[clears throat and cough]Good afternoon everyone. >> Good afternoon.>> I love a buzzy room. Sign of good energy.I will call this meeting to order. This is the July 22nd, 2026 Met Councilmeeting. As always, we will start with the Dakotaland, water, and people acknowledgement statement, and I turn it to CouncilMember Lilligrin to read it. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh, theMetropolitan Council acknowledges that the land we currently call Minnesota andspecifically the sevenount region is the ancestral homeland of the Dakota Oate,who are present and active contributors to our thriving region. As part of theMetropolitan Council's commitment to address the unresolved legacy ofgenocide, dispossession, and settler colonialism, and the fact thatgovernment institutions, including the Metropolitan Council, benefitedeconomically, politically, and institutionally after the forcibleremoval of the Dakota Oate. The Metropolitan Council is dedicated toinstilling land, water, and people commitments in regional policy. Thesecommitments support the Dakota Oate, the 11 federally recognized tribes inMinnesota, Hug Nation, and the American Indian communities representing over 150diverse tribal nations that call the seven county metro region home.>> Thank you, Council Member Lilligrin. First item is the approval of theagenda. Members can see it posted, and if there aren't any objections orchanges, we can move on to our next order of business. And I will move on.Uh, next, can I get a motion for approval of the July 8th, 2026 councilminutes? >> Some moved.>> A second. >> Any questions or revisions to thoseminutes? City. >> All in favor say I.>> I. >> Opposed.And the motion carries. Next, we are uh into our publicinvitation for comment. Any interested person may address the council onmatters that are not on today's agenda. Each speaker is limited to threeminutes. Uh if we do we have anyone signed in?>> No one. >> And is there anyone in the room whowishes to speak today? Okay, seeing none, I will forego therest of the instructions since we do not have speakers. Um, and I will move on toour consent agenda. Uh, we have several business items on this agenda. Can I geta motion motion for approval of the consent agenda?>> So moved. >> Is there a second?>> Second. >> Did the clerk? Okay. Thank you. Um, anyquestions on any of the items in the consent agenda?or discussion. Seeing none, all those in favor say I.>> I. >> I.>> Any opposed? Okay. Motion carries. Next are reports from standingcommittees. There are no reports today from environment and managementcommittees. [clears throat] We have two same week business items from communitydevelopment. And I turn it to council member Lilligrant.>> Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. And we are bringing two same week items uh forwardtogether from community development committee for our consideration tonight.And these are same week um items to meet our statutory review on deadlines andexpedite review for our local government partners. And since our next councilmeeting is until August 12th, we saw we heard both of these items in communitydevelopment committee this week and bring them forward uh the same week. Sothe first item is item 2026-4. >> Uh this first one is 114.>> Mhm. >> Okay. My notes say something different.Oh no, there it is. Okay. It's an amendment to the city of Carver's 2040comprehensive plan. So, this proposed amendment site is 255 acres locatedsouth of uh US Highway 212 between County Road 11 and County Road 443and uh north of Dalgrren Road. The amendment proposes to reguide 198 ofplanned uh land use um from agricultural to low density residential andadditional 57 acres of planned use from high density residential to mediumdensity residential. The proposed changes will facilitate the developmentof 403 detached single family homes and 105 town homes. The proposed developmentwould decrease the city's plan overall net density from 3.97units per acre to 3.6 units per acre overall, which is still above the ThriveMSP 2040's 3 units per acre requirement and imagine 2050's 3.5 units per acrerequirement. Uh our staff found that the pro proposedamendment does conform to regional systems plans is consistent with councilpolicies and is compatible with the plans of adjacent and affectedjurisdictions. So madam chair I move that the metropolitan council adopt theadvisory comments and review record and take the following actions. Authorizethe city of Carver to place its comprehensive plan amendment intoeffect. finding that the amendment does not change the city's forecast andadvise the city to implement the advisory comments in the review recordfor regional parks, transportation, land use, and water resources.>> Thank you, Council Member Li. Do we have a second on the motion?>> And any questions or discussion on this item? Anything to add?[clears throat and cough] >> Uh, no questions and no comments. All infavor, please say I. I. >> I.>> And any opposed? And that motion carries. Uh we have a second same weekitem. It is business item 2026123. And I will turn it back to CouncilMember Lilligrin. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. As you said,it's business item 2026-123. It's an amendment to the EurekaTownships 2040 comprehensive plan. The proposed amendment site is 1574 acres lolocated generally in the northern and central portions of Eureka Township. Theamendment proposes to reguide 146 acres of planned uh land use from agriculturalto agricultural commercial and 168 acres of agricultural to airport. Theamendment will also increase employment forecasted growth for the community byabout 200 jobs. Our staff found that the proposed amendment does conform toregional systems plan plans is consistent with council policies and iscompatible with the plans of adjacent and affected jurisdictions. So, MadamChair, I move that the Metropolitan Council adopt the attached advisorycomments and review record and take the following actions. Authorize EurekaTownship to place its comprehensive plan amendment into effect. revise thetownship's forecast for employment upward as is described in table one ofthe review record and to advise the township to implement the advisorycomments in the review record for forecast and surface water supply.>> Uh thank you. Do we have a second on the motion? >> Any questions or discussion on thisitem? >> All those in favor say I. I>> opposed. >> Motion carries. Thank you.>> Thank you. >> Uh we are now moving on totransportation committee. We have one business item from the transportationcommittee and I turn it to council member Chamblas.>> Thank you madam chair, council members. Business item number 2026-118is regarding the award of engineering and construction administrative servicescontract for the metrohine BRT project. The Metro Hline Arterial BRT is a 17mileplanned bus rapid transit line that will provide faster and more reliable transitservice in Route 3 corridor between downtown Minneapolis and Sunray TransitCenter. It's planned to stop at about 45 locations along Washington, Como,Maryland, and White Bear Avenues. Like past BRT projects, this contract ward ismoving forward in parallel with the H-line planning process and publicengagement for the corridor is ongoing. Release of the corridor recommendedplan, which responds to input on the draft corridor plan and invitesadditional public comment is anticipated to occur in August. Advancing theengineering and construction administration contract now will allowfor design to begin when the final corridor plan is adopted later on thisyear. A request for proposals was issued onFebruary 2nd, 2026 and there were 32 registered plan holders for thisproject. The council received two proposals. An evaluation panel andtechnical advisory group representing the council staff and agency partnersrecommended HDR, Inc. as the most technically qualified proposer. A metrortransit negotiation panel negotiated pricing and determined the finalnegotiated cost to be fair and reasonable, recommending HDR's proposalas the most advantageous to the council. Therefore, Madame Chair, I move that theMetropolitan Council authorize the regional administrator to award andexecute contract 26P00009 with HDR, Inc. for engineering andconstruction administrative services for the Metro Hline project and associatedroadway improvements in an amount not to exceed 17,929,911. >> Thank you, Council Member Chamblas. Wehave a motion. Is there a second? >> Second,>> Madam Chair. >> Yes. Um, I uh see council member Barber.>> Thank you, Madam Chair. Based on my position as a public works director forthe city of St. Paul, I will be recusing myself from voting on business item2026-118 because of the appearance of a conflict.>> Thank you, Council Member Barber. We have a a motion, a second, and onerecusal. Is there are there any questions or discussion on this item?Uh, council. Uh, Madam Chair, I believe the proposed action was read asassociated roadway improvements. I think that's what I heard in the business itemitself. It says associated ADA improvements. So, I just want to makesure we have the language correct. >> That'sthat's good. Uh could we clarify the which languageis correct if we have staff available? Is it roadway and ADA? >> It's just ri Madam Chair, while while we are waiting,um I see that what I read does not include that statement. So if it doesneed to be corrected, it would be what's written in the business item.>> Okay. Um I will thank you. Thanks for being on call to stop. Thank you somuch. Um, so we have uh we're going to we're going to revert to the writtenbusiness item. >> We have a motion on the written businessitem, a second on the written business business item, a recusal from thewritten business item. And now we will vote on the business item as provided inthe agenda which notes correctly ADA >> and ADA. Would you like me to read it asit's noted? >> Yes, let's read it one more time. Okay.>> Thank you, council member. >> You're welcome. The proposed action isthat the Metropolitan Council authorized the regional administrator to award andexecute contract 26P00009 with HDR, Inc. for engineering andconstruction administrative services for the Metro H line project and associatedADA improvements in the amount not to exceed $17,929,900. >> Thank you, council member. We're goingto do the whole thing again. Is there a second on this motion?>> Second. >> Council member Barber.>> Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, based on my position as public worksdirector for the city of St. Paul, I'll be recusing myself from voting onbusiness item 2026-118 because of the appearance of a conflict.>> Thank you, Council Member Barber. Is there any discussion or question on theitem? >> We're good.>> Council member Chamblas. >> Thank you. Uh, I was not in attendanceat the transportation committee meeting um last week, but I do thank councilmember Tony Carter for chairing that meeting while I and the vice chair oftransportation committee were absent. Uh, and I also have received uh manyemails and notes uh and messages for comments regarding this project. And asnoted, uh the additional public comment and engagement will continue uh and wehave taken note of all the information that we've received and we'llincorporate that into the final report. >> Thank you, Council Member Chamless.Appreciate the thoroughess. And thank you, Council Member Carter, for themeeting. Any uh remaining questions or comments?All in favor, please say I. I. >> Any opposed? And that motion carries. GoHeline. Uh, next, and thank you for yourpatience. It's better to get it get it right for the record. Uh, next we moveon to information items as we have no more business items for today. Um, uh,looking forward to hearing more about a couple uh, big bodies of work. First,uh, we are going to move we're going to hear about the climate action work uh,climate action work plan annual report. I will invite Lisa Barahus, directorBarahas and her team. >> Uh we also have uh Jeff Freeman and Jen.Welcome Jen. [laughter] >> It's Kruski.>> Kruski Kruski. >> Um welcome. We're looking forward toyour presentation. >> Thank you. Good afternoon. Um Iapologize for the error on the uh on our agenda today. Um, this is a a largeportfolio of work across the council and hence a large team representing thatwork as well. Um, but I'd like to turn to council member Lindstöm perhaps firstto kick us off. >> I'm happy to do so. Uh, yeah, if that'sokay with you, madam chair. >> Yes, please. Um, so I'll just start outby saying uh last week I was at at uh Thief River Falls meeting in Thie RiverFalls and um the wildfires kicked up and they had to distribute N95 masks to theto the people in the meeting that were inside of the uh the meeting room. Andthis is on top of uh you'll recall the the camp house fires from last year. 144structures burned. Uh 12,000 acres burned. This is seeming to be the newnormal here in Minnesota. All exacerbated by drought. All of thesewildfires exacerbated by drought, exacerbated by climate change. Um so weknow the threat is real. Everybody at this this table, everybody in this roomprobably knows that the threat is real and we're respondingaccordingly. It is being reflected in our our budgets. It is being reflectedin um capacity, staff capacity and um uh it has has been and continuesto be um an all hands-on deck divisionwideum effort which I'm extremely pleased to see. So, we've got a lot of work to doas as these folks will lay out in the next few minutes. Um, but I'm pleasedthat uh all of the actions that that we have taken to date. There's no silverbullet. That is for sure. Um, but I'm pleased that that we've had so many ofour staff that have been engaged, dozens and dozens and maybe hundreds at thispoint. Um, and stakeholders across the region. and that was demonstrated at thestate of the region um event a few months ago. How many of our stakeholdershave been engaged in this effort as well? So, I'm excited to hear what uhwhat we have in store for the in the next few minutes.