Budget Committee - November 12, 2025   11/12/2025

City of St Paul, City Council

Calling the City Council Budget and Finance Committee to order.

Today we have one presentation, which is the Public Works Five Year Capital Plan.

Today our presenter will be Nick Peterson from Public Works.

Thank you Council Vice President.

Nick Peterson with Public Works.

Happy to present our five-year plan to you today for the next five-year term of 2026 to 2030.

This is done annually, starts in the fall of every year that will start to have really rigorous interactions and then of course in December the five-year plan is asked for approval by the City Council.

So this year that will be December 3rd when the item comes before Council it actually slid up a little bit

and so we tried to get in here as quickly as we could to have this conversation with you.

Outline of our presentation, we'll talk through the chart of the five-year plan, show a map of what it looks like graphically and then also talk through funding sources and projects we did this year and projects that'll come up next year.

we want to save some time for common sense at the end but I do know that we do have Ruben Collins our transportation planning manager is in the process if he hasn't met with with you and your office in the process of trying to have those conversations occur so I know we're reaching out trying to have those and give the one-on-one attention that you you deserve

So this is what the five-year capital plan looks like.

This chart, and really the focus here, we've got a number of columns, we've got a number of rows.

The columns, of course, are the five years.

The rows are the funding sources.

And so this is what it looks like, generally speaking.

The five-year plan is funded.

There's just one year of funding that comes with it.

So it's that first year of 2026 that I really want to talk about in particular that we're focused on here.

We can see that and I'm gonna go through each of the funding sources individually But I just know that there's a lot of numbers here.

And so I don't want to dwell on this as our primary graphic So geographically what our projects would look like for 2026 you can see there's a lot of stuff throughout the city and actually for all five years and

of the state and city led projects.

This is what a lot of the transportation improvements look like in the city.

In particular we will have some collaboration with the county and collaboration with metro transit which I will be excited to talk about later which is a first of its kind type of collaboration with metro transit.

A lot of

and want to jump through these at a greater level of detail.

If you look at that chart

The first row is street reconstruction bonds.

These are issued annually for infrastructure improvements.

$12.5 million of reconstruction funding comes through street reconstruction bonds and $3 million for residential mill and overlay on an annual basis, so that's a total of $15.5 million.

Some funding is able to be carried over in a judicious fashion as allowed, but every year it's about $15.5 million.

The next big chunk is municipal state aid.

We call it MSA.

The primary funding source for this is gas tax.

There are a couple of other elements like your license tab renewal and that sort of thing that also help fund this, but primarily it's the state gas tax.

It's formula funding based on the size of the municipality and also the needs that that municipality has.

Needs is just a

it's the way that the statute tries to elaborate on or quantify how much infrastructure we have that is eligible for our state aid funding so it's population and needs evenly between the two and that funding can be used on MSA routes but it also must follow MSA standards so it can't be used on any corridor throughout the city.

then the next big city funding bucket is common sense and that's the local option sales tax and that is three quarters of one percent and you know as I noted we'll have some time at the end to walk through that but the 20-year program that has some identified corridors and a lot of good work happening there.

then if we continue through city sources of funding here we've got the general fund and general fund is one of those really I would call it the gold standard funding source because it can pay for things that some of those other sources just simply can't pay for so the MSA again must be spent on MSA routes and

of the City Council.

It's also used in projects if things come up that are not eligible for those other funds so we always try to hold on to general fund until the end of a project and even when construction is complete sometimes we're still going through a process of trying to close out that contract with a contractor and even after construction is complete that money might still be needed for a year or two after that.

Capital Improvement Bonds.

There's a funding program for capital improvement bonds and we've got some exciting additions for the future of the five-year plan where sidewalk grinding is anticipated to be something that's funded for a number of years, a much more cost-effective way of maintaining sidewalks and improving sidewalks.

Of course, assessments.

Assessments are applied for reconstruction

to reconstruction costs and the mill overlay costs as well.

Externally we have county, MnDOT and also federal funding.

The county and the state both have competitive solicitations that are available and we also may cooperate on projects with those entities so it might be that the city leads a project and they would partner with us or we might lead a project.

We might lead a project, they partner with us, they might lead a project and we partner with them.

of the city of St. Paul.

They both have cost participation policies so one of the things that not just the city of St. Paul but also when we talk about the county all of the cities in Ramsey County are working on trying to come up with a more equitable policy with Ramsey

we're paying our fair share and no more than that all counties across the state have developed cost participation policies and we can spend a lot of our money on county projects if they let us and so that's a big initiative that we've got going forward likewise with MnDOT there's also every city and every county in the state have a requirement to cost participate on MnDOT projects and we're going through a process with select cities and counties throughout the state to make sure that the state policy

is as equitable as it can be for us.

