Budget Committee September 29, 2025   9/29/2025

Good morning, my name is Ayesha Chuktai and I'm the chair of the Budget Committee.

I'm going to call to order our adjourned meeting for Monday, September 29th, 2025.

Before we begin our meeting, I want to offer a friendly reminder to all members, staff, and the public that these meetings are broadcast live to enable greater public participation.

These broadcasts include real-time captioning as a further method to increase the accessibility of our proceedings to the community.

Therefore all speakers need to be mindful of the rate of their speech so that our captioners can fully capture and transcribe all comments for the broadcast.

We ask all speakers to moderate the speed and clarity of their comments.

Councilmember Payne is absent.

Councilmember Wonsley is absent.

Council Member Ellison is absent.

Osman is absent.

Council Member Cashman is absent.

Council Member Jenkins is absent.

Council Member Chavez is absent.

Council Member Chaudry is absent.

Council Member Palmisano is absent.

Vice Chair Koski is absent.

Let the record reflect that we have a quorum.

Today we have two presentations related to the mayor's recommended 2026 budget, the first from civil rights and the second from our public works department.

I will first invite Kayla McConandiera, our interim civil rights director, to begin the first presentation.

Thank you so much.

today.

As stated, Kayla McConandira, I am the interim director of the Civil Rights Department.

I'm very happy to be here today to present the 2026 recommended budget.

So to start, this is where the Civil Rights Department is in the overall city structure.

As you can see, we are a part of the Office of Public Service and report to the city operations officer, Margaret Anderson Kelleher, who reports to the mayor.

This is a breakdown of all of the staff that are within the Civil Rights Department.

I'll highlight especially on this slide that we've engaged in significant workforce restructure over the last year for a variety of reasons with an intent to provide additional staff support and accountability for the work as well as centralize some of our work in our administration division.

some of the highlights that I want to point out here on this slide are that we have a senior project manager position who reports to the department director that we have recently reclassified into a quality assurance and compliance manager but because it has not yet been updated on our workforce roster we wanted to be consistent so that's our senior project manager

and we're really excited about this position because it is going to provide an additional layer of compliance and oversight over the Civil Rights Department's specific compliance with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights Settlement Agreement and the paragraphs that we need to comply with therein as well as provide quality assurance and compliance work across the entire department in all of our different divisions to ensure that we are adhering to our own internal operating procedures as well as keeping up with best practices across the country in this type of work.

I'll also highlight our manager of grants and community engagement.

One of the main key priorities of the department over the last year and into the coming years is to increase community engagement.

And so we've been able to centralize that work within the department and also have a staff person that's specifically focused on that.

We also implemented levels of supervision in our two larger of our divisions, which is our contract compliance division and our office of police conduct review.

So you'll see that we have a contract compliance supervisor within our contract compliance division, as well as three different supervisors in our Office of Police Conduct Review, which is our largest division, a policy and research coordinator, an intake supervisor, and an investigation supervisor over each of those different pots of work.

within that division.

I'll also highlight on this overview in yellow you'll see the three different boards and commissions that we support within the Civil Rights Department, which is the Community Commission on Police Oversight, the Civil Rights Commission, and the Workforce Advisory Committee.

Mission goals and priority objectives of the department.

So we had the exciting opportunity this year to engage in a rework or to develop new mission, vision, and values statements for the department.

We did this in collaboration across all of the leadership in the department as well as with input from staff and with some very helpful facilitation from our learning and development team in human resources.

and what we've come up with are as follows.

The mission statement for the department is that the department protects and advances human rights through enforcing civil rights protections with accountability and impartial investigations to empower community.

Our vision is as the people's investigator, we strive to eliminate civil rights violations in the city of Minneapolis by rooting ourselves in service, justice, and community and working to remove systemic and institutional barriers that cause harm.

The values that we identified that best reflect the work of the department are integrity, equity, accountability, justice, and trust.

We've also identified a variety of priorities for the department and they are to improve and standardize timelines, create, document, and align where possible standard operating procedures across the department, increase community engagement, which I had already mentioned, and refine and implement ordinances and policies that impact our work.

we also work to identify objectives in three different areas of our work investigations, education and engagement and compliance and I'll be touching on those objectives throughout the presentation

Some key achievements to highlight for the Civil Rights Department over the last year.

One is that organizational restructure that I mentioned that really was quite extensive and better reflects I think the work that we are completing here in the Civil Rights Department.

We've made significant strides on hiring and retention.

We also have seen the passage of multiple ordinance amendments to ordinances that we enforce, our civil rights ordinance, our community commission on police oversight ordinance, and our sick and safe time ordinance.

And we've had a lot of success in largely clearing the investigative backlog in the Office of Police Conduct Review for police misconduct investigations.

as well as continuing to meet the terms of the Minnesota Department of Human Rights Court Enforceable Settlement Agreement with multiple compliance submissions.

We've continued to provide support to the Community Commission on Police Oversight as well as the other boards and commissions that we support.

Some of the risks to the department that I'll highlight are changes at the federal level, and these are changes to funding, to policy, and to law.

Additionally, the department leadership is of course in transition, which can pose some uncertainty.

And then we're also implementing two new case management systems for our work, which is ultimately a very positive thing, but of course comes with some risks as well as we're doing that transfer over.

These are a breakdown of the different objectives that we've come up with for each of our different kind of pots of work that we do within the department.

We worked with our performance management and innovation department to come up with these.

In the investigations area, our objective is to complete objective, quality, and efficient investigations of complaints of discrimination, labor violations, police misconduct, and city compliance concerns that are made by the public.

in order to produce tangible and actionable outcomes.

The things that we're tracking to ensure that we're able to meet that objective is the number of complaints submitted, the case timelines that we're seeing, case outcomes and total monetary settlement amounts across our divisions.

In the education and engagement area, our objective is to promote understanding of and engagement with civil rights issues and empower community to act when their rights are threatened or violated.

We're tracking in this area consultations, the number and type of community engagements that we are a part of, and the impact of those engagements on participants.

And then in the area of compliance, our objective is to ensure awareness of the city's civil rights enforced ordinances, including our civil rights ordinance, our workplace regulations ordinance, police conduct oversight ordinance, and city contract compliance ordinance to promote compliance with those laws.

To that end, we are tracking the percent of contracts that meet our minority business enterprise and women business enterprise commitments and compliance related to the settlement agreement terms.

You'll also see on this slide a QR code that can be scanned that will take you to a dashboard that details all of these different objectives that we have across all of our divisions and provides a variety of data that we're currently tracking.

I'll draw on that data and discuss it throughout this presentation as well.

Here you'll see a breakdown of the department's budget over the last couple of years and then moving into the recommended budget in 2026.

As you can see there is a budget decrease and I'll discuss that throughout the presentation.

It is largely in the area of contractual services.

This is a breakdown of the budget based on division.

One thing that I want to highlight here, the big difference that you'll see is that the Equity and Engagement Division is not included in the 2026 recommended budget and that is because that division was dissolved in 2025 and therefore hasn't been budgeted moving forward.

As many of you know, the lion's share of the work of that division was facilitating the Urban Scholars Program and that program has now moved to our Human Resource Department.

In the dissolution of this division, that funding has been reallocated to other divisions throughout the department, namely our administration division and also some other ones.

But all of those changes that you'll see on the slides as we go through them are budgetary net neutral for the department as a whole.

This is a summary of our FTEs in the Department of Civil Rights.

As you can see, in 2024, we had 46.5.

In 2025, we had 47.5.

And then in the 2026 recommended budget, we have 48.

And there's a breakdown on this slide that explains that there was a 0.5 FTE that was added to the recommended budget.

And this was through an administrative ad.

And it was offset by the department's non-personnel budget.

So again, it is a net neutral change.

this is the same thing with the .8 FTE which moved from a special revenue fund to the general fund that was driven largely by just the duties of that position changing in such a way that it could no longer be on the special revenue fund and again that is a net neutral change that was made within the department.

We currently have six vacancies of FTEs in our civil rights department which is a vacancy rate of 8%.

We are

actively hiring five of those six and really are hopeful that we will be fully staffed as of the end of the year or early in the new year.

Now I'm going to move into division updates, so updates on our budget broken down by each of the divisions within the department.

starting with our administration division.

So our objective in the administration were responsible for providing process management, resource delegation, and program coordination in support of all the divisions within the department.

The administration provides leadership, guidance, and support to all divisions, ensures budgetary health, operational efficiency, and effectiveness.

We also serve as the hub of the collective department effort around a variety of things, including

community outreach and engagement, communications, contracting, and liaising with external agencies.

And some of the metrics of success that we're looking at are the number of community engagements the department is involved in, the impact of those engagements, training of staff across the department, and the general success on all objectives across all divisions within the department.

These are all the positions that are within the administration.

We have the department director and deputy director.

We have our senior project manager and manager of grants and community engagement, both of which are newer positions and I discussed previously but really key to the work of the department moving forward.

We also have an administrative assistant to the director, a business data analyst that reports to our senior project manager, and an administrative analyst too that reports to our manager of grants and community engagement.

Some key activities of our administration are our reimagined mission, vision and values that I've already shared.

Also our strategic planning work for the department as a whole, community engagement, communications and media, contract management and staff development.

and I have a breakdown here of our work around community engagement.

As I've already put forward, we have a major goal in the department of increasing community engagement overall.

