[Music] you're watching lmcc [Music] uh good evening um i'm peg du board i'm the president of the league of women voters of south ponca and welcome to our program that we have entitled a conversation with our hennepin county commissioner chris latondras regarding the american rescue plan we are partnering partnering tonight with um the lake minnetonka cable commission um who will be hosting and recording this zoom event and um they'll have it ready to distribute to our membership um and will be aired on lmcc cable channel next week sometime probably so before we begin i'd just like to talk a little bit about the league of women voters we are now in our 102nd year which began in 1919 with the ratification of the 19th amendment giving women the right to vote the league of women voters is a nonpartisan grassroots political organization open to all genders ages 16 and older to the league of women voter voters nonpartisan means we neither support nor oppose political parties or candidates the league believes that informed and engaged citizens are the cornerstone of our democracy as league members we study a variety of issues facing our community and we arrive at positions and solutions based on these studies and then we advocate for change at the local state and national levels about tonight our panel consists of our league of women voters members who will be asking questions they have developed in response to the commissioner's request for input on how hennepin county should invest the 240 million dollars allocated to the county by the american rescue plan act but first i'd like to introduce commissioner chris latondras he represents district six which includes all of the cities that are involved in our south tonka league the commissioner is a lifelong public servant at the local and national level he was previously served in the obama administration at the united states agency for international development providing aid and advocacy around the world dealing with issues such as hunger human trafficking and educational equity as vice chair of the hopkins public school board he helped the district develop their response to the to the covet 19 epidemic he grew up and still lives in hopkins with his wife ashley and their two boys and a spirited french bulldog his current hennepin county portfolio consists of the he is the chair of the head of hennepin health chair of the housing and redevelopment authority vice chair of hennepin county regional railroad authority uh he's vice chair of public safety he's on the joint committee on community corrections he also is a member on community action partnership of hennepin county uh the heading home hennepin and also on the hennepin county housing and redevelopment authority so with that uh i'd like to welcome the commissioner uh who will give us an introduction to some of the things that have been happening in hennepin county regarding um funding that's come from um washington relative to the pandemic response and and how we can respond and kind so fisher yeah thank you so much peg for that really uh thorough and and kind introduction uh also uh thank thanks to the league and to the lmcc for hosting tonight's events uh for all of you here this evening and anyone who happens to be listening to this at home or on a device uh in a rebroadcast setting i just want to assure you that we're having this conversation tonight uh because this conversation is for you this is a conversation that we all need and we're all needed for uh this is certainly an opportunity this evening to learn about some really historic investments that are being made right now at this consequential time for our community but i would say just as importantly um this is a two-way street this is a two-way conversation we're going to be sharing out a link later for you all to uh provide feedback directly to hennepin county about how we are thinking about stewarding these really once in a generation really uh we haven't seen money federal dollars like this coming to local government since the new deal the fdr years and we really need to hear from you on this and that's that's really what tonight is about um i love being with with the league um i and any any time we have an opportunity to be together i'm so grateful for the work that you do all every every day to keep our voters engaged informed and participating and the thing i want to add to that is you know it's often been said that your voice or your your vote is your voice i would say that that is certainly true but in these in between elections times your voice also extends to being able to interface and engage directly with your elected officials and that's really what these forums are uh are designed for so uh thank you uh to the league peg and lmcc for making that possible today um tonight we're gonna be talking about the american rescue plan hennepin county and uh and you and i'm going to share my uh my my screen here and this is really an opportunity uh for for me first of all to share with some of you um some of the historic and really exciting uh dollars that are passing uh directly to your local governments right now state local when we talk local government we're really talking about your cities your uh your county government and your school boards and i want to talk a little bit about um number one the uh the the size of that investment um in terms of what's coming to hennepin county right now um how we're thinking about that investment and then uh provide some opportunity for for feedback here um that's why we've got this titled the american rescue plan hennepin county and uh and you uh before i get uh too far and trying to advance whoops trying to advance the slide here one second there we go um so before we go very far i just wanted to again to introduce myself my name is chris letondras i'm your hennepin county commissioner representing district six that's one of six uh hennepin county commissioner districts in hennepin county i personally represent uh the communities of hopkins edina minnetonka northern eden prairie and then 12 communities around lake minnetonka you can see them all here and then you can see that little diagram with the chart of uh hennepin county and where those commissioner districts are the seven of us sit on the hennepin county board which is really a layer of government uh that is is similar to a school district or or a city but at a larger scale where seven elected commissioners make decisions about funding and policy uh on on behalf of all of us and that becomes pretty important right now at this time when there are really unprecedented federal dollars these are