And then the federal funding end of things of course we can get your marks and also regional solicitation grants that are competitive.

And then some more recent big external funding sources here when we look at the Kellogg Third Street bridge it's a great example of a legislative appropriation we have bonding on that bridge that bridge couldn't happen without a substantial amount of funding from

is a great example there and very specific projects that those have to be used on.

Relatively new is the transportation advancement account which is TAA is the short abbreviated name of that and that is the metro delivery fee that came out last year and we were counting on that to pick up our local share on federally funded projects in particular

Our transportation planning division does a fantastic job of getting federal money.

However, it comes with the requirement that we bring some local money to those projects.

Typically, it's 80-20 is the split.

The city is usually or the local county or city is required to bring a 20% local amount.

So it's a really great way to leverage our local money, but it means we have to have that local funding available to do it.

and so TAA is a great example of how we can leverage those federal dollars.

Now taking a break from funding, doing a lot of talking, trying to get through that quickly.

Street projects for 2025, this has been an enormous year.

I think if we were to add up all the projects we're doing, including bridges, it's somewhere on the order of $200 million, I think, for construction, which is enormous, absolutely enormous.

public works particularly on the Capitol and very busy very very busy this year and some representative projects here are Jackson which is a common-sense project just kind of up the hill from from the from the hospital Robert Street and I'll show some pictures and talk a little more detail about these but you know two two really big projects and when you talk about the bridge there's a lot of stuff going on kind of the east end of downtown

and it's not lost on us trying to really ramp up our efforts to communicate and be proactive with affected stakeholders.

As we move outside of downtown Grand Avenue, another common-sense project, a challenging business district that looks fantastic.

One of the first common-sense projects to get done, Pleasant Avenue.

This is over by the Pleasant Arena and the yard waste site that I might frequent.

the Wheelock Grotto phase one project just east of Como the lake there and then a bike boulevard on the west side and the Cleveland Railroad crossing and I want to talk a little more about those when we get to the pictures our mill and overlay projects actually had a lot of mill and overlay projects happen this year George Street really excited to have George Street done a lot of safety improvements and just pure condition

uh... fronts from western to rice there's also some bike elements that go with that.

I hope we can all do that.

Ruth Algonquin, that mill and overlay on the east side was delayed because of the Metro Transit work that was occurring so really excited that that was finally able to get done because whether it was on the detour route or it was just simply closed for a while it made it challenging and we didn't want to make things worse so really excited that that got done and then a number of phases of residential mill overlay projects that got done so super excited about those

and what these look like.

We're adding facilities that weren't there from a multimodal standpoint, making things so much better.

This corridor was really challenged before and really excited to see that we've got multimodal connectivity here and people don't have to trip over things.

We don't have street lights in the middle of the really narrow sidewalk, for example.

really great stuff that happened here Robert Street this is one of those projects that a lot of engineers and contractors alike try to avoid because it's so complicated and it's so risky not every contractor wants to bid on something like this and a lot of people don't have the skill set to go in and construct it or to design it or manage the construction so really challenging and I mean there are utilities everywhere and to protect them, work around them

Thank you, Chair.

Mr. Peterson, I appreciate you bringing up this picture of Robert Street just to show how, like you mentioned, complex and the high level of risk with reconstructing the streets.

Could you share this level of complexity?

How common is that in a lot of the streets that we're looking at reconstructing?

Is this something typical that you would see?

Council Vice President, Council Member, I would offer that every street downtown is going to be very similar to this.

The commercial corridors tend to be the next tier of complexity, but really just about everything that's downtown, there are so many utilities and they tend to be really old and haven't been touched in a while.

you know residential streets don't have that level but I would say just about anything we do downtown is really challenging and not only are a lot of people impacted by those projects but they tend to be the ones that are riskiest and we tried to use every tool we could to investigate things here but all those corridors require that higher level downtown of investigation and to answer your question or

This is Pleasant near the arena.

A lot of water over here and one really exciting thing about this project is this will be a solar lighting pilot for us where we've partnered with a university

and got funding twice actually.

People liked the idea of doing the study so much that we actually got additional money through the Local Road Research Board to study the feasibility of solar lighting.

And so the corridor will be designed for the ability to have conventional lighting on it, but also we will be working with really, really technical people to make sure that it's as optimal as it can be and to see is this something that

I've got an uninformed question so on the previous slide with the picture can you tell us like when I look at that I just see a giant hole in the ground I'm not gonna lie can you tell us what we're even looking at?

Sure.

