Committee member Donnelly.

Here.

Committee member Lostner.

Here.

Committee member McVay.

Here.

Chair Naker.

Here.

Welcome everyone to our March audit committee meeting and a happy St.

Patrick's Day to all.

We have a robust agenda today, so I want to kick us off with introducing two new committee members who we are really excited to be welcoming to our group.

All right.

Well, it's a pleasure to be here.

And Dayton Splough.

I am really excited to just be able to join the audit committee.

I think the work that we do here also sets the tonework for the policies that we make later.

And so just excited to be here.

So I've been coming up from maternity leave for three months, and so just getting re uh re-back to being here fully, and my son Isaiah is at home, and I look forward to going to him after this.

But if you want to see one, I have plenty on my phone, so I can show you after.

And actually, you know, to that point about getting home.

Very respectful, folks' time.

So good committee to be on.

Mr.

Donnelly, do you want to introduce yourself?

My background is number one, St.

Paul.

Lifer.

Background in manufacturing, workforce development, and I'm very enthusiastic about continuous improvement.

So I'm looking forward to working with everybody here.

Great.

Thank you for being here.

And congratulations.

I think folks know me, so Mr.

Lastetter, do you want to start?

And then we can go maybe to Mr.

McVay, Ms.

Dilworth.

Sure.

I'm Jeremy Lostetter.

I live in Ward One.

Uh my wife and two kids.

And uh in my uh outside of this, I'm uh internal audit manager at Hanniping County.

I've been on the audit committee here for I forget now because I think it's coming up on three years.

So like two and a half or something like that.

And it's been great.

It's been a great way to contribute to my city and meet a lot of great people and help shape the audit work that we do as part of this committee.

So welcome.

New members.

I used to be the newest community advisor, but I'm not anything.

So it happens fast.

It does happen fast.

I'm feeling so senior now.

But I actually have a background in public administration and governmental accounting.

I'm working my master's degrees, two different master's degrees in that, and by day I actually am a substitute teacher for 12 schools in four different districts.

Science, social studies, math, mainly six uh sixth grade through C 12.

So I get around.

So I'll stop now.

And you'll learn this uh later this meeting, but Noah also chairs our community engagement committee of one, um, which informs people about the audit committee.

So our community engagement subcommittee should say.

Um Ms.

Dorith.

Well first of all, I apologize for being late.

No worries.

I'm a um director of budget and finance um and facilities at the College of Design at the University of Minnesota.

We are in budget season, and I had to get some documents in today.

So I was trying to meet a deadline.

So um, but uh I um have what two kids, three grandkids, and looking forward to retiring in August.

And so I'm on the last six months, and it's just been quite hectic.

Yeah, as we're trying to do that.

But um, I've been on the audit committee.

This is my the first of my second term.

So enjoy being here and and working for the city.

Thanks, Ms.

Dilworth, which is a note to self that you can always re-up.

Um great.

Well, welcome again to our new members, really excited to have you.

And you're coming in at a great time.

We, as a committee, um, as you know, conduct performance audits.

We typically have one audit going at a time, and during that time we hear updates on the audit.

Um, we usually hear sort of a midpoint update and a final update before the audit goes to the city council for a presentation there.

And then during that time, we're also doing engagement to the community and trying to take ideas and think and talk about our own ideas for what the next audit topic will be.

We uh have continuously striven to develop a calendar where we do the same thing every year, and we're always on the same cycle, but for a number of reasons, we haven't quite been able to get into a perfect rhythm.

Um for one reason recently we had a new mayor come in and an administration turnover, and as you saw last week, Mr.

Donnelly, um, or last time we were here, we had a great conversation with the mayor and her team about what topics she might be interested in us exploring.

So rather than kind of charging ahead with our own topics, we wanted to wait and give her team a chance to weigh in.

So one of the things we'll do today is debrief that conversation a little bit, see if people had anything come out from that that they were really interested in in proposing as an audit topic.

Um another reason we sometimes get off of schedule is because our current audit might take longer than expected, and that's been the case here.

Um, Dr.

Britt from Wilder Research will talk about this momentarily, but um, there have been some setbacks in that work for a lot of reasons that were out of Wilder's control.

Um, so we're getting sort of a later midpoint update than we normally would.

Um, and that's that is totally fine.

So with that, um, we will move into our second item on the agenda, which is the data practices study update.

Um, and I'll welcome welcome up Dr.

Heather Britt from Wilder Research, who is our um on retainer uh research firm and has done a number of wonderful audits for us so far, and we're excited to hear what's going on.

Welcome.

Great, thank you.

She doesn't always dress like this.

I love it for today.

Look at the Irish.

Uh I think you're automatically on already.

Okay.

Yeah, all right.

Perfect.

Just okay.

Well, thanks everybody.

Uh welcome.

Uh excited to be here.

Uh, and yes, I appreciate your patience and grace as we have had a couple of uh tricky months in the twin cities.

Um, and that is part of what has shaped us being a little bit later in this process than we had, I think hoped for and anticipated.

So uh I'm gonna do a little bit of a reminder of where we are, what our key questions were, and then I'm just gonna give you an update on where we are in really our data collection process, um, and then just give you a refresh on what we anticipate our timeline is gonna look like.

Uh so just a broad reminder of what our overall uh purpose is uh related to this work.

So effectiveness, efficiency, and compliance of the city's data practice request process, the tools, policies, and the user experience, with really a focus on kind of internally the city's GovQA system, which is the internal request sort of tracking system and its alignment with the state's data practices act requirements.

So we've got kind of five sets of questions that as we went through our sort of first round of scoping and then really kind of narrowed and sort of sieved and got clear about what that scoping looks like.

So I'm just going to review what those key question areas look like.

So first one really focused on just GovQA, the capabilities and the internal use of that system.