dollars from washington d.c flowing through our state and local governments we're going to be talking about one of those investments tonight the american rescue plan and sort of a point of entry into that conversation would be this sort of big audacious question that i'd like to tee up for us which is how would you and i want you all to be thinking about this tonight um as as you listen to this how would you invest 240 million dollars to transform our community if you were in the driver's seat if you were king or queen or ruler for a day um how would you want to see these dollars invested and i say that because that's not just the thought experiment here in a democracy you are the folks that should be shaping how we think about these dollars and 240 million dollars is is a relevant sum because in this case 240 million dollars is the amount of money that the federal government has granted to hennepin county uh through the american rescue plan to invest on our behalf and that's what we'll be talking about tonight um to zoom out a little bit in in the midst of this really consequential time uh event set in motion by the colvit 19 pandemic there's really been unprecedented federal action to support residents and citizens on an emergency basis through the pandemic and to think about the longer term recovery so both the public health impacts and the economic impacts and it's it's sort of come in two big buckets two big tranches of money the first of those uh allocations was called the cares act uh some of you listening at home may have may have heard of the cares act before the cares act was passed under the previous administration and congress on a bipartisan basis and passed emergency dollars to state and local governments to serve residents on an emergency basis through the pandemic that was just as the pandemic was surging through the end of december 2020. hennepin county received 220 million dollars from the cares act 220 not 240 um to spend on an emergency basis both to ramp up our public health uh uh impact so everything from you know testing to contact tracing to shoring up our hospital system to you know the beginning of the vaccination effort but then also the economic disruption so through the cares act for example a lot of people don't know this 220 million dollars to hennepin county hennepin county administered over 70 million in small business grants that was the single largest thing that we spent money on to support our small businesses through the pandemic one of the second largest things we spent money on was 16 million dollars for emergency rental assistance on that any resident that was behind on their rent or any landlord that had a a tenant that needed help those dollars were available and made available by hennepin county long before there was a separate federal program on emergency rental assistance we also used some of those dollars some folks might have heard about the county's efforts to buy hotels to really first respond to our homelessness crisis and needing to you know de-densify our shelters but longer term those hotels have really become the seeds of a new strategy at the intersections of homelessness and housing that's the cares act the american rescue plan has been under this new administration the biden administration and congress on a bipartisan basis and even more dollars have passed to hennepin county now these dollars are a little bit different and we'll uh we'll talk about how these dollars are a little bit different and some of the eligible uses uh tonight and then we'll talk about some of the allocations have been already made so through the american rescue plan hennepin county is receiving a one-time investment of 240 million dollars in funding in two tranches so we got the first half of it this spring we're getting the second half of it on next spring and it's really for two big things number one is to uh help our residents uh recover from the covet 19 public health and economic emergency so really continued emergency uses some of those short-term things that i mentioned and then also it gives us an opportunity to think about what it would mean to build back better on the other side long-term impacts and where do we put these dollars to their highest use in terms of those long-term impacts for a strong and equitable recovery and the biggest difference between cares and the american rescue plan is that we have until the end of 2024 to fully allocate these dollars which means we have to you know tell the federal government um what our plans are for spending this money but we don't have to spend it until the end of 2026 so that really gives us a long runway to think about how to spread out these investments for for magnified impact and the other big difference is that counties local governments we have much broader uh flexibility under the federal guidelines for uh how we use these dollars for cares it was much more specific to emergency uses with this we have a little opportunity there's still guidelines um we have a little bit more opportunity to be creative about how we think about spending these dollars and that's a really exciting opportunity and the final thing i want to say is all the more reason why your voice is needed to shape these historic investments i've said it often before but i think if these really challenging and at times painful and consequential times over the last 18 months the event the the pandemic the event set in motion by george floyd's murder all of these events have shown us anything it's that we need good government now more than we've ever needed it before but it's also true that government can't do it alone and we need strong civic institutions strong citizen participation in our process and i think and i've said this before as well that particularly as it relates to the american rescue plan the what really matters the the what we spend this money on really matters we have to put these dollars to good use but i would say that the how matters just as much as the what and what i mean when i say that is um just like with the new deal just like with the fdr administration when they spent these dollars it was not only an opportunity to invest in residents it was an opportunity to build rebuild trust between citizens and their government between citizens and one another at a really important time a time of crisis for our nation and i think there's you know many of us that look at what's happening today and would say that we are in a similar crisis of trust um and legitimacy in our government top to bottom on just about every issue we're trying to solve for there's an underlying current of a