Like what it because like

I hear you say there's a lot of other infrastructure in place.

You have to work around it.

And I feel like that's probably depicted in this picture, but I just don't know what I'm looking at.

I have no reference point for this.

So can you tell us, we're looking at a huge hole, but what about this picture?

Why did you choose it for the presentation?

I'm assuming it's showing us something that we're not inferring, or I'm definitely not inferring.

Can you tell us what we're looking at in terms of, I'm assuming there is

Yeah, I'm not even going to say it.

There's things in there.

Council Vice President, on the left, if I just kind of start left to right, maybe in the pictures.

The picture on the left, you can see that there are a lot of pipes laying on the ground on the right side.

So there's a lot of water main that's out here being staged.

And those materials are going to be kept on site.

of the city of St. Paul.

The excavators are kind of in the intersection so to speak so they dig a hole inside the hole on the right and at the end of the day projects begin with the stuff that is deeper our road projects and they can be really frustrating for people because it looks like you' re digging a hole you' re filling it back in you' re digging a hole you' re filling it back in the same spot but not everything can be

So there's a hole that gets dug, there's a trench, and those pipes ultimately, systematically, in a very linear fashion, get installed in the ground and the trench continues to move.

They do removals and then the pipes go in.

And the types of things that you encounter are the picture on the right where you're playing

of the City of St Paul.

need to have gas services like the rusty pipe there towards the top.

You can also have water services that are going to be metallic.

There is a sewer in the background that's tealish.

And there's going to be, even outside of the picture, there will be things out of the excavation that's temporary to make sure that those services are maintained.

Yeah, I really appreciate that.

Thanks, Chair.

Council Vice President, Council Member, prior to construction starting or even prior to putting together plan documents, we had hired a few firms to help us doing some subsurface utility engineering downtown, just acknowledging that this was going to be a challenge

and we did ground penetrating radar for the whole corridor and tried to look for anything and everything anomalies were flagged.

Ground penetrating radar is kind of like going to the doctor and getting a, I'm totally gonna mess this up with like the sonogram, you know, to see what lies below.

You can tell my kids are older so I'm not going to remember the name of the procedures.

You're looking to see what anomalies might be there.

Is there a box below ground?

Is there a pipe below ground?

Is there some kind of a void?

Is there a big foundation or something in there?

We went through that level and then when those things were flagged we did some pot-holing to try and figure out where those are.

What are they?

How far down are they?

Is it something that we need to worry about?

So we talked about Pleasant, then the Westside Bike Boulevard.

In this picture you actually see staff painting out in the field.

This is an exciting project to do some quick build improvements here to see what types of things might work out in a permanent fashion in the future.

there are materials that are put in place rapidly not necessarily meant to be there for forever and ever and ever but you know to do things quickly in a you know a safer fashion than what's out there today and it was really cool to see staff do this it was an exciting day I think for staff to be engaged and you know do some teamwork and actually save a lot of money at the same time.

And then Cleveland Railroad crossing so every now and then we get questions about CIB

the capital improvement bonds, the generic funding programs that we have and this is an example of one of those the railroad crossing line item that it's kind of seated every so many years there was a little bit of money that went in there and this project costs over $350,000 just to do two rail crossings you know put in ramps and replace the crossing and partner with the railroad

of the

so bad for so long.

of the year.

I think we have a lot of work to do trying to get them all started as early as possible and really this year you' re going to start seeing that there' s what we' ve identified as pre-con money so that' s meant to help with project development early on before construction comes.

The university is a project that' s pretty far through the process and ready for construction earl conversations are

So those are the three new big reconstruction projects for next year.

Wheelock-Rado will be the second phase of an existing project in the area just east of Como Park.

There will be Payne pedestrian improvements along Payne.

There will be 11 intersections that get bump outs, medians, that kind of a thing to try and tighten up that corridor, high volume corridor.

And then there's safe routes to school.

Awesome.

Thanks, Chair.

Mr. Peterson, I was just wondering if you could say a little bit more about the pre-construction dollars.

It's the first time I'm seeing that show up on the five-year plan, and I know that there is work that has to happen before construction, but what is that work?

Council Vice President, Council President, it's a funny order to respond actually.

I call them development costs so every project has development costs and they are specific to that project.

and just a general rule of thumb is roughly 25% of the value of a capital construction project is the soft development costs to support and develop that project.

So that would include surveying, public engagement, preliminary design, final design, the big role exhibits that you might see at public meetings, the nerdy black and white plan sheets that we would put together

everything that it takes to deliver a project is in that.

We want to make that advanced planning for projects just happen so much sooner.

We're trying to move every project up.

