My name is Maline Mitchell. I'm the city's budget manager and today I'm going to walk you through the mayor's 2027 proposed budget. We will start um with the overall budget picture, including the $26 million general fund gap that you've all heard about and how the proposed budget closes that gap.

At the highest level, the 2027 proposed operating budget is approximately $888 million. This includes a 6.8% property tax levy increase. It funds nearly 3,200 FTEEs and its development was guided by four principles laid out by the mayor's office. Uh promoting long-term fiscal sustainability, strengthening community safety, supporting a thriving business environment, and responding effectively to residents needs.

When we talk about balancing the budget or closing the budget gap, we have three le levers to pull to get that gap to zero. We can either increase the property tax levy, reduce spending, or find new non-propy tax revenue. [...] So that really leaves property taxes and spending reductions as our most powerful tools for balancing the budget.

Um, I just am wondering, you know, I noticed as we go through there's the 4% reduction target and there's the counted towards target. Um, and they vary greatly in some departments. So like some departments are right on target, above target in some cases and then some are are significantly under. Could you share a little bit about like what went into just thinking like it seems like there was a 4% reduction target but then what actually was given in some cases could be millions plus lower.

I am very concerned about just the like what what happens if we were to eliminate the CARES team. This is a team that we fought very hard to um to fund and and preserve from last year. Um to me like what's missing is really understanding the county's role in this and even the state too. what is the long-term vision for this?

On DSI specifically, we have experienced some significant difficulties with uh invoicing for revenue that occurred either right before or during the cyber incident last year and then we did the transition to poly. So we have it's been a priority of OFS to partner with DSI to set up a structure and process to collect the revenue that is due to the city for services rendered.

It turns out that you cannot convert loonies and tunis at any bank even if it's a Canadian bank in the United States that you literally quite literally need to drive to Canada with coins and go to a Canadian bank in order to convert that to US currency. [...] so through the course of many years of operating the Komo Zoo and the donation box, we as OFS have been tracking um what amounts to be approximately $10,000, I'll get you an exact number of just coins in foreign currency that we can't necessarily use as a on a cash basis in this country.

I'd like to understand what the fiscally responsible recommendation from the Office of Financial Services would be if we took into account the growing trends that are happening nationwide, especially taking into the account that the city of St. Paul does not have insurance like other municipalities. [...] when we have multi-million dollar lawsuits for years, my quick question to us is should we check that costbenefit analysis again this year.