So what are those standard capabilities look like?

How has the city configured it?

How's that use documented?

And does it have sort of sufficient controls to really effectively manage what that process looks like internally?

And that's not just for Nia and Greg, who are kind of what I call the superusers for that system, but that's really each one of the department leads across the 16 departments that are really sort of significantly using GovQA.

The second area that we're focused on, really taking a look at reporting and data trends.

So what kind of reports are broadly available to the city staff?

Which of those reports were just kind of out of the box reports that were available?

What were those kind of specifically created reports for the city?

And what are those high-level aggregated reports kind of rolled up?

Tell about volumes, trends, timeliness, kind of the patterns since GovQA was really turned on for the purposes of the city and it's and its tracking and management of these data requests coming through the city.

The third area that you are really interested in is kind of that resident-facing portal.

So you all know that there's a portal that's available for folks to actually be able to put in requests.

So what is that?

Um, what is that online portal?

Um, how do folks sort of use that portal?

How's that function?

What's the experience of folks?

Um, and particularly how do folks think about that in comparison to other systems that they might be using?

So, is there an opportunity for us to get some feedback about improvements related to that portal?

The fourth area that you all were interested in, kind of that policies, training, compliance, what kind of training programs and guidance are offered to city staff, are those adequate to ensure kind of compliance with state expectations?

Um, and just kind of comparison related to really the data practices office expectations.

Are there opportunities for any sort of improvements or sort of improved alignment there?

And then finally, um, and this was a little bit of a pivot as we were doing really that sort of refinement and what the scope looked like.

Um, is there an opportunity for comparison of what's going on in St.

Paul to some other jurisdictions?

So what are the patterns and practices used elsewhere?

And this is where you all were really curious about what's going on in Hennepin County, Ramsey County, Minneapolis, Bloomington, and Duluth.

What's the tool that they use internally for managing?

Um, what's that tool that they're using as it relates to the portal that their folks, their residents or folks who are doing data requests in those particular jurisdictions?

Um, what kind of publicly available data do they have?

Um, what publicly available information do they have just about the data request process in those jurisdictions?

And then, as we typically do, and as we've done so far for each one of our audit processes, um, is there you know literature available or gray literature available that we might be able to make available back to you just around best practices?

So those are a broad set of questions, and then we had said that we would engage in three big data collection activities.

And so we'll talk about where we are with regard to each one of those data collection activities.

So, first one always we do the big document review, and this one is a document and a system review.

Um so the first one, take a look at the city's website, that online portal, and then any publicly available information that is out there.

So we've done all of that review, and you all know my lovely colleague Audrey is in the midst of doing all that summarization, and so that summarization process is in motion.

Um we've taken a look at the GovQA training materials, the process documentation, all the procedural guidance.

We spent a lot of time with Nia and with Greg, and they have downloaded and downloaded and downloaded, and we have folders and folders and folders and videos and lots of things.

So we've examined all the materials that they have made available to us, and again, are in the midst of that summarization.

We've taken a look at all of the GovQA performance data that they've made available to us from inception of that system to now when they pulled it, which was really the end of 2025, when all that data was downloaded and are in the midst of that summarization, and then taking a look at both the model policies and templates from the data practices office at the state level, and then your record retention schedule.

So, in the middle of that review, have yet to do the summarization of those two pieces.

So those two are kind of in progress right now.

So, kind of I'd say coming around if I were to use a baseball analogy, maybe third base as it relates to kind of this data collection and sort of system review piece.

So getting close on this particular part of the of the endeavor.

Tonight is the world baseball series finals, so I think that that is apt for anybody watching our millions of viewers, just so you know.

Starts at seven.

Continue.

Okay, all right.

Chef's kiss, well done.

Uh literature and benchmarking.

Um, so our sort of second piece, uh, peer-reviewed literature, we've pulled all that, um, gray literature.

Um, again, Audrey's in the middle of that synthesis.

I think it's actually pretty buttoned up.

Um, and again, we'll make available back to you like we did before, sort of the table with all of that literature and then a summary just for you all to be able to reference in the future.

Um, and then we've done public review of all of those other um municipalities and jurisdictions, sort of what they have available on their public websites, all the kind of stuff that's uh that's available for us to be able to pull in the midst of doing that summary, um, and then taking a look at some of those precedent audits that you all had sort of recommended that we take a look at.

So that summary we haven't gotten to yet, but that's in that's in motion.

Um, and then we had sort of the stakeholder engagement piece.

This is the part that we are um I would say further um further behind than we had anticipated, just from a timeline vantage point.

Um, and I would say that's largely due in part to a couple of factors.

One, Wilder has been pretty heads down over the course of the last couple of months, in part because of what's been going on in the Twin Cities.

Two, it has been really difficult for us to get um responses from other jurisdictions, in part because they have been pretty heads down because of what's been going on in the Twin Cities.

Um we have surveys developed both for um your internal department leads as well as for your um external requesters who've been using your uh portal, and those are um we just did our final review of those surveys today, and so those actually should drop into the field this week.

Um, and so we're really excited about both of those being able to go out.

Um, and then we finally had uh Hennepin County ping us back and say that they were ready to get um uh on on the phone or on the video or in person with us for an interview.

Um, and then we um had a uh uh nice back and forth this week with one of your former uh city staffers, John McCarthy, over at the League of Minnesota Cities, who is gonna pull some strings with us with with some of the other jurisdictions to really try to get us in front of folks since we've been emailing and emailing and calling and calling and just not getting anybody to pick up.

And I think that is not because those aren't lovely humans in those jurisdictions, it's because folks have just been um I think overwhelmed for the past couple of months.

Um, but the intention is for us to do interviews with each one of those jurisdictions just to um talk with folks about their patterns and practices, the systems that they're using internally and just policies, procedures, the kinds of things that might not be available on their website for public consumption.

