Well, I think that's a good thing.

All right.

And we've got 30 minutes for the first and then an hour.

Okay, great.

Call the meeting of the St.

Paul City Council Policy Committee to order.

Roll call, please.

Councilmember Bowie.

Here.

Council President Naker.

Here.

Councilmember Joost.

Councilmember Coleman.

Here.

Councilmember Kim.

Councilmember Yang.

Councilmember Johnson.

Who is arriving shortly, seeing six president and one on our way.

Great.

Good morning, everyone.

Uh, thanks so much to those of our guests who are joining us today for our policy committee.

Um, our first order of business is uh actually our second order of business.

Uh, want to welcome up um Ms.

Allen and associated guests who I'll let you introduce to um share with that's our first topic, which is ending slavery and expanding civil protections review.

We have 30 minutes for this first conversation.

We have a timer that helps us keep time, and we're so excited you're here.

Welcome.

Thirty whole minutes.

You gotta learn how to work the system, right?

Anyways, um, my name is Chantel Allen, I'm the executive director of the Indian Slavery Coalition.

Um, happy first day of Juneteenth.

We are black, so we start on the 10th and we go all the way to the 20th.

I too am America just like Langs and you, so I'm in my red, white, and blue.

Right.

Unfortunately, I have a different experience along with a lot of other black and brown Americans when it comes to being American.

Um, the Constitution was written in a way that really disenfranchised a lot of people originally, even in the start of America, right?

So with slavery and all of that, but even during Reconstruction, there was a process that happened that continued to disenfranchise black and brown people.

And so I want to welcome my guy, uh, my outreach coordinators, uh, Max and Josh up.

These are my guys who have survived that system to the utmost.

I've been exposed to it.

I've been around it because I grew up in the hood, right?

But these brothers have truly experienced this, and they are here to give you a beautiful presentation.

Now, this clicker right here, we just click it and it goes or hit the space bar.

We got it right there.

We got it right there.

I think it's just slide down with the mouse.

Just slide down with the mouse.

Yeah.

Okay, okay.

All right, yeah.

Thank you guys.

How you guys doing?

Good morning.

Welcome.

All right, my name is Max.

So slavery was abolished, except if convicted of a crime.

Is slavery really legal?

This is a question that our campaign is asking.

Because the Minnesota Constitution, Article 1, Section 2 says there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the state, again, otherwise than as punishment for a crime.

So far, in the midst of our dealings, like what uh Miss Allen said, slavery was supposed to be abolished, but it wasn't.

There was a constitutional loophole that left open a back door upon conviction.

Upon conviction has been a way that historically has brought us back to, as black Americans put us black on back on the plantation field.

Um, getting out of those chains have been things that we've been trying to maneuver.

We had the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 65, which was supposed to pull us off the plantation.

And because of this exception and because of certain loopholes, certain things form up like the war on drugs and mass incarceration, which brings us back to the plantation.

So it brings us to 2026, to where mass incarceration and the livelihood of um, I would say underprivileged individuals that have been targeted by this system, have to fight through a system where slavery is still legal.

So far, in our efforts, Minnesota is trying to be one of the states that have done away with this exception within our Constitution.

There are eight states, if you see here on this graph, that have done away with it: Alabama, Tennessee, Nebraska, Colorado, Utah, Nevada, and Oregon.

Out of these states, Minnesota, I believe, is more progressive than most of these states.

And we are one of the states that still allows slavery as punishment.

When inmates are brought into these prisons through slavery, they are brought here for exploitation.

We've known throughout history that slavery was a means of the beginning of capitalism.

So ownership established capitalism.

And as individuals were brought in, right now in mass incarceration, when individuals are locked up, in prisons, these individuals are paid 25 cents.

Now the 25 cents allows for corporations to exploit this labor from these individuals through this systemic uh loophole.

And what we plan on doing and presenting is raising the wages so we could actually stop corporate exploitation as a means because it's hard to stop the loophole.

So I just ask one, sorry, one question on that.

Is it that paying 25 cents?

Can you explain the loophole that allows the corporations to say that you're employed or how does that work?

So when inmates are brought in through this particular exception, they're brought into their mass incarceration.

So individuals are brought mass into the prisons for whatever design, but we found that it's for a corporate design.

And through this design, they're brought into the prisons, and as they're brought in these ridiculous amounts, when they're leased out, as it's called convict leasing, these individuals are leased out, and because of the wages, it makes it payable by the corporations to exploit them.

So if there's 25 cents and you have 20 individuals, that's five bucks for 20 people.

So a way to stop that and combat that is if you raise the wages to minimum wage, it'll stop the exploitation from corporations from coming into the prisons and getting 20 for five bucks, which undercuts many uh sectors of our economy.

So a lot of jobs are being monopolized, a lot of um corporations are pretty much undercutting uh small business.

Um we've seen prison labor used against union labor, so it takes away union power and things of that nature.

Um but really what corporate corporations are doing is they're keeping the same power that they had from back in the slave days.

So back in the slave days, um, ownership and owning individuals making sure like if I own him and he can't focus on himself, I have two people working for my game.

So that's capitalism.

So he's they're they're they're still using the same method of uh capital gain.

Yes.

You know, I'm a history buff, so I'm gonna throw it in historically.

So after we were free, once uh 1865 happened during Reconstruction, a lot of the slave owners they didn't know how to take care of their land.

They didn't know what they were gonna do with all of this land.

And so they started to create the what was called black codes.

You guys should check your boards.

I don't know what's going on, but I know Minneapolis just recently um X's off two of their black codes that still exist on the books, um, lurking and loitering and spitting on the sidewalk.

Also, there was other black codes like if you don't cross the street when a white woman is coming, um, just not having a job and hanging out, and if you can think about like if you were a slave and then you were released and people had such a negative image on your personality, what was the chances that they were hiring you for jobs?

And so they would just put these folks into prison, and then the slave owners would come and purchase them, contract them.

Well, over the years, those those fields became industrialized.

And so tobacco companies became craft, right?

And all of these other Hormel and all of these other big corporations.

And these corporations still needed a plantation.

And where this is really prevalent is in Louisiana, where they had a convict leasing situation on the Cargill farm at the time, that then expanded to a plantation that then expanded to cargill industries, and still currently there's a prison sitting on that land, and they still currently work those fields.

And so what we're looking at is the Minnesota version of that, right?

I don't know if everybody is familiar, but we did have legal slavery here in the state of Minnesota when slave owners came here to cultivate the land for their vacation space.

Of course, again, they don't know how to cultivate land because they had never done that for generations.

That was not in their DNA.

So they needed to bring the slaves here, and that's where it caught caused the Dred Scott kind of argument that happened.

And then after that, the state of Minnesota was like, we're gonna have to legalize slavery because they ain't finna get free coming up here, right?

And so they legalized slavery and they cultivated quite a few of our municipal spaces like Shoreview, Minnetonka, you know, Edina.

Um slaves actually, right along the Mississippi, there's a lot of towns that were cultivated by slave land, right?

And that prop that same thing is now currently manifested into our prison systems in Minnesota.

It's the historical person.

I think Ms.

Did you give a question or do we want to let them know?

No, I didn't have a question.

I just want to thank you so much um for the explanation.

I just wanted to share um the system, the contract system that they are talking about.

Um, there's on the national level, the federal um prisons have what's called Unicord.

Unicor, which is the contract leasing um of prison labor, um, essentially slave labor, as we're all um explaining, but uh also in Minnesota it's Men Corps.

So Men Corps is the um is the it's a private institution, public-private partnership between businesses and corporations, not just only in Minnesota, but across the, if I wouldn't be surprised if it's international, but across the country in terms of how they contract out prison labor.

And um, like they were mentioning, uh many municipalities like like Minnetonka, I'm sure you, um, you know, I believe Met Council also uses it as well.

Uh they contract with Men Corps to get um prison labor, um, and many nonprofits use it as well to whether it's building housing, make maintaining um landscape, uh, building desks, building furniture, the pennies, our license plates is a lot of things where if you don't actually know who's actually making that, and it's most likely exploited labor in our prison system.

Yeah, thank you.

Um, prison has been used for, I mean, a lot of things like when workers go on strikes.

I mean, they use prison labor for a lot of those actions, um, which just takes away from the power, but it's it's more about the exploitation of community.

Um, a lot of times we've seen systemic approaches to community to keep the prison population field.

Um, a lot of them are policing issues.

Um, some neighborhoods are just policed crazily, very intense and heavy to make sure that they are filling up the prisons to kind of do a modern day black cold uh color of your skin, pretty much loitering, whatever the case may be.

It's like they move the goalposts to keep the the um the prisons field, um, the education system.

Um, the education system and the relevancy, the the cultural relevancy with um education is I mean, they know by third grade whether an individual is gonna be going to prison, so it's like a tree of the prison pipeline.