I know in the last decade alone, things have been progressed a lot, but ideally we'd find ourselves in a two to three year window for projects in advance.

The more complex they are, the earlier we want it to be.

Just thanks, Madam Chair.

I'm just curious.

It looks like that all makes sense to me, but it looks like I'm only seeing the pre-construction again on the Common Scent projects as opposed to like the St. Paul Streets projects where again I assume those also need pre-construction.

Council President the Common Scent has a

a new planning process that came with it and so just because there are a lot of questions that are coming out of it and making sure that we're being planned full for this enormous program that has to last for 20 years we're identifying that stuff earlier to make sure you know a that we've got the money available for for that type of those are all big projects and they require consultants and we need to have money identified for those projects where we're gonna have consultants because I can't legally

and the other projects like state aid, we actually have a pot.

There actually is an account that already has money in there and we're always already cash flowing that.

But the common sense is it's different because those are the projects where every one of those projects

we're going to end up engaging consultants and we need to have that money identified earlier.

So just to maybe go one step more on that.

So it's about flavor of dollars, but also because if state aid is coming from a pot of money, you can project out what your soft costs could look like in terms of it being included in said pot of money.

like I think the question is like why aren't we identifying sort of what the the pre-cost or soft costs of our other projects but it sounds like that we maybe we are and they're just included in sort of the projected project costs in terms of like what we would need to draw down from said pot of money for state money so are we comparing apples to oranges because I think

I think even the line, the line, the thread that I'm pulling on then is even around the cost, like the true cost of doing business then if some staff are getting paid through to the general fund and some are project based but we're not drawing down those funds from sort of the state aid pot of money but so the question is

Do we have projected costs for projects?

Council Vice President, we do anticipate those soft costs and other flavors of money.

However, whether it is something that's going to require a

you know million plus dollar contract with a consultant is a important matter.

Just the magnitude of those projects, the common-sense projects tend to be very large.

They're corridors so the dollar just the sheer magnitude of that needs to be accounted for in a different fashion.

We do anticipate the soft cost for the other flavors of money where needed but the magnitude and the way that those projects are delivered

And then for 2026 here, we've got St. Anthony,

will be doing some mill overlay work between

they're going to do that because they have a special source of funding that makes it because it it lines up it's in parallel with one of their transit routes and so they're actually going to do that we're going to do concrete work we didn't want to we didn't want them to walk away because they have they have money that has a deadline it has to be spent next year and what what this means is the two minutes work will happen next year and the concrete work is going to have to happen in 27

Ideally, we wouldn't do that.

But in order to meet Metro transit's timeline and make sure that money doesn't walk out of st. Paul that was that was the best we could come up with so very excited to To be able to partner with Metro transit on that though So at this stage unless there are other Big questions.

I was going to turn it over to Ruben to real quickly walk through common sense

Thank you.

So 1037 now we have until 1045.

As this group knows very well, the local sales tax was approved by St Paul voters in the fall of 2023.

We have been busy working between then and now trying to determine exactly what that program looks like.

exactly what are the projects, what order will we be delivering them, on what timeline, and how do we start to turn this into a full program.

So we've been doing a lot of work, like reviewing the cost estimates that we prepared before we ever presented the idea to St Paul voters.

Forecasting the sales tax revenue, making sure that we think we're going to collect all the money that we thought we would.

and the City Council.

before the vote in 2023 this map or a map very similar to this was presented to the public and the message to the public was if this is approved by voters these are the streets where we will spend those funds so that's our intent is to turn this map into projects that we can deliver in a timely manner.

that means many of the lines on this map are kind of broken up into individual projects for example the line at the very top it's labeled number five on this on this map that's Arlington

that line is about three miles long.

Generally speaking we think we can deliver projects up to one mile in length in a given construction season and that is even that is definitely kind of pushing the upper limit of what we can accomplish in a single construction year.

So that's an example where this line number five would be split into three different projects probably delivered over three years and generally speaking we think we can deliver about

City Council, and the City Council.

This is all of the corridors.

The numbers on this map are just identifying numbers.

I've got a question about staff capacity.

So if we have projected dollars out for the next two decades, I'm just sort of wondering around, and maybe it's a bit rhetorical, but shouldn't we staff differently then and not rely so much on consultants?

Council Vice President, so we're doing both.

We have used the common sense funding to hire a few additional staff internally to help with this.

We are also using consultants.

Generally speaking, using consultants will increase our capacity to deliver projects.

And what sort of amount, yep and I see your hand, thank you.

And I think maybe I heard incorrectly but it sounded like there was about a million dollars for consultants.

And if that dollar amount isn't correct, I just would be interested per project how much we're spending on consultants.

