Good afternoon. My name is Aisha Chughtai and I am the chair of the budget committee. I'm going to call to order our very first regular meeting of this term for Monday, May 4th, 2026. 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 proceeding 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'll ask the clerk to call the roll so we can verify the presence of a quorum. >> Council member Payne. >> Present. >> Wansley. >> Present. >> Rainville. >> Absent. Vita. >> Present. >> Warren. >> Present. >> Osman. Absent. Stevenson. >> Present. >> Chavez. >> Present. >> Whiting. Absent. Choudhry. >> Present. >> Palmisano. >> Present. >> Vice Chair Schafer. >> Present. >> Chair Chughtai. >> Present. >> Whiting. >> Present. >> That's 11 members present. >> Let the record reflect that we have a quorum. I will also remind my colleagues that we are using speaker management today, so please make sure to sign in. The agenda for today's meeting is before us and as you can see, we have a packed agenda. Um I anticipate that we will need the entire scheduled committee time and potentially take up the entire afternoon. We have captioners available today until 5:30 p.m. I'll ask my colleagues to please make me aware of any scheduling conflicts so that we may ensure quorum to get through our business today. With that, we will begin with the consent agenda, which is item number one, approving the 2026 consolidated action plan budget adjustments. Um this is a standard item that we take up every year. I'll move approval of this item and ask for a second. >> Second. >> [gasps] >> Is there any discussion from colleagues on this item? I'll also note that we've been joined by Council Vice President Osman. I'm not seeing any uh discussion. So, on the motion to approve this item, all those in favor, please signify by saying >> I. >> I. >> Those opposed, say nay. Any abstentions? The eyes have it and that motion carries. We will now take up our lengthy discussion agenda. We have numerous presentations before us. Um so, to begin with item number two, George Hardgrove, controller with the finance and property services department, will be presenting both the fourth quarter financial status report and the rollover of unspent 2025 appropriations. I'll invite Mr. Hardgrove to join us and um begin the first presentation on the fourth quarter financial status report or the year-end financial status report. Welcome, Mr. Hardgrove. >> Well, um yeah, good afternoon. >> I'll just ask that you speak into your mic. >> Good afternoon. one's turned off, so there we go. >> Good one. Okay, you got it. All right, sorry. Uh good afternoon, uh Chair Chughtai, uh Council members. Uh my name is George Hargrove, City Controller. I'm here to present the fourth quarter financial report. Go ahead, Rob. Uh next. Um I just wanted to uh you know, mention a few things about the about the report. Um this is uh this is uh through uh the fourth quarter of 2025. This is our last operational quarter. It is a point in time report. Um even though the period 12 is closed, um we still uh are adjusting the books and doing um we're getting through our uh financial audit from the state auditor, and so we still have a few adjustments left to do. Um the the final numbers will be available in our 2025 annual financial comprehensive report, which will be uh issued uh around the end of June or so. Um just uh just a little um recommendation that uh that uh you know, we we we we don't necessarily use the numbers to uh to you know, make decisions and things like that. We'd uh it would be best, especially for 2026 items, um to check back cuz things have things have changed, and I do plan to talk some about 2026 um a little later on in the presentation. Go ahead, Rob. So, moving on to our main uh financial uh highlight, the city is really in uh a couple different situations. Our non-general fund is actually um I think doing quite well in most areas. Um the general fund, on the other hand, and uh we'll talk more about the general fund, is kind of our main um main fund that funds the you know, a lot of the the standard services that the residents that depend on is uh is starting to approach its uh minimum uh balance requirements. So, uh um so so really there's kind of a tale of two different two different situations in the city. Um you know, when I came to talk about quarter three, we were projecting that we'd spend down the general fund by about 67 million. It's now been a little bit more than that, about 68 million. And if you divide that by 12 months in 2025, you'll see that it comes to about $5 million a month. And we don't generally refer to that as negative cash flow. Um so moving on here, we'll come back to that $5 million figure as well to a little bit later in the presentation. Um some of our other financial highlights, we we continue to maintain our triple A bond rating with the three major credit rating agencies. Um the self-insurance fund is substantially above its minimum policy level of 116 million by about 84 million dollars or so. Um that being said, we have substantially increased our estimates for tort liabilities. So that we expect the net position and negative net position to increase to about 134 million dollars or so. And we're we're still discussing that number with the auditors, so it's not quite final yet. It's one of the things we need to do to close the books. Uh we continue to monitor federal grants and the changing requirements. Um I'm happy to report for the surely our some our main HUD grants like CDBG and home and things like that, they've stayed pretty consistent. At other times the city has gotten court injunctions and things like that to continue funding, particularly like health grants and things like that. So so far so good so good for the federal federal grants that we have. And then finally the city was awarded the certificate of excellence in financial reporting as of the end of 2024 for our AFR or our annual financial report that we issued last June. Moving on, some more highlights here, our property taxes are currently forecast ended up about $19 million under budget for 2025. That kind of stays the same in 2026 as well, too. Local sales tax in the downtown assets fund were essentially flat in 2025 compared to 24 about 87 and 1/2 million or so. Should be noted that that we have increased the transfers to the general fund. So, you'll see that fund balance going down by about $10 million or so. Finally, at the end of the year, the police department ended up about 17.6 million under budget over budget. Fire ended up a little less than 7 million over budget. For about 24 25 million dollars. In addition, we also have unbudgeted settlement costs of 5.7 million, which we split off at when we did the report this year. And continuing on with some of the highlights here in terms of our assets and investment accounts, we have about 1.18 billion dollars mainly in treasury bills. That's about a $50 million decrease from this time last year of December 31st of 24. We had about 1.23 billion or so. Um In addition, I do mention a few areas that aren't quite meeting the financial policy. Our self-insurance continues to have a negative net position as I mentioned earlier, although it is exceeding our short-term policy provisions. Property services is slightly under their target cash balance of about 4.6 million. Although that that substantially improved since since last time I was here in December of 25. Engineering materials and testing lab also isn't quite meeting the net position requirement generally due to um high uh uh liabilities in that area. And then finally, I'm happy to report that there's a couple areas that um now do exceed their minimum balances I mentioned earlier. That's our fleet services. And then our uh parking um parking area as well, too, has a has uh reached its uh it's uh a little bit above its uh minimum balance. So, with that, um at this point, I want to turn over turn this over to Deputy Controller uh Robert Lang, who will get talk more about the general fund. >> Thank you, George. Um thank you, Chair Chuq Thai City Council, for having us. Uh my name is Rob Lang. I'm the Deputy Controller. Um what we presented back at quarter three, there was not going to be substantial changes to the information we're showing. The forecast, as George mentioned, was relatively close. Um but especially for those that are new to City Council, um and as a reminder of where we're sitting, we're going to go through the fourth quarter unaudited financials. Those financials will be audited and hopefully by June 30th. So, with that being said, the general fund, as a reminder, accounts for all financial resources except for those that are required to be accounted elsewhere. Practically speaking, what this means is that we collect our property taxes, some franchise fees, certain services charges that we collect, and we utilize those funds to pay for what people typically think a city would offer, police, fire, public works, as well as to help run the city, accounting, HR, attorney's office. Because this fund is so critical to the operations of the city, it's very important to always be monitoring the health of that fund uh into the future. So, with that being said, we'll start with the cash balance. This is the balance in the bank account for the general fund. We ended the year or we be started the year at $234 million. We're ending the year at $176 million. This is a $58 million decrease in 2025. Similarly, the general fund balance balance also followed suit. And as a reminder what fund balance is, fund balance is almost like net worth. It's going to take your assets less your liabilities like accounts payable or salaries, and that remaining amount is the fund balance of the general fund. And it's an important number because that's what we utilize to determine if we're meeting the 17% minimum requirement. So, end of our beginning of the year, we had $209 million in fund balance, and we ended the year at $140 million, a $68 million decrease or about 33%. Now, the minimum does require $109 million in the general fund balance. So, as we stand here today, we are meeting our minimum fund balance requirement, but there is in '25 a significant spend down with a trend that could possibly be impactful as we end '26. And that we're going to get into more detail later on in the presentation as we move away from 2025 and start looking into '26. So, let's look at the revenues. So, we had about $9 million in revenues budgeted that weren't collected. The primary driver of that was property tax as discussed in the quarter three financials, about $18.9 million uncollected property taxes that were levied. Additionally, franchise fees had $3 million in less revenues. However, it was an increase from last year. However, the budget just increased faster than the actual increase in franchise fees. This was and then finally license and permits was under budget by $5.4 million as a result of building permits was a primary driver for that. This was offset by service charges thanks to public works and additional income that they brought to the city general fund uh, as well as unrealized gains and losses. So, how does this compare to prior years? Over the last 3 years, we collected almost 100% of the revenues that were budgeted. However, in 2025, it was about 98.7%. So, 1.3% difference on a budget of $660 million, that 1.3% can add up to many millions. So, we are collecting a little less than we have historically. On the expenditure side, here we have a table showing major expense category. What I want to draw your eye to is the public safety did have overspend of $14.7 million. And then public works also $7.8 million, but as a reminder, um, substantially most of that was, uh, collected in revenues that also exceeded, um, nearing netting. How does this compare to prior years? So, average of the last 3 years, 2022 to 2024, we spent about 91% of our budget. And in 2025, we're seeing about 98.8% a substantial increase in how much we spend per budget. A primary driver of that is that, well, certain departments have historically remained under budget, um, resulting in 9% savings. That 9% savings did get spent by public safety, um, resulting in us being closer to fully expending the budgeted expenditures. >> [snorts] >> What you'll see here then is that we're collecting less revenue than we historically have to budget, and we're expending more expenses than we historically have to budget. The net result of that is where we're seeing this drastic decrease in fund balance. Finally, I do want to show you this table here. It's an excerpt from that 70-page quarterly report that we do provide in your packet, but I wanted to call it out uh, special attention. This shows the budgets, the year-to-date actual, and the variance budget to actual for each of the departments within the general fund. I did highlight those five departments that currently are over budget. Uh exact same five departments that were there in the quarter three report uh for the exact same reasons. Um assessing due to some projects that had additional cost in 2025 that bled from 24 to 25, a small amount. Office of Public Service for uh personnel costs that were unbudgeted for a relatively small amount. And then finally we get to the big ones, fire overtime. Police overtime is a primary driver for those as presented in quarter three and is still the case as we move into this year. And then finally public works which we already discussed. Thank you guys very much. I will now pass this over to George who will be discussing the special revenues, enterprise, and internal service. >> Okay, thank you. Thank you, Deputy Controller uh Lang. Um yeah, I to to move on from the general fund here and and um just to kind of put it in context, um these other the non-general fund is about 60% or so of the city's budget whereas the general fund is about 40% or so. So um our special revenue funds, I mean these are these are funds that generally have external restrictions on them. Um and they're are held for specific purpose so we can't really put them in the general fund. Um the convention center certainly is example of that, downtown assets, um some item some areas in community planning and economic development. Um you can see um from the third and fourth bullet point that there really hasn't been much change at all from between the 24 year end and the 25 year end. Basically um within you know, just within a few hundred thousand dollars, um they've changed. Um and uh I can get into the kind of reasons in a little bit here. Um, Rob, go ahead and and switch it here. And so, this kind of chart right here on the far right side of the table here, you can see the increases and decreases in both our cash balance and fund balance. And so, in here you can see if you go to the third third department down in down the downtown assets fund, you can see that decline about 12 million in cash, 10 and a half million in fund balance. And then conversely, if you go to the bottom of the worksheet, it's you can see CPED or community planning and economic development area is up by about the same amount. So, that's why there wasn't any change this last year. And then moving on to internal service funds, these are these are funds that for departments that generally sell their services internally. Certainly the engineering materials and testing lab we've talked about or fleet services, IT, property services, stores, elements of our self-insurance as well. Two, you can see here we had a fairly hefty increase from 24 to 25, about 33 up 34 million in net position in terms of cash. That went up about the same amount from the end of 2025. And if you as I mentioned before, property services and engineering materials and testing lab are a little bit under their minimum requirements. But if you go to the next page and look at the right side again, now on the chart, you can see fleet services is up about five or six million five million and six million respectively in terms of cash net position. They've slowed some of their purchases down to replace the fleet. And then you can see the self-insurance is up quite a bit as well. Two, again, we we continue to to bank money in anticipation of a tort li- tort and other liabilities. And then finally, we have our enterprise funds. Most of these are based in our public works department. Um they're generally run similar to two businesses outside of the city. They generally sell their services and goods to entities outside of the city Minneapolis. You can see here we did again had a pretty pretty big increase in that position of almost 47 million. And then cash for about 25 million or so too. And then definitely want to mention to the parking fund did finish with 11 million in cash which is above the you know above the minimum requirements for the first time since since the pandemic several years ago. And then finally if we look at the right side of this table again just to you know what you know what exactly has increased. You can see certainly the sewer storm water. You know as we work down the table here. Um the water and parking have all kind of uniformly gone up since the end of the year. The only exception to that is our solid waste area. It does have some debt obligations that have kind of come due as well as some increased expenses. So they have stayed pretty pretty flat from last year. Okay. So at this point I want to get back to the general fund here. Um this is what a very important chart that that I've been using to kind of track the you know how the city is doing. I call this the two-year planning worksheet. So it's start and we're basically right in about in the middle a little bit past the middle of this horizon right here. And so we look at kind of where where we've been and where we're going. And so just to kind of walk through it like you know why have things changed you know where are we heading towards. We can see the general fund balance is about 209 million in January 1st of 25. That's the top number on the on the chart on the right side there. And then you can see we had less revenues in budget and less expenses in budget as well too. But that's still um since there was such a big but you know, difference in the expense and the revenue budget, it did cause our fund balance to go down by the 141 million or so and a lot of times you would have had, you know, that wouldn't have gone down so much um if uh if uh departments, you know, were uh were I finished more on on budget. And so that's our uh what's called our our you know, kind of our total fund balance. You can see that represented about 22% of our of our of our 17, you know, a little bit more than our 5% more than our target of 17%, you know, that we want to keep in the in the general fund balance. Then you can see there is various uses in the budget planning stage uh plan use of fund balance uh council budget amendments and then we have amounts that are restricted for public safety aid and the North Commons Park. So you can see that brings us down to about 116 117 million. So now, you know, right now um as of the end of the year, um you can see we're about 18%. So just barely above the minimum balance and you can see that down on the total above target where it says 7.438 million and that's you know, that's our 17%. Now, moving forward now into 2026, um you can see there's another one about a little less than $2 million appropriated by the City Council. We did pay the Park Board the $3 million, so we removed that. So that goes the other way. And then we did do a a quick forecast um at the end of March early April. And you can see um for the for the general fund, our expense forecast, we think it's going to be $16 million unfavorable, meaning over budget. Again, that's driven by um the police department at about 20 our forecast about a little over 23 million, fire about 6 million, and then settlement costs um approaching another 4 million or so. And then the reason why it doesn't go up 33 million, there's other departments and especially the contingency that we forecast as you know, either favorable or the contingency not being spent. And then that's um if you look at the very last line, you can see um for um for our revenue side, we're forecasting that to be about $14 million unfavorable, mainly property tax. Um and also also the other thing we're looking at is interest revenue. We do expect since we have lower balances now and the rates have been declining on our investments, we do expect a little less interest revenue as well. So, you add all those things