Good afternoon. Welcome to the regularmeeting of the Board of Estimate and Taxation for May 13th, 2026.My name is Steve Brandt and I'm President of the Board. Before we beginthe meeting, I would like the clerk to read the reminder concerning dictionduring the meeting. Before we begin the meeting, I want tooffer a friendly reminder to all members, staff, and the public thatthese meetings are broadcast live to enable greater public participation.These broadcasts include real-time captioning as a further method toincrease the accessibility of our proceedings to the community. Therefore,all speakers need to be mindful of the rate of their speech so that ourcaptioners can fully capture and transcribe all comments for thebroadcast. We ask all speakers to moderate the speed and clarity of theircomments. At this time, I'll ask the clerk to callthe roll so we may verify the presence of a quorum.Commissioner Chughtai is absent. Frye is absent. Olson Here.Payne Present. Vice President Bernstein Present.President Brandt Present. There are four members present. All right, let therecord show that we have a quorum present.Uh I will now offer an acknowledgement that we meet today on land that has beenhistorically um owned and um managed by the Dakota and uh Anishinaabe peoples.And we acknowledge the historical trauma that has continued down through this dayfrom their dispossession of that land. I will now proceed to our agenda, a copyof which was posted for public access to the city's legislative informationmanagement system which is available to the public atLIMS.minneapolis.mn.gov. Uhboard members, the agenda for today's meeting is before us. Do you have amotion to adopt the agenda, please? So moved.Right. Do we have a second? Second. All right. Uh with that, allthose in favor say I. I. Opposed, nay. All right. Uh we have the eyes have itand the agenda is adopted. Uh next is the acceptance of minutesfrom our April 22nd meeting. May I please have a motion to accept theminutes? So moved. Is there a second? Second. We have a proper motion beforeus. Is there any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor say I.I. As opposed, nay. Eyes have it and minutes are accepted aspresented. Item four on our agenda is theacceptance of public comment. Uh do we have anyone signed up for publiccomment? Just as a reminder, it is board standard to receive comment on any ofour agenda items that are on that day's agenda and the clerk informs me that wehave no one signed up to comment today. Um I'll ask the uhwe'll move on then to item number five, a discussion item, which is apresentation from banking, investments, and debt. And that presentation will bemade by Mr. David Wheeler. Welcome. Good afternoon, President Brant, VicePresident Bernstein, and Commissioners. I am Dave Wheeler, senior manager ofbanking, investments, and debt. Uh today I have the annual presentation on citydebt. I'll provide a brief overview of thecity's credit ratings, debt balances, and key statistics, uh and then verybriefly introduce the 2026 various purpose bond issue.However, I'll note I will be back probably in June with resolutions toauthorize that sale and at that time will provide a lot moredetail and analysis of the issuance. And one note I would like to make beforewe begin. I'm sure you all aware, but wanted to mention that director AlanHoppy retired from the city effective May 1st.So I wanted to mention that to this body and uhUm moving forward you'll be dealing with me. So I'll start with our bond ratings.Just a reminder the city continues to hold triple A ratings fromMoody's, S&P and Fitch. With stable outlooks from all threeagencies. This is an incredibly rare distinction puts us in company of onlyabout 30 other issuers throughout the country.These are the highest ratings available. Tells investors that Minneapolis isfinancially strong and well managed. Practically speaking it means we borrowat lower interest rates and save money on interest costs every time we issuebonds. At year endlooking at our debt balances the city had 851 million dollars outstanding.The majority of the city and indebtedness falls into two categories.Levy funded debt paid solely from ad valorem property taxes.And enterprise debt paid primarily from net revenues of the city utilitysystems. And one item to note we did pay off theconvention center debt on December 1st, 2025.That was a refinancing done in 2020 to restructure that debt at the beginningof the pandemic. There was a 26 million dollar kind of balloon maturity thatcame due in December. But that has since been paid off. Wejust wanted to leave that zero balance in there to make note of that. Um and here's a look at the historicaltrend of our year-end debt balances uh broken down by GO and non-GO debt. Uhthe non-GO debt in those blue boxes at the top, you can see is a very smallamount. We haven't issued any for quite a while. That balance is uh decreasingeach year as as those maturities roll off our books.Uh the GO debt makes up the vast majority of what we issue.Uh not in this graph, but about 20 years ago the city's debt peaked at just overa billion dollars outstanding. Um and then we had a long period of decline.Uh you can see from the graph going back uh beginning about 2015, thatyear-over-year balance uh has increased incrementally. Uh I will note though ona inflation-adjusted basis, that balance is actually declining. Uh it's notreflected here, but uh nominally increasing.Uh the increasing balance isn't unexpected. It reflects our plannedcapital spending and investment in infrastructure and capital improvements.Uh we will continue to see this balance grow year-over-year um probably aboutthe same uh pace as it has been as we budget for and finance the capitalspending needs of the city. At the end of 2025, Minneapolis had alegal debt limit of $2.4 billion. This is a statutorily defined debt limitof 3 and 2/3% of our taxable market value.Uh most cities in the state are 3%, Minneapolis is a city of the firstclass, so we have a 3 and 2/3% limit. Uh so we have currently about $340million applicable to this debt limit. So we're using only about 14% of ourallowable capacity. Um this percentage has grownincrementally over the past few years, and that's really a combination of boththe the small growth in our debt balance and as well over the the past coupleyears, uh, some slight declines in the taxablemarket value, um, taken together kind of increasingthe percentage we utilize of our debt limit. Um, but I do think an really interestingcomparison showing here. Uh, this is Minneapolis as well as the other largecity issuers in Minnesota. Um, this is the the debt utilization of each ofthose issuers. Um, the total debt limit represented by their uh, blue graph, uh,blue bar, and then the percentage, uh,uh, that they are utilizing in those green dots. Uh, despite a vastly higherdebt limit, we use about the average of all cities. So, we're at 14%. Uh, thatorange hash line is the average of this population, uh,just um, just under 13%. So, we're slightlyabove that. Um, one thing I'll note over the past few years, so I mentioned ourdebt utilization has kind of crept up by a percentage or two past few years. Uh,the average of all cities did this about the same. So, I presented last year, itwas just under 12%. That average is now just under 13% uh, for these issuers.So, it's uh, a kind of a macro trend among these issuers that theirutilization is increasing. And then,this is a look at the city's debt compared to its tax capacity. Uh,President Brandt, I think this is a graph you initially had requested a fewyears ago. Um, we kept it in. I think it's just aninteresting data point to look at. Um,we've updated it with the uh, 2026 valuations and 2025 year-end balances.So, this is the debt that's applicable to our limit.Um, notice increases in recent years. Uh, these still align with theincreasing capital investment um, as well as kind of some of those declinesin tax capacity mirroring the taxable market valuedeclines. Our current percentage is back on parwhere where it was at about 2020. Overall, the city's debt burden remainsmanageable and on target with our capital budget. And then this is a summary table of thenext few pages. This represents all the current bonding authorizationsoutstanding. These are currently approved bonding by council through thecapital improvement process, primarily approved at the end of every year withthe budget. They're grouped by the type of debt, sothat is the kind of the revenue that pays the debt service,enterprise bonds from net utility revenue, levy funded debt, and thenassessments are paid by assessments against property.