"[GAVEL] Welcome To The Regular Meeting Of The Public Health And Safety Committee For May 21, 2025. I Am Jason Chavez, And I Am The Chair Of This Committee. Before We Call Today'S Meeting To Order, We Will To A Short Presentation In Honor Of Mental Health Awareness Month. Our Colleagues And Staff Will Join Along Up Here. Does This Work? >> All Right. We'Re Sig Super Excited By Honog Mental Health Awareness Month. We Will Start Out Reading The Resolution And Pass It On To Staff. Speakers To Moderate The Speed Whereas, Mental Health Awareness Month Is Observed Every May To Raise Awareness About Mental Health, Reduce Stigma, And Promote Well-Being For Individuals And Communities; And Whereas, Mental Health Challenges Affect Many In Our Community. About 60% Of Minneapolis Residents Report That Their Mental Health Is Not Good At Least One Day A Month And One In Four Minneapolis Residents Report That Their Mental Health Is Not Good For More Than One Week At A Time; And Whereas, The Minneapolis Health Department Acknowledges That May Is Mental Health Awareness Month With The Theme \u201cIt'S Ok To Not Be Ok: Break The Silence, End The Stigma\u201d; And Whereas, Mental Health Awareness Month Will Also Include Weekly Themes \u201cIt'S Ok To Not Be Ok: \u2018Man Up' Is Not The Answer;\u201d It'S Ok To Not Be Ok: Speak Up, Reach Out, Heal Together; And \u201cIt'S Ok To Not Be Ok: Every Mind Deserves Care;\u201d And Whereas, The City Of Minneapolis Is Committed To Supporting Initiatives Such As The 988 Hotline That Prioritize Mental Health Services, Education, And Outreach To Ensure All Residents Have Access To The Resources They Need To Lead Healthy, Fulfilling Lives; And Whereas, Community Partnerships, Including Those With Local Organizations, Healthcare Providers, Schools, And Government Agencies, Are Vital In Creating A Comprehensive System Of Care That Addresses The Mental Health Needs Of All Minneapolis Residents; And Whereas, City Employees Are Provided Resources To Improve Their Mental Wellbeing Such As The Employee Assistance Program, Ten Mental Health Visits Covered By Insurance At 100%, Access To Group And Private Sessions On A Variety Of Topics That Impact Mental Well-Being, Online Support, And Various Mental Health Resources In The My Health Rewards By Medica Program. Now, Therefore, Be It Resolved That The City Of Minneapolis Declares That May 2025 Is Mental Health Awareness Month And Calls Upon All Residents And Employees To Join In Promoting Mental Health Awareness, Understanding, And Compassion While Also Supporting Efforts To Improve Mental Health Services And Resources Across Our City. >> Well, Thank You, Everybody, For Being Here And Thank You To The City Council For Recognizing May As Mental Health Awareness Month. Mental Health And Well Thread T Through All Our Live, But Where We See Mental Illness, We Also Know That Even Though That Is A Stand Alone Issue, It Exacerbates Poverty And Substance Use Issues. We Are Really Using This Month To Bring Awareness Around Mental Health And Just Mental Health Hygiene And Then We Also Want To Normalize Mental Health. There Is Deep Stigma In Our East African, In Our Native Communities And Also In Our Latinx Communities, Which Is Why Our Theme It'S Okay Not To Be Okay On The Posters Is Translated Into All Of Those Languages. And We Have Those Resources And All Those Languages As Well. We Are Also Hoping That This Message Resonates With Every Community And That People Take The Time To Learn About The Resources That We Have To Offer, To Spend Tom Time Thinking About How They Can Maintain Mental Health And Not Wait Until There'S A Mental Health Crisis, And Then We'Re Also Looking At The 988 Hotline, Which Is The Hotline That Anybody Can Call When They Just Need To Talk Or They Are In Crisis. And We'Re Able To Monitor The Calls And See What Time Of Impact That This Campaign Is Able To Make And So Again, Just Really, Really Grate To Feel The City Council For Helping Us Recognize May As Mental Health Month. I Want To Thank All Of The Staff. We'Ve Got Human Resources Here And I Know They'Re Going To Say A Few Words. And So They Really Take Care Of Me And All The Other Employees Here At The City. So Thank You For That. And We Also Have Several Members Of The Health Department Here That Have Helped Work To Make May Into The Campaign That We Have Today. So Thank You Very Much. >> Thank You For Recognizing The Importance Of Mental Health And Mental Health Awareness For The City And For Our Employees. In Particular, We Take It Very Seriously. We Have Done A Lot Of Work In The Last Five Years Around Expanding Resources To Be Available For Our Employees So That They Are Able To Take Care Of Themselves In All Ways Mental And Physical. And We Actually Kicked It Off With Campaign Called \"It'S Okay To Not Be Okay\" Back In 2020. I Am Glad To See It Coming Back Around And Really Recognizing That Is How We Feel Here At The City. It'S Okay, But It'S Also Okay To Take Care Of Yourself. >> Anybody Else? Cool. We'Ll Step Up Here For A Photo And Thank The Staff For The Work They Are Doing Not Just This Month, But Every Single Month In Minneapolis. Before We Begin The Meeting, I Want To Offer A Friendly Reminder To All Members And Staff That These Meetings Are Broadcast Live To Enable Greater Public Participation. These Broadcasts Include Real-Time Captioning As A Further Method To Increase The Accessibility Of Our Proceedings To The Community. Therefore, All Speakers Need To Be Mindful Of The Rate Of Their Speech So That Our Captioners Can Fully Capture And Transcribe All Comments For The Broadcast. We Ask All Speakers To Moderate The Speed And Clarity Of Their Comments. At This Time I Will Ask The Clerk To Call The Roll So We Can Verify A Quorum. Council Member Payne, Present. Rainville, Present. Ellison, Here. Palmisano, Here. Vice Chair Wonsley Is Absent. Chair Chavez. >> Present. >> Let The Record Reflect That We Have A Quorum. With That, The Agenda For Today'S Meeting Is Before Us. There Are Four Items On Today'S Consent Agenda. Item Two Is Producing A Staff Direction For Public Restroom Programs. And Item Three Is Homegrown Minneapolis Food Council. Four Is A Contract Amendment To The Hennepin County Attorney'S Office For The Sexual Assault Initiative Grant Program. And As We Did Earlier -- Wait, And Item Five Is Authorizing An Extension To A Contract With The Department Of Justice For A Grant Related To Recruiting Police Officers. I Also Want To Make Sure That, I Believe, In This We Will Also Have The Resolution As A Part Of It. Item One Is The Mental Health Awareness Month Honorary Resolution. With That, Colleagues, First Person On Queue Is Council Member Rainville. >> Thank You. I Don'T Have My Laptop With Me. I Have A Question Of Council Member Ellison. I Am Going To Vote For This, But You Had Brought Up A Really Interesting Point Yesterday In Our Other Committee Meeting About Having Some Of These Legislative Directives Perhaps Go Back For A One On One Conversation With Council Members As Opposed To Presentations By Staff. Would You Feel That This Might Be An Example Of What You Talked About Yesterday That We Would Be Best Having This Come Back To Us Individually? >> I Have My Opinion. Just That I Do Think That, You Know, I Understand That The Formal Way That We Get Information Is To Write These Legislative Directives And Staff Directives. I Do Think In Some Instances They Can Come Back To The Council Member Who Requested Them At Least First, So That We Know Whether It'S Worthwhile For Us To Come And Have A Presentation At A Committee. Yesterday We Had A Presentation At The Committee That I Felt Like Could Have Been, You Know, Kind Of A 15-Minute, 30-Minute Briefing Between A Council Member And The Interested Staff Or Staff With The Interested Council Member. This One Is Hard To Tell, But Maybe Have A Practice Of Bringing The Information To Council Members First Before Bringing It Baing To Committee. And It Is Also The -- Pr Before Bringing It Back To The Committee. The Reason I Say That Is Because I Don'T Want To Be Bothered With The Amount Of Time, But More Honest Conversation Cans Sometimes Happen When We'Re Not On Public Broadcast, And We Can Get Better Answers, And Staff, Who Sometimes Don'T Always Know What We'Re Getting At When We Write A Legislative Directive Can Get Clarity On What The Council Actually Does And Does Not Want To Know During A Broadcast Presentation As Opposed To Us Figuring That Out Together In Realtime On Public Pras. That'S My Opinion, But I'Ll Sort Of Defer To The Authors On How They Want To Handle It, But I Would Certainly Advise It. >> I Want To Address The Business, Housing And Zoning Committee. The Reason I Drafted That Legislative Directive Was Because There Was A Fee Schedule Coming To The Business, Housing And Zoning Committee. And One Of The Things My Constituents Have Brought Up Is About The Kind Of Inspections That Happen Need To Improve And That Sometimes There Is Not Enough Staff To Make Sure