>> Great. Thank you, council member. I appreciate the support. I'm Lisa Vajas.I'm the executive director of community development and it's my privilege to bethe executive sponsor of the council's climate work. um and to work with all mycolleagues across the council and just the smattering of our leaders heretoday. I'd like to let them introduce themselves.>> Madam Chair, council members, I'm Jeff Freeman. I am the sustainability managerwithin Metro Transit and pass this on. >> Good afternoon, Madam Chair. My name isJen Kruski. I'm the assistant manager of water policy and planning andenvironmental services. >> Good afternoon, chair and councilmembers. I'm Laura Brethheim, senior project coordinator for sustainabilityin Metro Transit. So today we're uh very pleased topresent to you our annual report on our progress in implementing the council'sclimate action work plan. As you all know and as council member Lindstöm wasreferring to, climate change is already impacting our communities today and hasimpacts across all of our services, our investments, and our assets. Um, and wealso have the ability to make a difference in all of these areas andmore in the council's regular course of work. Um, and it's really important thatwe think AC about that not just on the the four pictures that we see in theslide, but in all of the work that we do where the council is alreadyincorporating um work and also where we plan to do additional work. Our climateaction work plan, as a reminder, is [clears throat] organized um in afashion to work as a five-year plan. It's organized around six commitmentswhich I'll review um in a bit. Uh 20 identified strategies or overarchingapproaches to achieving those commitments. And then under thesestrategies, we have 73 actions that are specific projects or to-dos to helpadvance those strategies. And for a 5-year plan, that can seem like a lot,but we are a big organization and we do a lot of things across this organizationon a day-to-day basis. So um um and as we were developing this plan, you mightrecall um you had encouraged us all to be really ambitious in this work aswell. We had a lot of opportunity potential in front of us and we wantedto be sure that when those opportunities might have presented themselves, whetherthey were federal funding opportunities or other partnership opportunities, thatwe would have shovel ready ideas at the get-go so that we could jump on thoseopportunities when they presented themselves. So even though we didn't winout on some of those, um it was an excellent effort to show that we hadthat capability to pull ideas together to pull in good applications and tobuild stronger partnerships and relationships with our colleagues acrossthe region. Um our climate vision as shown on thisslide is to and really defines and guides all of the work um is to reduceour contributions to greenhouse gas emissions and to make our services andfacilities resilient to the impacts of climate change.The six core commitments I referenced earlier, you can see on these slides,are really rooted in the environmental justice principles and then organizedinto pairs of commitments around reducing emissions, which arecommitments two and three, and then adapting to climate change, which arecommitments four and five. Those pairs have both an operations focusedcommitment and a partnership commitment. And our sixth commitment is crosscuttingum and one that supports work um how we get the work get uh done expanding ourstaffing and training um ensuring that we're ready to do that with ourworkforce um all across the council. As a note, the icons that you see on thelefth hand side of the slide will um you'll see them in future slides as wellbecause we'll refer to those commitments as we report on our progress.So I'll turn to Laura. >> All right. Thanks Lisa. So, our progressupdate for this year, over half of our 73 actions are either on track orcomplete. Um, this is the first year we've been able to say that. So, that'sreally exciting that we're headed in the right direction. Um, you'll see someexamples on the right of types of actions that fit into these differentcategories. So, we have some actions where we said, "Great, we did thatproject. It's done. Fantastic." Some that are in various states of progress,whether they've just begun or might be close to completion in that green ontrack category. some actions that are on hold for some reason, perhaps funding,staffing, they depend on another action, they haven't started yet, and some thatwe anticipate to start in the future also because they depend on otheractions. One thing that I'll note here, too, is we have close to 20 actions thatare just ongoing. They're things we're going to keep doing all the time. Theyhappen every year. Some examples might be our annual greenhouse gas emissionsinventory, our work on the zero emission bus transition plan, things that we'llnever see turn to that dark green complete, but we're just going to keepdoing them year-over-year. So, um, we're seeing steady progress this year, whichis a great sign. In terms of staffing and funding thiswork, over half of our actions are now fully staffed or fully funded. So, thisis a great step up from last year as well when we were below 50% uh for bothof them. Um we've had some notable staffing gains this year which hasreally enabled us to make progress on the work since 2425.Um and over 50% of the actions are funded. The funding gaps are occurringfor various reasons. It can change on a projectto- project basis, but a fewgeneral reasons that this is occurring is funding might rely on another actionto be completed first before we're going to ask for that funding or we might havea staffing gap so we're not going to ask for that funding. um or allocate thatfunding until there's staff who can complete it.And Lisa mentioned the six commitments that we have. So, we wanted to show youhow we're doing across those different areas. Um the bars are different heightsbecause some of the commitments have a lot of actions assigned to them and somehave fewer. Um a few places where we're doing really well are the first and lastcommitments, which have small bars, but we are making a lot of progress. thefirst in our EJ work and the last in our cross cutting work to um staff up andensure we have the staff capacity for this. One other thing I'll mention aboutthis is we've provided static visuals for the purpose of this meeting but wenow have an interactive tracking dashboard that um we can use staff canuse and each division can use to get a better understanding of where eachdivision is making progress what the gaps are and help us better prioritizeand allocate resources. So that's available as well if there's interest.Now I'll dig into commitment two which is our operational emissions reduction.So commitment two is we'll accelerate emissions reductions opportunities fromour operations to achieve carbon neutrality.Next slide please. So why are we reducing greenhouse gas emissions? We'rea really large emitter as an organization and reducing our emissionsby even a small amount can really make a difference. Um, our operations are partof the fabric of emissions of our state and the region from transportation,electricity, the fuel used in our buildings and waste sectors. Andreducing our emissions ensures that we can make our services as sustainable aspossible. Meeting the imagine 2050 goal to lead on addressing climate change.And reducing emissions often involves reducing our energy use. And savingenergy usually saves us money, which saves costs for rateayers and thepublic. So that's something we're keeping in mind as well. Um, one thingto point out on the right here is if we made just a 1% reduction in thecouncil's overall greenhouse gas emissions, that's equivalent to taking933 cars off the road. So what might be small to us, just 1% is really a largeimpact for a single person, for the a household, or for the community.So what do our emissions look like this year? The total council emissions were452,000 metric tonses of CO2 equivalent. We know that it is really hard toconceptualize what this invisible gas actually means. So that's about 61,000homes energy use for a year. About 105,000 cars driven for a year. If we dosome conversions and think about that in terms of counties or cities, um the carsmetric is about the number of cars that would be in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota.Brooklyn Park is the sixth largest city in the state. So if we think of thecouncil in comparison to that with our emissions, we're like a really largecity >> when it comes to our emissions.>> And now I'll pass it over to Jeff to dive in deeper.>> Thank you, Laura. Um, again, Laura showed the 452,000 tons 2025. Ouremissions are up slightly in 2025 over 2024. A couple things that come intoplay again over in over our baseline, we're down almost 25% since 2005.Coming into play for 2025, um, we traveled more with our buses. Um, but wehave a little that's primary reason is we've just done more. We're back toservice and more transit service. Um, looking at this overall 19 in what 2019,Governor Walls reissued the executive order for OES executive order 1927. Itset a goal of 30% originally for emissions reductions by 2030.U through the work of the good work of the electrical utilities, we were aheadof pace. So they went back and they adjusted the goal to 50%. 50% is stilldoable uh as a state and as a region for us. Umso we look for us this year we looked at the calculation we put this together andwe're seeing that one of the things we did is we went back and looked at ourbiogenic wastewater emissions which is just the it's not the energy that movethat is for the process it's the process itself. And we saw we recalculated thosenumbers to be more consistent with industry standards. and we were nowseeing there was a slight tick up and then we went and applied that samemethodology back to all the previous years. So we're acknowledging really acorrection in our process of calculating.When we look at emissions by division um we have that down in that blue bar. Umwe see a lot of the uh that that biogenic emissions from environmentalservices along with their process power for their facilities and in their fleetemissions as well. That red area is metro transit facilities, propulsion,power, a little bit of district energy for us. And then that light blue chunkis MTS, which represents Metro Mobility, the van pool, and the various servicesthat uh MTS provides. When we look at emissions by source,again down in this blue bar here, this is the biogenic. This is almost it's alittle more than 45% of our total emissions is this emission of gas that'srelated to the process of treating waste water. Light blue is our fleet um andthen the green is our facilities. Those two numbers are about 50 are about equalin this graph.So where do our emissions come from? um wastewater treatment, light rail and buspropulsion, >> [clears throat]>> uh vehicle fuel, public facilities, and our support and operating facilities.And we take a look at those again. We look at which ones can do we havecontrol over. And we look at it here. We can see our lowest control is reallythat biogenic process as it relates to the wastewater treatment. That's notsomething we can change. It's basic chemistry and it's kind of set in thewool and going to be that way unless we find something really different thanwhat we're doing now and what people are doing across the world. This is kind ofpretty well baked in. There are smart small improvements to be made, but thisdoes this isn't something that can be reduced to zero. Light rail and buspropulsion. Um, our emissions are really dependent on the electrical utilities.What happens to the grid? More renewable energy, less coal, we're going to seethose emissions go down. We look at vehicle fuel. Um, this really is lookingat, you know, and what we're using for propulsion, miles per gallon on ourfleet. Um, some operational a aspects related to service planning andthings like that. I mean, it it's kind of there's some things that can be done,but it's there's not a lot of there's not a big fulcrum here on this lever. Aswe move into public facilities, we start to see more opportunities there becausewe have lighting and we have heating and we have just the operational needs ofthese some of these facilities. What can we do to make those facilities asefficient as we possibly can? And then we get to the one where we have thehighest amount of opportunity which is our support and operational facilities,heating plants, HVAC, lighting, um paying attention to the things we liketo pay attention at home. Closing the doors, make sure the windows are shut,uh all those small things that you do at home that we can essentially do at work,maybe a little different context. So, back to understanding our emissionsby our division. Each division has different leverage leverage to reducetheir emissions. Um here we see again ES with their wastewater treatment umprocess and their facilities. They are three they're