Um we believe not in St.

Paul.

Not in St.

Paul, but you know, the St.

Paul has a good, you know, situation.

But naturally, this system around this exception has provided, you know, a systemic approach on how these prisons are filled up.

So when we look at it, uh prison labor's we're gonna go back to the chart, prison labor steals roughly a hundred million dollars annually from homes from our poorest families and communities, and we found that out here in Minnesota.

Um, the average individual, if you they say one out of three black males will be incarcerated.

One out of six uh Latino males are being incarcerated.

Um one out of seven natives and one out of 17 white males were being incarcerated.

Um each individual that's taken out of the home, the ranges have been from roughly 25,000 to 60,000 on average, um, of per individual taken out of the home, which lose that family's income is take is taken away from that family's income.

So we're looking at a systemic thing that has literally plagued our communities for the longest around um this exception.

Um see.

Yeah, so when we look at um being incarcerated individuals, um, going in, it's how do we stop this loophole from continuing to thrive?

And like I said again, raising the wages within the prisons would actually be uh like a counterattack to how corporations exploit individuals behind the walls.

Um I want Josh to give a lived experience because he was formerly incarcerated here in Minnesota, so I want him to talk a little bit more about his personal experience.

Hi, ladies and gentlemen, uh, I'm Josh.

I want to say steam members of the council.

I've always wanted to say that.

You know, I like to crack jokes too, you know, because it's it's it's it's uh it's you know, it's life.

But anyway, so yeah, I'm an outreach coordinator with end slavery in Minnesota uh coalition, and honestly, honestly, so with this with this uh with this uh slavery that uh that uh the DOC and private corporations are continuing to perpetuate, uh you gotta look at like say here, like me, for instance, uh, you know, they say when you do your crime, uh you do you do the crime, you do the time, right?

But when is there gonna be an error for rehabilit like actual rehabilitation, right?

When is there gonna be an opportunity for not in just rehabilitation but growth, right?

And nothing in the Department of Corrections and nothing when you get out as a felon fosters any type of growth or rehabilitation or even just, okay, you made a mistake, let's move forward, right?

These are all mechanisms, probation, parole, you know, some of the harsher, harsher things, like you don't have control over your body when you're on supervision, right?

If if the PO says you're gone, these are all forms of slavery.

Like I have no c I would have no control over my body if if my PO said, you know, gone.

So these are these are all part of these mechanisms of the big institution of slavery.

And uh what Max is talking about with the 100 million dollars and stuff like that, and that's just like a minimum, is because you gotta look at it like this, right?

So when you go in there, uh you get paid 25 cents.

They take half out of it, right?

And then uh you can't even you work two weeks, you get like what?

Like, I think my state check was like 12 dollars for two weeks of the like full-time work.

And uh, yeah, and then when a bar of soap is five, six dollars, you know, that's half the check right there.

So you got people sending money in, and every time money gets sent in, DOC takes 10% out of it off everything.

You're getting a cut off everything.

And you're right, Mincor is uh is a private corporation, it's not an IPO, right?

You can't buy stocks into it, and you know, only people that have invested interest in Mincor is the Department of Corrections employees.

You know, so uh so what I'm getting back to is that is that you get out, I you get out, and uh, say you say you're making minimum wage, right?

And uh now you got you're saving money, right?

Because you get all free, your gay fee is not nothing, five hundred dollars is not gonna not gonna put you in a place to succeed, right?

You know, so like you make minimum wage, you're able to pay restitution, you're able to play pay child support.

You'll be able to send money back to your family with that amount of money, you know.

Like, and there that's a lie.

You know, you know.

So it's all about trying to like how do we understand and acknowledge the fact that slavery still exists, especially in the wonderful state like Minnesota, and the fact that Alabama beat us to closing the exception cause, which threw me off, you know.

It was like one of those, like, hey, you hear this joke, you know.

Like, I couldn't believe it, you know.

We're we're a greater state than that in St.

Paul's a bomb city, right?

So, like, anyways.

Huh?

Oh, is it time?

Oh man, I was getting going, man.

Thank you, members of this team council.

Thank you.

We never mind hearing esteemed council.

I saw a question from Ms.

Kim, and then I would like to let you finish your slides, just make sure we have enough time for you to share with us.

Yeah, I appreciate this.

I think just um, you know, and slavery is a national, like there's there's other affiliates that are doing this work across the country, so A just contextual to just going connecting the slides around the prison labor wages and the theft of over a hundred million dollars and the fact that one in six children in Minnesota experience parental incarceration, and then your point, um, which I really appreciate, esteemed member of our community, uh, Josh, you spoke to was sort of the impacts on community.

Can you just say two more things around the impacts that this like enslaved labor wages has on families because you know they are not only losing an income earner for the household, but oftentimes for them to have an idea or even saying this word sort of like um to help them survive the inside of our carceral system, families are now sending money in.

And so can you talk a little bit about the strain that happens to families that are that have someone that's incarcerated around the issue of this like in like mass systemic wage theft and the strain on financial strain on families?

Yeah, we'll get there.

But so one thing I would also want to point out is that when you're making 25 cents an hour at 40 hours a week, your annual income is about 580 dollars.

So you're not paying any taxes into the state, and so to speak to uh what council members, I would call you.

You just call me my first time.

Okay, council member Kim.

Well, speaking to is so they're not paying any taxes into the state, they're also not making enough money to pay child support, and so you're leaving a family with uh with the burden of taking care of that child, and nine times out of ten, the state is gonna be the support system in there.

So what's happening is the big corporation is the only one that's really coming up on this because they're probably getting some kind of tax break.

We ain't dug into that yet, but I'm sure, right?

And they're also getting cheap labor all at the same time.

And our state is losing, our children are losing, and so when we look at like 100 million dollars, there it is.

It's it's quite easy to find those dollars there.

So that's kind of the gist of it.

I think the burden of what Josh was talking about, and the fact that soap costs five dollars, deodorant is six or seven dollars, right?

That burden starts to fall on to the outside family also.

And so then you start to break these relationships.

You know, you break the relationships with your mother, and with so the grandmother who now has to carry this additional burden, financial burden.

Um, sometimes the mother of your children or the father of your children because they're carrying this additional burden.

And the reality is the individual is working 40 hours a week.

It's not like they're just sitting in a cell twirling their thumbs or going to the spa, they're working 40 hours a week where they should be able to take care of their family and alleviate those burdens, so and also kind of back to the re-entry part.

I he kind of briefed upon is um we have a re-entry problem also with individuals, which kind of adds to the recidivism of individuals that whether they go to jail for I mean, whether one is in prison or one is even abroad, you can call it alkaline or negative, whatever you want to call it.

But when they have to re-enter back into our society, that is like the hardest thing for anyone that takes a break from society.

Um whether it's a veteran coming home, our government, it's like our system looks and says, Hey, you might have gained a new perspective abroad, huh?

We gotta treat you funny, we've got to treat you different.

So it's hard for vets to come back home.

It's hard for inmates to come back home to their, you know, to their families and stuff like that.

So it's like we have an issue with individuals be re being reintegrated into our system.

Um we're we're looking at uh his say that again.

I was in discrimination, housing, yes, housing jobs, yes.

How does that foster you making it back in the community?

If you're a drug dealer and you you go in for selling the drugs, you get out, you start looking for a job, everybody denies you because they're judging you for your past.

What is the first thing the drug dealer's gonna think about how he's gonna get quick money for his family?

So we're looking to if we were to be able to correct it, and if you were to be able to just say let an individual build up a Nest A, would an individual who was formerly incarcerated coming out with roughly 10, 15,000, be better off as society versus somebody that had 200 bucks.

I mean, how do we look at this?

I mean, when we look at it, it's not our family members who get incarcerated is not to be exploited by corporations.

These are our loved ones.

If anyone's gonna be receiving money off these individuals, should be the kids, it should be the community, it should be some type of reimbursement back to the family, back to where they came from, not some outside entity coming in and saying, Hey, let me extract uh captive labor, captive wages from these individuals, and and um we're the only ones who can gain from these people as a society.

I believe we've agreed upon punishment, and we've agreed upon the sentencing, but it shouldn't be an outside corporation coming into our communities taking our loved ones and saying, Well, we're just gonna borrow them for this time and we're just gonna extract slave labor off of them for 25 cents an hour.

So then now it's like okay, well, we have kids here in this community too.

Just because you're locked up doesn't mean you don't have responsibilities.

So it's like you have responsibilities.

And we understand that slavery is one of those mechanisms that um we agreed on punishment being confinement.

So it's a status change.

And when you are locked up, your status leads from citizen to slave.

But they don't notify individuals that you are becoming a slave upon your conviction.

So people are just playing off into just giving the ownership of their body to these corporations to the system, and they are being exploited.