There'S More Inspections Happening Across The City. Instead Of My Office Arbitrarily Picking Numbers, We Thought We Could Work With Staff To Have A Study And See What We Could Do More To Have More Practical Inspections Across The City Because That Is Something We Definitely Struggle With Least In The Phillips Community. So That Was What The Intention Of That Legislative Directive Was. And It Was Meant To Be A Collaborative Effort, Which Is Why We Worked On That Legislative Directive With Staff Closely To Make Sure That There Was Adequate Language In Place. So I Just At Least Want To Add More Information About How That Work Came To Be. It Was A Collaborative Effort With Staff. Every Time I Work On Legislative Directives, I Send It To Staff To Get Input And Advice And That Is How I Approach It As An Elected Official. When It Comes To That, Item Two And Council Member, Rainville, Initially This Was A Legislative Directive. And This Was The Result Of Us Going To Washington, D.C. And Seeing The Public Restroom Infrastructure. As I Mention Earlier, I Always Send My Legislative Directives To Staff, So With That, Administration Staff Actually Included Policy And Research Team In A Meeting And Said Maybe This Is More Appropriate For The Policy And Research Team That We Have In The City. So Through That Collaboration, We Decided To Move From A Legislative To Staff Direction And Working With The Ddco'S At The Table, With Our Staff At The Table, Making Sure This Is Collaborative. And I Mention All The Work That It Isn'T Just Because I Am Bringing The Legislative Direction Or Staff Direction Because I Want To. It'S Because Sometimes Things Take More Than Five Hours. If It Takes More Than Five Hours, It Is A Requirement To Do A Legislative Directive Per Our City Rules. So I At Least Want To Make Sure -- >> Yeah. >> So I Just Want To Acknowledge That Information, Right? So This Went From A Legislative Directive To A Staff Directive To Being Delayed Multiple Times Now. And My Intention Was To Have This Done Months Ago. But There Was A Whole Process And My Intention Was Let'S Be Collaborative. I Don'T Want To Make This A Complicated Issue. That'S Why It'S Been Delayed So Much. I At Least Want To Add For Information. Council Member Ellison? >> Thank You. I Want To Clarify That I Think -- Whether Or Not A Presentation From A Staff Directive Comes Back To A Committee For Presentation Or Just Back To The Individual Council Member For A Private Briefing Has Nothing To Do With The Worthiness Of The Information. Even The Information I Wasn'T Certain That It Needed To Come Before Committee From Yesterday, I Still Felt Like The Information Was Worthy Of The Information -- Of Request. I Myself As My First Year, There Was A Time In Which Regulatory Services Just Used Them As An Example Because They Were The Subject Of That Legislative Directive. They Needed A Lot Of -- There Needed To Be Some Restructuring Happening There Especially Early In My Tenure. These Were The Kinds Of Questions That Got Asked. That Happened. A Lot Of Perform Happened In The Regulatory Services And Especially In The First Three. And So It'S Worthy Of The Information, But Is This Always The Best Platform For Us To Get The Most, Like, Accurate Information? Sometimes There Are Nuanced Questions That Just, I Hate To Say It, But They'Re Just Not Going To Get Hashed Out On This Dais. I Think They Can Get Hashed Out Either In One Or Multiple Briefings, You Know, In A Conference Room Somewhere. That'S Mostly What I'M Saying So That When We Do Get Things In Front Of Us, They Are Sort Of The Most, Like, Polished, Vetted, And Thought Through. It'S Not About What Information Is Worthy To Come Before Committee And What Information Is Unworthy. It'S More Like, You Know, Are Rewalely Getting What We Need And Would A Different Setting Help Us Get What We Better Need. >> Thank You. I Think When It Comes To These, I Will Add These For Approval. If Members Want To Add Themselves As Authors Of The Mental Health Awareness, And I Would Add Everybody On The Body As Authors. All Right. Clerk, Every Member Of The Body Except Council Member Wonsley Who Can'T Be Here Today Would Be An Author On That. More In General About The Public Restroom Staff Direction. I Think The Post Of This Is To Make Sure, I Think It'S Always Important To Have Information. Once Of The Concerns I Hear From A Lot Of Residents In My Ward And From Conversations I Have With My Colleagues Is The Type Of Public Bathroom And Restroom Infrastructure We Have In The City Of Minneapolis. There Is Some Public Restrooms And It Is Important To Have That Information And Cities Across The Country That Make It Safe, Clenly And Accessible For Residents To Be Able To Use It. I Think That Is An Important Aspect Of Our City Enterprise To Figure Out How We Could Have More Public Restrooms Available, But Again, I Don'T Have The Information Of -- I Don'T Have The Ability To Say What Is The Best Direction For Minneapolis And Having Our Staff Do Some Of The Research Would Be Helpful For The Body To At Least Consider In The Future When This Would Come Back. This Is A Result Of Some Of Our Colleagues Going To Washington, D.C. On Behalf Of The City Of Minneapolis And We Saw Pretty Cool Restroom Access We Got To See Downtown. We Thought Maybe It Would Be Good For Us To Learn What Other Cities Across The Country Are Doing. I Think When You Hear Calls Of People Using The Public Restroom In People'S Backyards, Next To A Business, You Go To Figure Out How To Mitigate Some Of The Concerns. I Think This Could Be An Opportunity For Us To At Least Create More Accessibility For The Rest Of The City. I Wanted To Mention What The Plan Of The Staff Direction Was. And I Know That There Is Language That We'Re Going To Be Changing In Consultation With The City Attorney'S Office, But It'S Been A Long Day. We Will Get To That At Full Council With An Amendment On That. With That, I Want To Give Some Information On The Directive. Anybody Else? Okay. So I'Ll Move Approval Of These Items. All Those In Favor Say Aye. Those Opposed Say Nay. That Carries And The Consent Agenda Is Approved. Our Next Item Is Receiving And Filing An Update From The Civil Rights Department On Their Work. Here To Present On That Item Is Director Michelle Phillips And Director Carmen Diarra. >> Thank You So Much, Chair Chavez And Members Of The Committee. Michelle Phillips, Director Of Civil Rights. Before I Get Started, I Just Want To Thank You, Guys For The Opportunity To Come Here Today And Share About The Updates With The Department As A Whole. I Am Here As Chair Chavez Said With Our Deputy Director As Well As Our Associate Directors For All Of Our Divisions. We Have Associate Director Russell Fujisawa Who Oversees The Office Of Police Conduct Review. The Associate Director Brian Walsh Who Oversees The Labor Standards Enforcement Division, The Associate Director Vaughan Who Oversees The Complaint Investigation Division And Lastly, But Not Least, We Have The Associate Director Johnny Burns Who Oversees The Contract Compliance Division, So Yes, We Have Quite A Few Business Lines And I Am Happy And Proud That The Leadership Could Be With Us Today. So To Let You Know We Will Go Through The Slides And Start With The Administration And Then Contract Division, Complaint Investigations Division, And Then We'Ll End It Off With Our Labor Standards Enforcement Division With Additional Information. So Our Administration Kind Of Division Is What I Like To Call Our Central Hub For The Civil Rights Department. When I Came July Of 2024, There Were A Lot Of Silos Within The Divisions And A Lot Of The Administrative Functions Were Built Into The Divisions And There Was No Centralized Kind Of Communication. So What We Did Under Our Leadership Is We Created A Centralized Process Where All Of The Department'S Work Would Fall Through From The Director And Deputy Director Through With One Mission, One Vision, One Goal That Worked Through The Strategic Planning And We All Worked Through The Budget Items, All Of Our Travel And The Information, Direction, And Leadership Then Comes Through That Particular Division. So It Provides A Lot Of The Management, Resource Direction And Coordination For The Department. The Last Several Months Our Leadership Has Worked With The Human Resources Department To Revamp Our Mission, Vision, And Goals As Well As Our Prior Tis. This Is What We Have Landed On. This Is A Collaborative Effort. We Also Had Some Surveys That Were Done So Our Staff Had Input To Move Forward For The Department As We Reimagine What The Department Of Civil Rights Looks Like. Our Mission Is For The Minneapolis Civil Rights Department To Protect And Advance Human Rights With Accountability And Impartial Investigations, To Empower Community. Our Vision As We Move Forward As The People'S Investigator. We Strive To Eliminate Civil Rights Violations In The City Of Minneapolis By Rooting Ourselves In Service, Justice, And Community, And Working To Remove Systemic And Institutional