And we want to do that to promote understanding and engagement with civil rights issues and make sure that folks know where they can go if they're experiencing possible violations of their civil rights.

And what we're measuring here is the number of community engagements, trainings and media appearances that the department has engaged in.

what you can see is in 2024 we engaged community at 123 different times or different occasions but that number has already significantly increased for 2025 even though this number is only through the end of August of 2025 so we have time for additional engagements before the end of this year so we are currently at 163

I want to highlight the significant increases really tied to

the efforts of our manager of grants and community engagement and the fact that we have that position that really can focus on getting the department out there and making sure that our information is available and accessible to community.

We also want to measure whether our engagements are actually impactful.

Do people find them relevant and do people find them engaging because that's how we know if they're going to continue to engage with us moving forward.

So to that end, we started sending out surveys after engagements to see what people thought and to get feedback so that we could potentially improve any of the work that we were doing in this area.

We do not have a percentage to report.

This is the percentage of individuals who report that engagements were

So I talked about

All the different engagements that we've been involved in this year, so I wanted to highlight what some of those are.

We were present at the Juneteenth Celebration, the Community Connections Conference, we were at all of the Open Streets events, we were at Northeast Park Fest, we participated in Black Business Week,

We participated in six of North Point's free fresh food Fridays.

We were a part of the Trans Equity Summit and participated there as well as collaborated with a variety of your offices on different outreach and engagement efforts and events.

We also supported our board and commission meetings on both their monthly meetings as an entire body as well as subcommittee meetings, recruitment and community engagement sessions as well.

We had a variety of media appearances.

We participated in interviews on Mung Radio, La Raza Radio, Native Roots Radio, Somali TV.

We had a press conference when our Labor Standards Enforcement Division reached the very impressive and important milestone of more than $2 million in wages recovered for workers since its inception.

as well as participated in a press conference for the first felony conviction for wage theft in Hennepin County.

We also issued a press release when our new civil rights protections as a part of the amendments to the civil rights ordinance went into effect on August 1st of this year.

We received $100,000 in one-time funding specifically for training investments for staff and commissioners in the 2025 budget and have used that funding to have staff and commissioners engage in a lot of different trainings and we're really happy to report their ability to do so.

Some of those include, we've worked significantly with the National Association for Civilian Oversight, otherwise known as NACOL,

to come in and do trainings both for our staff in the Office of Police Conduct Review but also for our community commission on police oversight commissioners.

We also have staff and commissioners attending their upcoming national conference.

We've sent staff to internal affairs investigations training, to mediation training, had staff

take part in the Employment Law Institute and the American Contract Compliance Association Training Institute.

We have staff who are attending the upcoming International Association of Official Civil Rights Agencies Conference, as well as staff attending an upcoming Certified Fraud Examiner course.

This really has been key to provide staff the tools and the skills that they need to provide the best possible service to community who is reaching out to the Civil Rights Department for services.

Moving next to our complaint investigations division.

This division is tasked with enforcing the city's civil rights ordinance and does this by receiving and investigating complaints of discrimination based on protected class.

As many of you know, a protected class generally is something about your identity that you cannot or should not be asked to change.

It includes things like race, religion, sex, national origin, disability, and the like.

and this division has jurisdiction to investigate discrimination in many different areas of life including employment, housing, education, public services and more.

This division also provides the staff support to the Civil Rights Commission and engages in community outreach across the city specific to our civil rights ordinance.

Some of the metrics of success that we're tracking for this particular division are the volume of complaints received, the numbers of cases closed and their outcomes, efficient investigative timelines, total monetary settlement amounts, and non-monetary settlement terms that promote future compliance with our civil rights ordinance.

This is a breakdown of the positions within our complaint investigations division.

We have an associate director who leads this division, two intake coordinators, two complaint investigation officer ones, and two complaint investigation officer twos.

This is a breakdown of some of the data that we're tracking over the last few years in this division.

You'll see a breakdown of the complaints submitted, and in the last couple of years we have seen an increase in the complaints submitted, so in 2024 we received 421 complaints, and so far this year we've received 279.

Again, that's through the end of August of this year, so we expect those numbers to be similar to last year.

We also have a breakdown here of case outcomes.

Similarly, for 2025 this is through the end of August and therefore our total case completion numbers I also expect to reach similar numbers as last year.

Monetary settlement totals, so in this division cases often are closed via a settlement agreement, via mediation or conciliation.

And the total settlement numbers we've seen over the last few years were around or more than $200,000.

So far this year we're at $105,000, but do expect that to increase before the year is out.

We've also had cases where settlements were reached where there was a variety of non-monetary terms that were included in those settlement agreements.

And they include things like agreements to policy changes, to tools for future compliance, to training to prevent discrimination or other issues from happening in the future, as well as sometimes continued reporting to the department so that we can continue to monitor compliance with our civil rights ordinance.

One of our key goals in this division is to ensure that we do have efficient case timelines and we've set an internal expectation of completing investigative work in cases within 150 days of that case being assigned to an investigator.

We're tracking the percentage of cases that are completed within that 150 days target and in 2024 we were able to do that 66% of the time.

In 2025 through August, we were at 54%.

Again, a caveat that this is because it's through August.

How the case completion deadlines are structured in this division is that we have a case completion deadline at the end of September and then at the end of the year.

And so investigators do generally focus in the first half of the year on their complex cases that are likely to take longer.

than that 150 days and so that's why that percentage is lower now.

As you can see we have a target of 70% of cases overall in 2025 that will be completed within that 150 days and then we've increased that target to 75% in 2026 and are really going to prioritize and focus on that efficiency.

some key accomplishments in our complaint investigations division.

Again, as I stated, we've closed 46 cases in this division up through the end of August and are really prioritizing that 150-day timeline.

Right now, the complaint investigations division maintains no backlog and no appealed cases, which go to our Civil Rights Commission review panel to take a look at, have been reversed by the Commission so far this year.

with the help of course of you all on the council as well as the mayor's office and the Minneapolis Commission on Civil Rights.

We have worked to update the civil rights ordinance and those updates really are pretty substantial and innovative and exciting and they do now, our civil rights ordinance now includes three new protected classes including housing status, justice impact status, and height and weight.

I'm very happy to report that we have also started to receive complaints on these bases.

So we're glad that the word is getting out there and folks are coming to us if they're feeling that their rights were violated in this area.

I will also highlight that this division is working hard to implement an outreach and engagement plan to get the word out about these protected classes and this has included cultural media appearances.

We're currently working on internal and external learning sessions and staff recently presented a Minnesota CLE, continuing legal education course on the updates to our ordinance as well as other work of that division.

Moving next to our Office of Police Conduct Review.

The Office of Police Conduct Review is a neutral agency that investigates allegations of police misconduct that are made by members of the public.

They receive complaints and investigate those allegations.

They also provide the staff support to the community commission on police oversight.

And they provide the Minneapolis Police Department and city as a whole on policing policy recommendations.

The metrics of success in this particular area are the timely clearance of misconduct cases in accordance with the settlement agreement compliance with settlement agreement paragraphs facilitation of community commission on police oversight commission and committee meetings as well as regularly scheduled review panels

Review panels are made up of one sworn member of the Minneapolis Police Department as well as two members of the Community Commission on Police Oversight and they review misconduct investigations that come out of the Office of Police Conduct Review to make recommendations on final outcomes to the Chief of Police.

These are all of the positions that are in the Office of Police Conduct Review.

One thing I really want to note here is this is a big part of the overall restructure to make sure that we had sufficient levels of supervision and staff support within this division which is the largest within the department.

and that includes our policy and research coordinator who supervises an administrative analyst too and a video analyst.

That group is really specifically focused on providing sufficient support to the community commission on police oversight and being responsive to their needs.

We have an intake supervisor who supervises a video analyst and three case investigators that do the intake side of our work in the Office of Police Conduct Review.

we have an investigation supervisor that supervises seven case investigators who are completing administrative investigations so those are larger scale and more intensive investigations and then we also have a management analyst that focuses on monitoring the data that we're receiving and doing research work related to that as well as tracking what's happening

across other municipalities, especially those that are under court in forced reform work to ensure that we are building the most appropriate and responsive model of civilian oversight of law enforcement.

One of the key accomplishments of the Office of Police Conduct Review is largely clearing their investigative backlog.

So as of September 15th of this year, the intake and administrative investigative units have reviewed, evaluated, and investigated all but four of the 234 backlog complaints that were sitting with the Office of Police Conduct Review.

Those four remaining cases are expected to be completed by the end of this month.

So we're excited to be able to report hopefully very soon that that backlog is fully cleared.

Again, this is for investigative work.

These cases are not closed.

There are multiple additional steps in the process and we always want to make sure that folks understand that but we're really proud of the work that has been done on the investigative side on those cases.

We've also really wanted to prioritize preventing a backlog like this from developing in the future and so to that end have really focused on staffing within this division to ensure that team members can continue regular assigned duties versus any sort of movement that needed to happen in an emergency response to an influx of cases or complaints creating a stable team structure which again goes to those levels of supervision and kind of different pots of work within the

the Division to ensure that there's clear roles and responsibilities to continue moving the work forward and by developing a better ability to triage and prioritize effectively to address emerging issues while continuing to do the day-to-day work of completing investigations.

I will note that on the dashboard there is not as much data around our Office of Police Conduct review.

