Welcome everyone to our city council study session for September 30th.

Great to have you all here.

Lots of our staff are here today, which is nice to see.

We have some very, very important and robust topics today.

So we are gonna get right started get started right away.

Ms.

Elms, take us away.

Uh thank you, Council President.

Mayor Norton, uh, council members, members of the public.

We are gonna kick off with Heather Corcoran, legislative affairs and policy director.

Usually get all the titles wrong.

I think I got that right, but thankfully it was on the screen.

Um, and she is gonna, I know it's shocking that we're it's in almost October, and we're gonna look back at the last legislative session in order to look forward to the hopefully look forward to the next one.

So with that, I would turn it over to Heather.

Thank you.

Button Thank you, City Administrator's Elms, Heather Corcoran, as you said, legislative affairs and policy director for the city, Council President Carlson, Council members, Mayor.

Thanks for the time today.

This one on the side.

This is starting out really great.

It's gonna go super well.

It's just like the legislative session.

That's true.

Usually the bumpy part is at the end, but we'll reverse it.

Um today I wanted to spend time with you as as Alison said to recap some um outcomes from the last session that ended in May, and then talk about some potential issues and get your feedback as we look toward the next session.

We like to start and end uh these types of presentations, reminding folks about the process we use for our legislative policy development.

We're in a the second stage of it during the summer, thanks to those of you who participated in some of the groups that are state affiliate, the League of Minnesota Cities had on a variety of topics to convene cities and hear shared issues.

Uh, we're currently in the process of gathering feedback from teammates about some emerging issues, opportunities they see for state statute changes to better provide services to the city and uh residents, and also looking at other groups um and what issues they may ask for our feedback or weighing in on.

Then we'll uh look for the council's consideration of our priorities on the December 9th uh agenda item.

And then believe it or not, the legislative session will begin on January 14th and uh conclude its regular session in May.

They'll need to uh set a state budget during that time and um and have lots of other activity.

So to kind of frame up your uh thought process going into this presentation.

Want your feedback on whether these working recommendations align with your uh priorities and if there's any adjustments to these before uh they are considered by you on a December 9th meeting.

There we go.

Uh so just to remind ourselves of back in May from uh February through May, there was a trifecta continued in the Senate House and Governor with the DFL majorities.

It was a quote bonding year, but spoiler alert, there was no bonding bill as you all know.

There were uh high volume of bills introduced.

Thanks, Ann.

Last session.

Uh again, you heard me say this about the 2023 session as well, and then uh in the final hours of the legislative session, they concluded with a very large uh mega omnibus bill, uh a combination of smaller omnibus bills, um, with uh a variety of uh policy issues and some budget issues uh that created quite a tumultuous end of the session.

Comparing the legislative outcomes with our own city priorities, just a reminder we did have some successes and uh a big thanks to the fire department, Chief Kurska and Deputy Chief Moholland were uh really great to work with on a bill to help with uh recruitment and retention of our fire leadership.

Um that was successfully included in the pension bill, a grant that benefited the CISI uh was successfully included in the legacy bill, a Southeast Minnesota League of Municipalities uh priority, which we're a member of that group was included in the jobs bill uh related to wastewater training at Riverland Community College, and then um some housing assistance funding, which we support was included in the final bill.

Unfortunately, a proposal related to a sales tax exemption for the forthcoming sports and rec complex was not included because there was essentially no none of these were included in the final mega omnibus bill from all the communities that requested them.

There was also no increase in the cap for the grant funding that helps support meeting requirements at the state level for wastewater treatment plants.

And then as I said, none of our bonding requests were finally included, although they were introduced as bills by our delegation, and we're thankful for that.

Next slide.

Thanks, Ann.

Jumping back to just highlight, and I won't go through all these, but obviously our issues weren't the only ones in front of legislators during the session.

There was a plethora of other topics that were either passed or at least discussed.

Some of them had a local interest, like the liquor provisions listed up there, some other provisions that we might want to consider, and I'll talk about in a minute.

One related to social districts, other things that were statute changes that impacted all cities, such as the Copperwire Theft Provisions, which we shared data on our own story there.

So then looking forward to the 2025 session, all the house seats, as you know, are up for election this November.

And we also have one state Senate seat in the West Metro area in the twin cities that's up for special election.

That will be determined in November as well.

There could be potential changes in the governor's office if certain national politics outcome go a certain way, in which case Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan would move up into the governor's seat to finish out the final two years of that term.

The current Senate president Bobby Joe Champion from North Minneapolis would then become lieutenant governor.

His seat in the Senate would require a special election.

If that sounds like a lot of dominoes and processes, it's what could happen, and the timing of all that could impact the momentum or the start of actually getting the legislature in order next session, depending on the outcomes in November.

And then it's also a budget year, so the legislature does need to pass state agency budgets, which fund the programs that we also use as a city and as residents.

So if I'd say there's kind of one key slide from this presentation, it's probably this one.

It's a summary of the feedback that we've heard so far.