Good afternoon. Welcome to this live broadcast of the Minneapolis Charter Commission. My name is Peter Ginder and I'm the chair of the commission. Before we begin the meeting, I want to offer a friendly reminder to all members, staff, and the public that these meetings are broadcast live to enable greater public participation. These broadcasts include real time captioning as a further method to increase the accessibility of our proceedings to the community. Therefore, all speakers need to be mindful of the rate of their speech so that our captioners can fully capture and transcribe all comments for the broadcast. We ask all speakers to moderate the speed and clarity of their comments. At this time, I will ask the clerk to call the role so we can verify a quorum for this meeting. Commissioner Boon >> present. >> Cle is absent. Cooper >> present. >> Thank you. >> Holquest is absent. >> Sorry. Uh, Danilo >> here. >> Dhy >> here. >> Garcia >> present. >> Kak here. Nye >> present. >> Perry >> here. >> Sandberg >> present. >> Schneider >> present. Smith >> here. >> Rubenstein >> present. >> Chair Ginder >> present. >> We have 13 present. >> Let the record reflect we have a quorum. And I remind my colleagues we'll be using the speaker management today. So please let me know if you've signed up. >> My apologies. Uh chair gender that is >> incorrect. >> Incorrect. There is no speaker at this meeting. I >> think so. >> Um the agenda >> for us. Can I have a motion to adopt the agenda? >> So moved. Rubenstein. >> No. Second. >> We have a proper motion before us. Any further discussion? >> Seeing no further discussion, all those in favor say I. >> I. I. Oppose say nay. That motion passes and the agenda is adopted. Our next item of business is acceptance of minutes from our September meetings, both special and regular. May I please have a motion to accept the minutes? >> And do we have a second? >> Second, Boon. >> Okay. Is there any discussion? Seeing no discussion on the motion, all those in favor say I. I. I >> all those oppos. That motion passes and the minutes are accepted. Next item on the agenda is the chair's report. Um I have just very brief. I would note that um we had five commissioners that were uh terms had were ending this year. Four of them reapplied. Uh commissioners Boone, Garcia, Schneider, and Kak. and those commissioners have been reappointed by the chief judge. Commissioner uh Sandberg chose not to reapply and her position is being uh filled uh has been filled. So this is Commissioner Sandberg's last meeting. Um I would like to take a moment to thank her for with actually many years of service to the to the charter commission including um time on the leadership as as vice chair and others. So um I've had an opportunity to work with her both when I was in the city attorney's office and um on the commission itself. So I I really want to thank her for her service. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Um that is what I have for the um chair's report and let's first okay let's see next item on the agenda is the charter amendment timeline. Um, and I believe we have copies of that. And Mr. Carl, give us a little information on this. >> Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And to the commissioners, I will say this should be within your stapled packet with the agenda. It's the second to the last physical piece of paper. This is a timeline we bring forward and ask for your formal acceptance each year. What it does is outline the process and the timeline that's associated by state law with a citizens petition to amend the charter. And I won't read all of it to you. It refers to the proper section in state law and at the bottom sets forward the basic timeline. Meaning from January 1 of May 1 of next year in 2026, the charter commission through the office of city clerk would be open to accept any filings of citizen petitions. uh from May 1st to July 6th, the charter commission and the city council would have to do any work for a petition that is found to be sufficient, meaning the number of signatures validated by the office of city clerk in order to finalize the actual ballot language that has to be submitted to the voters for a petition found to be sufficient and valid. And then the deadline set by state law is 17 weeks prior to the date of the general election. Uh and next year that means with the date of the general election in November, the deadline for us to submit that question to Henipin County and to the secretary of state would be July 7th. So that's the basic timeline that would be in place for any petition by a citizens committee to request an amendment to the city charter. Again, the previous uh paragraphs above the actual timeline simply point to the statutes and what the statutes require to be done. Happy to stand for questions, but ask for your formal approval of that timeline. Are there any any questions from SC Commissioner? >> Uh I have a question. Is uh chair and uh Mr. Clerk could is that the same timeline uh not in terms of a petition and signatures, but if we the charter commission want to get something on the ballot, >> Mr. Chair, Commissioner Dhy. No, this is the process that applies to a citizens petition to submit a charter amendment to the electorate. There are different timelines that apply to amendments that might be generated either by this body, the charter commission, which always has the right to propose amendments to the charter uh or to those that might come from the mayor and city council. And so because of the process, I should give a little bit more explanation. I'm sorry, commissioner. because we have to validate the signatures because we have to go through a process of assuring that the uh signatures are valid by voters within the city of Minneapolis. There's a timeline that has to be allowed for that. And then there has to be the process of the city council actually sets the language that goes to the ballot, not the citizens petition. And so there has to be enough time in there for the clerk's office to complete the validation of signatures and then for the city council to adopt a resolution uh that is advised by the office of city attorney in terms of the legality of the language that actually shows up on the ballot for voters to consider. >> Thank you >> Mr. Chair. >> Yes. >> Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Carl, how will this timeline be publicized? How will uh citizens be made aware of what they need to do? >> Uh through the chat. That's a good question. The way we've done this in the past is we have a whole page on the city's website that talks about a citizens petition and we update that uh with the timeline that's shown at the bottom. And then we also have produced several years ago and I believe I've given this to all of you, but we're the chair has asked us to work on an orientation in the next year uh because there has been so much turnover. So, we're working on that and I'll certainly give you a copy, but the city uh clerk's office has produced a guide to amending the city charter. And if you haven't seen that, it's um fairly robust. It takes the details uh set forth in statute for this the two major primary pathways for amending either by a vote of the people or by an ordinance. Um and it talks about the timelines, the steps, the roles, the responsibilities and all of that. So through our website is the primary means and answer to your direct question about how do we make that available to the public. Uh we put the timeline out there and then we have a direct link to the guide. >> Okay. Uh, Commissioner Cooper. >> Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um, Mr. Clerk, what's the uh the 10 days that the commission has to uh approve summaries of petitions over a thousand words. What's the process for that? If you have more detail, certainly through the chair, the statute says that for a citizens petition, the role, this body, I should let me start over. This body touches every amendment proposal to the charter. Um, and so whether that's initiated by the council, by a citizens petition, or by this own body, they have a role to play. uh this body. And so if it's a petition, if it's over a thousand words, the first responsibility of this body is to make sure that you approve the summary that goes on the petition signed by registered voters so that um if it's over a thousand words, that would be impossible to take around on a clipboard and have people sign. So the statutes allow uh petition committee to come up with a summary. um they can suggest their own summary, but you all ultimately get to say yes, that's a fair and adequate summary of that or it's not. >> Seeing no other questions uh for Mr. Carl, can I have a motion to adopt the 2026 charter amendment submission timeline? >> Move to second, please. >> Second, Rubenstein. >> We have a proper motion before us. Is there any discussion? Seeing no discussion on the motion. All those in favor say I. I. >> Those opposed, that motion passes and the timeline is adopted. The next item on our on the agenda is the 2026 calendar. Uh which sets the proposed dates for our regular meetings in 2026. Um there are four dates that are scheduled is the regular meetings. Janu the first Wednesday of each month in January, May, September, and December. Um, Mr. Carl, anything else on that? >> Mr. Chair. >> Okay. Just wanted to make sure that uh we get the calendar adopted now so we can publish all of the regular meetings for next year. Obviously, the commission can call as many special meetings in between, but um few years ago, and I'm sorry I can't remember when, we went from a regular monthly status to a quarterly. And so this reflects that trend recognizing that certainly if and as necessary there can be additional meetings called uh beyond these that are the quarterly >> uh commissioner. >> Thank you Mr. Chair. Uh so being a a a relatively new commissioner to this uh to this group uh going into a uh I mean it feels like every year is an election year, right? But uh going into an election year uh like the midterm elections, do you foresee uh the need to meet more uh based on the calendar that we just adopted, especially the first part of the year, or what I mean obviously you can't predict the the future, but what do you what are you thinking in terms of uh more than just four times next year? I think um to give you a little bit more background, historically the charter commission had meetings scheduled every month and historically a number of those meetings were cancelled or people showed up for a five minute meeting. They discussed something briefly and then they they left. And so, uh, I believe it was two years ago, we changed it to a quarterly meeting so that the idea that when we showed up, we all took the time to come downtown, that there was some meat on the agenda to talk and discuss. Um, the city clerk does reserve these first Wednesday afternoons for us in the event we want to call uh, other meetings. Um, I anticipate that at some point throughout this coming year, we will have a need for additional meetings. uh when I'm not sure it'll be, but um it could be the May, June, July part. If if in fact we're thinking about putting something on the ballot, then we may have uh more um u meetings in in the summer than we would have otherwise or early summer based on what the likely guy time frames will be for us to put something on the ballot if we so choose to do so. So, um, as I sit here today, I I can't tell you that there there will be a certain number, but I I wouldn't be surprised if there is. >> Thank you. >> And I've lost my So, have we had the motion? May I have a motion to adopt the proposed uh calendar? >> So, move Sanberg. >> And a second. >> Second, Cooper. >> We have a proper motion. Is there any other discussion? Seeing none. Um, all those in favor, please say I. >> I. >> I. >> All those opposed say nay. That motion passes. The calendar is adopted. And I'll direct the city clerk to publish and pass the calendar or post the calendar as public notice of our regular meetings. The next item is the government structure workg group technical amendments. Technically, this was still with the uh government structure work group. Um the city attorney's office through um assistant city attorney Andrea Nef has been working on these amendments and we have a number of new people. Um it's kind of a time for us to sit back in and have a brief overdue overview of what are coming forward on some of these proposed technical amendments to the charter. And when I say technical amendments, um, we always get in the discussion sometimes what's substant what is substantive and what is technical, but these are intended to be more technical amendments and not largely substantive. So with that, um, assistant city attorney Nef, would you kind of lead us through this? >> Certainly. Thank you, Chair Ginder and commissioners. I am Andrea Nef. I am the assistant city attorney that uh advises this body and I've been asked to give a brief overview of the current working draft of the technical amendments to the city charter. This presentation is going to provide a broad outline of the document and the work that is currently in progress in the government structure working group. First, briefly by way of background since I know we have some newer folks to the commission. The charter amendments adopting the executive mayor legislative council form of government were approved by the voters in November of 2021. Following the voters's adoption of this new form of government, the city began the process of developing the organizational structure that would be necessary to implement it. This culminated in the city council's adoption of the omnibus government structure ordinance in the fall of 2022. This ordinance placed the structure and necessary details to implement the new form of government into the city's code of ordinances. However, there were some gaps between the city charter and the government structure ordinance and therefore a draft of technical amendments to the charter were brought forward in order to align the charter with the code of ordinances. A draft of the technical amendments was first presented to this body at a meeting on Halloween of 2023. In January of 2025, this body voted to refer the technical amendments with one exception to the government structure working group. The exception is that this body did not refer the draft of a proposed article 10 dealing with commissions to the government structure work group. And I will say more about that uh that later. The working group has met several times throughout 2025 to discuss and make changes to the draft. [snorts] The booklet that is before you today is just that. It is a draft. It is still under consideration and discussion by the government structure working group. Today I'll be walking through some key parts of the draft to provide a snapshot of the work that is in progress. No action is being requested today. This is simply an update presentation. You should have all received a booklet uh in part of your materials for this meeting. And I'll just take a moment to orient you to the uh the draft that's in front of you. You'll see that there is text in several colors. The red is from the proposed technical amendments first presented in 2023. >> [gasps] >> The blue is changes by the plain language work group of this body and the purple text uh has been uh added during discussion of the government structure work group. You'll see that there are also comments in the margins. These indicate uh matters that have been