I just kind of wonder the question.

I get the sort of efficiency sake, but also if you're running a pretty lean team, bringing in more people into the city to create a similar knowledge set and across staff to build the capacity of our staff as well, but internally and have that knowledge in house then if we're just projecting out, looking at decades of projects.

I just sort of wonder if isn't that more of a preference because consultants have, you know, their hourly rate is based on other things that they're charging for that maybe is cheaper or better done to the city, right?

So I just sort of wonder, wouldn't it be better for us to take in more of those costs in-house and hire staff for us to do that?

Council President Sean Kershaw, the Public Works Director.

I'm not sure if I heard correctly the last part of your questions.

What I heard in the first part was, why are we hiring outside consultants to do it versus staffing up to do it?

Is that correct?

Council Vice President and members, there are benefits to both and as Ruben Collins said, we're doing both.

We've hired additional staff and we're using consultants.

There's engineering costs in all projects that are more or less the same percentage of a project cost no matter what.

So we estimate that it can be, let's just say 30%.

That 30% could be spent on a consultant or an internal staff.

There's not really a cost difference.

On a per hour basis, there is.

So what we look at is if we have a $10 million construction project,

consulting engineering will be about three million dollars on that and again that could be spent on staff or that could be spent on outside consultants so the total cost will be 13 million dollars either way in the short term there are big advantages of using consultants to be ready for these projects because we're delivering projects that are big in scope big in complexity big in terms of the public income of public impact on a very short timeline and so

internally we like to spend two or three years on a full reconstruction.

Some of these were more or less delivering in two years.

And so hiring outside consultants helps us to deliver that project more completely on this timeline.

So it's both.

Council.

to have more of this

to start weighing less on the consultants and more internal staff.

But then, heaven forbid, we're building a really, really strong team that stays at the city to help us take in more of these larger projects.

So just kind of thinking through that.

But I hear sort of like the sprint section requires us to stand up things really quickly.

But then recognizing that we have so many projects, how are then we thinking about ways that as we build up our own staff with that knowledge set, the less reliant we can become on external consultants.

I think that would personally be great.

And I think there's a strong case

Council Vice President, two things if that's okay.

One is, yes, we agree.

And we're in the sprint phase right now.

So we're absolutely in the sprint phase right now.

Over time, I would agree with you that that's what we need.

This is a 20 year program.

Especially we've learned in the last year and a half what additional capabilities we will need.

We're learning that as we go.

Each project may need additional resources in areas that we can't fully staff up for.

So Pleasant Avenue had a lot of groundwater issues related to that.

We may or may not have that.

In that case, we very well might have them.

Yeah, that sounds great.

I really appreciate that explanation.

Thanks, Chair.

It's a question and sort of a comment.

I'll say, so we just opened the Grand Avenue project.

For example, we used outside consultants on the Grand Avenue project as someone who

is an outside design consultant themselves.

It's very typical for municipalities to hire design consultants for the reasons that Director Hirsch and Ruben described.

We have 20 year projects coming and some are going to be big, some are going to be small.

So it's hiring those outside consultants that help you to be able to manage that work.

and the City of St Paul Public Works provides a lot of services to our city but I don't really see them as being a you know we're not we're not providing design we're not designers that provide design services in the same way we can but not we're not really built for that in the same way that a private company is to be able to you know

to be able

Yeah, I think that makes sense.

I think, for me, I have a very strong interest in how we reduce outsourcing and privatizing things that we should be doing on staff.

Thanks, Chair Kim.

I do have a question related to funding.

It's not about the comments sent, though.

Let me see here.

Nick, it was for a slide that you presented on.

Okay, the Metro delivery fee.

Would you all be able to share in terms of like the projection for that for this year?

What does that look like?

Sorry, I didn't hear it.

The Metro delivery fee, like in terms of the projection we're hoping to get this year, where are we at with that?

Councilmember, I'm going to look to Ann Weber to correct me here if I'm off.

it is not meeting our expectations the TAA funding program is I want to say that we anticipated about $740,000 this year and it's looking like that's going to be in the neighborhood of $400,000 is my recollection so

It's actually That's that's concerning.

We thought it was going to increase.

This is a different topic here, but I'm wondering if you all can share a bit about, when it comes to the projects that you're sharing to us here, what does the collaboration look like with PED?

And I'm bringing that up, and this is not a city project, but you all have been hearing me talk a lot about the Arcade Street construction happening in my ward, and there's many more phases of that to happen, like going into Ward 7, too.

I'm pretty soon here and we've heard a lot from businesses that are impacted by this.

I think some of you have too.