>> [snorts] >> The city carried forward almost $150million in authorized bonding from prior years.In 2025, the council approved $210 million inbond financing as part of the 2026 capital program.I don't know for sure, but I venture to guess these are probably record amountsor or very high amounts compared to past years.But I'll note that we don't issue all of the authorized debt in any given yearfor several reasons. But this does kind of speak to the budgeted increase in ourdebt financing for the various infrastructure projects.The next few pages are just the records of these authorizations. This is areport that we maintain on the debt team. We're happy to shareit anytime you'll like. So I won't go into detail on any one project. Thereare any questions on anything in this authorizations report, happy to take anyand and speak to what I can. Of course, I always like to say "Deferto a a subject matter expert if I need to." But, uh the next pages are the projects listed. So, um I'll move onif there are no questions on that. And then finally, I just wanted to lookahead to the 2026 bond issue. Uh we're in the midst of preparing for thevarious purpose bonds. Uh we hope to meet with rating agenciesin June, uh depending on when we are able to get before the board and havethe sale authorizations. Um if all goes to plan, we could look tosell bonds as early as July. In any case, we are still planning for asummer issuance July-August. Uh of course, we'll rely on ourmunicipal advisor Ehlers for any specific considerations of the sale andtiming. Um but I just wanted to make note ourinitial request for funding came back at approximately $244 millionacross uh the projects for total proceeds.Um those are broken down uh by type uh below. And these allocation percentagesare are very typical for the city GO issues. We always see just over half peruh half of the issue for levy-funded projects, just under half for theenterprise projects, and then a small portion related to assessment projects.>> [snorts] >> So, we'll continue to verify theseamounts, finalize what we need, um but suffice to say we're looking at a largerissue this year than we have had in most recent years.Um as I mentioned at the beginning, I'llcome back with some more detailed analysis and and uh specifics about thesale sometime in June. And then finally, uh more for yourreference than anything, but as we're looking to sell bonds, this is just alook at the AAA tax-exempt muni rates uh for Minnesota.Uh for reference, these are the yield curves on each of our last sale datesgoing back to 2022. >> [snorts]>> Uh the orange line represents market ratesas of today, so about what the city would pay in interest rates um on onthat time horizon uh if we sold today. UhSo, this is kind of what the market is at.Um You can see 2025 were the highestinterest rates that we've issued at in quite a while.Um and even 2026 today, rates are still elevated from kind of what werehistorical lows over the past few years. UmBut, all that being said, we continue to receive very strong pricing because ofour AAA credit. Our sales are competitive. We receive a lot ofattention around them and bids on our bonds.Uh as a result, we continue to receive the lowest market rates available to uswhen we do go to sell. Uh so, with that, I'll just close bysaying uh the story is kind of the same as it hasbeen for now uh the past few years. Uh the city's debt profile remains steady,consistent. Uh we have our top credit ratings, uh very moderate debt levels,uh with a substantial capacity to increase debt if needed. Uh our strongfinancial leadership uh often noted by the rating agencies, and uh diverseresilient economy that uh works well in our favor along with its tax base. So,uh with that, I'm happy to stand for any questions you have on the presentation.Do my colleagues have any questions? Eric uh Commissioner Bernstein. Mr. Riola, thank you so much for thepresentation. It's incredible, and your office obviously doing a lot ofenormously important work. Um I am curious umuh how um just a technical question. Um on yourslide that shows the um debt limits compared to umSome cities exceed their debt limit. I'm just curious what's going on there.Um So they're not exceeding their debtlimit. That's more of a factor of trying to jam in a fewdifferent Yeah, two axes. So two differentinformation slides into one. Soyeah, the the percentage is actually that right axis. So umYeah, it's their overall debt limit I think in comparison to the cities, youknow, we have a massive debt limitgiven our taxable market value. But then the actualutilization of that limit, you know, we're we're right in line with theaverage other cities are you know, 30-40% of their limit. So Any additional questions from mycolleagues or comments? Um I have one question and my apologiesfor not turning my phone off. Umthe size of 244 million in anticipated bond proceedsdoes surprise me a little. I'm I'm thinking that underum Mr. Hoppy'suh presentations and previous sales [snorts] over the last four or fiveyears it's been more on the order of maybe 150 million. Am I Am Ijust thinking of the levy funded portion or is this up quite a bit? Uh PresidentBrent, uh this is up quite a bit. I I like I said, I will have a lot moreanalysis for you prior to the sale authorization, butyeah, it's a combination of kind of carryover a lot of authorizations thathadn't been issued in the past. Those projects are now ready to beginconstruction and funds are needed to pay those expenses as well as kind of so anincreased uh debt authorization for the 2026 program.And a lot of those projects arepresumably and planned to be on schedule for construction this year early in2027. Is there any factor that you'reencountering that accounts for the uh carryover of uhgreater amount of uh debt that has beenauthorized but not issued? I don't know if there's one specificfactor. Um I I would venture to guess that by and large just the projectshadn't uh been at a spot that they were readyto issue bonds for. Uh we we typically won't issue bonds until construction isready to go. Um we don't want to sit on those bond proceeds for arbitragepurposes. So, uh I think some of these projects are nowuh their construction schedule is iscatching up here. And so, where they hadn't issued in the past, they'rethey're ready to go now. Uhmentioning arbitrage, um I noticed in a presentation that Mr.Hargrove will be giving uh that the city received auh I don't know if it was a million,million and a half dollar arbitrage uh on its books, uhwhich is something to the good for uh the city's balance, but umI remember being told when we were consideringum a different strategy for um bonding at the very start of wheninterest rates rose, and I raised the possibility of of maybe using some ofour uh selling some of our bonds ahead of time and deferring the use of cash toavoid the interest rate increase that we had we had [snorts] to be very carefulregarding arbitrage. I'm I'm assuming that we kept within thethe IRS limits here, but um umis there a particular reason that we have that Yes, President Brandt. Ibelieve you're probably referring very specifically to the convention centerdebt. Um and that was a very unique case um and kind of fortuitous circumstancesfor the city. Those bonds were issued as taxablebonds, so the interest on them was taxable. The IRS uh doesn't care aboutarbitrage on taxable bonds cuz they're they're able to to uh tax the recipientson that income. Um the arbitrage uhreally applies specifically to tax-exempt bonds, which is the majorityof our issuance. Um and in that case uh pandemic interestrates were 0% uh and in fact we issued taxable bondsat less than a percent uh to the city. Um and I kind of what happened in in theinterim is rates climbed very rapidly. Um so we actually held on to uhthe the debt service we'd planned to pay, uh invested in that and becausethat was taxable, we weren't subject to the rebate uh to the IRS. We were ableto keep that. Um so uh they were the debt service funds that we invested. Umand and they weren't due until uh2025. So what I mentioned that convention center debt uh maturing lastyear, that was a balloon payment. So um we had taken the planned debt servicepayment each year, uh invested in a treasury that was yielding three betweenthree and 4%. We were able to keep that uhdifference in in what we paid in interest and what we collected.Thank you for uh explaining the difference in standards between taxableand non-taxable. I didn't realize that we were talking non-taxable here.Um I wanted to also just ask uh is any of the increase that we're seeing in uhproposed debt issuance happening on the revenue bonds? Are they I guess it's GO,but it's backed with revenue from utilities, essentially.Uh Commissioner Brent, yeah, the the authorizations are up. Umyou know, the the proportion of requests are are about the same asnormal. So, the the authorized bonding for both utilityuh projects and general infrastructureprojects are are increased on on both sides. So. All right.Thank you. Uh Mr. Burns, Commissioner Brent.Bear Bear with me here. I'm trying I'm So, I'm looking at uh the history ofoutstanding debt uh from 2014 to 2025, and then I'm thinking about the commentyou said about, you know, keep in mind that inflation is growing over thistime. Our uhwhat's the uh the basis of our debt limitation is is increasing, right, withthat? Um but for the last several years, our debt fairly flat. So, then youexpect that our percentage of our, you know, of our utilization is decliningwith that, but then we've also lost some market value. So, can you just speak alittle bit more to how that has changed over time, those two factorskind of crossing one another? One being, you know, the increase in ourcapacity with our relatively slow debt growth, as at least from what Iunderstand. Uh and then also, you know, we've lostsome value, so then that decreases our limitation, I I imagine.Um yeah, I guess the comment to um the the Yeah, the the limitation is acalculation, um and so that comes down a little bit as ourum so, I guess that comment was specific to the percentage of of our utilizationthat's increasing, um because the kind of the dual factor of the valuations arecoming down a little bit. Um the applicable debt is increasing year overyear, um higher percentage. Um and then the the outstanding umthe comment on the outstanding debt was really Yeah, it's increasing nominallyevery year. If you factor in inflation over that time, that $851 million todayum was a lot less in 2015. So, um So, doyou know how much >> adjust. UmOff the top of my head, I I I I did look it up, and I can't remember off the topof my head. I'd be curious to see what the how the percentages change overtime. I guess that's a quicker way of asking.