up together and you can see that comes to about $31 million. So, if you take 116 million less that, you can see at the very last line, projected general fund balance as of December 31st will be about $87 million or so. Um so, that'd be about 14% or so versus our target of 17%. You know, roughly about 22 million under target. Uh why does why does this happen? Um plan to use a fund balance in budgeting, kind of covering the topics on the left side there. Um overspending by departments in both in '25 and forecasted in '26. Uh less revenue than budget. Um and then um appropriate additional spending out of the fund balance. All those things um can either decrease the fund balance uh but like what's happening now or increase it if it goes the other way. We also look at balance sheet items like uh liabilities, what the city owes, as well as um what's owed to us, called receivables. Those can affect the balance as well, too. Um so, anyway, the last thing I would say about this is this forecast assumes no more metro surges or anything like that. If we were to get with external shocks, you know, it could uh it could uh you know, you know, continue to to go go this way. And then finally, the very last uh uh, slide I wanted to cover. Um at the end of the the year last year, 2025, the city council introduced some new financial policies to have a budgetary control report. And you can see, um, this is our first one that we've submitted now for 2026 by finance as part of our, you know, quarterly presentations. You can see for the general fund, as Rob mentioned, we had assessing and office of public service and emergency management over, um, by, you know, fairly nominal amounts in 2000, 25. We don't forecast those to be over budget in 26. You can see the fire, um, is, you know, in the middle of the page here, was and if you What I'm looking at is the 2025 budget variance column and the 2026 budget variance column. You can see the fire is ho- holding pretty steadily at about 6 to 7 million dollars, uh, over budget. And then finally, the police department, um, is about 17 and a half million over for 2025. And then, um, now we're forecasting about 23.4 million or so. And then we have the MDHR settlement costs. Um, and you can see we pulled that out of the numbers. Um, we felt that was, you know, best cuz there's multiple departments. That's unbudgeted. So, we spent about 5.7 million last year and then we're forecasting about another 4.3 million. My understanding is we're going to, uh, budget try to budget for that in 2027. And finally, the last department is public works. They are over in budget, but only because they're bringing in a lot of revenue. And since they're generally selling hours or time or work on other, what's called work for others, uh, if they if they are getting more revenue than they have to have more expense because they're doing more than what they had budgeted. So, you can see there, um, for 2025, if you take, you know, they're over budget by about 7.6 million, but also were favorable to budget by 5.3 million cuz they're doing work for others, bringing in revenue. You can see we had a deficit of about 2.3 million. That was caused by the last snow event in 2025. Um as well as I believe a copper copper wire theft as well too. And then finally in 2026 we're forecasting them to be about even. Um they'll they're we expect expenses to be about 6.8 million more than budget, but then we expect revenue to be about 6.8 million over budget too. So cash wise they're about budget or so and you can see it represents a pretty um small amount of their total overall budget. So with that, that concludes our fourth quarter financial presentation. We now stand for any questions the council may have. Thank you. >> Thank you for your presentation um Mr. Hardgrove and Mr. Lang. Colleagues, are there any questions? Um I will recognize Council President Payne. >> Uh thank you Chair Chucktai. We're going to hear from MPD directly about overtime. Um I see fire is here as well. Uh this question is about baselines and I think that we can look to the last year and recognize that nothing about last year was baseline. Um but I do feel that particularly in the fire space we seem to be consistently hitting uh overtime budgets that um are >> [clears throat] >> overtime overages despite being fully staffed. Uh so this I don't think this is a fire department question. It's more of like a controller question. At what stage when you're consistently hitting the same number year after year do you just budget for that, right? Does that make sense? >> I I actually think this is a better question for um for the budget office just around how how plan in the future when we when we're consistent in the overages. Welcome, please begin by introducing yourself. >> Thank you, Chair Chek Tai, Council members, Deputy CFO Jane Desenza, and still acting director of the budget team as well. Um that would be something that's up to elected officials to change in the budget process. Um overtime is not one of those categories that we can inflate year to year. And so I think you can be expecting to hear more about that throughout the 2027-2028 biennial budget process. >> I think the it was less about forecasting overtime and more about recognizing the total number of hours that we consistently need and therefore that should translate to a different FTE count that we should be budgeting. >> Um through the chair, yes, I think that's an important part of the calculation. There's a There's a tipping point where more overtime might make more sense or more FTEs might make more sense. I think um both in the fire and the police space there's a bit of a a lag in new FTEs translating into reduced overtime. But I think we'll be having that, you know, that discussion over which of those areas is the most cost-effective throughout this budget process. >> [clears throat] >> Thank you. Um Next I'll recognize Council Member Wanzlick followed by Council Member Bonfiglio. >> Thank you, Chair Chek Tai. Um I actually have a question that follows like the information shared on the report that you attached to the presentation. So I'm looking at page six of the report and just trying to get a little bit more clarity cuz it states there at the top of it um that there was approved $2.4 million of approved settlement agreement funding um that was not budgeted for that contributed to the overspending. Um and under the police section it states that there was $3.6 million spent for unbudgeted settlement agreement item. And then I think we see a different number also presented in the presentation itself. So, I'm just trying to get uh some understanding of uh how to reconcile all these very different figures. Um even in the report, it Yeah, I'm trying to get clarity on that since a total is is suggested at 6 million. And then also, if you can speak more specifically on what exactly was spent um and why this was anticipated or unanticipated as I thought a lot of our settlement agreement um needs are mapped out in our a LEAF report. Like, there's an actual process that maps out like what is needed from that. Um and I recognize that might not be your wheelhouse. Likely probably is MPD. Um so, just starting with the first question, can you reconcile the differing budget figures? >> Uh thank you, Councilman Mosley. Uh so, the amount spent by police was 3.6 million dollars. The 5.7 million dollars includes various other departments. Um so, there was some spending within the attorney's office uh for some contracts. That's also being added to that 5.7 million dollars. There's uh additional spending within other like civil rights departments. Um so, as far as the executive summary that said 2.3 million dollars, I apologize. That would have been a translation error when we adjusted the number at the end of before we submitted the report. It is 3.6 million dollars by police. >> 3.6, so okay. So, not a total figure of six then. >> The total figure of 5.7 million dollars as a presented today. >> Okay. So, of that 3.6 3.6 was um relates to police, and then some of the others were other subsequent departments that touches the settlement agreement, and that's where I'm like, if staff could talk about what is that specifically, what factor under those expenses. >> Uh correct. Yeah, so we do have a um a detailing, a work paper of showing certain contracts and what department is paying for those contracts. For example, the Alief contract itself is covered by the attorney's office. It's about like 1.1, 1.2 million dollars in total cost for that. So, the 3.6 plus that 1.2, we're already getting closer to like 4.8, 4.9 million. The remaining 700,000, I would have to refer back to my work book. >> Okay, under the 3.6 cuz I don't think it lists of what was that inclusive of for the police. You kind of mentioned the other half or like Alief, but what was under the 3.6? >> I would have to look at the specific contracts that resulted in that. >> Okay, so that's a staff memo or follow up. And then if someone can clarify too if this was pulled from the 5 million dollars that um finance has said that we do have as basically allocated for settlement agreement costs and I'm I'm seeing some head nods, but just wanted to see if it was pulled from that or another essential fund which you use like cash to support this. >> Um Judge Lee It's all the same. So, a lot of the settlement agreement did happen you know years ago, 22, 21 time frame. And so, it is all coming from the general fund and it is unbudgeted, but it is anticipated that we'll spend it. If that makes sense. >> Okay, so that was the funding source used for at least the 5 million. There's still that outlying 700,000 dollars difference. That's where you also need to follow up on, correct? >> I have a question. >> Uh um Chair Tugtai, Councilmember Waseem, are you referring to the kind of reconciliation variance between the total amount >> there was 5.7 total. There's 5 million put in finance for settlement agreement, so there's still that outstanding 700,000. So, what covered that? >> Um yeah, I think what we might be best right now Church Council member Mosley is um if we could go back to our we have we have a a data kind of a little database of what all the settlement agreement um you know, authorizations were and their cost. Um I know there's other departments involved. Civil rights certainly comes to mind and things like that, but we could get you a list of you know, what the expenditures were and then and then and then have them add up to the total amount. >> Yeah, that would be really helpful, especially I know some of us have been in conversations with Council President Payne and also Council member Whiting ahead of getting a meeting for the settlement agreement committee so that we're truly understanding where we're spending on, is it actually in alignment with the recommendations that's put in the report, especially if we're doing some overspending and how we're not factoring into those things proactively. So, that information will be tremendously helpful. Thank you. >> Thank you. Um just a note for clerks. The administrative follow-ups that came out of this this set of questions is first to have finance detail out the the settlement agreement related costs including providing some further details on the police department's use of costs related to the settlement agreement and then just some reconciling um to make sure that we're understanding very clearly where money is set aside year after year for settlement agreement related costs and which of when that's when that is that's that part of money is billed and and who's managing um settlement agreement related costs. Any follow-ups needed for you guys? Okay, thank you. We'll continue with Q. I'll recognize Council Member Palm Asano. >> Thank you, Madam Chair. Um and thank you for this presentation. I am curious of your perspective of some of these things. Um some of this is similar uh to what Council Member Wantley was asking is that we keep hearing MPD was $20 million over budget, but this report says only 17.6 million. I say only facetiously, but what accounts for this difference? Like what line items were underspent? >> Uh absolutely. Uh so, the $3.6 million difference, if you add that Sorry, $3.6 million settlement agreement um and you add that to the 17 million, you'll get closer to that 20 million that you were discussing. So, on this report that we're showing uh for quarter four, we did pull all settlement agreement costs from the various department and put it into that bottom line. I'm going to actually back up my presentation a little bit here and put it into a bottom line right here where you see $5.7 million in that PowerPoint. That's where all settlement agreement costs are. So, including the $3.6 million settlement agreement that the police spent. So, that's why this report is showing a $17 million. >> I see. Okay, so that's I I'm connecting these two things. In looking at expenses by department, it appears that MPD's largest overages were, as expected, staffing. Um larger than expected CSO and academy classes and police reform, which is what Council Member Wantley was specifically asking about. Is there anything else that stands out to you? >> Uh that that is the majority of what you're seeing. We are in agreement. >> Yeah. Um thank you also for highlighting um fire's overage as Council President Payne also noted. Um we know we've got a consistent problem there, too. I seem to recall that fire is usually about $5 million over budget for staffing and is $6.8 million over this year. Do we know the source of this higher than normal amount? Is it just increased wages and cost of living or is it other expenses? >> Well, I feel like for that question, it'd be best coming from the fire department itself. >> Sure. Mr. Sca- Scagliardi. >> Madam Chair, Council Member Palmisano, committee, my name is Luke Scagliardi. I'm the finance director for the fire department. So, in answer to your question, I would say the majority of that overage does come from staffing and overtime, but there are certain other aspects in the department cost such as really non-discretionary items such as utilities, um um our fire stores budget which provides all the supplies to our stations. We have a budget for linen and laundry. Even our equipment budget is is is quite light. So, even in those items on an annual basis, we're 800,000 to a million over budget in there as well. That is on top of staffing. >> Mhm. >> And I'd be remiss if I didn't want to I wanted to add that part of part of our staffing overage, we do get a reimbursement from the state of Minnesota for PTSD for our members who are out on PTSD. That amount does not get reflected in our expense budget. It gets reflected in revenue, but it's really a direct reimbursement off of the wages for members who are out on PTSD. >> Mhm. >> So, that in in effect would last year was $600,000. So, while we're while we're 6.7 or 6.8 million over, it would actually bring that number closer to 6 million. So, we become a little bit more in line. >> Yeah. And then, Mr. Scruggly, it's my understanding that while you have um a firefighter out on PTSD, that's that's not a hireable position. They're still occupying that seat, that FTA slot, FTE slot in on our books. Is that correct? And whether or not they end up coming back to the department or separating, um that ends up with a resource gap between the people that you can staff with or not? >> Yeah. Madam Chair, Council member Palmisano, you are correct that um while that person is on PTSD, which is in D Lee, which is an extended leave of 24 weeks, um that continues to be an FTE in our department that we cannot replace. And then, generally, we're also um paying backfill for um for overtime for someone who is filling that position on the roster. >> Mhm. Yeah. Thank you. That highlights a a different issue, but um I think it's good to bring into this conversation. Um another question I have, and this is probably back to the finance department, uh or maybe Director Sexton, is the public works overage in public works seems highest in TMR, transportation maintenance and repair, um and traffic and parking, and I'm curious if that's um primarily due to unexpected snow events or what else goes into that. Uh we had a special push to repair street lights. Um so, I think this is street lights and snow, but Director, could you offer some commentary around it? >> Yeah. Through the chair, Council member Palmisano, my name is Tim Sexton, public works director for the city. Um that's exactly right. Um we had about 96% of our overage was related to copper wire theft repair, which I think we all had a conversation together about the planned potential to go around a million dollars over for that. The second piece was directly related to responding to snow events, particularly events in December of last year, which is why there was no opportunity to provide more notice about the potential to go over. We had, just for reference, in 2025, December, we had three snow events in December. Um for reference, that's the most snow events we've had in a December since at least 2009, if not earlier. So, it's really difficult for us to plan for that, and I think responsible budgeting means we plan for about one snow event per month in the winter. That's historically been pretty accurate, but we recognize, I think, as a city, that we still need to do that work, and so in this case, um yeah, we had a have a heavy winter snow or excuse me, December snow, and that explains the the approximately $1.1 million overage in TM&R. >> Yeah, that sounds really reasonable. Thank you. My last question is just very general and more finance-y. Um when I read this and look at the bigger picture, it feels like our special, our internal, and our enterprise funds are all in pretty good or better positions, but it's our general fund that's hurting that we need to be most concerned about. Um we have, it looks like, $7.4 million buffer over that required 17%, which isn't much. I remain concerned about that. Is Is this also your sort of general thumbnail sense of our finances? >> Yeah, Chair Chughtai, um Councilmember Pell Pell Me So, uh yes, I totally agree with your your assessment of it. Um as I guys I mentioned at the beginning, um this this it's kind of a tale of two cities. Non-general fund, I think, is doing just fine. Uh general fund, um you know, does does need to be looked at. Uh >> Yeah. >> It's my recommendation. >> Thank you. Thank you for this presentation. Thank you. Um next I will recognize Council member Stevenson. >> Thank you. Um so much to go over here. So I I think I just have a couple of questions as I get my bearing of this. Um I see in here um I pulled out the parking fund in particular, but I was hoping to get a little more education from you on those different special funds. The parking fund in particular has $194 million in it. What What is that for? >> Uh Chair Chughtai Council member Stevenson, the parking fund is you would You >> Yeah. I mean, just using that as an as an example. >> That's net position. >> Oh, cash is 11.2. >> Yeah. Yeah. Um >> [clears throat] >> Oh, excuse me. Um Chair Chughtai Council member Stevenson, um yeah, as as as uh Deputy Director Laing mentioned, cash-wise, it's got $11 million. The net position is quite a bit more because it's an asset asset-intensive uh business that owns a lot of parking ramps and things like that. And so the undepreciated amount is is recorded as a net asset to the city. >> It's got to be the buildings that exist. Infrastructure, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So then that's the same with sewer and storm water. These are These are physical assets, and that's why these numbers are so high. >> Yes, that's that's correct. Uh yeah, Chair Chughtai Council member Stevenson. >> Okay. Thank you. That clears up a lot. Um secondly, I just You said it quickly. I just wanted to to double-check. Did you say that MPD is on on track to be $24 million over budget this year? >> Uh yeah, Chair Chughtai Council member Stevenson. Yeah, as of as of as of early in April, that that's our best estimate of the of the forecast for 2026. >> Okay. Marking that down. Um and then I had a question for fire. I don't know if you could come back up. Thank you. Um what percent of employees are out on PTSD and is it abnormally high? Is it consistent yearly? What's the situation there? >> So, Madam Chair Councilmember Stevenson, currently um I believe we have between 25 and 30 members out on PTSD leave. That would um