Barriers That Cause Harm. Collectively, We Decided Our Values Are Integrity, Accountability, Justice, And Trust And Equity. Our Priorities As We Move Forward Will Be To Improve And Standardize Our Timelines, Create Documents Alignment Where Possible, And Standardize Operating Procedures Across All The Department'S Divisions. Increase Community Engagement And Redefine And Implement Ordinances And Policies To Make Sure That There Is A Clear Direction And Alignment For All Of Our Work. This Is The Old Org Chart We Had Around June, July Of Last Year That I Was Given. And As Most Of You Guys Know, There Has Been A Lot Of Restructuring And Reorganization To Make Sure That We Have Optimization Of Our Limited Resources And We Are Effective And Efficient In How We Execute Our Duties. What You Will Now See Here Is The Clear Delineation Of Our Divisions As Well As The Three Boards And/Or Commissions That We Support. How We Were Able To Kind Of Transition And Realign Our Work And Portfolio Is That Myself And Our Deputy Director Separated Our Lines Of Business. So I Oversee The Office Of Police Conduct Review. The Deputy Director Reports Up To Me And She Oversees Directly The Labor Standards Enforcement Division And The Complaint Investigations Division. This Helps Make Sure We Have Accountability To The Associate Directtors And The Ability To Respond Where We Need To. A Linear Organizational Chart Was Not Something Feasible For Any Director, So We Had To Reimagine What That Looks Like So That We Can Support The Staff So That They Can Get The Work Done And The Answers As Quickly As They Possibly Can. The Administration Department Is There At The Top And You Can See The Business Lines Throughout. We Also Notice It Was A Flat Organization And The Associate Directors Truly Needed Some Support As Far As Leads And/Or Supervision. During The Legislative Directive, A Couple Of Weeks Ago, You Saw Restructuring Of Ocpr. I Will Not Belabor That, But There Are Three New Supervisor Positions To Help With That Body Of Work. For Contract Compliance We Created A Supervisor Position As Well To Support That Body Of Work And The Programmatic Work That They Need To Use As Far As The Small, Underutilized Business Program So We Can Be More Intentional About Getting More Folks To Work And Apply For That Particular Program Throughout Community. So I Will Go Ahead And Talk About Contract Compliance Division High Level. Of Course, This Is Under My Portfolio, But Our Associate Director Is Here If There Are Any Specific Questions That All May Have. The Division Responsibilities Are To Insure That The Small, Underutilized Businesses Have An Opportunity To Bid And Committee On City Funded And Federally Funded Projects And Insure That Contractors Are Taking Affirmative Steps To Recruit And Retain Indigenous People, People Of Color And Women And Minority-Owned Businesses. We Strive To See That Contractors Pay Accordingly In City Funded And Federally Funded Projects The The Goals Are Achieved Through Active Monitoring Of Contracts Which Include Interviewing Workers And On Site Visits. We Also Certify M.B.E. Minority Business Enterprises And W.B.E., Women Business Intersurprise Firms Through The Minnesota Certified Unification Program. This Is A New Structure Where You See The Supervisor That Is There To Support The Director As That Work Moves Forward. That Individual Was Placed In That Position In The Last Month. They Are Training Up With The Associate Director To Assume A Larger Role Over The Contract Compliance Officer One'S As Well As Two'S And That Execute The Work. We Wanted To Provide Statistics As Far As The Quarter One Update. For The Construction Contracts, We Have Had 30 Contracts Year To Date In This Quarter That Equalled Up To Approximately 71 Million That Are Under Active Monitoring By The Contract Compliance Division. Professional Technical Services, 27 Contracts. Procter & Gambles Approximately $60 Million. Goods And Services And Other Goods And Contracts, $486,000. Cped Contracts That We Are Actively Monitoring, $98 Million. And Any Upcoming And In Process Contracts, There Are Six That We Are Awaiting And Working On Processing, Which Is Approximately $61 Million. In This Year, Quarter One, They Have Certified 16 M.B.E. And W.B.E. Firms And 73 Affirmative Action Plans For Quarter One And Six Contracts For Wage Investigations Which Impacted Five Workers, $3,910 Dollars Were Covered And The Average For That Per Worker Was $651. Our Focus As We Continue To Move Forward Is To Focus On Outregion And Education. We Did Start Interviewing For A Community Engagement Position For Our Department, Which Will Be For The Entire Department To Suspect All The Divisions Within. Challenges To The Affirmative Action Divisions As Well As Actively Working With City Attorney And National Partners To Ensure We Are In Align Wment Best Practices And Providing The Services With Eneed To Make Sure There Is Accessible To Contracts With The City Via Our Programs And There Is The Opportunity To Enforce That Work As Minority And Women-Owned Businesses On City Contracts. I Am Now Going To Talk About The Office Of Police Conduct Review That Is An Overview Of The Division To Insure All Folks And Members Of The Public Understand, Again, What The Kind Of Mission, Vision, And Goals Are Within Our Division Of Civil Rights. The Mission Of Office Police Conduct Review Is To Ensure There Are Impartial Division And Execute Their Investigations And Through An Impartial Neutral Lens. They Also Only Investigate Public Allegations Of Police Misconduct By City Of Minneapolis Police Officers. There Has Been A Significant Hiring Effort, Which Is One Focus. And As Of This Week, The Office Of Police Conduct Review Is Fully Staffed. There Is Reorganizational Structure To Ensure We Are Working And Executing In The Manner We Need To To Support All Of Our Efforts. That Includes The Community Commission On Police Oversight. We Are Working On Establishing Relationships With Community Partners. This Is A Closer Look At The Organizational Structure As The Associate Director Went Through Briefly. To The Legislative Directive At C.O.W. And That Is To Insure We Do Not Have A Backlog Again. They Triage The Cases As They Come In And As They Are Vetted Appropriately And Overseen By The Associate Director, Those Case Wills Go Through To The Investigations Supervisor And That Unit To Be Assigned For Complete Investigation And Unit Investigation. This Is A Quick Breakdown About Each Of The Units And I Won'T Go Through Every Single One In-Depth, But As I Stated Before, Complaint Cans Be Filed Through The Intake Unit And A Couple Of Different Ways That You Can Do That. In-Person, In City Hall. We Are Working On Accessibility. We Are Working With The Building To Make Sure We Are Accessible To The Members Of The Community And Out In Community That Way People Know Where We Are And How They Can Access Us As Well As Calling 311 And Opcr Directly And Also File Complaints Online Via Email At Police Review At Minneapolis Dot Gov. And We Have Received Some Snail Mail. They Can File A Complaint Via The U.S. Postal Service And To Do The Intake Interview And Know That Our Folks Are Access And Can Get With Need When They Come To The Ocpr. That Unit Gathers The Information To Assess The Investigation, Which Could Include Body Warn Cameras As Well As Police Reports And Any Other Additional Information A Complaintant Or Witness May Have And Complete The Investigation Credibility Assessment As Well As Any Officer Interviews, Witness Interview, Analyze The Body Worn Camera And Draft The Report For Submittal And Review. Once They Are Reviewed By The Supervisor And Approved, They Will Be Routed For Panel Review Which Provides For Community Oversite By Way Of Fairy And Thoroughly Reviewing The Police Investigations As Outlined In The Ordinance. Two Police Officers, Rank Of Lieutenant Or Higher. Two Civilians, And With The Amendment That Passed A Month And A Half Ago, We Also Have Supplemental Support From The Civil Rights Commission Volunteers As Well Which Has Added To Our Ability To Move The Work Through. >> Most Of You Guys Already Nose These Stats A The Report Came Out Yet, And It Is Repetitive, But I Will Say It Again. Ocpr Started With 234 Complaints In The Backlog. All Of Those Complaints Have Been Reviewed. When We Say Reviewed, We Also Mean That We Assumed A Lot Of Work That Came From Other Individuals. We Had To Go Back Through And Kind Of Audit The Work That We Assumed That They Were Thorough And We Didn'T Miss The Policy Violations And The Routing Decisions Were Correct. When We Came In, Myself And The Associate Director, We Had To Go Back Through And The Supervisors And Go Back Through The Routing Process. We Couldn'T Just Move Them Forward, Which Delayed Some Of The Completion Of The Reviews. All Of Those Have Been Included Through Intake And Currently We Have 54 In Admin Investigations. They Are Assign And Actively Being Investigated By The Investigators Within