We are currently converting to a new case management system and making sure that all of our data is 100% as accurate as can be.

as can be.

And so that will be available soon and we're actively working on it.

I do have an explanation here of the number of complaints that this division is receiving.

And so as you can see, we received 229 complaints in 2023, 250 complaints in 2024, and we are already at 248 complaints through the end of August of 2025.

So we expect that to of course still increase.

We hope that this increase in complaints received is a demonstration that we are having some success in rebuilding trust with community and having them know that we are a resource in the Civil Rights Department and the Office of Police Conduct Review to come to when they believe that they have experienced police misconduct.

Some other things to highlight for our Office of Police Conduct Review.

So we provide significant staff support to the community commission on police oversight.

That was a part of the reason that the policy and research unit was created.

And they have facilitated a variety of work, including policy language refinement with our CCPO, as well as presenting a sexual misconduct policy that the CCPO has now recommended the Minneapolis Police Department to move forward with.

We've also really prioritized focusing on review panel case processing and making sure that more cases are getting in front of our review panel.

Again, review panel is made up of one sworn member of the Minneapolis Police Department and two members of our community commission on police oversight.

and they review misconduct investigations.

In 2024, review panels reviewed 24 cases, but in 2025 so far, they have reviewed 63 cases.

So as you can see, there's been a significant increase.

Again, we continue to expect that number to increase throughout the rest of the year and are excited to be able to get more cases moving through that process to increase efficiency across the board.

Our staff have also supported the CCPO in public hearings on police policies I also want to highlight the compliance submissions for our Office of Police Conduct Review So these are specifically related to the Minnesota Department of Human Rights Settlement Agreement We have multiple paragraphs that specifically relate to the work of the Civil Rights Department and the Office of Police Conduct Review

as well as the Community Commission on Police Oversight.

So we did receive a letter of compliance in March of 2025 related to paragraph 338, which requires us to develop an outreach strategy for the Community Oversight Commission to appoint a diverse group of community members that represents a cross-section of the Minneapolis community.

We also received a letter of partial compliance related to paragraph 339, which requires that the Office of Police Conduct Review provide sufficient staff support to provide the Community Oversight Commission with meaningful participatory oversight.

We do expect and hope to receive full compliance on paragraph 339 in the near future.

Thank you, good morning.

Those benches are hard, geez.

I'll talk about contract compliance.

Contract compliance actively monitors construction contractors that have contracts directly with the City of Minneapolis over $175,000.

Those are construction, development, services, commodities,

we look out for small underutilized business program we look at low income workers and businesses and we also ensure workers are paid the prevailing wage on the projects

As I said, we actively monitor those contracts and also we include affirmative action, ensuring that no one discriminates while they're working on those projects and that we include small businesses in the process.

Some of our metrics for success are the SUBP participation, so we set goals, we approve goals, and then we monitor that those goals are being met.

I'll talk about that a little bit in a second.

and then identify any wage theft on contracts as well as misclassification under payment to workers and talking to workers on site to ensure that their rights aren't being violated.

As you can see with the Contract Compliance Division, we have three entry-level compliance officers, which is managed by a compliance supervisor.

As Director McConandiera talked about, we converted a position that was a senior level position into a compliance.

Supervisor, which actually helped a lot and has helped a lot streamline the workflow, training, project timelines has been very helpful to us.

So we still have four senior compliance officers and also the wait staff investigator, which was new to our division in 2024.

That's been very important to contract compliance also and to the city.

Currently, we're actively monitoring, as you can see there, I don't want to report all the numbers there, but there's a lot of contracts that we're monitoring, over $400,000, $500,000, half a billion dollars I should say, of contracts.

And if you look at the chart there,

those are the contracts that it tells you how much participation we're getting on those contracts from minority and woman-owned businesses and as it relates to the overall goal.

So 79% of the overall goal for MBE or for women-owned businesses is being utilized and 73% for minority businesses are being utilized.

There's two stages to the utilization of contracts.

One is that the goal is either met or they show good faith efforts on the contract.

And two is that the companies that they tell us they're going to utilize are actually utilized.

So these are, if a company decides not to use a small business, they have to have a legitimate reason and they have to come to us for what's called a deviation from the contract.

And if they don't come to us, there's a penalty for that and we've

gauge contractors with penalties also and ensuring that they must utilize those companies that they tell us they're going to.

Sometimes there is also a change in the contract.

The city decides not to do something on a contract, remove some work or there's less quantities of something that also can impact the subcontractors ability to do work also.

So through August of 2025, we also do certification of small businesses.

So we've certified 22 small businesses in the Minnesota Unified Certification Program.

We've approved over 220 affirmative action plans.

Again, that's saying to contractors, you will not discriminate on a city of Minneapolis contract.

and we've done 38 wage theft investigations and received over $104,000 in payments to workers.

Now as I told you before, that waste theft investigator position came in on early 2024 and as you can see from that chart, the trending of those investigations have gone up since then and we only see more investigations.

Our waste theft investigators out there talking to workers, we're reviewing those payrolls when they come in.

If there are some anomalies, we ask for additional information.

through ordinance and we're making sure that contractors are abiding by their commitments to our contracts.

Now I'll talk a little bit about our Labor Standards and Enforcement Division.

The Division investigates reported payroll and sick time violations to resolve disputes and demand back wages for workers and demands owed to workers and we monitor ongoing compliance with any agreement that's made.

The city's workplace regulations charge the division with receiving and resolving complaints involving failures to provide employee paid sick and safe time or wait staff and includes minimum wage and overtime across the city.

Now this is not to be confused with contract compliance which has, we look at wait staff for contractors who do business with the city, Labor Standards Enforcement Division

monitors contractors who have, employers, I'm sorry, within the city.

So a little different.

They also look at, when you look at the metrics for success for the division, the volume of complaints received and successfully reviewed and resolved, settlement agreements also, dollars collected and workers affected, and consultations provided and compliance monitored.

a lot of outreach with that division, a lot of training with that division of employers and employees across the city.

As you can see there are four investigators, two entry level investigators and two senior investigators as well as an intake coordinator that does the work of the division.

In 2024, there was 163 cases closed and they've collected over half a million dollars impacting over 1300 workers and to date in 2025, they've closed over 140 cases and collected over $300,000 in back wages and damages for workers.

In 2025 also we're monitoring 44 settlement agreements impacting over 2,500 workers.

This includes training and or policy changes.

And again the outreach with 297 technical assistance consultations for employers

between 2024 and 2025.

And also, the biggest deal is the passage of the Sick and Safe Time Ordinance and the amendments and getting those signed.

So that was a big deal for us, I think, as the city as a whole to get that approved.

Some of the metrics we have, some of the key remedies that we have is remedy past and present and future violations as you can see from the chart there that the cases are probably really on pace with cases from last year is either reaching a settlement agreement or violations found or no jurisdiction or sometimes we have to train employers, do some informal mediation but anytime we have contact with people there's some type of

a final adjudication to what happened with the case.

And then in our cases in 2024 there was over 162 cases.

We're at 140 right now through August.

So we're on pace to meet that.

And I think we're really on pace to meet that 170 target case for cases.

And then in 2026 we're going to increase that another to 180 cases.

So I think we can meet that too.

As you've seen throughout the presentation there is a reduction in the civil rights recommended budget for 2026 and that is to our labor standards co-enforcement funding.

That reduction is recommended to be approximately $349,000 and with that reduction approximately $309,000 will remain in the department budget to complete this work.

I want to highlight that we truly value and appreciate the work of our co-enforcement partners as well as our partnership with them.

This past year we piloted performance-based contracting for our co-enforcement contract and so have set very specific targets for different activities within this work and we are very committed to working with our co-enforcement partners to ensure that we make reasonable and mutually agreeable adjustments to those targets based on any reduction in funding.

Thank you for your presentation.

Director, colleagues, are there any questions?

And as I'm seeing council members jump into queue, I will note that we have been joined in this committee meeting by Council Member Jenkins.

With that, I will first recognize Council Member Cashman, followed by Council Member Palmisano.

Thank you Chair Chugtai, thank you Director.

I'm trying to understand this cut that you just outlined.

Thank you for the question.

We had a budget reduction target just as any other department did across the city and so we really had to take a look at our budget as a whole.

The vast majority of the Civil Rights Department budget pays for our staff and as I talked about we've done an extensive workforce

overhaul and restructure to ensure that each of our FTEs truly is necessary to enforce the civil rights ordinances we are tasked with enforcing and that is why we needed to identify programmatic funding that we could cut from.

We don't yet know exactly what the impact would necessarily be but as I said we piloted performance-based contracting in this contract so we do have very specific targets and we are committed to working with our co-enforcement partners to make reasonable adjustments to those targets so I think it's things like

amount of community outreach, you know, trainings that are completed, amount of navigation services that are provided to workers.

Okay.

And then last question here.

What's driving the increase in the contract compliance cases in the last couple of years?

So we established a wage theft investigator position in 2024 and so that was the first time we've ever had an investigator in that division that can solely focus on investigating anomalies that we find when we're doing active monitoring on city contracts.

and so we just have had increased capacity to be able to focus on that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Interim Director McConnell and DiEira.

I'd like to thank you for always stepping up through a couple leadership transitions here, taking on new and additional duties, and really stabilizing the department.