the big the big componentthat we have within our system and we know a lot of as we talked about a lotof the things that are built into ES there's a lot of things are just bakedin and they're not they're not they're harder to move. Um Metroansit with itsfacilities and its vehicles and propulsion we have some opportunitiesthere. Um and then we have MTS and that's almost that is all vehicles.So as we look at more understanding our emissions within MTS one of theinteresting thing goals that they've talked about here isone they have more vehicles than metrotransit and two their vehicles puton more miles than metrotransit. Um I think that's somewhat somewhat of ashock to a lot of people to find out that>> metroomobility is really bigger than metrotransit in a lot of ways. The onlydifference, the biggest difference is fuel. Their vehicles get better mileage.But one of the goals they have is to take away those cutaway buses, which isthe standard metro mobility vehicle we see on the street. You see the it lookslike a a pickup truck with a big camper on the back. Um [clears throat] whatwhat if we were to take cut the number of those by 20% and move to SUVs toreplace them? That's a fairly big opportunity when you think that an SUVgets more than 2x gas mileage, miles per gallon than than that cutaway vehicle.So, there's a good opportunity there. Um, [snorts] within Metro Transit, wetry to put together graphics to figure out how to tell our story. This is onegraphic that we've used in the past and we talk about um how do we how many whatlevel of emissions do we avoid or do we displace by offering this service? Um,when you look at the yellow bar, that is the emissions per PM per passenger miletraveled. When we look at revenue fleet miles only, that's basically comparingmile per mile car versus a bus. When we look at the blue line, that's all ofMetro Transit's emissions compared to the emissions of the car on the road.Typically, a car comes in by itself at point4 somewhere. We're in between thatright now. It's we're looking for better metrics. Um, I volunteered this year tobe adapted. I'm going to sit on a roundt discussion on metrics to see what otherpeople in the country are using. We look at their metrics all the time and we'reall the transit agencies are on the same thing there. How do we come up with ametric to best tell our story and with that I will turn it over to Jen to tellthe ES story. >> Yeah. So, u this is the graph of ourstory within environmental services. Uh, it's two stories that are overlapping.Uh the gray bars are the amount of energy that we use to move the wastewater to through our system and return it to the environment. And then the lineon the graph is the amount of water that we are treating through that process.And so when you overlay those two, it gets you sort of the energy use per unitof water treated. Um so that's the the graph that we have up on this this uhslide. There's two primary drivers of what's happening here. You can see thatthose lines are fairly flat for both of those things that we are measuring andthat's actually a good sign because over the course of the time period that thisgraph is showing, we actually have grown our regional services. So we have takenon two additional plants to our system um with the Rogers and East Bethlsystem. So that is within the timeline of this graph itself. And so we knowthat we have more water coming through our system and we need to use moreenergy to do it. But we're seeing those lines being flat. The other story ofsuccess that we have on this graph is that we are seeing reduced INI, which isinflow and infiltration into our system, which is fantastic because that meansthat that's not that clean storm water that could eventually get in throughcracks and pipes and get to our wastewater treatment. we're not usingenergy to clean that already clean water. Um, and so that is a successstory. As much as we can keep that clean water out of our system and keep it inthe ground or on the landscape, that is great. Um, the other part, and I'm goingto, you know, be a little proud about this one as well, is that there's asuccess of some of our grant programs that we have been offering. And so, wedo have a water efficiency conservation grant. Um, and that has contributed tothe fact that this line is staying flat. We know that not only do we have morewastewater treatment plants, but we do have additional growth in the regionoverall. And so the more that we can have efficient appliances put into thesebuildings and facilities and for the older buildings, which is what our grantis more targeted at, is to replace some of those older fixtures so that we cancontinue to have efficient and have water conservation within the metro. Um,we know that we do have work ahead of us though. We don't want this line to stayflat. We actually do want to start seeing this change and make sure that wecan increase the amount of water that we can treat per energy unit that we havemoving through our system. Uh so uh to understand a little bit moreand to help us target where we want to channel to hopefully see a a a change inthat that line, we are working to set targets for our individual facilities.Before we were looking at our entire wastewater system as a whole and we nowhave the staff and cap capability to start looking a little bit more detailedto see where we can find those winds. Um we're doing this based on historic andpredicted energy consumption because I think we all know that looking backwardsespecially in the case for climate planning is not necessarily the way youshould be looking for direction. Uh we know that the future will be a littlebit different than the past and so we are looking at both historic andpredicted consumptions. We also are going to be looking at our emissions byscope, source, and process end use. So again, to give us a little bit moredetail to see where that energy is being used and how we can find some processimprovements to perhaps lower the amount of energy. Like Jeff said, like thereare greenhouse gases that are inherent to our process. And so we're not goingto tell the bugs to stop doing their jobs. Um, but we can find ways withinour process to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.And so when we talk about facility efficiencies, there are efficiencieshappening across our different facilities that we have at the council.Both metrotransit and environmental services are improving our buildingoperational efficiencies. Right now we are down by 25% for our total emissionsand we are seeing this efficiencies uh this increasing efficiency based on manydifferent projects. uh our friends in Metroransit have been able to movetowards a 95% LED conversion uh at their facilities. They have been able to dobuilding automation and repair. Um again, thinking about having smartbuildings. Uh for those of you who are not hip to acronyms, there are a few onthis slide that I did want to define because we didn't do you that service.Um so when we say that there's a technology called a Jace control umthat's a Java application control engine and so it's pretty much having coding beable to flip switches as to when different um components are activatedand so we can use coding to respond to different situations to help us not useenergy when we don't need to. uh within environmental services we have beenusing fancy things called VFDs which is variable frequency drivers uh drives andso it's very similar to that again it's a additional component that you can puton top of a pump and as you need that pump to shift its pole onto the water orenergy grid this variable frequency drive allows those pumps thatflexibility to use energy or pull water at the rates at which we need it Andthat's really helpful because if you buy a pump that only has one setting and youdon't have that demand all day, you end up using that pump at that one settingeven though you don't need to. So these are tools and that we have been applyingat our facilities to help us improve our efficiencies.Another thing that we have been doing um thank you uh at our uh water resourcerecovery facilities. Uh the big example is at Blue Lake. We are looking atputting in different technology within our treatment process to recover thoseresources. So we're not just calling them resource recovery for fun. Wereally are recovering resources. Um this example uh in the last year we ended upor overtime it the project came live within the last year. Um we installed aregenerative thermal oxidizing unit. Um, again, like I said, there is greenhousegas inherent to our process. Um, one of those gases, methane, can be used toreturn back to natural gas systems. And so, this device helps us capture thatgas and be able to use it instead of paying our natural gas provider to helpgive us additional energy. So, uh, we ended up with 100 almost $162,000in cost savings per year by putting this device in. And we've been able to uheliminate 1.7 uh metric tons of carbon uh equivalentsper year from the system. Uh Centerpoint was excited that we were doing this aswell. And so we ended up getting an energy rebate uh from Centerpointbecause uh with through this partnership of uh nearly $152,000. And so I'm supposed to say somethingelse. >> Oh, good. I'm passing it to Lisa. Thisis not [laughter] So we'll talk about the third commitment um pairing with ouroperational emissions reduction are is our regional emissions reduction andreally um driving that through existing and new partnerships. As a reminder, ourregional emissions profile is here on the screen. This is how everybody in theentire 7ount region fares. This is what our total emissions looks like for everysingle person, operation, business, house, car, etc. in this region. Um, andthis is part of work that we developed both for our um, EPA funded um,comprehensive climate action plan and work that we included as part of Imagine2050 as well as that emissions profile. And you can see what's driving that,what's at the top, our largest source of emissions in the region istransportation related. Um and then you'll see commercial, industrial, andresidential kind of um come right there. And that's going to be related to energyuse, building energy use, especially because much of our um built environmenthas been on the ground um for quite some time. And homes like mine built morethan a hundred years ago could use some um some efficiency upgrades, if youwill. Um a lot harder to do on a private scale than on a public scale, for sure.Um, but those are some of the things that as we look at that landscape, we'llcontinue to track. This is our 2022 inventory, but moving forward, we'llcontinue to track our emissions inventory more regularly so that we cantrack the impact of actions that local governments are taking that we aretaking on um a regional scale as well and see how we fare overall. So a lot ofour work here um in the spaces where we have a lot of indirect um influence andhow we support local governments in their work um in providing both our umservices and technical assistance in in that effort.So, we have developed a lot of tools to support this and um you might recallwe've shared I think about our um greenhouse gas emissions reduction toollast year as we were getting ready um or to seek your approval on ourcomprehensive climate action plan. This is an enormous undertaking from ourstaff um and we were lucky to receive the um funding from the EPA grant thatreally helped to support and accelerate this effort. This tool isn't just tocreate that inventory, but to create individualized inventories for everycity, county, township in the metropolitan area. We wanted to be surethat we could um support every local government in meeting their newrequirements that come from the 2023 legislative changes and their localcomprehensive plans to account for their local emissions inventory and to havestrategies that actually uh reduce emissions locally as well. So um wepaired with that our climate action toolkit. So additional strategies thatlocal governments can take, policies that might adopt, programs that theymight consider and just actually earlier today was meeting with some of my staffand they were talking about just a couple more actions that they uploadedto the toolkit today. So toolkit um continues to grow with new strategiesand actions on a regular basis for local governments to consider as they'reworking on their plans as things that they could take on. We also haveunderway an update to our climate change vulnerability assessment. Our currentassessment really was a inward facing for the council. How does climate changeimpact the assets that the council is responsible for? But what we're lookingfor in this um in this next update here is to um be more expansive andsupportive for local governments to use as well and think about socialvulnerabilities as a part of that, especially as we think about not justadvancing the council's climate goal in Imagine 2050, but our goals aroundhealthy and safe communities. A big part of social vulnerability to climatechange is directly overlaid with people feeling safe in their communities,especially in times of stress, heat stress, um weather events, severeweather impacts. All of those things are important to that feeling of um safe uhsafety within your community. Um and then we'll continue to and our staff areuh furiously planning for upcoming engagements and additional technicalassistance through our planet um training program through conference thatwe'll be holding for local governments uh later this year as