Ocpr. Backlog Prevention. Staffing Up Is Something We Have Already Done And Assume The Duty Where Is We Need To Assume The Duties. Before Coming In, There Was Kind Of A Chasing The Backlog, So They Chased It In At Intake And No Resources To Administration And Administrative Investigations, Which Means Cases Started Building Up There. With The New Structure, We Are Intentional And Strategic In Staffing And That The Work Moves In Accordance With The Ordinance As Well As In The Settlement Agreement. >> Thank You. Welcome. >> Thanks, Director Phillips. Good Afternoon, Council Members. Happy To Be Here. Yes, I Will Discuss The Complaint Investigations Division And The Labor Standards Enforcement Division'S Work. So The Complaint Investigations Division Is To Enforce The Minneapolis Civil Rights Ordinance By Receiving And Receiving Complaints Of Discrimination. We Have A Nice Video On The Website That Gives A Good Overview Of This, But I Played That In One Of The Committee Meetings Fairly Recently, So I'M Not Going To Do That Again, But As A General Matter, To Have Jurisdiction To Investigate On Protected Class, Something About Your Identity You Cannot Including Race, Sex, Disability And More That You Cannot Change. We Have Jurisdiction To Investigation Discrimination In Many Different Areas Of Life Including Employment, Housing, Public Services, And More. Some Of The Activities And Outcomes To Report From This Division Is That The Division Closed 70 Cases In 2024 And Has Closed 20 Cases So Far In 2025. That Is Not An Indication That We Are Behind The Normal Numbers. We Tend To Prioritize That End Of Year Deadline And Spend The First Half Of The Next Year Focused And The More Complex Praises That Take Longer To Move Through The Investigative Process. In 2024 The Complaint Investigations Division Facilitated $20 # O,000 To Monetary Settlement To Victims Of Discrimination And A Little More Than $30,000 So Far In 2025. And Over Last Year And Into This Year, Facilitated 28 Mediated Settlement Agreements. So Sofa -- So Facilitated Many More, But To Reach An Agreement In A Discrimination Case. And The Division Is Focused On An Effective Timeline. That Is A Priority The Last Couple Of Years. Our Expectation Is That Investigators Complete Within 150 Days And We'Re Able To Meet That About 70% Of The Time. Certainly With The Goal Of That Continuing To Increase That Percentage. There Are Sometimes Complex Cases That Take Additional Time. The Complaint Investigations Facility Division Has Facilitated No Longer A Backlog Of Appeals Before The Department And Dismisses The Case, A Person Is Able To Appeal That. Those Appeals Are Reviewed By Our Civil Rights Commissioners And For Many Years This Was A Standing Backlog And That Was Cleared A Couple Of Years Ago And We Have Maintain Nod Backlog In Those Cases Moving Through. Additionally, There Is Continued To Be An Increase In Public Hearings. Those Are Before Our Evidentiary Hearings And When The Department Has Found Probable Cause That Discrimination Occurred But Not Able To Reach A Successful Settlement Agreement With The Parties. Those Are Time Consuming And We Are Appreciative Of The Commissioners Who Serve On Those As Well As They Are An Important Part Of The Adjudicative Process. This Is An Overview Of The Staff Within Our Complaint Investigations Division, So We Have An Associate Director Vaughan Who Is Here Who Leads This Division And Two Intake Koo Coordinators. Globally We Refer To These Folks As Investigators And Two Officers Two Who Are Tasked With The Complex Cases. And Some Really Exciting Things That Are In The Realm Of Complaint Investigations, As You Know, We Had Amendment To The Civil Rights Ordinance Pass Including Housing Status, Height And Weight, And Justice Impact Like Requiring Employers To Provide Religious Accommodation, Expanding To Investigation Pay Equity Issues And A Few Other Things. And Procedural Updates That Help Us Do Our Jobs To The Best Of Our Ability. The Division Is Foe Focused On Outreach And Protections And Insure That The Community Is Aware And Comes To Us With Discrimination In The Areas. The Amendment Wills Go Into Effect On August 1, 2025, And Between Now And Then We Are Connecting With Community Partner, Service Provideers And Reaching Out To The Community Itself. We Will Do Learning Sessions Within The Enterprise That Interacts With The Community And Jobs And With Community As Well. As These Go Into Effect, We Will Be Tracking Complaints Received And Case Outcomes To See What The Impact Of The New Protections Is. In A Similar Vein, I Am Excited To Report Most Recent, Prior To These Amendments, Around Source Of Income Discrimination. As Of December 2022, We Were Able To Support The Division That Bars Or Prohibits Discrimination Against Section 8 Housing Vouchers And No Longer Turned Away Or Face Different Terms And Conditions Of The Housing Because They Have A Section 8 With Property Owners And Landlords And With The Folks With Section 8 Housing Vouchers And Have Received Many Complaints On This From April Of 2024 To April Of The Wife The Wife, We Received 54 Complaints, Issued 11 Charges And Closed 48 Cases And Settlements Were Reached Totalling More Than $58,000. So This Is A Response From Community That They Are Aware These Protections Exist And Are Coming To Us When They Are They Are Having These Experiences, Which Is Encouraging. Moving To The Labor Standard Divisions And To Resolve Disputes Or Demand Back Wages And Damages Owed To Workers And Monitor Ongoing Compliance With The Labor Standards. As A General Point T Labor Standards In Minneapolis Include Sick And Safe Time, The City'S Minimum Wage And Overtime And Other Forms Of Wage Theft And Key Activities And Investigations. And Collected Over $540,000 In Settlements And This Impacted 1,367 Workers. And To Date In 2025, The Division Has Closed 73 Cases And Collected Over $154,000. And We Also Have Staff In Our Labor Standards Enforcement Division Monitoring 16 Settlements Actively In 2025 And Those Settlements Include Training And/Or Policy Changes To Insure That Future Violations Do Not Happen. The Staff And The Labor Standards Enforcement Division Has Provided 251 Technical Assistance And Know Your Rights Consultations Over 2024 And So Far In 2025. This Is The Structure Of The Labor Standards Enforcement Division. We Have The Associate Director Brian Walsh, An Intake Coordinator, And Known As Investigators. We Have One Complaint Investigation One And An Administrative Analyst Two Who Supports A Lot Of The Programmatic Work That Runs Through Our Labor Standards Enforcement Division. So Some Key Milestones. A Couple Of Really Exciting Things In This Israelment Of Work Over The Last Few Months, One Of The Biggest Milestones Is The Division Reached $2 Million In Back Wages And Damages Recovered Since Its Inception, Which Is A Really Big Number And Demonstrates The Impact This Work Has Particularly For Workers Across The City. And Then Edition To That Monitor Amount, They Have Provided 4,600 Free Consultations To Both Business Owners And Workers. And Then Since 2018 Has Resolved 1,000 Cases Involving 16,000 Workers And Have Been Investigated And 393 Settlements Have Been Reached. In Addition To The Monetary Amounts And Back Wages And For All Parties Involved And Pushing That Compliance Into The Future In Hope That The Violation Do Not Occur In Work Places. The Additional Milestone Is This Is A Part Of A Referral Of A Case That We Investigated That Was Referred To The Hennepin County Attorney'S Office And Pursued And They Did, We Saw The First Ever Felony Wage Theft Conviction. This Sent A Powerful Message So Anyone Cheating The System And Stealing Wages From The Workers. This Is An Important Milestone Of The Division As Well. So To Go To An And Code Enforcement And The Small Business Compliance Pilot Has Trained Community-Based Bookkeepers Who Are Now Equipped To Move Forward And Identify Potential Labor Noncompliance With The Community Business Owners That They Work With. In 2025 Our Partners In This Project Successfully Trained 30-Community Based Book Keepers And Labor Standard Compliance And Will Be Where The Complaints Are Being Made And They Have To Do Investigations, Though, Of Course, We Will Always Do That When Needed. And Then Also Coenforcement. The Objective Of Coenforcement Is To Empower To Learn, Spread The Word And Enforce Through Labor Standards, Intervention And Prevention And Reducing Barriers To Access City And Legal Services. So We Executed A New Contract For Co-Enforcement This Year In 2025 And That Includes New Performance Metric, Tracking, Types Of Worker Outreach, Training, Complaint Navigation And Support That'S Provided By Our Co-Enforcement Partner And Has Set The Goals That Are Here On The Slide. The Goal To Meet With 3,000 Workers Across 300 Work Places In The City Of Minneapolis. Hold 30 Trainings For 500 Workers And Complete Intake On Potential Complaints For 150 Workers And Provide Ongoing Support For 75 Workers. We