Your own consistent presence and institutional knowledge is really helping to hold things together in times of uncertainty and I appreciate it.

Also, congratulations on some of your achievements.

I see them here, especially clearing the police conduct review backlog.

This is really key for successful response to the settlement agreement and consent decree and I'm glad that you're prioritizing it.

Wonderful, thank you.

Thank you Chair, thank you so much Director for your presentation and thank you to everyone in the Civil Rights Department for their work.

I really see this presentation as an example of forward moving progress.

I was really impressed to see so much of the backlog reduced and I'm interested to learn more about

what's going to be done in the future to prevent future backlogs.

I think that's a very worthy goal to set and I look forward to seeing that come to fruition in the next year.

Really exciting policy work that's being implemented in the Civil Rights Department too.

It's heartening to see the expansion to housing, housing impacted

I really see the Civil Rights Department as a department that is the arbiters of protection

Justice a place where people who feel marginalized or are marginalized in our city can come there's been a couple of cases that I've kind of pushed towards your department and My first two years as a council member and the response has been really really great and it's very very widely known that we're in a moment where We're not in a country that's becoming more equitable and more equal.

It feels like a

It's the opposite.

There's further growth of disparities almost actually intentionally and so the work of the Civil Rights Department is really really important for the resiliency of our city and I want to see this department grow into the future.

I think it needs to grow.

in order to continue to do the current workload that's robust.

And we've had conversations in different parts of what civil rights does in terms of questions of capacity and the need for more capacity.

So even if it's not within this budget cycle, it's something that I'm really thinking about looking into the future.

So I just wanted to make those comments before I made some questions.

and again just thank you all of you that are working really hard in the department.

We really see it and our constituents really feel it too.

Like I get that feedback on the things that they've reached out about and connected on.

My question is about the reduction to co-enforcement.

Chair Chuktai, Council Members, thank you Council Member Chaudry for the question.

That's ongoing.

Okay, great.

And then I think I heard you mention something about figuring out internally how to kind of bridge the gap.

Thank you for the question.

And then I know that the additional ongoing funding happened just this last budget cycle.

I was a co-author of that funding with a couple of my colleagues up here.

Chair Chugchai, Council Member Choudry, thank you for the question.

I would say at this point in time it's hard to quantify that fully just because it's only, we're only tracking through the end of August of this year.

But as I said, we did pilot performance-based contracting and so we did want to align that funding in 2025 with the services that were going to be performed with that funding.

And we had very, I think,

reasonable but also increased targets for work.

Chair Chugtai, Councilmember Choudry, thank you for the question.

Thank you, that's perfect.

Awesome, thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you so much, Director.

This has been a really awesome Monday morning presentation.

You all have done some wonderful work.

The department, this department has been quite frustrating for me as a council member because I get a lot of questions about some of the things happening in civil rights and over the years I've just

I've just said we're working on it and like we've worked on it you all have worked on it you've done a fantastic job to be down to four cases this month having come from what was it like 234 or something like that that that we've been talking to people for for at least three years given that same number and saying it's coming down it's they're working on it and and to really be there now and

have it down to four cases and be thinking about how are we going to prevent this from happening in the future just feels really good you've done an amazing job the entire department I know that direct yes clap I see clap

Good job.

You have done a fantastic job.

I know Director Phillips has moved on.

I shared with her also that I thought her leadership just brought in this power of getting things done and really listening to community.

I've enjoyed seeing you all out at community events.

I've never seen that before.

It's good to introduce you all.

to community and make people feel safe about some of the issues that civil rights work on.

I know when they see you at outreach events like Juneteenth or just at a local church or staff out at the neighborhood park talking to folks about what the civil rights department does, that bridges a gap for folks that I represent for sure and everyone.

There are so many things happening in our communities that could be violations of civil rights or that people have questions and concerns about and to have folks out in communities saying, here's who we are, you can talk to us, that means a lot.

I really love the direction the department is going in.

I love how you've embraced that being seen in community is a big part of how folks access this department.

So thank you all so, so very much.

I mean that every single person in this department deserves huge big ups because I know it's been a labor

to get here and you all have been through it, whether it's budget or turnover and like so much staff turnover has happened in my time here.

Some of you have stuck with us this whole way.

Some of you are newer and I love it.

I really do.

I just appreciate this presentation so much.

I came in in a good mood and this is keeping me in a good mood for the day.

So thank you all so much for this.

I do have one question though, because I've been asked this a lot recently based on some of the public hearing we've had.

What is it, have you all explored, what does it look like to bring in

I will say that the department certainly

values the partnership with a community organization that is in a different non-government location and is accessible in a different way.

Yes, there was an RFP process.

We just did one early this year for this co-enforcement contract.

Okay, thank you so much.

Clerks, did we note that staff follow-up around expiration of the current co-enforcement contracts?

Wonderful, thank you.

Thank you so much for coming in to present your budget today.

I will just say I really appreciate, I know you were aware there were a lot of questions about the co-enforcement budget being cut in half a little bit more than that.

so I just really appreciate your honesty about the impact that we'll have and I can imagine that's a really difficult thing to do and so want to thank you for that so with that we will

Say thank you to the Civil Rights Department.

You're done for the day.

And I will ask the clerks to file that presentation.

And next up we have our presentation from the Public Works Department.

For that, I will invite Tim Sexton, our Public Works Director, to join us and begin that presentation.

All right, just-in-time delivery.

Thank you, Ennis.

Good morning Chair Chugchi, Council Members, my name is Tim Sexton, I serve as Director of Public Works.

Thank you for the opportunity to share an overview of our department and the 2026 budget proposal today.

As shown, Public Works is part of the Office of Public Service and reports directly to the City Operations Officer.

I'll pull this up here.

It's important to Public Works that we take opportunities like this one to highlight our team members who deliver the everyday core services our city depends on.

Many of these jobs are difficult and can be physically and mentally demanding, involving crawling through sewer pipes, plowing snow in the middle of the night, during snow storms, handling

Heavy trash and recycling carts in the cold, heat, rain and snow.

One way we're celebrating our team is through our Faces of Public Works interviews.

The slide shows James Landsberger, the department's equipment and training supervisor, who works across divisions to reinforce our safety culture and help ensure our staff have the proper safety equipment and training to complete their work and come home safely to their families at the end of the night.

So the Public Works Department makes up almost a quarter of the total city workforce spread across nine divisions who all share the mission of providing critical city services that contribute to public safety, economic vitality, and neighborhood livability in their own ways.

Our nine divisions are loosely grouped across three business lines.

However, staff routinely collaborate across divisions.

Shown here you can see our division breakdown and our FTE counts.

The administration division largely supports department and city-wide services.

For example, workforce training is led by admin and vehicle purchases and maintenance are led by our fleet division.

The utility business line includes solid waste and recycling, surface water and sewers, and water treatment and distribution.

They are mostly funded through utility fees, and their work ties back to those utility services.

Finally, the transportation business line includes all things transportation, from the Transportation Action Plan to building bridges and plowing snow.

Our goal is to operate as efficiently as possible.

One example of that is as the largest city department,

We have just one deputy director who also serves as city engineer and that position is currently filled by Jennifer Hager Public Works currently has 1061 positions funded through a combination of general fund and enterprise funds There are another 213 positions funded through the city's capital construction program that includes positions across the utility and transportation business lines for a total of around 1,275 positions

Our primary mission in public works is to be effective stewards of public infrastructure and provide core city services that promote safety, economic vitality, and livability across the city with our highest level goals being to provide a high performing workforce that reflects the diversity of the city, reliably provide affordable utility services, and develop a safe multimodal transportation system that is accessible to all residents and visitors.

The next three slides are a small sample of accomplishments in public works since last year.

We divided these by people, which focuses on our workforce, projects that relate back to capital investments, and partnerships, since so much of what we do can only be accomplished through collaboration with internal and external partners.

Just a couple of items here that I'd call out, the first being the Partner in Excellence Award.

Director Sexton?

Yeah.

Am I not advancing the slides?

Oh, thank you.

So excited, I just thought.

Thanks.

I think we're okay without going back through those.

But anyway, the Partner Excellence Award is a collaboration with the FATHER Project that we're really proud of.

This is a program that supports fathers in overcoming barriers to employment and helping them achieve family and financial stability.

Another one that, just to call out, that didn't get a lot of notice, but we're extremely proud of General Foreman Damon Troll, who was awarded the Citizens Life Saving Award.

Damon noticed a crash on the roadside, jumped out of his work truck, fashioned a tourniquet with using a belt to stop the bleeding, and then stayed with the person until the medics arrived.

And not only that, he returned to work pouring concrete on First Avenue right afterwards without telling anyone.

So this is just, I think, an example of sort of the humble heroics that many of our staff perform every day.

um...

I'm going to keep moving.

There's some additional things that we're really proud of, though, on our recruitment side this year.

It's been a banner year across the division with over 60 new trainees hired.

60 new trainees, service worker ones and twos, and water distribution operators hired this year alone.

We also had almost 50 interns and urban scholars.

Some of you had the chance to meet them on their community cleanups.

But we're really proud of this work.

to help people recognize the city as an employer of choice whether it's with public works or other departments within the city.

Next slide.

A couple projects to highlight include the Nicolette Bridge project over Minnehaha Creek.

This one is just an exercise in persistence.

We were awarded a $35 million bridge grant from the federal government.