well as u winterlearning labs for local governments to connect with one another as they'reworking on their local plans. learn from one another about what works, challengesthat they might be encountering as part of that, but also to learn more aboutthe tools that we have available for them and how they might apply themlocally. Um turning to another um projecthighlight is some additional work that our colleagues in MTS are um carryingout around supporting um cities in um electric vehicle planning and um how wedeliver technical assistance for local governments. Thinking about fleetopportunities, what are needed for zoning and permitting and best practicesaround those elements as well as um thinking about direct provision ofpublic charging. We had a similar effort around our um solar ready work that wehad done in the last um comprehensive planning cycle where solar was a newertechnology for local governments. Lots of requests were coming in and weprovided a broad array of technical support along uh similar lines aroundzoning, permitting, how to set up processes um to actually enable um thathappening within your community. So really excited to be moving into thespace as well. And next I'll turn back to Jen. So uh it is important to reduceour greenhouse gases. But we do know that we have already started feeling theimpacts of climate change. So adaptation is also a key part of making sure thatwe have resiliency within our systems and within our operations. And socommitment four says that we will reduce our risks and impact excuse me reducethe risks and impacts of climate change hazards to our community to ourfacilities and services. Sorry. And so when we're doing this within ESthere's a couple of things that we have been doing that we have been it's beenpart of our daily work but it's something that I want to make sure thatwe are clear upon because it is very important. Uh, one part is most of ourwater resource recovery facilities are right beside large rivers that do haveperiodic floods. And so we do have adaptation uh responses within thosefacilities including flood walls and the part that especially if you think aboutmetro plant which was built in 1938. What would have been the 100red-yearflood in 1938 has shifted over time. And so we are seeing larger floods on theMississippi and other rivers than we had when these facilities were originallybuilt. and our colleagues in plant engineering are doing a very good job ofmaking sure that we are working with FEMA flood plane data, working withother sources of information to ensure that as we know that that flood wellmight need to increase a few feet just knowing that the changing patterns andprecipitation might require it, we've been keeping up on that. And so uh thisyear uh we actually do have projects already lined up to reassess that floodwall at Metro Plant and make sure that it is going to keep our assets safe fromrising waters. This is also happening at our Hastings plant as well. Uh it's notjust adaptation that we are doing for the wall itself around our facility. Weactually are playing with our landscapes inside of our walls and at ourinterceptor sites out in the region um or lift stations out into the region.And so we have at this point 52 acres that have been converted to nativelandscaping. And there are benefits uh multiple benefits from making thislandscape change. Uh one I personally think it looks pretty. Um it's a it's abetter landscape than just traditional uh turf grass. uh the maintenance costsonce it gets established uh are lower. You do not have to take care of them.[snorts] You don't have to mow it as often or as frequently as grass as uhtraditional turf grass. Um additionally, if you plant drought tolerant plants, umyou don't have to water it as much. And so overall, it's a win-win. Um we havelearned over the course of this program getting established that communicationswith our neighbors are very important. Um sometimes as you are establishingthese properties uh they do not look they go through an awkward teen phase ifyou will um and some of our neighbors didn't really understand that. So wehave been working with our communications team to make sure that wehave the right signage in place to explain what is happening. We now haveQR codes. We've been doing a lot of uh community engagement as we are puttingthese landscapes out into the region at our facilities to explain why we'remaking these choices. And hopefully uh we can see uh positive uh influence outinto the communities as well. When we are talking about out in thecommunities, next slide please. This is where our commitment five comesinto place. Um we can't do this alone and we know that if we want to seeregional climate adaptation and regional climate resiliency, we do need to workwith our partners to ensure that adaptation is happening across theregion. And so, uh, one of the major projectsthat it's really super cool, I was actually talking about this with someoneearlier today. Um, are my colleagues in community development, um, have beenreally, uh, championing the community tree planting grant program. Uh, it isan opportunity to provide resources to communities so that they can increasetheir tree canopy. Um, and making sure that we are removing and replacing treesthat have vulnerabilities as we are looking forward into the future. Um,some really fun numbers. The 2025 program distributed $2.5 million to 14local governments and that will result in 5,000 new trees. The 2026 programwill distribute 3.4 million and applications are o or the applicationfor that cycle will open in September. And then we know that the 2027 programwill uh distribute 3.4 million to local government. So, we can see that wereally are making an investment. Um, trees help with uh heat vulnerability,but again, I'm going to bring it back to water because that is my job always withwater. Um, trees are really great at helping with infiltration as well. Theyare giant opportunities for us to get water into the ground. Uh, and so, um,the more trees we have, thank you. We appreciate it. And yes, as well,>> all right, I'm going to bring us home with the last two commitments here. Andwe're going back to commitment one because we wanted to give you all theall the technical things and kind of then pull it back to the people and theplace. So our first commitment is that we'll incorporate environmental justiceprinciples as we plan, implement, and evaluate our climate work. And anexample of how we're doing this right now is we're developing something calledthe environmental justice playbook. So there's a group of us who arerepresenting all divisions of the council that are developing a apractical tool for staff. So the EJ playbook is a is a tactical tool toimplement our EJ principles in action. So environmental justice has a lot oflofty goals and ideas, but then what does it mean to actually take thoseideas, embed them into our practices at the council and create the outcomes thatwe've set out to create. So on the right you can see the EJ framework that's inImagine 2050. So we're really t tying together the climate action work planand imagine 2050. that really support each other to create this project. Umthe playbook's nearing completion. It'll be ready for testing by se by Septemberof this year is what we're planning on. Um and then we're planning in the nextphase of this work to identify pilot projects in metrotransit and ES to testthe playbook and see does it really work the way we hoped it would? Does it makesense to staff who aren't subject matter experts in this area? Is it going tocreate the outcomes that we're hoping it'll create? So that's what we have ondeck for the EJ playbook and hope to fill you in in the future about howthat's going. And our final commitment is about ourcrosscutting efforts, especially those related to staffing and training inclimate work. The big thing that we've been working on this year is doing atraining for a program called Envision. Um Envision is a sustainableinfrastructure framework that it's very similar to LEAD, but instead of forindividual buildings, it's for horizontal infrastructure. So it's areally great fit for wastewater infrastructure and transit. There are alot of peer agencies around the country who are using this. Um so this year 52Met Council staff from all divisions have completed the training and abouthalf of those people chose to take an exam at the end to earn an officialcertification to be an ENV sustainability practitioner. Um so thenext steps and a natural question is great we have this framework now how dowe use it? What does it look like? Um so we are exploring how to use it in ESthrough the Crow River facility. Um there's work going on to investigate,okay, how do we apply these principles in that facility? And then in MetroTransit, the Franklin Avenue light rail station redesign, we're doing sort of anenvision light and not using the full rigor of the program that's prettyin-depth and intense, but seeing, okay, how can we test this out? What does itlook like and how does it work? Um, and that training will continue in futureyears and we'll be continuing to figure out what we learn from those pilotprojects and how we can bring this into our processes.And now I'll pass it back over to Lisa. Thanks. I'll take us home. So lookingahead over this year and next year, um, we are continuing to accelerate thiswork. As I think Laura said at the beginning, we have some more staffingcommitments and um our staffing teams have grown and or their capacity havegrown to take on these strategies and we have a lot of projects that are nearingcompletion like the EJ playbook that are ready for that next step of oper umoperationalizing them. And then we expect to see that um as we close outprojects that funding budgeted funds will switch to other projects. So, we'relooking forward to those next steps in this process and um using tools like uhthe dashboard on this to really highlight where we're at internally sofolks can see how we're doing on a regular basis and also be able to sharethat across our divisions and division leadership as well. So, we're notwaiting just to once a year when we're doing that and really highlighting umthat accountability to the work but also celebrating the work that team membersare are accomplishing every day as an everyday part of our work. Uh we'reabout three and a half years into this five-year plan. So of course that meansas a planning agency we're looking ahead and planning for the next plan. And whatdoes that look like? Our team members have already started to plan for thatscope and have been doing some of that environmental scan of like how do andasking our team members how does this how is this current plan working foryou? How was it developed? How what could we do better? Um where did we umdo really well that we want to continue? So what we're anticipating for version2.0 is that we'll continue to enhance these actions, get at some of thetargets that we talked about that we have underway here as well in developingthose. Um but also really broadly um as noted on the bottom of the slide that atthe regional scale the work that we do both operationally and in partnershipwith our local governments is really key to advancing regional uh climateleadership climate adaptation and in mitigation and being um about 60% of thestate's population is really important to driving Minnesota's climate work aswell. So, we really recognize the role that the council plays here and um we'llcontinue to um advance these efforts going forward. Um I did want to thank uheveryone and there's so many folks that's why it's so teenytiny on thisslide, but really um doesn't reflect just the outsiz impact that these teammembers have had on the work across all of our divisions, their contributions ina variety of different ways. And I'm sure there's probably other folks thatwe may have inadvertently left off this slide, but really just kudos toeverybody for their commitment to this work and the importance of thatintegration across our divisions because we can learn so much from one another.We all contribute to how resilient our region is and how um how adaptive we areto uh climate change. what we learned, for example, about sustainablelandscapes and environmental services, we certainly can think about how wescale and apply to other parts and other facilities and even potentially housesthat we own as well um for how those can be um those uh approaches can be appliedacross all of our work. So, just want to thank um all of our team members forthis work and I do want to do a special shout out for our colleagues um who havebeen key players who've recently retired and we'll sorely miss them. GeneLanhammer, Kathy Matter and Paul Coloulton um from you know threedifferent areas of the council but really um excellent partners, thoughtpartners along the way um and great contributors to this work.So, for you all, um, we have some questions and reflections about, um,reactions to how we've done so far, um, how far we've gone so far in this threeand a half years of our 5-year plan, um, and where you might want to see us gofurther, um, and what you might want to see in this next iteration of ourclimate plan and what you might want to see in our reporting as well. So, withthat, I'll turn it back to you, Madam Chair. Thank you.