discussed by the work group and may continue to be discussed by the work group. In deference to the size of the agenda, I will just go through some of the key provisions uh that you see throughout the draft, not each and every detail. [snorts] First, beginning with article uh article one on page two, you will see that there is a provision on laws superseded. This would supersede special laws regarding the civil service that are now outofdate, unnecessary or confusing and allow the city to start fresh with civil service positions. The second section of this would also cons supersede special laws that are now inconsistent with our city chart with our city charter. Moving along to section 1.4 four on page three. This is a clarification um that the city is claiming the broadest possible scope of powers permissible for a municipal corporation under the laws of the state of Minnesota. The charter already says this, but the uh adapt the updated language uh is intended to further clarify this to remove any doubt that we want to claim the further the broadest possible powers permitted by the state. Moving along to article 4. In article 4, you'll see no notable line edits until page three. of that article. Um, and looking first at section 4.2D, which is about vacancies. This entire article is about the city council. This provision clarifies the procedures that would be used for filling a seat in the event that a city council seat becomes vacant. On the next page, 4.2E, 2 E refers to removal. This provision is being moved from article 8 with clarifications in order to better align with state law. Next, turning to page six 4.2 H2 is relating to the city auditor. These uh these amendments fix an inconsistency within the charter and more specifically spell out procedures for the removal of the auditor including being explicit about due process procedures. And then finally in section 4.4A 4 A and this is on page nine. There are two additional clarifications of procedures again um providing uh due process protections in the event of a a removal procedure. Moving along to article 7. This article deals with the city's administration. Beginning on page three, there is a provision related to the mayoral staff. This adjustment recognizes that the mayor's staff needs may change from time to time and that fixed roles and titles may be out ofd. So, the draft now just provides for appropriate staff rather than specific titles of specific personnel. On page four and continuing through page five, you will see section 7.2 which is entitled executive officers. [snorts] In the current version of the city charter, section 7.2 lists departments of the city. [snorts] This draft replaces a list of departments with a list of executive offices in accordance with the structure that was created by the government structure ordinance. The three offices are the office of public service headed by the chief operations officer, the office of community safety headed by the community safety commissioner, and the office of the city attorney headed by the city attorney. These three executive officers are nominated by the mayor and confirmed by the city council. On page eight, you will see that there is a section uh two sections actually D and E which are also currently part of section 7.2 of the charter. These sections which relate to the Civil Rights Commission and the Planning Commission are struck through in this draft. But these commissions are not gone. they are simply moved to a different part of the draft. Turning to page 10, you'll see a section on police. There are a few things to highlight here, namely the the red text which says that the mayor nominates and the city council confirms the police chief. This is not a change from current practice. This is simply language that has been moved um but not a change. [snorts] The civil service provision uh under police has been removed as part of overall simplification of the civil service rules of uh contained within the charter. And finally, uh, at the bottom of 7.3 in subsection C, and you'll find this on page 11, there is a strikethrough of the funding provision related to the police department. This provision has not been deleted. It has been moved instead to article 9, which relates to finance. Next up, we have a section on the fire department. My comments here are very much the same as about the police department. Again, for the fire chief, the mayor nominates and the city council consents to the nomination of the fire chief. Again, although it appears to be added language, it is simply moved language. This is the current uh practice, not a change. civil service provisions uh are quite specific and have been removed as part of an overall simplification of the civil service rules uh that are contained in the charter. And then finally on this takes us down to page 13 [snorts] uh subdivision E, the funding provision again is struck through, but this has not been removed. It has simply been moved to article 9. Below the funding provision, you'll see a new section 7.4 relating to commissions. In the original draft of the technical amendments, the commissions were consolidated into a proposed new article 10. [snorts] I noted earlier that this body opted not to move forward with article 10. As a result, this draft moves the three commissions that are created by charter back into the other articles of the charter. And this is one of the key changes from the draft that was presented to this group in uh October of 2023. Here in the new uh section 7.4, 4. We have the Civil Rights Commission and the Planning Commission which are moved from earlier in the article with minor changes as indicated in the draft. Moving along to article 8. This article relates to officers. Starting in section 8.1 on page one, this is a clarification of the different roles that are officers within the city now including the executive officers that have been created by the new government structure. [snorts] Moving along to page two, you will see at the bottom of page three and continuing through pages three and four that there are strikethroughs of various subsections regarding terms, holding over, vacancy, and removal. These matters have been rem have been moved elsewhere as applicable. For elected officers, they have been moved to article 4 or select or section 8.3. For executive officers, they have been moved to section 8.4. So rather than combining matters for different kinds of officers which proves um confusing and unclear they have been uh separated so that elected officers are handled in a separate section from executive or appointed officers. Next, turning to section 8.3, uh, beginning in the middle of page five, you'll see an example of that. Uh, commencement of office, resignation, and determination of vacancy, and holding over are all additions of some of the matters that were moved from section 8.2. In section 8.4, we have executive officers. Now as I noted earlier to match the organizational scheme established by the government structure or ordinance three executive offices are created. This section describes how the heads of those three offices uh which are the city operations officer, the community safety commissioner and the city attorney how they are to be appointed. And then on page seven at the very bottom, you'll see a new section 8.5 entitled administrative officers. And this addresses the appointment of officers who are not one of the three executive officers or the clerk or the auditor. In section 8.6, uh you'll see a fair amount of simplification purposes. Again, I've noted several times there's an overall simplification of the of the civil service provision uh because some details can be addressed in the civil service rules. [snorts] Also, parts of section 8.6 were restored from article 10. One thing I would draw attention to is on page 10, beginning with subsection E and continuing through subsection H. These sections allow for the establishment of additional unclassified positions. And this works in tandem with the provision of article one that supersedes special laws regarding the civil service. Together, these provisions allow for cleanup of outofdate special laws and a fresh start relating to unclassified positions. Finally, just a brief look at article 9. [snorts] The primary changes there are found on pages four and five. Uh I say they're changes, they really are not. They are just text moved from other places within the charter. These are funding provisions that uh were moved from other places in order to centralize funding matters in the uh the article on finance. This concludes my summary of the current working draft of the technical amendments. Again, no request or no action is requested from this body today. The draft remains in the workg group for continuing discussion and further refinement. And with that, I would be happy to stand for questions. Um, thank you, Miss Nef. Uh, I know that for those of us or particularly for me that have haven't looked at this for a while, um, there's a lot of kind of getting back up to speed in what we were talking about and I'm sure it's kind of um, overwhelming for newer members who have not looked at any of this before. But um are there questions for Ms. Nef uh at this stage? Um as she indicated, we're not taking any action on this today, but it will be immediately a receive and file. It's kind of an update status report of where we have been and where we're going on these changes. So with that, are there any questions? Mr. >> Chair, Commissioner Cooper. >> Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um I have a question about uh article 4 on page 4 about the removal provision there. You' mentioned that there were some edits to align with state law. Could you expand on that a little bit like the specific um changes that were made and the basis for that change? >> Certainly. Um there is a provision in the Minnesota Constitution that relates to the removal of u uh local officers. And so um making our charter align with the standards set by the Minnesota Constitution is as uh that's the way that the standard was constructed. >> Commissioner Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um, attorney, is it your hope or that this body will get together with the city council and move these technical amendments by ordinance? uh in a in a perfect world. I think >> Chair Ginder, Commissioner uh Dory, I don't have a a a particular pathway or a hope relating to this. >> Commissioner Dhy maybe what I envision of this is as we went through this obviously some of this is substantive as we got talking about the executive officers and department heads and so that is not a technical amendment and that's what we're working on right now. So some of that wouldn't be considered in my mind part of the technical amendments. It's it's a draft that's out there. >> Some of this other stuff is technical amendments >> and um to the extent that we think that it's not controversial >> uh I would envision um asking uh the city council and the mayor to uh do this by a unanimous vote. That's one of the ways in which we can amend the charter. Um it's often referred to as is technical amendments go that way, but anything can go that way by um unanimous uh consent of all of the elected officials. And so there are some things that hopefully that all 13 or all 14 elected would agree are merely technical and could be done without having to go on the ballot. Um, and so whether that entails another meeting or whether it entails um um just some discussion with individual council members hasn't been determined. And as we go further down the line, we'll have to decide which do we really think are the least controversial if some of them are more controversial, but which are the least that we would actually propose to go to the elected officials. So, um, I hope that kind of gives you some at least enlightenment on on how this might work. >> Yes. Thank you. It's it's obviously a hope that the more uh changes that we can all agree on that can go by ordinance and limit the amount of ballot initiatives, it the better off we'll all be. >> I I would agree. And so, um, that's where we're moving. uh at some point uh going back to the council with um technical amendments. But other questions from Miss Nef Commissioner Rose. >> Thank you, Mr. Chair. This isn't a question, but just a sort of an addendum. Um with reference to removal, you had said that it the provision now conforms to state law, which certainly we all agree. Um, but I just wanted to add we worked we had a proposal on removal a couple of years ago, recall and removal. And after doing considerable amount of research at the time, I just wanted to mention that some of the terms that are in this provision were developed by case law, you know, court court decisions that are still state law obviously, but help um explain what the meaning of this provision is. Oh, that's not a question. I guess >> other questions or comments, >> Mr. Chair, Commissioner Cooper. >> Uh, thank you, Mr. Chair. I I I too don't have a question, more of a comment. Attorney Nef, I I will say as a non- attorney on this panel, um, I just want to thank you for your help and in bringing me up to speed rather quickly over the last year. Uh I I don't want to say that I understood everything at the beginning and I'm not going to say that I understood every that I understand everything uh at this point, but I understand more than I did at the beginning. And so I just want to thank you for for your help and for putting together um a great packet for us to review. So thank you. >> Oh, Commissioner Smith, and I'm not sure if this is for Miss kind of a a point of inquiry. If we have things that are not approved by the entire council, so it's not by ordinance and it goes to an election, is it one set of changes and it's either a yes or a no or is it possible to have like multiple questions that have different changes? Do we know? Chair Ginder, uh, Commissioner Smith, I believe how it's placed on the ballot is within the discretion of this group. We would need to obviously do quite a bit of homework to make sure that everything placed on the ballot was uh in uh was placed on the ballot in ways that were compatible with any potential result that might be received. Um, and that could be challenging. >> If I can add onto that, it's the attempt would be to get as much into a single question as you could. So, obviously the more that they really are truly technical amendments, the easier it is to have a a a question that is, you know, do you agree with making certain technical changes that are nonsubstantive to the charter? and then just have, you know, the summary of what the changes are as opposed to having maybe six questions on different areas. Um, so again, it's a focus of are they do we believe they're really technical, in which case I I would hope they would be done by um unanimous consent, but if they're not, then we may end up having to split some out into different questions. Um, that would not be a a favored way of doing it because it it muddies up a ballot. Um and we have enough issues with um a ballot in the future with RCV and state law as it is. So um we would try and keep it uh as as modest as we could as far as the number of questions. So that would be the art in devising questions and figuring out what we wanted to put on the ballot. And there may be technical amendments that we'd like to make that we just say that well we're not going to move forward with them um because of the issues in trying to present it to um the electorate. For example, Commissioner