breakdown in trust in our institutions in you know citizens citizens citizens the private sector that if we can't solve for that we're going to have a tough time solving for a lot of our broader problems and i really view these uh these dollars as an opportunity a historic opportunity to to build trust but that only happens through two-way street conversations and that's really the essential role that forums like this play in helping both educate residents but hear from residents on how we think about these investments i'm just very quickly on some of the eligible uses for these recovery funds i sort of uh touched down on on two already is you know this is really a balancing act between you know what percentage of these dollars do we want to be using on bullet one an emergency response we're still in this pandemic the surging of the delta variant people are still hurting it in crisis so we've got to spend some of these dollars that way but then how do we also balance that in terms of the long-term economic recovery and investments that position us for a long-term recovery and really pay dividends like long after the money is spent are continuing to impact our community after we spend this money um the other two things i'll cite is just we as i mentioned before we do have pretty broad flexibility but we have the broadest flexibility when you think about these investments in terms of their impact on um equity and addressing racial disparities because there's special language in there in the regulations that says if we use these dollars to benefit communities disproportionately impacted by the pandemic both public health and economic and we know in minnesota uh you know a lot a lot of that falls along lines of race um we have the most flexible use so if we can show the federal government that this is helping uh you know those communities rebound the the feds have the least amount of sort of red tape and questions for us about how we're using the money so that's something that's important to understand and then finally there's some additional sort of specified uses public sector revenue loss you know the clovis 19 pandemic has really taken a sledgehammer through local government budget so we can use some of it to replace some of that revenue you can use it for essential worker premium pay and then there's some very specific uh infrastructure uses like broadband uh sewer water et cetera that's more relevant in some of the more rural settings although there's certainly some relevance in hennepin as well so i won't go through all of these in detail because i want to leave plenty of time for conversation but hennepin county has moved with some speed to sort of earmark some of these dollars to allocate these dollars towards broad strategies which is to say we're sort of making a promise we're making a commitment this is really how we're going to spend some of this money that doesn't mean when you look at this chart that these dollars have been spent it simply means hennepin county has already made some promises so within these buckets i think there's a lot of latitude to hear from and be responsive to our community around are there specific needs are there specific opportunities to align these in investments where are there where are there gaps where you know we aren't investing yet where we need to think about some some more investments but i'll just highlight sort of at the top you know some of the biggest investments that we've made a historic investment in affordable housing on top of hennepin county's annual affordable housing investment so i chair our housing and redevelopment authority every year we have a grants program for affordable housing that allocates roughly 17 million dollars a year we're going to spend 46 million of these dollars on a variety of affordable housing strategies including a new home ownership strategy uh for communities uh most disproportionately impacted by the pandemic homelessness recovery i mean these dollars both cares and arp are really being used to transform from the bottom up hennepin county's shelter system and how we approach and tackle homelessness which is important because hennepin county more than any other layer of government is sort of in the driver's seat and responsible for addressing the homelessness crisis and you know i i often remind people that you know housing and affordable housing is expensive but homelessness is even more expensive for governments and ultimately for residents and has a bigger human cost and that when we have a homelessness crisis that not only affects those who are unstably housed but it really affects all of us and i think all of us have sort of felt the impacts of housing instability in our region um mental and behavioral health 20 million dollars this is an investment i'm especially excited about because it includes some supports for school-based mental health and expanding our embedded social worker program in partnership with local law enforcement and then on just on tuesday so i should probably have an asterisk next to this one what we're calling an equitable economic recovery we just approved it out of our committee on tuesday but we'll have the final vote next tuesday um and really this is a range of strategies i mentioned earlier that with cares we invested 70 million in small business grants we also spent about two or three million dollars standing up a smaller uh strategy uh called elevate business hennepin which really helps with some technical assistance and capacity building for small businesses ranging from early startups to micro businesses to just small businesses to businesses over two million dollars a year in revenue and and we have an opportunity for hennepin county to really support those businesses long-term and and help them flourish um there's a variety of additional strategies i would imagine we'll have questions about some of these this evening and happy to dive in on those uh this next slide is this slide is just sort of another way to uh to visualize just from a space standpoint size standpoints uh sort of where we're going where we've made some all-in investments and then where we've also put some markers down for for serious priorities for for hennepin county so um i'm gonna wrap up on my my sort of uh introduction and remarks here sort of with that broad overview of american a rescue plan but as i've said at the beginning and throughout this presentation ultimately i believe we will number one be in in the best position as hennepin county and decision makers to put these dollars to their best use and also like uh really be in a position to better build