>> Thank you. Um, wow. Uh this is my first annual update of thisvast body of work and I really appreciate um not not just thepresentation but when when I'm coming into this and it's been three and a halfyears I get to see all the progress too and I like I I think I want to say likecongratulations, great job, keep going. Um and I'm so impressed with thecommitment and the work. Um, I want to open it up to the council members for uhquestions or discussion. So, uh, please, Council Member Chamblas.>> Oh, thank you. This was uh very rich and I've learned a lot from yourpresentation about um how we manage our environment. Um, I do have um twothings. One is about the cutaway vehiclesum and how we can better utilize um those mobility assetsum to maybe a different category or configuration configuration in thevehicles. Um first I was kind of trying to envision what the the um the vehiclethat has like the truck in the back or the bigger space. Uh, I'm assuming thatwas for wheelchairs or other equipment. That's okay. And then, um, for have youI was wondering how far you've gotten for looking at alternatives. I mean, isthere a way for them to put those um, assets on the back of a car like we doon our buses or where is that going? >> Well, I don't I'll [laughter] I'll stepin for a little bit. I know Charles was here, but um my understanding is wherethe the the MTS team is on is they're in the process of they're got contracts outthey're looking at the SUVs. You see a lot of people with usingS SUVs and they're getting into the idea that um these can be adaptive vehicles.You see them the vans out that people are using like that. Often I think thethis is driven by the idea that so often we see a metroom mobility vehicle withone person in it and that vehicle is getting seven eight miles per gallon.Now if you replace maybe even six you if you replace that vehicle with a SUVwhatever that it is whatever that vehicle really looks like you start tolook at miles per gallon of 12 13 14 miles per gallon then you have cost ofvehicles in play as well as just the amount of space it takes to store avehicle. you can store one of an SUV in a in a a vendor's facility who operatesthe the the service in a lot smaller space than you can uh one of thesecutaway boxes. So >> thank you [laughter]chair council membersh did a great job starting up just a couple of the thingsI would share. So uh on Metro Mobility about uh only about 30% of our trips uhuse the lift and that could be for a walker, it could be a wheelchair, itcould be another kind of mobility device. 70% do not. They're what we callambulatory trips uh where a passenger does not need use of a lift. And that'skind of the opportunity uh for growing the nonbus the small bus uh share of ourfleet to more SUV or or those types of vehicles for which there exists aproduct you can actually buy that has a reasonable chance of working. Uh therethe cutaway bus electric market is essentially non-existent.the the uh SUV uh side of this uh exists uh and and is actually pretty good. Sothe opportunity for us is to grow into that space for those trips where peopledo not require use of a lift uh in order to board the vehicle. The challenge iswe have a new paratransit system every single day. uh we have different routes,we have different trips that we're operating every single day and itchanges all day long. And so going to, you know, like a 70% SUV mix because 70%of trips don't need that uh wouldn't be a successful outcome because we need theflexibility to adapt our service all day long uh to meet the conditions that areout there. But we see the opportunity to grow that fleet bigger than it is today.And that's where we can get into meaningful electrification and otherimprovements like that. >> Oh, very good. Okay. Now I'm my secondone is switching gears and that's related to environmental justice. Um onuh slide 32 I'm um I'm particularly interested in like theicons that you have and the different categories the uh people centered the uhcommunity centered and the repairerative. Mhm.>> Um and my question is first the community centered prioritiesum of engagement at this point anyway um has a term called overburdenedcommunities. I'm not sure if we want to go on to the details of what that is,but that's kind of a newer term. And when I think about overburdened, I'mthinking that it could have multiple meanings. You know, it could beoverburdened with taxes or is it overburdened with expenses?>> Uh, or is it overburdened because um you feel oppressed. So, all thosekinds of >> questions pop in my head um>> from and maybe it's going to pop in somebody else's head too. I don't know.But um so I had a question about that. I don't necessarily need an answer today,but maybe thinking about um how um I could have maybe a better understandingof that in the future. Uh and then >> if I may, Madam Chair, it would bereally quick. Madam Chair, Council Member Chamblas, um this actually is aum taken from Imagine 2050 where we have a more detailed description of what wemean by each of these elements. So, we're happy to share that with councilmembers after the meeting as well. So, you can see that more written out form.This was the just the visualization of that.>> Okay. And then for the final is the community benefits beyond mitigation. Iwas really happy to see that in the environmental justice playbook and umwould be very interested in in how that uh implementation and development goes.Uh, I've been hearing from many community members about um the need toget more from the resources that we have that have an outcome of communitybenefits and what that looks like for different communities.>> Yeah, absolutely. Madame Chair, Council Member Chamblas, I think um my colleagueLisa Thompson says it best is that we like to leave places better than weencounter them. And then that better is something we um define uh incollaboration with um the communities who live there. So absolutely agree withyou. We weren't just fixing the problem that we caused, but going beyond that.>> Thank you, >> Council Member Lindstöm.>> Two examples that I can think of uh related to that, things that we arealready doing. um the uhum equity water efficiency grant program, $400,000uh that we allocated a year or [snorts] two ago. They'rebeing put in place now. Um sothere's no um cost [snorts] match for either for communities or for theresidents that um now can benefit from water efficient appliances.Uh that's number one. And then um number two well it's the the tree grantprogram that that you mentioned. I mean, there are trees in the ground right now.U and there's an equity, environmental justice component to those tree grants.>> Um they're not big trees right now that are in the ground. They're kind of smalltrees, but they will be one time >> uh sometime soon. And so those are twoexamples that were that are in place right now.>> And I'm sure there are others. >> We do.Council member Carter, thank you um very much appreciation for thereporting and for um the results over time and the prospects for the future. Iam so um just incredibly impressed that we know how much we're responsible forand how much we can improve by any reductions that can happen here acrossthe metropolitan council and really appreciate the work that you are goingto be doing with our communities as you look to provide technical assistance,playbooks, things of that sort. for I'm curious because we know so much aboutand are taking responsibility for what we can do um you know and that 1%reduction can be such a huge impact on our community as to how when we partnerwith others other local governments or when we provide technical assistancewhether we will be able to engage together with them to look at theirgoals and to look at what impacts they're ableto have and to aggregate that potential impact that we all can have as we looktoward accomplishing the overall goal. Am I right to assume that we'll becollecting that work and that that in fact could be one of the goals of ourproviding the assistance? >> Yeah. Um, Madame Chair, Council MemberCarter, that is a really great question and I'm going to uh go really deep intoa water specific um opportunity. Uh, so my staff um through the advice of theMetro Area Water Supply Committee, MOSAC, affectionately known as MozAk, umwe are just launching a project this week. We're going to be hopefullygetting the surveys out in which we are asking communities about their uhinfrastructure that they use for water supply. So, what kind of pumps, what arethe status of their pipes, what are the conditions and the reason we're askingit is to just get an understanding of where we are just systemwide of thecapabilities. But if you take that same data and look at it from a climate lens,we can start thinking about what kind of pipes or what kind of pumps are theyusing and are there, you know, opportunities for more efficient pumps.And like we can use this data to find our partners to engage in conversationto say, oh, this is really interesting. These are the pumps that you have pickedfor your system. Like let's talk about why or maybe this is a better pump thatwe've never heard about. And so it's an opportunity to go really deep and workwith our local water supply partners because when you are talking about watertreatment or wastewater treatment, a lot of the same tools are used and it'spumps and pipes and we're trying to push water places. And so that's one areathat we're looking at. And then the other side of this when we think aboutthe surface water planning um and environmental services uh we partnervery closely with the 33 watershed districts and the soil waterconservation districts and we also have a review authority of their plans and soit is an opportunity for us to look a little bit deeper into that level ofwater governance and see what are they doing for climate because I say thisI've say this all the time like whether I'm saying climate planning or waterplanning it's the same work >> and so like when I'm looking at what awatershed plan is I'm looking at what their climate plan is and so it's thisopportunity to see what they are doing [snorts]>> make some recommendations or make some uh connections within our network to seehow we can even do our jobs better based on what locals are doing.>> Thank you. I appreciate that. And setting the example as we do our work,you know, gives us the opportunity to influence what they're doing. And it'sreally cool to kind of sneak and see what they're doing so you can makerecommendations and push it forward. >> Absolutely.>> Thank you. >> I don't need anything.>> I had Council Member Jenkins. I have Council Member Lilliger and CouncilMember Barber. We are coming up on some We have another discussion item that Iwant us to be able to um give as much care and attention to. So, I'll takethese three comments and then encourage you to um continue to to support andreach out and and ask questions. So, we'll go Council Member Jenkins first.>> Thank you. And this um dubtales off Jen where you said water work is climatework. Um since I wasn't here when this started, of the 73 actions, are theseall new unique actions above and beyond what we were doing at the time?Recognizing that a lot of our daily work still is climate work and so justgetting a clarification on the 73 and how that works with what we currently dotoo. >> Going to say this because Madame Chair,>> you got one. >> Okay, cool. Good. Thank you. [laughter]Um, council member Jenkins, that's a really good question. Uh, I will say andI will speak for my own and then I'll let my colleagues speak for the actionsthat they're on the hook for. Uh when we were making this plan, uh it wasactually in the middle of the pandemic and uh my colleagues in environmentalservices were really rightfully so panicking about making sure we werekeeping our operators safe and making sure that we were trying to create thisor have this essential service for the region during a time of great upheaval.Um and so we intentionally because again water work is climate work. Uh we keptour actions trying to be connected with the core work we were already doing butlooking for improvements in those actions to make it a little bit moreefficient or a little bit more resilient. Um we did have a few newthings but again if I would have said at that time dear friends in environmentalservices we are going to do all this new work. Um I would have probably writtenrun out [clears throat] of town. out. >> If I might add, I would say that'sprobably true across all of our commitments where there are new thingslike environmental justice playbook where we're going beyond um EGArequirements where we're required to do them by a federal law and expanding thatacross all of our work. So really building off the work we're doingalready. Um, a lot of our actions were related to our policy development forimagine 2050 too, directing how we wanted to incorporate climate um,considerations into our long range planning efforts and provide technicalassistance. So, some of that um, so I would say yes um, the same changing theway we do our existing work and then thinking about where else could we domore. >> Thank you.>> I would add to that. Um when we put together the strategies, there was anintent to make sure that there's a lot of existing work that would find a homeunder an existing strategy, not to allow the strategies to become so specificthat it really pointed to one thing. Even the actions have that take on them.The the we talk about reducing energy consumption in a facility. We don't getto the detail of changing a light bulb in a hallway. So with intent, we we webuilt umbrellas over things we were already doing. So they'd have they'dhave a home within the plan knowing that a lot of the place lot of we did we'redoing a lot of things and we had to find places for them within the plan. Sothank you >> council member Lilligrin.