We even received a letter from the Black Business Network of Minnesota about some businesses being on the verge of eviction.

We've been hearing all about this from the Saba, D5, many other organizations all year round.

And it was really a miracle what happened at the legislation where they approved 200k for mitigation funds.

that's just something we don't see a lot of but I'm wondering when we are doing these sort of projects are you hearing that sort of that sort of I would say concern from our business communities especially about the impact to their business and like what if I'm not sure what sort of

and the City Council.

Council.

I will start and I'm sure Director Kershaw will have his own comments here that I welcome him to interject.

On our projects, first and foremost, the things that we as public works project delivery agents have control over is how projects are planned.

So we try to be mindful that whether it's a city project, a county project, a state project, that we try to have

to make sure that

members, members of the committee, members of the committee, members of the committee.

First and foremost there is also the paradigm shift we are trying to get all of our own projects and partner projects that might have those types of business impacts to really bring business

with them about what can we do in planning or delivering this project, particularly just during construction to help ease some of those pain points that are there and a workshop.

So like on Robert Street, one of the things that we want to do when MnDOT does their work here just on the other side of the river across from us is to make sure that there's a staging workshop to make sure that the project is trying to have those conversations.

When are your deliveries coming and what are your big events

you know what what concerns you have about this so that is really really important you know very generally speaking then in terms of how we partner with PED you know we enjoy a good partnership with PED and try to work with PED to understand you know what those sensitivities might be

is a great example of how we might be able to promote things along the corridor during construction I know Grand Avenue is really for us a good example of trying to develop a business toolkit for our projects that we hope to implement on all of our business type corridors so my voice is starting to fail me.

The other aspect I

and the

Once it gets distributed, if it's a few thousand dollars to each business, I'm not sure whether that fixes things or if it creates other problems.

Just one of those kind of high level concerns that I have related to how that money is dispersed and just is it enough and what expectations go with it.

the two it's a really important question and I think this year we arguably have seen two of the toughest corridors for commercial or most impactful three if you include Robert Rice Street that the county did we did that segment of Grand Avenue with a lot of businesses on it and then Robert

the two most important things are not financial assistance to the business it's coordination among the agencies so when we do traffic plans we're not stepping on each other and we're trying to minimize conflicts between the work of different projects that's number one number two or what should be first is long-term planning as a business you want to be able to know a few years ahead if you're a property owner what will my rents need to be how do I anticipate how do I coordinate that and what you saw in Grand Avenue was

at least three years worth of planning for that.

So we knew the businesses individually.

They knew the segment, just like Nick said.

They knew when things would happen.

We were able to coordinate with them.

And most importantly, if you were there, and I was there the day of the opening and walked the businesses with Steve Dodge, our construction engineer, the thing that was most helpful to them was that there was somebody whose job it was as a consultant

to be there

that at the end of the project I think was most helpful.

A construction project is always disruptful, but the more planning and the more coordination.

I mentioned Rice Street because we think the county did a good job there.

There were some really tough situations like in front of the flooring store.

Thank you all.

Just a follow-up comment.

I really appreciate the response and just how you really laid out the different things that you are considering when it comes to the projects here.

I am very supportive of that and just want to share my support that whatever is needed to be able to make that happen in terms of the conversations, the coordination, the collaboration, and how we can

I think that is a huge win for all of us, especially the businesses that get hurt the most.

And I do want to share that when I have had conversations with MnDOT before, especially about the arcade project in my ward,

they've often shared with me we wish we could do what the City of St Paul did, what Public Works does around having a deeper communication with the community, being very engaged and also even having flexibility around signage.

So it seems like there's a lot of different departments out there in other government entities doing work and they're really admiring what is happening here at our city level and so I just wanted to

to share that because I really appreciate the work that you all have done, especially in just trying to intervene whenever it is a project that is outside of this plan you are sharing us here.

You all are very engaged in that, and I want to encourage you to continue doing that.

And overall, what I'm sharing here is really just an effort for us to continue making sure that PED and public works, that we continue that collaboration and also deepen it, too, because I know there's a lot of movement right now.

at the Legislature to try and mitigate the impacts for businesses.

I just even got out of a meeting with our staff from the IGR office and they shared a bit with me about that.

We got a question from Council Member Johnson.

Thank you.

Excuse me.

You know, when Council Member Yang actually asked about the delivery fee question, and we moved forward, but it did actually spark a little bit, because I think the question was surrounding the actuals.