Garcia, >> my understanding, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that the council is the one that develops the wording. We can come up with a recommendation, but they ultimately develop the wording that goes on the ballot. >> Yeah, that's correct. We we propose language that they're free to adopt. Um, and historically, they have often adopted our language, but there have been occasions which they have not. Seeing no other questions, thank you again um Andrea and um I'll ask the clerk uh to file that report. The next item on the agenda is comparable research on municipal councils and um we'll be hearing from Mr. Carl, the city clerk, as well as Andrew Hawkins, who is the director of legislative research and oversight in the city. And I'll ask Mr. Carl to get us started. >> Thank you. Uh, Mr. Chair, I want to take a chance to introduce Andrew Hawkins. You mentioned him. He is the director of the, uh, legislative research and oversight division within the legislative department. It's a new division that we have created just this past year. Uh its purpose under the city charter is to be that central nonpartisan staff that supports and informs the work of the city council and its committees as our legislative and policymaking body. So it's something you'll hear a little bit more about in our presentation. Um and I I know he won't be able to stay all night long, but I asked him to be here because part of my presentation tonight does summarize work that Mr. Hawkins and his team have done on behalf of the city council related to uh other municipal councils. So, uh Mr. Hawkins is with us and uh is available to us going forward in terms of the work this body may be doing and needing research and sort of technical analytical support. So, with that, I'll dive right in. Mr. Chair, uh the city charter of course, as you all know, serves as the constitution of our city government. And so by extension, this body, the charter commission, is like the city's standing constitutional convention. It is the charter commission which holds the charter and trust for the people of this community. And one of the commission's primary duties is to study local government and to propose amendments in the form of charter amendments that would improve the long-term well-being of the community. For context, I'll note that at this body's organizational meeting in January, Chair Ginder did note that this year marked four years since the voters had adopted the executive mayor legislative council system of government. I'll pause and note that the legally effective date of that was this date in 2021. So today marks four full years of that new form of government being in place. That amendment, which was approved at the 2021 municipal general election, primarily focused on specifically defining the mayor as being the city's chief executive officer and the head of its administration. So, as the chair indicated in January, he wanted to take this year to consider potential improvements to the city's legislative branch, that is the city council, the counterbalance to the chief executive. And this report is in response to that direction. uh in order to provide a landscape analysis of the comparable city councils, the office of city clerk engaged guide house this year and provided a list of comparable jurisdictions to be evaluated. Guidehouse is a global professional services firm which provides advisory technology and managed services to both commercial and government sectors. In order to provide a fair and balanced analysis, the scope of the research was confined to large cities in the United States that operate under a home rule charter with an executive mayor model that includes a full-time legislative council similar to the city of Minneapolis. In addition to the study by guide house, the clerk's office has pulled from research that was produced inhouse by our legislative department's research and oversight team under the leadership of Mr. Hawkins. That research was very similar in scope and was focused on the structure and operation of city councils and legislative departments in comparable jurisdictions. So because these two inquiries shared many of the same components, we've pulled from those two evaluations in order to provide a more comprehensive report with findings and that's what I'll be presenting to you this evening. Uh this list shows the jurisdictions that were selected as comparable jurisdictions uh in the analysis that was conducted by Guide House. You can see those listed on the left of the slide. Obviously, every city is unique. No two cities are exactly alike. What all of these cities feature, however, is a mayor who is the elected chief executive officer of that jurisdiction. And there is in that jurisdiction a full-time city council. That is the city's legislative body. Many of these jurisdictions, you'll note, have larger populations than Minneapolis. Some are not purely city governments. So for example, in the case of Washington DC, unique in the United States, it is in one government form a city, a state and a county all wrapped up in one and operates under the direct thumb of the United States Congress. Uh has no comparison really. And then of course Denver, which is a consolidated city and county government. So a little bit different from us, but both uh DC and Denver do feature as the core aspect of their government structure a an executive mayor and a legislative council. So, they have been included here for comparison. You'll see Kansas City is also listed on this uh list. Kansas City has really a weak executive mayor model because they also have a full-time city manager. Um, but the mayor is in their charter referred to as an executive. Um, and they have some duties that give them a little bit more power than the traditional weak mayor. The mayor in Kansas City is the presiding officer of the council. They have a 12 member council. So, the mayor actually votes to break ties. They preside. they can veto and they appoint with the confirmation of the city council, uh the city manager and I believe the city attorney. So, it's a it's not a pure weak mayor, but it's not necessarily a strong mayor. So, it's been included here. Uh and at least two of the comparable jurisdictions here have undergone significant restructurings in their government form at the same time as Minneapolis. And those include Portland, Oregon, which uh many of you may know was the last surviving commission style of government in the largest cities of the United States. the year after we moved to an executive mayor, Portland by a ballot question, moved to a strong mayor system of government and has been going through implementation since 2022. And also uh Columbus, Ohio, which recently transitioned it has had a strong mayor system of government for many years. But what it did was change the form of its election for members of city council from all at large to a very unique what they call a hybrid district atlarge system that I'll talk about in a little bit detail later. The five cities that are highlighted here in red on this slide and which are also shown on the accompanying map are the jurisdictions that I've included uh from both the guide house evaluation and from our internal teams evaluation. So for the purposes of tonight's presentation, I'm going to focus on Minneapolis and those five communities so that we've narrowed down the comparative pool. Based on input that we received from this commission's the government structure work group, we asked guide house to specifically address a set of indicators for all of the comparable cities. And these indicators are shown on this slide. As you can see, they include elements tied to elections and representation, council structure, the use of committees, and resources dedicated exclusively to support the city council in the performance of its duties. I think that these are excellent indicators to consider since they align very closely with indicators used by academics to evaluate state legislative bodies. And on that I just want to make a few comments. Political scientist Alan Rosenthal dedicated his professional life to the study of state legislative institutions and became the foremost expert in the United States in this regard. In his work, Professor Rosenthal identified the core characteristics of what he considered to be, and this is a quote, good a good legislature. According to Professor Rosenthal, a good legislature has three essential tasks. First, they represent constituents. Second, they make laws. And third, they balance governmental power with the executive. To evaluate a legislaturator's performance, Professor Rosenfall noted two factors were essential. Those were first capacity and second institutionalism. In this regard, capacity refers to resources that are necessary to enable a legislative body to do its work. Among other considerations, capacity would include things like a budget for the legislative body, facilities and rooms dedicated to the functions of a legislature, staffing that's dedicated to the legislature and under its control, as well as access to data and the analyzation and contextualization of data important for making laws and evaluation of oversight activities. and then other supporting infrastructure that address those official functions including representation, the making of laws and the balancing of government power with the executive institutionalism. The other factor is a bit harder to define but the way professor Rosenthal described it, it combined several things. First, a concern concern being the key word here by legislators for the legislative institution. Second, a sense of community. Community meaning the overall culture and the operating norms and values that were upheld by the legislative institution and third continuity continuity of the legislative institution despite changes over time that will naturally happen in the members of a body. So looking at our original list of indicators here on this slide I think we have incorporated many aspects of what would be referred to as a good legislature. I had originally planned to do a deep dive and I know I sent you all my uh slides last night. I'm going to in the interest of time spare you all of the slides that deal with Minneapolis because then if you noticed I go right back into Minneapolis in comparison to uh their other communities. So I'll skip over those and save the time. If anybody has questions I'm happy to address them. But uh with your permission I'd like to move right forward into comparable jurisdictions. So, um, the comparable jurisdictions, looking at the cities we have, my next step is to go through a series of slides that compare those indicators that I just reviewed with you that include Minneapolis and the five comparable communities. Then I will present some findings uh, based on that analysis and then stand for any questions. Is that okay, Mr. Chair? >> That sounds fine, Mr. Carl. >> So then the first one we'll go to is this slide uh, slide 15 in your packet, which is about elections. And so this is the first indicator that I identified for you. This includes such things as the timing of elections, the election methodology used in each jurisdiction, turnout, and elective terms. This first slide shows the city's estimated population based on 2024 estimated uh populations that are produced by the US Census Bureau. I'll note here that based on these estimates, Minneapolis and Milwaukee have experienced population declines since the 2020 census, while the other comparable cities have all experienced population increases over the past 5 years. You can also see that Minneapolis has the smallest population of the pool we've identified of comparable cities. Columbus has more than double the population of Minneapolis, while San Diego has more than three times our population. I've indicated here uh where each of the comparable cities rank among the top 50 most populated cities. So, as you can see, San Diego is ranked as the eighth most populated city in the United States, Columbus as the 15th most populated. Seattle and Denver are the 18th and 19th consecutively of the most populated cities. Then you jump down to Milwaukee, which is the 31st. And finally, Minneapolis, which is the 46th most populated city in the nation. Again, according to estimated population uh statistics put out by the US Census Bureau, this slide also captures each city's registered voter population in comparison to that uh estimated population based on the jurisdiction's most recent election turnout in 2024. So, you can see uh the population and the population of registered voters and what that looks like. In the fourth column over, which is uh labeled turnout, you'll find data about each of these cities turnout in its most recent city election. So this is not necessarily its election this year or last year. This is the last election whether in 2023, 2024 or 2025 when the jurisdiction conducted a city election. And so of course that also gives us an idea about the timing of elections for those jurisdictions whether in odd or even numbered years. And as you can see from that data, Minneapolis and Seattle top the list in terms of turnout for jurisdictions conducted in oddnumbered years. However, San Diego has significantly higher turnout uh of all the comparable cities. I think that's likely a combination of evenear elections and a significantly higher population. This slide also shows us the election methodology that's used in each of these comparative jurisdictions. you'll see Minneapolis is the only city uh in the comparable list that uses exclusively rank choice voting and does not conduct a primary. All of the comparable jurisdictions conduct primaries and Seattle uses RCV for its primary before a general runoff election. The second slide shows all of those same cities. We're still talking about elections, uh but this is specific to council members and what kinds of terms they serve and whether concurrent or staggered. Um, you can see that all of the comparable jurisdictions elect their council members to four-year terms. Four-year terms are pretty much the norm for the majority of cities across the nation. As this body is aware and as the city has recently experienced and council members um have my sympathies as does my election staff. Uh under our state election law, the city of Minneapolis council has a recurring 20-year pattern of consecutive back-to-back two-year terms um that that are driven by what we've called the con rule, Minnesota statutes 205.84. that state law uh focuses on assuring that there is equal representation and timely redistricting at the local level following each denial census. None of the comparable cities have a similar position that impacts the elections of their councils. And as you know, even within Minneapolis, that provision of state law only affects the council. It doesn't affect the mayor. It doesn't affect the park board. It doesn't affect the board of estimate and taxation. It only affects the city council. And as I noted, it is a recurring 20-year pattern where every 20 years, we will have two back-to-back consecutive two-year terms of council before returning to our normal four-year terms. The next occurrence of the con rule will be in 2042 and 2043. As this slide shows, the majority of comparable cities conduct their elections in oddnumbered years, and half of the comparable cities have concurrent terms for their council members, actually for all of their elected officials. Um, and Minneapolis is included in both of those. We have concurrent elections for all of our election