As people know, a lot of uncertainty at the federal level, but we were able to get everything that needed to be done by the end of this month done to receive that $35 million grant, not without a ton of effort from

Public Works in the City Attorney's Office, so really grateful for that.

Hennepin Avenue South should be ready to open up in November, another achievement we're excited about.

and finally lead service lines.

We're on track to replace as many as 10 lead service lines every workday in 2025.

This is a huge effort as there are over 38,000 lead service lines in Minneapolis and the goal of the state is to replace all of those by 2033.

and I guess one last thing is just in the copper wire theft.

I know that's an important topic for many of you and over 22 miles of wire theft have been repaired this year alone with over 580 lights relit this far into the year.

So we're going to keep going to partnerships.

Some of our most exciting work is really done through partnerships whether that's other city departments

working with city leaders, engaging with the community, county, state, regional partner agencies.

Just a few highlights include the Bike and Transit to Work Day in coordination with Metro Transit and Move Minneapolis.

Traffic Safety Camera Pilot done in collaboration with legislators who helped us make that pilot a reality.

NACTO, the National Association of City Transportation Officials

This is the premier conference for city transportation officials in the country Our application focused on partnerships with the City of St. Paul, some counties, MnDOT, and private and philanthropy partners We beat out a whole host of very competitive other city applications

You can read the rest of those, but a lot of the key here is that the work we do frequently involves others, which does add to the time that things take, but also adds to the quality of the outcomes.

In terms of big picture risks that we see coming this year and into the future, we're generally thinking of these risks in terms of trade-offs.

So inflation and rising costs continue to be a challenge.

related to labor, construction materials, electrical components, continue to outpace funding available.

Just as some examples, signals and street lights are twice what they used to cost, you know, going from $200,000 in 2019 to $400,000 today to replace one traffic signal.

General construction material costs also continue to increase faster than other inflation, increasing over 15% since 2022 for things like concrete and asphalt.

On the staffing side, you know, staffing is always going to be a challenge, but I think what we wanted to note

is the upcoming loss of institutional knowledge.

We have over 282 employees in public works who are retirement eligible.

That's over 22% of our total workforce.

So that is a very real risk.

Many of these people have decades of knowledge that helps us do our work more safe, more efficient, and more effectively.

Supply chains, some of you experienced this in terms of the wire theft.

We had an order for six miles of aluminum wire that was cancelled this year due to tariff disruptions that slowed down our streetlight replacement work for this fall.

Federal funding uncertainty, I won't dwell on that, I think people are aware of some of those challenges, but that is tens of millions of dollars of grants are at risk.

and it's hard to say with certainty how we mitigate that because there's so much uncertainty at the federal level but we continue to put our heads down and do the work the best we can to get those grants, agreements signed and the funding continuing to come to the city.

Copper wire theft remains a risk, but I think we have seen a slowdown this year, which is a good thing, and that's due to a lot of mitigating work that our staff have done to reduce the appeal of selling that wire, along with potentially some benefit from the state law changes.

And then sort of bigger more like big picture risks have to do with Collaborating with some of our partners one in particular with Hennepin County was given a lot of new transportation money by the state Those projects that they fund within the city require a city match and

We don't necessarily have the money to match that we used to, and so we're continuing to work with them to sort of adjust those expectations.

Other expectations that continue to change though is on our projects.

Minneapolis is really recognized nationally as a leader in multimodal transportation.

That is not without effort and cost though, so our projects, what used to be a simple

Pavement overlay is now we're adding ramps, signals, green storm water infrastructure, all the things that are important to our city, but they do take more time and they cost more money.

And then overall just aging infrastructure.

Many of you unfortunately have had to experience some of the outcomes of an older infrastructure system in the last year that has costs to us, to community, and can create major disruptions in the city.

All right, so overall the way we track our performance though, we have 16 categories with 54 visualizations on our outcomes Minneapolis dashboard and actually 64 unique metrics that we use.

We're continuing to refine these though.

I think even though we are a large department, it can be hard to manage 64 plus performance metrics.

But we can talk more about that if you'd like, but I'm going to keep moving otherwise.

Given that we have so much going on in the department, we continue to work on a new strategic plan that we started this summer and we'll be wrapping up later on this calendar year.

But the goal is to really say we've got all these metrics.

We have plans like our transportation action plan with hundreds of actions in them.

How do we boil that down so that our staff can really focus on what's important?

and make sure that we're all kind of rowing in the same direction in the short term, especially to identify what are those key things we should be focusing our effort, our energy and our resources on.

And we have three key areas of safety, equity and climate that we're focusing on.

That draft is in sort of its final draft, excuse me, that plan is in its final draft stage.

And we're hoping again to finish that in the calendar year.

Here are three examples though of the types of measures that we do feel like are important.

to capture and drive some of the work that we do.

Worker safety was always going to be our top priority.

We're really happy to report a trend towards fewer injuries, even though we won't be satisfied until we get to zero.

We really credit our progress towards a culture of safety instilled by many of our leaders here today, and increased investment in safety training from people like James Landsberger, who you saw highlighted on that first slide.

In terms of community response, we are proud of our response time to 311.

The numbers here show continued excellence in this area by staff throughout the department.

That said, we're not perfect and sometimes exceed expected response times.

However, for some perspective, since 2024, Public Works has received over 62,000 311 inquiries.

So the fact that we are actually exceeding our service level performance goals I think really is credit to all the people throughout the department who respond to those and really prioritize constituent and resident sort of responses.

And, you know, we have a real role to play in reducing the city's contribution to carbon pollution.

Well, the largest impacts are going to be from how we design and operate our infrastructure systems.

Electrifying the city fleet is one area where we have direct control.

We continue to make progress, but that work is non-linear.

We're overcoming supply chain challenges.

changes to sort of where people are located within the city and changes to funding and rebates for things like electric vehicles and electric vehicle chargers.

That said, we continue to make solid progress and our fleet division, this is really one of their number one priorities.

Alright, so to the expenses.

The proposed budget for public works in 2026 is just over $486 million of which just around $74 million comes from the general fund and we're actually proposing an overall decrease to that in 2026 by $550,000 The other, the remainder is largely from enterprise funds that are paid directly through utility fees

with a small amount then also being around from internal service funds for things like fleet and parking.

The largest overall budget that we're seeing for 2026 comes from salaries and wages.

projected to be $11.1 million or proposed to be.

We have 14 bargaining units within Public Works and about 60% of those increases come from the 363 labor agreement for wage increases for public service workers.

These are the folks who are out there in the field plowing the snow

fixing the roads, doing that difficult work.

The remaining increases, about 41%, come from AFSCME, MPEA, and professional engineers.

On the operating expense side, we're proposing an increase of $4.5 million.

These are mostly from increases to the Met Council to treat our sewage.

Those costs continue to increase every year, and we don't have control over what Met Council charges us, but we do need to make sure that that water continues to be treated.

Contractual services are up about $4 million.

Of those, $3 million comes from fixed internal charges for things like IT, general fund overhead, rents and fleet.

So this is the same information just broken down by division.

We'll discuss more of those in the coming slides.

Okay, so in terms of our FTEs, we currently have 138 vacancies in Public Works, so that's about 10% of the total Public Works workforce, which is right around 1,300.

And that includes all of our capital-funded employees, as well as general fund and utility or enterprise funds.

The majority of our vacancies are in those enterprise-funded positions, but all of our vacancies fall into three real categories.

We have positions vacated due to promotions currently in the hiring process or filled with a detail.

One thing that we're really proud of in Public Works is we use details a lot, which is like a temporary filling of a position.

For example, right now, the Deputy Director and City Engineer is a temporary or interim fill from Jenny Hager.

which led to multiple other backfill, temporary fills behind her.

This gives an opportunity for internal staff to explore the position, learn more about the new responsibilities before we competitively fill those roles.

Other vacancies include outside trades, or excuse me, we fill with outside trades and temporary fills from people outside the department.

So, for example, we have about 120 of those 138 positions are currently filled through outside trades.

These are represented folks who

are able to come in and work almost like a contract basis to meet the needs while if we're having trouble filling a position or while we're trying to do some of our larger hiring processes.

And finally, and most importantly, almost half of those vacancies, that total vacancy amount, are for service workers and water treatment distribution operators that we hold for trainees to move into after they complete their training for one year.

And we expect those service worker vacancies will be filled through our spring recruitment and applications open for that starting November 1st.

Okay, going into the specific divisions, starting with the administration.

The administration division has 16 people divided into four business units who lead recruitment, training, finance, and HR functions for the department, along with several department-wide initiatives like intergovernmental relations and outcomes Minneapolis.

Public Works team has been instrumental in connecting program participants with career opportunities at Public Works, helping to build a more inclusive and equitable city workforce.

Jennifer Swanson serves as Director of Business Administration.

or admin.

Admin has prioritized efforts to improve worker safety and increase workforce diversity, especially bringing on more BIPOC and female job applicants.

The graph on the right shows steady progress being made towards a target of at least 40% BIPOC employees to better reflect overall city demographics.

Given the size of the Public Works workforce, we are a major driver of the city's overall progress towards workforce diversity goals.

And as credit to some of our admin staff,

As of this year-to-date reporting, we've actually achieved that overall goal of at least 40%, but we continue to make strides to go beyond that.