>> I think the the um I can send you the the the figures onthese balances um and and what it would look like to to adjust for inflation,but uh I think the takeaway is uh city's doing a lot more with with less dollarsum on an inflation basis.>> Great. And then my last question is sort of a broad one. Forgive me. Um you know,you could make an argument looking at your chart on the our limited limit uhlimitation compare or sorry, utilization compared to other cities that, you know,we have room to invest more if there are uh investments that the city thoughtwere important. Um but obviously, as you've, you know, made clear, our uh ourrating is extremely important. And so, like, how would you assess that? Um youknow, how secure our rating is. Obviously, um our next presentation'sgoing to talk about, you know, the stability of the general fund and thingslike that. So, that's a huge factor. But I'm kind of curious your take on that.Like, you know, how secure is that rating? Umand you know, looking at this from my perspective, thinking, well, ifthere's important projects to take on, perhaps we do have more room for that.But is, you know, would you What would you caution?Uh yeah, Commissioner Bernstein. Um you know, I can't speakin any confidence on how secure our rating. I will say they tend to be veryslow changing. Um the rating agencies do have a number ofinputs that they factor in. There's a kind of a rating matrix, uh if you will,that they have a lot of economic data, population trends um that allfactors into it. It's a little bit of, you know, proprietary information thatthey don't share with us, but they try to be transparent.So I would I would never say our rating is secure. I would say I don't thinkthere's been monumental shifts in any of theunderlying um economic and and financial conditions. Iknow they are looking at our reserve fund balances,the general fund balance. They're looking atthe overall economy, unemployment, that stuff. So it all factors in.And so certainly there are economic headwinds we're facing. And I I expectthat those will come up on the rating calls this year. That being said, youdon't usually get a downgrade out of nowhere. Usually there's a little bit offorewarning and signaling that hey, conditions have changed unfavorably.Whether or not they would go so far as to lower our outlook, that is typicallya first step, not always, but yeah, it is important and and we willtouch on that when we come back for the sale authorization.Thanks, that was super helpful. Thank you.One more question. I last looked closely through thedebt philosophy it's in the city's financial policies some years agoand I just wanted to check whether there has been any philosophical shift interms of the view toward using cash versus usingdebt on the part of the city. In other words, pay as you go versus borrowing.President Brent, to my knowledge, not any philosophical shift. UmOf course we want to finance projects where we can in the most efficient waypossible. So we are keeping eyes on liquidity andoften times borrowing to fund these projects is isthe most efficient way to maintain proper liquidity for thecity and and keep cash on hand, but umyeah, for now I would say nothing philosophical has changed. Questions?All right, I'll ask the clerk to receive and file this presentation. Thank you,Mr. Wheeler. >> Thank you.Up next is the city controller's quarterly report for quarter four of2025. To give that presentation, we'll haveGeorge Hargrove joining us. I will say welcome even though the newsmay not be entirely welcome. Thanks, Rob. Uh good afternoon, uhPresident Brandt, uh commissioners. Uh thanks for having me. I'm GeorgeHargrove, the city controller, and with me today is Robert Lang, our deputycontroller. He'll cover some of the presentation, especially on the generalfund. So, uh just to just to as a reminder toeveryone, these are the the the main point of the presentationis the our 225 2025 financial results through a through a period 12. So, theseuh these results are have not been fully audited yet. We're in the middle of ourstandard year-end audit, and um there will be adjustments and things like thatthat uh come up as well to as part of the audit. So, it's not quite final, butum the numbers will be final when we issue the 2000 25 annual comprehensivefinancial report that we're scheduled to do by June 30th or so of this year. Andas always, um like I like like I mentioned before, you know, these theseestimates are subject to change. Particularly, we'll talk a little bitabout 2026. And um so um certainly uh you know,we'll we'll uh we'll be back I think this summer and everything as well, too.But feel free to check back with us as we forecast things monthly um as part ofour general duties. Go ahead, Rob. Next slide.So, the main uh highlight I wanted to talk about for the city of Minneapolisis the city's really kind of in a couple of different places here. If we'retalking the non-general fund or enterprise fund, special revenue,internal services, city's doing um quite well. We have very little that's notmeeting um minimum uh policies or minimum balance policies in cash or fundbalance or things like that. Um So, that's roughly about 60% of thecity. Um the general fund is roughly about 40% of the city. It is starting toget down to its minimum um balance. And uh we'll we'll uh cover that a littlebit later in the presentation. But if you look at um like uh where we where westarted the forecast at, we thought it would go down about 67 million. It'sactually gone down about 68 million dollars.Um And so so if you look at you know, ifyou compare like where we started in 2025 on uh January 1st to where we endedup the year, you know, you could see that roughly it has a negative cash flowof about 5 million dollars a month. So, we'll come back to that figure a littlelater on in the presentation. Go ahead, Rob. Next slide.Um as uh Mr. Wheeler mentioned before, too, you know, continuing on with ourfinancial highlights, so we continue to have a triple A bond ratingum for our the three major credit agencies.Um our uh another highlight is our self-insurancefund that funds uh the city's um you know, insurance-related liabilities andour general tort liability. Um you can see we are above ourshort-term minimum policy by quite a bit, about 84.3 million.And, um, this year, at the end of the year here,we we do reforecast our liability amounts, and so wedo have to mention that we we are increasing our total liabilityamount to about 134 million, so that went up,you know, you know, quite quite a bit or so fromthe year before. Um, and we're we're reviewing thesenumbers right now by our auditors, and they should be finalized very soon.Um, in terms of federal grants,we continue to to to you know, monitor changing requirements. City has had manyof their grants audited lately by the federal government. So far, things havegone pretty well. We have maintained, you know, roughly the same amount ofmoney as before. Some of that goes through court injunctions as well, too.And then finally, we were awarded the 2024 for the 2024 annual conference offinancial report. We were awarded awarded the certificate of excellence infinancial reporting by the Government Finance Officers Association.So, moving on with more financial highlights.Um, you can see our first bullet point herein 2025, they were about 19 million dollarsunder budget. We budget the full amount knowing that not all of it will becollected either because people can't pay or because they take they theychallenge the evaluation in tax court and sometimes get relief from that aswell, too. Um, for our local sales tax, they werefund the downtown asset funds in the related convention center and the TargetCenter. Um, you can see they were essentially flat in 2025 compared to 24,just about 87 and a half million dollars.And during that time, we've also increased our transfers to the generalfund from the downtown assets. Um, just looking at the last few months, they doseem to be holding steady despite a metro surge.And then finally, um, our police and fire departments finished about, um, alittle less than 18 mil The police ended up about 18 million dollars over budgetin the general fund. The fire department, um, ended up about, uh, 7million dollars or so, um, over budget in 2025.Um, that was about a 3 million dollar increase from what we had, um, before inthe previous forecast. We also separated out the settlement costs. We used toinclude those in the departments, but we felt, you know, in fairness we shouldcount them as their, uh, as their own entity, so to speak. And, uh, we do planto budget for those in 2027. Um, but we have been paying for thoseout of the fund balance. Um, so that's, uh,>> Mr. Hargrove, could I just, uh, ask a clarifying question?>> Oh, sure, sure. Um, on unbudgeted settlement costs, uh, are these [snorts]typically tort type settlements? Yeah, no, uh, President Bryant, uh,Commissioners, these are actually referring to our, um, MinnesotaDepartment of Human Rights settlement due to the George Floyd incident, um,you know, that we had, um, we had settlements with the federal government.That was, uh, dropped by them, but the state still has their settlement thatwe've, um, that the city has agreed to follow. Very good.