officials, elected officials, and we conduct our municipal elections in the oddnumbered years. Uh, currently, the majority of American cities, approximately 65% of all American cities use at large elections for their city council members. As with off-year municipal elections, the use of atlarge elections to choose council members was part of the progressive reform movement of the early 20th century. Together, the switch to oddnumbered election years outside of the evenumbered years with federal and gubernatorial years and the use of atlarge elections. These were seen by reformers as positive ways to combat corruption of political machines and the inefficiency of w-based election systems that were very pre prevalent at the turn of the century. At large elections were also an attempt to elevate municipal policym beyond very parochial ties to neighborhoods, an attempt to have a city-wide perspective uh in policym and it was an attempt to eliminate gerrymandering of wards. Another perceived benefit of at large elections is that all of the elected officials are accountable to all of the voters since every voter is entitled to cast a vote for all of the public offices on the ballot regardless of wherever the voter lives within the city. Despite this and the advantages as I have presented them to you, there is, as I have reported before to this body in previous years, a growing nationwide trend of moving city elections into evenumbered years and away from at large elections. The movement back to evenumbered election years is primarily a response to the extremely low and unrepresentative voter turnout that results in off-year cycle uh the off-cycle timing of municipal elections that once was celebrated by progressive reformers. This contemporary push back to evenear election cycles is primarily motivated by the twin goals of boosting voter turnout, a good goal in local elections, and reducing the overall cost on cities for administering elections in both even and odd-year cycles. Multiple multi-year research consistently finds that eveny-ear federal and statewide elections garner higher participation rates than off-cycle odd-year elections and that turnout is more representative of the overall electorate than what's achieved in off-year elections. Research in some cases has even shown that turnout for a local elections can more than double when conducted in the evenar cycle aligned with presidential or gubernatorial elections. In addition, higher turnout in evenear elections means you are engaging a more representative electorate, especially among young voters and voters of color who can be disproportionately suppressed in oddyear elections. As a result of these consistent findings, two states, California and New York, have enacted laws that either outright mandate or strongly incentivize local governments to move their elections to even numbered years. And so in New York and California, you see the majority of cities are undertaking those moves um now or have been over the last several years. In Minnesota, cities can choose to conduct their municipal elections in either an even or oddnumbered year, but not both. The process for addressing a change in whether its regular elections are conducted in even or odd-numbered years is provided in Minnesota statutes 205.07. And in Minnesota, current state election law limits the use of rank choice voting to home rule charter cities and not statutory cities. There is another presentation on your agenda tonight about elections. And so in preference to the experts, I won't uh push further on that point right now. I will also only note on this slide that San Diego and Denver have term limits imposed on their elected officials. However, the other cities, including Minneapolis, have no term limits on the number of terms that could be served by their elected officials. And for clarity on this point, I'll end by saying the state of Minnesota does not permit term limits for elected offices. In 1995, the Minnesota Supreme Court concluded that term limits were unconstitutional because a term limit serves as an eligibility requirement and not a qualification for public office. Therefore, it is not authorized under the state constitution as an exception to the guarantee of universal eligibility. And moving on to representation. This slide shows how councils uh incomparable jurisdictions address representation in terms of the manner of how council members are elected and also through a member to constituency ratio. As you can see, of all the comparable jurisdictions, only Seattle and Denver have atlarge elections on their councils. Um, at one point in time, Seattle and Columbus had all at large councils. Um, we've already discussed this trend about moving away from at large elections despite the fact that the majority of American cities still use this method to elect councils. That trend is most obvious, however, in the nation's larger, denser, more diverse cities. From the current list of comparable jurisdictions, I think that Columbus presents one of the most interesting cases. And so I'll speak about this a little bit here. In 1916, as part of that progressive reform era that I mentioned earlier, the city of Columbus adopted a new city charter which established their city council as being seven members, all elected at large. The goal of that change was to reduce the neighborhood-based political machines that had dominated that city's elections in previous years and to create a stronger citywide focus in policym. Despite the potential benefits, the city's all at large system was criticized for diluting the voting strength of minority communities, for making it difficult for grassroot cap candidates to win elections because they had to run citywide instead of by smaller wards, and for lacking direct geographic representation and accountability for certain neighborhoods. As often happens with ATL large, uh the representation comes from the wealthier, whiter homeowning neighborhoods, which is one of the biggest drawbacks about pure ATL large election systems. Still, over the years, despite multiple attempts to overturn its atlarge system, uh Columbus voters rejected those efforts. But in 2018, Columbus voters approved a charter amendment that changed the structure of their city council. This charter amendment created a unique hybrid atlarge system that took effect within the city's 2023 municipal election. Under that amendment, the city was divided into nine districts and the council itself was increased from seven to nine seats. A council member now is elected from each of those nine districts and they must be a resident of the district from which they're elected. However, the unique twist here in Columbus is that all nine district seats are voted on at large by all voters from the city. So, it's this unique what what they call a hybrid at large by district form of electing their council members. According to the proponents who put that question on the ballot, the goals of moving to this system were to balance the hyperlocal neighborhood focused representation of a district system like wards with citywide policymaking perspectives and full accountability to all voters which is achieved by an atlarge system. In the leadup to the 2018 election, the proponents of this unique system said that this uh process of electing council members provided localized focus with citywide accountability. Although although it's not included in this presentation tonight, Kansas City, Missouri also has a hybrid system there. The council is composed of 12 members with the mayor who is elected citywide and who serves as the body's presiding officer. The 12 council members are elected in two separate classes. Six of them are elected from each of the city's six districts and six of the members are elected at large, but they have to be residents of the six districts. So much like Columbus, it's a little awkward um in terms of how they're really not at large, but are chosen in an at large fashion. In both of these cases, the intent of that hybrid system is to secure in a single legislative body the advantages offered by the more narrow and neighborhood-based district system like our awards with the advantages of a broader citywide perspective achieved through at large representation. Ironically, the most populated of these cities in our comparable pool shown here, San Diego, Seattle, and Columbus, they have the fewest members, the fewest number of council members elected. Minneapolis and Denver both have 13 council members. Although it should be noted Denver is a consolidated city and county government and so council members there have the function here. It would be the equivalent of having both Henipin County and city of Minneapolis responsibilities. Milwaukee has the largest size council on this list uh in the presentation with 15 full-time council members. As a result, you can see that the average number of constituents per member is shown in the far right column. As would be expected, Minneapolis and Milwaukee have the smallest member to constituency ratio of the comparable jurisdictions. To put that in perspective, uh, consider that you could double the size of a ward in Minneapolis at about 32,000 people and it would still be less than the size of a council member district in Denver, where the council member, as I said, has both city and county responsibilities. And at the extreme end, even if you were to quadruple uh the population of one of our wards, it still would not be equal to the population in a single ward in San Diego, which ranks among the top 10 most rep uh populated cities in the United States. Here we're talking about council member and structure. Uh you can see how council's use of committee systems is done in the comparable jurisdictions. Half of the jurisdictions have eight standing committees. uh and that includes Minneapolis um somewhat and I'll get to that in a bit. San Diego and Columbus both have 11 committees. The composition, the leadership, the assigned jurisdictions of committees and etc. vary significantly between jurisdictions. So these are not specific data points that are captured in my summary. Some of them uh the cities have rules that require all of their committees to include a specific number of members. Some have rules that provide that all members of the council are members of all of their committees. Um, others provide that the council president is an exeicio member of all of the committees. So, because of that variability and how all of the memberships and and operations are determined, um, I haven't captured that detail here simply to show that these councils all operate with committee systems. Um, and then that the average number is eight. The key point in my opinion is that the cities in our list, much like Minneapolis, rely on a standing committee system to conduct the bulk of its legislative duties. That includes the responsibility at the committee level for developing, reviewing, refining, and recommending the full range of matters that fall within the purview of the legislative body. Committees are also the primary forum for the interaction between the executive branch and the legislative body and they are the primary means for public engagement in the council's work. So through public hearings and public meetings that's how the public engages with the council is primarily through its committees and all of these facts as I say apply to the city of Minneapolis as well. Finally this slide shows the number of staff members per council member uh in the farthest right hand side column. These are the personal and political aids for individual members. As the data show, most jurisdictions in our pool provide two aids per council member, as is done in Minneapolis. You can see San Diego here is the major outlier, where each member has a personal staff of between 7 and 12 aids. However, I think again this is partly explained by the significantly higher constituency ratio per member um which is again about quadruple that of each ward in Minneapolis. So purely on a numbers basis, if we were to elevate our member the population of our wards, our council members would have to escalate as well to probably seven or eight aids. There's an interesting history to how political aid positions in Minneapolis were created over the years, largely by special acts of the state legislature starting in the late 1960s. And though it's not relevant to the data presented tonight, it does underscore a theme that runs across all of these comparable jurisdictions and is true obviously for federal and state legislatores. And that is this. The greater investment you put into professional staff that work at the legislative institutional level, the less need for political staff. Um obviously there's um an opportunity to have both ends of that spectrum and there are trade-offs to whether you in institutionalize staff support or you have a cadre of political aids. um at Minneapolis and in these comparable jurisdictions, the councils have access to both political aids and to professional staff, which is a good segue into the next slide where I'm providing details about the types of professional staff resources that have been allocated to councils in our list of comparable jurisdictions. These are the staff positions that are separate and distr and distinct from the political aids described in the previous slide, which are focused on supporting individual members. Here what we're tracking are the professional centralized staff that provide that institutional support for the council in a incomparable jurisdictions. In each case there is a cadre of apolitical or nonpartisan staff focused on the work of the institution and the performance of its official duties. And again although each city is structured differently all of these comparable jurisdictions provide some level of staff support for councils that include these functions. And I'll highlight them. As you can see across the top row, uh this includes policy level research, reference and analytical services focused on current or anticipated policies and other proposals as well as studying of emerging issues and trends. Fiscal policy analysis and evaluatory support which ties into the legislative body's financial powers and its oversight functions. Legislative support which includes the full range of secretariat services required by all legislative bodies including the codification of official acts and procedural advice and guidance. Operations which covers day-to-day operations, management, budget, financial uh personnel administration, technology and systems support. and then outreach and communications which includes formal communications planning, outreach and engagement strategies, a myriad of constituent services and similar functions and support of both the council and its members. Like the comparable cities that are presented in the report, the Minneapolis Council and its members have access to both types of staff resources. However, unlike these comparable cities, most of these functions in Minneapolis are new. We've been creating these types of professional staff systems for the council since the adoption of the executive mayor legislative council structure in 2021. And as you can see in the far right column, Minneapolis is on the lower end of the list in terms of the overall number of dedicated professional staff that work for the body. Here we have about 34 full-time staff that serve in the same or similar capacities as those in other jurisdictions. Even in Milwaukee, which I would say is the nearest jurisdiction to Minneapolis, both