We do. Thank you, mayor and councel. There is one item on the agenda this evening. Item 6A, which is the recognition of the 2026 Minnotonka Essay Contest Award winners. Um, the winning essays were added to the packet, so they are included in the item and they are also available on our website. Um, this concludes the changes. So, with that, mayor, I turn it back to you for consideration.

I was anticipating your call for I'll I'll move to approve the agenda as amended.

I move approval of the April 27th, 2026 LBAe minutes and the April 27th, 2026 regular meeting minutes.

So this is the first year the DEI commission o hosted this essay contest and they selected the theme belonging. There were two categories grades 6 through nine and grades 10 through 12. The judge judges panel consisted of the DEI commission and members of the senior advisory board. And I am pleased to announce the winners who had an opportunity to meet earlier this evening.

Minnetonka won the Olympics. So congratulations you guys. Very good. Uh nice job Minnetonka. We're going to have to count we're going to have to copy this with the counties. Maybe we could do it with like Ramsy or Washington or something. I love that idea.

3.15 billion is our budget. Last year our our levy point um we raised at 7.79% um or 7.7 no percent is different 7.79 levy uh uh levy points and um looking at that you can see here's the property taxes and I have some good charts which are going to show how the trends what that's been looking up and that's coming up shortly but you'll see a big part of how county um supports itself is through property taxes. There's also state and federal funding.

You'll see the trend that we are going is is an over reliance on property taxes to fund county services. Now, I want to show you um Oh, there it goes. Okay, so the next one I want to point you to is the federal government, which is three over. again, blue 2024, light blue 2025, green 2026, and you'll see that that funding um has gone down and state it if you'll see it kind of es and flows. Um, and so but it has gone down. Now, what's interesting about the county too is I think if you're not thinking about it top of mind, a lot of what we do, about 70% of the work that we do is mandated by the federal government and the state government. So there are things we absolutely have to do, but yet the funding is not tied, right? I mean, you guys have obviously, it's funny, when I was at the legislature, people would say unfunded mandates, and I was like, "Oh, come on. We just have to shift how we do things." And then you're like, "Well, technically, there are things that we have to keep the community doing well, but if we don't fund it, where does that funding come from?" As you can see, the trend is that those funding sources go down and property tax funding goes up, right? You just want to tie that correlation there. All right? All right.

You'll see our health expenses are drastically increasing. Um, and so in that uh some of the things that we've had to do over the last year is remember when the federal government was uh not doing well with in terms of passing SNAP funding. um the the county government has to step in and so we've put out $3 million to make sure that people had food to eat. Um, there's other multiple things that you're thinking about where we've had to step in where when our state and federal government are not working for people, it's the counties that are because we have the resources. It's sometimes taking away from other resources. So I the other thing I want you to highlight um is the fourth one over under human services. You'll see in blue 2025 um how the funding for green 2026 went down for human services. Now most people when they think about what the county does is a lot of human services. That's one of our primary things and we're having to not be we're having to with attrition having to hold positions and and struggle with funding because of some of the instability of all the other systems. So just wanting to kind of big picture so you guys see what's happening at the county. Um, but you'll also see for capital improvements we have that um expenditures the money going out is we're reducing that because we have less money so there's less money to spend on capital projects.

Um, so property taxes um I've heard a lot about it and I absolutely agree the trend is not it's not sustainable. So, we have to figure out what we can do because whether we, you know, we all would like to change the federal government to be stable and not have the partisan fighting, but to do the things for the people. But the reality is is we're not going to be able to change the federal government. We have control of the county. And so, what we have to do is really look at not pricing people out of their homes. And so, um, trying to be, uh, cognizant of the budget that we have. Um, we understand that. I'll just want I want to say as the county commissioner for the area I understand that this is not sustainable that we are trying to level out property taxes um so that doesn't continue to go up but what Minnetonka saw specifically is about a 10.5% increase and now tax capacity comes in with this um I swear people need a PhD to understand exactly what it looks like but it I think it's 1.25 25, right you guys? Where because a lot of the homes in Minnetonka in a lot of the district 6, if you're over 500,000 or more, you're actually taxed at a different capacity for the state of Minnesota. And so some of that is the portion of the pie that we pay for is bigger for those homes that that have that. And because of the amount of um homes that have that, the percentage is larger in Minaco. And feel free to interrupt me if you have any questions.