>> So, so we incurred costs for that, uh, consulting firms, some other things,too. And so those costs were higher than anticipated? Um, yeah, we actually haveto take them out of our fund balance. We didn't formally budget those, but we doplan to next year now that we have a pretty good handle on on what they'llbe. So that's a 2026 obligation? Yeah, yeah. Yes, President BryantCommissioners. Um, yeah, when I before I counted those in the departments thatactually spent it, but we kind of keep a separate accounting of the settlementcosts versus the regular operations. And so we did separate it. I see. Thank you. All right, moving on to more financialhighlights. Um you can see the first bullet point we talk about the city's uhassets, which is certainly mentioned by uhby uh Mr. Wheeler and managed by Mr. Wheeler. Uh you can see there's beenabout a $50 million uh decrease from the end of 2024 until2025. Um so, about what $1.18 billion therethey were at at the end of the year. Um certainly has a decrease, so you get alittle less uh interest revenue. And then in terms of um meeting fundbalances requirements, you know, our minimum balances are set at the budgetprocess by the city council. You can see self-insurance will have a negative netposition of about $134 million. However, it does exceed um our short-term umminimum balance requirements in order to pay um claims, you know, over the overthe over the short-term horizon. Uh property services is about $700,000 orso below its minimum cash balance. That has improved uh greatly during uh 2025is getting close to to meeting the policy.And then finally, our engineering materials and testing lab, um the worksin the public works area, is about to um has net position of about 200,000. So,that's about 200,000 under their minimum fund balance policy. That's generallydue to long-term pension liabilities of employees that work in that lab.And then a couple uh departments that we had reported before as being, you know,not not meeting the policy, the fleet is now above their minimum balances. Theyhave held back on some purchases of replacement vehicles, so we continue tomonitor that as well, too. And then um and parking, for the firsttime since um you know, since the uh you know, since the pandemic, is nowmeeting its uh minimum balance in cash and uh fund balance. So, that'scertainly a an uptick from what that uh what we saw before.And at this point I'll uh invite uhDeputy Controller Lang up to the podium to talk about the general fund. Thank you very much, George. Um and goodevening, Commissioners, President Brandt.My name is Rob Lang, the Deputy Controller for the city. Um and myduties primarily revolve around uh the audit for the city as well as monitoringthe general fund. So, as a reminder for those and forthose that may be new, uh the general fund accounts for all the financialresources except for those required to be accounted for elsewhere.Practically speaking, what this means is that the general fund's collectingproperty taxes, uh franchise fees, charges for services in certain regards,and using that money to pay for services that most citizens would consider a cityto provide, such as police, fire, um public works, HR, accounting,um in order to keep the city functioning. So, it's a very vital funduh to the city. It umas George was saying, the quarter three forecasted amounts are very similar towhat we're seeing in the quarter four unaudited balances right now. So, whencomparing to the quarter three uh presentation, there shouldn't be toomany surprises, but it's good to go through these final numbers.Starting off with cash balance, we did have a decrease of $58 millionin the cash, going from $234 million down to $176 million.The fund balance follows suit. And as a reminder, the fund balance is almostlike net worth. It's your assets less your liabilities, and that becomes yourfund balance. It started the year at $209 million andhas since decreased to $140 million. About a 33% decrease in the fund balancein 1 year. This $140 million fund balance doesexceed the 17% minimum requirement that we have as an internal policywhich uh was calculated at 109 million dollars at the end of 2025.So, while we do exceed our minimum fund balance, what we want to draw yourattention to is the accelerated decrease over the course of1 year. And then finally, this fund balance doeshave a few restrictions associated with it currently.Those being the public safety aid, North Commons and planned use of fund in the2026, all of which totaling about 24 million dollars, resulting inapproximately 116 million dollars in unrestrictedfund balance for the general fund. So, let's start with revenues.Here on this slide, we grouped our revenues by major categories. And you'llsee at the very bottom that we're about 9 million dollars under budget oncollections for revenues. The primary drivers property taxes. We collectedabout 19 million dollars less than budgeted as George previously described,which was about 97%. Then we also have franchise fees. We didcome under budget by 3 million. I will say though that franchise fees didincrease year over year. However, the budget increased at a faster rate.>> [snorts] >> And then licenses and permits,about 5.4 million dollars. The primary driver behind this being buildingpermits, did not get sold to the rate that webudgeted for. All of this was offset by servicecharges, primarily due to public works providing internal and externalcustomers additional services than budgeted, as well as the all otherrevenues category. The primary driver on that is unrealized gains and losses ofabout 6.4 million dollars. So, how does this compare to prioryears? Well, on this slide right here,we are seeing in blue the 2025 budget to actual percentages, and thenin green is the prior 3-year averages. And what I want to draw your attentionto is that over the last 3 years, we've collected almost 100% of our budgetedrevenues. Coming into 2025, we collected about 98.7%and when you're dealing with a budget budgeted revenues of $660 million,this 1.3% does add up to about $9 million. So on the other side, we have expenses.Here again, we're labeling them through major expense category, and at a futureslide, we'll be showing each individual department. But in major category, whatI want to draw your eye to is that there were two groupings over budget. That ispublic safety, which was $14.7 million over budget.We'll get more into that later. As well as public works, which was $7.8 millionover budget. However, I will say with public works,if you remember to the revenues where service charges was 0.5 million dollarsover budget, they collected more revenues than budgeted and that takesmoney to collect those revenues. So that offsets a little bit of their overage.The remaining overage would be due to December had significant amount ofsnowstorms as well as wire theft that occurred during 2025.So how does this compare to prior year? Well, this is a much more dramaticchange than the average. So again, we see in blue the 2025 year and in greenis the 3-year average of the expenditures to budget. So over the last3 years, we average about 91% of budget to actual. However, cominginto 2025, we're now utilizing 98.8% of our budget.The result that we're seeing is that we're collecting less revenue thanhistoric to budget and we're expending more expensesthan historical to budget. The end result is we're seeing this big decreasein fund balance. All right, and then the big slide. Thisslide is taken from the 70-page report we provide a city council,and I just wanted to draw your eye to this as it shows all the departmentswithin the general fund as with their original budget, theirfinal budget, their year-to-date actual, and then finally the variance to thatactual. And I highlighted the five departments that were over budgetin 2025. Starting with assessing was over budgetdue to some project costs from 24 that bled into 25. Office of Public Servicewas a little over budget due to personnel costs.And then but the big ones being as George previously mentioned, FireDepartment being $6.7 million over budget. Overtime. Police, $17.5million over budget, again overtime. And then Public Works which we previouslydiscussed. And then finally at the very bottom, I didn't highlight it, but nearthe very bottom you will see the settlement agreement money that wasunbudgeted of $5.7 million of which police spent about $3.6 million of thatto adhere to the settlement agreement. Um with that, I will pass it back toGeorge to continue the presentation. Yeah, thank you thank you DeputyController Lang. Yes, continuing on now, we can talkabout the special revenue funds. And these are generally restrictedamounts of dollars that come into the city that can't be accounted for in someother fund, especially the general fund. So major areas that have those are theconvention center, Target Center, downtown assets, you know, the the statelaws, you know, kind of limit what we can do with that.Um there's community planning and economic development have some fundssuch as local housing aid and things like that um from the sales tax thathave to be in a special revenue fund. Um you can see there's basically been verylittle change between the year end of 2025 and the year end of 2024.Both fund balance and then cash as well too um had very very uh very little ifany change. Um basically if we uh if we go to the next pageum Rob I can kind of explain a little bit more in detail. You can see thedowntown asset fund, the cash, and the fund balance. If you look on the columnon the right there side of it there, you know, did go down mainly because ofincreased transfers to the general fund and then that was offset by