For the first time in the program's history, funding opportunities were offered concurrently across all grant initiatives, and those are play areas, sports equipment, lifeguard services, and arts and music. The fall 2025 grant cycle was again very competitive, reflecting the community's interest and the program's responsiveness to the community needs.

The recommended grant awards will allow for over 12,300 children of all abilities and backgrounds to benefit from increased opportunity and access to youth activities.

Reparations isn't a word that should be scary. Reparations is something that municipalities and jurisdictions all over the country are starting to name explicitly and do the work that it takes to repair harm in our communities. This is called the reparative justice task force because restorative justice is more of a philosophical term that actually shares the same definition as reparations. It really is taking meaningful and active accountability and responsibility to work to repair the harm that is caused by historic discrimination, historic policies that were rooted in racism.

The establishment of a reparative justice research task force fits as the county has shifted efforts and language from disparity reduction to disparity elimination. The conversation about reparations and reparative justice began for me when recreational cannabis was legalized at the state legislature. At that time, I spoke at a briefing in this room about how revenue from cannabis sales should go to those differentially impacted by the criminalization of marijuana.

I don't think we need another report on harms that have happened. What we need is what actions we can do about it. I want to make sure that we are this work is precise in the role that Hennepin County is playing in this ecosystem. Hennepin County certainly has played a role in historical discrimination, but we weren't the only bodies of government as a part of that. I think part of this I think we want to make sure that our responsibility is to identify where the county level policies or practices have contributed to that harm.

I think of California is the first and probably foremost and then it dies because the price tag on what people say this is how you repair harm and I think theirs was a very large price tag. I also very familiar with Evanston's model it it's successful it's small. I just always worry that we come up with a plan and we come up with here's what we're going to do and then it makes us feel good, but it doesn't actually deliver on that.

The reason that you see reparative the reparative justice task force including black and indigenous is because I saw those two combined. You can't really have a conversation about reparative justice without including our indigenous relatives in that. This is Dakota land that we are on.

Our library was built in 1971, 54 years old. It's on the banks of the Ha Wapadon, which is the indigenous name for Bassett Creek. Due to the library's age, outdated design and significant infrastructure need, this is a timely opportunity to partner with the city of Golden Valley and move forward.

I mean that's what's kind of fun on the county level. We are local but we have like a more localized set of leaders and it is really quite an honor to get to weave that planning with our existing planning. It is cheaper for the taxpayer and then there's a more kind of comprehensive or holistic view of how kind of that services and land use can be portrayed.

We have had an operating loss now for eight of the past 10 years. Our days cash on hand have been very low in the single digits. The existential crisis that resulted in dissolution of our board and county leading in. So we appreciate that partnership and I think it speaks to the severity of our condition.

I want to thank you for all the work we've there's a lot of us who've seen this budget several times now in many iterations and I know this was a lot of hard work and I appreciate you getting to zero and I think it's actually a doable budget this year. It's not a pie in the sky that we hope to reach and we won't. I want it that deflates people's egos. I think this is actually doable and moves us forward.

This administration is very clearly attacking people that are impoverished in this country and in this county. I mean, just today we're hearing about what is happening to HUD, what is happening to SNAP, and what is happening to Medicaid. The work must begin right away for next year. I don't think there's a lot of areas for us to get revenue and I'm really concerned about what we're going to do about that and then the fiscal reality of that.

The only people who pay for Hennepin Healthcare Systems is the property tax owners of Hennepin County. And it doesn't matter where the person who needs care comes from in the state. There is only one place that pays that difference. We do need legislature to look at a statewide solution because it's coming.

This is more fragile somehow and I want to just clock that because we will need in my opinion to be much much more pronounced with our consolidation of shared services. We have to hold those intention with immense pride that we as a county, the residents who rely on us and we as a board with Hennepin Healthcare System stated that we must have this service open and continuous for patients, workers, and the community at large.

What really caught me up is ordinance 18 is a county collected solid waste fee solid waste management fee and it was created in 1995. So it's a 30-year-old ordinance that has been sitting on the books. The rate right now is set at zero and it has been at zero for 20 years since 2009. The purpose of the ordinance though is to fund waste management programs including waste prevention, recycling, composting and other preferable waste management activities.

We need to hold all accountable for the large amount of waste that goes into our incinerator because we have a goal to close that thing. And I think that we do that through evaluating what ordinances are already there that we could use just by restructuring them or amending them to bring in revenue for continued work to increase the acceleration of zero waste in our county.