Um, and then again, uh John has hooked us up with the research leads at the League of Minnesota Cities who we'll have a conversation with to be able to pull information about LMC's guidance related to data practices, um, and then we'll also connect with um uh the data practices office over at the Department of Ublic Administration or the Department of Administration.

Um so stakeholder engagement is kind of that final piece that we'll sort of roll in here from a timing vantage point.

You know, we'll sort of push hard this month and April with our aim to have that draft report in May, so that we can come back in May and do that presentation.

As you all know, we make the draft report available, we come and do a presentation, we anticipate that you're gonna give us pretty significant feedback.

Um, and so we'll do another pass through to have a final report back to you.

I anticipate that final final report would probably be available in June, since we'll probably do a couple of rounds back and forth.

Um, we usually get your feedback, we come and present, we get a second round of feedback, and then we kind of button up that final version of the of the report.

So that's what we anticipate as it relates to that timeline.

So I appreciate your patience.

Um, and I really do appreciate um John's sort of booster power of sort of hooking us up and was really excited.

Heather and Audrey, yes, of course I remember all the time we spent together.

So it was absolutely lovely.

So, questions for us as it relates to this process, things you were expecting I'd talk about, updates.

Questions from my fellow committee members, Mr.

Lasteter.

Yeah.

Uh Dr.

Dr.

Britt, I was wondering if you know who you contacted at Hennepin County.

I do not know.

Audrey would know, and I'm happy to loop back and let you know.

Yeah, who in particular it is.

Yeah, yeah.

But she was really excited.

I heard back from Hennepin, so it wasn't you, Mr.

Lesson.

No, it wasn't it shouldn't be.

Jeremy finally responded to it.

No, it wasn't giving me it, but yeah.

Yeah, because we had done the like the generic and the phone call and the looking for staff and the sort of had done, you know, kind of come at it.

We'd run up the hill every single way we could in all those jurisdictions.

So but yeah, I'll happily have us follow up and let you know who in Hennepin.

And we definitely got sort of a we're sorry, we've had staff out, and also we've been just I think folks have been just underwater.

So a lot of uh it is it is not for um lack of wanting to respond, it is just because folks have had a lot coming at them.

Yeah, thank you.

Yeah.

This has been a hard time for the important but not urgent things in life.

Right.

Yeah.

I think I saw Mr.

McBay.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Um, Dr.

Britt, I have one question for you.

Yeah.

How is your team selecting uh the external requesters for the survey, or like how are you gonna be um what's the methodology that you're gonna be using behind that?

Yeah, so we I know that's kind of the tricky situation, I imagine.

Yeah, yeah.

So Audrey and I talked about this.

So we have kind of uh, you know, all of the requesters that have sort of hit the portal.

Um, and so we had thought, oh, let's go for the folks um kind of from the last you know, six months who had hit the portal.

We're anticipating, you know, somewhere between a 10 and 15 percent response rate.

Um, and if I look at the folks who've come in the last six months versus everybody who's hit that portal, you know, there's a there's a few thousand folks who've hit the portal.

Um, some of those folks are from outside of the state of Minnesota.

Most of those folks are from inside the state of Minnesota.

A lot of those folks are from the city of St.

Paul.

And so what we've decided to do is invite everybody who's got a St.

Paul tagged city in there, sort of lineup in their address to participate in the first round.

So anybody who's hit that portal who's coming from the city of St.

Paul, that's our first invitation pass, and that's gonna be just a little north of 700 folks.

Oh wow.

So we're gonna see how many folks respond to that and hope that that you know response rate looks decently sufficient.

I think we'd love to get a little north of a hundred respondents to that particular survey.

I think we're gonna see if that response rate is low.

I mean, again, I think we we know how folks are getting invited and invited and invited to participate in everything via you know their electronic device.

Um I think we'll see what that looks like.

Um, and if that response rate is incredibly low, and we'd use a modified Dillman, you know, we'll invite and then we'll give them some room and then we'll invite them again, and you know, we'll we'll do sort of a you know expected pattern of reminders, um, then we're gonna open that up to everybody in the state of Minnesota, so anybody who's got a Minnesota address.

We're not gonna go outside of the state just because that felt a little bit outside of the scope given City of St.

Paul and sort of that focus.

So that's our plan as it relates to those requesters.

Um but when we initially were like, let's, you know, when we thought about sort of the six months and we started to get really, really, really small.

Um, and we thought uh when we take a look at actually what's a reasonable response rate for somebody that's used a portal and what we expect that percentage to look like.

We knew we had to open up our aperture a little bit, and so we thought, all right, let's do a couple-phased approach there.

Let's not do all of Minnesota because we're really interested since this is the City of St.

Paul audit committee in St.

Paul folks.

So we're gonna start there and see what that response rate look looks like.

I'll keep close with Nia so you all have a sense for oh, it ends up it was 25%.

We're great on response, or we really do need to back it out to the entire state.

But that's a fantastic question because Audrey and I debated back and forth.

Um, and you all had had that.

Do we go with uh, you know, is it really just the high requesters?

Is it everybody?

And so it was, you know what, we're gonna ask, we're gonna invite everybody because you have a variety of humans that are coming through.

Some of those folks are representing businesses, some of those folks are residents, some of those folks are asking about personal things, some of those folks are asking about things in the neighborhood.

So we're gonna, you know, kind of open it up to everybody that's got that sort of relevant um address, be that address a business address or be that address a somebody who's got a uh a residence, obviously, they have to have an email address.

So folks who have the generic, right?

They've done an anonymous request.

That's not something for whom we have that email because it is possible to do a portal request and have it be anonymous, and you can go back and kind of check and pull your data back out.