uh ourcommunity planning and economic development also known as CPED um wentup, you know, approximately the same amount. So overall very little change inthe special revenue funds. And then um our next category of fundsis the internal service funds. And so these are these are generallydepartments and areas of the city that sell their services primarily within thecity. So some major areas are the engineering materials and testing lab umthat uh tests concrete, things like that. Um does other work for publicworks. You can see um that's on the list as well as our fleet area, propertyservices, storerooms, self-insurance, um IT as well too.You can see in this case both our debt positionand cash increased by about $34 million or so from the end of the year 2024 to2025. And if we turn the page to kind of lookat, you know, what what drove what drove those uh you know, those increases, youcan see our fleet went up about um 5 million in cash, 6 million in netposition. Again, they held off um you know, replacing some of the vehicles.And then also our self-insurance, we continued to build balances there, too,to offset our long-term liability. So, those are really the two reasons thatthe internal services uh went up. Um otherwise, um most of them stayed uh,you know, just slight increases for for the rest of the internal service funds.And then finally, moving on, um is the enterprise funds. Uh these are these aregenerally our utilities that are uh based in our public works department. Umthey generally sell their services outside of the city.Um you can see some of the big biggest areas are sanitary, sewer and stormwaterareas, or water area, uh solid waste and recycling, and the parking fund. UhC-PED has a very small enterprise fund, as well, too. And you can see there, umthat position went up quite a bit, about $47 million from 2024 year end, and thencash went up about $25 million, or so. Um and as we turn the page here to lookat the at the at the at the at the, you know, what drove those results, you cansee um generally, uh stormwater, you um if you look on the right side here, wentup about 17.9 million in cash, 10.7 million in net position. Uh water had afairly big uh net position increase. Those are usually caused by assetsputting in putting new assets in service.Uh then you can see parking, um they are they they're generally up quite a bitfrom the year before. That put them above the minimum balance.And then, uh the only one that really didn't go up with solid waste andrecycling, and they uh they do have some increased uh expenses now, as as well assome capital projects coming up. So, they've stayed um pretty flat from '24to '25. And then finally, I got um this slidehere. I just want to take a quick look at '26. You know, we've been watchingthe general fund pretty closely. We did do a forecast um right around the firstweek or so in April, or so. So, this is a little dated now, about 5-6 weeks ago,and obviously, things have changed. But if we walk through the right side here,this is I I kind of use this a lot as our planning worksheet to kind of show,you know, how you know, how we're doing against our targets and andand what what what options are available to the city and things like that. Youcan see the general fund balance was at about 209 million on January 1st of2025. And thenwhat happened in 2025 is we brought in about 654 million in revenue, but thenspent 722 million. And so it did cause it to go down likewe mentioned before to about the 22% level versus our targetbalance of 17% below. And then in the budget process for 2026,there was some more items that we have to reserve. There's a planned use offund balance in 2026, so that's in the budget process to pull,you know, a little less than 9 million dollars or so out of the fund balance.There were some other amendments passed by the city council back in December.And then we also have to restrict as Rob mentioned before the public safety aidthat came in at the end of 2023 of 19 million dollars. We still have about 10million dollars or so left of that. Then we have the North Commons Park that wasowed to the park board. So you can see if you just subtract allthose restrictions off, you get the 116 million. That's our what we call theunassigned fund balance. So that's right in the middle of page there and you cansee that's at about 18% of the 109 million dollar target or so.And then you look at the very bottom section, we started to look at whatwhat's happened the first quarter of 2026.There was some more rental assistance approved for CPED.We went the other way with the North Commons Park cuz we paid that to thepark board. And then we did as part of our forecast,the last two lines kind of represent that. So the expense forecast, you cansee we expect that to be 16 million dollars or so unfavorable in 2026.Again, that's driven mainly by the police and fire and the settlement coststhat we expect to be about $30 million over budget or so in 2026 and it'soffset by forecasting that the that we won't spend any of the contingency andthat some departments will be under budget. So, that's about $16 millionunfavorable. And then if you look at the revenue side, we're projecting that tobe about $14 million unfavorable generally because we know that theproperty taxes we won't collect the full amountkind of assuming the same rate as last year. And then we also expect interestrevenue to be down as well to. So, that's about a $30 million hit or so.So, if you add up all those numbers, that puts us at about 21 million, 22million under the you know, under the target. We're at the very last slide youcan see that the a balance of about $87 million or so, which should be about 14%or so of the target, you know, so below below the target thereat this point in time. Although this is subject to change as we we'll do anotherformal forecast in late July or so. Umotherwise, it just you know, what causes these changes in fund balance, you know,why do why does it go up or down? Certainly planned use of fund balance inthe budget. Sometimes organizations will go the other way where they'll plan onbuilding balances. Overspending by departments orunderspending that could cause it to go down.You can see you know, we've had some overspending in the last couple yearshere. Certainly if revenue is less than budget, that cause that can cause thefund balance to go down. And then if we appropriate you know,additional spending out of the fund balance, that can cause it to go downtoo. And as a result of this, we we didn'troll over any general fund budgets this year.Normally departments, if they have money left over in the general fund, we dobring a roll over resolution, but this year Um, uh we left the general fundoff, but we did roll over public safety aid and the non-general fund as well,too. And then finally, the last um thing that can cause balances to go up or downare things that we call on the balance sheet. So, like if we owe more money,then that can cause the fund balance to go down. That's called accounts payable.And then conversely, we have receivables. If people owe us moremoney, that helps. If we don't have as much money owed to us, then that cancause it to go down, too. So, we're counting kind of both sides, whatactually happens and what's what we expect to spend but haven't yet or whatuh what's coming in, but we haven't received it yet.And then the last slide that Rob brought up here, this is a new um policy thecity council implemented in December, where we report, you know, umdepartments that are over budget. Uh pretty much this follows from what wetalked about before. Um, you can see um in the first three columns in the blueare what happened in 2025. And then our 2026 are forecasts for thiscut this year that we're in right now. Um, in the general fund, as Robmentioned, you know, we have the assessing office, the public service,and emergency management um that we're over budget. Um, emergency management'scase is very slightly. Um, we don't expect them to be overbudget in 2026. Um, you can see the fire, we'reforecasting um they were over about 7 million last year. We think you know,they'll be over 6 million this year. Police was over 17 and a half million.We took out the settlement costs. Now we're projecting about 23.4 million overbudget for the police. And then the settlement um Rob showed us the $5.7million figure in 25, and then we're forecasting 4.3 million in 26.And then finally, the last is the public works department. Uh they went overtheir expense budget by about 7.6 million, but a lot of that was becausethey had extra work in their um areas where they do work for others. And so,in order to sell extra work, you have to incur the expense.Um but it the the extra revenue does offset that. So, you can see in 2025,they did end up um about 2.3 million net if you subtract off the extra revenuefrom the extra spending. And that was generally due as Rob mentioned to copperwire theft and then a snow event at the end of the year last year. And then thisyear we expect them to be on budget cash-wise in the general fund.So, with that, that concludes my our presentation today. We can stand for anyquestions. Thank you. >> [snorts] >> Commissioner Bernstein. I like it when someone else starts, butum thank you. Thanks very much. Um these reports are incredibly impressive. UmI umI guess I I'll maybe I'll start with two probably easier ones.The tort liability increase, why was that? Do you know?Um yeah, President Brandt, Commissioner Bernstein. It was due to increasedestimates from our city attorney's office on the case the outstanding casesthat we have. Got