Budget Committee January 22, 2024   1/22/2024

Consent

• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:00:31
    Good afternoon, I'm Aisha Chugtai and I'm the chair of the Budget Committee.
  • 00:00:35
    I'm going to call to order our first regular committee meeting for Monday, January 22nd, 2024.
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    At this time, I'll ask the clerk to call the roll so we can verify the presence of a quorum.
• • SPEAKER_05
  • 00:00:46
    Councilmember Payne?
• • Elliott Payne
  • 00:00:48
    Present.
• • SPEAKER_05
  • 00:00:48
    Wonsley is absent.
  • 00:00:51
    Rainville is absent.
  • 00:00:53
    Vita?
  • 00:00:53
    Present.
  • 00:00:54
    Ellison?
  • 00:00:55
    Here.
  • 00:00:56
    There are eight members present
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:01:12
    Let the record reflect that we have a quorum.
  • 00:01:15
    With that, we'll dispense with today's consent agenda.
  • 00:01:18
    Item number one is referring to staff the wages and salaries ordinance, which was introduced and referred to this committee at the council's organizational meeting on January 8th.
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    This formal action will allow staff in the human resources department to bring forward to this committee the creation of new appointed positions and existing appointed positions.
  • 00:01:38
    I'll move approval of the consent agenda.
  • 00:01:40
    Is there any discussion?
  • 00:01:44
    Seeing none, all those in favor say aye.
  • 00:01:46
    Aye.
  • 00:01:46
    Those opposed say nay.
  • 00:01:49
    Any abstentions?
  • 00:01:52
    The ayes have it and the motion carries.
  • 00:01:55
    With that, we'll move to the discussion agenda.
  • 00:01:58
    Item number two is a report on the 2024-2025 Budget Committee Work Plan.
  • 00:02:05
    Vice Chair Koski and I will be leading this presentation.
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    I'll start off with introducing this item and then hand it to Vice Chair Koski to present the first several slides.
  • 00:02:16
    The 2024-2025 Budget Committee work plan has been about a year in the making.
  • 00:02:21
    This work plan was approved by the council last year and its review, revisement, and adoption is a part of the annual process.
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    I want to especially thank Vice Chair Koski
  • 00:02:34
    and Melissa from her office and Jody from the City Auditor's Office for their work and leadership in putting this work plan together, bringing other council offices along and ensuring the council is fulfilling our job in dutifully and responsibly exercising our power of the purse.
  • 00:02:54
    With that, Vice Chair Koski, I'll hand it off to you and Melissa will be managing the slides while we present.
• • Emily Koski
  • 00:03:01
    Thank you, Council Vice President Chugtai.
  • 00:03:04
    I just want to make sure that the slides are coming up.
  • 00:03:07
    I think here they come.
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 00:03:12
    I don't have a question.
  • 00:03:18
    I just want to quickly acknowledge Councilmember Rainville asked me to publicly acknowledge that he's at a settlement conference in St. Paul, otherwise he would be here.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:03:28
    Thank you.
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 00:03:28
    Thank you.
• • Emily Koski
  • 00:03:30
    All right I see the slides are up so we will move to the slide we are on goals and outcomes of the work plan.
  • 00:03:39
    So the goal of the Budget Committee work plan is to organize the Budget Committee and ourselves to create a process by which it can fulfill its legislative policy making oversight responsibilities regarding all fiscal financial business as dictated by the city charter and a court ordinance and code of ordinances.
  • 00:03:56
    The outcome of the Budget Committee work plan is that it continues to fulfill those duties as well.
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    So think of this as our roadmap for what and when we will accomplish work together in this committee.
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    The next slide walks through the way that we have thought about how to put together the work plan and it follows the basic strategic planning model.
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    So plan, implement, evaluate, learn, adjust, and repeat.
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    You will see this cycle happening within our committee throughout the year on both macro and micro levels.
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    and then the next slide will talk a little bit about the process.
  • 00:04:43
    So the 2024-2025 Budget Committee work plan was prepared by myself as the former chair of the Budget Committee and the City Auditor's Office and was modified after consultation with council members, the mayor's office and key city staff.
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    I worked with the City Auditor's Office to develop the draft 2024-2025 Budget Committee work plan.
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    We briefed Council members to receive their input and feedback.
  • 00:05:09
    We modified the work plan and proposed topics to incorporate their input and feedback.
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    We briefed the Mayor's Office and Key City staff.
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    We then went and modified the work plan to incorporate their input and feedback and then presented the work plan to the Budget Committee in which it was adopted late last year.
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    Next we'll talk a little bit about just the introduction of what is the purpose of a work plan.
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    And this plan really is to provide a framework in which we organize ourselves as a committee.
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    This will inform us as committee members.
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    It will inform the public and the executive team and other key city partners on what to expect and what we will be accomplishing in this committee.
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    The framework focuses on the following work, the budget committee planning,
  • 00:05:58
    City Council budget priorities, the legislative department budget, financial oversight, and then, of course, the 2025-2026 biannual budget.
  • 00:06:08
    This work plan that we have here will be moved for adoption next cycle.
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    So as you're listening to Councilmember Chugdai, who will go into more further detail, you know, start thinking about the pieces that are important to you
  • 00:06:24
    as we will have the next two weeks to think about different ways to modify this if needed too.
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    So we'll dive in a little deeper now of the actual work.
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    So we have the Budget Committee planning.
  • 00:06:40
    That's what we're doing right now is hearing about the work plan.
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    And like I said, we'll have the next two weeks to kind of dig in this together with us as committee co-chairs to talk about how you might want to modify or strengthen the work that we're doing together.
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    Then we have our City Council budget priorities.
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    So that's us working together to set priorities for this term.
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    Next we have the legislative department budget.
  • 00:07:07
    We did this last year for the first time and so we'll do it so this should seem familiar and so this will come before us again and this is the work that our city clerk and our city auditors have done and so we'll get that presented to us as well.
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    Financial oversight.
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    We made some updates already late last year but this is our opportunity to continue to review those throughout the year.
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    and then of course the piece that we are all most familiar with and that is the 2025-2026 biannual budget.
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    I also want to say that throughout the year we will visit some of the proposed topics that many of you have already given us and again we're all ears but we will be utilizing those as inspiration to bring forward throughout the year so that we can make sure that we are
  • 00:07:55
    you know, educated and informed as we move into the budget and amendments time and during kind of the analysis of financial policies.
  • 00:08:05
    Okay, next up we have Council Vice President Chuck Tai who will go into a little deeper dive of the actual work plan.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:08:14
    Thank you Vice Chair Koski.
  • 00:08:16
    So now we are going to dive into the 2024-2025 Budget Committee work plan
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    we are going to review the work plan focusing on 2024 specifically so you can see exactly how these goals and framework translate to committee work in this upcoming year.
  • 00:08:38
    So starting in
  • 00:08:41
    during this time.
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    On the council side, our work plan focus will include review, modify, and adopt the 2024-2025 Budget Committee work plan.
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    this is what
  • 00:09:20
    I'm very happy to sit down with you and talk to you about your ideas for modification and make sure that that is incorporated into the final plan that we will then adopt.
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    We will also receive a report and presentation on the American Rescue Plan Act.
  • 00:09:40
    This will focus on the city's ARPA appropriations, their status,
  • 00:09:45
    and whether or not the appropriations are on target to get the funds out the door by the end of 2024, by the end of this year.
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    We will respond to requests for committee action on personnel related action.
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    can include considering reclassifications, appointed positions, salary schedules, vacation adjustments and salary increases, market adjustments and more.
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    Requests and received presentations on topical issues which may include reports or presentations.
  • 00:10:18
    on any topics that are raised by the committee or council members.
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    You'll note that later on in this agenda, we are going to be taking on a presentation that was raised by a member of this committee, Councilmember Wonsley, late last term.
  • 00:10:35
    On a parallel track, the executive branch will prepare information relevant to the recommended 2024-2025 biennial budget and the Board of Estimate and Taxation will have no standing business during these two months.