Now, once we get rid of slavery, it opens up a whole nother realm of possibilities and things of that nature for uh representation of what we could do.

Okay, so philosophy.

Involuntary servitude, right?

So you asked like how are they slaves?

How are they being forced involuntary to serve?

Well, they have this no-work, no play rule.

I don't know if any of you are heard that.

If you uh refuse to work, so they understand what that they lock you in yourself 23 hours a day, so you might as well be like in segregation.

So their hints is the involuntary servitude because eventually you're gonna be like, hey, I guess I'm working for next to nothing because I want to get out to get use the phone to call my family and all that, you can't do that with the no work, no play policy.

So, I'm I'm gonna just get straight to our constitutional amendment.

I mean, our well, we are supporting the constitutional amendment that Bobby Joe Champion and Dave Pento both carrying.

And actually, I found out that Mayor Herr was the champion of this constitutional amendment when she was in the House.

And so then Dave Pinto took it over.

Um, so I'm super stoked about that.

Uh, the constitutional amendment basically is just we're gonna cross off the exception, um, it will then go on the ballot in 2028.

In addition to that, um, we have another bill that Claire Obaler Bayton and Cedric Frazier are also carrying that will reclassify slaves as workers, and that will force the corporations to pay minimum wage.

It also has some stipulations in there around allowing for individuals to pay child support through this, um, being able to pay recidivism, which I'm believing in building a restorative society.

And so, and so in order to be really restorative within that system, you have to have a mechanism for being able to repay your wrongs, and at 25 cents an hour, it's just not there.

And so the the third piece is um we were talking about um re-entry, and right now there's a cap that you can only save up to five hundred dollars.

It doesn't matter if you're there for two years or 30 years.

You get $500, that's it, that's the check you get when you walk out, and this would also open that up so that they could save money so that they could have whatever they need when they're walking out.

And when we think about, you know, they're working 40 hours a week.

If they're in prison, we have a brother who just got out, he was in there for 32 years, um, since he was a teenager, and he's worked 40 hours a week every single week that he's been there, and he came home with 500.

And so it's just it's an unfair system.

Um, and so that's what we're working on.

It's called a gateway, this is some of the data around, you know, how the how the money is kind of split up, victim victims and court costs, um, how things kind of move.

I want to make sure that we get through this.

Um, seventy-five percent of jobs will be through outside employers, on-site, off-site, or remote government, private corporations, nonprofits, university self-employment, and actually, we just recently had a meeting with Paul Schnell, um, where I brought along my homeboy Bob Blake, St.

Paul Central.

Y'all know Bob Blake.

He he is the owner of Solar Bear uh solar company, and he had a pilot program at Willow Lake that was working with people who were incarcerated.

It got dropped some years ago.

Um, and we're hoping that they can get back into relationship for short term short term responses, and then also looking at long-term manufacturing, considering it's a billion dollars coming in right now, last week, right?

And more will be coming, and that's an industry that they could actually learn some skills and actually use um moving out.

And so we're we're willing and open to working with a lot of different folks.

Um, that's just one of the brothers that came forward right away and say, I will pay minimum wage to incarcerated people, and so we're working through that process.

Um, yeah, so we talked a little bit about the recidivism.

Um here's all our great pictures of all of our great people.

Um, you guys have any specific questions?

Like, looks like we do, and we got a couple minutes, so thank you so much.

I see uh Miss Coleman and then Ms.

Kim and then Ms.

Johnson, and then Miss Joe's.

Awesome, everyone has 15 seconds.

Thanks so much for this presentation.

Just a quick question about the bill that's currently in the legislature.

Would that then also provide full employment protections to incarcerated workers?

So, like unionization rights and breaks and sort of anything that any worker in the state is entitled to, these workers would be as well.

I don't know if that would be in an immediate situation, but I think once you become labeled a worker, because technically right now, if you have a felony, you're literally a slave in the United States by status, and that's why you know one of the things I argue is that all of the organizing and you know uh uh boycotts and things that have happened around prisons, there still hasn't been any movement.

Why?

Because they're only three-fifths of a van.

The judge told us that with Dred Scott, it hasn't changed one bit, and so I think that this status change will help a lot of that arguing about some of the conditions and things that are happening within the prisons.

Thank you, Ms.

Kim.

Yeah, I was gonna ask a very similar question, but I'll just rephrase it, and I was gonna offer it as a softball to that point.

But there's also an initiative or a group called the incarcerated workers union.

Yeah, what is it?

I walk is how I know it, and they and I believe that is like the tandem campaign to ensure that when the classification happens, there is someone that's able and willing to step in and help like unionize because that's part of the issue, and why they get away with this is by classification.

So just um lifting up another great org that's working on this and really appreciate the presentation.

Thank you.

And okay, can you give us just say two things about about IWAC for folks?

Yeah, so I I mean, do you want me to say that?

Go ahead.

Yeah, so uh the incarcerated organizing committee, uh it is looking at like labor, but right now it's focused on uh more like inside organizing, like getting uh getting to the brothers and sisters that are locked up, and uh a lot of it's been like dealing with grievances and stuff because there's a lot of malfeasance going on in the DOC, so like you know, that's what they're focused on now, but a lot of them are with us, and you know, so we all work in tandem.

So, so I see that we're running out of time, and I know that we have uh meetings set up with several of you, and we are willing to take meetings with anybody else that's interested in knowing more information.

So all of y'all, I think at me on the because that's how I operate, hit me up.

Let me know.

Is it do we have time for one more question?

I I think it's fine to get through all of our questions.

It's okay.

It's our own meeting, so it's not we're all gonna fit.

No, this isn't a protest.

I'm not here to we appreciate your uh attention to the clock, but I want to make sure we get all of our questions answered, and this is really important information.

So thank you.

We'll take a little bit more time.

Uh Ms.

Johnson, Ms.

Justin, then Ms.

Yang, and then Ms.

Bowie.

Okay.

Well, I appreciate just um you all coming into the policy committee as well to just show the important work that you are doing at the state legislature right now.

Um yeah, I apologize for being a little late through the presentation.

I woke up without a voice, so I'm gonna do it until my voice runs out.

Um, but I just wanted to kind of ask through and really get clear around the ask for the council and this work and what ways as council members you see us being able to support the movement and the work.

I know you have individual meetings with a lot of us, but could you just share a little bit about like how you envision the city council being supportive or what exactly the question and kind of just what that looks like for us, yeah.

I mean, for me, I think it's really important since we have other um cities that do practice to be able to uplift and show cities that are able to operate without that type that type of contract or procurement um happening in their space.

Um this is definitely gonna be a political issue because it's gonna go on the ballot and it has to go through the legislator.

And so we want to make sure that we have representation from the elected officials in a lot of different spaces saying that this is something that can possibly happen or can happen or should happen.

Um and so basically just showing your your support in the work that's happening moving forward so that we know that Minneapolis and St.

Paul are on board.

We're always the leaders, right?

Everybody else is gonna hop on behind, I'm hoping.

And as a follow-up, you mentioned just like the no work no play policy.

Is that um instituted at the county level?

Is that statewide, or just like almost everywhere, probably fair nationwide.

So, and that means even if you there is no job for you to have like right now, we have a situation where there's a lot of people that there is no jobs for them to have.

So they're just stuck in their cell for 23 hours and they can only get out for one hour.

Thank you, okay.

Thank you.

Uh Ms.

Jose.

Um, thank you, Council President, and thank you for being here.

A couple of you sort of asked questions similar to what I was going to ask.

Um, I uh first of all, just really appreciate the discussion on this issue.

I think one thing that a couple things that really stand out to me are you know the way that uh people are being exploited by corporations um in this, and then additionally the impact, you know, these are these are our constituents, these are their families, these are our people that are being exploited.

And when you have you know information in here, like one in six children in Minnesota are experiencing parental incarceration and just how much um you know municipal government is being impacted uh by the harm that is caused by this system, and also all of us at this table understand the limited resources that we have in our city and take care for our people, um, and in the same way our cities and communities are being exploited by this by this process, and so um really committed to what we can do, and I appreciate Councilmember Johnson asking, you know, what what can the city council do?

Um, and so with with that being said, uh wanting to understand it sounds like these bills.

I know the session ended um last month, but it sounds like these bills did not pass, I'm assuming, and we would be looking into the next session to we didn't even try to this year, that wasn't the okay mission.

We were yeah, we're we're mobilizing.

Okay, I see, I see.

Well, that makes sense.

So the constitutional amendment previously, I think when Mayor Her had it passed through the House.

Okay, and it didn't get a hearing in the Senate, but then it just died.

Okay, but then it's been it's been what do they call it?

Lisa resurrected.

I don't know.

It's brought back now.

I understood.

Okay, that's helpful to know.

And then I think what I'm certainly interested in um is you know, what can we do at our city and our policies.