trust and transparency with our community to the extent that we're hearing from our community on these investments and to the extent that your voices are shaping these investments so what you're seeing here is a link to a survey that our office is hosting to get your ideas to better understand your priorities so www.tinyurl.com hennepin a-r-p-a that's american rescue plan act you can go there or i think this should work even for folks watching at home if you hold your camera up if you've got a qr code scanner you can hold it up to that qr code and it will uh it'll it'll get you there so with that um thank you for the opportunity to present on this topic and i will look forward to entertaining our questions and a really uh terrific discussion so just um for the audience to know is that um that survey will also be sent to you after this and it'll have the hyperlink in it as well so you'll be able to to uh access it that way um i just have a couple of um kind of overall questions about um so what the is the cares act is is all that money now spent did you have to spend it by it it had to be spent by a certain date or yeah that's a great question peg and again back to this two big tranches of money cares act 220 million short-term emergency american rescue plan 240 million longer term with the cares act i mean it was kind of crazy i mean we all remember where we were when we first realized this pandemic was going to like change our lives dramatically and for the long term and um the the federal government moved with some speed but you know these those cares dollars really came i think in don't know exactly the month but that that spring period right as the pandemic was first surging and the initial federal requirements on those said that governments had to have all of that money spent not just allocated but spent by and i i think i'm correct on that it's for sure allocated um by uh december 31st of that year so getting this historic amount of money and you gotta move it out the door immediately and like that underscored the fact that like um the federal government didn't want county cities sitting on these dollars didn't want uh you know folks tying up these dollars in long-term strategies they wanted us to move these dollars out the door to help residents immediately and that is exactly what we did now um there was sort of a last-minute guidance that came in i think sometime in december that basically said uh surprise actually if you haven't alloc if you haven't spent all this money you can continue spending it into uh the coming calendar year and so we actually did some bookkeeping we're actually able to move some things around freed up i think about 30 million of those funds that we've used and delegated authority to our county administrator to continue using those funds on things that we use them for that the board had granted approval to our administrator to use them on before so it's been those funds that in part with with some additional arp dollars have helped you what you didn't see up here for example is a significant allocation for like the ongoing public health response that's because some of those care scholars have continued to be available for that and in areas where we delegated some authority to the administrator on cares administrators like the ceo of hennepin county our board is essentially his boss and then he runs the enterprise um he also has some delegated authorities to spend american rescue plan dollars in in some of the areas where there were some authorities granted uh for for cares but that's right i hope i hope that answers yeah no that's fine i had just one other question so how much in total did the state of minnesota get under the uh american rescue plan oh man that is a is that's a great that's a great question in in today's episode of stump the commissioner and i i don't but just to give you a sense for like you know regionally like the regional impact like just talking american rescue plant hennepin county got 240 million dollars the city of minneapolis got 280 million dollars there was each individual city depending on their size got individual allocations um sort of through a separate mechanism um i think the dollars went from the feds to the state but then the state had distinct arp dollars to pass to school districts so um you know all in i mean just for hennepin county it's not just hennepin county that's spending american rescue planned dollars there are other entities the state and other local governments within hennepin county spending significant dollars i want to say it's in the couple of billions though i'll get that exact number though all right and then did the state of minnesota get a separate tranche as well to or what are they just not or not correct okay yeah so the the single the the american rescue plan package all in um was several trillion dollars in the single biggest bucket of money in the american rescue and it was a variety of strategies the single biggest allocation was for state and local aid so the federal government essentially just wrote big checks to the to the states and wrote big checks to local governments and that was a little bit of a novel approach because there has been precedent in the past where if the federal government's doing a a big program like that they might pass all of it through the state for a variety of reasons and and in part to sort of avoid you know minnesota is it is the only divided legislature in or the only divided government and legislature in in the country um as as much as we hate to see but you know partisan politics play a role in you know how states are governed you know we would hope that every elected leader regardless of their party red blue or otherwise is just making you know decisions that that don't involve those considerations i think the federal government wanted to make sure that politics didn't uh disproportionately affect the who the what the how of who got money and so by by it by setting up these additional dollars to go directly to local governments there was an opportunity to sort of bypass some of the politics of that and go to nonpartisan local government and i think that was a pretty smart choice i mean i i would much rather be making decisions about uh these 240 million dollars than say have that tied up in some you know negotiation happening at state level great thanks so is anybody have a question that they would like to ask just chime in uh commissioner i was wondering if if there are any overarching goals for instance in some previous recoveries the recovery has been short-lived it hasn't been sustainable people um on the low end of