constitute about 8% of the department. We're 434 authorized sworn. Um And that that number um has stayed pretty steady, consistent over I would say the past, you know, um 6 to 9 months, but it has shown an incremental increase over time. It it became um it became quite prevalent in 2025 and has stayed there in 2026. It certainly hasn't shown an indication of decreasing at this point. >> Okay. What is hard to find a typical year in the past in the recent past, but in a more typical {quote} year, what percent do you think would be out on PTSD leave? >> So, if I'm going to defer to Assistant Chief Van Vickle who is here just cuz I know I can't speak as well to the legislation of it. So, I'd like to defer to him for that question. >> Chief, if you'll first begin with introducing yourself. >> Uh Chair Chuck Tai, Councilmember Stevenson, I'm Wes Van Vickle. I'm the Assistant Chief of Operations. Could you please repeat your question? >> Yeah, I'm just curious. Um It was said there was about 8% of employees were out on PTSD leave right now. And I'm just curious, is that normal? Like year to year is 8% normal or what might a quote-unquote normal be? >> Uh Council member Chughtai, Chair Stevenson, or Chair Chughtai, Council member Stevenson, this is a fairly new program, so it's hard to make comparisons. We didn't have PTSD leave until >> [snorts] >> 2 years ago, and since then it has stayed fairly consistent. Uh I will say I think some of the drivers have been some of the major events that we've seen, like Annunciation, Operation Metro Surge. Um we seem to have spikes during those events. So, on a regular basis, I think we're going to have to just keep track in the future, cuz there's really no comparison for it yet, cuz it's so new. >> Okay, thank That's what I was trying to get at. Thank you. Um yeah, that's all for me. Thank you. >> Uh bef- before Chief Zanner call, before you go back, uh just as a follow-up, I appreciate that you're you you note the changes to um to state law that that um resulted in in the way that we account for PTSD leave in the fire department. Prior to that, uh how did you account for officers um that were in similar conditions that were that were leaving the department on a temporary basis? >> Chair Chughtai, I believe that was not included in anything. Mental health at that time was not considered injury on duty, and so that is something that is recent for us, where a mental health injury is considered an injury on duty. >> Got you. Thank you. Um I'll next recognize Council member Whiting. >> Thank you, Chair Chughtai. Um just a quick question, kind of based particularly for an an ACUK. This isn't a question for fire, so feel free to to sit down. >> [laughter] >> Um uh particularly relates to kind of these these general fund balance details here. Uh and kind of just trying to get it understanding here. Right, since I'm new, I know this this target number of 17% is the minimum kind of required. I guess like, you know, little more context like required for what is like why is that 17% kind of listed there? So, maybe it's just a little bit of a background would be helpful. >> Uh yeah, sure. Uh Chair Chughtai, Councilmember Whiting. Whiting, yeah. Excuse me. Excuse me. Yeah, I apologize. Um yeah, um that amount the the the the 109 million it's it's a calculation of fund balance and there's some other things that go into it like our internal service fund. It is set by the City Council in the annual financial policy. So, why do we have a balance like that? Generally as generally it's really like as a cash flow part of it is cash flow. Like, for example, we we probably will get to a negative um cash balance in the next few weeks here. Not a huge one, but so like like the cash kind of comes in at different times. You know, a lot of it is property tax that comes in just twice a year. Then when we get our infusion of property cash it'll go back up positive again. So, that's that's one of the main reasons it helps to you know, protect the city against paying interest as well as a lot a lot of areas you know, a lot of certain number of weeks or months, you know, in order to be able to operate in reserve in case cuz you never know what'll happen, you know, metro surges, things like that, you know, that that are that are hard to control. >> Thank you. Yeah, but then just kind of piece on so it's sounding like right since if we are under that piece, is there any kind of financial consequence or something for being under at kind of that 14%? I think that's kind of the the question that I have. >> Yeah, Chair Chughtai, Councilmember Whiting. Um there's no direct consequence. It does put the city a a little more risky. We certainly have talked about credit ratings before. Um it I guess the biggest consequence is us in the finance office. We don't feel like we can authorize things, you know, spending below the amount that the councils the council that you know has approved. So that that that played a huge role in our decision, you know, not to roll over budgets, which I'll get to in a few minutes here from 25 to 26 cuz we looked at and said, "Oh, we can't, you know, if we were to prove this, you know, we'd be violating council policy." So that's probably the biggest consequences is really on kind of an errand, I guess, too. Um but certainly there is consequences, too, like you won't get as much interest revenue and things things like that cuz you won't have as big of balances to accrue that. >> And then the last piece on that, so you know, you brought it up briefly, but as it relates to kind of our our credit rating, does this go into the kind of calculation to to our credit rating and what the kind of the would be issued by the specific bureaus? >> Um Council Member Chughtai, I mean, Chair Chughtai, Council Member Whiting, um I think I'm not certainly not an expert and and I I would defer to other people. I would say that there's just a number of things that go in the credit rating, that's one of many. There's there's other things that aren't as controllable by us, such as the property tax base, general economy economic health of the Twin Cities, you know, things like that. So there's really a wide range, um but that is mainly managed by our banking and debt area. >> Perfect. That's really helpful. Thank you. >> Thank you and and just to reiterate, historically the the the primary caution that finance will bring to us when any adjustments are being made to planned use of fund balance is the is the negative impact it can have on our and our on our um credit rating and then the subsequent impact that can have on our ability to to make capital investments and and manage that at at for our institution. Um Come back to Council Member Stevenson next. >> Sorry, um, one more line of questioning. Um, for the enterprise funds, the things I referenced earlier, where was the assets that were that were um, we were talking about. Um, do you have somewhere broken out the uh, future maintenance liability of these different assets? >> Uh, Chair Chuck Thai, uh, Counselor Stevenson, I do believe public works has has some work in that. I would have to defer to to the department exactly to get an exact, um, list. Um, but I do believe there's uh, there is uh, you know, maintenance liabilities and things that are planned for in the They They do what's called pro formas, where they forecast out a number of years of, you know, what the rates would be. And in there, um, cer- certainly, you know, major projects and things like that would be as part of the pro forma, um, for accumulating cash, for example, to do a major project or or to pay back debt service or things like that. >> Okay, so that budgeting, would that be would that fall under public works budget then? >> Yeah, yeah, that'd be part of the public works budget process. Um, uh, Chair Chuck Thai, Counselor Stevenson. >> Okay, thank you. >> Wonderful, and then, um, I'll end with a couple questions for you. Um, I think, so just looking at slide seven, where you walk through, um, the decrease to the the funds net position and and the general funds cash position. Um, and the both to the 58.3 million decrease in the cash position, um, and the 68.6 for the funds. Um, can you Can you, um, point out what of that decrease was was a planned use. >> Yes, thank you, Chair Chughtai. So, for planned use, we originally started with a planned use of fund in 2025 of approximately $24 million. Then there was an approved rollover of about $42 million. Something those up, you get about a $66 million planned use of fund balance in 2025. So, then we're looking at the decrease of 68 million and admittedly, that decrease was close to the planned use. The difference that you'll see here though is that that planned use of fund involved maybe other departments fulfilling certain other roles that they had or certain other spending. But what ended up happening is because of public safety overspend, certain departments might not have spent for the projects they were thinking and wanted to maybe roll over into 2026 but now can't because that money was spent. Does that answer your question? >> That absolutely answers the question. And then um I know the finance department plans out the use of fund balance for into future years including for balancing the recommended budget that's presented in in August. How has this this significant increase to the use of plan balance impacting the the projection of what's available to use for for future years including in the planning of the 2027 recommended budget? >> Thank you, Chair Chughtai. [clears throat] I think it's highly unlikely that we'll be able to recommend any uses of fund balance in the coming budget cycle. >> Thank you. Um that uh completes the the discussion on this item. Um I'll see if colleagues have any final thoughts that they would like to get in Q4. Not seeing any, I will uh direct the clerk to file this No, so sorry, Councilmember Wansley. >> Thank you, Chair Chair, but I did want to make sure I heard this correctly. You mentioned for the under-collection of franchise fees, that was a result of expenses tied to that exceeding the revenues. Um I just want to make sure I heard that right. >> For for franchise fees? >> Yes. >> Uh so for franchise fees, we were $3 million under budget on the revenue we collected, uh but we did see year-over-year growth in franchise fees from '24 to '25. It's just that the budget increased at a rate higher than the growth. Um when it comes to the revenue, if I'm understanding the question correctly, it is actually uh charges um service charges that public works um would charge internal or external clients for work that they do, and we would collect additional revenue for that, but collecting that revenue also incurs additional salary expenses. So you'll see that their expenses went higher over budget as well as the revenue going hand-in-hand. >> So I'm thinking uh health and sustainability is a factor into this when I Oh, sorry. Sorry, you mentioned franchise fees. Never mind. So public works, okay. And I thought we approved a increase in those fees for last year, so that's why I was surprised to see that we under-collected. Sounds like >> Through the chair, Councilmember Wansley. So while the um franchise fee rates have increased um due to the agreements with the utilities, so um the franchise fees are highly variable as a revenue source. So if it's a warm winter, for example, we're not going to collect as much in franchise fees. >> Okay. >> So, as people's bills are lower for electricity and natural gas, we will not see that revenue that we are meant to be sort of segmenting, a portion of which for the climate work. >> Mhm. >> So, that is um it is true that the council voted on another increase to franchise fees in December. We will not know for this budgeting cycle if that pans out >> Oh. >> as, you know, the as as was forecast. >> Okay. Thank you for that clarification. >> Thanks. >> Wonderful. All right. With that, I will ask the clerk to file this report. Um and we are now ready to move to item number three on our discussion agenda, which is um the rollover of unspent 2025 appropriation. Um Mr. Hargrove, I will welcome you to begin this presentation whenever you're ready. >> All right. >> Uh yeah, thank you uh Chair Chughtai. Council members, um so yeah, this is the second presentation we have today to talk about our rollover process and the resolution uh to roll over budgets from 2025 to 2026. Um so again, um uh Council members, um the rollover process, um like what is a rollover? It's really like moving left over budgets into the next year to complete the work from the previous year. So, that's kind of a the the simple explanation of what a rollover is. You can see um the council's addressed it in section 4.13.10. Um and I I won't read off the explanation what it says in the in in it, but that's basically the authorizing language and it's um uh the process is administered by the finance officer here at the here at the city of Minneapolis. So uh this year we have a slightly different um rollover format than we've had before. Um but backing off a little bit, um as we mentioned before in our first presentation, um this year the finance officer decided to limit it to just public safety aid in the non-general fund. And again, there's really two primary reasons for it. One is we were only $7 million over the target. Like last year we rolled over about $42 million in general fund, so it was way if we'd have done anything like the year before, we'd have been way, you know, under budget. Um so that that that's um that that that that that that's that's really the main the main factor. And then the other factor was um just our projections of how the public safety area was turning out. Um so we felt it was prudent for the city to to not roll over the general fund balances. So anyway, the report's separated into three sections. Section one is the public safety aid. Um that technically is in the general fund, but restricted. Um section two is uh rollovers mandated by the city council that were outside of the policy, so that's a new section this year. And then section three is the non-general fund uh rollovers. So just to go over the process real briefly, uh at the end of January we sent out a request to the departments. Um we advised them that we couldn't do the general fund this year, um but we can do the non-general fund. Uh they were given till early March to um submit their uh submit their requests. Um we did ask them to uh submit encumbrance detail, which is uh another name for purchase orders. And so they submitted uh the purchase orders, uh which ones they were um you know, requesting to be rolled over. Some of these things were in a project format. Sometimes they requested rollovers for a whole project or so. So then in the mid-March or so, we we assessed the rollover requests. We looked at the department budgets to make sure that they still had budget uh budget remaining in their in their in their in their budget that could cover the roll over. So, we also looked at the funds health, which in this case was mostly the general fund, although there were a few others that we looked at. And then finally, the resolution does state that grant funds, capital funds, things like that are automatically rolled over from year to year cuz those tend to be multi-year projects. And then lastly, the following here is is really a summary by department of you know, what we're what we're rolling over for the year what we what we're requesting to be rolled over for the year. So, you can see the public safety aid is the bulk of it is in neighborhood safety. We also have community safety pilots in finance. So, that probably accounts for almost almost $6 million or so of of the 7 million 7 and 1/2 million total and then lesser amounts in the other departments. The council mandated roll overs, those are generally the resolutions or the the right I should say the resolutions that start with kind of notwithstanding. We felt we had to include this in there cuz they weren't part of the general fund appropriation just to make sure we can include the budgets. Again, that was mainly CPED for the emergency housing vouchers in the clerk's office. So, that came to about 1.5 million. And then finally, the non-general funds, which is pretty similar to other years. So, this none of this is in the general fund. You can see the vast majority of is $85 million for CPED in their mainly their special revenue fund. Lesser amounts are IT mainly for some pretty big IT projects they have as well as fleet as well to to cover up purchase orders for vehicles and equipment replacement. So, these should generally tie to the the details in the resolution. I I tried to spell out acronyms the first time something was mentioned. But otherwise, yeah, all of the details are generally sorted by department here and they're in the resolution itself to So, with that that concludes my presentation on the rollovers today. I certainly can stay on for any questions at this time. Thank you. >> Thank you for your presentation. Colleagues, are there any questions on this item? This item will require an approval, so just noting the distinction here and I'll recognize Councilmember Stevenson. >> Um What trends do you anticipate in rollover funds in the future? >> Um Chair Chughtai, um uh Councilmember Stevenson Uh as far as the trends, I think it'll be a difficult year to roll over funds at the end of this year as well too. After that, it it really kind of depends how how how things finish this year. If we have a lot of If we have a lot of departments under budget and it looks favorable, then you know, that could change or so, but I think it will require some sort of rebuild of the general fund balance before we can get back to that. >> So, basically you don't expect rollover funds in the near future. >> Uh Chair Chughtai, Councilmember Stevenson, yes, that's correct. Not for the general fund. Non-general fund, they don't anticipate any changes. We still should be able to roll over items in the in that aren't general fund. >> Okay. Um Yeah, thank you. >> All right, I'm not seeing anyone else in queue. I will move approval of this item and ask for a second. >> Second. >> Any further discussion? Seeing no further discussion on the motion to approve this resolution, all those in favor, please signify by saying I. >> I. >> Those opposed say nay. Any abstentions? The eyes have it and that motion carries and we forward it to Thursday's council meeting for final consideration. Um next we'll move to item number four. Um and this is uh the 26 22 2026 council dedicated funds. This is the first of two new presentations that'll come before the committee today as a result of changes to the city's financial policies. I will invite Deputy City Operations Officer Brett Jelly to uh join us and begin this presentation. Welcome. >> Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair Chucktai and members of the committee. >> can ask you to just pick which mic you want to use. There we go. Perfect. Thank you. >> Uh my name's Brett Jelly, Deputy City Operations Officer. And I'm here today to introduce a receive and file report on the 2026 council dedicated funds. So as background, the council dedicated funds are amendments to the mayor's recommended budget and they are adopted as part of the general appropriations resolution. The uh funds are dedicated for specific purposes and they're often also referred to as earmarks. These funds are restricted and may not be expended or reallocated for any purpose other than the purpose specified in the appropriation except as provided within financial policies. The administration is required to provide a written update on these funds by April 30th and August 31st of each year. Uh the table in this slide is just an overview of all of the council dedicated funds for 2026, and I will have representatives from the different departments um listed in the chart come up and present an update on their items. >> Good afternoon, Chair Chughtai, members of the committee. My name is Chris Stokes, and I'm the operations director for the health department. I have two very brief updates. Uh the first is on the South Pardon me. South Minneapolis Underserved Communities Opioid Response in the amount of $150,000. Our intention is to expand the Brixadi pilot project that's currently going on in the city. And as a reminder, Brixadi is a medication used for opioid use disorder. Um so, the intention is to purchase additional medication for that pilot for use by the um FQHCs