>> Yeah. Thanks chair. And in the interest of time I'll just make statements ratherthan ask questions and I'll structure these around your questions that youprovided. Uh sometimes how have you done this past year? Great. Especially whenconsidering this is just we're only three and a half years into this plan.So, uh, actually, where would you like to see go further? And, um, and thisgoes back to something that you said, Jen, that I found very intriguing, and Ican't quite sus it out on the data that we have here. And again, I'm not we cango into this further, but you said um you know, with so much of ourenvironmental services, uh greenhouse gases or emissions coming fromtreatment, the biogenic I think was the word that you were using, but we putmore water treatment online without really going up in the emissions. And sojust to understand that relationship a little more uh would be helpful for me.And since that's sort of the biggest area, I guess a related question ormaybe response to your questions is since that's our largest um area ofemissions, is that where we go for bang for the buck or is it just a given it'sgoing to be that that high? So I would be interested in in that another andthese kind of relate is about money budget, right? and where um the uh theplan appears in our budgets. And so one of the things that comes to my mind isgrants, right? And so maybe a little more reporting on the grants. Uh uhyeah. And then as we go into budget season, kind of showing this is aa environmental action plan strategy, something like that. And then anothermetric that I think would be really interesting would be I would like Ican't wait to see then uh EJ playbook and some reporting on that but also inthe toolkit and how it's getting used. So that that would be an interestingmetric for me. Thanks. Thanks Madam Chair.>> Thank you council member. Council member Barber.>> Thank you madam chair. Um thank you so much for all this. I think back a fewyears ago, I was on a climate work group and we were talking about how we wereeven going to frame some of this up and to see kind of this continued action.Um, especially in a political environment that's not always perfectlywelcoming to it right now that we're continuing to march forward is reallyreally amazing. Um, I will tell you some of those uh like the toolkit and um thegreenhouse gas emission tool. been out in community and showing some of thesethings. And um you can almost see the relief on some people's faces cuz it's abig ask that the legislature um made to have um tool or to have these thingsincluded in comprehensive plans and we've built tools that they can use andthey can adjust and play with and I think it's really been to watch peoplethey're just amazed by what we're doing with all of that. Um I think then uhreally not a question that you kind of have asked what would you want to see inyour next report and I think it's the next report and the next plan. So thenext report like keep moving, keep marching. I think it's reallyimpressive. um for the next plan, you'll have a new council and I think um I asCouncil Member Lindstone pointed out, this is not a problem that's going awayand it's really impactful and my ask of you would be to be ambitious and that'sreally what we'd want to see. >> Thank you, Council Member Barber. Um Iwill just close this out by saying thank you so much for your work. you supportour region and you support the state's climate framework as well by doing suchthorough and such ambitious work. Um we look forward to the progress between nowand next year when we hear from you again and we are here to support you.Thank you so much. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Uh are you you ready for some morereally great information? We are moving on to our next presentation. Um I'mgoing to introduce us with just a word or two and um as we're bringing up uh uhBarish Gumas to join us at the days for a presentation. The title of this is theimmigrant contributions to the regional economy. Uh that doesn't quite dojustice to the origin of this work and why we're doing it.uh in our reflections of Metro Surge, it brought us to many questions about uhwhat happened, why it happened, what our role is, how we can seek to understandum why we felt so committed to and protective of our neighbors who weretargeted during Metro Surge. Um, I asked for a little bit of thought on this andthe team came back with a couple of uh threads to pull, ideas to pursue tounderstand the impacts of Metro Surge and to really put a a value inperspective of why it is so important. We are a welcoming region to all. Sotoday you're going to hear about a piece of that work and I'm really excited forthose of you who haven't um heard it at community development yet to receivethis information and to to promote uh good discussion about it. So with thatintroduction, I will turn it over to our expert here and just thank you inadvance for all of your work on it. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Good[clears throat] afternoon, Madam Chair and council members. Um today my name isBish Kimishd and I'm a planning analyst at the um in the research unit at the uhcommunity development division. Today I'm going to be talking a little bitabout the uh contributions economic contributions of immigrants um into ourregion's um into our region. Um oops. Um so in today's presentation I will startby talking about the context of the project and the rationale behind it andthen I will summarize the findings we have um quantifying the thecontributions that I will specifically talk about. Then I will uh continue withour next steps and um hopefully we will wrap up with some um discussion and thequestions pertain to the next steps. So this is a broader project as uhmadame chair uh mentioned um the findings that you're going to hear todayare uh part of the first component of this project. The broader project hasthree components and the first one is what you're going to hear today. Um it'sbasically a quantification of all the um or a quantitative analysis of the dataum on the economic contributions of immigrants. And um this was um sort of acontextual piece um in the sense that we wanted to um sort of put the theoriginal research that my colleague Darcy and her team are undertaking putit into a context and just to give an idea of um what does it look like whatare we talking about when we talk about immigration let's just put a number ontheir contributions. So the second component is really aboutum a sort of a longterm a study qualitative study of the long-termimpacts of operation metro surge on the region's small businesses especially theimmigrant-owned ones and um to uh identify um their experiences um Darcyand her team are um doing an on the ground ethnographic study of theirexperiences and um perspectives and hopefully we will bring the results ofthat um to your attention on August five uh 5th. Um and the last component ofthis project is a regional convening and we're hoping um to um bring together abunch of um or a cross- sector of regional stakeholdersum to discuss u potential strategies about strengthening um uh bringing uhshort and long-term recovery and strengthening economic resilience ofthese businesses in the long term. So that uh I will um get into the detailsof that um in a minute. So why are we conducting this research? We'reundertaking this project because the council committed to certain actions andgoals in imagine 2050 and um the um 2025 regional economic framework.Specifically in imagine 2050 we have um five regional goals and one of thosegoals is the is to foster a a dynamic and resilient region and uh this projectis relevant to um fostering that goal in that it analyzes the impacts of an eventthat threatens the um resilience of the region. And um the council alsocommitted to um collaborating with regional partners and uh to identifyregional strategies about a number of um uh areas. And in this case the um theconvening component of this um research will uh bring together uh regionalstakeholders to try to um identify certain strategies for the well-being ofthe region. And uh similarly in 2025 regional economic framework we committedto holding future convenings as needed that can help continue the conversationum about the region's economy and uh in the um 2025 regional economic frameworkwe talked uh extensively about economic resilience and the convening part ofthis project will also return to that theme.So um I should mention that um we have studied the um the larger um demographicand economic trends in imagine 2050 and uh the regional economic framework butuh we evaluated the contributions of immigrants and noted that uh in our umelaborations but um we didn't really quantify those contributions and this isour opportunity to put um some numbers on the specific contributions to tellthis story. We came up with seven different narratives u pertaining toeach um specific contribution and uh so I will start with the first one which isabout population growth. So the region's future population growth willincreasingly depend on international immigration. If you look at populationchange uh or population growth, there are three sources. One of them is umnatural growth which is um defined as uh births minus deaths. Then we havedomestic migration and finally we do have international immigration.uh in this in these charts the striped bars are all forecasted numbers and theum solid bars are the actual observations.So when you look at the chart on the left hand side of this slide, you cansee that natural growth has been slowing down since the beginning of the century.And this will continue be continue to be the case because we're aging. It's notthat we're everybody's aging but it's the um composition of the[laughter and clears throat] region is changing and the share of u older adultsis growing. So um when you look at international immigrants uh immigrationthe trend is exactly the opposite. You see that starting with 1990s we startedum getting more and more international immigration and our forecasts also um uhdemonstrate that we're going to be having more immigration.Um and finally for domestic migration we do have it is a bit of a wash. It tendsto fluctuate from one decade to another depending on economic conditions andmany other factors. So domestic migration will not be a significant uhuh contributor to our population growth. >> Looking at it from a slightly differentperspective, when [clears throat] we look at um net population growth,immigration once again will be driving that. And uh if you look at the chart,you will see that um international immigration um will account for 47% ofall the population growth we will have [clears throat] until 2050. Um the second narrative is about the umuh workforce growth in our region. The region's economic growth will stallwithout international immigrants entering the workforce. So this charthere shows you the composition of our workforce through um 2050. Again the umstriped portion is the forecasted piece and the rest are the actual numbers. Umin this case the gray area while all of these um differently colored bands showthe impact of or the share of um certain demographic groups um in our workforce.And the largest portion of this chart is the gray chart which shows the share ofum US-born workers their contribution to our workforce. As you can tell from theshape, it's flat. So um the foreign USORN workers will not be able to offsetthe um labor shortages that we are uh experiencing and these shortages um arelikely to grow. So um to uh instead of um meeting our um uh labor force needsum through um US-born residents workers, we are actually looking at a situationwhere our immigrant population is going to be um the growing share of ourworkforce. Um if you look at the Navy band um that basically shows the shareof um foreignb born workers in the region as you can tell from the width ofthe band the share of uh immigrant workers in the workforce is going to beincreasing and they will play a central role in filling jobs and sustainingeconomic expansion. The third narrative is about the jobdistribution or the industrial um [clears throat] the distribution ofimmigrant workers across uh different industries. And as you can tell from thechart which shows the 12 largest industries in the region and the uhamount of foreignb born workers in each specific industry. Immigrants are reallyan integral part of the workforce. They are um operate working in all sectorsall industry industries of the um of the economy and uh one in six workers in theregion is foreignb born and um [clears throat] more than half of theseum foreignb born workers are um concentrated in the top four industriesand these are healthcare and social assistance, manufacturing, retail,trade, aid and educational services. Then we looked at the um occupationalmix of our um immigrant workers and um it basically the the overall message isthat they work um these workers support the regional economy by doing essentialand everyday work. And uh I selected a number of occupations and identified theum the percentage of immigrant workers in each occupation. Um and Ispecifically selected these just to show some of the important functionsimmigrant workers serve in the economy. Um I think the most important one is umthe fact that they um enable workers um working age um adults to participate inthe labor force by providing essential