it. Okay, so probably follow up somewhere else. Umand then um there is a I'm looking for the slidenumber. I should have written it down, but a different Here we go. Seven. TheWhat is the difference between the cash balance and the fund balance for thegeneral fund? Yes, absolutely. So, the cash balance isthe amount of cash in the bank. And then the fund balance would be our assetsless our liabilities. So, sometimes we might have an expense that we don'tactually pay for. Uh so, we have a million-dollar expense.Um it would not impact our cash cuz we didn't pay for it yet, but it woulddecrease our fund balance because it's still an expense that we accrued for.So, generally cash balance and fund balance normally you know follow suitand they trend together, but they're not not an exact science. Similar withaccounts receivable, we might be owed money, but we don't quite collect it atyear end yet. Got it. Thank you, very helpful. And then one more that'shopefully also an easy one. Um or maybe not, but umwe've talked we talked when the when Assessor Momquest was here about thecollection rate on the levy and that how that's fallen over time. I think it wasI have it up here. Uh in 2015 it was 99.7%and now you're saying projecting I think you said 97% of the levy, is that right?So >> Um who do you think's likethe best person to get under the hood on that? Um is that an Assessor's officequestion? Is there different office? Cuz I'm just curious like how that breaksdown, what sorts of properties are are we collecting less from, what you know,income distributions, etc. Uh yeah, President Brown, CommissionerBernstein. Yeah, we we would recommend uh Ms. Momquest's area, the Assessor'soffice, you know, address things like that.Awesome. I'll pass it to you, Steve.All right. Thank you, Commissioner Bernstein. Umon the budgetary controls page, I just want to make sure I understand it.The green is essentially areas each line is a variance from the approved 2026budget. Oh, yes, uh President Brown, that iscorrect. Um Yeah, the variance for 26, that would bethe amount over budget. Um and also including public works as revenue, youknow, I show that as a negative number as revenue comes in in credits in the inthe accounting world, but but yeah, that's the amount over budget. That'swhat the City Council asked us to report. We will come back with a fullreport on the general fund uh probably approximately late August or so when wecome back for the second quarter financial report.I I think that the police department overtime issue has been hashed outmore than I want to go into today, but fire department umuh Is it a matter of not being able to fillpositions that were No, that wouldn't work.Um the I mean it's In the past, it's been relatively easy to staff up a firedepartment when you have an a vacancy. YouI think I can recall one time when they gave the firefighters exam and therewere 2,000 people who took it, I think over at the convention center.Um what's what's driving Why is there such a need for overtime?Uh is it related to things like Metro surge or is it Please go ahead. Absolutely. Thank you,President Brandt. Um so for the fire department, theya primary driver of it actually is a lot of the leaves that they have. Um PTSDleave, paid family medical leave, paternity leaves, things of that nature.Um I think even with PTSD, it's about approximately 30 people that are um youknow, on leave. So we're still paying them, they still have a position at thefire department, but someone needs to cover the shift. And so that is whatdrives the overtime. And the budget for overtime for the fire department um isis of a few hundred thousand, where the actual payments going out due to thesenew leaves is is in the millions. And are the areas where the overages areoccurring, for example, these types of leaves, things that are unanticipatedbased on past practice, one would think, for example, thatum people have been taking family leave umunless it's under the new state program. Can you elaborate a little bit?So I President Brandt, I will say that you know like with PTSD leave, I believethat's 5-6 years now that it's been in play. I'll have to double check withLuke from the fire department howeverYou know admittedly that might be something we should probably follow upwith you on at a later date to get a more accurate response to your question.Okay because at at some point don't people switch over fromPTSD tothe police and fire pension for covering those costs?The pension plan? When when somebody retires on a on aPTSD disability? I don't think it's a retirementnecessarily. They're just out on leave to be coming backonce the leave is done. Excuse me, so these are people we expect back at anundetermined future point. President Brandt, that is correct.>> Okay. Is is the occurrence of these PTSDleaves something that hasum Is there aa common trigger for this? I mean these date back to 2020 orMetro surge or is it another factor? President Brandt, Iactually don't know that information at this time and I would have to conferwith the finance manager of the fire department for a history onon the PTSD leave specifically. Perhaps you could put me in touch with thatperson. I realize this is a little bit out of ourlane and more in the city council's area but umI'll I'll satisfied with that. Um Um And uh Commissioner Brunsting?Uh TomCommissioner Olson. Yes, I'm just wondering so it looks likewe might be at some point if things don't change going down below that 17%.When was the last time we went below that? Was that>> [snorts] >> like Great Recession orum Do we know off the top of our heads?Yeah, President Branca Commissioner Olson. I don't believe it's for I thinkit's been before that. We'd have to research that. I'm not I'm not I thinkit was quite some time ago or so. I'm sure we have and there might have beendifferent calculations of you know what the you know how we calculate the targetbalance cuz that is subject to change every year. It really hasn't you knowduring my you know a couple years I've been at the city but we'd happy you knowwe could we could go back and look at our records. I don't know Rob do youknow Um President Branca um CommissionerOlson, I will say that I looked at the past 10 years and we have not fallen inthe past 10 years below our minimum fund balance. So I can confirm that. As tolast time we did, it would take some more researchprior to even 10 years ago. Okay. Um you know sometimes you know at ParkBoard as as we do our budgeting you know we've kind of looked back in the past ofwhen we were in really tough budgeting periodsand so sometimes that can help as we make decisions moving forwardyou know to see maybe what the city did what some lessons were learned fromthere but so it seems like it's fairly safe to say at least in recent memorythis combination of lack of revenue collection plus extremeover budget of a couple departments is is has put us in a fairly unprecedentedsituation in recent memory. Uh yes President Branca Commissioner Olson.Yes, that that you're correct there. It you know the spending really has hasbeen the one thing that's kind of been unexpected and and so that that's kindof put us a little bit more in the you know in the downward trajectory. Yeah,yeah. Our city's been through a lot recently but we uh we'll have to rein itin. I uh just wanted to comment uh havingwritten about the big cut massive cut in local governmentaid uh back about 2009 2010uh that the governor at the time felt was necessary in order to balance thestate budget. Uh that triggered massive umcuts at the city level and some of those we haven't recovered from yet but therewere positions held open and so that was met byum by umaccommodations on the spending side particularly the personnel side. Um Iwould say I was heartened to hear that the mayor was looking in his state ofthe city speech at uh uh the whole range of city programs andand what programs have served their need and uh perhaps are notvital to the city going forward. Um I have umI know that last year for example he recommended eliminating a coupleprograms that were near and dear to my heart. I I I don't know if they survivedor not with council's deliberation but uhuh it in a situation like this it sometimes requires shared sacrificeuntil we can come up with new sources of revenue which uh we'll get into brieflya little bit later in the meeting. Commissioner Bernstein.Um do you know uh of the [clears throat] spend down that that ended up now at68.6 million how much of it was planned versus arose throughout the year.Let's get in. President Brant, Commissioner Bernstein.So, we had a planned use of fund in 2025,about $24 million. Then we approved rollovers of about 44or 48 million dollars. I'll have to re-look at that in the mid-40s. Thetotal amount being about $66 million. So, I will say that we had approved andplanned to spend down $66 million of the general fund budget. However, whatwasn't planned necessarily was who was going to spend that money.And so, what ended up happening was some of thosespendings that we were expecting were due to rollovers forcertain projects and certain contracts that other departments hadand then possibly wanted to roll over into the next year that we did not getto roll over into 2026. So, at this point, while we did plan to use thatfunds, we were planning on doing other things with it. But, instead the cityspent it on overtime for public safety. That was an incredible answer. Thankyou. Very concise and exactly what I was asking. Thank you.I got one more question and it's a it's a little it's broad it'sbut I'm just trying to