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    Next we are going to move into March and April where our focus will be on the City Council budget priorities.
  • 00:11:02
    During this time we will develop, present, modify and endorse the City Council budget priorities and then direct the Council President and myself to present them to the Mayor.
  • 00:11:13
    We did some of this last year when the Council voted to endorse certain budget priorities.
  • 00:11:21
    is generally a newer muscle, though, that we are using.
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    And in this upcoming year, we will have a more cohesive process that looks at council budget priorities in a more holistic way.
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    We will also receive the fourth quarter financial report and a presentation.
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    This is the quarterly update on the fiscal status of the city.
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    Rollover of the previous year's budget appropriations, the passage of a resolution amending the budget to allow for rollover of unspent funds for items that were delayed or not completed during the budget year.
  • 00:12:00
    We will receive the biennial personnel report and a presentation which is a report and presentation on all personnel actions taken to date as well as those that are anticipated within the existing budgets including those internal to departments that may be included in their operating or business plans showing all of the approved and budgeted positions along with FTEs or vacancies, newly created positions, positions that were transferred
  • 00:12:30
    changes in existing positions and and beyond.
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    We will respond to requests for committee action on personnel related actions and request and receive presentations again on topical financial issues.
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    During this time the executive branch will prepare the state of the city with the city's stated goals and priorities and then departments will develop their proposed department
  • 00:12:57
    biennial budgets, and the mayor will have one-on-one meetings with council members on their individual budget priorities.
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    The section is pretty consistent with what we've seen in years past.
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    And then the Board of Estimate and Taxation won't have any standing business.
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    You'll notice this is a theme throughout a lot of this work plan.
  • 00:13:18
    Next we'll look at May and June and this is where we'll be focusing on the legislative department budget.
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    During this time, this committee will focus on the legislative department and they will develop
  • 00:13:39
    5 legislative department biennial budget and present it to this committee.
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    As a reminder, the legislative department includes the city council, the city clerk's office, and the city auditor's office.
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    We will modify and endorse the 2024 or 2025-2026 legislative department biennial budget and direct the council president and myself to present it to the mayor.
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    We will also modify and adopt the city's goals and priorities as outlined in the mayor's state of the city address.
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    Receive the current service level report and a presentation which will include revised revenue forecasts and expenses inflated to cover personnel cost growth and internal services at our current service level budgets.
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    We will respond to requests for committee actions on personnel related actions and request and receive presentations on topical financial issues.
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    During this time, the executive branch departments will deliver their proposed department budgets to the mayor and the board of estimate and taxation will have no standing business.
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    Next we're going to move to July and August, which will focus on financial oversight.
  • 00:14:57
    And during that time, this committee will receive a presentation from Finance and Property Services on their recommended financial policies, direct the City Auditor's Office financial consultant to develop review of recommended financial policies, and then present that review.
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    and we will modify and adopt our financial policies.
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    We will also receive a report in presentation on the prior year's change items.
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    So this will be an update on the items that were brought before us for consideration and approved in this year's city budget.
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    We will receive the annual comprehensive financial report and presentation.
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    The Finance and Property Services Department prepares this along with the schedule of expenditures for federal awards.
  • 00:15:55
    The purpose of this presentation is to provide an overview and highlights of the city's
  • 00:16:01
    comprehensive annual financial report and the related federal grants program reports.
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    We will receive the first and second quarter financial reports and presentations, respond to and along with every, just like every other part of this year, we will respond to requests for committee action on personnel related actions and request and receive presentations.
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    on Topical Financial Issues.
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    During this time, July and August, the executive branch, the mayor will be presenting the recommended 2025-2026 biennial budget and levy and the Board of Estimate and Taxation has no standing business.
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    Now we get to September and October.
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    As you know, this is the busiest part of the year, so the next three slides will cover September and October.
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    During this time, this committee will choose whether or not to develop a position on the recommended 2025-2026 Biennial Budget.
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    And if we choose to develop a position, we will go through the standard committee process where we develop, present, modify, endorse.
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    We will receive a budget overview, levy overview, schedule five overview, five-year financial direction overview, and performance management overview.
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    Continuing on, we are going to receive departmental presentations, which will include the current service level budget, work plan, which will include their organizational chart, programs, FTEs and vacancies, achievements and risks.
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    a performance management framework, new budget proposals, and FTE administrative adjustments, transfers, and so on.
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    Generally this is pretty consistent with what we receive in departmental presentations, but I will just
  • 00:18:09
    point out that we will do a deeper dive into the current service level budgets in a way that we haven't gotten a chance to deeply understand in years past so that as this body is considering making adjustments, we have a clear understanding of what bodies of work already exist so we're not creating additional work that is already happening.
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    along with that performance management framework that's going to be a newer tool that has been incorporated in years past and is going to further develop in this upcoming year.
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    Along with this, if we choose to develop a position on the 2025-2026 biennial budget and levy, we will direct the Budget Chair and Vice Chair to present that position to the Board of Estimate and Taxation.
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    The purpose of this will be to inform the BET of the Budget Committee and City Council's position on the budget and levy before the maximum levy is set.
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    the budget chair and vice chair will facilitate preliminary markup conversations as is pretty consistent with years past.
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    The committee will also receive the biennial personnel report and presentation and respond to requests for committee action on personnel related actions.
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    You will notice that topical
  • 00:19:29
    presentations are not included in this section, so the time to get those in will be prior to September, October, since this time we have a very narrow focus that we have to carry out.
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    During this time, the executive branch side, the mayor will deliver the department's proposed departmental biennial budgets to the City Council, and they will be made available to the public via LIMS.
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    and then continuing on the Board of Estimate and Taxation will receive a presentation from the mayor on the recommended 2025-2026 biennial budget and levy hold a public hearing on the recommended levy and set the 2025 maximum levy.
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    and then finally in November and December we will continue our focus on the 25-26 biennial budget.
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    We will, the chair and vice chair will facilitate preliminary markup conversations, hold public hearings, hold markup meetings, hold the truth and taxation hearing and adopt the 25-26 biennial budget and levy.
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    in addition to receiving the third quarter financial report and presentation.
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    for Committee action on personnel related issues.
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    The mayor at this time will adopt the 25-26 biannual budget and levy and the Board of Estimate and Taxation will have no standing business.
  • 00:20:59
    So that is our overview and presentation of the Budget Committee work plan and we are happy to take questions or comments from members of the committee.
  • 00:21:08
    I see Councilmember Cashman.
• • Michael Cashman
  • 00:21:13
    Thank you so much for giving us a blueprint and for outlining all this work that's ahead.
  • 00:21:18
    I'm wondering if you have an idea of some of the topical presentations that you'll be inviting staff to present to us on in the near term and if we can weigh in on things that we think are important for us to know and get data on at the start in the first quarter of the work plan.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:21:39
    So as an example, today we're going to be receiving a presentation on participatory budgeting, some of the presentations that are highlighted in the work plan right now.
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    Those are the presentations that we are for sure planning on with staff.
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    So if you are hoping to receive a presentation that
  • 00:22:01
    that covers what our unspent funding is or where there are transfers within budgets of staff happening or things like that.
  • 00:22:16
    We're already planning on those.
  • 00:22:18
    If there are additional topics you have an interest in covering,
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    Please, any time before, in these next couple weeks is a great time to raise some of those questions with us and we can decide where they might fit in and work together to plan those accordingly.
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    And we have time set aside in every phase of this work plan prior to September for there to be additional presentations that are added to the work plan.
• • Michael Cashman
  • 00:22:53
    Okay, thank you.
  • 00:22:54
    So I will raise that with you too, and I also have one more question, which is about the Board of Estimation and Taxation that was, like, you know, an empty bullet point here.
  • 00:23:05
    Could you explain why that is?
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:23:08
    So this is just covering what their planned or standing business is.