Those are folks for whom we can't actually do that survey.

But brilliant question.

The researcher and me loves it.

It was something that's been on my mind for the last month, and I was like, I need to talk to ask Dr.

Britt this next time I see her.

So I'm just kind of curious.

It's just me being a little bit enough to be annoying.

So yeah, no, great, great, great question.

Yeah.

So again, I'm hoping we get enough of a response for for St.

Paul folks, but you know, we'll we'll know, and then we will be able to take a look at those two, you know, response sets if we end up having to go, you know, St.

Paul and Minnesota.

So we would be able to take a look if there were differential kinds of you know, responses between folks who were St.

Paul and folks who were not St.

Paul but were um, you know, Minnesota addresses.

Well, thank you.

Yeah.

So just because it is an important question.

So this week, those anyone from St.

Paul who requested through the portal in the last six months who has an email address.

Yeah, who's ever requested?

So who's ever requested?

Who's that request?

Yeah, so we've got a few, yeah.

We've got a yep, yeah, which ends up being a little north of 700 folks that we've got sort of good ever good addresses for.

Yep.

Should get an email requesting them to take this from to participate in this survey.

Yeah, yeah.

And then I know there were a few entities, sort of other watchdog entities.

Um, now I'm forgetting all the acronyms of them that we suggested.

You also talk to um Koji, maybe is one of them.

Looking to my fellow community members.

Um, the um, oh dear.

Uh sort of good government um watchdog entities, sort of.

I know several people are affiliated with one of the um there's insight, right?

Right.

Inside St.

Paul.

There is um, oh, who are the folks that there's an open government group?

I'm trying to remember their name.

Yeah, I think we put them in the they were in one of the presentations um that you had given us originally scoping and SOS as well, I think, right?

Or is that different?

I'm thinking I don't I can't remember if we if we specified them in this one.

I'm thinking more like Minnesota data practices blank group or Koji or some group like that.

Anyway, maybe you can look back and see there were there were just some specific entities that we had thought would be good to talk to, and I think that they were in one of your previous presentations.

Okay, and if they weren't, let me know, and I can try to dig them up.

Okay, I'll try to brainstorm too.

My brain is fuzzy, admittedly.

I've been teaching children all day.

It's hardest thing possible to do.

Okay, all right.

Um, other questions for Dr.

Britt.

Ms.

Just a quick question to the neighborhood.

Um Dr.

Britt, how can you tell if there's like multiple requests?

Or at least 700 discrete.

We the address list that we've got has been deduplicated.

Yep, yeah.

So I don't know from looking at that whether or not it's folks who've been repeat requesters.

What I know is it's folks who have made a request through the portal system.

Yeah, so and essentially the survey is built to say you have made a request, you know, at least one request through the city's portal system.

Um, yeah, so but I don't have a sense for the frequency with which folks would have made that request, and we're just asking about their experience with uh with the portal system and in conversations with Mia and Greg, that's how we built that survey with regard to the to the portal system.

So it's utility, um, its language usability, additions or modifications that might make the portal system itself easier for folks to be able to use.

Um, so that's the the boundaries around which we put it.

Um we intentionally tried to make it short so that folks would be a little more likely to do it.

So we sort of said this thing's gonna be really quick for you to take.

Um, and we made it intentionally, and as we've talked about before, since we're trying to keep the scope for this sort of in a box, um, we made all those questions closed-ended.

Um, so we're not anticipating folks are gonna give us lots of stuff.

It's really, you know, if we were to make some modifications to the way that portal runs, you know, could you give us some check box responses related to the modifications that we'd make around that portal system?

Yeah, yeah.

Great.

Well, I we have a couple of other items I want to make sure we have time for, but are there any final questions for Dr.

Britt before we move on?

See none.

I'll take a quick comment.

Sorry, Madam Chair.

Or comments, yeah, of course.

Dr.

But I just want to say thank you to you and your team for doing all this on such a short timeline.

Because I know that it's it's there's been a lot going on, so I just want to say thank you for all that you're doing.

And so I appreciate it.

Yeah, yeah.

Ditto.

It's our absolute pleasure.

Um, yeah, I mean, I think I will say, I mean, you all know this already, but every jurisdiction in the state and every state agency and every nonprofit is in the same situation you're in, trying to figure out how to handle the volume of requests coming at them about all kinds of data and information.

So um, I think you're I think you're setting the mark.

Um, and I suspect there will be lots of places that will want to take a look at what you're what you're finding um after you're through it.

So I appreciate it.

Leading the way it's where we like to be.

Thank you so much, Dr.

Brett.

Seriously, we look forward to seeing the next uh update in May, it sounds like.

Yeah, okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And happy St.

Patrick's Day.

Um, with that, we're gonna turn to our next item on the agenda, which is a community engagement update from uh Mr.

McVay, and I just want to start by saying thank you so much for the hard work you have been doing, the yeoman's work um to engage, and you'll see from Mr.

McVay's memo um extensively.

I think we've had a community engagement committee for I don't know, two or three years now.

We've always sort of laughingly talked about our community engagement subcommittee of one.

Um, but you are a force of nature of one.

So um I look forward to hearing your update.

A force of nature, okay.

You're really hyping me there, madam chair.

Um so well, happy St.

Patty's Day.

So uh let me get started here.

So there is a lot I have to cover, but I will try to be succinct about it because you all can read, and I don't want to insult your intelligence.

But um I will first cover a status update regarding all of our district councils.

I have actually met with eight of them.

It would have been originally 10 at this point, but there was some rescheduling due to one incident with a um snow slash ice storm um last month with Greater East Side, and also there was an accidental um uh I double booked with a doctor's appointment and with one of the meetings I didn't catch until the day before, and so rescheduled with um Yanni over at uh Seiko actually to the end of April.