I know, Director Allen, we talked about procurement and um I don't know if this is a discussion with you know hero or and because we have also have a lot of our own um uh processes, and I don't know if there's things that we need to look into as well, but I'm very interested in like what can we do with the city government level two around this issue.

I mean, this is a lot of really old furniture, but I can almost guarantee that this furniture was made by prison labor and almost every piece of furniture in the city and in our schools.

So we're going through uh facilities roll over right now, and the furniture that we're getting rid of, I can guarantee you was made by prison labor um through Mencore.

And so you can look deep into your procurements and see what type of contracts that you may have.

Um we have people who research that, and I don't believe that they found anything in the same city of St.

Paul, I'd be here talking about it.

Um but another one that we found is um sometimes like laundry contracts.

I don't know why you guys would have that, but I didn't know why the U of M had one, right?

And they did.

Um, and so there's both kind of contracts, and then also just contracts for land, typically for the parks for cleaning up.

Um I don't know that the city has any kind of judicial system that would, you know, serve STS to people, maybe your contracts with the STS folks if they're cleaning up our our areas, but I don't believe that's the case.

I think they stick to highways and state parks mostly.

Um so I don't that I think the overcriminalization of black and brown people definitely plays a huge role in that, and that's what's led me to this space as you know, one of the co-founders of Black Lives Matter.

I felt like I was a gerbil in a cage trying to change these policies that were embedded in our city and county, right?

That were really just pushing us into the prison system.

And then once I realized, oh, it's it's bigger than just change this racial profiling law because they're just gonna find another loophole or another way to get us into that system.

So I think just being cognizant of um the criminalization that is happening in our cities around right now, unhoused people, and then our young people who are doing the park takeovers.

I know it's really uncomfortable, but y'all know love first has an answer will be popping up and making some things happen and building relationships with those young people real soon and and establishing some playground etiquette.

Um, but how do we start to always look at it from that perspective first before we start to criminalize the situation when we see some sort of sort of havoc or things that are uncomfortable for us to see in our cities?

Okay, so our question too, but you know what?

As justice impacted person, uh I think what uh boss lady was saying earlier was about uh restorative practices, right?

How can St.

Paul maybe practice restorative practice to people like coming out because you know, honestly, there's a lot of trauma trauma being locked up, and it's not just to the person, the individual.

There's trauma from the crime to the community, there's there's trauma to your families, you know, and the kids not having it.

So, how can like how can St.

Paul like find ways to be restorative to help foster that that growth I was talking about?

That that rehabilitation look at because everything is so punitive right now, you know.

So that's why I wanted to kind of jump into that too, because I really think that's big and important.

Thank you.

Um I'm gonna move us on to our last two questions, because yeah, nice president.

Yeah, thank you, Council President.

I first want to say thank you all for your passion leadership and for the very thorough thorough presentation today.

It was very heartfelt to me because I have family members who have been incarcerated before, my brother, and um, you know, I like even my extended family members, all experiences that I believe are shared by so many people in all across our city that often go unspoken or just experienced in silence, and so your fight for liberation here is uh a fight for them for for me and so many folks who have this shared experience.

I want to say thank you.

Um I I uh really appreciate just how well you laid out hey, here's what we're doing at the state legislature.

I know they asked that you have for council members is um you have a resolution that you are wanting to bring forward, which I believe is being brought for maybe by Councilmember Bowie.

Thank you, Councilman Ruby for your leadership on that.

I just wanted to name like my support for that, and in terms of the work moving at the state legislature, for me personally, I would really like to see it be put onto our city legislative agenda too.

So that's uh another tangible action step that I believe we should push for.

Um, and just again, wanted to name like the the ways in which you have shared um the injustices and and truly the exploitation and corruption of the car store system is so real.

Um I remember when I made uh phone calls to my brother and just even found out the cost of how long, um, you know, how the cost of the phone call itself is so expensive, and to think that folks who are in prisons are paying more for daily essentials, like our bars it's they're paying more than us, clearly.

Like that's so unjust, and so there are so many ways in which we still need to improve and treat all people with dignity and respect, and like here they're humans, and to me it's my very mind-boggling, like just um, for people who clearly have decision making power over this, they can make a change, and it's very important that they do that, and for this to even still exist to this day.

Slavery in Minnesota, it is um unacceptable.

And so I I truly appreciate your leadership.

And Chantal, I want to say thank you to you because I first heard about the ending slavery um movement overall when you posted about it because this was on the ballot in California, and I believe it um it was not as successful, which is truly a shame.

So I saw the list of how many states are haven't um accomplished ending slavery yet, and I am determined to have Minnesota be on the list of actually accomplishing that.

And so thank you for um for this movement and keep up the amazing work.

I know how long it takes for us to be able to actually like even accomplish what we want to in terms of systemic change.

We know how long even it even took for us to win restore the vote, and there's still major improvements to make in that legislation, too.

And so again, keep up the amazing work, and I I believe that we will win this.

Thank you.

And we'll let Ms.

Bowie close this out.

Thank you.

Yeah, I don't have a question, but I just wanted to just echo um just highlighting your work, your leadership, your courage.

Um, this is a long-term game, it just didn't start.

You know, ending slavery was an extension of the over 400, 600 years of standing the test of time for making sure that human beings are treated um justly and human beings have um rights.

Um, when I think about the reason why I stepped up to to even run for office and be here and have representation, is because when I had my own experience, um, having my family members and my both of my parents um throughout the justice system, throughout the the state prison system, the federal um correction system, and just seeing a complete extraction, a complete extortion of human beings.

That's exactly what it is.

And I just want to say I appreciate you know you even naming this as the criminal punishment system because there's so many different ways that we can apply justice in this city and justice in this um country, um, and that this is really more so about punishment and using our laws as uh as a as a cover, right?

To continue um slavery by another name.

Um, and for some of my colleagues who want to explore and learn more, um, there's a PBS um special called Slavery by Another Name.

Uh Ava Duray also has an incredible documentary that actually been nominated um called 13th, 13.

Um, there's also a uh if you want to look at some of the the background.

I know in 2020, uh representative former representative John Leshlee, excuse me, um brought forth the uh constitutional amendment.

Um and I know uh myself and council member uh Yang when we were doing when we were advocating for restore the vote um and both serving on the restore the vote coalition.

This was something where we were like, this needs to go all the way.

Um because not only is it extracting um wealth from our communities, but it's also a wealth generator for many of those prison um towns uh here in Minnesota.

When we think about um the census and like the resources that could be coming to our our cities and our counties, that those resources are going out into those places where people are um are incarcerated.

So uh I, you know, also um plan on endorsing um this um this ballot initiative and also the legislative agenda.

Uh I'm excited to be knocking on doors and getting the word out.

I think Minnesota needs to stand the test of time and actually be the North Star state.

When I think about my family, you know, fleeing from Texas and fleeing from Mississippi, they're leaving from a legacy of slavery only to find another one.

So it's important that when we are looking at our laws that we're making sure that you know people are able to not only be well, but people are able to have safety.

And like safety, the other side of safety, means that you are able to control your body, you're able to make decisions and you're able to have your rights protected.

One of the things, and I know you covered so much in 30 minutes probably wasn't enough.

Um but one of the things I wanted to also highlight with the status change, um, we'll also protect people's rights.

Because when you're talking about being a slave, the reality of being a slave, you have no um no rights, none of them like everything is everything all of all the discriminations are legal.

And I know that was a conversation that came up uh with our tennis protections in terms of what we can actually adopt.

Um I know Minneapolis, they were able to pass the um Justice Impacted as a protected class.

Um, that is something that you know in our public safety committee uh we were able to um review, and I'm also still you know um adamant about you know us looking at that and exploring that um and looking at you know how we can have justice impact as a protected class.

So just because you've done a crime um and you have uh went through our our justice system, uh you should not be denied housing, you should not be denied employment.

Actually, those are the very essential things for you to be a contributing member of society, and um, you know, so I just want to say I appreciate it.

Um I have the lived experience, um, and I think um, you know, I'm here with you standing in solidarity.

Um I believe next week we'll probably be at Ramsey County uh workhouse um doing our Juneteenth celebration and just getting the word out and letting people know you know how the best honor and celebrate Juneteenth because the work is not done and it's still people need to be that needs to be freed.

Thank you, Miss Bowie.

Thank you all so much.

I want to echo my colleagues.

And we look forward to working together for an equitable future.

Sounds like we have some concrete next steps, and I'm really glad we got to do this as a policy session conversation.

I do want to add in one thing.

I talked about the criminalization of unhoused people and of brown and black people, but the new thing is the criminalization of immigrants, and so I want to put that like out there on the record because St.

Paul did a great job, but let's just make sure we keep doing a great job.

That is the next goal.

Peace.

Very much.