in the city. The second update is on the autism and water safety public health program, which is $25,000. Um we are currently working on a contract amendment with an existing contractor to expand their scope of services to include this particular project. >> All right. So, just um to provide an overview of how we'll uh conduct um discussion for this item. Uh as Deputy COO um Jelly uh outlined, he will go through We will go through by department each uh department's updates as as it relates to uh this report. We'll take up discussion so that um staff from each department can um can come in and out of the chambers and we can um stay on track with discussion here. So, on the two items that the health department just presented, South Minneapolis Underserved Communities Opioid Response, and the Autism and Water Safety Public Health Program, um are there any questions or discussion from the committee? I will recognize Council Vice President Osman. >> Uh thank you so much. Uh I appreciate you coming over and this are couple items that I really uh care about and I authored the amendment to bring this forward. Uh this was meant to uh address the opioid crisis in in in that area. Um uh with a lot of folks that are dealing with a lot of addictions, especially in uh South Central Minneapolis, Cedar Riverside, and Native American East African community. I really excited about the Pracsari program that has I that has uh been uh great having a medication that will get off people uh addiction. Uh I do want to see a data how many people we have helped. I know that this program has been has been has been on working for like couple last couple of years or maybe 2 and 1/2 years. So, I do want to see you know, um in the future not today, but in the future, what the outcome is and if this is something that we can continue to fund. Um so, I I do welcome that. Uh And also the water safety. This was um mainly one community who who continue to suffer uh young kids with autism that are drowning in waters. Every summer we see it. Especially East African community who a lot of young men are there. So, the education and awareness and and and what's what's the test around that. I had a lengthy conversation with the health department to kind of address. And it was kind of new to the health department actually to kind of learn, meet the expertise, and understand what is causing this and how do we as a city make um be be helpful to that. So, I am a little bit um um wondering those organizations that are extending their contract, how much knowledge do they have in this field? Uh and especially the water safety and the kids historically last 5-6 years that have been um dying in the water. >> Mhm. Um through the chair, Council Member Osman, I would actually defer the details of the project to our Deputy Commissioner Heidi Richie, who is out of the office ill today. >> Oh, no problem. >> Um but I can certainly have her follow up directly with you. >> No, wonderful. Deputy and I have a conversation. She's she's wonderful. She definitely She knows this program very well. So, I appreciate you coming and presenting, but I'm I'm excited that the RFP is coming forward on on that. Thank you. >> Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you. Now, before we uh continue to the CPED section, um Deputy CEO Jelly, if you'll come back just really briefly. I think as it as a level set, um this is our first time going through a report like this. Um And a new change to financial policies that this is responsive to. If we don't see uh Council dedicated uh fund item on the list of items that you will be presenting. Um what what does that mean? Does that mean there are no anticipated changes to that item? >> Uh Chair Chughtai, uh thank you for the question and I was going back to grab my financial policies. So, there are um I think there's a number of categories of budget amendments. So, this is very specifically about the council dedicated funds and earmarks. And if you look in the budget book under each department, you will see each one of these called out. So, that should tie uh this list of 13 items will tie directly to what's listed as council dedicated spending in the budget book. There were some other council amendments that might have had different sources. And um my understanding is they'll be included in the mid-year budget update, a status update on those items. >> Gotcha. Thank you. Uh we're ready to continue. >> Introduce CPAB. >> I'm so sorry. Uh I skipped I skipped over Councilmember Chavez as for the Health Department. Go ahead, Councilmember. >> you. Well, I just want to I feel like we need to reset a little bit, Chair. There is I'm trying to understand this presentation a little bit better. One, it is about council dedicated funds. There's a specific bra- bracket in the budget that's council dedicated funds. I'm not seeing a lot of the budget amendments that a lot of us authored last year in December here. And I'm trying to understand where those are at, what is happening with them, a status update. I think what you were saying was that if they're not on here, then it means that there's no issues with them, but what I heard was the opposite, that that's probably going to be a mid-year thing. So, now I have concerns that a lot of the budget amendments, particularly I'm thinking about 33 thrive, many other concerns that I have. I want to hear what's going on. So, I guess any clarification on is this just one part of the budget that we're going over from last year that's just council dedicated funds? And then in the summer we're going to get an update on the other budget amendments that we authored. So, I'm just trying to get some clarification here. >> Yeah, so I'll start I'll start with saying um council dedicated funds and earmarks are the same thing. So, when we're talking about council dedicated funds, we're not talking about council initiated budget amendments. We're talking about just earmarks initiated by the council. And so every August we receive the like the the annual report that walks through every single budget amendment and the status update as to the implementation of that amendment. That I I think is the distinction staff is trying to lay out here. Um that these are just council initiated earmarks. >> So, just earmarks not other budget amendments for >> Exactly right. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Director Director Hanson, I think we're ready for you. >> Chair Chaktai, members of the budget committee, my name is Eric Hanson. I run the Department of Community Planning and Economic Development and I'm here to deliver update on five items. The first item is a $50,000 investment in public housing tenant organizing. Uh we uh we're moving forward with this. This is through the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority's high-rise council. Uh and we hope to have contract through the council later this month. The second one is Tiny Homes Big Dreams program. And this is this is a $15,000 of CPED directed funding. This did not come with additional funds, but we worked with the author of this amendment, uh Council member Chavez, uh to do some investigation of how to make it easier to do tiny homes in the city. We have a staff work team that is um starting to uh put together the scoping for that phase. The third item on our list is emergency shelter operation funding. We are working This is something we were doing with um This is a program we're doing with Hennepin County. We're now working out the contracting and we're hoping to have that contract to um uh to the council sometime in May, which probably is looking like June considering the the timeline of the council meetings. Um the last two, we have a commercial adaptive reuse study. This is $125,000. This was something to help us understand what's the impediment and barriers to um building conversions within downtown high-rises. Um uh it would be just very direct. The the We are taking uh we are working with existing resources to try and figure out how to come to um some information. We've been doing some research uh through the last few years with our team around what other cities have been involved in, what uh we are seeing in Minneapolis, and based on what you just heard about the rollover and the budget situation, we're you we're going to be using existing resources to to meet the purpose of this directed um uh this council direction. And the second one uh the next one is Invest in Child Care Workers. This was also a creation of an FTE, but it did not have associated funding for it. Was asked for the for CPED to find funding to fund the FTE. We have a contract with the YWCA to do this work. I want to Hopefully I said the W instead of the M. I think it's the W. One of the Y's is doing this work for us as doing contract work for us. We are using existing FTE resources within our employment and training group. This is supposed to be a person who would help shepherd people in into this this career track. And so we'll be using existing FTEs in that to to meet that purpose. And that's the That's that's it for me. If you have any questions, I'm here to answer them. >> Wonderful. Any questions for CPED? I'll recognize Council Member Wansley. >> Thank you, Chair Chughtai. I'm actually speaking to item number seven, but that's in child care workers one. As you mentioned, originally this budget amendment was a earmarked to create FTE position for this specific sector. And you know, I am not necessarily oppositional to the proposed change of you essentially still using your existing resources through the YMC A contract to fulfill this, but where I'm a little bit confused is I still thought under this financial policy even this proposal would require a council vote cuz it was a earmark. That's currently not being enacted in its intent. So I'm trying to get clarification how that doesn't fall as a council change. >> Council Member Chair Chughtai Council Member Wansley, so this one was was unique as if it was a direction to use existing CPED resources. It did not come The other The first three we had had actually Three of the four Three of the five of these things had funding. The Tiny Homes Big Dreams one was direct was a direction to use existing resources. Same with this FTE was a direction to use existing resources. I would defer to Deputy CEO Jelly about the policy, but we're wanting to be very clear that we will get we're trying to meet the purpose of the intent to get here without having to find additional money to find a new FTE um and fill it we'll fill it with a FTE that is in that is working on employment and training programs right now. So, I'm not sure about the answer to the question about whether the council needs to act on it. I would defer to my my friend direct Deputy CEO. >> Yeah, cuz I'm also looking for the actual budget language. I've never seen a say directive to use existing funding. I think that's [clears throat] usually just the earmark. So, I earmark within your existing budget as opposed to finding a new funding source to give you the additional dollars. I think we did this as a earmark. Um so, even as a earmark using existing resources, you're proposing to not use it in its original intent. So, again yeah, I think this would be a question around Deputy Jelly, how does this not fall under the scope of the financial policy then? >> Chair Sawant, uh Councilmember Wansley, uh I think my recommendation on this one as we looked at the policy, it talks about the purpose um of the amendment, and I think as we are embarking on this reporting, it might be a good topic to sit down with committee leadership and finance and review um in this case uh C Ped's proposing to meet the purpose of the invest in child care workers um and using their current resources to do that. And whether or not um that meets the intent of the author um or not. So, it might be something that we want to um have some further conversations about. We will be coming back as I noted um again to to report again on this later in the year cuz there are um there there very clear processes on if this if the administration is not going to use the money for the intended purpose, we are required to come back to committee and explain how much um funds are no longer required, um why, and what the effect of the um on the council dedicated purpose would be. >> Yeah, I was a co-author of that policy. So, very aware. I think it's that piece though still if it's a earmarked um it's great to hear that the implementation is a is moving forward, but I think we're still getting at the technical aspect of even bringing a change to say we're not going to implement the budget amendment as it was passed, which is a earmarked and we're going to propose this instead. That as the author of this policy, I think also fell under the same scope regardless of implementation. So, this does seem like a follow-up then where it might need at a subsequent budget amendment where uh or budget meeting where we might need that change then on this one. >> Understood. >> All right. Um I'll next recognize Councilmember Stevenson. >> Yeah, um this is getting back to the discussion that Chair you had with um Councilmember Chavez. I didn't understand what the difference between an earmark and another budget amendment is. Um I don't know who should answer this question for me whether But, please explain it to me again. >> I'll take the first stab and then the the deputy CFO might also jump in, but um an earmark [clears throat] is um it is or a standard budget amendment involves paying for a new thing or expanding paying for a thing that we're already doing. And so, to pay for it, you need to find money from point A and place it in point B to do the thing. Usually, that means there's going to be a reduction to a department's or a a set of a program's budget to increase to pay for the new thing. Sometimes, we'll earmark money within an existing budget and um and either create a new um program to be paid for using that earmark or to expand something that exists already. Um I think at a high level, that's the distinction. And here, we're just talking about earmarks um that were a part of the budget. That's these 13 amendments that were paid for using earmarks instead of paying for the outcome by by making a cut somewhere in the in the budget. >> Okay, so we're not hearing about the 38th Thrive money today because it made cut to something else. >> Correct. >> Okay. >> It it took money from the the downtown assets fund um fund balance, and so it used cash from local option sales tax to pay for the 38th Street Thrive implementation. That's why it's not covered here. >> Okay, thank you. >> All right, and next we'll recognize uh Council Member Wansley. >> Yeah, just another quick thing Chair Chucktai and just for staff why I feel very certain this will require a change is because then what happens now with the $102,000 that was originally earmarked for this purpose is not being utilized for this purpose. >> Chair Chucktai, Council Member Wansley, that funding was we had to find it in the budget. It was being used. So, I'd have to go in and cut it from some other place within the CPED budget. >> Mhm. >> It was not. So, then that's what it would mean. It's being used for salaries. It's being used for programs. It's being used for inspection services. That's what it's being used for. And um you know, in light of the of the rollover situation, we'd make some difficult decisions about um what we're cutting and not cutting. And if if if it was the if it's the you know, direction of the council and working with um the administration that I have to go cut $102,000 and create an FTE for this, then we will go ahead and do that. But it will have a consequence somewhere else in the department of things that are already happening. >> No, I actually am acting or asking for the opposite of that. So, what your would need or what there would need to be in front of the body is saying we're not a budget amendment that says we are asking to use this instead [clears throat] for a French personnel as opposed to creating the FTE, but there needs to be a vote on a resolution that notes that change even with the earmark. So, I think this is a really good lesson of earmarks are also falling under the same expectation of this this financial policy and that a change even if it means just still keeping it absorbed within your budget like that should be reflected in the approval process. So, all that to say, we'll follow up about getting that credit. Thank you. >> All right. Um no further questions on the CPAC section. Uh next, I believe we're welcoming public works. >> Thank you, Chair Chektai. My name is Tim Sexton, public works director. We'll be walking through some of the um council directed spending updates for public works. You're the next Well, I guess [snorts] I'm running this. That's fine. I got it. Thank I got it. Thanks. >> [laughter] >> All right. So, starting with a zero waste project manager, we had two related amendments. Um Uh one is to create a new position, zero waste project manager, and the second was to um have a zero waste work group. We've been working to create the position, the zero waste project manager role. Um we did work with the council vice president to change the funding um to the climate legacy initiative, so that that role could have an expanded scope, which means uh it can work not just on residential units of four four units or less, but it could also work on commercial and multi-family residential. So, it would have an expanding expanded scope rather than the initial um budget proposal, which was to come from solid waste and recycling funds, which are restricted to the residential sector only. So, we worked with the council vice president to make that change. That position is being um is with HR right now. I think we're hoping to post in the next few weeks. So, we're making progress there. We've been um also working with the clerk's office to add the zero waste work group um to the the SEAC existing uh community environmental advisory commission. Uh it already has a structure, it already has staffing, um and so we've been working with the clerk the clerk's office to make that change. So, I would suggest that we are we're making progress on both of these items. The second grouping uh has to do with sidewalks plowing pilots. Um and actually since this posted, um we have new information that we're closer to $250,000 spent. Now, this the sidewalk pilot is um it's a little bit unique in that winter, as you know, uh it's at the beginning of our calendar year and at the end of the calendar year. Right? So, [clears throat] the fact that we've spent about $250,000, I would suggest is very much on track um for spending. We um just like I mentioned this past year in December, we had some unplanned snow events. Um so, we don't want to be pushing up against that say like full 50% of the spend or we could run out of money in December of next year. So, we spent about again $250,000. This walks through the different pilot areas um that we've been working on throughout the year. Um and happy to go into some more detail. I might need some help from some of our staff here to go into specifics on those four pilot areas, but happy to do that if you have any questions. >> Thank you. Um are there any questions related to um public works earmarks? Not seeing any, so we will continue with our presentation. >> Please. >> Okay. >> Ready, Chair? >> We're ready for you. >> All right. Thank you, Chair. Uh Todd Barnett, Commissioner of Community Safety for the City of Minneapolis. Uh up first is the Police Department Off-Duty Fees. Um all The update that we have for that one, uh other than what was in the um memo that was sent to Council on December 2nd, is that now we have an actual um timeline for this uh to be started. And you can see up there is estimated for uh second quarter of 2027. Um like has been explained in the email, uh we need to get a timekeeping uh platform together and as well as some of uh technology uh that is needed. I'll let uh Chief O'Hara talk about the Non-Fatal Shooting Team. >> Thank you, Commissioner. Uh Thank you, Chair. Brian O'Hara, Police Chief. Um so the the Non-Fatal uh Shooting uh Team has begun, the FAST Team. Um the earmark uh is essentially paying for salary, fringe, and an estimated amount of overtime for the members of the Minneapolis Police Department that are assigned to the Non-Fatal Shooting Team. In addition to that, uh they're being supported uh and we're getting work from other law