I know we planned for the budget amount for these projects, but I am curious about how up-to-date our actuals are, just because with the example of the Metro delivery fee, that $300,000

I'm curious as to where we're landing on

budget to actuals for these projects as it sits and how we track those annually and then just what those numbers look like from like are we on track for the first year of these projects and as we're heading into the common sense timelines.

just knowing that over the next

from the city or some of our local partners investments and how that tracks over time and I'm just wondering like what ways do we as council members should we be expecting to get that like actual update over time so like if the metro delivery fee consistently comes in under what is projected or if the appropriations are not where would they need to be what does that look like from a you know

members.

Part of the reason for having a five-year plan, this is a high-level answer but hopefully it helps, is to allow us to look out at a broader window even beyond an individual project planning.

That allows us to track and whoever does phenomenal work, what are the actual amounts coming in

We're doing that with common sense as well.

There's a really important

that plans what we think the projects will cost versus the revenue that's coming in versus the state statute language.

Inflation numbers alone are wildly variable in that, so we can just track it as best we can.

And then what always happens within the context of the five-year plan is we adjust it on a year-by-year basis when we know more about what has come in and what's available.

So we won't program a project unless we know we have the money to deliver that project.

So maybe on the TAA fund, we anticipated $700,000.

Sorry, Sean.

Council Vice President, Council Member.

In the case of TAA, we were really careful actually to not over-program.

So we were trying to be very conservative, acknowledging all along that this might happen.

So it actually isn't...

it's very disappointing because we had big desires to be able to fund other things that would help with EV charging and a whole bunch of other federal grant opportunities but in the here and now it isn't as bad as what it sounded like when I said that you know look we're getting almost half of what what we had hoped for so we're just trying to be more planful as we go forward and we actually had this conversation you know let's

here's what the I get a forecast every not only every six months from the state and that's a forecast on what we get for state aid it's a forecast and what we get for the metro delivery fee here the TAA and I look at that and I think let's be conservative so not that the numbers aren't great they do a ton of work that you know I can't even you know get my arms around but just knowing that this could happen so you know the short answer is we're

Once you said you thought you were gone at 1045, we decided that's just not going to happen.

I'm curious.

This is an adjacent but slightly different question.

So going back to the five-year plan and thinking about funding that we receive or don't receive, I'm also thinking about funds that we anticipate spending and don't spend.

So we have these annual programs that were mentioned earlier.

For example, lighting improvements, $500,000, or railroad crossing safety improvements, $40,000.

Those are just consistent amounts year over year in the five-year plan.

My guess is that we're not spending exactly $500,000 or exactly $40,000 every single year, and those dollars then go to zero.

So my question is, if we don't, do those dollars just roll over into the next year?

So, Council President, those funding lines, there are some nuances as it relates to the CIB.

I know that I think it's the railroad crossing and the stairway category just as two.

There have been a lot of conversations related to how can we be as responsible with that money as possible and

capital projects are multi-year projects so that money does roll forward.

I think that will be I said this a few different times but just as a comment some of that information especially over

I think when it comes to this capital plan I think when we get into conversations around whatever will come of some of our bike lane conversations too because these projects are multi-year I do think that having those consistent status report and those updates especially on actuals will just become more pertinent and so I'm really huge on that and I definitely think that as we're heading into budget cycles in future years

Citywide, that's going to have to be a continued conversation, but for sure when it comes to just ways that we can plan for the pivot if needed.

I think to some of the experiences we've had on the east side, with Gold Line and my ward with our cave, we've seen not necessarily city projects, right, both state projects done differently, but took longer than anticipated or started earlier than anticipated and in so many different ways.

for the City of St. Paul.

of the year.

We recognize sometimes winters can last longer, they can last shorter than we think they could.

Things could change in timelines and contractors' availability.

We could dig into something and not really realize that, again, it's the gift that keeps giving type of situation.

Thank you.

Thank you, Vice President.

An important part of the Common Sense program for each of the projects that were on that map, we went through a process internally to create what we call a technical score for each one of those projects and this graphic

is showing kind of what some of the criteria was that went into that technical score.

For example, this is showing that pavement condition accounts for 35% of that technical score.

And there's a variety of other criteria here that we went through to try and maybe take a first stab at how would we look to prioritize some of these projects, what are our highest needs around the city.

It's important to know and understand

to discuss

A big part of trying to determine what order the projects are delivered in has to do with what our partners are doing.

MnDOT, Ramsey County, Metro Transit, St Paul Regional Water, private utilities are all also doing work in the public right of way.

and our projects need to be coordinated with their projects.

And there are some instances where we want to create distance between their projects and our projects so that our two projects aren't right on top of each other trying to work.

There are other instances primarily with Metro Transit where we are trying to schedule our projects at the same time as there are arterial bus rapid transit projects that may be coming in the city.

and all of this is kind of an effort to make sure that we aren't overburdening any particular neighborhood at one time to make sure that our projects are taking into account detour routes that projects will need to use.