  • 00:23:17
    So a lot of what you see listed in the executive branch, for example, is just following what they do in an annual budget process and it's incorporating their charter responsibilities as well.
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    I will note that the Board of Estimate and Taxation has a specific business later on in the year in September-October when they set the maximum levy and hold a public hearing prior to that.
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    and that's just how they relate to this committee's business.
  • 00:24:01
    The place where you see the most detail is what this committee has ownership of and that's our work.
• • Michael Cashman
  • 00:24:07
    Perfect, thank you.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:24:10
    I see Councilmember Wonsley in queue as well.
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 00:24:13
    Thank you, Council Vice President.
  • 00:24:16
    So, one, thank you to also you as well as Councilmember and Chair Koski for bringing this forward again and really shaping this work plan in a way for us to maximize our
  • 00:24:33
    person holding authorities that we have not fully utilized in the prior term.
  • 00:24:39
    I'm really excited to also see a lot more focus on performance management and just budget oversight, which I think dovetails well with the work we're going to be doing in administration enterprise oversight, which I will be chairing.
  • 00:24:53
    So I'm really, really excited to make sure that, you know, we're both working in collaboration to make sure
  • 00:24:59
    the administration side or executive side is you know really delivering on the priorities and programs that we fund.
  • 00:25:09
    I'm also really excited to see the piece around the rollover dollars because I know last budget meeting
  • 00:25:16
    staff share that there would be maybe an estimate around 20 million.
  • 00:25:21
    And I know there is a very tight turnaround process for how we can make decisions around that.
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    So I'm excited to get more clarity on how we're going to be approaching that, going again to March and how we can
  • 00:25:33
    Hopefully use some of that to support other priorities that our constituents are bringing forward to us.
  • 00:25:39
    So just wanted to say thank you for that.
  • 00:25:42
    And just clarification again, the surplus process will be kicked off in March or sorry, let me the uncommitted surplus or rollover dollars.
  • 00:25:53
    I know there's some language around that.
  • 00:25:55
    That's going to be kicked off in March.
  • 00:25:57
    Correct.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:25:59
    It is currently planned for March and April, and Councilmember Wonsley, I just want to highlight something you raised at the end of your comments.
  • 00:26:07
    Rollover or surplus, sometimes it's used interchangeably among us, and I think we don't always have a shared understanding of what we mean when we use those terms, and as a result, neither does the public.
  • 00:26:19
    sometimes when we see actions in front of us that address rollover and that's talking about money that has been allocated and is going to be spent but wasn't in the year that it was allocated for.
  • 00:26:34
    What you are talking about exactly as you said is the rollover of unspent funds from the previous year.
  • 00:26:43
    It is right now planned for March and April, which follows when we close out our books and account for the previous year's budget, and as a result of a point you raised earlier today, just want to clarify that with finance and make sure that it is appropriately
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 00:27:05
    yes I'm really again excited around how we can maximize some of those dollars I know typically that has gone into the the mayor's administration to be able to delegate to wherever they have decided or feels is best so it's really good that we have a proactive process where council gets to weigh in on how we want to appropriate those unspent or uncommitted surplus dollars so really excited to see I think you all are going to bring some changes to the work plan to reflect that process and
  • 00:27:35
    really excited for that.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:27:37
    Excellent.
  • 00:27:38
    Next in queue, thank you Councilmember.
  • 00:27:41
    Next in queue is President Payne.
• • Elliott Payne
  • 00:27:43
    Thank you, Vice President.
  • 00:27:44
    I just wanted to say thank you for bringing this forward.
  • 00:27:47
    I know there was a lot of questions as we were starting this term around what would the body of work be for a standing budget committee.
  • 00:27:53
    And I think you very clearly outlined that.
  • 00:27:55
    And I also want to, um, echo what council member Wonsley was saying is this is a really great venue for, you know, more frequent performance management, um, tracking and, and metrics definition around how our, our dollars are getting spent and having a little bit more of a real time,
  • 00:28:13
    Thank you, and next we've got Councilmember Chowdhury.
• • Aurin Chowdhury
  • 00:28:25
    Thank you, Council Vice President Chug Thai, and thank you to both of you.
  • 00:28:31
    Vice Chair Koski on your work on this.
  • 00:28:35
    This is really helpful just coming in as a new council member.
  • 00:28:38
    The budget process historically is when the City Council has the most action and our constituents are paying attention to see how we are going to spend their taxpayer dollars.
  • 00:28:48
    And there's been oftentimes a call that we need to demystify our process, especially as we're moving into biannual budgeting.
  • 00:28:57
    And I think this is a really good step.
  • 00:29:00
    right direction for us to figure that out both as a body but also with the constituents and people who work in our city that are really invested in seeing how we are going to allocate our budget every year as a city council in partnership with the executive branch and to that end one of the questions that I have just to gain a little bit of clarity on is from our last budget that we approved in December
  • 00:29:30
    When are we going to get information around how that has been spent?
  • 00:29:36
    Is that the same as the financial oversight part?
  • 00:29:39
    I'm really particularly curious on the public safety aid dollars that we allocated this year.
  • 00:29:46
    I just wanted to get your thoughts on when we'll plan on hearing that back.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:29:51
    Thank you, Councilmember.
  • 00:29:54
    Right now, in this work plan in July and August, we are set to receive a report and presentation on the prior year's change items, which include changes made that were led by Council.
  • 00:30:11
    Vice Chair Koski and I would be very happy to talk to you about if there are other opportunities for us to keep track of that sooner.
  • 00:30:21
    I know that's been of interest to others as well.
• • Aurin Chowdhury
  • 00:30:27
    Thank you.
  • 00:30:27
    I just had one more.
  • 00:30:28
    It's on the work plan, excited to spend the next two weeks meeting with you.
  • 00:30:35
    What's our process, just to clarify, on this body to make changes to the work plan?
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:30:45
    That's a really great question.
  • 00:30:47
    You will receive an email from us in the coming days that will outline the process including just a clear timeline of what the amendments or markup process to the work plan will look like and like deadlines for getting those in so we can consider them
  • 00:31:05
    all together.
  • 00:31:07
    And so more to come on that.
  • 00:31:10
    We know that currently we are planning on modifying and adopting at the at the next meeting.
  • 00:31:20
    Excellent.
  • 00:31:21
    And right now, last in queue is Councilmember Wonsley.
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 00:31:25
    Thank you Council Vice President.
  • 00:31:27
    I just want to know for the public record with the clerks that I am here in attendance because I know I missed roll call and then also I saw you took up a consent item and just wanted to make sure an aye vote was recorded for me.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:31:43
    Excellent.
  • 00:31:44
    Actually, that is a great reminder that we were joined by Council members Osman, Cashman, Wonsley, and now Jenkins for this meeting.
  • 00:31:58
    Okay, any further discussion?
  • 00:32:03
    Seeing no further discussion, I'll direct the clerk to file that report.
  • 00:32:09
    Next, we'll move to item number three, which is a report providing a high-level overview on how to integrate participatory budgeting into the Minneapolis budget process.
  • 00:32:21
    I will invite Andrew Hawkins from the City Auditor's Office to give us that report.
  • 00:32:29
    Mr. Hawkins, welcome.
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 00:32:32
    My name is Andrew Hawkins.
  • 00:32:37
    I manage the Office of Policy and Research Division in the Office of the City Auditor.
  • 00:32:44
    I'm here today to provide an overview of the participatory budgeting process.
  • 00:32:49
    This is kind of intended to serve as an introduction to this topic to give council members an idea for the various
  • 00:32:56
    like formats that this takes across you know both like the country and globally you know and then where there might be some areas for potential adoption within the city and where there might be areas for further exploration um additionally I will note this is the first time that we're trying a we're gonna call a collaborative presentation so I will be joined shortly by but city's budget director James
  • 00:33:17
    but her team graciously worked with us in conducting this and helping to kind of fill in some of the gaps where there was more information needed and this seemed like a good opportunity to attempt this.