And we will uh pivot to our next topic, which is economic development and vitality.

Want to welcome up Miss Worthington, excited to have you, and uh glad that the PowerPoint is loaded.

We had some technical issues, so thank you for your patience.

Um, I understand that you uh end at 11 30 today.

Uh, and so I'm wondering if uh two options here.

I could go past eleven thirty if you can, or I could come back, and then it's entirely up to you.

Um so let me know how you'd like to proceed.

Thank you.

Why don't we do as best as we can through 11 30 and then we'll see where we're at, and we'll try to hold our questions till we get to the end of the presentation.

So this one a little a little preamble to this, if I might.

Um we did this initial project for Ramsey County in 2020, and then we were brought back to update this project in 2025.

And so what you're seeing is data that has Ramsey County's name on it, but it's also your data.

And so, yes, I can see that.

Thanks.

Thanks to my two later.

Can you see the presentation down there?

Nope.

Okay.

Okay, the same issue here.

At any rate, we all have the printout, so it'll be starting to work.

There is a video I wanted to show you, of course, right?

Um, at any rate, St.

Paul was captured in the Ramsey County work, and what I tried to do within that deck that we prepared for Ramsey County was carve out the St.

Paul specific slides so that we could have a conversation that is really more about St.

Paul this morning, but you will see Ramsey County's name all over this because they are the client.

And so that's what I'm presenting this morning.

Or I'm trying to present this morning, right?

Um, good humor is essential in public service.

Uh at any rate, um, just a little bit about me.

I worked for Ramsey County for seven years and I got to know several of you during that time.

Uh and uh it's it's really great to be here this morning and talk with you about what Urban Three does.

Urban 3 is a uh land use economics firm based in Asheville, North Carolina.

I came to Urban 3 about two and a half years ago as the COO and principal.

Um prior to that I spent about 25 years in local government.

I started as a community organizer here in St.

Paul.

This is kind of a full circle moment for me because I think in 1996 I was standing at this podium presenting to the city council at that time.

Uh at any rate, and then I worked in in local government for about 25 years, and uh primarily my role in local government was uh in economic development.

Uh and so what we're gonna show this morning, we're gonna try to show this morning, uh, but I can also just walk you through the deck as well.

Uh just looking at my computer, you can look at the printout.

Uh, is a series of slides that we did as part of a project, an analytical project on property tax and sales tax revenue for Ramsey County.

And of course, you are the beneficiary as the city of the same tax sources in terms of revenue.

And so what we do is we analyze the link between land use regulation and revenue generation.

So that's really the key takeaway today, is what we're looking at in these images is how that land use produces revenue for you so that you can provide services to your community.

Um, so I'm just gonna pull my computer out, and I'm gonna keep going.

And if and if Tim can get the story, that's awesome, thank you.

And if not, it's no problem.

We're just gonna we're gonna pinch it here.

Okay.

Sorry for the technical difficulties.

I'm not sure why.

You know, we are having.

Had to happen sooner or later.

I present all over the country, so um right.

Oh, great.

Wonderful.

Thank you, Tim.

And it's just the uh but the keyboard.

Uh I grew up in Lansing, Michigan.

I'm a rust belt kid in a community that uh has lost about 100,000 in population over my lifetime.

Uh, but I've lived longer in St.

Paul now than I ever lived in Lansing, so uh I'm really kind of a St.

Paul kid now.

My dad worked for the city of Lansing, so I kind of have it in my blood.

I was a I was a schoolhouse rock freak when I was a little kid, and I really believe that knowledge is power.

Um I loved what Chantel and her um partners talked about this morning because knowing your history is so important in informing your policy future, right?

And I was a geek about the yearbook and about my Atlas and my Globe.

Uh these are the communities I worked for throughout the Metro.

My last gig in local government was long-range planning director in Minneapolis, where I led the 2040 plan, which you may have some familiarity with.

All right, so I'm gonna start with this video, which I think is a great primer on what Urban 3 does.

That's just a couple minutes.

We need sound on this.

Various kinds of housing affect a city's budget differently, but zoning policies often limit the range of housing options.

Over time, this can lead to growth patterns that are more expensive for cities to maintain.

At Urban 3, we analyze housing through the lens of economic productivity based on how much value a property generates per acre of land it takes up.

It's like how you measure the efficiency of a car.

We don't measure it in miles per tank because different cars have different sized tanks.

Instead, efficiency is measured in miles per gallon.

We measure the economic efficiency of land in dollars per acre for the same reason.

These two adjacent neighborhoods have different levels of economic productivity.

Compared to the nearby lower density development, Trilluth produces four times the value on a per acre basis, thanks to its higher density.

Between 1940 and 2020, Springfield, Missouri's land area expanded through annexation much faster than its population grew, causing the length of road per resident to more than double.

When growth requires extra infrastructure, like longer roads, new utility lines, and sewer extensions, it can increase municipal costs compared to more compact development.

This is a spectrum from undeveloped land to densely developed land showing revenues and costs.

The undeveloped parcels don't provide much revenue, but they also have low costs, providing a small surplus.

Low density residential areas are often challenging for cities to balance fiscally because their costs can outpace revenues.

While densely urbanized places have high costs, they have even higher revenues, so they are net positive.

We mapped Springfield's infrastructure costs and tax revenues.

The net positive land is black and the net negative land is red.

In places where residential development is net positive, it tends to have a higher density.

Mixed use buildings, townhomes, missing middle, and multifamily housing can be economically self-sustaining, which is why communities benefit from having the option to build them.

So what is a city?

Well, a city is, as you know, uh it starts out as sort of raw land, and then you put your fingerprints on it, right?

You regulate land use, you pass zoning, you impose all kinds of different regulations on it, and you create the city that we see today.

St.

Paul is not in an annexation position, right?

You have uh limited boundaries, and so you have a finite amount of land to develop.

And so I would argue it's even more important for a city like St.

Paul to think about it through the land uh land production lens uh than even a city like Springfield, Missouri, which is actively annexing property around it, right?

And uh an example I'm gonna show you here in St.

Paul and in Ramsey County is the Walmart in Roseville, which is a kind of atypical Walmart.

It sits on 19 acres, which is small for a Walmart, usually they're about 25 acres, and the Osborne 370 building, which I know you're all familiar with, St.

Paul's living room.

And you can see that that Osborne building is generating about 1,600 jobs per acre, but it's also generating a lot more property tax.

So some of this kind of feels like scary math.

Uh I promise that it won't be uh terrifying.

This is what the taxable value per acre looks like in Asheville, North Carolina, where we're based.

And you can see the downtown kind of popping off the map.

If I go back, you can see the Biltmore estate, which is the country's largest single family home.

Uh, and it doesn't really register in the value per acre because it's a giant 3,000-acre parcel with one home on it.

So it's extremely unproductive, all right.

So let's get into your tax system.

Now you do this all day long, but I think it's important to ground uh this conversation in the sources of your revenue and how that revenue is generated.

So we're just gonna walk through Minnesota's tax system, which by the way is the most complex tax system in the nation.

And this is primarily because of the 1970s Minnesota miracle, which created uh the local government aid, fiscal disparities, all the things that St.

Paul and your larger city brethren uh benefit from today.

But this is what it looks like when you break down uh the tax bill in Minnesota.

And this is a commercial tax bill example.

There's only a few states in the union where commercial property is taxed at a higher class rate than residential property, but Minnesota is one of them.

And you can see that there's a substantial difference.

If you look back at that residential tax bill, non-homesteaded versus a homesteaded uh property, you can see there's a substantial difference.

So homestead is an important element of your tax system.

And this is just the quick roll up.

This is where your dollar goes in St.

Paul when you pay taxes.

You have almost equal distribution between the city and the county, which by the way is unusual in the United States.

Usually one of the entities, one of the jurisdictions, takes a higher percentage of that tax dollar than the other.

This is the budget for Ramsey County, which we just um, and I'm sorry, it did not translate well to the PowerPoint.

My apologies, but it should be clear on your slides.

Um, but this is what we we measured.

We measured property and sales tax.

This is a butterfly chart or a Sankey chart that just shows the inflow and outflow of revenues.

And then we talked a little bit about uh this local government aid system that was established in 1972.

It's really the uh the intention behind it is to compensate cities with older housing stock with an aging population, so fewer children, uh, population decline, uh, and the amount of commercial industrial or utility properties.

And St.

Paul, unfortunately, is the winner in that because you have most a lot of property in the city that is owned by the state of Minnesota, and you also have a lot of commercial industrial and utility properties within the city.

This is the total assessed value for Ramsey County, and so St.

Paul is within this measurement.

And we can see downtown St.

Paul here, Rosedale Mall, which you're probably familiar with, the 3M headquarters.

This is the value per acre.

So now we're looking at the data from Ramsey County Assessor's Office, and we're seeing it expressed as value per acre.

