Speaker numbers apply only to this recording. Names come from transcript evidence. “Possibly” marks uncertain attribution.
The Budget Committee convened at 10:00 AM on October 14, 2026, to review the 2027 budget proposals for the Office of Financial Services (OFS), including the debt proposal and Capital Improvement Budget (CIB). Presentations were led by Director Joe Harney, Climate Action Coordinator Liz Boyer, City Treasurer Neil Younghands, and Budget Analyst Michelle Blackcoe Woods, with additional input from Assistant Mayor Baker. Discussions covered climate investments, the sunset of the electric car share program, debt service fund increases, sales tax allocation for the arena complex, and CIB community proposals.
Roll call, please. Vice Chair Yang. Councilmember Bowie. Councilmember Coleman. Councilmember Kim. Here. Councilmember Jost. Here. Council President Maker. Here. Chair Johnson? Here. Thank you. We have four present. Three absent, one being excused, being council member. I'm sorry. Vice Chair Yang. Thank you. We expect the other two consequences to show up shortly as we are transitioning back here from our earlier council meeting that was off site. So we will get started just because there's a lot of different things to get through today with the Office of Financial Services, and we have a pretty robust time clock calendar to keep us all in alignment. First, we'll do the just overall departmental Office of Financial Services General Budget. So welcome, Director Harney. Chair Johnson, members of the budget committee. My name is Joe Harney. I'm the director of the Office of Financial Services. To begin with the agenda today, uh Chair Johnson, you alluded to it. There is a lot, and we'll have multiple OFS staff come up for component parts, that being Miss Boyer for the Climate Action Plan implementation, uh Mr. Youngens for the debt and star proposals, and then Ms. Botco Woods for the CIB budget proposal for 2027. And then I'll wrap it up again for uh general government accounts uh discussion at the end of the presentation. To begin from the jump, uh here for you is the executive summary for the Office of Financial Services. Our mission is to champion the financial health of the city and its residents while facilitating organizational effectiveness. In 27, our goals are stated to be investing in payroll and benefits administration to alleviate alleviate citywide pressures and also to prioritize deferred maintenance to address the backlog of city repairs. Um that's manifested in some of the changes from 2026, which includes the addition of an accountant position to support citywide payroll and benefits administration. Um you all heard from the St. Paul Police Department in their presentation to you regarding the transfer of events and festivals funding to that department. It will show up here, but it will be on net to the entire city budget, uh, a net zero change. Here is the uh organizational chart for the uh Office of Financial Services. Um admire is that it's most more than just budget and accounting. There are a lot of business units in OFS that provide a lot of valuable resources to city departments, and that would be business support, real estate, treasury, and our fleet service techs at the Dale Street Garage. Updates on recent initiatives. Um the 2024 adopted budget included the creation of a central grants office housed within OFS, and we are happy to report some of the successes this year being the security of 8.5 million in uh congressionally directed spending. We have confirmed with um Senator Tina Smith's office that that is from their understanding the most successful municipality in ev uh across the entire country as far as dollars coming in. We have also implemented vendor payments um on time and under budget from the original ARP uh um uh uh allocation, and that's increased the vendor payments amount by 202% year over year. Also happy to report on the uh deploying of uh all new solid waste fleet for public works with our uh fleet division that delivered 22 vehicles and pieces of equipment with a total investment of three million dollars, and then also want to add their continued uh priority to appropriately reflect the cost of those vehicles in their billing practices to recover those costs and financially manage them in a more sound way. And then last but not least, um the city had the bond rating reaffirmed through our sale earlier this year for AAA stable outlook, and it reflects the robust financial management and forward-looking strategies that we all have partnered on in years past. To provide you a bit with the budget recap on a line item basis here. That includes the uh uh what you're used to seeing as far as the current service level role uh adjustments, the removal of an accounting clerk, uh, previous reductions of professional services, and the shifting of the business support manager to a special fund.