the income range have remained on the low end of their income range they haven't moved up so are there any overarching goals like for instance some kind of a goal about long-term sustainability and doing something and making sure everything that's done is actually going to be sustainable and result in long-term increases in whatever area it's invested in yeah that's that's a great question kay and and thanks for that you know the the language that i've been using to describe my goals and ambitions and the counties for these dollars is that we want these dollars at least for their longer term use not the emergency use to result in a strong and equitable recovery and i use both of those those words deliberately strong to your point in terms of like in enduring it's not just sort of a flash in the pan and once the money's gone the impacts are gone and then equitable i mean we we know that here in the state of minnesota not every single resident in the state of minnesota shares equally in the promises of good government in the promises of opportunity a great education access not just to affordable housing but a house they can own and live on and pass that wealth off to their children the opportunity to start and grow a business that they know is going to be around tomorrow and so i think that's where you know when i think about the the long-term investments that i'm most excited about have been making here i mean i'm doing backflips around this uh 46 million dollar affordable housing investment um it is one of the single biggest crises even before the pandemic that was one of those areas that because of the last downturn in 2018 uh we we got behind on a decade of redevelopment of how affordable housing at all levels at all income levels and and it's it's it's it's most impacted those at the bottom of our uh our uh our sort of opportunity ladder and um i mean you know this isn't just government you know bureaucrats and electeds like me that are concerned about this i mean i talked to our chambers if you look at the greater um you're the you know minneapolis greater regional chamber of commerce uh housing affordability is like one of their number one issues because they know that these housing gaps are having a significant impact on an employer's ability to like attract and retain talent so i think it's smart for us to go all in on on housing these are dollars that once we spend them the housing doesn't go away it's going to be here long term and if anything i think you know long term i i see this really as a down payment on what needs to be a much much greater public expenditure and activity on the part of our governments from a state all the way down the local government in this housing space you know the other one around us around the equitable economic recovery piece you know historically hennepin county has had sort of a a a small set of very effective but really flying under the radar programs um that have really partnered with our small businesses and small businesses sort of at every stage in the spectrum with a particular focus on women and minority owned businesses and but historically that's not really what hennepin county has been known for you know we've been known more for our human services for those at the bottom of the you know the opportunity ladder for you know being a safety net institution um you know these investments are really allowing us to go big and like 10x our activities in that space of really supporting small businesses and really growing those businesses and again that that not only has an impact in wealth building multi-generational wealth building for those you know owners that had that unleashes a really uh promising amount of economic activity uh in the region in the region broadly so um i'm i'm certainly happy to see the two biggest investment areas are are in those two domains i think that sets us up for a strong and equitable recovery thanks i'm gonna remember to unmute myself first before i ask the question um uh i truly appreciated the um uh you putting together the list of the buckets basically in which the uh funds are going to go in and to see that affordable housing um tops it all with the maximum investment i was wondering if there was anything um looking at the long-term view that you are planning on uh related to climate change uh and uh any projects related to that either in in the sense of and i know uh affordable housing also is an important uh you know factor uh when it comes to battling climate change but i'm also thinking waste management and natural resource management uh and uh if there are any plans for that yeah thank you it's it's a really great question and um you know first and foremost i'll say that in a totally separate lane of work you know these these american rescue plan dollars are sort of the topic for the evening um as as i said earlier in the conversation before we turn the cameras on you know pandemic or no hennepin county is here every single day serving residents standing up innovative strategies to meet the needs and challenges of the 21st century and the biggest things we're facing climate is one of them so this spring the hennepin county board of commissioners uh passed our first ever climate action plan um you can go to www dot hennepin dot u s backslit backslash climate action i believe is the the link again we can send that around or correct that in the uh in the post production if that's not the exact right link but this is a result of an 18-month uh effort where you know we basically looked across every single line of business in hennepin county top to bottom and really asked what could hennepin county's role as largest local government in the state of minnesota um you know second largest government in the state of minnesota second only to the state in addressing the accelerating impacts of a changing climate and um you know we were able to set a few pretty ambitious goals number one uh we set a net zero goal for 2050 through through that action uh number two we set a pretty ambitious uh target for a reduction in vehicle miles traveled over the same period we you know we know residents will continue to utilize cars but we really re view it as our responsibility to make sure folks have and are empowered to utilize other options um and then you know a pretty significant body of work there just related to waste management so as as sort of a adjacent and connected action um how many folks know that in the beginning of 2022 every single municipality in this in in hennepin county will be required to um offer residents curbside organics recycling i'm seeing a thumbs up from from peg