I would caution us a little bit when we're approaching looking for revenue because when we look for revenue by passing it to possibly commercial, we have tariffs right now. We have a lot of costs that are happening. So I guess what I would just say to staff from my perspective is we really also have to just be cautious about how much revenue are we trying to generate so that we're not passing it to the consumer because it's going to happen potentially.

I want to make sure that that is like as we are looking at this that we are very that we are looking broadly at how fees levied against an industry or hauler or whatever gets passed on to the end user. We see this in our organics collection. We see it in every instance that we levy a fee onto the people bearing the responsibility. It just gets shifted right back on to the consumer.

Governance really resides with the county board and not the hospital board. And so I brought that to council and to the administrator to see what resolving clause or resolution might make sense from this body in order for the both the county board and potentially the hospital board to engage more in an informed manner regarding governance options.

I do see kind of what's in here and I just want to make sure that we're not duplicating that this covers that governance part for staff. I appreciate this coming forward. I look forward to the engagement of the work that's happening.

It's really hard for the public to be able to engage with this board and with government in general if we don't have timelines set out clearly. I feel like that's lacking right now still. I think it's really important to look at the large scope of what the state has done, what the county is doing and also I would encourage and I don't see cities in here but cities are also doing this work.

I see two things happening and that's we do need to do the governance review right we do need to look at what worked what didn't worked where are there areas that are needed for transportation transformation opportunities for improving transparency. This is setting the bones that sets that off in the way that I'm reading it. This is the structure that sets off those next few steps from now until March, from now until June that get us the foundation we need to create a governance model rooted in community.

Alliant was chosen based on experience with public entities, their inclusive pricing, a tailored approach to consulting services, their scope of services, and their cost. Alliant provides a broad array of services including strategic planning, actuarial cost and benefit use analytics, legal and compliance guidance, RFP and contract deliverable supports, vendor relationship management, data warehouse reporting, federal reporting requirements.

Their cost structure will result in a $200,000 overall contract savings as compared to the other two proposals that were received as part of the RFP. Currently, we're paying less per year, but with the new cost structure, the other proposals provided brought us up to a higher amount than Alliant proposed.

CMS interoperability refers to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services efforts to ensure that health information can be securely and efficiently exchanged across health care systems between patients, providers and payers. When completed, members can access their health records more easily through third-party apps. They can take their data with them when switching health plans, and this empowers members to make more informed decisions about their care.

The Ren Collective is not a PR firm. They are an advocacy group and the fact that we're using taxpayers money for an advocacy group. They are here to advocate. I am also looking at the bar where twice in three sentences there's complex information like as if we can't understand information. This is nothing more an advocacy. Taxpayers should not pay for it. If Miss Morardi wants to pay for it, they use campaign money because that's what this is.

The problem is we would need a professional level communications person to be able to replace the work of the Ren Collective. The Henipin County Attorney's Office sort of has unique issues and with Mary Morardi being an elected official needs to be able to communicate to the public using her communications folks.

How did you go out for the bid to find the communications that you were that you were would use for the complex legal issues? Because I too don't see there's there's a lot that they do, but I don't see like contracted media work for government agencies. So, can you talk to me a little bit more about the process to obtain REN to do this work for you?

I will not be supporting this. Let me just read the Ren Collective, just so we're all on the same page. Democracy under attack. The resurgence of the death penalty. An honest conversation about public safety, the president's plan to lock everyone up. This is the Ren Collective is not a PR firm. They are an advocacy group.

I am a bit heartbroken about why the need continues to grow with respect to victims. I've always expressed that I wish for at some point the county to have a parallel path with respect to its victim services. So much of DV funding and a lot with children is federally funded. I individually appreciate that that was a unanimous vote a couple months ago. This is a public health need from my perspective. When we're talking about people who feel like they must stay in their scenario in order to survive and then they're not getting the same type of holistic support from government at large.

Black women are 7% of the Minnesota population, 40% of its domestic violence victims. There's got to be an organization that is culturally specific to African and African-American women that exists that we can partner with to have in this list of agreements. I'm just wondering if we can maybe look at that look at what local organizations or agencies might exist that serve specifically black women from across the diaspora.

Currently we do have an African-American grant under OJ, which is Office of Justice Program, to serve primarily the African-American community along with all victim survivors of domestic violence. In 2024, we did serve around 1,609 individuals who identified as black and African-American. One of the supports that we are able to offer and provide through our African-American grant through the Office of Justice program is financial assistance for individuals who have experienced domestic violence where there are high lethality and risk factors in their situation.