  • 00:33:28
    Where it differs from a normal presentation is again might not seem like a huge deal and I guess we're gonna see how it works but the idea is to bring forward the staff that are responsible for carrying out the work and that have the subject matter expertise to speak directly to some of the city's actual processes to ensure that council is able to get as much information as possible from this presentation.
  • 00:33:47
    But with that, I'll begin.
  • 00:33:50
    Participatory budgeting in its current and tourist form, as most people know, it began in Brazil in the 80s.
  • 00:33:58
    It kind of stemmed from a desire from residents to become more involved in the process to help guide where dollars were going and see some, I think, more connection between the government and its population.
  • 00:34:13
    Again, it was initially deemed fairly successful.
  • 00:34:16
    It was adopted fairly widely in Brazil, at which point over the last couple decades, it's spread fairly significantly across both the world and the United States.
  • 00:34:25
    There's at least 29 U.S. cities that currently employ some form of participatory budgeting.
  • 00:34:29
    Currently in the state of Minnesota, I believe Burnsville is in the initial stages of developing a process, but at least as far as what I was able to
  • 00:34:39
    learned that there isn't anybody that has a fully formalized participatory budgeting process that's been implemented.
  • 00:34:47
    Some of the central themes that you're going to see across any participatory budgeting process are, again, just a dedicated pool of funding, so something that's explicitly called out and made available to this process.
  • 00:35:00
    Engagement strategy is kind of one of the central pieces.
  • 00:35:04
    Again, the whole idea behind this is engaging with residents and community, so being able to sort of formalize and, you know, I think publish
  • 00:35:12
    how you're gonna go about this work in order to ensure that you're gonna have the largest impact possible, you're gonna be able to engage.
  • 00:35:19
    A lot of times the priority is people that have been historically left out of budgeting processes.
  • 00:35:24
    And then I think being able to outline the process stages and timelines, essentially setting expectations so that individuals that are engaging with the process have a better understanding for what they can expect both from the process and from the city itself.
  • 00:35:39
    is like essentially any engagement effort with community.
  • 00:35:45
    That's one of those where you really only, you don't get many shots at it before.
  • 00:35:49
    It can start to lose credibility and lose, once you lose buy-in, I think it kind of undermines the entirety of the process.
  • 00:35:56
    So making very good expectations, both from I think the government side and from what the government side expects from residents who want to be involved in the process.
  • 00:36:06
    is a critical piece.
  • 00:36:14
    So in 2017, there actually was an ask from Council as part of the budget process.
  • 00:36:19
    I went to a number of departments, but essentially just asking them to look into this, sort of a version of what I'm here talking to you about today, but from the staff side.
  • 00:36:29
    So I think what was asked was, what would this look like if we did this in Minneapolis?
  • 00:36:34
    Would it be viable?
  • 00:36:34
    What are some things to know?
  • 00:36:36
    And I think with the goal of sort of establishing kind of a framework across these departments that would be involved in bringing that forward to Council.
  • 00:36:44
    Again, through fairly deep scouring of limbs, I cannot tell you what happened to that actual request.
  • 00:36:52
    The one thing that we were able to find, there is a participatory budgeting playbook that was created from I think the finance department was a primary driver, but I believe there were some other groups that were involved as well.
  • 00:37:04
    basically what that provided was just a very kind of high-level overview for what they felt would be some of the structure at the time in terms of what this might look like if it was going to go forward and have success.
  • 00:37:20
    Point from that to looking at existing comparable programs in the city.
  • 00:37:24
    There's a couple that we wanted to highlight.
  • 00:37:27
    The first of those is CLIC, the Capital Long Range Improvement Committee.
  • 00:37:31
    This is a 33-member committee, two seats per council ward and seven at-large seats that are appointed by the mayor.
  • 00:37:37
    They're responsible for review of all capital budget and all capital budget items and they provide recommendations.
  • 00:37:44
    that inform both the mayor's budget and the budget that is moved forward by council.
  • 00:37:49
    The other kind of somewhat comparable piece that we have right now is through NCR, and that's the four programmatic funding areas that they do in collaboration with a lot of the neighborhood organizations and neighborhood-based service providers.
  • 00:38:01
    These include the City Neighborhood Network Fund, which is a fund that distributes things.
  • 00:38:06
    I think the allocations are done consistently across neighborhood orgs.
  • 00:38:12
    We have the Equitable Engagement Fund, which is the largest fund.
  • 00:38:15
    It focuses on three criteria.
  • 00:38:17
    I believe it's calculated poverty, cost burden, and gentrification of a neighborhood.
  • 00:38:23
    So that one's intended to help neighbor support.
  • 00:38:29
    There's a Partnership Engagement Fund, which is primarily used to engage with community-based organizations that provide service within a specific community.
  • 00:38:37
    And then they have the Collaboration and Shared Resource Fund, which is that one, the main
  • 00:38:42
    and it is to essentially help foster collaboration between the groups themselves, if there's any other groups that are going to contract into a larger group, things of that nature.
  • 00:38:53
    Jumping from there into the landscape, just to get an idea for some of the places around the country that have been doing this.
  • 00:39:00
    For the purposes of the presentation and the report, we have selected three.
  • 00:39:03
    As I said previously, there's over 29.
  • 00:39:06
    It includes Phoenix, Hartford, Seattle, Portland, Oakland, Philadelphia, Nashville.
  • 00:39:12
    So this is something that we're seeing.
  • 00:39:14
    It's not limited to any specific geographic region.
  • 00:39:16
    It's being adopted, I think, at a fairly
  • 00:39:19
    I'm going to talk about
  • 00:39:43
    is because there's two parallel processes that are running.
  • 00:39:45
    At the same time, one of those is run from council offices.
  • 00:39:48
    I think right now it's 39 of 50 or 51 offices there, employ some, have kind of signed on to participate in the, I believe it's called Participatory Budgeting New York City.
  • 00:40:00
    There's also the People's Money, which was implemented in 2022 by the mayor of New York and the Civic Engagement Commission, where they differ.
  • 00:40:07
    The council
  • 00:40:10
    process generally focuses on infrastructure type projects, whereas the mayor's program focuses more on programmatic budgeting.
  • 00:40:17
    So they do sort of have their own respective lanes, but it's also just interesting that they're both running simultaneously.
  • 00:40:24
    The allocations in those ones, there's at least a million dollars in participating council districts, and then I believe the most recent estimate was five million that's made available through the people's money through the mayor's program.
  • 00:40:39
    From there we go to Durham, North Carolina.
  • 00:40:41
    The reason for this is just, again, to illustrate that, you know, New York has a program that, you know, like this really, these programs are scalable, depending on the needs of residents, depending on this, you know, I think what the city is actually, you know, is looking for, what they want to accomplish, so it doesn't matter if it's a city of, you know, a hundred people or a city of a hundred million people, you know, it's something that can be adapted to serve the population.
  • 00:41:03
    The Durham one is fairly recent.
  • 00:41:05
    It was adopted in 2018.
  • 00:41:06
    They're currently on their third cycle.
  • 00:41:08
    The allocation when they launched this was $2.4 million.
  • 00:41:13
    The scope for this one was projects with one-time expenditures that address community need.
  • 00:41:17
    It can include physical infrastructure, technological improvements, and community enhancements.
  • 00:41:22
    I believe one of the other conditions for this was that it couldn't require
  • 00:41:26
    you know bringing on additional staff so it had to be something that the city was able to do with its current existing resources and then something that I actually forgot to know in the previous one who can participate this was something that again was fairly it's fairly unique across all the cities but one of the things that we definitely saw is that usually it's you know like goes down to you know fairly young part of the population that's able to participate I think New York
  • 00:41:51
    and New York.
  • 00:41:52
    All residents regardless of immigration status like 11 or older are invited to participate.
  • 00:41:59
    In Durham we saw it slightly higher but the same criteria apply.
  • 00:42:02
    I think we see the same thing with Denver in the coming slide.