in terms of um its size, its city's population, and its location in the upper Midwest, the number of dedicated professional staff there for the Milwaukee Common Council is about double what we provide for the Minneapolis City Council. Uh this slide focuses on the budget allocations for the city's legislative department. These budget numbers include total department appropriations and they've been adjusted where we can and know about them to provide as much of an applesto apples comparison as possible. However, a big disclaimer. I'm going to start with the city of Minneapolis. You can see our department budget is about $22.6 million for the legislative department and the city council. This includes bus city council, the 13 members, the 13 ward offices, the two aids per ward office, the entirety of the office of city clerk, which includes the staff that support the city council, but also includes all of my elections and voter services division, which has not much to do with the city council. Um, our records and information governance division, which serves the entire enterprise, but really isn't specific to city council. We also have a document solution center, which is the city's in-house printing team, a print shop, if you will. not much to do with city council and the entire office of city auditor. So when you look at our budget and you take away all of the resources that aren't specifically tied to council, it reduces to those 34 staff I talked about under the office of city clerk and then the 20 I think it's 28 aids that work for the city council and it would reduce our budget to about 51% of this total. Um so about $11 million is what we would put on here as what really ties to the city council. And then within that $11 million, we give each year each council member what we call their ward budget shown in the far right column called the member budget. We give each council member $10,000. That $10,000 that comes out of the central budget is to support their official functions. Primarily, this is going to support their participation in the National League of Cities, in the League of Minnesota Cities, training, development, conferences, constituent services, communications like their newsletters, and community-based ward meetings. So, it is not a lot of money. You can see by comparison, I'm just going to go down the line the the budgets for the legislative departments in our comparable cities. And here again, this is more than just city council. We've done our best to identify the department or departments that support the city council in these in these cities. So, in San Diego, it's the city council, it's the city clerk, it's the office of the independent budget analyst. You see how I'm adding those up? Uh, and so they can be quite large department budgets. And then you can see how much they allocate to their individual council members for their use similar to what we do for our council members. And there's quite a disparity disparity between what we offer our council members for their ward operations and what the comparable cities do. So we don't have confirmed data for the city and county of Denver as you can see. Um and what we've noted for Columbus is the total budget for the department. I mentioned they are in transition after changing the way they elect their council. So more details to come there. But this is at least in terms of one of those indicators the financial resources that are available to the legislative body under its control. This slide presents that information that summarizes um I know it was very long and probably tedious but a fast walkthrough of the comparison of Minneapolis and the five. The next series of slides I have are about findings. If you'd like, Mr. Chair, I can complete the findings or I can stop for questions. Now, >> let's stop for questions right now. Are there questions right now that that commissioners have? >> I just have Commissioner Dhy. [clears throat] >> Thank you, Chair, Mr. Chair. Uh Mr. Casey, in terms of the resources, budget support, the uh 11 million, if you cut out the clerk and the voters and the auditors, do you know if the other cities mentioned here have other aspects connected to their budgets? Uh through the chair, Commissioner Dhy, yes, they do. And so that's why I tried to preview um or at least explain those department budgets on this slide that I'm referring to. Those other departments like San Diego, Seattle, Milwaukee, those are more than just the council. That's the entirety of the one or multiple departments that that city um creates that has a tie to the city council. So like in Minneapolis, my office has a direct tie to the council and I have certain staff that work for the council members. The clerks and my administrative team, for example, work with and for the council, but my elections and voter services team do not. But they're all accounted for in that $22.6 million. >> So what you've tried to do here to the best that you can is do apples to apples in terms of what they cover. >> Yes, that's correct. Should I go on to findings? If >> there are no other questions, let's go on to findings. >> So, I'll start with the findings on elections. Um, based on the research of comparable jurisdictions with respect to elections, the city of Minneapolis conducts regular municipal elections in odd-numbered years, specifically the odd year that is following the high turnout presidential year. [snorts] Um again, the use of odd-numbered years is currently consistent with most of the largest municipalities in the United States. Um which is approximately 57% according to 2024 research by Sighteline Institute. The practice of conducting local elections in oddnumbered years as I mentioned earlier dates back to the progressive reform era in the early 20th century and was intended to encourage a greater focus on local nonpartisan politics and issues. Minneapolis is the only city out of our comparable jurisdictions to use rank choice voting or RCV for a general election only, no primary. All of our comparable jurisdictions still use a primary and a general format, though there are slight deviations noted about how they'd conduct a primary or how they conduct their general. According to Fair Vote, 39 cities in the United States use rank choice voting as of October 2025. That's the most current data I have. In Minnesota, there are five Minnesota home rule charter cities that use rank choice voting. Those are Minneapolis, St. Paul, Bloomington, St. Louis Park, and Minnitonka. Like most of the comparable cities, Minneapolis does not impose term limits on its elected officials. The only comparable cities that I pointed out to you are San Diego and Denver that do. So in terms of the elections indicators uh the m the major issue here for potential follow-up I think would be around the timing of municipal elections whether or not to transition to evenear elections and I know that that is a subject this body has been uh researching and discussing for years so it's something already on the docket findings related to representation here again based on the research of comparable jurisdictions the city of Minneapolis has one of the largers sized councils nationwide The average size of city councils across all of the different categories and types of cities uh is five members. So a mayor and four council members. The size of a city council is determined by a number of factors. Not least of which includes any legal mandates, a city's population, the complexity of services that are provided as well as the political dynamics and preferences of each particular community rather than some national standard. Um, the data also show that larger cities, so that grouping of 50 largest cities in the United States is what I'm talking about, they tend to have larger sized councils, and of all of those top 50 largest, um, 13 is ironically the average number of council members. So, we fit right in with there. However, Minneapolis has the smallest member to constituent ratio among the comparable cities and one of the smallest among the top 50 largest cities in the nation. The average member to constituent constituent ratio for the 50 largest cities is one member per 76,000 constituents. Um though this obviously varies from city to city. So Minneapolis has one of the lowest when you consider for us it's 1 to about 32,000. This level of representation and the member to constituent ratio is potentially an area for further exploration. is particularly an area for further possible consideration if you also consider as I mentioned those hybrid models of representation that were looked at by Columbus and Kansas City as two examples findings about council's powers and functions based on the research of our pool of comparable jurisdictions. The Minneapolis City Council operates in a government structure that includes a full-time legislative council and a separately elected mayor who is the chief executive officer of the city. This is the same for all of our comparable cities. They also operate under the opaces of a home rule charter like Minneapolis. All of the comparable cities have councils like Minneapolis that have the same general powers and the same core functions. These include policymaking authority, general oversight responsibilities, and of course, key to it, representation of their constituents. Minneapolis is the only city among the comparable jurisdictions where council's legislative authority is diluted by other elected bodies created within our charter. Specifically in Minneapolis, powers that normally would be assigned to the city council have been assigned by the city charter to the park and recreation board of commissioners and the board of estimate and taxation. The presence of these two elected bodies diminishes the centralized policymaking authority of the city council in Minneapolis. None of the comparable jurisdictions have separate elected bodies to rival the the authority of their councils. Some of the comparable jurisdictions, however, do have other elected executive officers, which have the effect of diminishing the centralized authority of their chief executive. This could include, for example, elected city attorneys, elected treasurers, elected accountants, or they're usually called controllers. Um, so this is the exact opposite of what exists in Minneapolis. Instead of elected executives, we've chosen to have elected legislative or policymaking bodies. And the effect of that is to reduce the overall power of the city council. Uh the diffused structure of the Minneapolis government creates several challenges in terms of accountability, efficiency, and clarity on roles and responsibilities. These are some of the key issues that were identified in the leadup to the 2021 ballot question here, which resulted in the adoption of the executive mayor legislative council system. Uh these are some of the same arguments which led to the adoption of a strong mayor form of government in Portland in 2022. The values of public accountability, operational efficiency, and clarity on roles and responsibilities along with a limited set of elected officials are the essential components of the model city charter which is published by the national civic league. The model city charter defaults to a single elected body that holds all leg all legislative policymaking authority for a jurisdiction usually called a city council combined with centralized executive or administrative authority either in a single officer that's elected called a mayor or appointed called a city manager. The most recent edition of the model city charter was published in 2021. That model, city charter, strongly discourages diffusing or decentralizing policymaking authority into multiple elected bodies or officials in preference of a single legislative body and a single centralized executive officer. In terms of the list of comparable jurisdictions in its evaluation, Minneapolis has a total of 25 elected officials. One mayor, 13 elected city council members, all by district, a nine member park and recreation board of commissioner that has six by district and three at large, and a board of estimate and taxation, which includes two uh commissioners elected at large, and a partridge and a pair tree. San Diego has a total of 10 elected officials. So from 25 in Minneapolis to 10 in San Diego, the biggest jurisdiction we compared to, one mayor and a nine member council, all by district. Seattle has a total of 11 elected officials, one mayor, one nine member city council that has seven by district and two at large and one elected city attorney. Milwaukee has a total of 19. That's the most other than us. We're at 25. They're at 19. They have one mayor, a 15 member city council. That's the largest council. All by district, one city attorney, one city controller, and one treasurer. Again, an example of multiple elected executives, but one legislative body. Columbus has a total of 10 elected officials, one mayor and a nine member city council. Remember, I said they just recently changed that unique by district at large uh way of electing their council. And then Denver has a total of 16 elected officials, one mayor, a 13 member city council, all elected by district like Minneapolis. one elected city auditor and one elected clerk recorder. Of course, uh the question of whether there is a continuing benefit to the diffused power dynamic created by having multiple elected policymaking bodies is a political one um and could be taken up by the city charter commission. It's certainly an interesting point to address the perceived loss of power and authority by the city council since the creation of the executive mayor structure. Um because as I noted, having a park board and a BET elected actually take away from council's power, not from the mayor. Um in all other Minnesota cities, the functions of park and BET are part of the city council, not separate from it. Uh here I'm talking about council structure. Like comparable jurisdictions, the Minneapolis City Council has a president who is a council member chosen by the council to serve as its presiding officer. Um, interestingly enough, I'll point out the council president has duties uh that are assigned by charter and by council rules. The charter is really quite silent on the role of council president. I know previous to the government structure, there was a belief that the council president was the single strongest elected official in the city. And I laugh at that because here's what the charter said prior to and since the government structure reorg. Nothing changed. The council president is chosen by the council member to be its presiding officer. And the charter does not define what a presiding officer is. And I'll point out that in other cities, they have city council presidents who do not preside over meetings of the body. There are other elected officials that preside, either the mayor or a separate elected. The council president is not automatically the person who runs the council meetings and bangs the gavvel. Ours is, but that isn't prescribed by charter. It simply says they're their presiding officer. They're the president. Um, in fact, I I don't even think the charter says it's the pres presiding officer. It says they're the president. It says that the president is a voting member of the board of estimate and taxation, a separate elected body where they are one of six votes. And it says most importantly, they are first in the formal chain of command or line of succession to replace the mayor if there's ever a vacancy. And I'll also point out the charter has