this this is a big deal i i think back to the 1980s the reason why we have county-wide recycling is because of county action on that topic i see curbside organics in a as a similar thing and we're not just investing at the curb side we also allocated a significant sum of money and we are going to be building one one of the uh few in the nation i don't want to say first in the nation but there are only a handful of them anaerobic digestion facilities focused on residential organics recycling so this is this is a facility that essentially takes all of that organics waste in the waste stream takes it to a facility and then uh processes it breaks it down and there's a smaller by-product that takes up way less space in a landfill and then it also produces natural gas that you know can be be a part of our you know broader energy strategy so you know i think hennepin county is exerting significant leadership in this space um there's certainly room for improvement and we want your voices and perspectives i i i would expect that we're going to hear a lot from residents of how this curbside organics program as it rolled out rolls out and again you have to ask your city for it it's not required that every resident have curbside organics but it's required that cities contract with vendors that provide it um and specifically how it connects with the american rescue plan is as i as i specified earlier with the eligible uses here this is really about the pandemic response both both public health and economic so i think you know as as creative as our program folks are and our attorneys here are you know trying to interpret the federal rules in a way where we might be able to make some of those explicitly climate related investments that's sort of we're sort of treating that in its own separate lane and not i i think thus far not have not been thinking about sort of a separate climate related strategy to arp but it's it's really an integrated approach across our enterprise so any of these areas that american rescue plan is touching will also be impacted by hennepin's climate work hi um i guess one well i would like more information about the mental health piece because we're seeing such a huge increase in mental health issues and what specifically is going to be addressed you mentioned the schools um but are there other areas where people can easily access services um can you tell me more about it the range of strategies i'll read them all out number one expand school-based mental health to improve access to evidence-based mental health services for youth number two develop and expand network of culturally specific mental health services in alignment with enterprise-wide priorities for arp funding and disparity reduction goals number three expand family home visiting number four expand caring connections for kids number five reform 9-1-1 oh i should have mentioned this like we're we're doing a tremendous amount of amount of work and reform at our 9-1-1 dispatch center in partnership with the sheriff's department this will continue to fund and expand the runway for that expanding the hours at 1800 chicago to 24 hours i mentioned that already expanding embedded social workers with local law enforcement launching a juvenile behavioral health initiative expanding family response and stabilization services pilot a family-based recovery program and launch a mental health awareness campaign um so there's a there's a whole host of strategies each one of those has sort of a paragraph of corresponding sort of uh detail okay thank you um so my question would be so how are you going to per you know um choose the providers for the services that you're proposing and how are you going to make sure that um you know you can measure success and um you know the viability of the program going forward i know that's kind of a large um order of um question but you know you know having having worked in state human services for part of my life you you want you always want to make sure that you spend tax dollars wisely and that they're not wasted because there's too many people who need too many things for it to be wasted so i mean my my thing is what kind of accountability is the county going to have and how are we going to measure success yeah that's a great question peg so you know i think the county on a lot of these strategies is is uh doing this similar to how we do in you know just our regular order where we've got a strategy and we've got a budget area you know some of these programs we administer ourselves others we do an open rfp process um where we you know take proposals from providers who can help address the strategy and demonstrate an existing track record of success um talk about how they're gonna you know measure results in some cases the county will be specific about the results that we're looking for you know just one example of that you know one one of these uh smaller allocations still a significant amount of money five million dollars in gun violence and community violence prevention strategies a portion of that is has gone and immediately moved out the door in in the form of an open rfp for a community based organizations that have a track record proven track record of success uh being able to apply for 50 000 rapid grants to uh stand up programming this summer and into the fall like right right in the middle of um some of the surge that we saw in uh in in violence so we moved these dollars out the door quickly to uh organizations that um you know had a proven track record of success and we're current currently evaluating compiling the results of that and we get a report on these things that'll be true across every single one of these investments you know on the affordable housing uh programs you know of that 45 million will move i think at least 15 million dollars maybe more we'll be standing up a fall round we typically do a spring round of uh a grants program where folks working on a housing development that has a certain percentage of affordable units can apply for county funding to help cobble together the dollars they need to make that building happen we'll have a sort of a wrap a rapid grants round for that housing this this fall we'll have some additional money available in the spring for that so that's sort of an example of where the county how the county pushes these dollars out the door and evaluates it along the way well some of that housing assistance will that be through like vouchers or will it be through you know providers building more affordable housing or how how do you how do you see that rolling out yes so well there's i i i should have mentioned this