And HUD these are the permanent permanent shelter permanent housing funding that we have 12 million and I saw Ronnie Secretary Ronn Ronnie CR when I was in Washington DC for a conference and I had talked to him and I said listen he he made some statements and then he left without questions and I followed followed down in the hallway and I was like wait don't leave I need to ask you questions because the permanent support of housing has been very successful in Henipin County and so making the 12 million of cuts because what the current administration believes is there's too many people receiving the benefits that should be working more. But the problem is is if we take people out of permanent supportive housing that were formerly homeless, we are creating another problem and the cost is significantly more than 12 million. So we're genuinely worried about this. We had a good email back and forth. He did email me back but there's no commitment. I will keep trying, but I'm I'm I'm genuinely worried about that. And it's it's more than the cost. It's it's what are we going to do about the people that are going to lose housing?

And so that is really positive news for the hospital. It really is good news. Um, and then there's 500 million that looks like it will be available to apply for and not just for HCMC, but for other hospitals. those other hospitals are struggling as well. And so, and then there's a task force that will be done to look at our governance and long-term sustainability. I've been doing a lot of research on this. We want to make sure that we secure and stabilize HCMC, which this money will do. But, you know, possibly looking at a hospital authority other states have, but learning from what those models have done and figuring out ways um to sustain it, but also remove it from the liability of the county, too. I mean, we're we we had $40 million last year. So, a levy point is 10 million. 40 four levy points were just for the hospital alone. And so and we were caring for 20 million of that was for people that were outside of Henipin County. And so we don't want to turn people away, but we need a funding mechanism that the state can show up for as well. So that we're not looking to property taxes to pay for people's healthcare, but people's people getting health is absolutely a priority. So it's not getting rid of that. It's saying we believe in health for people, but we need to have that as a shared cost with the state.

This is great news uh for the city. We sent an email out council members and mayor um and also city members. 9,000 will be Henipin County will be giving for onetime funding to help with elections this year. We are also looking at how to be more supportive for elections in the years ahead and keep going.

We have our youth cris crisis stabilization center which opened up in December of 2026. It was about 20 million to open with 13 beds. It has 247 care students that will go there are 8 to 17. Um, and it's about it's a short-term stay facility. Now you might say $20 million 13 beds that's a lot of money. But the reality is is every time we were in every time we're in care of a child we are in we are responsible for all of the cost and and quite frankly one child could cost us well over a million and especially when we're sending that child out of state where they're far away from their family. That's not good for that child. It's not good for the family and it's really hard for kids. we see more reoccurrence of coming back in to crisis care at that point. So this is really a positive positive intervention that we are seeing and um very very good for our county. So we would like to see residential treatment facilities there's not enough of them and if you have a a child that has behavioral like acting out physically people would reject reject and that child has nowhere to go. So, that's the next level of of attention that I would like us to pay attention to because oftentimes those kids end up in like a juvenile detention center or in a facility that they should not be in.

Minnetonka and other county or other cities like Edina are working together and they got this funding here for the 631,000 for grant funding to work on autothefts that are happening. I mean, there's this new I'm sure the police chief knows much more about this, but I was seeing there's like a fob thing where people can like walk up and I'm going to decimate it, but anyways, it's there's in there's innovation. There's innovation on autothefts. And so, we need to make sure we're keeping up with that. So, we're preventing them before you know, unfortunately ends up being a lot of young people getting creative. You're like, use your force for good. But yeah, so hopefully this will be helpful. this funding that we're receiving and these are infrastructure projects that we have going. Baker Road, um, we're doing a lot of pavement resurf resurfacing. Um Gleon Lake, that's also reconstruction. We have pavement, curb, storm water, sidewalk, and then ADA accommodations are going all across the county. So, you'll see that on Ed Prairie Road pavement preservation as well.

thank you for your hard work. Um, I'm very grateful that um, there's a plan moving forward for HCMC. Um, being a person that has been working with the county quite a bit for family members who need services, these cuts are devastating. Um, I'm have some means, but I am not a wealthy person by any by any means. And um, these cuts are really devastating. And I really encourage people that listen to this meeting to call their federal legislators and encourage them to reinstate funding for social services, Medicaid, SNAP, housing because the people this is the some of these cuts are supposedly punishment for quote unquote fraud that is already being prosecuted here in Minnesota and the only people that are suffering are the people that were already the most vulnerable people and needed these services. So, I just want to thank you for your service. You and I have a lot to catch up on and talk about. Um, but you know, I think these cuts are really devastating and I I it's amazing that we, you know, can offer what we can offer. And I just want to say I'm I'm sure I can speak for all of us that we want to be your partner because these are the issues that cities and counties grapple with and we have to support our residents and they need these services. So thank you.

What would Ponch do?

staff was all saying universally that if they have a tough situation, Scott's the person to call on.