An increase of 87,000 is proposed for 2026, largely driven by increases to wages and fringes.

Okay.

These are the folks plowing the streets, fixing the potholes, doing the work that's shown in the pictures here.

But it's not just that.

So TM&R has 217 people divided into five business units.

Bridge, ramps, streets, paving, and special service districts.

So not only do they do that maintenance, they are our in-house construction company that is doing the work, building projects, making sure that we have

that expertise within the city to build and repair some of those really challenging projects, not just contract that work out.

The team and I focuses on maintenance and repair throughout the city and evaluates their performance based on reactive work in response to complaints and concerns and proactive or preventative maintenance to cost-effectively extend the life of transportation assets through efforts like pavement resurfacing.

Team and I perform summer and winter maintenance like street sweeping and snow plowing, runs a construction crew that builds and repairs streets, sidewalks, alleys, and bridges, and they're frequent collaborators with other divisions, departments, and external partners when operation support is needed around the city.

Joe Palman serves as Transportation Maintenance and Repair Division Director.

One example of a metric of success for TMNR is response time to pothole complaints, as shown on the graph to the right.

The blue bar shows the number of complaints reported through 311, and the green line shows the percent of complaints resolved within 12 days.

Data is year-to-date through September 15th.

Overall for TMNR,

an increase of 2.6 million or 4.2% is proposed.

Again, similar theme, these are driven almost entirely by increased staffing wage and fringe costs.

In addition to that increase though, I think it is notable here that we're actually proposing a 4.1, like a little over 4 FTE reduction

to that department.

It's I think what we could do, the most we could do without sacrificing safety or having major impacts to service levels.

Moving on to transportation operations and mobility.

This is the first example of, I think you may recall this from last year, we have divisions with different names than you see attached here.

So these are legacy names for some of these programs.

Transportation Operations and Mobility is a legacy label for the Public Works Division better known as Traffic and Parking Services.

or TPS is what I'm going to just refer to it for here because I think that's more familiar, focuses on helping all people move freely around the city regardless of your mode of travel.

TPS runs a sign shop and impound lots, builds and installs signal boxes, manages 18,000 parking spots in the city, runs lots, ramps, and meters along with overseeing the city parking policy and leads traffic and mobility management.

They are the lead division for running our annual traffic calming application process to support calming measures throughout the city.

TPS has 117 positions divided into four business units.

Capital improvements, traffic field operations, street parking,

and shared mobility or curbside management.

Alan Klugman serves as Division Director.

A little fun fact about the images here, this comes when the blue shirts come out, that's for doors open.

In the last three years they've had over 3,300 people come through the border maintenance facility to learn about city traffic operations in the sign shop and all the work that happens out there.

Okay, so TPS, or Transportation Operations and Mobility, we talked about that, ensures streets are lit, signage is present and clear, and streets are open for plowing and sweeping to make sure all users can safely navigate the city.

The graph shows our continued progress towards fully accessible, signalized intersections around the city.

We're proposing an increase of $7.9 million for 2026.

What's important to recognize in this funding though is

About $59 million is from the parking fund.

The budget increases we're proposing are directly related to capital improvements and deferred maintenance for some of our parking facilities.

That budget is also fully covered by people parking and using the parking facilities.

Most of the general fund reduction that we're talking about for TPS comes from shifting $500,000 from the general fund to the capital fund.

Excuse me, it's actually $100,000 from the general fund and instead increasing the traffic calming to $500,000 into the capital funding program.

We'll talk more about that in a moment.

I think those are the key pieces for transportation, operations, and mobility Transportation, Planning, Design, and Engineering This is a combination, another legacy label, but combines two separate divisions known as Transportation, Planning, and Programming or TPP and Transportation, Engineering, and Design or TED or T-E-D

at least the operating capital side of TED.

So this does get confusing.

I don't think it's super important, but if you want to ask more questions about that division, I'm happy to respond afterwards.

TPP though has 33 divisions divided into two units who develop transportation policies and programs.

build the capital improvement plan, coordinate public engagement on projects, and lead early project design, bringing projects up to 30% designed to ensure they align with department goals as much as possible.

Kathleen Mail serves as interim TPP division director.

Ted kind of picks up where TPP leads off, leads and reviews project design and engineering,

manages construction projects and handles right-of-way and property management issues.

Ted has 11 positions.

Excuse me, that's not right.

That should be 111 positions.

Let me get back to you on that one.

And divided into five business units.

Yes, 111 positions in Ted divided into five units.

Don Elwood serves as Division Director for TED.

All right.

So, TPP and TED combined to plan and design our transportation system.

These divisions are the ones who created the Transportation Action Plan, Racial Equity Framework for Transportation, Vision Zero, plans that guide our transportation investments, and then finalized project design and oversee construction projects like Hennepin Avenue South.

Notably, that's on track and scheduled to open in early November.

Their metrics demonstrate the Division's commitment to safety and equity for our transportation system.

The graph on the right shows the continued challenges to reducing fatal crashes in the City as part of our Vision Zero work led through TPDE with contributions from all transportation business line divisions.

An increase of $3.9 million is proposed for 2026.

This includes a $2.8 million increase to capital program for new staff to deliver that capital program, which is in total is over $310 million.

And an $890,000 increase to the engineering lab for wages and higher material prices for things like asphalt.

Those are the main drivers of those increases.

All right, utility programs, excuse me, internal service programs starting with Fleet Services.

Fleet Services Division has 73 positions divided into four business units who are responsible for purchasing and maintaining our vehicle and large equipment fleet for all departments within the city, from sedans to snowplows and snooper trucks.

Chris Royston is the Fleet Services Division Director.

As we mentioned, Fleet works across the city with all departments to match them with equipment that cost-effectively meets their needs.

In recent years, conversion to cleaner electric vehicles has been a priority and the team has been working on the puzzle of fitting the right vehicle model to meet the customer needs and making sure that charging is available at different facilities around the city.

Preventative maintenance is also a focus to keep vehicles operating cleanly and efficiently to reduce costs and pollution.

The graph on the right shows progress towards increasing the number of EVs in the city fleet as a percent of all city vehicles.

We're currently at 9% of the total fleet being EVs.

When excluding vehicle types that currently lack electric options,

or at least like readily available electric options like medium and heavy duty trucks, the percent of electric vehicles in the city fleet rises to 25%.

A 3% increase is proposed for 2026, again driven largely by higher staffing costs and increased costs to repair or replace totaled vehicles.

Solid waste and recycling,

includes 150 positions divided into three business units who help keep our city clean.

The team pick up residential trash, recycling, organics, and yard waste for half the city in contracts with MRI, a private waste hauler for the other half.

MRIs service area is west of 35W from the Minnehaha Creek up through North Minneapolis and then east of the river from Broadway Street Northeast and 18th Avenue Northeast to the northern city boundary.

They also support city cleanups and graffiti removal.

Nick Gerald is the Division Director.

So this division focuses on keeping the city clean, and for people and the environment, they partner with Minneapolis Health Department, Hennepin County, and private haulers to work towards a zero-waste future that includes waste reduction, reuse, and recycling.

The graph on the right shows garbage, or waste that cannot be reused or recycled, is back to the same level as 2019 after jumps in 2021 and then reductions in 2022 and 2023.

While the City is still considered a national leader in waste reduction and recycling, more work is needed to make meaningful and lasting reductions.

An increase of $7 million is proposed for 2026 that is largely driven by higher wages and higher internal service fund charges for things like IT and other enterprise-wide internal services.

This funding is almost entirely paid through waste bills by users.

Sanitary sewer and stormwater are managed by the Surface Water and Sewers Division to provide wastewater and stormwater management to protect the community and our water resources to support clean water in a thriving city.

Just for clarity, sanitary sewer is water from faucets and toilets that needs to be treated at the Met Council facilities.

Stormwater is water that runs off of roofs, parking lots, and streets that is largely untreated.

Surface water and sewer has 138 positions who build and maintain the sewer and stormwater infrastructure, including gray assets like pipes and green infrastructure, like some engineered vegetated medians and boulevards that detain water before it enters the stormwater system.

This is also referred to as green stormwater infrastructure.

Between the sanitary and stormwater systems, the Division operates and maintains about 1,400 miles of underground infrastructure.

All the work in surface water and sewers is funded through utility fees.

Angie Kraft serves as Division Director for Surface Water and Sewers.

So on the sanitary side, sanitary sewers are aging.

The division uses and really leads the department in their use of a data-driven asset management approach to guide rehabilitation and replacement of sewer mains owned by the city.

System performance is regulated at the federal, state, and local levels, and backups, leaks, or failures can have health or environmental impacts.

The graph here, we actually debated on this

how to visualize this because the work is because what they do is so impressive that there's zeros the last few years in terms of the number of combined sewer overflows.

So the national average you can see continues to hover between 15 and 20.

Our number has remained at zero since 2019.

Really suggesting, you know, is evidence of all the work that we do

and the great leadership in surface water and sewers.

An increase of 117,000 is proposed for 2026 for sanitary sewers.

Let's move on to stormwater.

On the stormwater side, the stormwater fund is used to operate, maintain and improve our storm sewers.

Again, all costs are paid through utility bills.

The state recently required additional measures to comply with a federal EPA permit that created the need for more staff and resources to comply with additional terms.

The chart here reflects the total volume of phosphorus removal capacity built each year through green stormwater initiatives.