always said that there can never be a vacancy in the office of mayor. It doesn't say that about council, park board, or bet. That there can never be a vacancy in the office of mayor. And the council president is first in that chain of command. You might even think of them as the deputy mayor. Like the comparable cities, the Minneapolis City Council also operates with a committee system where the bulk of its legislative policymaking and oversight functions are conducted. Among six jurisdictions considered, the average number of standing committees is eight and that aligns very well with the city council here in Minneapolis at least for its 2024 2025 term. Fundamentally, these are matters about the internal organization and operation of the council's legislative body and at least in my opinion are matters best left to the discretion of the council. Uh, in terms of council executive interactions, um, this is a sensitive but very interesting topic. Uh, in Minneapolis, the charter language about separation of powers is unusually strong and very specific. In section 7.1H, it states, and I'm quoting, "Except, as this charter otherwise provides, neither the city council nor any council committee nor member may usurp, invade, or interfere with the mayor's direction or supervision of the administration for which this article 7 provides." Those words are quite severe. >> Usurp, invade, or interfere. The model city charter I referenced earlier does not contain similar language. nor does state statutes in Minnesota when they talk about the city manager form of government which is called the operational plan B for cities in Minnesota created under the statutory code. In both of those cases, the language is less extreme or harsh. It merely provides that except for the purpose of inquiry, the council shall deal with and control the administrative service through the city manager and neither the council north member shall give orders to any subordinate of the manager either publicly or privately. It's a little bit friendlier, a little softer. Um, the Minneapolis provision about separation of powers uses much stronger, stricter, and as I mentioned, potentially harsher language, which I think inevitably sets up the potential for conflict between the legislative and executive branches. Although we did ask guide house to include in its evaluation any um executive legislative interactions. So, so tools, methods, practices, systems that might be in place to help support effective legislative count uh executive interactions and collaborations. Sadly, there were no consistent findings in that report. In every case, the common theme for all of our comparable jurisdictions is this, that these matters tend to be based on the personalities and preferences of individual elected officials. And in the absence of formalized structures, systems, processes, or protocols, such interactions and collaborations were the result of determined efforts by those elected officials who were involved. In Minneapolis, the mayor and council have adopted an enterprise policy that attempts to bridge the divide between legislative and executive branches while respecting the separation imposed under the city charter. that enterprise policy provides two pathways for engagement, informal inquiries and legislative directives. Some comparable jurisdictions have similar policies or procedures to address how their council is able to interact with and receive support from the city's bureaucracy under the mayor. But here again, the effectiveness of those types of policies and procedures is heavily dependent on the willingness of the elected officials involved to make use of them appropriately and to follow them consistently. Uh here on legislative resources, as we indicated, Minneapolis, like the list of comparable jurisdictions, provides its council and its members with dedicated staff resources to support its official functions as a body as well as the representative duties of the individual members. That includes a small team of aids that support each of the individual council members and a dedicated a-olitical professional team to provide institutional support for the work of council and council committees. And the council has control over its own budget, including those appropriations for each of the ward offices to support their operations. With that, I have uh exhausted all of you and completed my prepared presentation. Um I would like to suggest that my summary tonight simply scratches the surface of the research that's been done both by Guide House and by our internal team in the legislative research and oversight team. Uh my goal working with you, Mr. chair was simply to get this presentation in front of this body before the end of the year. It took a long time to get it. I know you've been waiting on it. Um my recommendation would be that you consider and give some further direction on priorities or possible amendments based on the data that I've presented. I also think that if you are amendable to this, Mr. Chair, we might um get some feedback on which points are of most interest and ask both guide and the legislative research team to come present early next year. um much more comprehensive details on those specific items of interest. This was intended to be a very broad brushed approach. Um obviously I don't think we can address all of those issues I've covered, but if there are certain ones that are of particular interest, I think that we would take your lead in that. >> Um Mr. Carl, I have a a couple of questions. Um first of all, um thank you for um doing this and the effort you've put into this. Um, and these are your slides based on a rough draft report or preliminary report done by guide house. When would you anticipate having a completed report from guide house? >> Uh, Mr. Chair, the the report from guide house certainly can be finished immediately. Um it was my hope that having had um sort of the broad overview of all of the data but limiting it to six jurisdictions that this body would say as an example, we're very interested in pursuing some of this information you provided about types of elections or representation or council resources and we would like to get more information here and there and then we could finalize that with guide house and ask them to come back January sort of timeline >> which segus into another question that I have. Um I take it that their report has much more detail and is much larger than what we have today and so u is there value in having them show up. we will have had a chance to get the report prior say for example our January meeting to go through that report and then have guide house present and so we would have a some time to formulate questions and that's one thing that I would like to see is to actually have the report and then have guide house come in and we could ask them specific questions um and so if that is possible um I would like to have a report done it finalized and then have them available if possible for our January meeting. And as I you were going through what we asked them to look at um I noticed something that we didn't ask which is the next item on our agenda um on department heads is which uh commissioner um uh Kle is not here um to give his report but I think most of us were present at that meeting you have a good understanding what that report is but I would like to ask guide house in these comparator cities if they can do that in this time frame to take a look at the department head appointment confirmation process in these cities. So we have additional information um to kind of look at what do these cities do as far as their own appointment confirmation process. I mean we spent a lot of time on what we think it should look like. Um, I think it would be valuable to have a little bit more information from other cities and how does their world play out and who do they um uh who does the mayor appoint by him or herself completely? When does the council get to weigh in, what kind of positions um and if that is something that you think that they could include in either an addendum to this report but have that presented also um on our January meeting? Uh, Mr. Sher, yes. And I would hasten to add, I also think there would be benefit in asking Mr. Hawkins to come at the same time. His report actually fed a lot of what Guide House did. His report that was done at the request of council about comparable uh councils and legislative departments um was actually done first and we actually sent his report to guide house as an example. So, I do think there's value in both guide and the legislative research team coming forward to to address both of of the research both that's been done that you haven't seen the fuller scopes of those and any follow-up questions you have. >> Okay. Uh let's take that as a >> Yep. a directive if we could to to um you to have them complete complete the current report, do the agenda and um and then have them appear for our January meeting. >> Yeah, happy to do. >> Thank you. >> Questions, Commissioner. >> Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair, uh and Mr. Cole. This is amazing. This is I believe in my opinion uh resources and time well spent on getting these numbers. So, uh, thank you to the clerk's office and guide house. What I'm curious and what I think is missing from the findings under elections, and I don't know if this pos data is possible, but I am very curious to see if there's any cost-saving benefits to having our local elections line up with presidential election years. That's something that I'm very curious about. Um, so that that's something that I would be really interested in, you know, seeing if Guide House can pull that information. Um, or if you have that information to, you know, how much does an election cost the city of Minneapolis to to run um that that would be great to to have as a part of this report. Thank you. >> Noted. Okay. Um, Commissioner Cooper. >> Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um Mr. Carl, I had a question about the powers and functions slide two which focused on the park board and BET. Um you mentioned that in other comparable cities that general practice is to have park functions folded into the city council. Do you have more information about how that works functionally? Is it a like if it's a committee structure or if there's a like some other structure for how that works in other cities? uh through the chair, Commissioner Cooper. I don't um I do know personally from some jurisdictions where I have personal contacts that things like the park board being under the council means that there is a department that's within the professional administration and the council might have a parks committee. Um so that that provides the the connection, but that's not universal and I cannot speak to what the specific comparable jurisdictions might have. Okay. Thanks. >> [snorts] >> I I forget my own name too. Uh thank you, Mr. Chair. Uh uh uh Mr. Casey, this is been a really insightful and enlightening presentation and I would agree with what was said earlier that this is resources well spent. Uh I uh and I would echo the chair in in saying that I would absolutely appreciate the opportunity to review the report and um the full report and I come to this this question as a former legislative staffer. I worked for the Senate for a number of years. Uh and so the um there's always a special place in my heart for for for staffers. Um in uh in any of the data was the different tasks of of member staff similar uh to what Minneapolis does? I mean we have uh you know was it scheduling? Was it constituent services? Was it uh um engagement? Uh uh I ask because I know when I was a a me a a minority staffer in the Senate um I was the only staffer for a senator who represented 85,000 people uh and it was just me and so I did it all. And so I'm just curious, so what does like in San Diego a staff of 7 to 12 people do who rep who work for one member? Um through the chair I will say that our research has shown that political aids at a municipal level tend to have um a broad array of tasks and functions that I think can be sort of bucketed in or classified into five big groups. um one uh most importantly they do is constituent service like the political aids are responsible for interacting with being that connection between the elected official and their constituents. So constituent service is a high priority and a top function that you find universally across political staffs. The second one that probably equals that is the scheduling and calendar management of the member's time. Um running the office is a third. Ward management or office management and scheduling together. um constituent services, communications maybe as an outgrowth of constituent services. So, communicating on behalf of the member both in formal ways such as maintaining their social media, their website, generating newsletters, but also um being that facilitating voice between established groups within the ward, neighborhoods, businesses, nonprofits, things like that. Um and then project management. And project management, I would say, is broadly a an umbrella term. Project management can include um special projects in the ward uh event management that they're planning. It also could be tracking um and maintaining control over um proposals for ordinances and resolutions that the council member is sponsoring. And so those tend to be at a big bucket level the work of the political staff. It's really focused on the work of the member themselves. And the prerequisite for hiring political staff um as opposed to the institutional staff tends to be around um political agreement and alignment between the aid and the member. >> Thank [clears throat] you. Uh I appreciate that. Um, one followup I had, uh, so again, the members that I worked for had sort of a requirement that any any constituent who reached out had a, uh, I needed to respond to them within 24 hours. uh in in this research uh specifically again around uh partisan uh member staff, >> was there a uh uh uh was there any study done on how long it took for a uh a constituent to get responded to? Was Minneapolis sort of like good in terms of constituent response time? where other uh municipalities, you know, San Diego again with 7 to 12 even though they represent what six times the amount of uh of people that that we do here. um how were response times compar I guess comparatively >> uh through the chair commissioner NY you raised some really good points and we've asked that information too and I want to be um circumspect and careful in my response as you might imagine asking politicians and politicians staff do you have performance metrics for your jobs and can you tell us what the average turnaround time into a constituent call is no one's tracking that um or at least they're not going to tell us that. Um we've asked but we don't have it. We've also asked, do you have certain like standards? Do you have um manuals? Do you have resource guides? Do you have and that's those are those are things that are kept really close to the vest between the individual elected official and their staffs. Those are not shared resources. >> I appreciate that and I can certainly understand how how elected officials might not want to publicize if they are not adhering to their own standards. I will say again, I responded to 95% of the constituents within 24 hours. I think there probably could be a few out there probably not listening because I did not represent a member from from this area who would say that Josh did not get