before but there's sort of two different strategies happening here so there's the affordable housing strategy which is really about trying to accelerate the construction of new buildings and new affordable housing units in some cases renovating existing uh you know we call it noaa naturally occurring affordable housing and preserving that um so that's really about the construction side in creating new um and or preserving existing um we have a separate strategy but it's still run run out of our housing and economic development office on emergency rental assistance i mentioned through cares we stood up our own 16 million dollar program uh to move uh grants out the door to residents who are behind on their rent um the american rescue plan has brought i think an additional 24 million dollars totally separate from the uh the 240 million we're receiving that's a dedicated emergency rent assistance fund that um if if you know if you or a resident you know is behind on their rent they can go to www.renthelpmn.org to apply for uh for rental assistance so that's really it's we're both trying to stabilize folks that are experiencing a crisis in their homes but then with the the care with the arp dollars where we're really trying to stand up some new construction and some new units that will be with us long after these dollars have been spent the breadth of this thing is really new to me um and i was thinking you know who got really impacted by covet it was restaurants restaurant workers the travel industry anything doing with hospitality the local little cinema of the big cinemas what about all those theaters all those our wonderful theaters our many of our arts uh groups our concerts our music groups all those kind of things i didn't really click on where they would get help from this would that fit anything like could all of our wonderful theaters and that are in hennepin county would they qualify for anything they've really suffered through this pandemic yeah thanks for the question kay um so under the cares act that that that first trancha money that i mentioned hennepin county the single biggest thing we spent money on was uh small business grants just cash grants directly to small business operators ranging from ten thousand twenty five thousand dollars in select industries like some of the ones that you mentioned they were actually eligible for multiple grant rounds and received multiple allocations i think we had some folks individual operators that received over a handful of 10 to 25 000 grants you know north of you know 50 or 60 000 um and those monies were you know back when the the federal government they stood up the ppp program which was really the paypa paycheck for protection that was through banks but there was really some strict eligibility guidelines there like you couldn't use it for rent and things like that that's where we try to use our money to fill gaps with smaller grants that could help with that kind of stuff that the ppp didn't cover um similarly through the american rescue plan as i mentioned this this is a really challenging balancing act like you've got this one-time opportunity to spend 240 million dollars how much of it do you want to spend on one and done you know you write somebody a check and then the money is gone versus the longer term stuff so as we've considered where we target our sort of small business investments we've wanted to pay really close attention to where are there where are there new federal programs uh you know getting stood up and where are there state opportunities and for fortunately you know right right now through through deed um there's a very similar small business grants program underway right now and i'm sure we could i don't have the link off the top of my head but you know if you're a small business they're they're operating a very and it's the applications are open right now a very similar grants program to the one we're operating so rather than stepping in and using these very you know scarce precious flexible dollars on that we're letting the state sort of step in there similarly there's a federal program that's uh specifically targeting some of those uh you know those those venues and some of those other industries so you know we we've also tried to have some really good situational awareness of where where we sit in the whole ecosystem of government actors and really try to be an effective partner and uh you know we we don't want to duplicate efforts and we want to put these dollars to where hennepin really has a unique opportunity and role to play so what about schools you mentioned schools are getting a chunk of this but also can the state give some money to schools yeah so the state the federal government at least as i understand it again uh we're actually having we're hosting a series of these uh public engagements around american rescue plan with various stakeholder groups some roundtables so we're meeting with our mayors and city managers on friday we're meeting with school districts superintendents uh board chairs in the next couple of weeks i am not an expert on the federal aid that has been available to school districts through this um i i was a school board chair back back when there was very limited federal support and we were like trying to like plug holes in the ship i understand that you know the american rescue plan has has significant money for schools but it's being administered at least as i understand it a little bit differently i i don't know how much of that's passing directly to schools versus flowing through the state but there's significant american rescue plan dollars specifically for schools thank you carol thanks i just have a quick question about the scale of the spending when you look at 240 million dollars that sounds like a lot but how much does hennepin county allocate on a typical annual basis and are there large revenue gaps because of kovid that you're still looking to fill yeah that's that's a great question carol um so hennepin county's annual budget is uh this past year is 2.1 billion dollars billion with a b um so you know to put that into perspective like yes that's a much larger on an annual basis than these 240 million dollars but also to put things in perspective um you know every year we are looking at um you know like every other layer of local government um having to balance our levy with you know payroll increases and other you know cost increases oftentimes depending on the program like having state or federal requirements to administer a program at a certain level that we only get compensated for it for another amount so we're always balancing