enforcement agencies that are participating, uh as well as we've started a a Violent Offender um Apprehension Team uh that is also supplemented by outside law enforcement agencies. So, that as soon as there are suspects identified and that there are probable cause for arrests, uh those those individuals can target them and get them off the street and make arrests as quickly as possible. So, the earmark for the non-fatal shooting task force is completely accounted for um with salary, fringe, and an estimate on how much overtime it will cost for the members of the Minneapolis police that are assigned to the team. >> Thank you. Um are there any questions for the chief? I'll recognize Council member Warsame. >> Thank you, Chair Chakhtoura. I'm very excited to see the implementation of the non-fatal um task force. I've sung the praises of that many times, but and this is no commentary to you, but I do have some comments regarding the off-duty um fees not being implemented, which I still find to be unacceptable and it's very appalling that the Frey administration is refusing to implement this until at least the quarter or second quarter of 2027. Um especially when we know um based off of 2024's like report and data, we we are currently subsidizing this at $1.4 million. Um and let me say or provide clarity, it's not we residents are subsidizing $1.4 million. Um of making sure that MPD officers can essentially do your side gigs um for personal gain, and that is not leading to citywide public safety outcomes. Um and I know residents have made it very clear repeatedly that they would like to see us prioritize decreasing property taxes and actually taking $1.4 million off of their shoulders could be a clear and obvious way to do that. Um and it will allow the city to recoup said million dollars of cost without reducing any programs or services. Um, and I want to note that there is a real cost to delaying this work. Um, as you mentioned, we get off-duty memos now as a result of Council passing a measure um, to get those reports and through April of this year MPD has stated that there's been 10,000 hours of off-duty work um, performed that the city has been subsidizing. And that's almost nearly half a million dollars. If we implement the fees that Council passed just last year, we could be recouping nearly half a million dollars right now. Um, and I would just say this is absolutely a choice of political will. I've seen the city I've seen the prior administration work magic um, to put things in place to do all sorts of things. Make sure, you know, recovery is happening downtown and I just find it mind-boggling that we can't do the same to get essentially an app or whatever tech you need to actually get this implemented this year. Council already put the policy measures in place for you to collect this fee. We also, as indicated by this presentation, gave you over $300,000 to implement collection of this fee and you're still saying it's going to take another year to do tech changes to collect it. Makes no sense to me. Um, so this is one where again, as we're talking about the bleak future of the city financially, this is actually one of the easiest ways in which we could be recouping costs and alleviating financial burden and strain off of our residents and particularly especially when they're paying such a high degree for one department that this actually directly ties to. We just heard nearly a $20 million of spending. We could take at least 1.4 million of that off the shoulders of residents and there is a choice by the prior administration to not do so and it makes absolutely no sense. So this is one where I just have to say like do better. There is no reason why you can't implement this fee this year and buy the technology and I would encourage the fire administration to do so so we're not in the same situation come next year where it's like oh we wasted a million dollars of taxpayer dollars for absolutely no reason. That is it. >> Um thank you. Next I'll recognize Councilmember Stevenson. >> Thank [clears throat] you. Um my colleague laid out the case well enough but I'd like to hear it I don't know from the commissioner or from the chief. Why does it take over a year? >> Through uh the chair uh Councilmember Stevenson my understanding is that um as an enterprise we'll try to implement uh timekeeping measures um as well as the technology. I think that memo from I think it's December 2nd kind of lays that out that went to all councilmembers. I know that there are also other projects that's going on. Um I hear Councilmember Wansley loud and clear. Um I will definitely take those concerns back uh and see what we can do to move things quicker. But as of right now I it appears that it's scheduled for the second quarter of 2027. >> So the reason it's going to take a year is not because the process takes a year but because it's a low priority for you and you're going to do other projects before you do this. >> I don't through the chair uh Councilmember Stevenson it's not a low priority for me. Um I can like I said earlier I'll take it back and see where we are and and what specifically as far as timelines that are out there. I didn't ask for that specific thing. I asked when did we think we would get it done. It's other departments, not just OCS. I mean >> Okay, which other departments? >> So, um when it comes to the technology piece, of course it's IT. Um I believe also uh there's if we're believe the technology I mean the piece of timekeeping I think is a broader project for the enterprise um that would create a new platform for us uh that um I don't know if that lies in HR or IT. >> Okay. Can I mark this for a staff follow-up of understanding which departments need to move what in order for us to Yes. recoup these fees? >> Okay. >> Um Yeah, and I just want to stress to you, you know, I had a large violence interrupter contract cut in my ward at Sabathani. This saves lives. Uh these are people's jobs. This is super important stuff uh and it's because of overspending. Uh and now here we are. We have a way of recouping over a million dollars. Uh this We got to move on this. We got to move now on this. >> Next I'll um recognize Council Member Chavez. >> Uh thank you Commissioner. You said that this is not a low priority for you, then who is it a low priority for? Cuz I think what we want to know is then what we need to do to make sure this happens. It's clearly when we and as we when Council Member Warsame let us do this work, our intention was for this year, not delaying any work of recouping any fees that then our residents in Minneapolis are going to face the burden of. >> Through the chair, Council Member uh Chavez, like I stated earlier, I'll take the concerns back and see if there's any way to move up the timeline. I will definitely as uh, Council member Stevenson said, understand the exact timeline and bring that back. >> Thank you. I would love uh, if we can move the timeline up. And as a follow up, uh, who is this a low priority for? >> Um, okay. Sounds good. And then before, oh, I will recognize Council member Warren. >> I just, um, thank you, Chair. I just have a quick question. Uh, um, the overspending here, does this have anything to do with the decrease in the recruiting budget from 2023 and 2024? Because if we wouldn't have had a decrease in recruiting budget for new officers to obtain, um, positions in 23 and 24, then forwardly thinking, those individuals would have already have come through academy and been vested, which would have then in turn reduced the number of overtime because we would have had the amount of officers needed in order to serve in this underneath this current administration. Is that correct? >> Through the, uh, Chair, if I understand you correctly, uh, Council member Warren, you're saying that is there a correlation between, um, reduced funding for recruitment and where we are with the budget right now? >> Mhm. Correct. Go on and tell the truth, shame the devil. >> Well, I'm not trying to shame you down, >> [laughter] >> uh, Council member Warren. Of course, um, if if we could increase the number of law enforcement officers, that would help us with the overtime, which is significant uh, portion of why we've gone over budget. So, finance probably or budget could tell you if it's a direct correlation. From my standpoint, if we had more officers, we would be in a position hopefully that we're not spending so much in overtime. >> Right, because then it would be considered regular time and we would have the adequate budget needed in order to have so many officers per the amount of residents here in the city of Minneapolis in order to move through community effectively and efficiently. >> Through the chair, Council member Warren, I believe you're correct. >> Okay, thank you. And so, um, I think that that is something that we definitely need to work on because I've heard it stated several times. I mean, we can sit here and get upset about the fact that our officers are over budgeted or our police department goes over budget, but should there be travesty, chaos, confusion, or whatever else the case is, because they're over budget doesn't mean that they all of a sudden don't show up. And I need them to show up. So, Northside needs you to show up, too. Thank you. >> Thank you. Next, I'll recognize Council member Wansley. >> Thank you, Chair Chughtai. I'm actually in you might not have these figures off off hat, but what I'm recalling, we still had had pretty significantly high overtime costs even when MPD was closer to the charter minimum of over 800 officers. Um, do you know what the estimate was, let's say pre-2020, 2019, what that was when again you were closer to that charter minimum? >> It looks like Uh, Chief O'Hara might have that answer. >> Uh, Chair, Council member, 2019, um, the police department spent over $6 million in overtime, which I believe works out, um, and that was a fully staffed department, um, less serious cases. I believe if you work the numbers out, that's roughly about 935 FTEs, the amount of hours that the police department worked, um, what that translates to. >> Right. And I think you all are going to be presenting on this well a little bit more hyper focused for this past year related to Operation Metro Search, but I think this is a larger conversation of even when MPD was closer to their charter amount versus even now. We've had a consistent problem for several years, over 7 years, with essentially overtime. Um, and this is one where we're trying to constantly figure out how to equalize you all's budget so you can spend within the same amount, um, as it's grown over 30% over the past several years. And one of the things that we're asking for to help in that goal is things like off-duty to take that off the the shoulders of residents, um, so that that could actually free up officers to do more of that public safety work that all of us would like to see. So, I just wanted to make sure if someone had that figure that could be cited for the public record. And I know we're going to have lot tons of conversations around this this overtime regardless of staffing. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Thank you. And, um, just before we continue, um, took me a a while to find this presentation. Um, thank you to the Council President for for your assist on that, but, um, in early last year, um, or I want to say maybe in No, this was in the summer of 2024 around this time. There was uh through the settlement agreement subcommittee a contract that was brought forward um for an early intervention system. And during that conversation, the the subject of overtime came up. And I see now exactly why it did because I'm looking at the slide deck and I see that uh one of the the metrics that that was at that time proposed as something that this early intervention system could assist in in better tracking um and and quantifying in one centralized place was, you know, everything from calls for service, but then it it really looks at time worked and time used uh for individual employees. Specifically in in the bucket of time used, looking at sick time, vacation time, but in time worked, really looking at regular hours, overtime, buyback, and then in addition, off-duty and bi- uh and part-time external work um side gigs as we we call them. Uh so, I'm just trying to I think what I'm trying to reconcile in this conversation and and it has come up since this this was approved 2 years ago, but um really trying to understand why the early intervention system was initially uh approved understanding uh with based on the information provided by the department that this was a tool that could be used to track overtime, buyback, and off-duty hours, why there's a brand new system that's needed. And and I think that's that's uh reconciling that might help us um be able to figure out what's going on. >> Yes, ma'am. Chair. Um So, I think the best way to think about um the early intervention system is that it is the place that pulls data from several different siloed systems. So, it'll pull data from the police reports. It'll pull data from what is now Workforce Director, which is the the system that Commissioner mentioned IT is changing over for the city. Um it will pull that data from different places to analyze it and give um warning flags, early warning flags if you will, around any outliers or any concerns, anything that we preset into the system. So, it is not the system in and of itself that tracks the human resource data, but it's the thing that you pull all of this different data into one place to analyze it. >> Got you. Um thank you. I'm not seeing any further dis- Oh. >> Thank you. >> So sorry. Uh Council Member Chavez. >> I just wanted to add some more information maybe uh regarding the comments made about the recruitment campaign money spent. Maybe if there can be a follow-up memo. My understanding is that the mayor mayor kept talking about how the the City Council, you know, cut money from the media recruitment campaign. But yeah, there was like money left over even after that. So, if the if the budget department or someone here can answer uh with that, was there leftover money before? Thank you. >> Through the chair, if I could just follow up on one thing that I think might be important to the conversation about um the off-duty cuz the chief was talking about the early uh intervention. We do need a way um to bill. Uh our billing process right now, we don't have a way with um all of the um sites and things like that in billing. So, that's a part of it um separate from just knowing the hours, if that makes sense. The the um early intervention system doesn't do that part. Thank you. >> Council member um was was your question also addressed? Did you want to >> To whoever can answer it. I mean, there was comments made about cutting recruitment budget, but my understanding is that there was leftover funding last year. So, I'm trying to get an answer to that. >> Got you. So, it would be really helpful if we can do an administrative follow-up just uh detailing then the um the full budget for recruitment for the police department and uh what of that was was spent on what purposes um or what recruitment activities. >> There was literally leftover money after we were told that we defunded it. So, make it make sense. >> Um and then I'll recognize Council member Wansley. >> Yeah, um just also level of urgency of following up on off-duty in relation to the last point made. I know that there are numerous vendors out there in the free market universe that have reached out and are excited to help the city figure out and go through our procurement process in this this goal to help us be able to enact these fees and track them and bill them. We just have never done the work to put out a RFP to even reach those vendors. So, it's not a matter of like there's a lack of resources out in the communities for us to enact these fees. There's been a lack of effort on our side to actually do the process to bring the appropriate tools and vendors along to actually save our taxpayers $1.4 million. So, I just wanted to highlight that and I thank you Chair Chuck for flagging. We've been told repeatedly throughout several years now that technology was a top barrier towards implementing off-duty fees. We've heard that for over 4 years, at least during my time. And there's been no issue in getting technology as it pertains to the settlement agreement and things of that nature. It should not be this much of a hassle when you have everything in place. You have the policies in place. You have the startup money in place, thanks to this council, to get these things done. So, I just want to name it does not take NASA to come in and design the off-duty system for us. It's literally something that can be brought in by a vendor if we did the RFP and actually started the procurement process. >> Council member Chaudry. >> Yeah, thank you, uh, Chair Chughtai. I just I just wanted to state around the question of, like, council funding, recruitment, and pathways. Um, there are several ways that this body in the past have been a part of that. There was the funding of higher wages so we can get more lateral recruits and then attract, um, other officers. Um, we also have funded MPD pathways programs repeatedly, and I see those as real tangibles, and we have been able to get clear data that shows how those work. Um, as far as the PR campaign for recruitment, I remember this discussion well. Um, we had a amount that was funded, I believe, in the in the 2023 budget process, and then there was another amount that was brought forward for about half million dollars in the 2024 budget process, and there were no hard data points given in that presentation to show how well that recruitment campaign worked, and so we asked for for information. I remember I asked for that information and we didn't receive adequate information that would share the efficacy of the the PR recruitment campaign that we were asked to put another half million dollars into. And then we learned later on in the rollover process that initial amount that we did fund for the PR recruitment campaign had um a a x amount of dollars left over and that was a topic of discussion that we had in this council. We might have also done an administrative follow-up to get that number at some point, but I did want to just highlight that. I really feel like the the the bread and butter parts of recruitment and retention we have really put effort into >> [snorts] >> this body to make happen and it notwithstanding contention and I think that's worth holding up. I think it's for me I think it's more powerful to have the higher wages and the pathways program than to rely solely on a PR recruitment campaign that showed had leftover funding for future years. So, um I don't think that there is a real correlation between us deciding not to do that half million dollars when there was already money left over and um struggling with recruitment. I think like it's there's several data points that shows that this is a difficult time across police departments um to recruit new hires and that's also why we've implemented the CSL program that has had a larger number of graduates every single year. Um so if we really want to name what the devil is, it's it's something that's impacting all cities. >> Thank you. Um we will now continue to the Neighborhood Safety Department's section of this presentation. We're coming near the end here. This is the the last department to present. >> Good afternoon. Amanda Hearington, director of Neighborhood Safety Department. We have one earmark, which was focused on getting safety initiatives to Steven Square neighborhood. This council directive actually aligned really well with the goals of Neighborhood Safety, which was to use data to get services into neighborhoods that needed it, and Steven Square showed up as one of the neighborhoods that needed that. We had already at the same time Council Member Osman was working on this, started to put services into Steven Square. And so we currently have a contractor that's in that area. We are going to specifically use the $100,000 earmarked in this directive to ensure that services continue from July through the end of December. And I believe that concludes the presentation. >> Yes, it does. Are there any questions for this Neighborhood Safety item? I'll recognize Council Vice President Osman. >> Uh, thank you, Deputy Director. I appreciate you uh bringing uh forward. I just want to overall talk about the Steven