  • 00:42:08
    One of the reasons for this is that a lot of these programs
  • 00:42:11
    what they're trying to accomplish in the community there is a youth component to it so the city's made the decision that if that's the outcome that they want to see then they need to involve that part of the population in the process in some capacity.
  • 00:42:26
    Jumping to Denver
  • 00:42:30
    The Denver participatory budgeting project, it began in 2017 just with a briefing to council, much like this one, and that kind of kicked off the initial cycle.
  • 00:42:38
    They developed a community guidebook that was intended to serve as kind of that, I think, roadmap for both the city, the council, elected officials, as well as residents in understanding how this process was going to move forward, what the expectations could be, what the timelines were, what was going to be allocated, what projects qualify.
  • 00:42:56
    and they attached a $2 million allocation to that.
  • 00:42:59
    I believe they just finished that initial cycle very recently as well.
  • 00:43:04
    The scope of that one was neighborhood improvement projects as well as infrastructure funding.
  • 00:43:08
    And then this one, age or older, regardless of immigration status.
  • 00:43:11
    So again, that's something where we do see it varies, but it's fairly consistent in that there's not a formal voting age requirement for these programs.
  • 00:43:24
    In the timelines and evaluation,
  • 00:43:28
    this is something just like you know many of these other pieces where it's scalable depending on the needs of the specific city size of the city the allocation of funding whether or not they're doing it on a citywide basis versus doing board or district basis so I think as you add in those layers of complexity you can bump out some of the timelines that are necessary to execute
  • 00:43:54
    We see in New York, again, that participatory budget in New York City is, again, that one's a little unique where it starts in October and it actually carries over into the new year all the way through June.
  • 00:44:06
    period concludes.
  • 00:44:08
    We see, meanwhile, the parallel program, the people's money, is a September to June.
  • 00:44:12
    So, again, they're on fairly similar timelines, but both of those do roll over.
  • 00:44:15
    I believe they're on a version of a biennial budget.
  • 00:44:19
    So, it's always something where there's, you know, could be some there.
  • 00:44:24
    With Durham, the timeline that I selected to show was just for when they implemented.
  • 00:44:29
    Their most recent iterations were somewhat responsive to COVID, so the timelines were a little bit skewed because of that.
  • 00:44:34
    They began everything in the fall of 2018.
  • 00:44:38
    And by the fall of 2019, they were ready to implement.
  • 00:44:41
    So we saw that go through their formalized program.
  • 00:44:50
    evaluation and measuring equity.
  • 00:44:52
    This was a central piece to all of these, and I feel like all of the cities had gone out, essentially gone out of their way on the website to ensure that all the materials were made available so that people had an understanding for what the process was going to look like and how everything was going to be measured.
  • 00:45:08
    As I alluded to previously, getting that buy-in on the front end is great.
  • 00:45:12
    but as the process moves along, especially since this has been touched on by the council, well, since we're talking about public funds, it's important that everything is tracked and measured to ensure that the money's going where people want it to go or at least if it's something where your project wasn't selected, having a very clear understanding for what the process was that everything moved through and how everything was evaluated.
  • 00:45:37
    This is something in all the different cities, what it looks like can be
  • 00:45:41
    and the City Council and the City Council and the City Council.
  • 00:46:03
    of the projects that kind of make it through that selection, it's generally whittled down to a more manageable amount, and all of those receive some kind of formalized scoping from city staff that turns them into what would basically be a formalized proposal.
  • 00:46:18
    One of the advantages of that that was found just through surveys of residents that have participated is a much better understanding for I think the larger scope of how the city approaches something, which again, from that buy-in and engagement with residents and kind of demystifying
  • 00:46:33
    Some of the processes that the city operates under, it seemed like it was a fairly valuable tool for walking people through and actually seeing what they might have an idea and it's like, well, why don't you just do this?
  • 00:46:47
    This sort of provides that, well, we will, but here's everything that it has to go through and all of the different people that are involved and all the hands that touch it.
  • 00:46:53
    So I think that that was something that was definitely a positive kind of byproduct of these processes.
  • 00:47:00
    from the equity side.
  • 00:47:03
    There's a nonprofit public agenda and the participatory budgeting project have a fairly elaborate framework that's intended to guide cities in establishing what are basically surveys that are employed at various parts and stages during this process.
  • 00:47:18
    The goal of those is to measure and gather as much data as possible about
  • 00:47:23
    was engaged.
  • 00:47:25
    What were the outcomes?
  • 00:47:26
    What are we seeing in terms of geographic outcomes?
  • 00:47:29
    Are we seeing projects being approved in one specific area of the city?
  • 00:47:35
    They also employed a degree of spatial equity, which is another way to think about project diversity and equity by considering where these community projects are located and whether the location benefits some community members and not others.
  • 00:47:48
    But yeah, it's a fairly impressive and vigorous set of various guidelines in terms of getting all of that data that you're going to need to evaluate this effectively.
  • 00:47:58
    The City of Durham, again, it's a slightly different approach.
  • 00:48:01
    They had their project evaluation matrix, which was used to kind of filter down all of the proposals into what ends up being the final slate that's voted on.
  • 00:48:09
    And with that one, again, the core question of that one was, how do we know if a project advances equity?
  • 00:48:17
    And they have a number of questions that they want individuals that are on the evaluation group to go through before they're able to advance a project.
  • 00:48:27
    One other last piece to this, a byproduct of resident engagement, I believe it was Lansing, Michigan, began employing this process and having conversations with community.
  • 00:48:41
    Through those conversations, they actually pivoted from their kind of what we would know as a traditional budgeting process and program to a program-based budgeting process.
  • 00:48:50
    The reason they did that was because what they learned during their conversations with community was that the program-based budget
  • 00:48:56
    was kind of more in line with I think how residents talk about funds where everything's based around you know a program or you know service as opposed to just you know and when a constituent calls a council office you know very seldom are they this department needs more money it's usually you know I want this program to be better that was something that was kind of an interesting takeaway where you know they were able to listen and determine you know there was a more effective process and way to communicate with their constituents
  • 00:49:22
    With that, I'm going to turn it over to Budget Director DiCenza for the final two slides and then we'll be both happy to stand for any questions.
• • Jayne Discenza
  • 00:49:38
    Council Vice President Chug Thai, Council Members.
  • 00:49:41
    I'm Jane DeCenza, I'm the City's Budget Director, so I work within the Finance and Property Services Department.
  • 00:49:48
    Do you wanna echo, thanks to Mr. Hawkins for including us early in this conversation.
  • 00:49:52
    I think it's so important that we, as we're building out this function of government, that we're developing a collaborative, collegial relationship, so we really appreciate that.
  • 00:50:00
    So I'm really here just to discuss two pieces of existing work that are tied to the concepts around public engagement and participation in the budget process.
  • 00:50:10
    One of them is ongoing and one's a newer endeavor.
  • 00:50:12
    So I'll just briefly speak to those.
  • 00:50:15
    So you've already heard a little bit about the Capital Long Range Improvement Committee today.
  • 00:50:20
    So CLIC is a really important way in which residents can engage with a substantial portion of our city's budget.
  • 00:50:28
    So to touch on the impact, members of which there are 33 appointed by council and the mayor last year heard 1.5 billion dollars of requests from many departments so they hear from
  • 00:50:43
    Park Board, they hear from Public Works, Property Services, Arts, and the Municipal Building Commission.
  • 00:50:50
    123 requests came to them in the last cycle, so they were able to interrogate those requests, ask a lot of questions.
  • 00:51:00
    and then program them out over a six year period.
  • 00:51:03
    So the total recommended capital budget that you all saw in or that the last council saw in August was $1.4 billion.
  • 00:51:10
    So the adopted amount just for 2024 alone was $274 million.
  • 00:51:15
    So it's a substantial piece of the pie and is an important way that residents can engage in the budget.
  • 00:51:22
    It's of course a significant time commitment, so it may not be as accessible to everyone.
