Good morning.

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

I'm going to call to order our adjourned meeting for Friday, October 9th, 2026.

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'll ask the clerk to call the role so we can verify the presence of a quorum.

Councilmember Payne.

Present.

Wandsley is absent.

Rainville.

Present.

Warren is absent.

Osman is absent.

Stevenson.

Present.

Chavez.

Whiting is absent.

Chowder is absent.

Palmasano is absent.

Vice Chair Schaefer.

Present.

And Chair Chugtai.

Present.

That is seven members present.

Let the record reflect that we have a quorum.

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

Today we have three presentations related to the mayor's recommended 2027 budget from the mayor's office, the office of city auditor, and the office of city clerk.

I'll first be uh invite um Grace Waltz, the chief of staff from the mayor's office to begin our first presentation.

Welcome.

Thank you.

Um

Chair

Shagtai, Vice Chair Schaefer, good morning and members.

Good morning.

My name is Grace Waltz, and I am the chief of staff in the office of Mayor Frye.

I'll start my presentation just by giving a brief overview of our office structure and some of the mayor's uh priority initiatives before getting into our budget changes for 2027.

Uh

to begin, the mission of the mayor's office is to improve the daily lives of Minneapolis residents and to provide clear and consistent direction to the cabinet and administrative departments.

Uh so for those who are familiar with our org chart, the one in front of you will look a little different.

Um over the past year, turnover of some senior level positions gave us the opportunity to rethink how we structure our office to best serve residents.

Um the end result is a majority of our staff are split between two verticals, communications and engagement and policy and government affairs.

Our communications and engagement team is inclusive of our small but mighty communications staff as well as our engagement team.

Uh,

those are the folks who manage incoming constituent questions and requests, manage mayoral appointments to various boards and commissions, manage external stakeholder groups such as the mayor's community cabinet, in addition to staffing the mayor for events out in community or attending on his behalf when his schedule does not allow for him to personally attend.

And then on the policy team, each of our policy advisors has a portfolio that corresponds to city departments but maintains the flexibility to meet the needs of bearing issues that come into our office.

Uh, these are the folks who are working regularly with city departments and all of you to uh to review, develop, and ultimately implement city policies.

And then

rounding out the team is our office manager and the executive assistant to the mayor.

Um I'll note to you, all of these changes were achieved through our existing FDE count, uh, though, as you'll see, we expect to reduce our FTE count by one as part of our 2027 proposed budget.

So,

as you've seen before, Mayor Fry's policy priorities are centered around affordable housing, economic development, public safety, climate action, and good governance.

Uh, these priorities stay the same, uh, but the specifics change year over year.

I'll give a few examples.

Uh, we are deeply proud of our record on increasing the amount of affordable housing across the city, uh, but that affordability is still too concentrated.

Mayor Fry has repeatedly cited boosting the affordable housing supply in middle and upper income neighborhoods as a key focus of his third term.

Permitting reform is also a key focus.

Uh, throughout this year, PMI has spearheaded an enterprise-wide licensing and permitting reform initiative that brings together multiple city departments, and we're already seeing some of the benefits of this work.

Uh, just last week, Mayor Fry and Director Hansen announced a series of changes to our construction permitting process that will allow hundreds of permits each year to move forward in days rather than weeks or months.