This is a way to level and make that revenue picture more consistent across different land uses.

This is a quick scan of the county as a whole.

And this is the productivity ratio.

This is the measurement that we apply that's really based on the area and the revenue it's generating.

So this is the way the productivity ratio works.

Here in downtown in St.

Paul, you have about 29% of your, again, these are, I'm sorry, the tags are off because of the PowerPoint.

You have about 29% of your area, which is non-taxable.

I'm sorry, 47%.

And your taxable value is 1.6 times greater than the amount of county area that the city takes up.

What we like to see is a number closer to this.

So this is downtown compared to the city, 5.2%, and this is downtown compared to the county as a whole.

I mentioned earlier that we did this math for you.

This is Minneapolis, by the way, in case you're curious what Minneapolis does with regard to Hennepin County.

So Minneapolis is a lot more productive.

But back in 2020, when we did this study, you were actually closer to 13% in terms of that ratio.

So COVID was hard on St.

Paul.

I think y'all know this, but I'm just gonna say it out loud.

This is the taxable versus exempt look at St.

Paul in Ramsey County, and you can see a lot of the county is exempt.

One thing that's interesting in this model that we have not seen in other jurisdictions in the United States, and we've worked in 46 of the 50 states in two Canadian provinces, is we have not seen this amount of right-of-way.

The right-of-way that Minneapolis and St.

Paul have within their boundaries is really substantial and significant in terms of the impact on your revenue generation.

And I'm just going to zip through these pretty quickly.

This is your taxable versus exempt for just the city.

Only 43% of your land area is taxable.

You are a capital city, and we also looked at downtown.

Downtown is 33% exempt, and 38% right-of-way.

Significant amount of right away in your downtown, probably one of the highest numbers we've seen in the U.S.

This is Hennepin by contrast.

Hennepin is not a fully developed community, though.

So this is like comparing Cumquats to Apples, okay?

Because Hennepin County is still considered primarily a rural county, because most of the western part of the county is not developed.

Despite the fact that it has Minneapolis, the largest city in the state, most of its cities are smaller and there's less development to the west.

So we wanted to call out a couple of capital comparisons for you just so you could see some of your brothers and sisters throughout the United States and what they're generating.

So about 44% of your area in the downtown is exempt.

In Providence, Rhode Island, it's about 40%.

In Tallahassee, it's 39%.

And there's the roll-up side by side.

So St.

Paul is one of the most tax-exempt capital cities we've seen in the United States.

Again, this is just Hennepin and Ramsey, comparing the two counties.

You can see what's happening here.

Ramsey County is the only fully urbanized county in the state.

Okay, so you are a fully urbanized part of the MSA.

This was our work in 2020, and I want I'm gonna go through these pretty quickly, but what you're gonna see here visually is growth within the county value per acre.

So that's 2025.

I'll go back.

You can see the purple mountain there is really climbing.

And look at all the growth further out in the county.

White Bear Lake, Roseville, Little Canada, North St.

Paul.

And I'm gonna pick on a couple of these.

Galtier Towers is the peak parcel within the county.

That is in downtown St.

Paul.

That is a condominium building.

And these are the comparisons between 2020 and 2025 and your value per acre.

So as a whole, Ramsey County grew in terms of revenue generation in that five-year period of COVID.

And the big game changer in that value growth, back in 2020, it was 13.2 times greater than the amount of county area it took up, your downtown.

Today it's 8.3 times.

You lost ground primarily through properties becoming exempt in the downtown.

And so we wanted to kind of dig into that a little bit.

Why did that happen?

So that's the value decrease, about 2% value decrease in a five year period.

That looks like this when you look at downtown North St.

Paul.

So North St.

Paul, very small community, but it has an actual downtown.

It has like a main street.

And what they did was they took two parcels and redeveloped them.

They had an exempt city owned parcel, and they did a redevelopment called the Article Number 7 apartments.

This is what it looked like.

It added 91 million in in value per acre to the county as a whole in that five-year period.

Really substantial.

This was the this was what popped off the map at us.

This was the biggest chunk of value growth we saw in the county.

This is what downtown did in that period.

You can see all the parcels that have a dark outline around them, those are parcels that lost value in the last five years.

Now, some of this we know was about a large property owner, there was some market impact.

We've seen a lot of economic impacts of COVID, right?

So there's a lot of different issues here.

But one of the bigger issues is really how much of that property went exempt in that period.

And some of it is reflected here.

And this is the exemption piece.

So a 2% increase in exempt property in the downtown in that five year period.

And if you can't manage it, if you can't measure it, you can't manage it.

That's what Michael Bloomberg used to say.

These are quick comparisons out in the county in municipalities, and just showing kind of that taxable value per acre in the suburbs.

I'll zip through these really quickly.

These are just some of the more productive uses.

And looking at that value per acre comparison in North St.

Paul in that two-year period again.

I want to quickly talk about parking.

Downtown St.

Paul has a lot of parking and a lot of structured parking.

Okay.

And so one of the things that we know about parking is that parking tends to be a lagging indicator in terms of revenue generation, right?

Because you tax it differently per space or per building footprint.

And the more of it that you add that is not structured.

So throughout the city, if you think about like large parking lots like the Sears parking lot or the target on University Avenue, this is what happens over time when you add land to a development and subtract land.

Now the target on university is a good example of this because when that was built, which is in my neighborhood, they decided to actually put parking on University Avenue instead of putting some kind of productive use there, like apartments or another commercial block, right?

And so what they did was they diluted the value of that overall parcel.

You've got a very large building in a lot of parking, okay?

So it's just an example here of the big box store, it could be any big box store, it could be Minards, right?

This is what it looks like in real time in the model.

This is the Badness Heights Walmart and the Roseville Walmart.

Now, the big difference here is that Roseville regulated the parking for that Walmart very strictly, and they did not allow Walmart to build as much parking as they wanted to.

So that's just a regulatory issue.

Every city has the ability to do that.

This is a just a quick vignette about missing middle housing.

St.

Paul is quite rich in missing middle housing.

Um St.

Paul continued to build missing middle units even when other cities stopped.

And so we have a lot of these, we have a lot of single-family homes, of course, but we also have a lot of these missing middle residential parcels, and some of them are quite old, like the one in the far lower right, and then some of them are brand new, like that triplex on St.

Paul or on Grand Avenue.

And then we've got a lot of multifamily residential throughout the county, but a couple of these are specific to Maplewood Roseville, White Burr Lake.

These are the downtown and Grand Avenue examples in your in your data.

And then you've got these, some of these are newer, like the Arlo and the Penn Field, and landmark is a recent conversion, as you know, but the Lowry Building has been a condominium building for I'm guessing at least 20 years, if not longer.

This is the roll-up for you, so this is the value per acre for residential properties throughout the county.

We're gonna look at a couple of commercial uses.

So this is the Costco in Maplewood and the Target in Shoreview.

The big difference here is Costco has gas and liquor on this site, and they have a lot more parking.

So that's just a regulatory issue.

Maplewood allowed them to bring in gas at that site and have a liquor store, and it necessitated a little more parking.

The other thing we like to pick on is malls.

Malls are really interesting land use because they take up a lot of land, usually 40 to 50 acres, and they're typically not terribly productive.

So we compared Maplewood to Rosedale and Harmar to Rosedale.

You might have seen recently that Harmar is going to be redeveloped.

So this is kind of an interesting thing.

It's generating about 1.2 million per acre, Rosedale about 1.9 million per acre.

But this is the OG.

So South Dale was the first indoor mall in the United States.

What's really interesting about Southdale as a comparison point is that it's pulling about 3.1 million.

Sorry, the tag is off here.

It's pulling about 3.1 million per acre now.

Why is that?

Well, primarily because of the development of the outlots.

So they had a lot of parking at Southdale, and they said we don't need all that parking.

Nobody ever parks out there, so we're gonna build housing, hotel, commercial uses, and that's what it looks like in the model.

There's a couple other shopping centers, just want to draw your attention to.

You probably drive by these all the time.

They're out in the suburbs.

We've got University Avenue, well represented here, my neighborhood, North St.

Paul, and then parts of St.

Paul, like Selby Avenue and Grand Avenue here.

So one thing I want to draw your attention to here is that these are some of the most productive parcels in the Ramsey County model.

And this is the most productive street in the Ramsey County model.

I call this the Patagonia to Fratellone block of Grand Avenue.

So if you ever go over there and you eat at you know French Meadow or you go into Fratellone's to get something, know that you're shopping in one of the most productive parts of St.

Paul in terms of property tax generation and value per acre.

These are your downtown office buildings, still very respectable in terms of their revenue generation and value per acre.

Osborne 370 is very, very potent.

And then the Fitzpatrick, which is a new building for you because it was vacant and uh really underutilized for many years, and that's come back on market, and that is a really uh really shiny example of that compact footprint and downtown development.