Look Forward To Pointing Out The Meeting Of Those Goals In The Future. Moving Beyond Our Divisions To The Important Partnership And Work With The Boards And Divisions. We Provide The Staff'S Support And The Civil Rights Department To The Civil Rights Division And The Community Commission On Police Oversight As Well As The Work Place Advisory Committee And We Are Very Appreciative Of The Work That Our Board And Commission Members Put In. We Understand They Do This In A Voluntary Capacity And Yet This Is A Lot Of Time And Effort They Put Into This Work, So We Want To Call That Out And Thank Them For Their Work And Dedication In This Area. To Highlight A Couple Of Things From The Civil Rights Commission, They Were Able To Partner On The Amendments To The Civil Rights Ordinance And Brought Forth The Idea Of Including Height And Weight As A Protected Class. This Is A Big Recent Accomplishment Of The Civil Rights Commission. They Are Tangible In Involved In Impacting What Gets Included In City Ordinance. That Is A Big Thing And Something They Are All Proud Of. We Have Seen An Increase In Public Hearings Before The Civil Rights Commission Which Has Really Called On Them To Invest A Lot Of Time In Those Cases And We'Re Very Appreciative Of That. They'Re Working On A 2025 Youth Essay Contest. They Did One In 2024 For Middle Schoolers That Was Quite Successful And Really Valuable Way For The Commission To Engage With Communities So They Look Forward To Do That In 2025 And TO CELEBRATE THE 50th Anniversary. The Civil Rights Commission Has Been Around 50 Years As Of This Year, So We'Re Excited To Partner With Them Toing A Knowledge And Celebrate That Accomplishment As Well. Moving To The Community Commission On Police Oversight And Investment In Training To Make Sure Folks On The Ccpo Have The Tools They Need To Do What Is Required Of Their Role Effectively. And That Has Included Internal Trainings Facilitated By The Civil Rights Department Or Other Departments Across The Enterprise And Significant Training With Nacole, And Really The Premier Association Around This Work Has Provided Valuable Training As Well. A Focus On The Review Panel Work That Runs Through The Ccpo. Working Cases Through The Entire Investigative Process Is A High Priority In That. In 2024, They Were Able To Review 19 Cases But Already In 2025 Even Though We Are Not Halfway Through The Year, They Are 26 Cases In. We Appreciate Their Time And Dedication To Those Cases. And Then I Will Also Highlight The Ccpo Held A Public Hearing On Police Policies Last Week, Which Is Another One Of The Things That They Are Entrusted And Required To Do Under The Ordinance. And So That Was Successful As Well. I Will Highlight Our Really Big Focus On Training Across The Civil Rights Department. We Really Have Wanted To Engage In Insuring That Our Staff Have All The Tools They Need To Do Their Job As Effectively As They Can. To That End, Folks Have Engaged In Many Different Kind Of Trainings Across The Different Divisions And National Civilian Oversite For Staff And Members Of The Ccpo And Training And Internal Affairs Investigations, Which, Of Course, Go Insides With The Office Of Police Conduct Review. And Mediation Training To Provides Mediations In House When Necessary And Appropriate. And Sending Folks, As I Was Actually Just At This Myself Yesterday. To The Employment Law Institute To Make Sure The Labor Standards And Complaint Investigations Staff Have All Of The Tools And Are Up To Date On The Developments In The Many Different Areas Of Employment Law That Touch Our Work. Just To Highlight, I Think We Have Covered Some Of This As We Have Gone Through The Presentation, But The Overview Of What We Consider Our Biggest Achievements Of 2025 As The Civil Rights Department. We Have Engaged In A Pretty Extensive Process As Director Phillips Highlighted Creating An Updated Mission, Vision, And Values For The Department That Had Buy-In And Involvement, I Think, Of Folks Across The Department At All The Different Levels. And Continued Support Of The Pilot Program To Support Minneapolis Small Business Compliance With The City'S Labor Laws. That Is Our Small Business Compliance Project. Assisting The City Clerk'S Office With Providing More Direction And Support For Our Community Commission On Police Oversight And The Important Work That They Do. And Continuing To Work To Meet The Terms Of The Minnesota Department Of Human Rights Court Enforceable Settlement Agreement. And A New, We'Re Working On A New Case Management System For Our Office Of Police Conduct Review, An And That Work Continues. Passage Of The Amendments To The Civil Rights Ordinance Are All Things We Want To Lift Up That We'Re Proud Of And Also That We Appreciate Our Staff And Partners For All Their Investment In Assisting And Make That Happen. And Future Plan, We Want To Highlight Reviewing And Updating Quality Assurance Protocols, Policies And Procedures For The Department, Just To Make Sure We'Re Doing Our Jobs In The Best Way That We Can And Also In A Cohesive Way Across The Whole Department, Versus By Division, That Moving Out Of Silos As Director Phillips Noted. Centralization Of The Administrative Work For The Department For Greater Financial Oversight And Ability And The Prop Active Community Engagement And In A Position To Focus On That Here In The Coming Weeks. With That, I Will Close. Thank You So Much. We Are Very Happy To Answer Any Of Your Questions. >> Thank You So Much For The Presentation. I Will See If Any Of My Colleagues Are On Queue. Otherwise, I Can Ask A Few Questions That I Have. Thanks So Much For The Presentation And It Is Really Helpful. I Think You Mentioned $2 Million In Recovery Of Wages In 2017, Is That Right? >> From 2018 To Now. >> And Great. You Can Follow Up With Me And Wondering What That Number Has Been Since 2022, But I Don'T Have To Get That Answer Today. >> We Would Be Happy To Provide That Amendment. And I Did Have A Question About The Source Of Income Discrimination Charges. Is That Made Public? How Do People Know Who The People Being Charged Are? >> Chair Chavez, Thank You For The Question. We Cannot Share Investigation On Open Investigations. >> For Sure. >> We Should Consult With Our City Attorney'S Office. There Is Some Public Available Documentation After A Case Is Closed, But No Repository Or Proactive Data And Sharing Information. And Thank You For The Presentation And The Work And Our Staff At The Civil Rights Ordinance And Is Incredible To Have That With The Civil Rights Commission And How They Were Able To Influence Policy Making In This Process. So Thank You, All, To Your Staff And Yourselves Included On That Work. That Is All The Questions. I Will Pass It To Council Member Palmisano. >> Thank You, Mr. Chair. Thank You For This Presentation. I Have Two Different Topics. The First Came Up About Housing Discrimination. Through My Office I Have Recommended People To Civil Rights When They Feel They Have Experienced Different Types And How Do People Navigate That? Do They Know To Call You? Do They Know, Like, From An Outside Website Or Do You Get These Kind Of Routed To You From 311 Or Council Member Offices? Is There Any Kind Of Insight? >> There Are Many Ways To Make Complaints And That Goes For All The Divisions So You Can Make A Complaint Through 311, File One On The Website And We Have The Forms Available In The City'S Main Languages And Discrimination. If It'S A Housing Discrimination Issue, Police Conduct, So If There Is A Complaint Of Police Misconduct, And Labor Standards And Walk Into Our Office During Normal Business Hours And Fill Out A Paper Form If That Is What You Are More Comfortable With. We Certainly, You Know, Want To Be As Accessible As Possible And To Continue To Build Knowledge And Understanding Acos Community That These Services Exist. That Is Something We'Re Really Excited To Have Someone Coming On Who Will Be Really Focused And Community Engagement And Insuring More Of That Information Gets Out To Know How To Access Our Services And Hope We Provide Many Different Avenues To Make Folks As Comfortable As They Can Be. >> Through The Chair To Council Member Palmisano We Are Partnering With N.C.R. To Make Sure That The Materials Are Translated For Members Of The Originalized Communities And Where English Is Not The First Language. I Will Highlight That Council President Invited Our Office To Have A Presentation At One Of The Ward Meetings And We Have Been Work With To Coordinate To Meet Folks Where We Are And We Are Willing And Excited To Do A Presentation Specific To A Division, Housing, Any Or All Of The Divisions That We Have At Any Of Your Ward Meetings If That Is The Pleasure. >> So If I May Try To Answer My Own Question, What You'Re Saying Is There Isn'T One Particular Complaints And Through 311 Or One Of The Offices Or Anything Like That? >> >>En Anecdotally, We Can Say Online Is The Most Popular. And We Have Connected With Different Community Service Organizations That Work With Folks And We