Our observers confirm that Minnesota and Henipin County's elections are verifiable and accurate through this transparent election certification process.

In 2024, there were two counties, Scott and Sherburn, where there were some discrepancies found. And then that led to recounts, court reviews, and then some legislative changes that occurred so that we could improve the process in terms of confidence in the certification of the election results.

Seven seems like a small number. The mayor of Brooklyn Park got elected by two votes a few years back. So, I always think about one or two votes. May not mean much in the broader sense, but the more local the races you get, you'd be surprised how many people get elected by single digits on these races just for council races and council members become mayors and become other positions later on. So, those things can matter and those can carry forward.

Indigenous People's Day is an opportunity to reflect on the role native peoples have played in our history as a state and county and recognize their resilience and contributions to our community.

This commemoration supports our efforts to build stronger relationships with our native communities and promote education, representation, and reconciliation. And we know that there is much, much more to do to live up to this ideal.

I just want to highlight the work that has been done that continues to be done and the continued need for birth justice. You know, we we can read data we can see that the system is not equal. People don't have the same outcomes including some people don't leave the hospital alive because of the complications of birth. And so we know the more we can do that this advisory board I believe is always having people with lived experience at the table helping us guide our policies is the best way to have a more just system.

I just wanted to highlight 9D, a relatively obscure small piece, but this item is extending a contract with the city of Maple Grove to prolong affordable housing for six properties there for the next 30 years. So, it's it's great to see these kinds of programs and partnerships with our local municipalities to preserve and protect affordable housing. And I'm here for it in every community.

The agreement before you is with the Minnesota Department of Human Services to provide focused services to assist refugee families participating in the Minnesota Family Investment Program to obtain the resources and life skills needed to become self-sufficient and achieve sustained social and economic well-being.

Mr. Grieman has over 16 years of experience in public sector finance. Currently, he is the chief financial officer for the Minnesota Department of Human Services, where he is responsible for the planning, development, and implementation of a 24 billion dollar annual budget that includes state, federal, and special revenue funds.

I did also want to just acknowledge that I'm grateful to be able to work with Betsy David for several more months before she retires and gain some of her wisdom hopefully and and continue her the strong financial stewardship she's she started as we work for going forward serving the residents of Henipin County and facing the opportunities and the challenges ahead of us.

Whereas National Domestic Violence Awareness Month was first declared in 1989 to acknowledge the more than 12 million adults annually who experienced domestic and intimate partner violence in United States.

For more than 30 years, Henipin County has been providing direct services to individuals impacted by domestic abuse. These services include the Department of Community Corrections and Rehabilitation's Intimate Partner Violence Unit, No Wrong Door, and the Victim Navigation Services Pilot, which is overseen by the Safe Communities Department. the county's safe spaces initiative, housing stability, the daily efforts of responding law enforcement officers and resources provided by community servants service agencies and the domestic abuse service center which is operated by Henipin County's attorney's office and marked 31 years of operation recently on October 11th, 2025.

This is brought forward for a few reasons, but one of them is because one month ago today, a woman called 911 and just hours later ended up being killed in a scenario that should have been prevented by the systems that are meant to serve her and her family. And so, on the one month, one month after her passing, it just seems fitting to name Miss Mariah Samuels and her family and, to really make sure that we are when people call us for help, help should be able to be provided in a manner that is timely and that prevents this type of devastating ating harm for her, her community, her kids.

It is imperative that we have the data that we need to prevent preventable deaths and that's across the board. But in this this instance in in particular given one in four given the prevailence of intimate partner violence of domestic abuse given how devastating it is in our society. Um, we want to see that there, um, is a mechanism in place to find out what opportunities we might have to do more.

I also want to highlight I think an important part of this the action which I really really appreciate is the prevention. We here at Henipin County have done so much work to work upstream to identify the root causes of situations of society's most challenging situations and I really want us to lean into into that. Um, I know in Maple Grove, Maria Pew, was killed, I think, 5 years ago now. Um, and out of that, Maria's voice has been advocating for a public health lens to domestic violence, identifying and recognizing the signs, working with law enforcement to better identify when somebody is at risk to proactively provide help as opposed to reacting after the after a call is made.

Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer among women in the United States with over 316,000 new cases expected this year 4,300 alone will be in Minnesota thanks to early detection treatment advances and community education survival rates have greatly improved over the past several decades nearly 99% of women diagnosed now survive past 5 years yet we still lose about 42,000 women a year in the United States reminding us that awareness and equitable access to care remain vital.

As a breast cancer survivor myself, I was 34 years old, diagnosed with stage 2 cancer. This gives me firsthand knowledge about just how scary it could be. Detection numbers also have changed. If you say my mom had breast cancer at 55, you're supposed to go 10 years before that, but even if I would have waited, I would have had stage four cancer. So, the more and more we think about um how important it is to have these conversations, especially with the Medicaid changes that we will be seeing, there's programs like SAGE um funded through the Department of Health. Um I also pulled up uh Hope Chess Breast Cancer Foundation. Um I'm truly worried that with the changes that we will have less people getting screened and less people getting care.

For anyone watching at home, if you, uh, remember Saturday morning cartoons, if you owned a pair of guest jeans with a triangle on the back, if you owned a pair of a stonew wash jean jacket, it's time to schedule your mammogram.

This request is to approve the assignment of a lease for Rail Authority property in Shorewood and Tonka Bay. The lease is for storage and access purposes. The current tenants JNL Development LLC have leased the property from the Rail Authority since 1987. They plan to sell their property to RLP3 LLC later this year and have requested to assign this lease.

Today's item is to authorize the execution of an agreement with the city of Minneapolis for participation in a demolition project that Regional Rail would like to undertake for some properties along West Broadway. So about one year ago, this board authorized regional rail to direct purchase and or participate in an auction to purchase um four tax forfeit parcels along the north side of West Broadway between Gerard and Irving.

I think the idea commissioner would be to maybe then move the parcels from rail authority to HRA and then through some kind of partnership with housing and economic development work on how to move those into some kind of a commercial residential development along West Broadway.

This location is also very closely aligned with the county's and the project offices and the community's initiative on anti-displacement. And so this land can also become a part of that future conversation in this in this geography as well.

There's this program called the Lake Street Lift where they do art installations on vacant parcels throughout Lake Street. I've seen heads nodding. Folks have come to Lake Street. They're It's great. Brilliant. There's mural tour tours and all sorts of there was like an ice skating rink in the middle of the summer. It was great. Um but some ideas for activation to kind of um in my opinion fencing is um hostile environmentally hostile but I understand uh the the use in this particular case. I would just say that let's think of activation because these extension projects take a very long time and so what could uh maybe JTA could help with how to activate those spaces and I'll end there.

One thing I just want to highlight is the opportunity for land banking where we have a nonprofit partner that could acquire the the land and then that makes affordability higher or easier above it. And so I think those kind of opportunities are things that as we kind of lean into anti-displacement is making sure that we are not just displacing things but we're actually creating opportunities for people to invest that allows them to stay.

This might be a good kind of case study to really demonstrate kind of the length that a property will take. Not a case study but a way to communicate to the public this these parcels will have many um many lives between now and when the blue line is open for for revenue service. It will first need things needs to get cleaned up. I mean, there's a bunch of it I think that needs remediation. So, that's an aspect that I know the public from an anti-displacement perspective will say, 'Well, we should have housing here. We should have XYZ here.' This is where we really need to push um land use and station area planning. Uh because if you are remediating for a housing development versus a different use, of course, you have to dig lower to to clean that soil up.