Square. Um right now uh Council Member uh Schaefer is also part of that neighborhood. It's I talked to the chief many times about this neighborhood. It's um it's much needed resource here. I'm super glad uh uh that this is coming forward. I've been screaming my lungs out for a long long time to get Steven Square and 18 and to have some uh some violent interruptions and some program here. So appreciate your leadership on this. And also I am just encouraging the city leaders, especially public safety, to really pay attention this area. Um add on your summer safety plan, you know. I haven't really seen that conversation happening, but we we are we are looking at uh area that is struggling with um with violence, especially gun violence. Uh, it's uh it's area that that I'm hoping um, the chief and and and and folks that that, you know, um, that are uh, about public safety is really paying attention in this area. So, super glad. Please continue share with us uh, when when that will be so we can introduce to the businesses and then share with the neighbors that the service is coming forward. So, appreciate it again. Thank you. >> Thank you, Council Vice President. Next I'll recognize Vice Chair Shafer. >> Yes, I just wanted to say thank you to Council Member Osman for bringing this forward last year and we're working hard as a team to try to bring the community together and set up some meetings to discuss what's going on and we appreciate your offices um, uh, help in this whole area. Thank you. >> Thank you. Um, I'm not seeing anyone else in queue. Uh, thank you for this presentation and I will direct the clerk to file this report. Um, we're ready now to move to item number five on our agenda uh, which is related to administrative FTE add uh, memo report. For this presentation I will invite budget manager Justin Carlson. Um, welcome. >> Good afternoon, Chair Chugtai, Vice Chair Shafer and members of the Budget Committee. My name is Justin Carlson. I'm the Budget Manager in the Finance and Property Services Department. I'm here to present on the 2026 first quarter administrative FTE adds that were included in the summary memo and supporting documentation within the LIMS file. Administrative FTE adds, also referred to as admin adds, are increases to a department's budget FTE count that's offset by an increase in revenues or an ongoing reduction in its non-personnel budget. This report is presented in accordance with financial policies, specifically policy 1.5.3, which addresses adding FTEs administratively. This reporting of admin adds quarterly to council was a change in financial policies, as noted in bold on the slide, to provide additional transparency on these increases to department budget positions outside of the annual budget process. Admin adds in 2025 are also noted in the staffing section of each department page in the 2026 adopted budget book, and we will continue to include them in the budget books moving forward. In quarter 1 of 2026, there were 13 FTEs added administratively as shown in the slide. I will briefly share each of these, and department staff are on hand to answer questions. These FTEs include in the Arts and Cultural Affairs Department, one position in the general fund, which was created by reducing the department's non-personnel budget for contractual temporary administrative support services to bring this work in house. There was no change in programming. In the Health Department, three positions in special revenue funds and two positions in the general fund. The three special revenue positions are offset by grant revenues, and funding for the two positions in the general fund was budgeted in contractual services in 2026, so this shifts the funding from non-personnel to the personnel budget. This is related to the Climate Legacy Initiative and franchise fee increase that was passed in December. This formalizes the creation of two positions within this body of work. In the IT Department, one position in an internal service fund. This position is offset by revenues from external partners who will be supported by this position, along with the reduction to the non-personnel budget in IT, and an increase to the technology charge to the 911 Department. This is a modification to the offset that is included in the supporting documentation in the LIMS file. Previously, a portion of the offset was coming from the Fire and Police Department budgets. This was changed to a greater portion being covered by 911 and using the IT budget and these as these are better aligned with the work being done by the position and we determined to have adequate capacity to cover this expense. In the public works department, six positions in the storm water and sewers enterprise funds which are supporting work funded by the capital budget. Finally, there was one position in the IT department not listed on this table as the department reduces budget FTE count and increases contractual services budget to better meet department needs. I'll note that the table shows estimated 2026 salary and fringe costs which is based on the anticipated start date for the positions. The full year cost of the position is offset to ensure the action is budget neutral in the current year per financial policy 1.5.3 and the offset is ongoing. This concludes my presentation and the department staff are on hand to answer any questions on these positions. >> Thank you. Um Mr. Carlson, um as as you've noted, uh this this is a new report that we're receiving as part of a change to our city's financial policies just to make sure that we are better tracking um FTEs that are created administratively outside of the city's regular budget process. Um are there any questions on Mr. Carlson's presentation? I am not seeing any. Um so, thank you and I will ask the clerks to file this report. With that, we are ready to continue to our final item. Um I anticipate there will be extensive discussion on this as well. Uh this is regarding police overtime expenses during Operation Metro Surge. Um this is a response to a legislative directive brought forward by the council president. I will invite um um Chief O'Hara to join us and begin this presentation. Welcome, Chief. >> Thank you, Chair. That's a different one. >> Oops. >> This says police department there. Yeah, that's it. Yeah, but I think it's uh It's one of these down here, isn't There we go. Okay. Good afternoon, Chair. Um I'm going to open it up uh and then I'm going to pass it off to go through the individual questions. I'm going to pass it off to Deputy Chief Kluko, who's the deputy chief of patrol uh and led the incident management team uh throughout uh throughout the surge, so he can uh speak more specifically about some of these questions. Um uh obviously um Metro Surge was an emergency uh for the police department and for the city and one of the most complex uh and sustained operations the police department has had to endure and was truly unprecedented. Um there was no one single incident during the surge. And for several weeks um the city of Minneapolis was on the precipice of having yet another incident that could push us off into the cycle that the city saw six years ago. Um so there was no defined beginning uh and for much of it there was just no end in sight. Uh it was a period of prolonged uncertainty. Uh there were several rapidly evolving situations and very significant public safety concerns not just happening in the city, but public safety concerns that were stretching uh, our our outside law enforcement agencies around the metro. So, to meet these demands, we had to mobilize the entire department. Several times there were days off canceled. We recalled personnel back to duty and we maintained a constant and heightened state of readiness for weeks. Uh, that ultimately involved multiple times asking for the state patrol to have hundreds of troopers on standby for us, asking for the Minnesota National Guard to be on standby and ultimately to deploy with us into the city. There were real-time decisions made about uh, deploying personnel continuously. Our officers worked extended shifts. They came in on their days off and several canceled vacations. Standby assignments were utilized to ensure uh, as rapid as a response as we could to unexpected emergencies. And officers were essentially in a constant state of readiness and under very intense physical and mental pressure consistently. The same time we made very deliberate decisions to try and balance the constant and immediate operational needs with the long-term health and well-being of the officers. Recognizing that uh, we just could not sustain this forever. In addition to receive mutual aid from our partner agencies, particularly from the state and others, we had to demonstrate um, that we were fully utilizing every member of the department. That was required before we could even get uh, state patrol and uh, members of the National Guard to be on standby. So, while there was no uh, clear end point, no ability to scale down safety safely, and there was certainly no margin for failure. With that, I'll ask uh Deputy Chief Cluco to come up and explain the directive and uh essentially from the incident management team's perspective uh how this all went. >> Thanks, Chief. Chair, members of the council. Uh did you want me to go through these questions one by one or is that is that the preferred method here? >> Uh I'm my my assumption is you're answering them one by one or um it'll follow generally the Yeah, you're answering them one by one. Um so, we'll just go through that one when we get to those sections of the presentation. That'll be great. >> the Chief mentioned, I I operate as the Deputy Chief of Patrol and during this uh this event, I was the incident commander for most of the time unless I was going to sleep and then pass off for a few hours, come back in. Uh so, so my familiarity is very very unique and and uh should be able to answer most of your questions. I'll get to the legislative directive by Council member Council President Payne. Um dep- department-wide, what is the average cost of overtime? The Before we get into that, I'll just do these definitions that we set up to level set for you all how how we define overtime. Overtime in the department is when when someone works over 40 hours in a week, then it's overtime. It's not quite as simple as that cuz we schedule them four-week increments, but uh when people are basically outside of their schedule, that then they come in, it's out it's overtime. Other things that we define include standby time at 0.50. And that as we talk about here, it's half the employees' rate. And the folks are put on this um this version of standby because they're uniquely skilled to and they've been trained uniquely to respond with uh with gear and uh we call we'll call this folks mobile field force, strike team, the the bicycle teams. Those folks are I would I'm going to just kind of ballpark it about 140 officers that have one of those unique skills that we bring in to help us mitigate these large threats that we that we are either anticipating or currently experiencing. They have to be fully uniformed in the city and operating within 60 minutes. That's what and they're at home and that's the that's what 0.5 standby time. 0.25 standby time, I I want to also say that is not used very often. That 0.5 standby time, it's not being used right now. It uh it's not it's not used unless we're in these these moments like like operation um metro search. And then standby time, that is something in some cases it's contractual. It's someone like the fast team investigators at home and somebody gets shot, they get called in quickly so they can respond quickly to that scene and start the investigation. Homicide, some of our some of our uh also uniquely skilled but more uniquely trained. They they do that uh 0.25 uh work. That is currently they'll be point they'll be people on 0.25 tonight. Okay, so estimated cost, this is with fringe that that that our personnel we have 47 lieutenants uh that and that is their average overtime costs, their 0.5 point rate and their 0.25 rate. That was one of the um specific questions and then you see we do have our officers as well in a in our sergeants. This is one of the reasons why when we try to estimate costs, we we struggle because the all three of those civil service ranks do more or less uh they have 0.5 standby time, 0.25 and they also come in for overtime and and of course when we call everybody in, everybody comes in and they're not necessarily going into a manage managerial role just because they're a lieutenant. Sometimes we'll put that person on a line because they have a unique skill. This was the question posed by President Payne. What was the total amount of spent on overtime 0.25 and 0.5 standby during OMS? Please specify for each. Gets into the weeds here and I'm um certainly should go over this whole slide, but it's available and we can we can break that down if you'd like. There are multiple slides that that are answering the questions that look like this. Here's another one that was a total amount spent on overtime standby for the 6 weeks preceding Renee Good's murder. Uh for for purposes at this at this point, I think it's important to note that we didn't use the 0.5 standby time until Renee Good's murder. That was you know, the 7th of January. That's when we That's when we had to bring people in against their will as well as uh after the 4 or 5 days, I think it was the 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th. And then it on the 12th, we took the chance to not call everybody in and see if we could we could do it with standby time rather than have everybody everybody working. Some of these slides are in the deck and you all have access to them. I'm hoping you would ask but how many hours of overtime 0.5 and 0.25 standby were logged each week uh respectively and it goes week by week here. How many hours uh were logged each week during the 6 weeks preceding Renee Good's murder. And you can see the numbers are are lower. The 0.25 were the ones Those are the hours that we use as an operational element and 0.5 uh very very rare. So, we get into a breakdown of many hours of overtime and standby. This uh this histogram is a little bit a little bit complex, but if I could help you kind of through it, this is uh it shows by number of by number of hours um how many officers worked, let's say, 10 to 20 hours of overtime. If you'll look over on the um the second the second um line in, 28 28 officers worked between 10 and 20 hours of overtime. And then as we go through it, 6 49 worked between 20 and 30, and it goes down down the line. And then the standby time is the other the other graph on the deck, and that talks all more about the standby time. You'll see that uh 0 to 25 officers were put on this uh 342 officers. And then as we go across that histogram on the on the uh lower side, you'll see that those that 140 officer number that I was referencing with those those skills that either their SWAT, strike, BERT, uh they're they're uniquely skilled because they're part of my team, the instant management team. They have uh skill with planning or logistics. Those folks were put on standby, and those make up the rest of the numbers on the on the far right of this slide. This goes right to the dates uh the dates that we had that we were using standby and and overtime. This the how many occasions were MPD officers on standby called in. And it uh you can see it it does correlate with the death of of uh Renee Good on the 7th, and those days that we came in, of course, on the 12th, 13th, 3 We thought we were through that. We thought we were done with with uh this episode of um chaos. And on the 14th, that was the uh so Solice um Sorry, I'm losing I forgot his name. Um the man that was shot on the north side, 24th and Lindale. And 14th, 15th, 16th, that's when we we were balancing it, and then of course on the 20 on the 17th is when we lost Alex Pretty. And then that that indicated that we were we were still going to be in a loss of control and when it comes to what we were what we were worried about, 26th and Nicollet, some of the events we were managing included folks that were illegally lawfully protesting and then also people that were that were using the the cover of the thousands and thousands of legally lawfully protest to damage things in the city and um and and um go to the hotels and block the streets and those sorts of things that we would would all remember that were highly publicized. As we drift through January, we were still seeing quite a bit of activity from the federal government with regard to their federal law enforcement activity. And I think I think some close in there, the 23rd, we had the vice presidential visit. We used as we always do in Secret Service asks for assistance to help with their protectees. That And then as it goes beyond that, we we had lots of those barricades in those situations. And of course we were on the precipice of another event at any moment. That's what that's we finally kind of realized in February we were going to be out of the dark and um that's when for the most part a lot of this overtime use and the questions that President Payne posed I think summed up. Although there is another question here, the total number of days off canceled for the 10 months prior, March through December >> [snorts] >> in the escalation, and there were no days off canceled. And that's that's a severe thing. When we cancel days off, that every officer who is available is called in and has to come in whether they're on standby or not. They they don't have that that 60-minute window. They just need to they need to come to work as soon as possible. And and some some folks are on light duty status or they're on parental leave or something, but those folks we wouldn't bring in, but we didn't have to use that for the 10 months prior. And then the the overtime cost since February 8th, as you can see it's there is some good news in here. We have been putting quite a few measures in to limit the use of overtime as a police department. And I think that's a discussion that we're we we certainly can have. We're we are trending down in the overtime use. I think the 2026 numbers were recently talked about. Um that answers question nine. And then the final question here, please provide an additional histogram chart that includes all hours worked during this time. This does not include the overtime the regular duty hours, the hours that our employees have. We we just know that everyone works 2,080 hours a year. Um and so we left it off this slide for obvious. And then and then it trends the same way as that that prior slide in which some folks had more standby time than than others cuz because of their their unique skill in in related to what we were dealing with. All right, thanks. Any questions? >> Thank you for that presentation. Um colleagues, are there any questions? I will first recognize Council Member Vita. >> Thank you, Chair. Thank you Is it Commander now? >> Uh Deputy Chief. >> Deputy Chief. I'm sorry. Thank you, Deputy Chief Kukal for the presentation. Just a couple quick questions. The first one is about um you said people get put on standby and then they just have to come in within an hour. Like they have to be within the city limits and then come in on assignment within the hour. Do we pay for a certain amount of time once they come in or do they come in and get paid hourly? >> Council member through the chair, I will answer that as as soon as they are in and ready is when their time converts from 0.5 to 1.5. Because they're in and ready, they're in the city, deployable. That's when they convert to overtime. >> Okay, but you So, is there a minimum amount of time that they have to serve on that call-in shift or is it just like if something happens, they leave after an hour, you figure out what you thought was going to happen isn't happening? Like I'm trying to understand like do we pay them for a minimum or like a maximum amount of hours for this during a period of time? >> I I understand the question, Council member through the chair. The answer is the minimum 4 hours is by contract that if they're called in and then they don't have an end time, although we we prefer to find a way to get them out of service as soon as possible or 16 hours. If we're going to be use them for too long, we know they won't be they won't be usable at all for us again. So, it is and and my role as instant commander incumbent upon me to find a time to get them back into what we would call a bedding down situation cuz they might need we might need to put them on standby again if something else were to pop up and surprise us. >> I guess that's kind of my question. So, like how many hours can you work on like in addition to your regular 40 hours a week, how many hours a week can you work on standby or what was the other one you said the other version of overtime, not standby, but like if a patrol officer had to just be called in. I can't remember the name of that. >> Uh, think I think I have the answer for you. >> Okay. >> Councilmember, through the chair, the answer for any uh person in the department, a sworn officer, a sworn person in the department, they have We have hours worked limits that includes no more than 160 in a 2-week period. We have We have to have one full 24-hour period off, and also 8 hours has to be off in every 24-hour segment. >> Okay. So, if somebody worked 24 hours, then they have to take 8 hours off, and then they can come back in. >> To be more clear, they have to have 8 hours off in every 24-hour segment. >> Okay. >> Of their Yeah. >> Okay. I think I understand. And then my my um My last question is about like if Just say Say like a critical incident happened during the time where you have like a large group of people, and isn't there some sort of requirement for like the people on the scene to take so much time off? >> Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. That critical incident is defined um specifically with using deadly force or having to uh witness deadly force used against you, having to use um So, it is defined in with uh with their collective bargaining agreement. >> Okay. >> And that is true. That the 3 days the administrative leave that they have to take if they're involved in in a critical incident. >> And that applies to this, too. So, if you got called in for um the um standby or some version of a holdover time if that happens, you're required to take the 3 days off in those incidents, also, and not just like a regular shift thing. >> I I will clarify it if during the time that you come in, you're involved Let's say there was an officer on scene when Renee Good was murdered, and and somehow was involved in that. His or her life was also threatened with uh it deadly force, that will qualify as a critical incident. Although that event is a critical incident in general language, the way we define it in our in our policy and is specific to a force being used against our employees or them using force. >> Got it. Thank you. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Thank you. Next, I will recognize Council Member Rainville. >> Uh thank you, Chair. Uh thank you for the detailed expenses. That must have taken a long time. That was very thorough. Uh and I just wanted to uh give you a compliment, Inspector Peterson, Shane's on uh the day that the uh during the height high high tensions, very cold out, that uh influencer Jake Lane came into town, the the guy who burned the Quran, and he was going to march to the West Bank and whatever he wanted to do. In fact, uh uh Vice President uh Osman and I, we we saw each other down there. You had the and Inspector Peterson had the vision and foresight to go into the West Bank and assure the residents, go going into the apartments and the uh coffee shops and the constitutional observers that MPD was there to help, to protect, to serve. You had your blue shirts, Phil. You took your jackets off. You calmed everything down for the people were very scared. So, that that was um and I wrote about that in my newsletter, and the feedback I got about the the brilliance of that simple move, that kindness of walking in the West Bank and reassuring people that the Minneapolis Police Department was there to protect them. That was really good. The second thing I want to do is just Chief, you don't have to come up, but uh just overall, the the compliments I've gotten about the big difference between the Minneapolis Police Department and the federal agents that came here, uh tremendous. So, all these years of the training in the last 5 years and and the leadership from the whole department, uh it's it's just showed off and it and really you guys shine. The The department shined during this. So, thank you for everything. >> Thank you, council member. Through the chair. Yep, appreciate that. I wish we could have done more. Yeah, you know, we just didn't didn't have capacity. >> Next, I'll recognize Council President Payne. >> Uh thank you, Chair Chuck Tai. Thank you, DC. I'm looking at the histogram on page nine. And just trying to look at these outliers. One is 500 to 525 hours [clears throat] of standby time. Uh just looking at the math of that across 32 days, that's somewhere upwards of like 16 hours a day. So, basically they were on standby for the entire duration of that. >> Council member, through the chair. Council President, that is that I I did anticipate this question and that uh was the overall uh leader that we needed to have constantly available. That's the That's the one outlier on the on the far right side. Yes. >> And then for the total sworn overtime, uh the one outlier, I don't know if this is the same person, uh 230 to 240. By my math, that was almost like 8 hours of overtime every day throughout 32 days. >> Council President, that is different a different person uh and actually that person uh is often uh outlier. So, manages to stay within within the boundaries of the work policy, but is working as many hours as he possibly can uh to and most of the time it's not related to uh operation search. It was uh 911 events and 911 calls. Which uh to to supplement the shifts cuz the the shifts are are very small. >> Um [snorts] and then I was curious, you know, in particular for the standby, how does being on standby interact with those requirements of 8 hours off every 24 hours? Cuz I mean, clearly every working hour, well, every waking hour this one person was on standby, so that but they weren't utilized [snorts] for all of those hours of standby. So, I'm just curious like how that interaction like what triggers being on standby and then how does that affect your 8 hours off? >> Council President, through the chair, the answer to that is that people will be offered the opportunity to be on standby and they have to self-select into standby. We can't force them into it. Um, and and based on their life and what they're doing with their life. And then they they have to balance uh, their hours worked with the policy. So, if they do get called in and we use them for a 16-hour span that wasn't in their planning, they have to find a way within that 2-week period to get out of other obligations that they've committed to. Sometimes that is important work. So, they they have to be careful with how they bid to get into those to get into that standby time and then also somewhat estimate how much they will be called in and and it happened in a couple of situations where they had to also uh, finish their work with other folks uh, time because they could they would be outside the boundaries of um, I think I missed one question there was how does 0.5 reconcile with active work? >> Yeah. That's that's the That if you're on 0.5 standby and you don't get called in, that is bedding down. We don't We don't count that against their uh, week their week's time of uh, We count the time that hours worked policy means hours worked. The time in in this uniform in the city in any role. >> Okay, and then maybe just a follow up on this one outlier that's like working to the maximum level possible. Just out of curiosity, is this a later in the career looking for high five, is this an earlier in the career and just they have a they just have the time. I'm just curious cuz it doesn't seem like the best healthy >> through the chair and it's I'm very familiar with it. I did it last year. All right, so yes, end of your career. You're you're attempting to do as much work as you can to um to reconcile your retirement your final your for the rest of your life. You just to somehow buffalo that as much as you can. That's the honest answer. That's why that most of our older folks are doing something similar to that and that that's really the the gist of that. >> Okay, thank you. >> All right, next I'll recognize council member Stevenson. >> Thank you. I have very similar questions to the council president. I'm I'm less concerned with the the one outlier as going back a couple. So looking at 450 to 475, there's 12 officers who that's sorry, same histogram sworn officers total standby time. Looking at 450 to 475, there were 12 officers who met that amount of time and across 32 days that's 14 hours of standby time a day. Um can you just help me understand these numbers? Like how is this possible? >> Council member through the chair, can you give me the question it's answering? I don't have numbers on my slides. >> Okay, sorry. So um that's question six. >> Okay, and your question, sir, was specific to >> So, I I'm pulling out under sworn officers total standby time. Uh on the on the far right there, there's well, third in from the far right is 450 to 475. There's 12 officers who are at 450 to 475. If you take 450 divided by 32, that's just less than 14 hours a day of standby time. And I'm I'm wanting to hear from you about logistically how that's possible. >> And the number 32 that you got 32 through the dates >> Yeah, so that's that's the 7th of January to the 8th of >> Oh, understood. Understood. Okay, I I I'd be guessing. I don't have a specific answer, but I do believe that there uh it in situations in which we are in trouble as a city, we make exceptions all of exceptions to the hours worked policy. All of those exceptions have to come up to our office. They all have to be in a in a email format so we have record of it. And then uh uh I was doing most of the exceptions when I would see uh another officer come in who had recently had an exception, I then I would skip I would say, "No, not this time." Because I was worried about managing the the overall health and rest of of all the personnel that were assisting us. So, I I'm I'm only surmising that that that is some of those numbers why it's not squaring with the math that that I'm sure you've you have correct is because of those exceptions. >> Okay, So, during emergency times, there's the capability to suspend some of the hours worked rules in order to meet needs. >> Yes, sir. Yes, Council member, through the chair. That's correct. >> Okay. Um and so then >> [snorts] >> in this case, you were saying it was you you were the one who was going over the exemptions and saying, "Okay, yes. Yes to this one, no to that one. Yes to this one, no to that one." >> That's That's correct. And then I then I would check in with their supervisor. I'd say, "Please make make sure you manage the the health and rest of this employee to that That was That was kind of my pat every single every single time I had to do that. And And those were the real really the tough times were post uh Prudeys murder uh and I I think a post that the uh Solis shooting. Those were the ones where we were really struggling to maintain and we actually did you know, we we missed a couple of things that we shouldn't have missed. And it was because we were trying to bed people down, get them rest, get them away from wearing this uniform for periods of time and uh it it cost us. The Home to Home Suites is a one example. It cost us in the the way we responded to that and the way we we didn't get to that hotel in time. >> Okay. Thank you. Um I have another question. Um can you help me understand better like the physically what officers were doing during their overtime during this period? >> Certainly. Yes. Uh The The officers that weren't on the specialized group, so some of the non-outliers, but we did we did have people called in. We would put them into what we'd call strike teams, groups that would that could respond to a problem that was that was boiling up. Uh we we'd put them in in uh they're they're non-specialized. Although they have riot gear, they could they could get fully turtled up and and assist. They still would need to be led by the sort of the ground leaders of folks who have highly specialized training there. And uh those folks would be out in areas of the city where we knew that there was tender uh feelings and thoughts and and and people that felt vulnerable. As example would be Council Member Rainville's uh uh we we really wanted to flood that area that neighborhood on that on that day. Also around City Hall because we had also similar threats around City Hall were related to that um influencer. So we do coordinated work with everybody in those situations. We'd also put them uh two at a time in a hotel throughout the hotels that experienced threats, whether it was online threats or real real or perceived. So that our our hotel guests and and frankly we have a lot of relationships with our hotel managers and folks that work in those hotels that they they uh they were being penetrated nightly by uh folks who wanted to disturb whether or not there were federal law enforcement at that hotel or it seemed to be um the hotel thought they were vulnerable. Uh we we certainly didn't know where everybody was staying and we we couldn't reconcile any of it. So we'd put officers in those places. We also had them uh we would ready them just in case there was something that went sideways in the demonstrations, uh the damage to properties, uh make sure the fire department was safe. And then of course the 911 service takes up a a large chunk of our personnel every day. And although I don't think 911 really went through the roof during this period, I think it was just a little bit more, uh we thought that it might. So we did put extra folks in those roles as well. >> Okay. Um so, during Operation Metro Surge, what I'm hearing you say is that over the way that overtime was spent was on uh officers being in different strike groups ready to deploy, you know, throughout the city, you know, to a sensitive area or something. So, a lot of officers doing that. And then a lot of officer Oh, well, a certain number doing like hotel security two at a time in the different downtown hotels. Um is that is that correct? And then I think I'm missing a third thing. >> Yes, and I I if I could uh just If I look at all my detailed plans in retrospect, I can I can come up with a a dozen other things that we we used people for. We didn't like the idea of the of the personnel coming in and not being of service to the community in some way. Uh infrastructure protection, we we would give them details to make sure that they had almost a secondary purpose if we did call them in. Their their primary purpose would be to quickly respond to something if it happened. Secondarily, uh we would give them these these other assignments to make sure that they were active and and ready to go. Because we we knew that quick response to all three of the major events that we know about, but then quick response to the demonstrations or that some some needs that we would have, whether it was helping with the the road the roads, monitoring cameras to make sure that some of these amazing demonstrations that occurred that started very close to here, they'd move they'd move through the city, uh to make sure that safety was was maintained. That was we would use the personnel in that regard. Well, we're going to keep you over here just in case traffic finds a way through. They had great road guards, but we weren't confident every every demonstration was going to go as well as it did, to be honest and frank. It it The demonstrations brought road guards, they communicated with us. We would send out a liaison team to go out in some cases I would be that person to talk with the leader of the demonstration to make sure that they felt comfortable. If they needed assistance, that those are the things we were we were doing. >> Okay. Maybe this is a good thing to mark for a staff follow-up of a more detailed report about what activities were being done during overtime uh throughout Operation Metro Surge. Um okay. Thank you. >> Thank you, Councilmember. >> Thank you. Next I'll recognize Vice President Osman. >> Oh, thank you, uh Deputy. I appreciate it. I I I don't have any question, but I do really want to talk about uh the workload um that the MPD was given, right? Uh we're talking about the extra time here, but I do want to recognize what was what what has happened in our city. It's uh this was something that extreme and I uh want to uh you know give where the credit's due, which uh the chief and and police, they were not just responding to this um >> [clears throat] >> massive um you know uh extreme events that was taking out of place, but they also kept the department going. They were answering all the 911 calls. What was it like 500 um uh 5 50,000 calls or something something like that. So, I um do [clears throat] want to say that, you know, uh you stepped in. Uh I remember where when Renee uh Good was murdered, uh remember Chief being right there in the middle and officers trying to, you know, bring calmness to the situation where you have over 200 uh federal agencies that were not communicating with you. They were not communicating with you. They were not telling you where you were coming and I just want to thank every officer who spent extra time keeping our residents safe, responding to the threats of federal government and handling yourself in the most professional professional way. I think all the residents that came with their whistles were amazing. Our city did not just you know >> [clears throat] >> really over overcome the threats, but our officers were amazing and and I do want to thank you and and the police leadership for your work and >> [snorts] >> let me just say this. It's it's something that that never happened in our city. There's I remember even during that time there was some policy updates you have to create around that how to work with federal agency and especially when it comes to immigration, you were up front communicating with with our residents. So yeah, thank you for your leadership and I do want to recognize that today. So thank you, sir. >> Thank you, Councilmember through the chair. >> Thank you. Next I'll recognize Councilmember or Council President Payne. >> Thank you, Chair Chughtai and I forgot to ask this question. Um So the chief said, you know, if you did the math on the 2019 overtime, which would be a kind of maybe like a reasonable baseline, there'd maybe be so I I I couldn't remember was it like 900 and some FTE equivalent hours of work. So that suggests that you know if we had no financial constraints, but we just have our people constraints other than you know, how how many more outliers would there be of people willing to work the maximum amount of overtime possible? At some point you have to say no. Um and I'm curious what that approval process looks like. So, you talked a little bit about you're the, you know, you sign off on certain exceptions, but when it comes to that that that big picture, is it you know, is it the mayor? Is it the commissioner? Is it the chief? Is it your role? Like, what's that decision-making process of actually we would we do need to activate this overtime. This is a moment of crisis. And I mean, obviously during Metro Surge, I mean, I remember going down there uh the morning that Rene was killed and that felt like a moment of crisis and it was very understandable why you would have a lot of officers activated. Um but, you know, today feels like a normal day, whatever that means in Minneapolis. So, how many hours of overtime should we be working now? Like, is there like a formal decision framework around when we should really start turning those resources on or when we should actually be more conservative about that? Or like, whose decision is that? >> Okay. Council President, uh through the chair, uh in a moment in a moment like that, in a moment like we know we need every everybody possible because we know we're also going to need additional folks. Uh so, that that that answer or that question is posed quickly and it comes right from the chief. That everybody's coming in. Make it happen and then we we spin up everything we have and it's not enough. It but it needs to happen in order for us to get help from State Patrol and our our other partners in the county and and Metro Transit and the suburbs. Uh so, that that's that. So, we have been pretty aggressive in in the past few months ever