Have A Relationship With Minneapolis Public Housing, With Legal Aid, And Other Places That Might Do The Initial Intakes Or Be Aware Of Those Situations Happening. In The Source Of Income Discrimination With Section 8 Housing Vouchers, Often They Work With A Housing Navigator, And So We Have Trained The Housing Navigators To Insure That They Know That This Is A Protecti That Exists. And We Actually Have Complaints That Come Directly From The Housing Navigators Often Who They'Ve Watched Something Unfold That They Feel Like Is A Possible Violation And There Are Ways That Other Folks Come At It And Not Necessarily A Person Filling Out The Form And Send It In To Know We Are There And The Other Service Provideers. And By The Way, I Have Seen Them Promoted On Bulletin Boards And Direct Rec Centers. And I Go All Over The City Rec Centers For My Kids' Sports Things. It Wasn'T Nearby In Southwest Minneapolis. I Don'T Remember Where It Was, But I Was Pleased To See It. My Other Questions Are About Opcr. I Said This At Another Presentation And I'Ll Say It Again. Civil Rights Has Done Amazing Work To Reduce The Backlog Of Complaints. On Slide 14, Of The 54 Remaining Backlog Cases, What Is Your Expected Time Frame To Complete These? I Know It Said They Were Active Investigations. How Long Do You Think That Will Take? I Assume It Varies On The Type Of Complaint And In Terms Of Being Current With The Reasonable List Of Complaints, How Long Do You Think It Will Take Until We Clear At That Backlog? >> For The 54 That Remain From The Bag Lock Log To The Chair, We Are Anticipating Completing The Ocpr Investigative Work By August 31 Of This Year. That Is Our Anticipated Goal. We Are On Pace To Be Able To Hit That Goal And I Say Ocpr Meaning It Has Gone Through And Approved By The Associate Director And Still Has To Go Through The Panel Review Process And Be Routed To The Chief. Some Things Are A Little Bit Out Of Our Control As We Work To Stand Up A Little Bit More And I Do Want To Correct Something. We Are At 31 Year Year And We Had A Couple More Panels Since We Put This Slide Together, So I Want To Highlight The Dedicated Commissioners That Sit On Panels. And As They Do Panels As Well As The Committee Assignments And The Commission Meeting And I Know That Is A Huge Lift. To Answer Your Question Directly, We Anticipate August 31, 2025. >> That'S Great. If I May Add One Last Question, And I Might Have Taken This From An Old Slide And 180 Others That Were Revieweded And Completed Investigations. Are They Waiting For Review Panels Or What Is Their Status? >> No, So For The Intake, 114. We Have To Review All Of Them. Some Cases Were Duplicates. For Example, If There Is A High-Profile Case And It Is On Either Social Media Or The News, Multiple People Will Call In And Say, Hey, Did You Guys See It? Did You See It? Want To Make Sure You Have It. So We May Get Multiple Complaints About One Incident That Might Be Like Five Or Six. We Will Keep One, Of Course, And Do A Relation To That One That Will Be Closed Duplicates Or Expedited Discipline Which Will Be Routed If There Is Clear And Convincing Evidence That When On B.W.C. That The Alleged Officer Committed The Alleged Thing And Is Like, Dude, You Know, Come On. There'S Nothing To Really Go Through And We Will Write Those Directly Up. Those Dispositions Are A Little Bit Different, Of Course. Jurisdictions, Right? If They See Something Happen And May Be A Minneapolis Police Officer And It May Be Another Jurisdiction That We Do Not Have Authority To Investigate Over, We Will Route Them To The Appropriate Entity That Can Investigate That And Then Close That Due To Lack Of Jurisdiction. So That'S How Some Of Those Were Disposed Of. >> Thank You. I Really Appreciate This Additional Context. Thanks. That Is All My Questions. >> All Right. Thank You. No One Else Is On Queue, So Thanks So Much For The Presentation. It Was Very Helpful. >> Thank You. Appreciate It. You All Have A Good Day. >> Thank You. See Nothing Further Questions, I'Ll Direct The Clerk To Receive And File That Update. The Final Item Is Receiving And Filing A Report From The Policy And Research About The Fire Department Recruitment Including Specifics On Hiring Female Candidates. Here To Present Is Dwight Miller On This Item. >> Welcome. >> Good Afternoon. Everybody See The Slide? >> Good Afternoon, Chair Chavez, And Public Health And Safety Members. I Am Excited To Represent The Fire Department Recruitment And Retention Report That Was, That Will Be Filed And Received Later On Today Along With A Special Attention To Female Firefighters. So Just To Ground Us In The Legislative Background And Staff Direction This, Staff Direction Is Focus And Really A Few Components But Two Major Components Within The Report. The First One Is Just A Nationwide Analysis Of Firefighter Recruitment And Also Female Firefighter Recruitment. Along With That Going Into Minneapolis' Hiring Processes And Along With Recruitment And How It Really Has Geared Towards Female Firefighter Recruitment. And The Landscape Analysis To Exceed Across The Country And The Promising Practices And The Promising, I Would Say, I Will Call It Secret Sauce Between Each Of The Fire Departments That Were Profiled To Be Able To See What We Can Beg, Borrow And Steal For The Minneapolis Fire Department. This Was A Very Exciting Report To Dig Into And I Am Excited To Be Able To Share What I Have Learned. One Thing To Notice From The Staff Direction And Also Within The Report Is The Report Is Focus And Recruitment Heavily More Son That Retention. And To Talk To Fire Departments Across The Country, And Retalk About Recruitment For 45 Minutes And Then I Talk About Retention And It'S, Well, That Is Not As Much Of A Priority. We'Re Talking About Recruitment. To Reflect What The Prioritizing Recruitment Heavily And Ideas About Retention, Particularly With Female Candidates. Without Further Ado, Given National Trend And Barriers And Challenges Within Firefighter Recruitment And Female Firefighter Recruitment. Nationwide, Departments Are Struggling With Recruitment. They Are Not Receiving As Many Applications. A Lot Has To Do With Historically Fire Departments Have Used Linage And Family Ties To Recruit New Firefighters And Full The Pipeline. A Lot Of Fire Departments Are Working Their Muscles To Actively Doing Outreach And Recruiting, Particularly To Recruit Communities That Will Reflect Which Is Extended To Female Firefighters And Candidates And 4-5% And Identify As Women. So If You Think About It, You Can See It, You Can Be It, And A Term I Will Use Over And Over Again. If You Can See It, You Can Be It. Often Times When A Person Is Thinking About To Think About To See Themselves In That Career. And Particularly For Female Candidates, They'Re Not Seeing Female Firefighters Nationwide Represented. This Kind Of Adds Into Some Of The Current Recruitment Barriers And Through The Landscape Analysis. The First Big One Is Limited Exposure. Talking To Recruiters. Often Times When They Talk To Potential Women Candidates, It'S The First Time Hearing About Firefighter And Firefighting As A Career Option, As A Long-Term Career Option. And Also Along With That, There Is Misperceptions Of The Job Requirement. And We Understand Firefighters Go Into Burning Buildings And Save Lives. That Is What The Media Kind Of Focuses On, But A Lot Of The Times The Work Of The Care Work And Being A Leader And Representative In The Community Are Not As Seen Anz Going Into Burping Buildings And Self-Select And One Of The Other Barriers Is The Minneapolis Physical Ability Test That Is The Physical Ability Test And Cpat. Every Fire Department Has A Physical Ability Test. The Cpat Is The National Best Standard And Backed By International Association Of Fire Chiefs, So In The Landscape Analysis Uses The Cpat For Comparisons And With The Cpat Is A Pass-Fail Time Test With 8 Events That Are Geared Towards Firefighting. These Are Things That Are Aligned To The Fire Service. Now, The One Thing With The Cpat In Particular Is Nationwide There Is Generally A Gap Between Men And Women Who Are Able To Pass The Cpat. That Is Not Because -- I Want To Be Very Clear -- Not Because Of Innate Ability, But With The Cpat Was Geared Towards The Biomechanics Of Men. And A Lot Of Times What Is Needed Is Technique And Training Specific To The Biomechanics Of Female Candidates And Then They'Re Able To Be As Successful As The Male Candidates. I Want To Expressly Put That In There To See Interventions That Are Able To Address The Gap We Are Seeing Nationwide. Some Of The Things And Barriers We See Nationwide And In The Min Police Fire Department Locally. So The -- In The Minneapolis Fire Department Locally. 