care for their dependents and these areolder adults and children. Um if you look at the numbers um nearly 40% of umpersonal care and home health aids who um extend care to older adults they areum immigrants and [clears throat] one in six child care workers is alsoforeignb born and without their um uh care services it would be hard for us tou maintain our um fairly high labor participation rateand then immigrants provide core services and uh I picked threeoccupations but you can extend the series quite a bit includingconstruction workers and many other critical sectors but um if you look atum the health industry for instance half of our nursing assistants are immigrantsum one in five physicians is for uh foreignb born and um we also thecleaning staff in our region, nearly half of them are immigrant workers.And [clears throat] usually um there is a a perception that um immigrant workersfill low-skilled jobs and that is not the case. In fact, many of our umimmigrant workers are um they are um over represented in the educationalspectrum. on the higher end of the educational spectrum, we do get a lot ofhigh-skilled um immigrants filling hard to fill um technical positions and uh asthey do so they're contributing to innovation and growth in the region. Umthey are sustaining our um cyber infrastructure. For instance, if youlook at um the number of um computer related occupations, one in five of themare um occupied or filled by immigrant workers. And [clears throat] immigrants are notonly workers, but they're also entrepreneurs. And as entrepreneurs,they um start new businesses and provide additional jobs and create additionaljobs. And uh when we looked at business ownership patterns in the Twin Citiesregion of the businesses without paid employees and these are businesses wherethe owner is the sole employee. Uh one in five are um started and owned byforeignb born entrepreneurs and one in 10 of the um small businesses with paidemployees um is also a foreignb born uh entrepreneur. And um in terms of the umthe businesses without paid employees, these are really important uh economicpathways. They provide economic pathways for immigrants to be integrated to theregion's economy and to their new countries. Um and with the paidemployees, um entrepreneurs are um expanding their standing. They tend tobe more wellestablished as entrepreneurs and uh but they do uhcreate additional jobs and many of them actually own multiple businesses. Um immigrants are also taxpayers andthey support essential public services in the region. Um council staffestimated their contributions. um they are adding up to almost $5billion a year. [clears throat] And these taxes include range from federalincome taxes to payroll taxes. And in this case, we're estimating only theemployee section of um payroll taxes to be on the conservative side. Um also, umMinnesota income taxes and uh sales exile taxes and property taxes are amongthe types of taxes that they pay. And finally, um this is our lastnarrative. Um we wanted to quantify the total um contributions of um immigrantsas a whole. And uh we talked about um immigrants as workers, as entrepreneurs,um as taxpayers, um also they are consumers of goods and services. So tobe able to um understand their impact, we need a a macroeconomic model andwe're lucky enough to have that model. It's our forecast model. So we werereally in a unique position to be able to estimate the economic impact of umimmigrants in the region. So um to be able to do that we did a sort of a niftytrick. We came up with um a counterfactualscenario where we simulated a um a scenario which would um sort of quantifythe contributions. And I want to emphasize that this is a hypotheticalscenario. It's just a simulation. It is not an actual um policy or forecast.It's just something we u did to understand the economic impact ofimmigrants. So in this scenario, we just did um we asked this simple question.What would the region's economy look like without the region's nearly 410,000immigrants? So, um, this exercise, if you think ofit in terms of its reverse, it shows their contributions. If they didn'texist, whatever would disappear would be exactly their contributions.So, in this exercise, um, we just came up with the following numbers. If wedidn't have u our existing immigrants in the economy, we would lose nearly $50billion in our GDP and similarly we would have almost 335,000fewer jobs. So um and I should also note that this basically adds up to roughly14% of a loss in our economy. Um and the numbers the 335,000number is actually larger than the number of immigrant workers we have inthe region. We have um 277,000 immigrant workers. The differenceroughly 60,000 employees um or jobs is their contribution to the economy aboveand beyond the work they do. Uh it is the induced business they generate andinduced jobs that they generate. So that's really the end of my findingsand uh so in terms of next steps um we have two steps we're hoping to take. Thefirst one is the dissemination of results and uh this is not an academicexercise. We don't really [clears throat] want this um to sit on ashelf. We just want people to use this information for whatever purpose theydeem is appropriate and um also we want to use some of ourresearch to frame the convening that I was mentioning.So um in terms of dissemination of results I just want to give an exampleso you have a an idea of uh how this could be used. uh as part of ourresearch, we reached out to the Mang American Partnership and uh uh we justasked them, you know, would you have any interest in this kind of information?Would it be helpful to you in any way and [clears throat] how would it andthey were very enthusiastic and they said, you know, we could use this in ouradvocacy and lobbying work at the state legislature.So, um, we're basically thinking that there will be like-minded institutions,organizations that, um, could make use of this information.[snorts] Um, also, we're hoping that the, um, theconvening we're going to be, um, holding, we'll need some of this data tosort of anchor the conversation. And specifically, we're looking at threeoutcomes of this um, uh, convening. And uh we think that our um researchespecially the research that Darcy and uh her team are doing will be reallypertinent to these outcomes. Um we want to first highlight the challenges facingsmall businesses in impacted corridors. U Darcy's work is an ethnographic study.They do um talk to um many many u businesses. I'm not going to be able toreproduce the number. She's going to talk about it in August 5th. Um and wealso want to identify the gaps in the support systems and figure out thebarriers and those conversations will come really handy for um that potentialoutcome as well. And finally, we were hoping that we could develop strategiesum for economic recovery and long-term resilience of immigrantowned smallbusinesses. So [clears throat]this is really all I have to say today, but I'd like to open the floor for adiscussion. Um, and we kind of came up with certain questions to anchor yourconversation and uh, one of them or a few of them are related to disseminationof results and one of them is um, uh, pertinent to framing the convening. Sothe questions we have are who are the audiences you anticipate for theseresearch results? You have professional contacts um you know um your sectors.So, we're hoping we could hear some names from you or some institutions. Um,and how would you see these audiences using these findings? That would give usan idea of how we should present our findings depending on our audiences andalso where should we disseminate the results. That's another piece ofinformation that would be very useful. And then in terms of the convening, wehave envisioned certain outcomes. Well, we're hoping that you could give us someum clues about what other outcomes you would like to see if we're missing outon anything and the with the goal of um sustaining um or establishing long-termresiliency uh for our small businesses especiallyin the post uh surge um era. On that note, I'll stop. Thank you.>> Thank you, Bish. I'm really pleased to see all this research and I'm opening upthe conversation already. I see council member Johnson um was first in thequeue. Uh and then I have council member Carter is council member Dr. Carter aswell. Council member Morales and then council member Ovashak and we'll see ifwe can get get that order. Council member Johnson.>> Thank you. Um very timely. So I appreciate uh the request for this uhappreciate the presentation. So, um I'll give you um some suggestions[clears throat] to what you're seeking, but also in this report um you know, alot of the data goes back to 2023 and 2024. So, it was pre-metro surge>> um and it was even pre-political >> discourse that's taking place in thisnation and in this state. So, I you know, I know data is only as good as wecan get data, but certainly things have already shifted. Um and I know just uhanecdotally from listening to news reports probably NPR type um you know wealready know there's a big chill on people coming from all over this worldwhether it's to just even come for an education or temporary work permits umscientific contributions uh there's there's another level of loss that weare currently experiencing here um I don't have [clears throat] that data,but those that data is out there and it's currentduring and now I don't know if there's ever a post surge. Seems like the surgeis still sitting there in a way, but um at least what happened here in January.So, I would like to know if there's any way to harness some of that current uhdata or um other sources to say, okay, this was 2023 24 and I'm not sayingthings were perfect then but certainly things havegotten worse and so where do we stand today? Is there any sort of metric anddirection? I'm making an assumption that it we have less people coming into theregion. Um, having worked at great MSP for six and a half years, we knew thatthat was going to be the strategy back in 2010, 11, 12, 13 to, you know, haveour region grow. So, um, I don't know if we reached out to her P, but theycertainly know about bringing in and retaining uh workers in this regionbecause we can't grow our way organically out of it. So, I've beenhearing about that for 13 years. So, they must uh and they havedata. Um, so I guess what I'm trying to do is kind of take what we have here andpatchwork it to where do we sit now and what trends are we seeing and whatheadwinds are we facing um when it comes to being worldwide news for a couple ofreally bad reasons for people of color. Um, I think we are a courageous regionthat is resilient in bouncing back, but the realities are that Minnesota is notfavored by the federal government in a lot of ways. Um, funding for programsand things like that on and on. So, I'm trying to say that if we go out therewith this that has a bit of a lag in data, there's a whole story that'smissing around, well, where are we now? what our it's it's it's beyond you knowit's beyond I think the the supposition that we're putting forward it's not evena supposition it's fact that if if if we don't support our immigrant communityforeignb born uh residents I mean it is we are already starting to hemorrhagethat and so that's the part where h who's if I'm and I work at a chamber ofcommerce and I put panels together and this would be very interesting inchamber of commerce world it's perfect for some sort of panel on this. But Ithink that part of the story though is we're in the middle of ofum intense change and our image of Minnesota being welcoming. I mean, Ithink people probably know we're welcoming in Minnesota, but it's it'sstill very difficult. We're seeing people leave the state, choosing toleave the country, all of that. So, how do you frame that into what's going on?Because that'll be the top of mind questions, I think, for people that arehearing this. And um also because this is at the root of economic development.So communities everywhere that have any sense about an economic developmentstrategy are looking at how do we you know bring new residents into ourcommunities because many of them are aging. They're getting older. Even thenewer communities, if you go into the schools, you can always tell what yourwhat your community will look like in 10 and 20 and 30 years based on who's goingto school. So I guess I'm trying to just wrap it around with an economicdevelopment framework with what's in the news on the daily about you know what dowe have any current data or anything that we could supplement data that'salready three two or three years old would be my question.>> Yeah. Unfortunately the data sets that we use the latest releases are usually23 at the most 24. >> Correct. Yeah I understand that.>> Yeah. So um for This is what I'm trying to say. Are there other partneringgroups out there? Whether it be through DED, whether it be through, you know,other state agencies or even greater MSP or the chambers themselves, Minnesotachamber might be the best to be honest. The ch the state chamber and US chamberhave had a pretty good policy around immigration reform. They just haven'tgotten there. So, I'm trying to find out how we bring in I think that this is astory that has been told for a long time and maybe we need to be reminded of it,but we're we're facing some strong headwinds and I'd like to know ifthere's anything out there that tells us where are we now headed consideringwe've had a lot of bad bad press and um you know with ICE and immigrationand changing policies, good, bad, or indifferent politically, whatever y'allbelieve. But the reality is it's harder for people to come here and that's whatwe were banking on as a region and state.