But by and large, um there as madam chair, as you have noted, uh community engagement has been kind of um that's the word I want to use, languishing perhaps for a period of time.

Um the last time we reached out to our district councils was back in November of 2023, and we kind of really restarted getting in touch with them all in January.

And since then I've been hitting the ground running, and there's been a lot of positive feedback.

They love hearing from us actually.

Our district councils are so thrilled for us to be meeting with them.

They've been really interested in what we have to say and what our we're doing.

Um, I've been organizing town halls, and I want to use town halls loosely.

That phrase is kind of a nebulous one.

It's got a nebulous characteristic to it, and so um by definition, a town hall is literally just a meeting where um you have officials in some kind of public capacity meeting with residents to discuss various issues, and um that actually gives us some flexibility.

I can really tailor these um our town halls to whether it's a just a line item on a board agenda, and I just come and speak for 15 minutes, or if they want to have a longer presentation of 35 minutes to uh 45 minutes, it's also possibility.

Or um, in a case of last week with Summit University, we had an actual full on community forum, and we went on for an hour and 40 minutes.

So, which I wasn't expecting that.

Half of it was questions, so but um by and large, there's been a lot of positive feedback, and uh the all the executive directors I spoke with are very supportive of our work, and if there's any way that they can support us, they've all said they would like to.

So we are supposed to keep that in mind going forward as a committee.

Um, I do have four uh four district councils I'm going to be meeting with at this point so far.

Pain Phelan, um, next week, Union Park on the first, Summit Hill on the 9th, and then SACO at the very end of April.

I am still trying to get things arranged with West Side Community Organization, Greater East Side Community Council, Dayton's Bluff Community Council, and Frog Town Neighborhood Association, having said that I've been in touch with all four of those um district councils and their staff, and um there's been really really positive communication overall, actually.

Um my good friend John District 17 has given us a whole litany of ideas of what we could potentially be looking at as a committee, and I've listed some of them from the district council board members and staff.

And I've listed some of them from the district council board members and staff.

It runs the gamut from public safety to environmental issues to business regulation and all that, and as well as another big thing being housing and even cybersecurity.

That is one thing I will admit I was not expecting to hear a lot from district council board members so far.

Cybersecurity, about maybe a quarter of all dimensions are regarding the cybersecurity incident from last summer.

And so, but a lot of interest with housing, a lot of interest with public safety.

And so I these are just some ideas to get the committees our collective brains uh chugging along at ideas that maybe we'd want to refer to Dr.

Britt and her team on our behalf later on.

In terms of upcoming projects, I had some wonderful ideas from uh three different district councils that came to my mind and um that were brought to my attention, I should say, and uh one thing that was a concern for a lot of um district council board members is that the work that we do as a city, all the different programs and services we provide, it's in com it's very broad.

I mean, we do a lot here in St.

Paul.

We do spend over 900 million dollars, so that's to be expected.

Having said that, a lot of folks don't know exactly what we do as a city, and so one of the recommendations suggestions that came from these conversations and these presentations was maybe we as a committee need to have a directory of programs and services by functional area and department that um residents can use when they're actually thinking about the different issues that impact their daily lives and how they can make suggestions to us as a full committee through our survey.

And so I decided I I wanted to talk with the committee and with staff and um Ms.

Vane, Ms.

Romero, if you have any thoughts on this.

I do appreciate your um feedback and also thank you both for putting this getting this printed off for me.

I do I didn't have time to do it at work.

So um, but any feedback that you all have on this, let me know.

But I am actually thinking about working on this over the next couple of months and having it organized.

I haven't decided if it's gonna be a word format or if it's gonna be Excel to make it easy for people to find information.

I'm not sure.

I have to figure that out yet.

I got a toy with that in my mind a little bit.

But that's one thing I was thinking about work that I will probably work on with after hearing any of your feedback, and then I'm hoping to wrap up our town halls with all of our district councils by the end of May.

That's contingent on some district councils with their schedules, but hopefully by the end of May.

And when that does happen, I'm going to switch gears a little bit and try to see if we can get more physical materials on the work of our committee out to say um with really for um interfacing entities within the city, like our public library and all of our different branches, and perhaps even reach out to our public schools here in St.

Paul to see if there is any way that we can.

I have a lot of relationships with a lot of schools, so this isn't actually not gonna be that hard for me, but um see if we can try to have that kind of uh communication with them about uh how we can better uh provide information about our work to uh uh the parents and legal guardians of students attending public schools here, and I also will be writing to a whole list of civil major civil society organizations that are here in St.

Paul or within the confines of the Twin Cities Metro to see if we can get any feedback that they can provide within our audit survey.

And so I don't expect there to be a massive response from those entities, but I'm gonna try nevertheless.

And if there's anyone that wants me to do another town hall with them, I'm willing to do that.

I would gladly do that and provide I educate.

I teach during the day, and I I educate people on what we do here, so it's it's just second nature for me.

Um, having said all that, I do have some observations for the committee just now that we're at this point with our um civic engagement this quarter.

Uh I've been thinking a lot about this lately.

We as we're in the world of government auditing as a committee, and that basically that everything we do, it's all an exercise in civic engagement, right?

Because we are providing a process and the mechanism to hold entities accountable for how taxpayer dollars are spent, and especially in light of the we have an episode of democratic backsliding going on right now, um not just nationwide, but also that's being acutely felt here in Minnesota just because of what's gone on recently here in Minnesota that ways that we can really uphold those principles that have been the foundation of public life here, I think are important, and that's something that we as a committee actually have a big role to play just within the city of St.

Paul.

And so I think where we can be doing more is educating folks and what we're up to, and so for that reason, it really feeds into our mandate and showing up for the community, honestly.