Up to 500 pounds of algae is produced from one pound of phosphorus.

In 2024, 20 pounds of phosphorus removal capacity was added to the city, preventing the growth of 10,000 pounds of algae.

An increase of $1.4 million is proposed for 2026.

led large again by wages, increased cost of wages and internal fund, internal service fund charges being the main drivers.

Alright, I think this is our final utility funded program is water.

The Water Treatment and Distribution Services Division ensures the City has clean water to drink and fire systems have adequate flow and pressure for public safety needs.

206 people in water are divided into four business units who build and maintain water infrastructure throughout the City and operate the water treatment plant for the City.

Again, the water division is funded entirely through utility bills.

The division includes a diverse mix of field operating technical staff who ensure we have some of the most affordable, cleanest, and best tasting water in the country.

Again, we were just awarded the best in glass as the best tasting water

in Minnesota by a jury of their peers, peer water systems.

So kudos to WATER for all the work that they do.

Annika Bankston is Water Treatment and Distribution Services Division Director.

Alright, so WATER's focus is on operating a safe and secure drinking water system for the city.

This program is paid by utility fees.

And like other areas in public works, water is also dealing with the need to renew aging infrastructure, particularly water mains, while keeping rates affordable.

We continue to strategically invest in our system to ensure long-term performance without overburdening ratepayers.

Water mains are owned and maintained by the city and water service lines, the pipe that runs from the city water main in the street to a property's water meter, are privately owned.

An increase of $660,000 is proposed for 2026 that is driven by higher staffing costs.

Alright, so our proposed reductions.

The following are proposed cuts to the Public Works budget.

With a few exceptions, any cuts to the General Fund budget for Public Works does have a direct and visible impact to core services.

Again, the total General Fund budget for Public Works is less than $75 million.

So walking through these, I'm going to skip over the food and beverage, but moving on to budgeted reduction in transportation maintenance and repair.

We are proposing to eliminate one vacant service worker, FTE, in transportation maintenance and repair, recognizing that there will be a reduction in service levels that could cause some delays in maintenance and repair work.

These are

These will be non-safety activities, though, for things like work done on bridges, malls, plazas and greenways, graffiti removal, litter pickup, mowing, weed control, shrub replacement, bridge washing, flushing, those types of activities.

it is notable that any service worker reduction will drop service levels.

Grass will grow longer, graffiti will linger, shrubs and weed care will be deferred, and any additional reductions would impact core service delivery including snow plowing and pothole filling.

We'll discuss the sidewalk snow and ice pilot number three on the

The chart on the next slide.

The number four then is a non-staffing reduction in seal coating.

So seal coating is what we do to extend pavement life and prevent potholes by sealing the pavement surface, creating a protective barrier against environmental elements that are the primary cause of asphalt deterioration.

While this reduces some of our capacity, it avoids more immediate impacts to staffing or safety.

We can still achieve our $800,000 expectation for seal coating annually that's outlined in Ordinance.

Number five would reduce the general fund portion of neighborhood traffic calming

the $100,000 that we've had programmed for multiple years.

However, we propose adding $500,000 to the capital program for this work.

That would fund about 35 projects.

The program has matured and expanded so it is a better fit for the capital program and it really looks more like other construction projects now that are funded through capital.

Next item here is a $200,000 reduction to the traffic safety camera pilot.

this would just delay hiring staff and regulatory services to renew review violations.

The reason we felt okay with this is it will give the program time to ramp up to ensure we're hiring the right number of staff to meet the need.

The program will be kicking off later this week so our thought is that we should see how things go before we maybe do that full hiring

Finally, number seven is our previous annual contribution to support the Northern Lights Express train to Duluth.

Funding for the project overall at the federal level is now questionable under the current administration.

So we suggest putting our membership here on hold.

Sidewalk's no nice.

I'll give you a sense of where we are too, because I know Public Works is a long one.

We have three sides left.

So, for Sidewalk Snow and Ice, the pilot was developed to improve the accessibility and safety of public sidewalks, focusing on the pedestrian priority network and assisting residents who struggle to clear their walks due to age or disability, particularly in underserved areas.

Over the past two winters, we've identified that focusing on community-based programming has the potential to be a cost-effective strategy to maximize the goals of the pilot.

We're talking specifically about what we call the Senior Snow Clearing Assistance Pilot These are grants to neighborhood organizations to cost-effectively provide services to seniors and those who need assistance and help provided over 250 snow clearings over six snow events in the last two years

This part of the pilot also helps build local connections and community capacity for neighbors to support neighbors.

Given the effectiveness of this part of the pilot, we suggest doubling capacity for senior snow clearing assistance in 2026, which is reflected by the $75,000 proposed.

The snow coordinator has also proven critical to advance this work.

They're needed to identify and collect data, understand barriers, identify a charted path forward.

They direct outreach and education to residents about sidewalk clearing and connect people with resources and services for sidewalk clearing.

They also serve as a resource for renters experiencing inadequate service from their property owners.

The three FTE reductions shown in slide 33 were not any new hires This is a combination of people pulled from other work to support the pilot And actually staffing this work was a real scheduling challenge because these staff were needed for other critical winter work over the last two winters

Alright, finally, we started with one of our team members and we're going to end with another group of folks.

Eight people plus two not pictured from our water team demonstrated quick thinking and compassion when they came across a resident involved in a serious car accident near a job site this summer.

Her vehicle was overturned and had struck a light pole.

Without hesitation, the crew sprang into action by helping the resident out of her overturned vehicle, providing immediate traffic control to ensure safety of the person and the area and offering calm professional support during a very stressful incident.

Thank you for that presentation, Director Sexton.

Colleagues, are there any questions or discussion items related to this presentation?

Thank you Chair Chugtai.

Thank you Director Sexton.

Lengthy presentation, but again it's a huge budget so it's important for us to get all the details.

I appreciate you going through it and everybody who put a lot of time into it and you know it's great working with your department.

You're very steady but also

forward thinking and moving our city along towards our policy goals.

I really appreciate that and instead of asking a lot of questions about your outcomes here, I'm going to just ask that we have a follow-up meeting to discuss that because I think it is important to understand what you're tracking and how in terms of metrics for outcomes, but did want to give you the shout out for reducing preventable worker injuries and

that's really great from a safety perspective, but also from a budget perspective because it also helps reduce the settlement costs, right?

So thank you so much for that.

But just generally about your budget, I wanted to understand why the total budget's increasing 25 million when so many other departments, almost every other department is making cuts to their budget, so I want to understand

where you're really finding the need for increases.

I know there's labor costs and supply chain costs.

I see the increased FTE count is going up by nearly 26 FTEs in Public Works, even after making five FTE reductions.

In terms of the overall increases, you're right, those are mostly driven by wage increases for existing staff.

That's about 11

Over $11 million of those total increases come from wage increases Wage and fringe totals about $12 million Operating cost increases really driven $3.5 million almost is going to the Met Council to pay for treating our water And then another $4 million is coming from sort of on the contractual side

largely driven by internal service charges for things like IT, information technology, general funds, overhead, rent, fleet, and those other charges that we pay into the overall enterprise.

And then there's also some additional, almost a half million dollars of

that we pay back, or I guess $360,000 that we pay back to the general fund.

There's a whole host of costs that come with those sort of contractual costs of operating, many of which get paid back to other departments or to the city via the general fund.

And then your second question about staffing.

Yeah, so the positions that we're adding

I believe are entirely but I will confirm with you through the enterprise funds or capital fund.

So those are paid through through bonding or through utilities.

But a number of those 13 I think it is that we are we're actually holding back on on the capital fund of those 20-25

25 point something positions, and that's due to federal uncertainty.

Okay, thanks.

And then I see that there are about 138 vacancies, FTE vacancies in the department.

Yeah, happy to.

Chair Chuktay and Councilmember Cashman, just to give you a yes, we will follow up with a memo.

I think it's important to note a couple things is that we don't

We have some positions that are difficult to fill because of the technical expertise, for example.

We also, as I mentioned, try to use that detail opportunity to give people an internal promotional opportunity in the temporary, which creates sometimes some positions that stay vacant.

And then we do meet some of the business needs.

through salary savings of those vacancies to hire outside trades or temporary workers to meet the business needs of the department.

But we will follow up with more information on that.

Yes.

Thank you.

And then I just have a couple questions about TPS.

Well, actually, basically, why are we not changing TOM to TPS if that's the new name?

Okay, thanks.

Yeah, Chair Tuktai, Council Member Cashman, I'm looking around.

There's Alan.

I guess it's afternoon, good afternoon, Chair Chug-Teng, Councilmember Cashman and the members of the committee.

Sure, of course.

Right, okay.

So Councilmember Cashman referred to, there was a state work group on transit priority, I believe it started in 2023, maybe 2024, went for about a year, I was a member of that committee.

An outcome of that committee was to recommend some changes in how agencies in the whole metropolitan region looked at transit signal priority.

We have not

We've done large changes.

We've continued to advance the work we're doing.

That's what I would say.

We're now up to over 820 signals.

We have 190 signals with bus transit signal priority.

And we have 40 signals with light rail signal priority.

So we have about 30% of our signals with transit priority.

that's the third highest percentage in the nation.

There's only two cities above us.

So we're very, very active in that.

I think a large finding from the work group, two-part finding.