The other one I just wanted to draw your attention to are what I call the Times Golden Time Restaurant and Golden Time Cafe.

If you live in St.

Paul, these are institutions, these are beloved members of our community, these are incredibly productive land uses within St.

Paul.

Um short shorthand advice here is do lots more of this.

When you have infill parcels, do the times.

Um it's incredibly productive for you, but it also, these are great because they also have housing and commercial uses.

So they're providing an asset to the community and then providing stable housing to the community.

So you get a twofer on those.

The other one I wanted to draw your attention to is kind of an oddball, and it's in the lower left here, the apartments at Dale and St.

Paul.

We call them apartments.

Really, this is a single family lot, and we've counted four units on this lot.

That's remarkable in St.

Paul.

You don't see that very often.

So whatever you did from a regulatory standpoint here, we think you should do a lot more of it.

It was very it's very productive for you.

Look at that, it's pulling 6.6 million per acre.

These are your peak parcels, they're all in downtown.

No surprise there.

They're all residential.

This is a little atypical in America.

We usually see some commercial buildings in those peak parcels.

Um, your residential footprint in downtown is very strong.

So that's just something for you to consider as you move forward.

But remember, that's taxed at half the class rate of commercial properties.

So something to factor in.

And then you've got a bunch of these lasting value, we called lasting value parcels, the Hams Building built about 1920, pulling 6.6 million.

That is right now being converted to housing.

You've got the Farwell Osmond Kirk warehouse, which is artist loft, and has been since we think about the 1970s.

It's still incredibly productive.

It has no off-street parking.

And then this is North St.

Paul's Main Street, and you can see what's happening there.

Um, that little commercial building pulling 8.3 million per acre.

I'm gonna zip through these really quickly, but the commerce building right across the street here pulls about 14.1 million per acre, the same as the Walmart, but it sits on.2 acres.

So think about that compact development and how much more productive it is for you as a city than building a Walmart or a Sears or a Target or Home Depot, right?

The Golden Time, 6.7 million.

And this is the roll-up of value per acre examples by building types.

So these are just different building types, your single-family home in the upper left and your very dense compact development on the lower right.

That's what it looks like in the chart.

So incredibly productive multifamily uses.

And you know, that that commercial use right next to it is the last Class A office building built in downtown.

And it was built in the late 1990s, I think.

Because I was, I think I was working in Falcon Heights at that time.

Really quick value per acre, just looking at 3M and that single-family home, the gateway town homes, a very classic kind of typology, the OASIS, which just came on online about two years ago in the Gultier, which has been here since the 80s.

And then wanting to dig a little bit into the Ramsey County model and just kind of look at land value per acre.

For you, what we looked at was a couple of parcels that we found really interesting.

So these are right next to each other on Grand Avenue.

These are very similar buildings.

They're probably sixes, they might be twelves, it's a little hard to tell, but they're classic St.

Paul Pullman style apartment.

Um the one on the left, pulling under under a million an acre, but the one on the right pulling 2.2 million.

This is just a note for your assessor, right?

There's something amiss here in terms of how these are being evaluated.

And then we also found these, and you sorry you can't see this, but 722 grand is 0.3 million per acre, 0.03 million per acre, and the the coconut tie restaurant is 1.8 million per acre.

So again, looking at commercial versus residential here, just to show you kind of the difference.

We also looked at your sales tax, and as you know, um sales taxes become a really important revenue source for St.

Paul going forward and for Ramsey County.

And so you collected in 2025 about 119 million in the county for sales tax, and so we mapped that across the county, but you can see really where things are productive is down here in St.

Paul.

That's the really productive area.

This is property tax revenue per acre, that's sales tax revenue per acre.

We were a little surprised Rosedale wasn't as productive as we thought it would be.

Grand Avenue, Selby Avenue, University Avenue, much more productive, okay.

And this is what it looks like layered on top.

So from a revenue standpoint, 22% of it's coming from sales tax, 78% from property tax.

You're not as reliant on property as you were, like when I worked for the county, which is good.

Um, and we compared Harmar and the Patagonia to Fratellone block.

That Grand Avenue block just kills it in every single model that we've looked at, just incredibly productive.

Property tax and sales tax.

So Harmar is a giant land use, 42 acres.

Think about that from uh from the standpoint of redevelopment potential.

We also mapped some growth projections.

So there's three sites that Ramsey County asked us to look at.

And the first was, and we these were the different types of uses that we uh used to calculate the productivity of these parcels.

So these are actual uses within your model, and some of these probably look familiar to you, like the one uh for missing middle residential, which is that laurel block that we just talked about, and then the Grand Avenue block.

Um, and you can see this is what we looked at.

So this is kind of an average roll-up on these uses in terms of tax revenue generation.

So the three sites we looked at were Les Bullstead golf course, so this is the one owned by the University on Larpender Avenue.

You're probably familiar with that.

We looked at the Maplewood campus, uh which Ramsey County owns, and then we looked at downtown St.

Paul, and we used the Gensler study that you um, I think the downtown alliance uh got that study, and so that's the source of these three projections, these economic projections.

This is the golf course.

Right now it's vacant, it's completely exempt.

The university is selling it, and we we projected about a six million dollar uh value per acre on this.

Now it's about 142 developable acres.

So this will be a significant revenue source for the city of Falcon Heights.

Probably for the metro as a whole, though, because in terms of things like other assets that are created there, like shopping.

And these are the types of uses that we put on that site as a projection.

So this is just a theoretical scenario.

Okay.

Then we looked at the Gensler study, we looked at gallery and first national, and we estimated an increase up to about 18 million for those sites in terms of growth projections in terms of revenue value per acre.

And then we looked at um, finally we looked at the Maplewood campus.

So this is the Aldrich Arena.

Uh, this is not the golf course.

So just to kind of orient ourselves to this.

So it's the arena, the parks uh facility, the barn, that's what's in this area.

And this was what we looked at.

It's right now exempt, of course, it's government-owned, an increase of seven and a half million projected to that site.

So currently it would look like this, and with all those redevelopments here, it would look like that.

So, pretty significant growth into I'm sorry, went too fast through that.

Um, pretty significant growth in terms of revenue generation and value per acre over time.

These are just three sites.

There are endless numbers of sites throughout the county that this could happen with.

So I'm in the home stretch here.

Good news.

Um, so now what?

I think this is kind of the question.

You've seen a lot of data.

I have kind of inundated you with visuals.

Um, we like to recommend that you look for those examples of productive places and replicate them.

So you've got a couple of examples here.

The article number seven apartments in North St.

Paul, you can do something like that here.

Um, you can look at those small buildings, and all of the revenue they're generating is incredible in terms of productivity.

Um, the times are uh just just great poster children for this type of development.

Know where your assets are.

Uh one of the things we did for Evanston, Illinois was we looked at all those city-owned assets, and we determined where they had the opportunity to do more development.

And this is what we came up with.

I'm just gonna go through these quickly.

But we looked at all their different public assets, so some of those were parks and greenways.

They had a lot of parking, they had a lot of public works buildings, they had some open space and some vacant space.

We uh very conservatively estimated they could add about 57 million in value by developing some of that property, not all of it, some of it.

And I know you had a study, an RFP for a study out for transit oriented development just recently.

Um, so that's the kind of thing that that will show you.

Um, you should also leverage those public assets.

This was a transportation study we did for Indianapolis for their MPO, and we looked at uh the BRT line and the blue line, so they had two lines crossing, and what we did was we analyzed all the land use around that to see what was vacant, what had a building on it, what was over one story, or a civic use, and what was just a one-story.

All those one-story buildings are amazing opportunities to leverage that bus rapid transit investment, and that's what Indianapolis has done.

They have reoriented their zoning to reflect this leveraging opportunity, right?

That infrastructure is there.

How are you utilizing it?

You're not building new infrastructure, it's already there.

How can you leverage it for better development in the future?

And these were the station areas that we looked at, and this were just some projections that we did on these specific station areas to show what could happen in these areas.

Again, you could do the same thing on the green line, you could do the same thing on the Snelling BRT line, on the orange line, you have a lot of TOD investments.

We estimated that those four stops could create $120 million in new value for the city.

Indianapolis is a rust belt city.

St.

Paul is not a rust belt city.

Indianapolis needs that revenue.

So that was part of their conversation internally.

You've got municipal partners you can work with.

It just so happens that your municipal partners own a lot of the downtown real estate.

And they understand that, and it seems that they are starting to shift their policy direction on that.

So that's a really important opportunity.

Remember that every time you put a street in, it's forever.

Um I know Kellogg out here, which is not a street, it's a bridge, right?

This is a real challenging right-of-way that you own and have to maintain.

And you're doing it right now, and it's looking great, but that's a significant investment that you're making.