  • 00:51:27
    We are working with communications this year to amplify the listening sessions that this body holds throughout the spring But you know I wanted to highlight this as it's an area that residents and visitors to Minneapolis are engaging with every day our infrastructures is so important for that and there is a tremendous opportunity to influence the direction of the city through that process and
  • 00:51:55
    Next, we are working on designing a public engagement strategy.
  • 00:52:01
    Last year, the budget division added a position that was focused on policy and engagement, and so that staffer, a large chunk of her work has been thinking about public engagement and how we can do that better.
  • 00:52:13
    We of course are going to continue to do our required public hearings in the fall and winter, but we know that those happen really late, and it can be hard to influence decision-making at that stage.
  • 00:52:26
    We are working in collaboration with NCR to design a program that is credible and that at this early phase serves the goal of informing residents.
  • 00:52:39
    What we've heard from NCR is that there's a lot of questions out there about what the budget is, what it does, and how people can impact it.
  • 00:52:45
    And so in this sort of curated pilot phase, we're gonna work on the inform goal that's laid out in the IAP2 continuum.
  • 00:52:55
    We're working also with IT to design some technology solutions to help us share back that information.
  • 00:53:02
    So participants will be asked to rank the mayor's and the city's priorities using a very simple ranking tool.
  • 00:53:13
    We'll also use technology to educate them on the trade-offs.
  • 00:53:18
    is really building empathy for the budget process and using technology to record that information.
  • 00:53:30
    We're in the co-creation phase with NCR, so I don't want to get too far ahead of it, but we will be identifying a couple cultural groups to work with us in this pilot phase to test this out.
  • 00:53:43
    And that should happen in the next couple months.
  • 00:53:46
    And then we will be developing a communication strategy with our city's communications department to share out information about that and from that.
  • 00:53:55
    So with that, I think I'll stop there and we can both stand for questions.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 00:54:05
    Thank you both.
  • 00:54:08
    We'll open up discussion now.
  • 00:54:09
    I see Councilmember Wansley in queue.
  • 00:54:12
    Thank you Council Vice President.
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 00:54:14
    Also thank you staff for this presentation.
  • 00:54:16
    I authored this motion last year because it's very clear our residents want to be more involved in the city's budget process.
  • 00:54:27
    and getting a say in what the city prioritizes and I know on council we receive hundreds and hundreds of emails and points of contact from our residents looking to engage in our existing budget process and also beyond that residents are constantly showing up year-round
  • 00:54:43
    on the City of
  • 00:55:05
    lots of residents who volunteer their time and their energy to serve on the city's appointed boards and commissions.
  • 00:55:12
    So all in all, we're really blessed within the city of Minneapolis to have such an engaged public that wants to support this council and the legislative body and its allocation authority around our city's resources and just really trying to figure out
  • 00:55:31
    and I'm glad that you brought this up on the administration side or executive side but how on the council side we can be more intentional of if it's a pilot or figuring out a way to accurately involve our communities and how we do this work and do it more proactively than just like November and December.
  • 00:55:51
    So I'm really excited to work with our
  • 00:55:54
    budget chairs to really think through how we can integrate either some pilots or initiatives on the council side that goes beyond just click as well as our NCR funding initiatives that you outline so that we're also kind of reflecting
  • 00:56:11
    what's happening on the executive side so I at least just wanted to name the intention of how we got there I think everyone has been contacted multiple times over if you've been involved in organizing work around why the city does not do participatory budgeting and so I'm really glad that we have a presentation good to know there was somewhat
  • 00:56:31
    initiated a conversation back in 2017 and to kind of revisit next steps.
  • 00:56:37
    But I did at least want to have like two follow-up questions because I'm thinking through like proportionality of with New York for instance the mayor allocated or the simultaneous project processes it was like six million dollars I think the mayor's has five million the council is seeing like it had one million what was that
  • 00:57:00
    percentage of the total budget?
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 00:57:04
    Councilmember Wonsley, members of the committee, that's actually a very good question, and I was writing that down before I came up here, and I can't find wherever I made my notes, but what I can say is the participatory budgeting project, which is sort of the nonprofit entity that is consulted by municipalities on this topic across the country, they've said that it needs to be anywhere from 1 to 15 percent.
  • 00:57:28
    of a city's budget is kind of what they recommend to be allocated.
  • 00:57:33
    On a per capita basis, I cannot remember
  • 00:57:41
    where we landed on that one, but this is something where we see even some smaller cities.
  • 00:57:46
    Again, you have New York, you have $5 million on the mayor's side, but then you have cities like Durham and you have some even smaller cities where they're putting forward $2.5, $3.5 million, which is almost matching a city that's significantly larger than they are.
  • 00:57:59
    So again, without being able to answer the specific question, I'll say again, it's at anywhere from 1 to 15%.
  • 00:58:08
    but also just that it's made very clear going through the surveys and going through analysis of how successful various cities have been is just being incredibly detailed and descriptive with what is available so if we're going to engage people in the process they understand there's a larger budget process so I think
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 00:58:31
    being able
  • 00:58:54
    what would be a good
  • 00:59:19
    and thinking of like our green zones and our cultural corridors, like best practices for making sure that those communities that often I know I hear that a lot from our green zones, particularly how they are not, you know, welcomed into the process around how we're delegating out climate equity dollars that we're receiving.
  • 00:59:39
    So just wanted to hear if there was any specific best practices.
  • 00:59:42
    I know you mentioned again, the participatory budget project and
  • 00:59:47
    the other evaluation tool kit and it seems like some cities created their own but just wanted to see if there was any best practices you came across.
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 00:59:56
    Absolutely.
  • 00:59:56
    I think one of the things to highlight is that you know somewhat consistently across cities an equity component is one of the primary drivers for how they
  • 01:00:06
    outlined who they were going to engage with.
  • 01:00:08
    With New York specifically, everything's divided up by council offices, but also by borough.
  • 01:00:13
    But then even beyond that, there's I believe the term is equity neighborhoods, which are kind of micro subsets in each of the boroughs that are identified either like median household income,
  • 01:00:25
    I think the gentrification piece that was in another city, but they have a series of criteria they use to establish where these neighborhoods are, and then those neighborhoods are eligible to receive additional funding on top of what's being allocated to the borough itself.
  • 01:00:37
    You also see, and I believe actually Durham did it, where they started off on essentially a ward or district basis in terms of how funds were being allocated.
  • 01:00:47
    They sort of had the opposite impact where the way it was being distributed wasn't as equitable as they wanted it to be, so what they ended up doing was lifting it up.
  • 01:00:57
    and they reverted back to a citywide process to see if that would have a different impact on what the outcomes were in some of the different neighborhoods in the city that just weren't being addressed through the process they had in place.
  • 01:01:08
    Again, I mean one of the things that's reiterated again and again and again in this process is that the importance of gathering data at every single step of the process because that's the only tool you have to evaluate.
  • 01:01:19
    and the City Council and the City Council and the City Council and the City Council
  • 01:01:33
    as good as it feels.
  • 01:01:35
    We did it.
  • 01:01:35
    We implemented these three projects.
  • 01:01:37
    Everybody's happy.
  • 01:01:38
    What it actually does is it goes and looks across comparable cohorts in other cities to see if they didn't use a participatory budgeting process.
  • 01:01:50
    Did they achieve the same outcomes?
  • 01:01:53
    And I think the idea behind that is to basically, to the best of your ability, try to measure and I think I'd use this
  • 01:01:59
    Board, but like causality versus correlation.
  • 01:02:03
    So while you might be getting some outcomes that seem like they're in line with the project, in reality, they would have occurred even if the process wasn't established, because at that point, then you need to figure out why it's not driving outcomes the way that you had intended it to.
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 01:02:20
    This last question, just thinking of the process as we're building out the work plan and how we could get something started officially, just how did cities kind of go about this, especially when they were new?
  • 01:02:31
    Did they basically contract with the people's or the people's budget or participatory budgeting project to create a blueprint of sorts?
