Reminder that this board workshop is recorded and it is live streamed on Zoom webinar.

There will be no votes taken during this workshop.

Let's start with introduction of commissioners and presenters around the table and then the rest of the room.

Kelly Miller, Ramsey County Commissioner District 7.

Right, Chang, Commissioner District 6.

Ralph Commissioner District 12.

Sarah Jevinsing, Commissioner District 1.

Rita Moring, this commissioner district four.

Lindback Accounting Manager.

Josh Olson, uh director of community economic development.

I'm trying to assessor.

Right.

David's wagon certificate.

So we'll be so counting manager community services.

You're having that very hernandes and that's basically.

Commissioner McMoy online.

Okay, do you want to introduce yourself?

Oh, okay.

Uh, we do have Commissioner McMire online.

So today's workshop builds upon last week's workshop in highlighting Ramsey County's fiscal health.

We will hear about how the county can respond to property tax realities through the use of county tools.

Our economic development staff will walk through pathways of focus that will catalyze economic growth.

I will now hand it off to the presenters to kick off the workshop.

I also want to note that if we have questions, can we try to hold um as much as we can to get through as quick and if we have to go over a little bit, is that okay with everybody to go over at least like 15 or so minutes?

Okay.

All right.

Thanks, Commissioner.

Um, I'm gonna kick us off today.

I wanna first of all thank um Carrie and Josh and um Brian on the team for um really helping us um get to today.

A lot of conversations and planning has um led us to today.

But the catalyst for um the conversation is something you're very, very familiar with already.

So I'm gonna have to um go through here today.

Uh, Carrie and Josh will be the presenters.

Um I'm just gonna do a quick kickoff.

Um, I'm gonna talk just real briefly about those funding for property tax realities, and then um they'll they'll go into some of the details around the tools, how we're gonna adapt to the future and then have some conversations as we uh bridge into an afterseason conversation around um uh a bold economic development strategy.

So um some of you have actually already seen this slide.

This is actually something we've used with our legislative delegation, and I thought, well, rather than creating something new, let's just kind of have a consistent message as we talk about this publicly um with folks.

So as you all know, you know, we are facing significant property tax pressures and Ramsey County is a bit unique, while we also have some things that other government entities like Collins are also experiencing.

So there's a couple things happening at the same time.

But on the revenue side, we've talked a lot in previous conversations about the amount of tax exempt property that we have in our county, and we've talked about you know how to advocate sort of against that as we look at our legislative strategy.

Um, we also have the lowest per capita net tax capacity in the Southern County Metro area, talked about that quite a bit as we went through our budget process um last year with our biannual budget.

Um you're all very familiar that we have a small, densely populated, fully developed uh county, which makes you know new development extremely more challenging.

Uh, we don't have a lot of open space where you get to start with, you know, uh a brand new piece of property with you know kind of a blank slate most of the time.

It's complicated.

And then, you know, this was the first year in a while that we had to we had saw some of these property tax shifts that went from our commercial over to our residential.

So those are kind of on the pack side, some of the um challenges that we we face that are primarily unique to Ramsey County.

I will say the cost shifts um in terms of the pressures we feel on the expense side are not necessarily unique to Ramsey County, but we are unique in the amount of people and the diversity of our population.

So sometimes the impact can be very um localized.

Um, we're seeing significant costs of underfunded and unfunded mandate mandates.

Many of you are very, very familiar.

Um, just to give you a little sense of that, you know, as we look beyond, you know, the federal cost shift of primarily of HR1 is look, you know, NACO has told us it's about one trillion over the next 10 years to state and local governments.

That's going to depend a little bit on what the state does.

Um, when we were at NACO, it was very clear that you know the advocacy at the federal level, at least in the short term, isn't going to be any additional dollars.

Um, as we kind of project out just on Snap and Medicaid beyond 2027, you know, in a kind of a worst-case scenario, it could be up to 21 million dollars for Ramsey County.

So we're looking at some pretty high numbers as we think through what possible scenarios could be.

So those are not already assumed to happen because some things are gonna, you know, affect us from the state level as well.

But in addition, the state also has some looming state budget pressures.

I know there's been conversations about a surplus this year, but we know the long-term forecast is always a little more variable, and and you all are very familiar with our current tax situation because you made these um decisions, but we started at a 9.75 levy as our starting point in 26, and you know, through a lot of hard work of our staff and also um of all of you making diligent decisions, you were able to bring that down to 8.25 for 2026.

So for all these reasons, I think they set the foundation to this really critical conversation of today.

Um, some of you have heard the statement of, you know, no one's coming to save us, and so we really do have to, as a county, figure out what are our tools, what are what do we need to do, and how do we ensure that people can keep homes, stay in homes, be home owners, businesses can start businesses, continue being a business and drive as a business.