understand the internal service funds. And so, as Iunderstand it's a fund as this says, created to track when the city'sproviding services essentially to itself. Is that right? And so,um is it all I guess my question is is italways a city entity that is paying into the internal service fundand that any change in the general fund would result from a special revenue fundpaying in or is there sometimes a third party non-city paying into internalservice funds? So, I guess I'm asking the net change through that's channeledthrough the internal service funds, it comes either out of the general fund orout of a special revenue fund. Is that correct? Uh Pres- President Brunt, uhCommissioner Bernstein, and also um the enterprise funds, too. They can chargeanywhere in the city and and we have a We as part of the budget that we do, weallocate costs around the city, and then they budget for that. So, the decisionto um spend down the general fund could be,you know, to preserve, for example, a a um a special revenue fund, or you coulddecide to spend down a special revenue fund and preserve thegeneral fund, but it's all within one of those three areas.Yeah Yeah, uh Probably not a helpful phrasing, sorry, but That's okay. Yeah,uh President Brunt, Commissioner Bernstein, umyeah, you can I mean, generally, the general fund is unrestricted,so you can't necessarily, like if you decide, "Well, we don't want to spend onthe general fund," you can't necessarily replace that spending from other fundsbecause they'll have their restrictions on them. You know, you have to spend iton certain things, you know, like affordable housing, for example, and andyou can't spend it on the police or something, yeah. Yeah. So, that's kindof That's why the general fund is so important because it has the leastamount of restrictions. Got it. And so, when we're pricing things internally,that happens within each department, or is there a centralgroup that does the internal pricing for like how much we charge for certainservices? Yeah, President Brunt, uhCommissioner Bernstein, yeah. Our budget office handles that. We in fact have abudget analyst that specializes in that, and so you and so she works with thedepartments and sets the prices, and then Rob and I help allocate and mystaff help allocate the cost out as part of the budget plan. Then we of coursehave to fund it, and we're and we're doing that right now for 2027. Got it.Yeah, I was thinking I I was reading a little bit about that in the budgetbook. Okay, I'll relent. Thank you. Any additional questions?Okay. I I have to say thatreviewing this report, I recalled a couple years ago when Iurged the mayor to take more out of the budget reserve for umuh avoiding a bigger property tax increase as well as shifting more fromthe um downtown assets fund which was umrecovering at that point. And I have to saymea culpa, I did not anticipate that the general fund would decline this fast.And I think that's uh we didn't we didn't anticipate the police and fireovertime, and we didn't anticipate um the decline in collections, but umour property tax, but um wasIt's good to heed the um advice of our finance folks when they come to us.Uh if we have no further questions, I will ask the uh clerk to receive andfile this report. Up next,we have the BET work planning goals and objectives discussion. And to give thatupdate is our staff member, Christina Cederling,who will be arriving at the podium once she makes her way through thefrom the inner sanctum out to the outer sanctum. And just a quick heads-up, we do haveanother actual park board meeting uh today as we're going through our budgetprocess. So, um pretty soon we'll be done with those, but I will be leavingat um 5:20-ish, 5:22-ish. So, if there's somediscussion or something that we want to skip to or get to early while we havequorum. Uh Commissioner, I think the only thing I would tell you is that it'scurrently my intent to cancel the May 20th meetingand push off the business that might have come up there until one of the twoJune meetings. And one of those will be, of course, thepark board presentation. Okay. Thank you for that. Thank you. And you can get back with me to see ifthat was approved. Hey. Good evening, President Bryant andCommissioners. I guess I would ask for guidance from the clerks then.If we do only have 5 minutes, I just wanted to ask how that works with ourquorum. If I begin speaking, if there can be discussion orif you wouldn't mind. Uh once the body loses quorum, discussion on this itemcan't happen. The the meeting would have to adjourn atthat point and any unresolved things on our agenda wouldhave to go to the next regular meeting. May I present then and they just cannotrespond to it or can do I need to stop presenting would be my question.That would be you would have to stop presenting atthat time as the meeting itself would have to stop if any members have anyquestions from what they had heard since then, they would be able to talk to youoffline and be able toask anything that they might have from that pointor at this present time, the president could adjourn and move make a motion tomove these items to the next regularly scheduled meeting and you could pick upthis presentation at that point. Okay. President Bryant, I will defer to you,but I it does look like we only have about 3 minutes and I think the workplan is really important and deserves more attention.Okay. Maybe you could advise us on how longyou expect your presentation to be and we could postpone the discussion perhapsuntil a subsequent meeting. Sure. I would say if you can give me10 minutes, I could roll through my portion of the presentation. I do thinkit'll require discussion, but I could I could knock it out in 10 minutes. Proceed, please. Okay. Yes, sir.So, my name is Kristina Kiderlin and I'm the senior advisor to the Board ofEstimates and Taxation. I'm so glad to be here with you. Thank you for onceagain having me. Earlier last week, I sent out a memowith an attached proposed work plan. I hope that everyone did get a chance tolook at it. If not, that's okay. We can certainly take a look at it now. I dohave a few slides. The majority what we're going to be referring to is thememo and work plan itself, but the the slides are just meant to guide ourconversation. And I apologize, I'm going to try and go very fast through this.So, first I'd like to go through the what and then we'll move over to the howor excuse me, the why and then we'll move on to the how. So, what is a workplan? A work plan is a living document meaning it can change over time. Whatyou see on there today is just a draft. It's just a proposal. It absolutely doesnot need to stay the same, but it's a living document that informs the work ofthe BET outside of your day-to-day charter mandated activities. So, somethings are not going to change. For example, you guys receive and file bondtransmittal memos. That's charter mandated. Not proposing that we changeany of that. We're looking at your duties and your objectives outside ofyour day-to-day. The work plan identifies goals andobjectives that you as a board wish to accomplish. Staff assignments withinrelate back to those objectives. So, it's looking at what you as an entirebody look want to accomplish this term. What you want your resources to go to,what you want your staff are working on as a majority body.The work plan must be adopted by the majority if desired by the board. So,right now you don't have a formal work plan. What I'm asking you to do is lookto see what consensus among your members there is so that you can adopt thisformalized work plan and we can better work towards what is the will of thisboard for the next few years. So, why is this being suggested? There'slots of different reasons, but I'll sum it up in five. First of all, itfacilitates discussion amongst the entirety of the board. Um I do realizewe're from Minnesota, but sometimes we need to be direct. I have noticed frommy time here on the BET that sometimes we'll have individual members bring workideas or objectives and it's really hard to get feedback on that and getnecessarily a formal motion and carry over the objective from one meeting tothe next. That's what we're trying to do here. We're trying to directly talkabout the proposed objectives and say, "Yes, that is something the majority ofthe board wants to discuss." or "No, that's not something that the majorityof the board is looking to take up." So, just a little bit more clarity on someof these different ideas and these different topics that we right now arebringing up as one-offs. Secondly, it serves as a foundationaltool for other documents such as the staff performance plan.Um if we have a formalized work plan for the board, we can have a formalized workplan for your staffer and everything that I would do would relate back towhat your goals are for this term. It all rolls up um into one enterprise.Third, this mirrors the goal-setting process the city council committees aregoing through um currently and it aligns the BET more with the rest of the cityenterprise. That pretty much sounds exactly like what it is. They're goingthrough the same process trying to establish what they want to accomplishover this term. You would be doing the exact same thing. It avoids veeringoutside of the scope of the BET or at the very least if we choose to maybeveer outside, it explains the why you are doing that. It makes it a little bitmore transparent as to what the BET is trying to accomplish and why they areexpending resources at these different avenues.Um and then finally, it relates staff time, board