  • 01:02:41
    Because I can imagine some ways we might be starting from scratch, but just trying to think how cities
  • 01:02:46
    really even started this and who they use for expertise to help shape that work.
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 01:02:53
    Absolutely.
  • 01:02:54
    The participatory budgeting project, that entity was, I think, brought into a number of cities.
  • 01:03:00
    And if not brought in, they have kind of a resource library that provides sort of guides and walks the city through all the steps would be kind of similar to a lot of advocacy organizations.
  • 01:03:10
    so I think a lot of cities had engaged with them on the front end just to sort of outline what a plan could look like across the board I mean these all started with some version of a pilot you know if not necessarily called a pilot where a number of them started were actually council offices with you know a council member sort of you know essentially ramping up either with city staff or just through their own ability you know some version of engagement amongst those they represent to provide input
  • 01:03:36
    and then essentially guide the budget priorities of a specific ward or district.
  • 01:03:42
    So I think those two avenues are definitely very, very common as the points of entry in terms of moving forward with this process.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:03:51
    Thank you.
• • Emily Koski
  • 01:03:54
    Thank You councilmember next we've got vice chair Koski Thank You vice president took a quick question for director descensa I just was curious could you just elaborate a little bit more about the and maybe I just didn't understand it correctly the prioritization tool or app is that something that you have used or going to be using could you just describe it a little bit more
• • Jayne Discenza
  • 01:04:18
    Council Vice President, Budget Vice Chair Koski.
  • 01:04:22
    IT has solicited applications for a number of pilot projects using the Salesforce technology.
  • 01:04:29
    So we submitted this idea to them of developing a participatory tool.
  • 01:04:34
    And so we've been working with them since then to flesh out some prototypes.
  • 01:04:38
    So they're still very much in the works.
  • 01:04:39
    We have a meeting tomorrow to look at some examples.
  • 01:04:42
    But it'll be a relatively simple online tool that we can use at these sessions.
  • 01:04:48
    So it'll show a Budget 101 off exercise as well as a ranking of priorities that we can set.
• • Emily Koski
  • 01:04:57
    Okay, so that's helpful.
  • 01:04:58
    So, the tool will show two different, potentially two different things.
  • 01:05:01
    So, like, give me an example.
  • 01:05:03
    Like, I'll just say, like, we have public works, and we have public safety, and if I, how I trade dollars, and what that looks like, and is that what you mean with the tool?
  • 01:05:12
    I've seen these online before, and other cities utilizing it, but, so, actual constituents can go, I'm going to take $100 from here, and add it to here, and they'll be able to kind of see the color wheel change.
  • 01:05:26
    Is that?
  • 01:05:27
    of funding.
• • Jayne Discenza
  • 01:05:28
    Through the Chair, Councilwoman Kroski, yes, it will be, other cities have a module called Balancing Act, so we've kind of looked at that, but we're trying to design something in-house.
  • 01:05:39
    So we're still figuring out, you know, do we look at department views, do we look at spending categories, what makes the most sense for participants, but it would be something like that, so that you're engaging with the very real trade-offs that policymakers at a municipal level have to deal with.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:05:56
    Okay, that's great.
  • 01:05:56
    Thanks so much.
  • 01:05:57
    Appreciate it.
  • 01:05:59
    Excellent.
  • 01:05:59
    And last in queue, we've got President Payne.
• • Elliott Payne
  • 01:06:03
    Thank you, Vice President Chigatay.
  • 01:06:05
    I just wanted to say that you bringing the comparable programs into this context has really opened my mind about
  • 01:06:14
    what the potential is here especially around our neighborhood associations.
  • 01:06:19
    We've seen some really amazing projects coming out of the Equitable Engagement Fund and it's just more like comparing participatory budgeting with this and even NRP as a foundational funding mechanism for neighborhood associations was actually very effective and created a lot of civic engagement in our city so I really do see there's
  • 01:06:40
    This is actually not a new idea that we have.
  • 01:06:43
    We're just building on some great work that's already happened in the city and with a renewed focus.
  • 01:06:47
    So just wanted to share that appreciation.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:06:51
    Excellent.
  • 01:06:52
    Thank you.
  • 01:06:53
    And we've got next Councilmember
• • Andrea Jenkins
  • 01:06:58
    Thank you, Madam Chair, and I guess to the point that Council President Payne just made, you know, the REB department did a very substantial participatory budgeting project over a number of years, and they actually utilized
  • 01:07:24
    a community voting system to a select the projects and then to subsequently fund those projects so you know just to be clear I mean this is a great idea I'm a strong proponent of participatory budgeting it has been a topic that we have been discussing for a very long time and I do believe even in our
  • 01:07:50
    last budget, we incorporated that in this biennial budget idea that we are subsequently newly rolling out.
  • 01:08:04
    And so, just wanted to name the fact that
  • 01:08:11
    the NRP programs that we discussed, the CLIC process, and subsequently the work that was done in the Race and Equity Division at the time.
  • 01:08:24
    This would be a follow-up or a continuation of the work that has been happening.
  • 01:08:40
    to further participatory budgeting in the city of Minneapolis.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:08:45
    Thank you, Councilmember.
  • 01:08:46
    I know it was covered earlier in your presentation, slide 3, the 2017 City of Minneapolis budget and the development of a plan for participatory budgeting.
  • 01:09:00
    It sounds like, I know you mentioned in your presentation that you kind of ran into some dead ends while scrolling limbs, but it might make sense for you, Mr. Hawkins, to connect with Councilmember Jenkins,
  • 01:09:11
    has a lot more history on what that process was like and can perhaps share deeper insights into how that worked.
  • 01:09:22
    Council Member Cashman, go ahead.
• • Michael Cashman
  • 01:09:26
    Thank you.
  • 01:09:27
    Yeah, echoing what folks have talked about with the baseline that we have and the programs we have that are already doing like a sort of participatory budget or allocation of funds, I have had experience with the Partnership Engagement Fund
  • 01:09:40
    in the last couple of years and helping community groups access that.
  • 01:09:44
    And I know they're doing amazing work with air quality monitoring and biking and zero waste with kids in schools throughout the city.
  • 01:09:52
    And I was wondering, actually, Mr. Hawkins, if you had some data on the Partnership Engagement Fund that we could look at to see how equitably distributed that fund already is or how we can analyze how it's being used, what groups are applying.
  • 01:10:08
    to develop the data analysis that I know you seem to really want to push forward for participatory budgeting.
  • 01:10:17
    So what data do we already have from those other programs?
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:10:23
    I'm just going to interrupt.
  • 01:10:24
    I'm so sorry.
  • 01:10:26
    So like the Partnership Engagement Fund and the NCR programs that Mr. Hawkins outlined in his presentation and specifically your question about data coming out of the Partnership Engagement Fund,
  • 01:10:41
    will be able
  • 01:11:00
    I will note though last year in the Public Health and Safety Committee there was a presentation that NCR did on the Partnership Engagement Fund and specific data coming out of that.
  • 01:11:11
    So we'll see if we can dig that up and get that sent over to you so you can ask NCR some specific follow-up questions if you've got them.
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 01:11:20
    I don't want to necessarily speak on behalf of NCR, however, we have engaged them on this, so I'd be more than happy to whether it's another collaborative presentation or if there's another ask to work with them to provide whatever would be helpful to Council.
  • 01:11:39
    But I think Minneapolis is, I don't necessarily want to say it.
  • 01:11:44
    some of the versions of this exist across the country, but it's in a good position through the neighborhood organizations.
  • 01:11:50
    I mean, there's already entities that are doing work either, it might not have the formalized label of participatory budgeting, but it's a version of it.
  • 01:11:59
    And so I think that was one of the things that's mentioned in this, the academic research around this is just trying to be respectful of the time commitment from residents to engage, which is generally,
  • 01:12:11
    and the
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:12:37
    Thank you very much and Councilmember Jenkins did you get back in queue or is this still running from last time?
