committee.

Um, this is gonna be a very brief overview just to make sure we have some context around what the ELR ELR work plan is, how we got here, and sort of what are the next steps.

Um just high level of what work what work plans are for um around the spring.

We want we and the LRO team wanted to support the committees to be able to create some measurable strategic goals um and align some objectives to be able to sort of track and also show the public what the committee is doing.

Um, a lot of the public know sort of based on a name what committees do, but this kind of helps flesh out some of the things and objectives from the committees as a whole, um, not to be cash with the miss the committee of the whole, but the ELR committee.

Um, the steps that were taken, um, LRL staff, which is me in this case as the um ELR committee liaison.

Um we met with the chair and vice chair to guide the work plan vision goals.

We sent out a survey, we compile the input um from that survey that was sent out via smart sheet.

Um, then based on those compiled um pieces of feedback and input.

We worked with um the vice chair and chair to be able to come up with a work plan, which is one you see in LIMS today.

Um just wanted to highlight some of the high-level objectives, um, strategic objectives and strategic goals.

Um, goal A and B, um, promote an efficient and accountable enterprise, and also support collaborative labor relations and equitable city workforce.

Those are our two big goals in the objectives of enterprise oversight and accountability, modernizing the city operation, which is kind of um linked up today with the um some of the work that's happening within legislative policy reform, um, legislative process reform, and then also be collaborative labor relations and workforce sustainability and equity.

All of these are sort of things that we solve based on trends from the LR survey input and also just conversations with council members.

That's a high-level overview of the ELR work plan, answering questions or making comments.

Thank you, Mr.

Miller.

Um, the priority, the priorities in this work plan are a direct reflection of conversations I've had with committee members, other council members, and the feedback that was provided in that survey.

Honestly, it's been a struggle to define what this committee is actually about.

So I thank you for your uh for guiding us through this process and the energy that you put into this process to help us pinpoint what exactly is it that we're going to do here.

Um our charge on this committee is about enterprise-wide processes and policies.

So that includes the legislative reform that we just talked about earlier, but also overall city operations, accountability, HR workforce issues, labor relations, and how we interface with the public through our 311 system.

As we've said before, these aren't the sexiest things, but they are foundational building blocks for how our city works, and it deserves some special attention.

So thank you.

Um I see my colleague, Councilmember Whiting in Cube.

Thank you, Chair Palmasan.

I just want to take a moment to say thank you for for all the work that you've put uh into uh drafting out and compiling what I think is a fantastic version of a work plan, and so excited to uh follow through and kind of complete some of these strategic uh objectives.

So I just wanted to make sure you got your flowers.

Thank you.

Seeing no other discussion, I'll go ahead and move approval.

All those in favor, please signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Any opposed that motion carries.

So with that, colleagues, we have concluded all business to come before a committee today.

And without objection, we are adjourned.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Oh, yeah,