We know it's always a problem when two parallel routes are under construction at the same time.

That's really frustrating and we try to avoid that as much as possible.

and so all of this goes into how after we have provided a technical score on each one of the projects, all of these considerations about what our partners are doing and their ability to bring funding to the City of St Paul are all reasons why we might deliver projects kind of out of sequence of what the technical score might suggest that our priority order to be.

In the Common Year program, the way we're presenting this in what we call the programming plan, which is a kind of lengthy document that we are preparing to release to the public soon and do quite a bit of work around community engagement on that.

The way it's presented in that document is that the program is presented in stages.

Which is just kind of a fancy way of saying a five-year period of time as each stage Stage one 2024 to 2029 that's everything that's already on our adopted five-year plan and for the most part the projects in stage one are Projects that were sort of low-hanging fruit for a variety of reasons some of them were already on our five-year plan before common-sense was ever approved by voters and

Some of them are streets where we have already put a lot of effort into planning and design and engagement before common sense was ever created and So stage one is kind of you know again what we think are kind of those lower hanging fruit that we are able to mobilize fairly quickly at a staff level and then stages two three and four that's where we kind of get more into the kind of the technical scores kind of driving the the

the order of the projects again subject to what I mentioned earlier about coordination with our partners.

So stage one of the projects and again this is everything that's kind of already shown on our adopted five-year plan.

This is a map.

I won't go through these individually, but this is This is this is what we would anticipate through the comments that program in the next five years and you know one of the things that we have kind of said as a priority for the program as we this is this map is a does a good job of illustrating how we try to kind of spread the projects out as opposed to concentrating all of the projects in the same neighborhood at the same time and

this is what stage two looks like and I want to talk in particular about two of the lines on here you know you're seeing segments of Summit and segments of Grand and that's a great example and frankly one of the more challenging coordination pieces with the common set program because those two streets are parallel to each other and one block apart so they are the natural detour route for each other while they're under construction and I want to be you know

One thing I didn't mention earlier that I should probably mention is there are two bridge projects included in the Common Cent program.

One of those is Grand Avenue over Eide Mill.

One of those is Vandalia over the railroad tracks, kind of just north of I-94.

and both of those projects are happening in this stage two timeframe.

The purpose of the stages and presenting the projects in stages like this as opposed to providing a specific construction year for each of these projects is just to give us flexibility to make adjustments 20 years in the future.

We know that a lot can and will change throughout the 20 year lifetime of the Common Sense program.

Thank you.

This is the full program map.

I think that's the end of our slides today.

something we get asked about a lot is whether or not we're paying attention to that and it's good to be able to hear on the record that we do and in fact we actually reorganize projects so as to minimize those impacts and sometimes that means reorganizing them so they happen at the same time so that the construction isn't happening in an area forever.

I'm curious going back to the five-year street plan and I'm not sure who can best respond to this but I'm curious what changes have been made to this since the last time we saw it because we just see sort of the next five years and we don't see

what we were planning to have happen in these five years last year and how that might have changed.

Yeah, that's a really great question, Council President.

Thanks for the question.

So, of course, the big change that is new on this compared to the previous versions is we've added 2030.

So everything in the 2030 column is new in this version.

The changes that have happened in 26 to 2029, there have not been huge changes since the previous one.

What has happened is some of the dollar amounts have been adjusted as we've done a little bit more estimating work.

Some projects have shifted a year, generally backwards.

A couple of the county and MnDOT projects have shifted years, in particular I think MnDOT's West 7th project is a good example of that.

just kind of shifted their two projects and they each shifted back a year.

So there have been kind of minor changes like that.

You had the question earlier about kind of design funds that are showing up here.

We're trying to be more mindful about scheduling those design funds in earlier in advance that we're seeing a little bit more of that on this project.

Okay, so just a couple of projects moving farther back, but we shouldn't be seeing anything moving further up or anything new that we didn't see last year on the five year plan except for 2030.

And I guess, just as a follow-up, I think if there was something new being added that was not originally on it, we'd have to vote on that.

Is that correct?

Because I feel like we approved this and approved the projects.

To that question, I think that's why I'm asking, because what normally would happen is we would adopt the next five-year plan and we wouldn't necessarily see what had changed from the previous five-year plan.

So I do think that's why it's really important to be specific about what's different from last time we adopted this, because we are really adopting

OK, so that's helpful because I was like, oh, they couldn't do that.

Great.

Any other questions or comments from my colleagues?

Wonderful.

There's nothing else before us.

Thank you for your time today and the presentation.