This particular amendment has ongoing funding. So, first I'm curious for the author or someone who helped put this together. Is your intent to do a pilot program as other cities have done to determine the effectiveness in the true costs of such a program or what have you used to determine how we do this permanently?

I made this funding ongoing because in our research with other talking with other cities that have implemented this, Ann Arbor being one, uh the bathrooms were so popular that the community did not want to get rid of them once they were created.

And then in terms of safety and use, one of the tactics that they used was um having like uh their city hall, it could be local libraries, it could be a number of organizations that we could partner with that would give uh the community [snorts] members specific cards to access the public restrooms and they would get to card in and get to use it. And then if there was any instance of vandalism or um destruction or just behavior that we don't want to see in our public restrooms, we'd be able to identify that individual card code and shut it off and be able to enforce it that way.

At this point now when uh 5:00 6:00 at night, there is no one on the city staff to help monitor this uh economic engine that is our nighttime economy.

I have uh Northeast has a number of little neighborhood bars and right now the status quo is that um either we have bar owners that are really on top of managing their operations and there's no issues or we have owners that are just overwhelmed by the reality of having a bar in the middle of a residential neighborhood.

Uh this amendment allocates $200,000 to support the development of a grocery store in an area um of our city identified as experiencing high food insecurity or what also as our homegrown council has uh defined to be food apart tide.

I think the the bigger problem we have in Ward 4 is we have North Market that's a struggling grocery store that um you know if we developed a new grocery store it wouldn't be as helpful to the community as helping North Market right so like um I'm just wondering if there's an opportunity or could we maybe create an opportunity in this for a store like North Market or Solo or Colonial Market, some of the stores that we have in North Minneapolis already that are struggling to stay open that may be able to benefit um from some of these dollars in helping not to create another grocery store, but to sustain existing grocery stores um in our community that is uh ran by our community members.

Grocery stores are notoriously expensive to develop and maintain and have very little profit margin and that gets to go back into the store. Um what can $200,000 accomplish here? There's no way it can cover space, buildout, inventory, technology, equipment, licenses, or even staff. just to open the doors.

But we have not really explored a financial incentive to make this happen. And while we understand the barriers that exist to converting these buildings in financial barriers, engineering barriers, we don't fully understand the public benefit. And I would like us as a city to to study that public benefit to model the the benefits of converting a building like the Northstar Center right in the center of downtown.

This is another economic development proposal to address the retail vacancies that we're seeing citywide. The proposal is for a cost share program for vacant retail activation, which would support uh property owners actually making physical changes to their buildings to allow for for the tenants uh retail tenants to come in.

I want to point out that this amendment along with amendments 26 and 27 transfers $2.2 million from downtown assets. Um, while I understand this amendment is meant to just reduce empty retail space at a time that we're trying to revitalize downtown, that is a lot of money coming all from the same source here.

Uh this this earmark uh about $12,000 in CPAD's workforce development fund which has approved budget of 14 million. was support funding a FTE that would help residents interested in early child care education get plugged into the correct pathways and programs.

I could see us having uh a full-time staffer uh that knows how to navigate some of these challenges so that we can actually uh expand access to child care to our community. So, uh there's a real need for this and it's really timely.

Um perhaps others know more here, but I really don't think it makes sense to reinvent the wheel and have CPED stand up a brand new program utilizing an FTE when this other program already exists. Would this need to be a new track as part of the existing career pathways program.

This was a budget amendment last year. Uh we are very much on our way to getting a vendor identified. It's just the timing of it all. This these funds need to be rolled over and we need to take this action so that um that we can actually leverage those funds that were allocated for this year's budget.

Um this motion in front of you, um, essentially repurposes the very original, uh, motion where we were looking to, uh, pull FTEEs from the administrative side, um, to essentially, uh, use already existing, um, FTE positions that's within, uh, the legislative department or the city clerk's um, office that's actually already in motion for classification.

I am just I'm really grateful to to the author to council member Wanley here for um you know her her willingness to um be flexible and find a creative solution here um that that is an alternative to such a significant reduction to the mayor's office.

And I think that as we have evolved into this new government structure increasingly we are estab establishing a need for increasing levels of formality because there are such breakdowns in informal communication. And I think um you know it's shockingly timely that this is being brought forward cuz I mean one of the questions that was asked I think council member Kashman asked this of um our safety commissioner of you know what are you doing to prevent these types of overages and in December as we're finalizing our budget they're saying they're going to start a conversation around more oversight.

This budget amendment is really aimed at making sure that our city auditor has the capacity to say yes. Um, and I'll also note that we worked really closely with uh our budget team. Starting in the beginning of the year, we identified four FTEEs to move over to the auditor's office with the vision of a a multi-year buildout.

I will support this today because of the trust involved here on all sides. But I do want to caution us to give audit a chance to absorb these new positions and be responsible about their growth. um this department is too important to not be monitor monitoring its ability to incorporate all these new positions in the work that they are intended to do.

I, you know, appreciate that everybody was working to compromise here, but I do have some concerns that public works and CPAD are getting their positions taking taken instead of the mayor's office positions. uh of politically appointed positions and I'm wondering how how it came to be that um you know the mayor and his uh negotiating team came to agree that public works and CPAD positions should be taken for this.

I think there is a a real need for us to build some some guard rails around um around our how money is um spent once it has been allocated through the budget process. Um and build in some some accountability.

These earmarks are captured in your budget amendments dedicating funds for a specific purpose. For example, the earmark earmark of funds to the office of immigrant and refugee affairs for the purpose of providing community engagement and support for im immigrant and refugee communities. The policy provides for both controls and reporting. So under the policy number one, the earmarked funds can't be used for different per purposes without council approval.

Um this council has made appropriations and we do not see the mayor then implement or execute them. Um, we're even seeing that play out in this existing budget where we know council may appropriations for 2025 uh for emergency housing vouchers to get 150 unsheltered people into permanent housing with wraparound services. And that work did not um get executed this budget cycle and now we're having to do the restoration of that along with other like civilian investigators right now.