objectives, and future planplanning back to the overarching city overarching city goals and values. Ifyou reference that actual work plan memo that I sent out, the first page isessentially a disclaimer talking about that the different objectives I have onthere are just proposed. You can take all of them, you can decide to changeall of them. They are just proposals. However, what I highly recommend is thatwe relate our strategic objectives back to the city goals and the city values.So that everything we do as an enterprise can roll up and we're ableable to easily articulate why the Board of Estimate and Taxation is going aftercertain objectives, how it fits into the values of the city of Minneapolis.And finally, the how. Um, so if we could adopt all strategicobjec- Excuse me, adopt all strategic objectives today, that would be great. Ianticipate there will need to be some discussion based on the board, so weneed to think about how this conversation will continue. I as yourstaffer I'm here to help with that. I can send out goal setting surveys, I canwork with you individually on emailed responses or discussion, and I can sharethose results to try and see if there's any points of alignment that we mightwant to talk about as an entire body. So that's it for the slides. If youcould please reference the document that Ipreviously routed and you should all have a copy of. I'll also put it up hereso that everyone can follow along. So here's that memo I talked about. We'regoing to skip down though to page three, where we actually start talking aboutthose strategic objectives. These strategic objectives are justproposals that I have come up with based on watching your conversations over thepast few months. Although I was gone, I was trying to keep up with you. Um, ifyou like some of these, like all of them, we can certainly keep them. If youwant to change each one, we absolutely can. I would ask that if you don't likea particular strategic objective, please don't let it um mar you against the ideaof a work plan. I think if the board has a work plan, that's a very good thing.If you want to change the specific things I have on here, totally fine. Umthat doesn't mean we shouldn't have a work plan, however.Um so, I'll go very quickly, but the first one proposed is to do a staffaudit of different opportunities for public participation. As you probablyknow, it has been quite the lift to try and get public comment on things likesetting the maximum property tax levy. I think that we can probably look into arethere any other avenues to try and get general public involvement? What doother cities do for communication to the general public? How do we getrepresentative umrepre- I don't want to say representative budgeting so much, butmore representation in the levy setting process so that the general public feelsthat they know and that we are being very clear with the different avenuesthey have to give their opinion on on what we do here at the Board ofEstimate and Taxation. Um that one I don't expect to be very controversial,but you can certainly give me feedback on that. Secondly,um looking to strengthen our communication frameworks. Just to giveyou an idea, when I started this role, my job description talked about a bunchof different departments and it had how often I talked to those departments. Ihave a feeling the job description is pretty old just because it does not haveseemed to have kept up with the job today. I don't necessarily talk to thosesame departments, but there's many others that I talk to. So, for my secondstrategic objective, I'm proposing that we try to strengthen our communicationframework to make sure that the BET is getting the information out of theenterprise they they should be to do their job effectively. I think we shouldhave a communication audit to see how we're working with all those differentdepartments. Our third and fourth objective are takendirectly out of what I've heard from you the last couple meetings. The numberthree is to continue a partnership with City Council concerning alternativerevenues. Um I can certainly allow thecommissioners to speak to that, but that would essentially beum taking what is the majority will of thesport as far as medicinal revenue goes. What did you take out of thatpresentation and what would you like to finalize or enshrine as the BET'sopinion towards that matter. Number four is to advance and secure amendments tothe city charter related to the Board of Estimate and Taxation. I know PresidentBranch, you would specifically brought that up. Um, I wanted to call that outdirectly as a strategic objective so that the board can vote on that and sayyes or no they want to direct me, their staffer, and the the resource resourcesof the board towards obtaining that objective um or if they do not, we couldtake that off. But that is what I have listed for strategic objective numberfour. So I apologize that I went so fast through that, but if you have anyquestions for me, I stand for them now. I would suggest that we defer questionsuh so that we can complete the board's business while we still have a quorum.Right? Uh, Commissioner Bernstein.Uh, yeah. I guess I was just going to ask so umwhat is there a process that you're recommending for carrying forward thedevelopment of the work plan? If you were comfortable with thestrategic objectives, you could do a motion to adopt the work plan today. Ifyou wanted to change that, you could on the fly. You could say like for example,I want to adopt a strategic objective one and two. I do not want to adoptthree and four today. Something like that. If you're not comfortable adoptingthis work plan at all today, um I would say to please communicate tome either now or after the meeting how you would like to see that happen as faras continued uh communication. I know that you will run into open meetinglaws, but that's why you have a staffer. You all can communicate with me yourobjectives moving forward and I can certainly bring that back to the board.My preference would be just to discuss this as a group at a future meeting uhprobably the second meeting in June, when we'll also be taking up the BETbudget and uh one additional item, um that pertains more internally.Um so, um could well yes, your performanceevaluation, um which I want to update my colleagueson. Um so, I think I'll ask you to stand down now and defer to future discussionby the board and umum move on to our new business while we still have our>> Excuse me, President Brand. I I wonder if it maybe if weif we as a board, if it might be better if wemaybe just kind of approve this as almost like preliminary, so that there'ssome things that we know that you can get started on and work with us on.And then we can just know as a board we can maybe amend it at at at that futuredate. Like cuz I just wonder if there is some advantage to saying, you know, cuzI think you know, mostly I think I am on board with with the the thingslisted here. So, I just wonder if there is some advantage to approving now andamending later. Well, if there is consensus, I'm notopposed to that. I guess I have a similar question is can we approve theconcept of developing a work plan without agreeing on the strategicobjectives, which I feel like probably require a little bit more conversation.Is that And would that be helpful or not particularly? Yeah, wouldn't want towaste our time. >> I love I just want to say like I lovewhat you've put together here and I think this is very important andhelpful. And but I think like thinking about the objectives and what city goalsand values they relate to going to take a little bit more time, but I want tolike I'm happy to provide whatever stamp we can on the development of this planand for to encourage folks on the board to start communicating with you abouttheir thoughts about different things and communicating with one another aboutthem cuz I think that'd be very helpful. And I don't want to hold it up. Yeah, mymy recommendation would be to do a motion to direct the staff to do a staffdirection to continue this endeavor.Um just because I think if we were to pull everything out of it, I'm not surethere would be enough substantial information here to actually adopt.Uh is there a motion to that effect? I moveto hold this whole entire discussion to our next meeting so that we can take itup in full. Uh could I ask that we not make it thenext meeting but the meeting of June 24th because we have the park board andthe city budget presentation uh and another item on the 10th.I move that we continue this conversation at our June24th and leave prioritized space for it so that we can fully complete thediscussion and take action on it. Is there a second?Second. All those in favor? Any? I. I. Opposed?Okay, we have a direction. Thank you. And our next new business isreceiving projects from the city council for which the board of estimate willconsider approving the issuance of tax exempt GO bonds.Projects [snorts] are in your packet. Are there any questions?Seeing no discussion, I'll ask the clerk to receive and file the projects and wehave lost our quorum. >> have lost our quorum and that was beforethat receiving file was able to be completed.>> put that on our next agenda. Uh yes, those will be continued to the nextregular meeting of the BET. Okay.Since we are had lost our quorum, I will adjourn themeeting and ask my colleagues to stick around for like 3 minutes where I justdo a little bit of update um mainly for the benefit of the people who aren'there. Uh, but uh,meeting stands adjourned. Um, I just wanted to let people know, Iknow Commissioner