Calling the city council budget and finance committee to order.

Today we have one presentation, which is the Public Works Five Year Capital Plan.

Today our presenter will be Nick Peterson from Public Works.

Welcome to the chambers.

Thank you, Council Vice President.

Nick Peterson with Public Works.

Happy to present our five-year plan to you today for the next five-year term of 2026 to 2030.

This is done annually, starts in the fall of every year that we'll start to have really rigorous interactions, and then of course, in December, the five-year plan is uh asked for approval by the city council.

So this year that will be December 3rd when the item comes before council.

It actually slid up a little bit.

And so we tried to get in here as quickly as we could to have this conversation with you.

So outline of our presentation, we'll we'll talk through the kind of the chart of the five-year plan, show a map of what it looks like uh graphically, and then also talk through funding sources and projects we did this year and projects that'll come up next year.

If he hasn't met with with you and your office uh in the process of trying to have those conversations occur.

So I I know we're we're reaching out trying to have those and give the one-on-one attention that you you deserve.

So this is what the five-year capital plan looks like.

Um this chart and and really the the focus here, we've got uh number of columns, we've got a number of rows, the columns, of course, are the five years, the rows are the funding sources, and so this is what it looks like generally speaking.

Um the the five-year plan is funded.

There's just one year of funding that comes with it.

So it's that first year of 2026 that I really want to talk about in particular that we're that we're focused on here.

So we can see that uh, and I'm gonna go through each of the funding sources individually, but um, I just know that there's a lot of numbers here, and so I don't want to dwell on this as uh as our primary graphic.

So geographically what our projects would look like for uh 2026.

Um you can see there's a whole lot of uh stuff throughout the city, and actually for all five years uh between the county, the state, and and city-led projects.

This is what uh a lot of the transportation improvements look like in the city.

And uh, you know, in in particular, we will have some collaboration with the county, some collaboration actually with Metro Transit, which I'm gonna be excited to talk about a bit later, which is uh kind of a first of its kind type of collaboration with uh with Metro Transit.

But um a lot of continued mill and overlay and and reconstruction here.

And want to jump through these at a greater level of detail.

Um if you look at that chart, the first row is street reconstruction bonds.

These are issued annually for infrastructure improvements.

Um reconstruction funding comes through uh street reconstruction bonds and three million dollars for residential mill and overlay on an annual basis, so that's a total of 15 and a half million dollars.

Um funding is is able to be carried over in a judicious fashion as allowed, but um every year it's about 15 and a half million dollars.

The next big chunk is municipal state aid.

We call it MSA.

The primary funding source for this is gas tax.

There are a couple of other elements like your uh your license tab renewal and and that sort of thing that that also help fund this, but primarily it's the state gas tax.

It's formula funding based on the size of a municipality and also the needs that that municipality has, needs is just uh it's the the way that the statute tries to elaborate on or quantify how much infrastructure we have that is eligible for for our state aid funding.

So it's population and needs evenly between the two, and that funding can be used on MSA routes, but it also must follow MSA standards.

So it can't be used on any corridor throughout the city.

Then the next big city uh funding bucket is common sense, and that's the local option sales tax, and that is three quarters of one percent.

And you know, as I noted, we'll have some time at the end to walk through that.

But um the 20-year program that has some identified corridors and uh a lot of good work happening there.

Then if we continue through city sources of funding here, we've got the general fund and general fund is one of those really I would call it the gold standard funding source because it can pay for things that some of those other sources just simply can't pay for.

So the MSA again must be spent on MSA routes and according to MSA standards, but uh general fund is really helpful that we can spend it on the local system.

So we can't uh we can't spend just uh any any source of funding on our our local residential streets, for example.

So uh sidewalks and mill and overlay and alley work are gonna require that there be general fund uh revenues available for those types of improvements.

It's also used in projects if things come up that are not eligible for those other funds.

So we always try to hold on to general fund until the end of a project, and even when construction is complete, sometimes we're still going through a process of trying to close out that contract with a contractor, and even after construction is complete, that that money might still be needed for uh a year or two after that.

Capital improvement bonds, uh, there's a uh funding program for capital improvement bonds, and we've got some some exciting additions for uh for the the future of the the five-year plan where uh sidewalk grinding is anticipated to be something that's funded for uh a number of years, uh a much more cost uh effective way of of uh maintaining sidewalks and improving sidewalks.

Of course, assessments, uh assessments are applied for reconstruction uh to re reconstruction costs and the mill and overlay costs as well.

Externally, we have county, min dot, and also federal funding.

Uh the county and the state both have uh competitive solicitations that are available, and we also may cooperate on projects with those entities.

So it might be that the city leads a project and they would partner with us, or we might lead a project.

Um we might lead a project, they partner out with us, they might lead a project and we partner with them.

Um but they both have cost participation policies, and so one of the things that not just the city of St.

Paul, but also when we talk about the county, all of the cities in Ramsey County are working on trying to come up with a more equitable policy with Ramsey County to make sure that we're not we're not paying we're paying our fair share and no more than that.

Um all counties across the state have developed cost participation policies, and we can spend a lot of our money on county projects if they let us.

And so that's a big uh initiative that we've got going forward.

Likewise with MINDOT, there's also every city and every county in the state uh have a requirement to cost participate on MINDOT projects, and we're going through a process uh with select cities and counties throughout the state to make sure that the state policy is uh is as equitable as it can be for us.

And then on the federal funding end of things, of course, we can get your marks and also regional solicitation grants that are competitive.

And then uh some more more recent big external funding sources here.

When we look at the Kellogg Third Street Bridge, it's a great example of a legislative appropriation.