And so for that reason, I think that I think it'd be helpful.

I don't know.

Um Jeremy, Stephanie, Dylan, I would love to hear your feedback on this.

But I think it'd be helpful if we were to have um short autobiographies just on ourselves, just to give a human face to the work that we do as community advisors on the on our landing page on the audit committee with landing page.

It doesn't have to be much, it could be a short clip it, but just to get something out there, along with providing regular um uh physical mailing materials to our district councils, they're really interested in that.

I had that come up seven different or no, no, six different times, and I've been with eight of the district councils, and they thought that would be really helpful because they would actually put that in their materials that they send out to all the readers regularly.

And there was also mention at two district councils, uh oh gosh, Hamlin Midway Coalition and um Summit University, the idea that maybe we should have a blog that just summarizes like on a periodic basis where we can have a listserv and send masks and that out as like almost like an email situation where folks can um get an update on what we're up to as a committee and this projects that we're working on and stuff like that.

I am not expecting our staff to do any of this for the record.

I know that um you are all plenty busy as enough.

I want to say I'm here to help you in that regard, though.

So I know that's I welcome to help.

Yeah.

But our website is updated um throughout the year, and yes, everything that that the audit committee does is publicly posted.

So our agenda would be will detail the types of project we're working on.

And I agree with you on that.

I that was just I was trying to explain to the street council board members like we do have a very updated website.

Our staff do a wonderful job of updating it, and we always have audit reports coming up.

It was just they just brought it up to me.

It's like, okay, I can bring that forward, I suppose.

Because I mean, it could there's a lot of local auditors throughout the country that do that, so I understand the merits of it because there's often people aren't going to our websites per se, they may be getting information about our work, say through social media.

And so that may be one vehicle to get uh demographic that may not otherwise actually be all that attuned to what we do.

And so that's the only reason why I actually mentioned it, besides the fact that I was getting nagged about it.

Not in a bad way.

Don't come after me, district council board members.

I'm not saying this is a bad thing.

I support what you're doing.

I've just I'm just the vehicle for conveying information.

I'm facilitation.

So on that, are there any questions for me, colleagues?

Um Ms.

Johnson.

Um a couple of fun questions I would say, just to because now I understand why they were jokingly hinting at a powerful forcing one because of all he comes with he comes to the to the audit committee meeting with a memo and form that's probably more substantial than some of the memos that come across my desk.

So that's amazing.

Um, but I guess just uh a couple questions of just I know you mentioned some of the themes and things that are coming out of these conversations, but um, did you notice kind of a variance or like that's depending on where you talked, there was a different level of knowledge of just that we have an audit committee that there's this work is taking place by district council.

I'm just curious if you noticed yes, change differences in that.

Yes, there is a I've noticed quite a bit.

Um there's more of an aware more people are aware that we exist as an entity on the northwest side of the city.

So from Highland Park north up to where we meet with Minneapolis and with um Falcon Heights.

The eastern half or maybe even eastern two-thirds of the city are not as aware that we exist.

Um and when I reached out to a lot of district councils, they were actually kind of surprised.

They were thrilled that we exist, but they were surprised nevertheless.

And so um, but they've all been there's been no very positive response.

I will say that um along the University Avenue corridor, there's been a lot of talk about public safety issues, a lot from uh anyone that any of the district council board members that direction, and there's been more mention of cyber security from basically kind of uh I will say actually overwhelmingly in uh your ward, um Chair Naker and in um uh councilmember Jo's board as well, that there's been more of interest in cybersecurity, which that might just be because of whatever demographic variables are at play there.

So um, but it's been really um having said that there's been all sorts of issue um ideas that have come up from people all across the cities as as I met with them so far.

So um councilmember Johnson, do you have more another question for that?

It sounded like you had more.

Well, no, I just think that it's I um I guess I'm not necessarily um surprised by that, just because I think you know folks are gonna be learning more about um all the different committees that we hold, and I think in community too, knowing what resources are affordable to them.

Um I think to the piece around just you know, just some of your your ideas as well are really great.

I think when we have community leaders joining our committees and being able to be a part of it, I know that it can be intimidating to put like your actual face and bios maybe out and about.

But I think about how that um how knowing a little bit more about the everyday folks that are joining us in this work to give some credibility, I think, to it as well.

Um, just sort of like this, these aren't you know, just um busy committees that there's actually work and there's reports and things that come from it.

So I I think that that's great.

If folks there's no pressure, I would say, like on putting your bios together, but it's never a bad idea to show that the audit committee is also full of incredibly credentialed folks, is what I heard during the introductions.

So I think that that's also really cool to see.

Um yeah, and so and especially on the east side, I'll just share that uh happy to you know put put out different materials and newsletters and things that we share to boost that awareness too.

Silver told me, and so I'll be following up that okay.

That sounds good.

I always I I've been so fortunate.

I do want to add um the council members that we have on this committee are always so supportive of our work, and Chair Naker and Vice Chair Coleman have been I I've appreciated your company coming with me to so many of these district councils, and um councilmember Johnson, you're always welcome to join the at any um meeting in your ward if you want.

Well, thank you.

I understand you have a we one at home.

So we also love oh yes.

Bring bring the honorary community advisor.

So well, that's awesome.

Thank you.

Other question if we can help.

Yes.

Of course, um, are these meeting re um via MS team or are they required to be in person?

I've been meeting every single one of them has been in person, except for um uh two of them.

One was actually with West Seven Fort Road Federation.

They met um remotely because that was right when um the whole with the feds decided to make an appearance, and the other was with Nino because I actually had a doctor's appointment, and so I wasn't able to uh go uh I was I wasn't gonna make it on time from the doctor's appointment, so it's easier for me just to plan to have everything prepared at home and work and meet with them from my desk at home.

So otherwise everything's been in person.