• • Andrea Jenkins
  • 01:12:45
    I don't think I was in queue but I think I just didn't get marked out but I would just comment again that
  • 01:13:03
    The equitable engagement program is designed, I mean, the whole intent is to be equitable.
  • 01:13:12
    And so if people are engaging with the program, then they are, by definition, doing equitable work.
  • 01:13:26
    It's designed to create
  • 01:13:29
    equity in these neighborhoods that have been inequitably using their resources.
  • 01:13:34
    And so if they are engaging in it, then consequently, it's equitable.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:13:45
    Thank you.
  • 01:13:46
    We've got Councilmember Chowdhury followed by Councilmember Wonsley.
• • Aurin Chowdhury
  • 01:13:53
    Thank you, Council Vice President.
  • 01:13:56
    I share in this body's excitement around delving further into participatory budgeting.
  • 01:14:01
    It's very clear to me residents constituents really want to feel like they can touch and feel the budget process and really understand it and see outcomes that
  • 01:14:11
    will show up in their neighborhoods.
  • 01:14:13
    I think that's a huge part of helping our city recover and get to thriving.
  • 01:14:19
    I want to learn a little bit more of the history of the participatory budgeting playbook.
  • 01:14:24
    I know you looked into it.
  • 01:14:25
    I was trying to find it I think a while ago.
  • 01:14:27
    I got a meeting with Laurie Johnson when she was still with the city on that.
  • 01:14:32
    I was wondering if you could just kind of set a little bit of a baseline on what that playbook looked like
  • 01:14:37
    and if you have the documentation around that that you could send to us just as a starting line so we understand what our history is with participatory budgeting.
• • SPEAKER_00
  • 01:14:50
    Council Vice President Chigtai, Council Member Chaudhuri, I believe in the report it's I know it's linked in there it exists on city I think it was city talk where I found it
  • 01:15:00
    and again, once after I provide my response, if Budget Director DeCenza has anything she can add, I invite her to come up as well.
  • 01:15:09
    I can also send it around as an individual document to make sure everybody has got it.
  • 01:15:19
    There's nothing overly prescriptive.
  • 01:15:24
    It's essentially laid out kind of a rough timeline for what something might look like if they were to implement it, what some of the important pieces were as far as that engagement strategy, how things would be rolled out.
  • 01:15:36
    I know they also consulted some of the guidelines that were set forth by the participatory budgeting project as well.
  • 01:15:41
    So again, that group is kind of, I guess, across the cities that are doing this, but it's something where, you know, even if it existed, you know, even if it had been produced today, it doesn't go to the level where you could take it and run with it.
  • 01:15:55
    There's still, you know, there needs to be something that's a bridge between actual formalized like plan would look like.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:16:03
    Thank you, Mr. Hawkins.
  • 01:16:06
    All right, and Councilmember Wonsley.
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 01:16:08
    Thank you, Council Vice President.
  • 01:16:10
    I'm actually glad that Councilmember Chaudry brought this up on page seven of the playbook that you included in your email to us.
  • 01:16:22
    It does lay out something that I think is important if the council decided to move forward is
  • 01:16:28
    we would have to make a budget allocation and it does make that note on page seven that you know kind of like New York if council offices wanted to participate it would be up to us to figure out what is that appropriate allocation amount I'm assuming ideally all 13 council members would want to partake in this but knowing that this will have to be reflected in our own budget process of
  • 01:16:51
    again something to consider as we're doing our work plan but I at least wanted to flag that piece because it while my earlier question was like how did the cities kick this off did they you know partner with some of these groups as reference it really wasn't spelled out how the council offices themselves like in New York also you know initiated this and I think at least the 2017 playbook offers some clarity on how we could proceed
  • 01:17:17
    along with of course like probably still needing some more technical expertise when we're shaping metrics of success.
  • 01:17:24
    So I'm hopeful that performance management or PMI could probably support some of that work too.
  • 01:17:31
    But I at least just want to flag that on if we wanted to do a pilot initiative, we will have to like allocate that money on our side.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:17:41
    Thank you.
  • 01:17:42
    And actually last we have in queue Councilmember Palmisano.
• • Linea Palmisano
  • 01:17:47
    Thank You madam chair I do want to point out because I was there when we did the participatory budgeting book and if I'm not mistaken I believe I took on this work with then councilmember Glidden so I think it was a staff direction maybe during budget time and then the results came back in 2017 so with appreciation for everything that councilmember Jenkins
  • 01:18:14
    said about the race equity division the single most important piece of that budgeting playbook was that we would have a biennial budget and if you recall not only did we have at the time a mayor and her administration who made it very clear that it was their job to develop the budget and council did not have a role in it until well after it rolled out
  • 01:18:40
    So that was one piece was that it seemed outside the council's purview to have such a thing.
  • 01:18:46
    And the second piece that came out of this coming back of the participatory budgeting playbook was the need for biennial budgeting.
  • 01:18:55
    This is what kicked off my interest in changing the city charter
  • 01:18:59
    to have biennial budgeting.
  • 01:19:01
    Now, that was not a successful move because of a previous council member who would not entertain that without a ballot measure but I do want to remind everybody on this body that we only have biennial budgeting right now because our mayor says so.
  • 01:19:18
    If we want to create a program that would have participatory budgeting in a different way Then our first order of business would definitely need to be to make more permanent or more steadfast Our biennial budget because right now that's only in place because our mayor chooses to do it that way.
  • 01:19:37
    Thank you
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:19:39
    Thank you Councilmember.
  • 01:19:40
    Councilmember Wonsley, were you hoping to make a priority motion or just offer?
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 01:19:44
    I wanted to get back in queue.
  • 01:19:46
    I figure we're in committee but we have caps and actually Councilmember Palmisano raised a question that I wanted to follow up because I don't see anywhere on this playbook doc where it talks about biannual budgets and want to know if there was a page you are particularly referencing because it has on page
  • 01:20:06
    6 here, where it lays out necessary conditions for successful participatory budgeting in Minneapolis.
  • 01:20:12
    So I would assume this would be the place where it would be if, you know, yeah, I'm not seeing that.
  • 01:20:19
    So was this something that you recall during discussions at that time that might not be reflected in the actual playbook?
  • 01:20:26
    Is that kind of where that's coming from?
• • Linea Palmisano
  • 01:20:28
    If I may Councilmember Wonsley, yes, I believe it was in the presentation that was made to council but as I Think one of the authors.
  • 01:20:37
    I don't remember.
  • 01:20:37
    I'm sometimes part of something without being officially made an author But it was made very clear that based on the time the community needs to thoughtfully engage in a participatory budgeting process This is not something that could be done and concluded within an annual budget cycle
  • 01:20:57
    so that's why I brought it up as something that's extremely important that we should look to make progress on if in fact we want to take some of these next steps.
• • Robin Wonsley
  • 01:21:09
    That's interesting.
  • 01:21:11
    Yeah, definitely want to take some time with the original playbook.
  • 01:21:14
    It seems like from your research also is there's other cities that do this process simultaneously without a biannual budget too.
  • 01:21:23
    Again, it seems like what was illustrated here and in your presentation
  • 01:21:27
    is on the legislative side, we would then have to make a budget allocation around it.
  • 01:21:31
    Of course, figure out what's the, you know, road map or blueprint that we want to do and maybe it builds upon existing programs.
  • 01:21:39
    But I at least want to get clarity on what you raised because I did not see it in a playbook.
  • 01:21:43
    So thank you for offering that.
• • Aisha Chughtai
  • 01:21:45
    And that's all.
  • 01:21:47
    Excellent.
  • 01:21:47
    Any further discussion?
  • 01:21:51
    colleagues thank you so much for engaging in such a thoughtful discussion about participatory budgeting and there is going to be more to come on this.
  • 01:22:02
    Seeing no further discussion I will direct the clerk to file this report and with that we have concluded all business to come before the committee today and without objection we stand adjourned.