One was that we're kind of at the forefront of this, and two is that there are some emerging technologies that we want to look into.

And that would be for future discussions, possibly future budget years.

But the technology is possibly moving from directly having equipment into field to more of a cloud-based system, and that's the kind of thing we're looking at for the future.

So I don't mean to get super technical,

I just want to let you know that we continue to advance the system.

I'm very proud of the work our team has done.

Again, 30% of our signals do have transit signal priority.

And with every one of the bus rapid transit lines that you see coming in line, B line earlier this year, E line coming here in another month or so, we've continued to expand the size and scope of our system.

So that's maybe point one.

I think point two, you spoke to maybe other smart signals and other technologies.

We continue to look at those suites of equipment.

In the past year,

We actually upgraded our central traffic control system.

You were at the shop last year.

If you came this year you would see a new map up on the screen.

We continue to stay up to speed with the latest technology in terms of how we operate, monitor, manage those signals and operate them.

So we do keep up with that new technology.

The next thing we're looking at, maybe I'll conclude with this.

is the future with autonomous vehicles, connected vehicles.

We're looking towards that future.

We're with MnDOT on the work groups.

We stay abreast of what's happening in that industry.

We do feel that'll be coming to our city, but probably not in the next year or two, but we're kind of prepping our equipment for that.

Just one quick example.

When we put in our traffic signal cabinets, we're making them a little bit bigger than we used to historically because we know there's new equipment that we'll be housing in those.

We may not even know what all that equipment is now, but we're trying to future-proof our system for that.

Thank you.

One follow-up here is about whether the

Traffic Safety Camera technology that we're installing starting this week.

I think the short answer is probably not the equipment that we selected for the camera safety pilot program.

There are other technologies and equipments that are used for more of the license plate recognition and issuing of citations for parking.

And a lot of it has to do with where you would set up the camera for what it is the camera's looking at.

Okay, thank you so much.

We'd be happy to follow up with you on that and the Climate Infrastructure Committee.

And then the last couple questions are about fleet services.

Good morning.

Yep.

Thank you.

The challenge is as we're ordering the vehicles, they have to come in obviously and then they have to be upfitted.

Once we get the vehicles upfitted and ready to go into service, we've been ordering quite a few EVs and we want to make sure that operationally that we are sound and so we're holding back

the vehicles that will be going on in service to make sure that the vehicles that are coming into service, the EVs specifically, will meet operational needs to confirm it.

And also to make the end users more comfortable with the vehicles and then knowing that they still have the ability to put into operation, put back into operation their internal combustible engine vehicles, their ICE vehicles.

So what that does is it increases the vehicle count which messes with the math as far as the emissions because we're adding vehicles to the fleet Without necessarily taking vehicles out of the fleet right away in addition to that when we're adding EVs so case in point This year we added over a hundred electric vehicles to the fleet Those electric vehicles require charging stations

Those charging stations, there's a whole procurement process that goes into place and then there's a construction process just with those.

And so you have to bring all of that together.

They're bringing in the vehicles, to upfitting the vehicles, to getting the charging infrastructure in place for the vehicles.

Typically, the city, we're buying about 30 vehicles a year.

We're using them now, but when we're doing the math for the greenhouse gases emissions, some of the vehicles were not in service yet, but they still counted, right?

I mentioned that typically we bring in about 30 vehicles a year.

At one point in time, we had over 100 vehicles that were in the process of being upfitted.

right and so that took almost seven months so we had the vehicles but they couldn't go into use because they needed to be upfitted.

Upfitted is will they be adding uh emblems on the side or equipment inside in the case of squad cars you're putting in taking out back seats putting in cages putting in radios um and other safety components it could be a traffic control vehicle that requires light bars

you have to buy that stuff and there's lead times with it and then it has to come in and it has to be upfitted.

EV vehicles that they're using for investigations.

And we've just added our first six squad cars that are EVs.

They're not in service yet, they're currently being upfitted.

Initially we're only going to put three into service immediately.

We anticipate those being in service.

Okay.

Thank you.

Next I'll recognize, actually before we continue with the queue, I'll note that we've been joined in this committee by Council President Payne.

We've got two more speakers in queue, Director.

Thank you for your patience Director Sexton.

I just wanted to pass on some compliments from several of your staff members.

Ethan Frawley, I had the opportunity to join him in testimony for the red light speed light cameras and so good to see that's being started and he's really good.

He's a very good employee, very effective.

I also wanted to shout out Katie White for her work on 13th Avenue as I'm in that neighborhood.

People are very appreciative of how thorough she was and her explanations and her presence there was very important.

And then lastly, you have a superhero on your staff and that is Alan Klugman.

And Alan is always there with my very difficult questions and asks and he's just a joy to work with.

Please know that Alan is a very, very vital part and I hope when you talk about institutional knowledge leaving that he's not part of that institutional knowledge that might be leaving.

Awesome, thank you.

Thank you, Director Sexton, for this presentation.

I'm aware of the time, but just a couple comments and then a couple questions.

I really like your mission statement on page five, and I was struck by how the infrastructure and services provided by Public Works actually supports the other 21 departments in our city.

You can't have public safety without safe and efficient streets.

You can't have economic vitality without orderly waste pickup and a commitment to climate reduction strategies.

You can't have neighborhood vitality without clean water and best practices on storm water management.

I also like that in your presentation you reflected your comments on a grand scale from huge changes to Hennepin Avenue to the simple replacement of lead water lines that you're making a lot of progress on.

They're very different but they're both really important in their own ways and they're both meaningful to residents.

I need to give you these warm fuzzies because frankly you've selected some really pretty photos here but to me most of the work of public works is cold and dirty.

You didn't have a lot of those in your in your presentation But another thing that really struck me if I'm reading the budget book correctly and you just confirmed in your presentation I think was that out of your four hundred and eighty six million dollar department budget only about seventy four million comes from the general fund.

You know the General Fund component is what we as City Council can influence.

The things funded out of the General Fund are core city services that we talk about a lot.

It's about filling potholes and snow plowing and repairing streetlights and maintaining traffic signals.

Any cuts or earmarks that we might make to that part of your budget means cutting staff and an immediate and direct impact to the on-the-ground services for residents of Minneapolis.

I bring that up because time and time again over the years I hear council members saying Public Works won't notice a cut because you have such a large budget.

But that's just not true.

only a small amount of your budget is actually even under our purview and I just want to caution us as we move forward that we really have to be careful to support the livability of our city and these are the things in your presentation that I hear about from residents when I speak to them from all over the city

A question for you.

Yeah, I'm Chair Chuck Tai and Council Member Palmisano.

I think I'm going to take advantage of having one of our capital program experts here in the room maybe help respond to that.

Hi Deputy Director Hager.

Good afternoon chair and members of the committee.

My name is Jennifer Hager serving currently as the deputy director and city engineer and the answers your question short answer is yes, we have proposed neighborhood traffic calming to be part of the CIP and

Because that came a little bit later in the process for developing this current CIP you don't see that as a standalone program.

Thank you.

That's helpful because I think it's largely a program that we all have a lot of interest in and have enjoyed having here in our city, especially to direct residents to give that feedback more directly for projects that they want implemented.

Director Sexton had spoken about the public works utility fees and it was on slide 38.

This feels like a pretty steep monthly increase and could impact those who can least afford it the most, right?

This is my same concerns I have about franchise fees.

Have these amounts been verified by a fee study or some type of calculation for the increase in public works utility fees or who pays those really?

Yeah, Chair Chuck Dye, Councilmember Palazzano.

Yes, the utility fees are all paid through by ratepayers.

It is our goal to look nationally at those rate increases and what's happening around the country.

We traditionally have been

in the lower end of those national average increases and we always try to keep them within the sort of five to seven percent range to make sure that we are doing that and staying ahead of the curve in terms of the affordability of our utilities.

So would you say then that for this next year we might be average in public utility fees?

Chair Chigtai, Council Member Palmesano, I'd want to follow up with more specifics on that.

I think we could, why don't we give one example from water if that's okay?

Hello.

Once again, my name is Annika Bankston.

I'm the Division Director for Water Treatment and Distribution Services.

So in regards to water, storm, and sanitary sewer fees, as you pointed out, those are paid by obviously our rate payers and bill payers.

Part of the rate setting process is basically looking at revenue requirements to deliver the level of service and the quality of services that we do, and then perform a rate allocation to understand who is fair,

With that we determine the rates needed and then we do do affordability calculations and estimations and one of the levels we look at that's becoming an industry standard is something called the household affordability matrix and you actually look at the prevalence of poverty in a given service area and look at the amount that a rate payer would pay for those water services

Industry benchmarks are around 7% for the lowest quintile of household income and collectively with water, wastewater, and stormwater we're at about 3.5%.

Thank you.

As usual, Director Bankston, you're a wealth of information.

Awesome, thank you.

Any other questions, Council Member?

Wonderful.

With that, I think we've exhausted discussion and questions for you, Director Sexton, thank you so much to you and to your leadership team for coming in today.

I think most of them are here.

For your presentation, I will direct the Clerk to file that report, and with that we have concluded all business to come before the Committee this afternoon.

and without objection we stand adjourned until our next meeting which is this Friday October 3rd at 10 a.m. in these chambers where we will receive presentations prepared by the mayor's office and the Department of Neighborhood Safety and the Minneapolis Fire Department.