2021, The Last Application Cycle, They Saw 688 Applications And Through Anecdotes And Discussing With Firefighters, THAT WORKED THROUGH FROM THE 90s And Used To Get Thousands Of Applications. Right Now We Have A Lot Fewer Applications To Fill The Spots In The Fire Academy. And With Something Council Members Have Expressed In 2022 Resolution And Where It Talked About This Dicline In Firefighters And Currently 8% Minneapolis Firefighters And This Is The Decline From Around 15% In 2002, Which Amounts To 70 And If You Look At The Chart, Some Of The Hiring Practices Which Leads Into What Is Not There To Be Seen As A Mirror To Other Folks Who Want To Be A Recruit With A Negative Feedback Loop. There Was A Lapse In Prioritizing Hiring Female Candidates. Where It'S Just Like To Hire More Female Firefighter, You Have To Prioritize And In 2005 And 2017, Six Years Where There Were Zero Female Candidates Hired In The Fire Department. Versus Looking Back From 1986 Whenever We First Hired The First Female Firefighter In The Teens, That Is Very Stark And What Happened With We Weren'T Able To Refill The Pipeline To Get From 15 To 8 In 2025. With That There Is A Limited Volume And This Previous Application Cycle. Even If It Was Higher Proportionally To The Applicants They Receive, It Wouldn'T Be Enough To Make Up For Six Years Of Not Hiring Any Female Candidates. And A Cpat Gap Specifically In The Most Recent Civil 2021 List And 81% And Compared To 41% Of Women And Even More Selling Is There Is An Orientation And Practice Test And Between The Orientation And With 47% Of Female Candidates Drop Out During That Time. They Are Not Attempting That Test. And To Go Back To The Proper Training And Build The Confidence To Take The Test In The First Place. These Are Some Of The Head Winds. I Want To Give A Second To Breathe Because I Feel Like I Have Been Saying A Lot Of Negative Things, But Minneapolis Has So Much To Offer And So Many Promising Programs Within Our Own City. One Of Those I Want To Highlight Is The E.M.S. Pathways Academy. This Is A Paid Internship That Allows For Participants Generally Young Professionals LIKE 18 TO EARLY 20s TO GO TO Learn About E.M.S. Professions, Particularly The Partnership Between The Minneapolis Fire Department And Also The Hennepin E.M.S. And At The End Of The Program You Get Paid As An Intern And Are E.M.T. Certified, Which Is A Requirement To Be A Firefighter, Along With Preferential Points Into The General Hiring Process. So This Is Promising For Several Ways. A., It Allows For Exposure At An Early Age. Low Barriers For Exposure. Also Allows For Candidates To Learn About What The Job Is, To Be Able To Prevent Misperceptions. And With That, Female Participation Averages 30% Per Cohort Compared To The 13% Of Folk Who Is Apply To The General Pool. There Is A Promise There With The Low Barrier Of Entry To See Whether It Feels Right. Throughout That You Are Getting Exposure There. So This Is A Promising Practice, Currently Right Now That We Are Currently Doing. This Has Been Going On Since 2021 And Throughout All Interviewses, This Is What People Are Coming Back To. That Is What Is Happening In Our Own Backyard. Minneapolis Is A Leader In The Field, Because We Are Double The Average, But There Are A Lot Of Things To Learn From The National Landscaping Analysis And Things That I Was Able To Find And Reveal Within The Report. So Positive Trend. Remember, Talking About Three Things. How Do We Gain Exposure? How Do We Make Sure Folks Are Correcting Misperceptions And Address This Cpat Problem And Cpat Passing Gap? Really I Kind Of Saw Three Different Povrt Trend And Programs. First, Having Active Affinity Groups And Support Female Firefighters, Comprehensive Recruitment Efforts, Early Exposure To Firefighting. Physical Ability Test Training. Having A Supportive Application Process Along With Having Clear And Robust Pathways, Which Is Something Minneapolis Already Has But I Have Another Example From Another Entity That I Think We Can Learn A Lot From. So With That Being Said, Starting Off With Having Active Female Group. A. This, Helps With Retention. Having A Sense Of Belonging And An Affinity Group Builds A Since Of Belonging. More Importantly When It Comes To Recruitment And Increasing The Number, Having An Afintive Group Allows To Extend This Recruiting And San Francisco Has 15% Among The Service And Is Often Seen As The National Leader. Everybody I Nobodying Sw Said Talk To San Francisco. And What San Francisco Said Is The Secret Sauce Was The United Fire Servicewomen. And The Family Organization That Is Independent Of The San Francisco Fire Department. Also Along With That, They Coordinate Strongly With The San Francisco Fire Department And Host Boot Camps And Go Coordinated Outreach. And They Are On The Website, They Have Resources That Are There To Help To Do All The Things In Order To Become A Firefighter. With The Pathway. And Along With That, They Are Able To Really Leverage The Resources Of San Francisco Fire Department. The Fire Department Isn'T Telling Them What To Do, But Empower Them To D Things They Need To Do. Borrow Equipment, Borrow Facilities. They Have The Wind In Their Sails Versus Tailwind. And Having This Coordination And Is Important For San Francisco And Bolster The Recruitment Capacity, Which Is Kind Of Related To Seattle, Fire'S Connect Program, Which Is About Coordinated Recruitment Initiative. Fire Connect Program, Which Is A New Program, I Think Came Out In 2022 For This Current Class. And It Is Really Based On Three Prongs. And Three Coordinated Efforts. First, Just Very Strong, Deep Partnerships With Community Members And Community Organizations. And Realizing The Limitations Of Not Being Able To See Everybody, They Built Deep Partnerships With 120 Seattle Community Organizations To Kind Of Be -- To Kind Of Each One, Teach One, Teaching Those Organizations About Here Is The Hiring Processes, Here Is Why Folks Will Be Fire Department, Firefighters And Then Using Using The Organizations As Mouthpieces And Extending The Reach By 120 Organizations And Also Being Able To Expose Themselves To Traditionally Underrepresented Groups Within The Fire Service. With That They Leverage Higher Education Partners With North Seattle College. And Also They'Re Doing The Going Out And Having People Touch The Equipment And See The Equipment To Really Be Face To Face With Folks Interacting With Them. And One Of The More Innovative Is A Podcast Called Fire Connect. And Have A Panel Discussion With Three Firefighters And This Allows People To, Once Again, Get The Exposure To Firefighting As A Concept And Also Dig Into The Misperceptions About Firefighting. The First Episode Proviled Women Firefighters And Once Again, If You Are Looking In Seattle And I Want To Become A Woman Firefighter In Seattle, This Thing Comes Up On Youtube. Once Again Leveraging Multiple Modes Of Communication. The Fire Connect Program Here In Seattle Exposes This To A Lot Of What The Fire Department Is All About. In Portland, Portland Metro Fire Camp Is A Separate Entity Of Portland Fire And Rescue. However, They Work Very Closely Together Because It Includes All Fire Departments In The Metro. And Instead Of It Just Being About Portland. One Of The Cool Things About This Fire Camp Is It Is Rung Completely By Female Firefighters Who Plan It, Who Run It, And So It Is An All-Woman Event And Build Connections And Mentorships And There Have Been Some Firefighters Who Have Been On Portland Fire Rescue And If You Want Too To See The Cost And That Is A Big Cost. A Lot Of That Is In-Kind Costs And That Is The Amount Of Investment That These Women Are Making To Put On This Camp Which Is Around $200,000 Of In-Kind Donation. So This Early Exposure And I Want To Touch On Physical Abilities Test, Which Is In St. Paul. St. Paul'S Twin Cities Female Firefighter Fitness Program Is A Monthly Fitness Program To Go In And Be Taught The Physical Abilities Test And Connect With Other Candidates Who Are Interested In Becoming Firefighters. One Caveat Is This And The Biggest Evaluation Is Pass-Fail And Theirs Is Evaluated Based On Time. The Higher The Time, The Better The Points Will Be. And Outside Of That, They Are Learning How To Raise Laders And The Different Biomechanics To Pass The Physical Abilities Test. And Denver Is An Interesting Case Because I Am Not Going To Come Here And Say Here Is A Program That Denver Fire Department Does. What They Do Is An Ethos. They Work On Supporting The Application Process And Talking About How Do We Evaluate The Best Candidate. Denver Uses It As The Opportunity To Be Able To Really Build In Equity And Build In Differentiation By Adding Support. They Have Clear Communication And Also Have Practice Mock Interviews And Also Cpat Practice Tests. Within That, They Encourage Firefighters Who Are Volunteering To Go In To Look And Build Relationships. Mock Interview, Hey, Iron Your Shirt. Don'T Have A Wrinkled Shirt For The Interview. And The Way You Are Doing That, I Feel Like You Are Copying Somebody, But This Is How It Will Be Better For You And The Biomechanics. And This Is The Secret Sauce To Have Successful Candidates And Thinking About The Application Process As A Way Of Supporting Firefighters And People Who Want To Become Firefighters Within Your Municipality