So and I think they're gonna continue to be in person.

So go ahead.

I have an update.

So thanks to um Noah's uh community engagement, um, because our survey that is ever green our website has thalled.

Um I just checked right now, and we have about 15 people who submitted um topic ideas.

That's which has been very quiet since 2023.

So it's it's huge.

And I will pour through the topic ideas and I will put it to the committee members to review because that ongoing that work is ongoing.

So that's awesome.

That's wonderful, and that's such a great uh obvious outcome that's directly related to your work.

I I was actually gonna say, I mean, we we only have about nine minutes left, but I would actually suggest that we take some time to continue discussing this really robust memo and the work you've done and the questions you've raised for us in here because um in part because A, we have 15 new topic ideas that I think we should um would be great to see and talk about in the context of debriefing the conversation with the mayor.

Um, also you have identified a whole bunch of potential new topics in your memo.

Um, so we have a few minutes at the end if you want to share quick reactions from the mayor's conversation.

Great, but I it sounds like we now have a lot of new substance to inform a conversation about topic selection, and I don't want to short shrift that either.

So um other questions or comments for Mr.

McVay, Miss Delworth and then Mr.

Lastin.

Um I think this is a great um, so thank you for for the memo.

I think this is a great follow-up to what James was doing.

And at the time that he started doing it, it it was um because I went to a couple of them, it was um, you know, um virtual, and so I think to be able to go in person is up is obviously a great uh next step for this, and so this is wonderful to see how it's how it's progressed from what he had started.

I give a lot of kudos to James because he had a um the slide deck and everything, it just needed some minor updates, and it's I was able to hit the ground running with it.

I know that he was very busy, he's still very busy as one of the regions that for the university, and so I know that took a lot of time away from doing work here, and so um kudos to James and that uh I'm I'm sad that he's um uh no longer serving with us on this committee.

So Ms.

Dilworth is right, he planted the seeds and got us up to a great start, and to the extent that any of these district councils, well, many of them had already heard from James, I'm sure when you came back, it was fertile ground for you to be kind of reminding them.

Um so thank you, Mr.

Lester.

Yes, uh thanks for the update, advisor uh McVeigh.

It sounds like great work, and um, I wanted to um one of the ideas I think you brought up was to have a list of all the auditable entities, all the programs subject to audit.

I think that's a great idea.

Um it could give people doing the survey a place to start, you know, and something that could even we could link to you know, for each of the auditable entities when was it last audited?

And here's the report um so they can see that.

And um, oh, this one hasn't been audited in a while.

I'll choose this one, you know.

So give them they can choose one of those programs, or obviously have something free form that is not in the list they can say to be audited, like data practices or you know, something like that.

But um, I think that's really good and um giving people kind of uh a picture of yeah, what does the city do?

What could even the audits be gives them a great place to start?

And it's great to hear that there's 15 responses in there right now to the survey.

I'm excited to see what those are.

I tickled pink.

So forgive me out of chair.

Go ahead.

No, yeah.

Go ahead.

Oh, I was just gonna say I'm tickled.

Oh I um yeah, I love that idea of linking to the previous audits too, because I think that really helps people contextualize their questions and know that you know something they were wondering about is something that we've already wondered about ourselves, explored, and they may still want to have further investigation done, but to have that the previous audits be right there, I think it's that's a really great idea.

Um, I don't want to put anyone on the spot, so I will, but I will suggest that I think the the um question about the short autobiography for publication maybe is something that we could follow up on via email and just ask folks.

This seems like a very direct actionable step, and would love to hear you know from everybody who is willing to do that.

I don't I think it's fine if some folks aren't, but anybody who is it would be great.

I agree to have those up there.

Um and I just wanted to ask about the creating mailing materials.

I you know, my first thought goes to oh my god, it's so expensive and hard.

But my second thought was could it be emailing materials, in which case could it be something like writing up a brief summary of this meeting and linking to it that goes out to district councils after these meetings for them to put in their newsletters or elsewhere just to say this is what the audit committees working on.

Trying to think about minimum viable product given that we're limited in staff capacity, and but I hear the point about wanting to be communicative.

That's what I was leaning towards.

Just because our staff are got enough going on as it is.

We don't need to put any more on you more than necessary, and so I think that if we can have someone working on this, I think that we'd be I think that'd be easier than having to meet reading materials or physical paper materials because otherwise we're gonna be blowing up our budget.

Okay.

Other discussion questions, comments, and then I Mr.

McVeigh, maybe you can summarize the next steps because I think you had you mentioned having some maybe that um list ready for review in August.

You were thinking, or yes, I will get that direct.

I should have that directory done by August if that's something that you it sounds like we're very keen on.

So I will try have that done in by the end of August.

So we should have it for certain at our September meeting.

And then let's see, what else?

Um I have more that I'll be bringing next month because I've just been working on uh uh literature database.

So if not next month, if we have too much going on, we can always save it for me or later on.

Well, thank you.

I think on behalf of all of us for this work, seriously, and to the extent that we can be helpful about Customer Johnson and I and Baster Coleman as well in helping connect with any of the remaining district councils.

I see some of them are on my ward.

Uh please let us know.

We've been in touch with all of them.

We've had conversations, so it's just fine getting it's just figuring out a schedule, basically.

They're trying to figure out their schedules right now.

Okay.

And so don't worry.

Okay, we'll be we'll be tapped.

They're well, they're they're behaving themselves.

Good.

Well, thank you.

And I know they have a lot going on as well.

So no no knock on that.

All right.

Well, then with our very with our last thought this would happen.

Two and a half minutes.

Um I'm sorry.

No, no, no, no, not at all.

I wanted to take time for that, and this is really remarkable.

So thank you.

But um, while it's fresh, sort of in our minds a month ago rather than two months ago.

