Call to order the Ramsey County Board of Commissioners roll call, please.

Chavin Singh.

Here.

McGuire.

Here.

McMurtry.

Miller.

Here.

Moran.

Here.

Zhang.

Here.

And Ortega.

I can we stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

And to the Republic for which it stands.

One nation undergo.

Janet Knowledge, Commissioner Moran.

Yes.

Every community owns its assistance and vitality to generations from across from around the world who contributed their hopes, dreams, and energy to making a history that led to this moment.

Some were brought here against their will.

Some were drawn to leave their distant homes in hope of a better life.

And some have lived on this land since time immemorial.

Truth and acknowledgement are critical to building mutual respect and connections across all barriers of heritage and difference.

We are standing on the ancestral land of the Dakota people.

We want to acknowledge the Ojibwe, the Ho Chunk, and the other nations of people who also call this place home.

We pay respect to their elders past and present.

So please take a moment to consider the treaties made by the tribal nations that entitle non-native people to live and work on traditional native lands.

Consider the many legacies of violence, displacement, migration, and settlement that bring us together here today.

And please join us in uncovering such truth at any and all public events.

Second.

And Ortega.

Second.

Moran.

McMurtry.

Miller.

And Ortega.

We move right into the administrative items.

Commissioner Moran.

Okay, Mr.

Chair.

Um, I would like to move administrative item three.

Capital grant agreement with Metropolitan Council for the engineering phase of the Metro Bronze Line Bus Rapid Transit Project.

I would like to move administrative item four.

Personnel complement increase.

Yes, I'd like to move item number four, personal compliment increase in the financial assistance services department for House Resolution One implementation.

Yes, and we had uh quite a discussion and presentation on this last week, but because this is when we're voting on it, I thought I would ask the county manager to just to give a high-level recap so we understand what we're voting on.

In case anybody else had any additional thoughts to share today.

Um as Commissioner Jevinsing indicated, uh last week the board received uh board presentation from the Financial Assistant Services Department about the impending impacts of HR1.

Um we parsed out that um the conversation was just primarily about the most immediate impacts and that there would be other conversations as we move into the 2027 supplemental budget discussions as well.

Um over the past uh couple years, um the FAS department in partnership with lots of areas around the county has done a significant amount of improvement around things that we can control when it comes to um serving our residents um around these eligibility services.

Uh despite um all those efforts, um we know that HR1 impacts um are unique for our uh us here in Ramsey County, particularly because we are part of uh uh the state of Minnesota's state supervised county administered system where um there are many things that um we don't have control over uh um as a result of um us having to deliver the services when it comes to particularly SNAP and Medicaid.

And so um with some of the impending changes around medical assistance workload um impacts, um we are going to be seeing some additional work um due to expand kind of uh uh uh expanded renewals and uh um eligibility checks that we have to do.

Uh that's gonna require additional FTEs.

In addition, we have SNAP workload impacts as well around um additional increased case reviews, resident communications, uh uh the changes also um require more manual notices, change processing, so basically a lot more administrative burden on behalf of the county.

Uh the full impact of uh what you are looking at today is 17 FTE.

Um those are going to be primarily eligibility specialists as well as some supervisor um roles.

Uh we are looking to um uh get some contingency dollars so that they can begin the hiring.

Um as they described last week, uh we are subject to um the state hiring process and timelines, and we want to ensure that we're not at risk of being able to uh meet the the needs of our community as well as being in compliance of the F the work as well.

So we need to get ahead of that a little bit.

Um we'll discuss sort of the ongoing impacts of those investments as part of the twenty-seven supplemental budget as I mentioned, but we do need um some more immediate action of um allowing for these FTEs and contingency funds to get us started immediately.