back to me within 24 hours and so I'm not going to say everyone that I did. But uh um and I'm not I'm certainly not not saying that my my council member the folks that I've reached out to uh at the city have um have taken long to get back to me because they're all fantastic. But uh I was just curious if response times uh are impacted. I I would hope that the bigger the staff, the uh the quicker a response would be, but um I guess I will I will just I will just have to hope that that is true, >> as do we all. >> Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um to to to your point, Commissioner. Um, I'll just having worked at the city for 30 plus years, I'll just mention that about 20 years ago, the city instituted the 311 system as many cities have across the country. And that system was designed to be the front door for constituent uh complaints and questions and to take the burden off of the city council and mayor. it. I mean, I I I was part of the team that helped train uh the city departments on that. I I was not the leader, but I was a team member. And so, it's um we we we ought not to forget that this city has a 311 system that that it receives thousands of calls every year. And it was put in place spurden off of city council members. Now council members at the time were I can tell you were not all that enthused about it because they wanted the direct contact but the the ultimate city decision was to proceed with this which had been in other cities. We were not the first. uh and um if you talk to you know that group they will tell you that they they receive thousands of calls they funnel them to the right departments they typically notify council members but that is a big part of this city's constituent operation so the other if I may chair I had just a sort of a a question for Mr. Carl I I can't help notice that our twin city St. Paul is not in this uh group. And I I know that at the beginning you said you you looked at cities with full-time councils. I can't help think that there are cities our size uh most of whom do have full-time councils, but there are cities our size out there that function okay without full-time councils. And I'm just could you say a word or more about why St. Paul was not included? Because having again worked at the city there we are constantly comparing ourselves to uh how does St. Paul do it? how do they do how what their metrics are compared to ours etc. So >> through the chair um Commissioner Schneider a good point and I should be clear St. Paul was included it just wasn't included in the select group of five that I pulled and that's because they don't have a full-time council and so that would not have been an applesto apples. However, we do have data on them I can share at a high level as I'm sure most of you here know they have a full-time mayor who is the chief executive. They have a part-time council and I'm going to look for help. This is my lifeline. I think it's seven or nine council members. Seven. Seven council members. They are part-time. Um each council member has two aids just like ours who are politically appointed and report to them. And they also have a very small um central staff that supports the city council and its legislative functions. They have a chief of staff. They have the city clerk. Um they have a budget analyst. uh um much more modest uh staff resources than does the Minneapolis council and I would say that we have modest resources. Um but it is a part-time council and for that reason I did not put them in here because our our guidance was it has to be a chief executive mayor with a full-time counsel under a home rule charter. But it is a good point. >> Garcia, >> thank you chair Mr. Carl. I also want to say this is great information. I look forward to the whole report. I have two questions. One is about um when it comes to council resources, council salary. >> Mhm. >> And to cross reference full-time, part-time. I think that would be interesting. Um and then my question similar to Commissioner Cooper's about the park board in BET. What what I would be interested in was what functions do they have that our current council does not have? I mean, I'm sure they have um you know, constituency people. They they do budgeting. They do there are certain functions that bodies have, but what do they specifically do that would be new to our council? Should our council have had those functions. >> Happy to add those to the list as well. >> Thank you. >> Seeing other questions, Carl. >> Thank you. And then I'll invite Mr. Hawkins up. Um, and >> do you have anything? >> Question. >> Yep. If you have questions for Mr. Hawkins, uh, I don't have a plan presentation for you. >> Okay. Any other question? Is there any other questions for either Mr. Hawkins or Mr. Carl on on these presentations? Well, then thank you for your attendance. Uh Mr. Hawkins and parenting will get to ask you questions next month. [laughter] >> Wonderful. >> Um with that, uh clerk will receive that report. The next item on the agenda is the report um from the uh government structure workg group. Um, and Commissioner Kle had a conflict today. Um, and so I I discussed with uh co-chair Garcia and I'll just give the short update because everybody pretty much was there except for one or two of us. But uh at that meeting last time they considered the appointment of department heads and um there were the three options that were presented. the one option um which was kind of the status uh quo where um uh council ratified everyone um uh uh disappeared so that uh that we ended up voting on options one and two which was the mayor's uh proposal where it was just the uh the three uh executive officers and police and fire and the the middle ground which was the mayor's proposal plus public works and CPED. Um then we just kind of we took a vote on that and it ended up uh that the mayor's proposal was one as a on a six to five or six in favor and five in favor of the other method. Um so you know kind of a split on where we were exactly on that. And so um that's the report. Uh at this time I'm just going to receive the report because the hope is we're going to continue to receive information um before we move forward on any you know final decisions on department heads. Um and so at that point um we'll have hopefully the information from guide house and then we'll have a fuller discussion and trying to finalize where we end up on what we want to do with um council approval of department heads. That moves us then to um evenear municipal elections and we're hearing from Katie Smith, assistant city clerk and and director of elections and voter services as well as John Martin Martin, the election and voter services deputy director. Um and just kind of a status update on what's going on with even your elections. >> Yes. Good afternoon, Chair Gender and Commissioners. My name is Katie Smith and I am the director of elections and voter services here at the city. Happy to be joined by deputy director Martin. Um we also have the next agenda item number 11 which talks a bit about this year's municipal election. Together we've prepared a a presentation that will address both of those topics. Um Deputy Director Martin's getting together our presentation. He's going to speak first a bit about turnout numbers and the data from this year's municipal. And I would just like to express how immensely proud I am of our team and Deputy Director Martin's leadership as well on all the work that went into the outreach, the access to the ballot box, and in accessibility that contributed to the numbers that we saw at this year's election. I will go ahead and turn it over to you. >> Cool. Uh, thank you, Director Smith. All right. So, this slide provides a nationwide comparison of municipal turnout among the four uh four largest cities that had municipal elections this November. Minneapolis, uh, St. Paul, Seattle, and New York City. Minneapolis had a turnout of 55% representing 147,72 votes. This turnout marks the highest turnout the city has had for its municipal election in about 50 years. Minneapolis turnout was only slightly less than Seattle's 55.5% but I think still fairly impressive since Seattle mails out ballots to every voter in in the city which is a a way that they help increase their turnout. And then by comparison, St. Paul was significantly lower with about 40% turnout and New York City saw a bit lower engagement than Minneapolis as well at 40.3% turnout. The main takeaway is that Minneapolis continues to perform strongly relative to municipal level turnout nationwide. The average of which is about 37.1% turnout average nationwide for municipal elections. And that's based on a uh some research that the University of California at San Diego did in 2024. This shows turnout trends in Minneapolis across the last three municipal cycles from 2017, 2021, and 2025. Um, from 2017 to 2025, the city has seen an increase in both overall turnout and also an increase in the number of votes cast. Turnout in 2017 was 42.5% with about 105,000 ballots cast. in 2021 saw a significant increase to 54% with about 145,000 votes cast. Then we saw another slight increase this year of a 55% turnout with additional 2,000 more people voting, about 147,000 votes cast. This again continues to show the continued upward trajectory of the past three municipal elections in terms of both turnout and votes cast. And this was the highest turnout for the city in the last 50 years. This uh this slide compares the method of voting across the last three presidential last three municipal elections. For 2025, 82% of voters cast ballots on election day. An additional 18% of ballots were cast early through the various methods of early voting. That includes about 15,000 votes cast at our main early vote center at 980 East Enipan Avenue. Around 9,000 votes were cast by people voting by mail. This year, the city also had five one-day popup locations. Two located in North Minneapolis, one in South Central Minneapolis, one on the U of M campus, and then one at the public service building here in downtown Minneapolis. And around um 1,200 people took advantage of those one-day pop-ups. And then around 600 more voters cast ballots early through the various other methods of early voting. Compared to 2021, about 20% of people cast a ballot early. This was still some residual left over from the CO 19 pandemic. People were still tending to vote more by mail in the 2021 election. And in 2017, only 11% of voters cast ballots early. This is again showing a increasing trend of year after year of voters voting more often early and shifting away from election day. This slide provides a ward level comparison between the 2021 municipal election and the 2025 municipal election of the number of votes cast and the percentages the cast on election day cast early the v voter turnout in each ward and then the change in raw vote compared to those two elections in each ward. uh city's earnout increased slightly by from 54% to 55% and that equated to about um 2365 more votes were cast this year compared to 2021. A few highlights for this comparison. W 2 saw the biggest decrease in votes cast, dropping uh 2,844 votes cast. and W 9 saw the largest gains in votes cast from about gaining about 1,400 votes. This is primarily due to red redistricting. Ward two lost a very high turnout precinct in redistricting and Ward 9 gained um two a two high turnout precincts. Um so that's main reason for that um fluctuation in votes. And then once again, the south and southwest Minneapolis wards of Ward 12, 11, and 13 remain the highest turnout wards across both elections, both all seeing um turnout above 64%. So this slide is the same as the previous slide. Instead, it just compares turnout from 2017 to 2025 compared to 8 years ago, over 41,000 more voters cast the ballot this year compared to the 2017 election, which is a about a 28% increase in votes cast and um a increase in turnout of about 12.5%. And the overall we Ward 12 saw the greatest number of of votes cast and then Ward 7 1 8 11 and 13 all saw um about 4,000 additional votes cast compared to 8 years ago. The reason W 12 saw the most votes cast most in increase in votes cast is is again due to redistricting. It gained the high turnout precinct that Ward 2 lost was shifted into Ward 12, which is the Cooper neighborhood, which is one of our highest turnout neighborhoods in the entire city. And once again, every uh ward saw an increase in turnout in raw votes cast compared to 8 years ago except W 2 again due to redistricting. This slide may be familiar to some of our previous um conversations about even year elections. So this slide reviews historical turnout patterns and models potential impact of shifting Minneapolis municipal elections to the even years. Um research has shown an average of a 30% reduction or or rolloff for down ballot municipal races held in evenear elections. So for some context, the presidential election in 2024 saw 78.1% turnout, which would imply a municipal turnout roughly of 54.7% if you applied a 30% roll off to the presidential turnout in 2024, which is roughly equivalent to what we had this year. And then in 2020 turnout was 81.3% again applying a 30% roll off the equivalent municipal turnout would be around 57%. And looking at municipal cycles, 2025 turnout was 55% which is in line with the modeled projections in past municipal elections such as 2013. It's 33%. Uh 2009's 19% show what happens when municipal elections are just isolated to odd years. You get you have you sometimes will have very low turnout elections. So this I guess the takeaway can be is that if you align municipal elections in even years you you do get higher turnout since there's just overall high higher turnout in a municipal in a evenear election. And with that I will turn it over to director Smith to talk about evenear elections in St. Paul's implementation as well. >> Thank you >> Mr. Chair. I I have a question of Mr. Martin. >> Okay. Go ahead commissioner. Um, what do you attribute to the general trend of increasing turnout in the city of Minneapolis? uh chair or commissioner Perry. I think it's we you've seen that turnout is often times based on the competitiveness of races and we've I I think we've seen really since 2013 that the both the mayoral elections here plus city council elections and then in 2021 with the three ALEC questions that they have shown to be very competitive races which brings people out out to vote more often than if there was not a competitive race like we've seen in like 20 2009 when Mayor Rybeck didn't really had only token opposition in previous years when maybe the mayor's race was not as exciting for people people are less inclined to vote. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Go ahead, Mr. Smith. >> Yeah. And the numbers where you say that 50 there was a 55% voter turnout. That's 55% of the people registered to vote. Is that right? >> Correct. >> So, is there any estimate on how many people are not registered to vote? >> Uh yeah. So, um Chair Ginder, Commissioner, the there's So, the city has roughly now about 260,000 registered voters. There's about 360,000 people who are eligible to vote, but some of them may not be registered. So roughly there's about 70,000 people here in the city who could vote who are eligible to vote but who are not registered to vote for whatever reasons and they may not choose to register to vote >> Smith. Thank you uh Chair Ginder and commissioners. I wanted to provide an update on St. Paul and their transition over to an evenar cycle. Uh this November marked St. Paul's final oddyear municipal election as they are now transitioning to align their municipal races with the presidential cycle. Uh to enable that shift, uh we St. Paul chose to shorten this year's term from four years to three to get them onto alignment. Uh, we saw Ramsey County also make some changes this year that I wanted to speak about, including an update they made to their ballot design to help support municipal RCV races appearing alongside federal, state, county, school district races that will have to appear on the same ballot. Um, and then also speak about Ramsey County's implementation of using RCV tabulation equipment, specifically the rank choice voting resource c center's RCT software to produce their results. Uh, first we'll talk a little bit about the ballot design. Uh, Ramsey County shifted to a more compact layout of their RCV races to help those municipal contests to fit with the other races. Uh that's in an effort as you know we talked about there's several challenges to merging RCV races onto a ballot card with the uh regular style um races as well and they have implemented this new more compact design in an effort to contain it to one ballot card. I will note that they do use a different vendor than is utilized by Henipin County. So, this wouldn't necessarily be an option for Minneapolis, but there are different ballot design options available to us through our vendor. Um, this would um try to address the issues that we spoke about before about a multicard ballot and the administrative consequences. So things like ballot reconciliation issues, uh, equipment programming, printing and and transportation, the complexity of of transporting and accounting for those extra ballot cards. Um, and this redesign was an attempt to ensure that it fits onto one ballot card. So you can see that it goes away from what we're used to of a traditional column style with every candidate listed out three different times for this three selections and goes closer to a compact grid style with each candidate's name only listed once and then selections for one 2 3 four or they get up to five rankings in St. Paul. Uh secondly, they began utilizing the RC tabs software. Um they uh key observations from their experience this year. They were able to report their first round results at around 10:49 p.m. on election night and then a they declared their unofficial winner within their mayoral race just after midnight. there would be challenges with utilizing RC TAB in Minneapolis that weren't present this year in the election that St. Paul hosted. Um, right now we're using RC TAB as a validation tool confirming the outcomes that we produce manually through our manual tabulation process, but it is not used as our official tabulator. uh to adopt RCAB as our primary tabulation system, we would need to pursue changes to a code of ordinance that would um align our processes with the um the abilities of that piece of software. And within that experience that St. Paul had this year and what they were able to achieve with their speeds of tabulation, there are factors that are significantly different here in Minneapolis. Um those include things like the file sizes and the just volume of contests compared to what they had this year with what we we have normally because we have more offices. And then also because it in it will be in an even year in the future. So the file sizes they're actually downloading to produce those files that they're using to tabulate with will be a much longer process. And um they also have just one single county Ramsey that's doing all of the reporting. It's not a um process that's split between their county and their city. And um [clears throat] like I had mentioned with the evenar processes being it's also just more heavily loaded with other background processes administratively that are occurring in an even year uh versus when it's solely the one election. So, our timeline and our workflow uh would necessarily look different and the tool would help modernize, but it wouldn't necessarily eliminate all complexities with election night reporting. We do still have the same outstanding issues that we have spoken about previously when it comes to um legal concerns. So those include things like the limitation to one ballot card that exists within statute unless the second card were strictly to be um a judicial card. Uh we did speak a little bit about how Ramsay has addressed that with their ballot layouts. Um also the uh statute and rule which require state and federal ballots to follow the state's example ballot and then that example ballot doesn't contemplate RCV. Um, if we were ever to run over onto a second ballot card, it would again require us to revisit the ballot reconciliation statutes. And then finally, any new tabulation software uh must comply with our with voting system certification requirements which are governed under statute and rule. Um, so what we're doing administratively within our office when it comes to even your elections and rank choice voting in general, I have an upcoming meeting that's yet to be scheduled with ourselves, the Secretary of State's office in Ramsey County to review their processes more in detail and understand exactly their different uh processes that they used this year in implementing RCAB and find out what they are working on as far as their processes in the background ahead of their uh swap over in the presidential year and then we're also prioritizing our CATAB adoption as a legislative agenda opt item in the upcoming session. Uh that's where we stand as of today and um Deputy Director Martin and I are happy to stand for any questions. >> Questions? Commissioner Smith, >> does Minneapolis have any legislative priorities uh to try to get some of these statutes changed that would make some of these issues or problems go away? [snorts] >> Yes, great question. Uh Chair Gender and Commissioner Smith, uh this has long been on our legislative platform and each year we've worked on this. um as far as the software piece of it goes, since there's no statute governing ranked choice voting and it's not something that is um allowed for in the statutory cities, it's just in the charter cities and lives and resides within charter. Um there would have to be some sort of something passed at the statutory level for the state to certify the equipment based off of. So, we have testified, we've written letters in support anytime that there's been any sort of legislation brought forward uh regarding like statutory authority to implement RCB or any sort of piece that addresses that and we'll continue to do so um again this legislative cycle. And one one additional question. You said that you used the RC tab to validate the city of Minneapolis results and I was wondering did it equal what your tabulations were. >> Uh Chair Ginder and Commissioner Smith. Yes. Um it it consistently matches. There are processes that we do because of manual tabulation that I speak of needing changed within the code of ordinances of our batch elimination processes that the RC tab software can't duplicate. So while the outcomes always show the same, the points in time when someone's eliminated don't necessarily match up. And that's just because the software doesn't batch eliminate. We batch eliminate for for time savings reasons. >> Commissioner Cooper. >> Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um, >> regarding race, but it took part of town. Um, regarding the ballot design, would Minneapolis still have a challenge with the length of our like if we adopt if we were able to adopt that compact grid? I think it's my understanding that there would still be a ballot design issue because of the elections for BET and park board would likely make an evenear ballot over one card. Is that is that right or is that not right? Uh, Chair Ginder and Commissioner Cooper, there there always could be challenges with it, especially when we start thinking about what if we run into questions and things that we haven't contemplated of of as far as length goes. Um, we've had some vendors that have been able to produce us our samples with our municipal plus presidential year and fit them onto one card. It's not something that I've seen from our current vendor. It's just something that I've seen out there. Um so I think that there was still would be a lot of background work to be done to ensure that we could stay within one card and um that that also that equipment and that process resides at the county level versus at our own level. So uh definitely something administratively I can continue working on. Okay. >> Thanks. >> Could I ask a followup on on that question? Yes. Go ahead, Commissioner. >> Uh, Mr. Chair, um, uh, director, my understanding was that the legislature was going to look into changing that law requiring the one card and it just didn't get added into an omnibus bill at the end. Is there a possibility of changing that? Uh, Chair Gender and Commissioner Dy, I it definitely did not go through and is certainly something that would continue to be on our one of our legislative priorities uh to allow to also to allow um a difference in the order specifically to where if we ever did go on to two cards, we could have an RCV card and a nonRCV card because right now it only allows for that second card to be judicial races. Uh so it it's certainly something that's on uh on our radar and I hope will be taken up again. Um and as a reminder, um St. Paul passed this by it was a petitioner initiated uh charter amendment and so they did not uh have the benefit of professional staff advising them on the the issues that might arise or legal advice about the issues that might arise which is what you know we have done in our the past years we've studied this and so um St. Paul is in fact going to be until the law changes, they're going to be the guinea pig as this upcoming election. If there are no law changes, um what are they going to do? And I mean I assume they're going to move forward with an election, but um it'll be interesting to see what the state does, the secretary of state or individuals if they sue about what they put forward um if there aren't these legislative changes. So, I mean, from our perspective, as I understand, we're still, in spite of what they're doing, we're still in the kind of the same position waiting for legislative change to address some of these issues. Um, Commissioner Kak, >> uh, Mr. chairman. I believe uh the legislature considered it, but if I recall, I think it was the last day or the last two days of session, uh there was a vote, I think, in the House and they they rejected it. So, so it was controversial. >> Commissioner I >> Thank you, Mr. Chair. And uh thank you for for this presentation. And I will say um I voted on the first day of of voting this year and it took me I think longer to drive to the Henipin County polling place than it did to vote. So or the Henipin County Center in Minneapolis. I'm not sure I'm describing it right. But uh it was very quick and a very easy process. So thank you for for making that. So uh my question is um is about eligibility for uh for individuals who are who have been formerly incarcerated and in you know as of uh 2023 uh Minnesota has uh restore restore the vote is is law so people who are uh who have been released from prison uh but are still on papers can can vote. Do we have data that shows uh whether or not uh those individuals have been registering to vote? Uh and if so, what sort of engagement have or what sort of turnout have they been uh voting? >> Uh Chair Ginder and Commissioner Nay, I don't have data on it. I'm happy to ask the Office of the Secretary of State and see what I can find. Um, I think it was about 30,000 individuals whose rights were restored. From Minneapolis's perspective, as far as outreach goes, we did do a active outreach campaign following that year's session and following the passing. We did things like billboards, speaking at at community events. Our voter outreach team created materials, um, additional training for our election judges and staff. Um, I can only speak qualitatively and not quantitatively. So, I'll refrain, but I'll see if I can find actual actual numbers. Uh, while we're talking about numbers, I failed to mention when we were talking about the RC tab software, and I would just interject that it um when we did our tabulations this year, it took about 5 hours for us to manually tabulate the office of mayor and that was able to be tabulated using the RC tab software in about 20 seconds. So, just for comparison and data info. Okay. >> Thank you. Thank you. >> Um, thank you uh, Miss Smith. I see no other questions. Thank you both for your presentations on this. And that m Mr. Clerk, I believe covers items 10 and 11 on the agenda. So, if we could just receive those reports and the final item on our agenda is public comment. [clears throat] And is there anybody that is registered for public comment, Mr. Clerk? >> Mr. Chair, there are no members of the public uh, signed up. >> No. And is there anyone here for public comment? Mr. Carl, >> why not have more comments from me tonight? Um, I should have said this earlier, but I I'm actually happy to say it at at the end. I failed to track with everything else going on that Commissioner Sandberg's last meeting was tonight. And uh, Commissioner Sandberg, I believe, was on the commission when I came to the city, correct? and so has been a member of the charter commission throughout my term as city clerk, also has been a member of our election judge team and has been actively involved um in that regard. And of course, election judges are the best people that live. So um both her service as a charter commission and an election judge, it's been great to work with you. You've been a steady um consistent calm presence on the charter commission. And so as someone who works very closely with this body and has also worked closely with you in in other uh capacities, I wanted to say thank you so much for your service to the city of Minneapolis, to the citizens of this community, the residents who are served by this commission whether they realize it or not because your work largely tends to be behind the scenes but often becomes front row as you know when you make major changes. and you have been um both a consistent um member but a a quiet and determined member who has oftent times I feel from my perspective sort of been uh the swaying influence on big important things that have happened here. So Jan, thank you so much as both the clerk but also a resident of Minneapolis for your service. >> Any any comments, Jam? No, I just um I I am glad to see there are new faces coming on the charter commission. I think it's great. I I think most those of you who were on the commission remember a few years ago when I believe we got a few comments from the public that um [clears throat] the uh the old guard or whatever they were calling us uh needed a little new blood and I think we've got new blood which I think is absolutely terrific. Um, I looked at my schedule for next year when Michael reminded me about the appointments and uh realized I was probably going to miss at least three of the four scheduled meetings and that's not a good thing. So, this is this will work out very very well and and my granddaughter in uh Vancouver will be very happy because I'll get to go to more soccer games. >> So, thank you. Thank you very much. And thank you, Casey. Um that concludes all of the business before the charter commission and without any objection um we stand adjourned. Thank you.