>> He seems to have a thing to say. >> Yeah. Chair, Council Member Johnson. Umso one thing that we are doing that will help get to some of this is um an update[clears throat] to our regional forecast. So that's coming a little bitlater this year. We'll be um probably wrapping that up by about September. Umand that will include updated immigration forecasts. So a lot of theseum big picture uh questions about population change um employment changethat will be um with um updated data >> and if I may just madam chair what whatwould be the date of that data >> I'm just trying to get to you knowJanuary changed the world for us as well and you might not be able to answer>> so um yeah and to finish what I was um saying is that within that we are takinga a scenario approach right so we're going to because it's it's uncertaintyIt's uncertain. It's impossible to know exactly how this will play out, how, youknow, you mentioned this chilling effect. It's hard to really say exactlyhow that will play out. And so, we are going to use um a scenario approach tothat to show what a range of scenarios could look like. And that's about um thebest that we can do with that level of uncertainty.>> I do appreciate that. But we know the U has dropped in, you know, applicants.So, I'm just trying to get I think this is excellent, but if you go out thereand it'll be informative certainly as a baseline for some communities, butthere's this next thing that's missing is all I'm saying as it impacts oureconomy. >> Council member, I just I want to take anopportunity to respond to one of your points. U both council member Cameronand I have been engaging with greater MSP on economicuh strategy that they're assembling. I made them aware uh just a couple daysago of our work here and we plan to sit down with them. We have differentregions so our numbers will look different but certainly we should besharing and learning from each other and and I think our our goal and the team'sgoal is to look for not just greater MSP but other agencies that we can comparedata learn from uh maybe they have something more current maybe we havesomething more detailed. Uh this is a great starting point and I really thankyou for your care and attention and all your great questions on this.I should mention that the uh convening itself will give us some opportunities.It'll be an occasion for us to invite for instance deed and uh we talked to umSBA. Um so uh there will be venues for us to bring in more information. Um atthis stage we were just simply dealing with the data limitations but I Itotally understand. >> Yeah. Thank you.>> Point. >> Uh we had council member Dr. Carter andthen to Council Member Morales next. >> Yeah, I want to say uh thank you forthis study and just an unpleasant reminder, Operation Metro Surge resultedin over 3,000 immigrants being arrested and un and federal agents uh killedRenee Good and Alex Freddy. And so that that's a severe wound to this area, butI'm glad that something this powerful was growing out of that. And[clears throat] uh so one of the questions that that I have is uhin terms of origin primarily where are these immigrants coming from in terms ofuh by country percentage- wise? Uh do we have that data even though you might notbe able to give it to us now? If you could give>> we do have that data. >> Yeah, I I would like to see that. And uhthe other thing is I would think that if you're if you have something as valuableas this, you want to present it to the people that it most affects. So maybemeeting with those local communities, meeting with the business organizations,chamber of commerce, and um also uhbecause uh they're going to be able to tell you how they're being affected,>> what their needs are now, what their needs are going to be in the future, andthen you can design something that's going to be more of a tailored suit interms of uh addressing their needs. But thank you again for this. Thank you.Yeah, I think your point is right on in terms of hearing the voices of peoplewho are impacted. That's one of the reasons our colleague Darcy and herteam, they're working on the ethnographic work. They have reached outum to quite a few um businesses. And in the convening we're envisioning, we willhave testimonials from actual impacted small businesses as well as um CDFIs,community development, financial institutions that work with thosecommunities. So hopefully it will be a um sort of a multi-voice conversationand as part of the convening they will have a voice in uh suggesting suggestingsolutions. >> Uh council member Morales. Thank you,chair. Thank you for all this great information. Um, I'll just get quick toyour questions. I think, you know, reaching out to any immigrant advocacygroup would be the first we should look at. Um, specifically, right, you gotlike Lake Street Works, Unidos, Mikasa, you've got the RiseUp Center, uh, LakeStreet Works. There's plenty of different advocacy groups out there. Uh,I could see them using these findings specifically for like workforcedevelopment. So looking at different counties, different cities that offerworkforce development grants or monies and trying to tie them to these advocadvocacy groups. Um that would be the best place to disseminate all thisinformation. >> Thank you.Uh Council Member Obsaken was next. >> Yes. Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Chair.Real quick, I echo everything my colleague said. Uh you might want tolook at the Minnesota Truth Council. Um there will be that's uh the governor setup group of people with lots of information. Um I think that'll be agreat uh segue with that. I'll be quiet. I know we're running out of time. Sothank you and your team for for what you presented.>> Uh thank you council member Obsac. And I will note that uh the regionaladministrator and I have spoken with um the governor's office about the presenceof this data. We think it will be very valuable for>> uh the the truth council and so you're spot on.>> Thank you. >> Great. they expressed, Madam Chair, theyexpressed an interest in trying to weave this into the presentation plan beingpulled together. So that's not that's not ours to decide, but I think it's oneof the stronger pieces of data that may benefit that group as they move forward.>> Thank you. Thank you. >> Council member Osman.>> Thank you, Madame Chair. Uh first of all, I want to thank you for thispresentation. And it is really uh helped us uh to know how the uh the immigrantand uh their contribution to the our economic in this region. Although thethe data and numbers is back in 2023 and 20 2024but it it shows us how is it's important to our economic in in this region.uh and I will encourage to do more research so that our lawmakers andpolicies have more information to uh support our immigrant economic in thisregion. So, thank you for your team and kudos to this uh uh great work. >> Council member Carter, uh just a coupleof comments. I we've mentioned you know the chambers of commerce the ethnicchambers of commerce the CDFIs the associationsuh ethnic associations and the like. So certainly getting to the folks who aremost impacted who can tell their stories. You mentioned a date August5th. Is that the date that you're talking about gathering these groupstogether and hearing from them or was that something else that I missed? No,it is the qualitative ethnographic work that uh my colleague Darcy and her teamuh conducted and they will be coming with their findings.>> So that that's when you will. >> Thank you. Thank you. And then I wantedsimply to comment that looking at the impact on immigration isimportant. And of course understanding that the actions today have rippleeffects into into the future. but also the actions around immigrants haveripple effects into our entire community as there are suppliers and contractorsand partners who work with these groups and who are impacted as well. So, youknow, the idea of seeing the impact on these businesses as the total impact ofcourse has to be expanded. And I don't know the answers to what that expansionlooks like, but I just wanted to make certain that we don't close our eyes tothe fact that there are streams of economic impact.Yeah, I think this um economic impact analysis that we did with our forecastmodel tried to capture that because everything that I provided to you todaywas about entrepreneurs and workers and we just put the whole package togetherwhich includes those ripple effects. >> Thank you,>> Council Member Chandless. >> Thank you. Um I see some connectionsbetween the climate action work and the environmental justice and um theimmigrant contributions u based on um you know the regional economy. Um, and Ialso agree with um Tony Carter, council member Carter that um we if we have anopportunity to look at other impacts, I think we should including housing um andif we can even get it des uh disagregateduh that would be helpful by even geographically because there will be umsome impacts in certain geographies maybe more than others. I've said manytimes that, you know, I live in a very diverse uh neighborhood that has a largeimmigrant population and anecdotally, I think that may be adding to someresilience and stability over time in that neighborhood. Um, especially, youknow, um, neighborhoods historically that have been diverse over time,sometimes there's a struggle. So I mean that's kind of a big>> analysis just in itself but um looking at housing I think would be helpful you>> are there any further comments or thoughts or ideasto share with the team. Um, thank you so much for your work andfor your presentation today and I think you got some really great feedback fromthe council and we look forward to seeing the next part, the ethnographicstudy uh, in a couple of weeks. Thank you again. Great work.>> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Uh, we are just about through oruh, we'll move on to reports. I just have one of two quick reports today. Umthe regional administrator and I were joined by council member Wolfat a work session in Scott County. Um we availed ourselves for their workingmeeting. Um put together some topics that we knew would be important to them.Um and uh had a very open discussion abouttheir concerns. Uh the meeting was really good and we would look forward toum doing more of those in your counties if they would like ourum transparency and our participation. Um we missed Council Member Barber, butshe was definitely there in spirit with us. Um the other update I have is thattomorrow I leave for um the the third convening of the BrookingsInstitute regional sorry national saying regional now it's a good changeuh national advisory council on improving uh relationships and outcomesbetween state departments of transportations and local agencies.Um this is the third convening. I missed the first one because we had some thingsgoing on here in January. Uh but really took a lot away from the second and thethird one I will come back and share uh share with the council and with thestaff uh things that might help us do our work. Um I will pass to councilmembers if anyone has updates to the regional administrator.>> Uh madam chair, two quick updates. We completed the reertification process foruh disadvantaged business enterprises DBEES uh as a part of thereertification need from the interim final rule from the feds. Um I won't gointo deep detail on the number. We had about 800 uh DBs on the list prior tothis work. The reertification uh brought forward about 270 and then after thepriority deadline it brought through about another 130. And so we had we haveabout 400 of the original 800 now reertified. Um we could we'll at somepoint do maybe a deeper dive into the data. The process continues. It's arolling basis now. But the important piece is it allows the program to get upand running again with goal setting because we followed through the program.Uh huge kudos to everyone across the organization who's been working on it aswell as the partnership with the MAC and MINDOT. And then uh MCUB related. I justhad a really good piece of data pass my email the other day and I just wanted toshare this uh in the MCUB direct spend. So the 10 to $25,000 category, one ofthose like small spend categories that gets talked about around this table. Canwe see progress? Uh it's a chart that shows our spend 2019 to 2025 secondquarter is where our data is up to. We have a year lag in the data to theearlier conversation. In 2019, first quarter, 3% eligible spend is where ofeligible money went toward MCUB direct spend 3%. Uh the same quarter in 2025, 6years later, 36% spend. So up 33% and um that's up 16% even over last year. Andso the last three years, we've gone from 14 to 20 to 36% in the eligible spendcategories. And so I just want to call it good work when I see it. It takes uhdiscretionary spending across the organization. It takes choices from allsorts of purchasing people. That's people pulling together in the same wayat a lot of levels. And that reflects the work the council's been doing tocontinue to want to highlight and support this work as we go. So, good jobeverybody. >> Thank you.>> Uh general counsel. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. No report.>> Great. Okay. Uh we'll see each other again atthe next meeting on August 5th, 2026. And with that, this meeting isadjourned. Have a good evening everyone.