Any just quick, and again, we'll have a more robust conversation about this next time, but um thoughts on our conversation with the mayor and all four assistant mayors, which by the way, has that's the only time that that has yet happened since our new administration has come in.

So that really was a huge honor, I think, to this committee that we got that level of attention.

Mr.

Lasteter.

Yeah, Chair Naker, that was amazing.

I just want to say that that was um wonderful that they all came.

It was great to meet the mayor.

Um, and the one thing I wrote down so a takeaway of I think it came up college-bound St.

Paul as a potential audit idea.

So just wanted to put that out.

Thanks, Mr.

Allen.

I mean, Mr.

Losteter.

Mr.

Donald.

I totally agree.

It really gives the mayor and the team a lot of credit for coming.

That was really important, and I really appreciate that.

Um, and they seem to sort of understand the spirit of audit, and it didn't seem punitive, it seemed like improvement.

So I thought that was a great basis.

Uh, I think we have work to do to put the topic for what's next because that didn't come up.

We talked about college bound, and I flavored that point too, but I think there are a lot of other options in addition to that we could consider.

So um glad they were here, and I think there's work to do to sort of narrow what we can be doing moving forward.

Thank you.

Yeah, I echo what he's saying.

I thought it was I took it was amazing that she wasn't scared of audits.

And so, and she actually embraced audits, and so that's really uh to be a good spot to be when trying to work with the administration.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah, and the interesting thing about college bound is I think about it, and I agree, Mr.

Donald, we should there are lots of topics we could explore.

It occurred to me it's an interesting sweet spot in that with a new mayor, you know, you might sometimes be there might be a downside of studying things that were done under the previous mayor because there's there could be a tendency to sort of write it off and not really own it as you know that was the last administration and we're moving forward, or you know, um, or even to dismiss the work too quickly if we had negative findings or really um difficult findings because it wasn't you know yours.

In this case, this happens to be a program that the mayor helped create.

Um, and is a program that's been around long enough now for her to for us to be able to audit.

So it's actually kind of in a sweet spot of ownership, even though this is a brand new mayor, um, and having had time to demonstrate results.

So that is interesting.

Mr.

McKay, were you gonna add something?

I thought I saw your I lost my train of thought.

It's all good.

No worries, ma'am chair.

Okay.

Maybe they'll come back to me.

Sometimes they come, sometimes they go.

None of us are disappearing after this meeting.

So ignore to reach.

Um, well, then I think my suggestion would be um if if there's no other debrief thoughts, that we uh get the topics that have been submitted, um, that folks take a minute to look over Mr.

McVay's um summary, and if there's any color you want to add by email, um specifically by way of sort of to Ms.

Johnson's questions about um how often a topic came up.

You mentioned cybersecurity came up a lot, but otherwise it's not clear from the list like how weighted those were.

So if you want to if there's anything that you want to provide later to say, you know, these things were particularly frequent, but I think if we can review your list, review the 15, think about our conversation with the mayor, um, and then come back to our next meeting in April prepared to um really look at come up with a l oh we do we not meet in April?

May we might want to talk about that just because it sounds like in May we're now gonna be getting the update from Dr.

Britt, and with only an hour, like we don't have it, so we'll talk about that.

Um but prepared to look at a list and talk about our process from there.

It sounds like we're not gonna need to select a new topic until July because this current audit will go through June.

So we have some time.

But as all of us know who've been on this committee for a while, we don't select a topic overnight.

Exactly.

Sometimes it takes half a year.

So um, so how's that sound to folks?

Yeah, great.

And we'll get those those lists out well before the next meeting.

Yes, do we have like a list of the mayor's suggestions?

I believe we only really talked about college bound.

That was the specific one.

Yeah, that was the one that she named, but I believe she was interested in understanding programs that the city implemented and whether or not we took into consideration the budget impact of implementing a program that a mayor or the council adopted.

It might be a good idea actually, Ms.

Vang, if we followed up with the mayor's staff to say that was a great conversation.

Were there any thoughts about specific audit topics that occurred to her afterwards?

Okay.

Um just so that we can get any any more that she might have to say.

Okay.

Yeah, I think as a follow-up to that, it was just um I definitely will take a look at some of the listed uh the listed uh different topics that are here and um I know that there's a couple of uh east side folks and Dave Bluffing in my board too, so I'll flag that for them so that way they can provide just a couple of topics of interest for them.

So I see a couple from board seven on here, so I can help with that.

But then also just take a look and review and but yeah, there was additional add-ons.

I just you know, folks have the one, but I just was wondering if there was something else that we should consider too.

And or I guess maybe taking this list that you've compiled too and showing it to staff and getting their feedback.

And I will plan to bring next time as well when we talk about the topics also our uh process that we've used in the past to kind of narrow from a big list to a few to do a risk analysis to run them by staff in the council.

There's um a number of steps which we have in pencil and sometimes rethink, so I'll bring that process as well next time.

It's iterative, but it's fun.

It's iterative, but it's fine.

That should be our tagline, it's not actually.

There we go.

Uh great.

Well, with that, we are a few minutes past time.

I want to thank everyone for a productive meeting as always.

We will see you probably in April, but we will connect about it.

We'll schedule that, yeah.

Um so we typically meet the third Tuesday for our audit committee meeting.

So I'm looking at the 21st.

Sorry, yeah, the 21st if folks are available at four o'clock.

And if not, then I'll try to find a different time.

Great.

Please, does anyone right now you're not available on the 21st to four o'clock?

The 21st of April?

Yeah.

I'm not.

You're not available.

Anyone else not available on the 21st of four?

I don't know.

You don't okay.

We'll send it out via email.

I thought it might be easy to do it here, but all right.

Thanks everyone.

We're adjourned.