since this occurred in trimming overtime costs and and those decisions are the administration coming coming right from the chief again that we are we are dialing down this this trend needs to go downward. So, and I think we are getting close to that. I mean I know we are. We're watching, you know, Director Traswick bring up material that we're we know we're making a big difference in diminishing the use of overtime to operate the police department. In 2019, we used 400,000 more hours of police time than we're going to use this year. Uh I I you know, we just talk about hours cuz dollars is difficult to compare the two 7 years apart. But that is we're on trend for that. 395,200 hours fewer police time spent by our department to operate the same. >> Uh actually, can I call the chief up? >> Sure. >> I think all of these matters are just they're judgment calls and, you know, obviously a lot of these decisions have to land on your shoulders and you just have to use your wisest judgment to make the right call. Um I'm I'm and, you know, being on site for some of these events, whether it was the north side, the day Renee was killed, the day that Alex Party was killed, uh it it didn't take some sage genius to recognize the moment that we were in that it was a moment of crisis where like all hands needed to be on deck. But I think I'm trying to understand when we're not in that moment. >> Yes. >> Right? What is the deliberative process that you have for making some of these decisions of um cuz I'm trying to connect the metro surge, but I think everybody viscerally understood the moment that we were in, but now I'm trying to layer that into the, you know, significant overage that we went last year where certainly during Annunciation, that was another one of those moments where it didn't take, you know, some sage of genius to recognize the moment that we were in. It Is this like solely on your shoulders and you're just making your best judgment call on a day-to-day basis of these or are you getting guidance from the commissioner or the mayor as it relates to some of the bigger overarching goals of balancing, you know, our response times with managing to a budget? >> Yes. Chair, Council President, so just to be clear, um during the emergency of Operation Metro Surge, the public safety operational needs were the priority and not not the policy. Um and I know you mentioned those three shootings. Um part of the other issue I was trying to communicate earlier, all three of those were unspec- unexpected. Um when Renee Good was killed, it was a the morning on a weekday. So we have investigators working over there, we have people in training, we have the people in the office. There are people available and not everyone in uniform. So we had people that were at work that we could put them out on the street. When um Mr. Sosa was shot, Sosa Salise was shot uh on the north side, it was the evening and we didn't have any, you know, intel that there were going to be marches or demonstrations or something at a hotel. Um and we were unable to get help fast from outside agencies. And then a similar kind of thing happened that Saturday morning when um Mr. Prude was shot. So it it was the difference between 2020 and this thing was we were constantly on the precipice of just something else happening that was just going to push us off the cliff. So the priority was on the operational need. Getting past that now, what I think you're saying for the day-to-day stuff generally does not come to me. Um the expectation is we are going to follow the policy. There are certain times there's operational issues that it's uh to me it's just common sense. You know, we have homicide investigators that get called in. They need to continue working the case depending on what the evidence is. That's what's going to happen. Um we have officers that are out on a scene that need to stay uh an extended period of time because the scene is involved and we have other emergencies, you know, happening elsewhere in the city. That's that's the expectation. Um but it should be happening less and less as we continue to build up our capacity with sworn. But metro surge I think all that was kind of out the window because of just the seriousness of the emergency. >> So, if I if I were to say that make sure I'm understanding it correctly. Uh on a day-to-day basis, the policy is driving these decisions and it's not even showing up on your desk as a as a choice to make. Um and when we step outside of those day-to-day realities and we have something really unexpected, it comes up to your desk and you have to make that judgment call. Is that a correct way that to describe what's >> Chair, Council President. I told the deputy chiefs that the command staff we just need to get this done. >> Yeah. >> Um there was there was literally just a state of emergency. It It was just a constant state of emergency. >> Mhm. So, that that So, then you know in the year preceding metro surge where we did end up in this pretty significant overage and overtime there was no it it seemed it seemed to me that like the operational needs were driving those outcomes more than any policy necessarily. And I'm just curious were all those decisions on your shoulders or were you in collaboration with your superiors, the commissioner and the mayor, when it came to going outside of that policy and ultimately going over budget in that way? >> Chair, Council President, um there's specific things we can lay out why why the overage occurred. Um you know, the overtime budget each of the last couple years, the line for overtime has gotten smaller and smaller and smaller. And that's why that's why I email you every week. It's gotten even smaller this year. Um and and for example, like for this year, through the different managerial controls we have in place, we've cut back very significantly. I would estimate we're going to have about 1/3 less overtime hours this year. 1/3 less, even considering that Metro surge happened. Because there's a lot of things that we've done to try and drive that down. Um but the reality is we still have a problem with the budget >> Mhm. >> um continuing that way. The main driver of that is the the the lack of a financial plan to account for the hiring that's been made. That was the problem last year when we talked about it. It's still the problem this year. Even reducing overtime getting rid of double time, the critical staffing overtime, cutting back uh about a third of hours of overtime, that's what we anticipate this year. Um we still have the issue that we have we don't have the vacancy savings we used to have. Year after year post 2020 when we just kept going down in sworn members and we had a a much higher overtime line, but we had all the vacancy savings. Problem last year is the same as the problem this year. We no longer have the vacancy savings. And we have the most community service officers we ever had. We've added an entire a new class of cadets. So, we hire the cadets an additional class each year. But, we still have operational vacancies. And we just don't have the funding for it. So, tho- those questions going forward, yes, there have been meetings. There are regular meetings uh with OCS and with and with the mayor's office because we have the same problem for this year that that we have that we had last year. >> Yeah, so >> still there even with the reductions that we've made. >> I think that um you know, implementing some of these controls is going to help. I think we also just need to be realistic about what these numbers are going to look like. And you know, we just took up the rollover request this year, and that was a very different rollover request than any previous year, which is most people's rollover requests just didn't happen because there was no money for it to roll over, partly because of these overages. So, that meant that it was a very unplanned cut in every one of those departments that didn't get their rollover requests fulfilled. I would much prefer that we as an institution proactively recognize the reality of the department. And you'll have to work with the mayor because it's going to take the entire institution to reflect that reality. And I would like that to be more planful than just waiting until the end of the year, while at the same time that you implement management uh controls to try to keep those costs down. >> Yes. >> Thank you. Next, I'll recognize Councilmember Vita. >> Thank you, Chair. Chief, um you you might you might have answered this in Councilmember Payne's questions, but I I'm trying to get to the bottom of like who calls the overtime. So, the incident you brought up in North Minneapolis, right? Like there was an incident, it was at night. >> Yep. >> Folks came in, and then there's a lot of aftermath following that. It doesn't end that day. There's days and days and days of stuff that happens that is spiraled out of that one event. Um so, I'm [clears throat] trying to understand who actually says who assesses it and says, "We need more folks in North Minneapolis because of this." >> Yep. Chair, Council member, thank you. Um it starts with me. While I was driving up Lyndale Avenue, after I called the BCA, I called the State Patrol. Uh and honestly, you know, honestly was scared because there just there weren't that many troopers available. Um you know, we spoke with the Sheriff's office. They also had commitments. Our neighboring towns, um neighboring communities were willing to assist answering 911 calls. They were not willing to come to a scene like the scene on North Minne- in North Minneapolis. And they were only able to do it when they had the staffing and their call volume allowed it. So, it was very very unpredictable. And then, as you mentioned, there were other things that happened after that as a result that kept happening. Um So, I I think if >> I'm sorry, I lost like you're you're the the I'm sorry, if you could just repeat the question specifically though. >> understand after the incident started, did you make the um did you like make the call for overtime for that day? Or did like the instructor or the patrol like who said, "We need overtime in North Minneapolis?" >> Chair, Council member, I assembled the the incident management team who came to we were running the command post downtown, got everybody in and I said to recall everyone that we could. Everybody who could pick up the phone that cuz it was it was an emergency. Um and we just uh I knew we were not going to get the help uh a sufficient amount of help from other agencies. >> Okay. >> Yeah, that was that was my call. Get everybody you possibly can in here as fast as possible. >> And is that in coordination with the inspector and like the sergeants and the lieutenants and everyone that is in leadership in I mean cuz that's the fourth precinct. So, like what is their role in you know, how that plays out over the next couple of weeks or days or however long it takes? >> Chair, council member, so that will play out through the incident management team at not just North Minneapolis to bring people in from the fourth precinct, but they need to be supported by everybody. So, investigations, they'll come in uh you know, all the specialty teams, like all the all the different folks that are available um would be contacted through their chain of command. >> So, then do they get like assignments specifically to the north side or is it just kind of like a we need the specialty team to help with an investigation of what happened versus like someone at I mean because that area was it was in a bad way for some days and I mean I don't remember if it was fourth precinct or whomever, but like in the morning I went over like 5:00 in the morning, there was uh public works was there cleaning up all the trash cuz they there was like trash all over the street. So, public works came and I noticed that there were police officers there at 5:00 in the morning when public works got there and then I also noticed like in the next few days that you know, on Lyndale kind of in that area I would see police cars. So, was that coordinated by this this team or by the inspector or like how did that happen? >> Chair, Council member, I'm sure the inspector was involved in the coordination, but all of the major events were run out of the incident management team. >> Okay, so that's like the larger group of We have something happening in the city, we gather in in the leadership format and figure out how to kind of um work through each incident. >> Chair, Council member, yes. Um in in in in particular getting the support that's needed from all of these specialty teams and outside units. >> Okay. And if it My last question, Chief, if we need like the Sheriff or whomever to coordinate, is that a Chief thing or is that just somebody in this team is assigned to do that? >> Uh Chair, Council member, it's both. Uh and the Sheriff uh the Sheriff was with us throughout this, but like the other agencies had, you know, other other responsibilities happening at the same time. >> But the So, the specialty team is MPD, not like a room with all different kind of law enforcement. >> Chair, Council member, the incident management team, not every single day, but uh days that we had large incidents or days that we knew in advance something big was going to happen had all the different uh had representatives from all these different agencies there from the state, from Hennepin County, Ramsey County, EMS, fire, everybody. >> Thank you. >> Cou- County Attorney's Office, City Attorney's Office, everybody. >> Thank you. Next, I will recognize Council member Whiting. >> Thank you, Chair Chakhtoura. I think this is probably a question just kind of walking through uh for for DC Clueco. Um particularly as it relates, and sorry if this is a little elementary. Uh just trying to get a better understanding of of like how you all go about your methodology. Um as as right as it it There's a lot of policy baked into here. And so, kind of wanted to just walk through this a little bit. And so, particularly as it relates, and you noted, once you go over 40 an officer goes over 40 hours a week, uh that's when they start to uh accumulate kind of that overtime policy. Is that correct? >> It's a little different than that. It's close, but it's we schedule them in 20 28-day increments, and that's 4 weeks. And sometimes they might be scheduled for 6 days in a given week. So, they would those 60 hours cuz they're 10-hour shifts, they would all be on regular duty time. We call it reg duty. And then if they went if they were beyond those shifts that they were scheduled, that's when overtime would kick in. >> Great. Helpful. And then kind of just wanted to chat a little bit about like our limitation on hours work policy, right? Because I think you know a few council members raised concern of like how can you possibly do this in a day? And so right, I know we have policies right 3 300 310 on limitation to work right you can't work more than 160 hours total in a pay period. And then if they do that, that exemption goes to whoever the the chief's designee or the DC in in that case. Um for kind of in these instances, did you see a lot of kind of exemptions that you had to make outside of that 160 hour work limitation during operation Metro Surge? >> Chair Chucktai, [snorts] council member, no that particular exception of the three main work rules wasn't involved very often. The bigger exception would be they need to go beyond 16 hours by an hour or two based on what we were seeing or what time they were called in. >> Perfect. Thank you. Just wanted to to help clarify there of like what we are seeing here isn't necessarily a depending of it's right there there weren't a lot of exemptions coming to your desk to the chief staff that this is within the realms of MPD policy that is already established. So, this wasn't something that wasn't kind of creating a a higher level of of of worry from a policy standpoint. >> Uh Chair Chuck Tie and Council Member, there were more than I was comfortable with and I that's why I was I was concerned with it. So, yep, we're definitely operationally I could justify it, but I wanted them to go down. I didn't like the frequency and I was monitoring them carefully. >> Yeah. And and and for I guess from your perspective having been on the force for a while, is this something it sounds like you just noted it and the 2019 numbers we're going to surpass what 400,000 officer hours comparatively? Is that something that in these situations we probably wouldn't have had to have as many officers filling those kind of exemptions if that was kind of a staffing issue or otherwise? >> [snorts] >> Council Member through the Chair court of course, yes, cuz we would have nine you know, 880 officers instead of instead of the five or 600 that we were working with that were full able-bodied available. >> Perfect. That is helpful. That's all I have. Thank you. >> Thank you and then um I just have a [snorts] couple questions for you Deputy Chief um I appreciate the that you break out the different definitions of of overtime and that 0.5 standby means that you need to be ready um and be you have to respond be fully equipped to to do your job within 60 minutes. Um What's is is that the same 60 minutes for a 0.25 standby or is it a different amount of time that you need to be ready to respond in? >> The Council Chair, that is the same the same number the expectation is that or quicker and in some of those 25 situations really it's really frowned upon if they take the full hour to get there because they don't need the equipment. They don't need that resourcing that a like like a a strike team officer would need. They really just need the skills that we've trained them with to get to the scene of a shooting as quick as they can. So we hope for that response to be it could be 20 minutes, could be 10 depending on on where they're coming from. >> Yeah, that's helpful to know. And then I actually I found I really want to compliment you on on the the histograms that that look at overtime and standby hours worked over the the course of time and really detailing out what number of officers is working the the different ranges. It really helps put into picture the the state of or or really add some context to overtime costs. In the the 32 days from January 7th through February 8th that that are included here which I think lines up with about five work weeks based on the the charts that you've provided in your presentation. Something that I isn't necessarily for you to answer here but but has really struck me in this discussion in this presentation is the the volume of officers that that were compensated some amount of standby pay and and how how significant those standby hours were. So for 118 officers, they they worked somewhere between 250 and 475 hours of of standby over those 32 days. That's significant to me because for 118 officers they were being compensated for standby pay for somewhere between 8 and 14 hours every single day from January 7th through February 8th. Right? Put that into the numbers that you give us on in one of your earliest slides about the breakdown of hourly pay and then the the average rate 4.5 standby the average rate 4.25 standby. Um there and and you know we don't know that in the in the histograms that you've provided which one of those you know 12 people that worked between 450 and 475 hours or were compensated 450 to 475 hours of standby pay which are at the rank of officer which are at the rank of sergeant which are at the rank of lieutenant but um there there are that there are 118 officers who received somewhere between just using their hourly rates provided by you somewhere between 8,000 and 20,000 dollars worth of standby pay in one month alone. I'm it is like that's astronomical. That's insane. I can't think of a better word other than insane to describe just the standby pay received. Just to be ready to work you receive 20,000 dollars over the course of one month. Not for actual work done. You know, like that that that is mind-boggling. Um I I don't I don't have anything else to say so I want to thank members of this committee and for for your patience as we went through a very lengthy agenda. I want to thank um the members of the police department that came in right at the beginning of this committee and and are are still here to make sure we got through your item. With that, I will ask the clerk to file this report and seeing no further business to come before this committee, we stand adjourned. Thank you.