The St.

Paul City Council Policy Committee to order.

Roll call, please.

Um, Chair Kim.

Um, Councilmember Cam.

Sorry, here.

Councilmember Young here.

Councilmember Johnson.

Is she excused?

Not that I know of.

Absolutely.

Councilmember Coleman.

Here.

Councilmember Jose.

Here.

Councilmember Bowie?

Here.

Um, all absent except for one is um all present except for one absent.

Six present, one absent.

Good morning, everyone.

We have three topics in front of us.

We have thirty minutes for each.

I'm going to keep us running on pretty tight timeline because each of them is is pretty substantive.

So I'll turn things over for our first item to Vice President Yang.

Thank you, Council President.

I um really excited for our first topic here.

It's about a discussion regarding uh potential change for our council member positions to go full-time and also um have a salary adjustment too, which I believe are items that are long overdue.

Um, I do want to say thank you to my colleagues on the council here for your willingness to just engage in the conversation here for your support really for the changes that we envisioned for this body as a whole.

This is a conversation that I've been having, not only with you all, but even my former colleagues, and it started five years ago, really close to when I came onto the council here.

And I just wanted to share a bit of context that prior to me being on the council, I was a former union steward when I worked at Take Action Minnesota, did a lot of community organizing, especially in fighting for labor rights, for workers' rights, and really to improve the economic status and just conditions for workers overall.

That's something I care deeply about about and what really brought me into community organizing work in the first place, knowing that even my own parents and people who look like me who are immigrants, um, you know, people who are from immigrant and refugee communities or um you know who are just from marginalized communities, they experience so much injustices when it comes to the workplace.

And so that really spurred this interest that I had um, you know, over almost 10 years ago to to begin this work.

And when I came into the council here, I knew that it was really important for me to to carry that spirit with me and keep fighting for our work, all workers across our city.

And then I also recognize too that it was really important for us, you know, for me as a council member to be an advocate for myself, knowing that we don't have anybody who would actually have conversations about our salaries, about whether our part-time, officially part-time position here, which we know is not part-time at all.

And um, it really would be a full-time position.

Yeah, how how important it is for us to be pushing for that and having conversations to make sure that not just our current body here but future councils who I believe will continue to be even more diverse, will have even younger people serving on it, and people who are growing their families, similar to me too.

That's the stage that I'm in in my life, that they can continue to do this work and that they don't have to think about hey, am I how am I gonna be able to have bring in more income into my household if I ever get married, have more kids.

How do I make sure that I do just this job alone and can really focus on this rather than having to think about how I can get a part-time position or even some side gigs as well?

Um, and so to me, those are um uh many, these are the many reasons why I started having this conversation five years ago with my colleagues at the time.

Um, and I just wanted to really say thank you to um our chief policy officer, Tim, who has been working really hard with my office on this in terms of our council pod who led in the conversations here.

I want to extend a my gratitude to the Ward 2 office, Ward 5 office, Council President U and Councilmember Kim for being a part of that pod with me.

And recently um we had switched you, council president out for councilmember Johnson to be a part of the pod here.

Uh, thank you, Jay, as well.

Our director, our council director, who's been in these conversations with me and also my staff, pool, legislative aides, and I also want to give a special thanks to Minneapolis Council members Robin Wensley and Jeff's Jason Chavez, along with their staff who have been very instrumental in being, you know, being partners and just sharing with us what are they doing in Minneapolis that is much much more sustainable than us here in St.

Paul.

And so I really look to them as a model because I believe that they are many, many steps ahead when it comes to actually having a structure in place and institutionalizing practices within their city government to make sure that they're having conversations and and just systems in place that allow for them to get comparable pay to city government similar to their city, and also um making sure that those adjustments are routine as well, um, so that they don't have to have this conversation 20 years down the road, 15 years down the road.

And so those are the things that I want to uh accomplish with this.

And um, I am the council member who's bringing this forward and and taking lead on this in partnership with um of our colleagues, and I just wanted to name like how important this is to me.

Um, and so I will I will uh save some of my comments for the very end.

And there are just really, really great.

Um, it's there's really great information in the presentation here.

A lot of it that we again have learned um and taken as inspiration from Minneapolis.

And so uh Jay, I want to say thank you for for doing the presentation today.

I know that Tim had to be out and um for in emergency or uh for bereavement leave, and so I I really appreciate you just willing to take on the role here in doing the presentation.

Thank you, Council President and Council members, Councilmember Yang.

I'm happy to be here and um uh it's a good segue because I do want to acknowledge uh that much of the work reflected in the presentation was developed by by Tim Greenfield who's away this week due to a family loss.

Um but I'm happy to step in and pinch hit for him.

Again, my name is Jay Wilms.

I'm the director of council operations.

Uh so the goal of today's presentation is to discuss uh three things, and that's the reason for the proposed change, the status quo and legal constraints, uh and then the pathway or pathways forward.