that so in any given year hennepin ability to be strategic um is and flexible with our budget is limited like most of those 2.1 billion dollars are just totally tied up we might have you know 10 million dollars or something we got we can figure out in any given year like hey how do we want to like leverage this for maximum impact on a 2.1 billion dollar budget right so i i think it's almost impossible to overstate just how transformational a one-time 245 mil or 240 million dollar allocation is we will never we have never seen money like this before we will never see it again and it is a you know 10x 20x the kind of flexibility that we typically have as a local government to make strategic choices in a way that doesn't like have an immediate impact on our you know we we generate revenues by living property taxes right we don't have to levy property taxes for these investments it's directly from the feds and have you seen a significant revenue drop at hennepin county oh that was your that was your other question you know it's that that that's that's a really good question i was expecting that honestly coming from the school board context where i mean colvid19 really took a significant sledgehammer through the middle of our gov through our budget particularly anything that was this is getting a little wonky and technical on budgets but anything that's fee so like schools like your nutrition programs rely rely on people paying for lunches or getting reimbursed from the feds first you know uh kids living in poverty um your community education programs which inherit in the hopkins you know multi-million dollar program all that went away and we had like nothing we were sucking wins um you know hennepin county is has been in more the beneficial position where because of a lot of the programs that we run are either funded through property taxes rather than fees or through state or federal reimbursement programs we have certainly had gaps to fill probably most significantly in our public health areas with the hospital but like the core enterprise hasn't seen this kind of hemorrhaging that we're seeing um that some of our other partners in local government are experiencing so for example you know some of our city-based partners like they they have not been able to think as flexible as flexibly as we have about these dollars because you know justifiably so like they they were you know doing forgiveness on certain you know municipal fees and whatnot that they rely on through the pandemic and they really needed these dollars to backfill that so we've had some i would say that we've had greater flexibility than a lot of our partners in local government thanks that really helps put it in perspective of how transformed transformative when you talk about these dollars that's exciting to think about yeah no no question you know uptown really you know struggled you know through the riots and the george floyd events and so you know you know my daughter lives down in that neck of the woods and you know you drive down there and everything's still boarded up you know hennepin and um and lake are you know like it's just it's sad so what can any of these dollars be done to sort of you know revitalize that part of town and help help it get back uh to where it was before maybe better build that build better back back better build back better yeah that's a great that's a great question and again like they're you know we we experience both the impacts of the the the public health and economic impacts of the pandemic along with you know just unprecedented civil unrest not just for this town but in in the nation um you know disproportionately hitting certain neighborhoods and zip codes particularly those that were already you know where we already saw some of the greatest disparities and i think that you know part of the good news here is like number one even in the midst of that is as i mentioned hennepin county's got 240 million dollars the city of minneapolis alone actually got more money than hennepin 280 million and we are working in close partnership with them to try to figure out how to you know strategically align those investments um to to affect across any of these strategies that you see that may have intersections with those areas hardest hit to figure out how to to really align those investments there um you know the the federal government provides us as i mentioned at the outset the greatest flexibility to affect those to to make investments where communities have been hardest hit by the pandemic as i mentioned in the state of minnesota take away the civil unrest that's already you know our our communities that have experienced yet you know that are high disparity communities and those are the places where the civil unrest hit the hardest as well um so you know we we have the greatest flexibility to spend these dollars there and it's certainly a part of our our approach and strategy so would you just like to wrap it up for your section commissioner yeah you know what what what i'll just say is thank you so much for any of us anyone that's uh stuck around till the end here i would extend the invitation and not just the invitation but really um we would say that all of us as residents as citizens have a responsibility to engage with our elected officials not just around election time but along the way and your voice is so needed um in every decision that that impacts your life but in this in particular we need to hear from you so i really hope and encourage you to take a little time it'll just take a couple of minutes to fill out your priorities in the survey we need good government now more than ever but government can't do it alone we we need all of us at the table to uh to make sure that government's getting it right for all of us so thank you yeah so thank you commissioner for your time i think it's been a really interesting evening um thank you for allowing the league to provide some input or ask some questions anyway and and hopefully that we can all work together to uh help help utilize and make good use of some of the funds that hennepin county is receiving so appreciate your time a little plug for the league of women voters um anybody who's interested in uh nonpartisan political involvement at a grassroots level we're open to people 16 and over to join uh we have lots of men that are belong to the league of women voters as well so it's not just women it's the guys out there who really want to uh you know impact local local and uh state um topics that'd be great so um thank you to the lmcc for recording and uh hopefully you all have a great night [Music] you