And Somewhere Else That The Sense Of Family Of Firefighting And Building An Equity Mindset In The Application Process. Kind Of Bookending With The Pathways Program, We Have The D.C. Fire Cadet Program. This Is Around For 27 Years And Is A Fine Tune Machine From All Pieces Of Evidence That I Am Able To Observe. And It Is Competitive Like The E.M.S. Pathways Academy. The One Big Difference, Three Differences Is A Yearlong Program Versus It Being 12-Week Program. The Other Difference Is That It Guarantees Employment With D.C. Fire And Emergency Services Versus An E.M.S. Pathways Program, It'S Not Guaranteed. And Then The Third Thing I Want To Emphasize Is Throughout The Yearlong Process, They Are Giving Cpat Training To All Of The Cadets There In The Fire Cadet Program. So By The Time They Get To The End Of It, They Are Able To Pass The Cpat. Having The Long Runway And The Long Training And The Intensity And It Is Expensive. There Is A Lot Of Things In The Model To Implement It Here In Minneapolis. Potential Options For Consideration. We Could Boost Community Visibility An Engagement And To Be Seen In The Community And Partnering With Community Organizations. You Notice Throughout All These Examples That There Is Always Partnerships. Partnerships Are So Important. And Building The Community Partnerships To Extend The Reach Of What You Are Able To Outreach. Affinity Groups And To Empower Them To Do The Outreach They Need To Build A More, I Would Say, Belonging Environment For Women In Minneapolis In The Fire Department And Build Out The Outreach To Potential Women Firefighters In The Minneapolis Community. Deepen Candidate Support And Learning And Growth Happening Instead Of It Being Purely Evaluative And To Have More Participants And Support To Have Better Prepared Candidates For The Firefighter Cadet Process. There Lies My Highlight Reel Of My Report. I Encourage You To Read The Report In The Entirety, And I Appoint The Chair To Ask Any Questions For Me. >> Thank You So Much For The Presentation And The Work That You Did On This. I Will Pass It To Council Member Palmisano. >> Thank You, Mr. Chair. I Have A Number Of Questions, But Pause And Have You Move On To Somebody Else. First Off, I Want To Point Out That Chief Rucker Has Been In Charge Of Recruitment For The Past 10 Years. Did You Speak With Her For This Report? >> Yep, I Spoke With Chief Rucker -- Sorry, Assistant Fire Chief Rucker, Chief Tyner And A Few Current And Former Firefighters Within The Minneapolis Fire Department. >> That'S Good To Know. I See Chief Tyner In The Audience. Do You Know How Many Women Candidates Applied Versus How Many Actually Passed The Physical Exam, The Cpat Exam? I Understand We'Ve Had Plenty Of Women Apply. But What Percentage Of Them Are Passing The Cpat Exam? >> 41%. >> I Know Because I Have Literally Trained With Some Of Them. I Have Been Through Some Cpat Training Myself. And Lots Of Firefighters Are Engaged In Affinity Groups Themselves. I Would Like To Have This Discussion For Sure. I Have Been Interested In It For A Long Time. But It Feels A Little Weird We Say We Care About This Without Looking At Our Own Numbers And I Know That Chief Rucker Would Have The Numbers And How Many Female Candidates We Have And How Many Are Passing The Cpat And You Gave Me A Percentage. I Mean, You Have To Pass This Particular Part Of The Exam, Or We Can Say We Don'T Want To Have This As Part Of The Training Program. You Have To Pass This One Particular Part Of The Exam That Is More Than Skills Development, Right? And I See General Nixon In The Audience, And She Is The One That Taught Me Much Of What I Know About This Topic. And She Has Worked Incredibly Hard To Establish A Pipeline In Minneapolis And I Think I Can Tell From The Look On Your Face It Is Fair You Have Spoken With General Nixon. And Yes, Ma'Am. In Fact, She Was Interested In Targeted Audiences From My Last Conversation, Like College Supporting Events. And Some Of The Most Amazing Young Women That I Have Met In The Fire Department Were Division One Athletes In College. And That Seemed To Be An Appropriate Recruiting Pipeline So That We Can Up The Probability That The Cpat Exam Is Cleared, But Also That There Is An Affinity Group That Is Meant To Help Train People Because It Is A Trainable Test To Some Extent. I'Ve Gotten A Lot Of Tips Over The Past Couple Of Years From General Nixon And Some Of The Other Women Firefighters. I Also Understand Just Anecdotally That About 25% Of Our Last Hiring List Was Women. Does That Comport With Your Research On This Matter? >> The Hiring List, And Are You Talking About Those Selected On The Civil Service List? And Pass The Cpat Have Passed The Exams And Are Eligible For Hire. I Understand About 25% Of Them Are Women. Is That Consistent With Your Research Into This? >> When You Say -- Yes, If You Are Saying Sorry, Through The Chair, A Lot Of 25% Are Women And Thinking About The Success Of Women Candidates From The Time They Apply Through That Is What The Numbers I Was Reflecting On. >> It Is A Lot Lower, The Numbers You Are Reflecting On. >> I Would Like To Be Working With Our City'S Numbers. I Don'T Believe That'S Necessarily A Question About Outside Research. It Is More Specific For The Fire Department Themselves So Maybe A Logical Follow On Might Be To Have That Information From The Fire Department Or Chieftyner If He Wants To Be Able To Opine On This. I Am Deeply Curious About What You Have. >> And Over 41 Years And The Last One We Had Just Under 100 Women Applicants And You Are Right, About 25, 26 On Final List. This Is A Little Lower Than The Passing Rate. >> An It Seems To Be Much Higher Than The National Average In Terms Of Women Going Into Firefighting. Is That Accurate? >> We Have Been Able To Hire, But Yes, We Are Doing Better Than Fire Departments Are Doing Nationally. But I Still Think There Is A Lot Of Room For Improvement. >> I Agree. I Have Been Intrigue Bed -- Intrigued By Things Haired In Other Women Firefighting And Particularly Focussing On Whether It'S Younger People In Supports That Are Girls And With Imin College Sport, Even In The Rec Sports Of College, It Seems Like A Really Appropriate Time To Be Training For This. >> Thank You, Mr. Chair. >> I Have A Question And I Think It'S Important That We Got This Presentation That Talks About That Female Firefighters Only Make Up 8% And I Want To Highlight 8%. I Don'T Want To Be Better Than The National Average But Equitable And That Means Having More Women Firefighters. If We Have 8%, It Need To Be Higher, Right? I Think It Would Be Helpful To Look At The Programs In Other Cities To Increase Them That Is A Topic We Should Dive Deep Into This Committee. Go Ahead. >> I Think Also With The Slide, What Minneapolis Is Confronting Is There Is A History Of There Not Being Female Firefighters Not Being Hired. So A Lot Of The Things That I Was Able To See I Cross Country, We Do That Work. We Are Trying To Ail -- To Ameliorate What I Saw With The Current Zeal And Trying To Quench The Thirst Of Always Wanting To Improve And Polish The System. >> Definitely. I Didn'T Take It That Way And That We Are Doing More Than Most Fire Departments And At The Same Time We Are Working On Recruitment Of Women Firefighters And A Lot Of Firefighters Focussing On This, And At The Same Time, I Think There Is A Lot Of Ways That We Can Support Our Firefighters In Recruiting More Women And Firefighters Into The Field Than I Think With Other Cities To Increase More Representation In The Fire Department. So I Appreciate The Presentation. I Think It Is Very Helpful. And I Have Met With Women Firefighters. They Have Told Me How They Want More Support. This Is Reflective Of That As Well. >> Council Member Palmisano. >> Mr. Chair And To The Presenter, Do You Know What Year The Fire Department Moved To The Cpat As The Physical Exam? >> Does It Correlate With Your Data? >> 1998, 1999. I Think That Is Close To The Creation Of The Cpat, Which Is Like 1998, So Around 1999-2000. I Will Stay With The Cpat, The Origin Was To Create A More Equitable, Physical Abilities Test, And That Was The Purpose Of It. I Think What This Provides An Opportunity, You Know, Talking Because A Lot Of Folks Did Talk About Going After D1 Athletes To Be Able To Do That, But Also Just Creating Withen The Program And What Minneapolis Fire Department Does Of Preparing Folks For The Cpat And Being Able To Be Successful For It. I Also Know And Chief Tyner Can Comment On It. The Cpat, Because It'S A Nationally Recognized Test, That Is One Of The Reasons Why We Use It Is Because It'S Verified. >> It Does -- I Just Want To Point Out Based On This Bar Graph, It Does Seem To Have Had An Impact. Thank You. >> All Right. >> Thank You So Much For The Presentation. We Really Appreciate It. It Was Very Enlightening. No One Else Is On Queue, So Seeing No Other Questions, I Direct The Clerk To Receive And File That Update. And Seeing No Further Business Before Us, I Will Declare This Meeting Adjourned. [Gavel]. . ."