The river river bluff site, which is sitting vacant, that represents a really important opportunity for the city and the county in terms of revenue generation.

So think about those rights of way.

Maybe you want to consider talking with Mindot.

You know, they own a lot of your real estate.

There's a really interesting conversation to be had there.

If you haven't read Chuck Morone's books, Strong Towns, this is the original, and then Confessions of a Recovery Engineer, we highly recommend these.

And we ask you to please do the math.

Math does not lie.

Data is objective, right?

And so it's one way to position a better discussion for better outcomes.

Appreciate your time this morning.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Ms.

Worthington.

I've been doing the math on your uh time per slides, and it is pretty incredible.

So I think in terms of productivity of a presentation, that is at the time, that would be the purple bar going on.

I I great.

I hit the purple mountain, awesome.

We do have a few more minutes.

I have a couple questions, and I turn to my colleagues.

I'm sure there's a lot of questions based on what you shared.

Um just very straightforward question I have is, and I think the big takeaway I am taking away is be dense, as much density as possible and a specific kind of density, multiple uses that you're talking about.

Um I'm wondering if you can explain you mentioned that the loss of value downtown had to do with more parcels becoming tax exempt.

And I'm wondering if you can be specific about how that happened, because I'm trying to remember like which parcels went from exempt taxable to exempt.

And then my second question, which is a broader one, is when you say your first recommendation was find what works and do more of it.

And so I think about that really productive block on grand you're talking about.

One of the challenges, I'm curious how we do more of it.

Because I think it's easy to say, do more of it.

Um, because normally what happens is that we have a we have a proposal for a use for a development, and it's not like we have a bunch of different proposals for that block at the same time.

We have a buyer who is proposing to do a thing, and we don't have the capacity, it's sort of sometimes we don't have yes or no over it at all, um, but often it's if we do have yes or no, it's this particular use or the other use, and this is more productive than what it was, but maybe it's not as productive as it could be, right?

And short of actually building it ourselves, I guess I'm wondering when you say build do more of this thing, how that actually works.

Yeah, a couple of thoughts before I dive into that.

Um, I think it's important to build compactly where you can.

That doesn't always mean you have to build density everywhere.

It means you have to build enough density to rebalance your land use portfolio, right?

Think about this like your retirement account.

How are you invested in terms of your land use regulation?

So do enough of it that you're balanced.

You don't have to do it everywhere.

This doesn't have to become blade runner, right?

To use an example.

Um, it, but it does need to have enough compact development to carry revenue, right?

And and the biggest, actually, the biggest takeaway is the amount of tax exempt property you have as a city, which is not unusual for capital cities, but I think this it's interesting.

This has started a conversation, especially at the legislative level, about the impact that the state of Minnesota has on communities and especially St.

Paul.

And I think that's the biggest takeaway for us as we looked at your model.

And again, we've worked in states all over the nation, so rarely do we see a city with that much tax exempt property.

You are an outlier in that way.

Um getting back to your question about how you do more of that, I think you do that by regulating it in advance of redevelopment.

And so your regulation is really crucial here.

Um, I'll give you an example of something that I think is really successful in terms of redevelopment within the green line corridor.

And that is the I'm gonna call these liner parcels at Raymond.

So you had a commercial block there that looks just like the Patagonia block on Grand Avenue, and what happened was there was a vacant parking lot behind it, and the city allowed a developer to build a building behind that.

Okay, and this was back in, I want to say this is back in the early 2000s, that conversation started because I was a community organizer in that neighborhood at the time, and the conversation really got bogged down in this discussion around how much how much right does a developer have to come in and build on property they own, right?

And what happened was over time, the development community made a really good argument about those liner parcels, and it resulted in thousands of units of housing in that area adjacent to the light rail.

Okay, so that's one example.

So I'm gonna file that under development by right.

When you come in as a city and you regulate that land use appropriately, you will drive the market in the direction you want it to go in.

And I think the Green Line is a great example of hits and misses.

So one of the conversations that was had at the time the Green Line opened in 2014 was how much height should we allow in the corridor?

And the community of which I live in really had a big discussion about that.

And there was a lot of discussions that centered around equity and about return on investment and about leveraging the light rail line.

But what happened was the city regulated things in one part of the corridor differently than in the other part of the corridor.

And if you drive from the city limit at 280, roughly, all the way to the capital, you can see this visually very clearly what happened here.

On the far western end of the avenue, you have higher rise development, you have more dense development, that's more productive.

On the end, closer to Frogtown and the Capitol Precinct, you have lower scale development and you have less development happening.

That's because the market is not going to respond to that type of regulation because that regulation is just a stick built regulation.

So all you can build is a five over one in those areas east.

In the areas to the west, you can build concrete and steel.

That's a different conversation.

You're gonna get more compact development, you're gonna get higher unit count, right?

And you're gonna get better leverage on that light rail investment.

The same applies to Snelling Avenue, right?

Any BRT investment.

You've seen that on Snelling in Highland Park and Matt Groveland.

You've seen it with the Whole Foods and all of the apartments that were built, um kind of midway down the Snelling Corridor to the south.

And so that those are just real world examples.

Like we could drive around and I could point them out to you.

Um, and all of those parcels are more productive in terms of revenue generation for the city, but more importantly, from a policy standpoint, they generate more housing units, and the city is severely lagging in its housing unit production.

So that's my I guess my my opinion, my informed opinion as someone who did economic development is regulate by right, alleviate some of the entitlement burden for developers.

Developers are typically taking two to four percent off of a project right now, and when they do, some of them don't even break even.

So this is the real challenge about actually getting housing built in this market, is that with labor and with construction costs, it's really expensive.

Y'all know this, and I think this is where if you have a two-year entitlement process, you're adding costs onto that production of that housing.

So that's just something to consider.

Um, the other thing uh that I would just suggest is looking at your parking minimums.

A lot of the housing that you have in the city works pretty well without off-street parking.

It's not a panacea, but you you have options.

You have a really robust transit system on University Avenue now.

And um, so that's that's again that's an asset you have.

You should be leveraging.

Thank you.

Other questions from my colleagues?

I don't have questions, but also I just want to say um council president, thank you so much for um having this.

Um, and also thank you.

I referenced uh Stelby Avenue and Grand Avenue and even Golden Time, which is a beloved um community institution and business, and I just want to say kudos to Rondo COT and also the uh the Summer University Planning Council and know some of the previous councils before uh worked really hard to make sure that we were able to have density on Selby, and as you can see today, uh, due to you know our city planners, you know, it really takes that forward thinking.

Um but also I love the question that you asked uh President Naker because I I wrestle with that as well, especially with dealing with a lot of the blight that we're seeing at uh on midway and the question the the overall question around the green line is like did it actually did we did did did the neighborhood leverage the opportunity, right?

Um, and that's still is an open um uh conversation.

Uh but uh I just I want to love to uh follow up with you, especially you know, what some of the sites that's taking place um on university, also on Selby Avenue, and just looking at ways that we could have more productivity um on that site um and also just no I think um as a as a council member you know we're always trying to leverage you know relationships and build and and attract people to invest here in St.

Paul um but there's also that other underlying current of like the zoning laws and the regulations right that takes a whole other type of will health of understanding um and even just what of our what are our financing tools um so I was definitely just want to say kudos thank you for this presentation very productive and um thank you for highlighting going I'll make sure that Ronald COT gets the message yeah it's a treasure in in more ways than one right and I think that's uh we were really pleasantly surprised to see that and I s I actually directed our analysts to them because I said I have a sneaking suspicion these are really productive and yeah they kind of blew us away so um it's a win win for sure uh happy to chat with you anytime council member and just uh let me know and Councilmember Naker I I didn't answer your question about what happened in terms of tax exemption downtown some of that and we have we have yet to map this for the county they've asked us to follow up on this some of that we think was um 4D properties that came online in that five year period and again this is the conversation that you all need to have as a council and have all the time about the values that you have right and so I know this council values housing and values affordability and that may mean you have to leave some things on the table when you do that.

And so those parcels are not as productive because of the exemptions that they get through the L IRC program at the state level but those have great value to the community in terms of providing affordable housing in the community so this is the balancing act you have to do in some areas you can do more and you can do more market rate and that helps to offset the affordability issue right and so again it's that portfolio view that's how I would uh describe it.

Thank you Ms.

Arlington um I want to give full credit by the way to the Word for office that brought this forward this is um not not me so I don't want to take credit that wasn't mine but I agree with you this has been a super super productive presentation to use your words we are a little bit past time I want to look to my colleagues to see if there's any final thoughts or questions otherwise Ms.

Worthington thank you so much I think you will be getting some follow ups from this room appreciate your patience with us this morning and uh with that we are adjourned.

Thank you.

That is so interesting.

So here's the other thing I think vida, con los que simbolizamos