Budget Committee - August 05, 2026   8/5/2026

Mayor of St Paul

St Paul, City Council

St Paul, City Council,

City Council, Budget Committee to order.

Vice Chair Yang?

Here.

All right, thank you.

it's something that happens at the City Council like when you're here you get through like your first budget update and then now we just keep asking you to come back so I think that's time that you're doing a good job but welcome Director Barber

That is how you actually have people get around through communities, through neighborhoods.

and it's been a very successful program and I'm going to turn it over now to Irene Kaiser who's going to tell you all about it.

Wonderful, thank you so much and welcome Ms. Kaiser, how are you?

So Amanda LaGrange.

I'll be right back.

Thanks, Erin.

we've experienced maintenance challenges like the copper wire theft issue that struck many city services and that led to a large maintenance cost in 2025 which you see reflected here and we tried several approaches to maintenance all while providing the highest level of service possible operating support allows the program to absorb unavoidable cost fluctuations without increasing prices or reducing services something that is paramount to EV car share operations and Amanda is going to tell you about that now

And so through that National Science Foundation grant that I mentioned, we've been able to put together a really robust pricing model to help us understand the elasticity of those charges.

I see a question from Council President Naker.

And also, do we understand that the access plan for low-income residents is

And then I'm so sorry, I've already forgotten your second question.

Well, just to clarify, wondering about the cost, not just for access plan, but the cost per membership in general, and then do we have a way of ascertaining income?

Yeah, excellent.

So even if you don't have a third-party vetting place, are you still reviewing the information that is self-vetted?

We have an entire department that's called our member services team that's looking through making sure that folks are answering as truthfully as possible.

Thank you for the questions.

All right, back to you, Irene.

I really thank you for your attention and we've saved some time for questions and would love to answer them at this time.

I see Council Vice President Yang and then we'll go to Council President Baker.

Can you talk a bit about the purpose of that penalty fee existing?

And it is something that we may need to reduce some of the speed at which charging happens because of these minimum costs.

Expanding into those areas too, I'm wondering for the $60,000 ask around expansions for next year, what does that cover and what does that mean long term too for those areas that right now don't have service?

To your point about the North End, we hear a lot from COMO, we hear a lot from other parts of the greater East Side, which are not represented in our current expansion.

Thank you and I just have one last question which is I have a request around just sharing data to us later on about or if you can email us a follow-up on the usage based on the stations just because earlier I mentioned like the interest in having the stations be in areas where there's low car ownership and I'm wondering if the data is showing us that in those areas there is higher usage

So yes, happy Council Member Yang to provide more data and would love to have a conversation about sort of some strategies for how we might increase use at some of the lower use of stations.

Thank you.

Council President Baker.

So I'm curious what some of the transit entities like Met Council, Metro Transit, the counties are being asked to and are committing to contribute.

There were some pretty erroneous bills that happened, and I would be happy to chat more about how we fixed that.

Excellent.

to date the risk management folks here at the city like of great respect to them have said that that's not something that we want to take under but that would be something that we could pursue further whether that be with our own fleet or partnering with another fleet and that is something that we continue to have conversations about.

We have this sort of stable subsidy to make sure that the service continues and that we aren't having to suddenly, for those that have relied on our service, to not need to purchase transportation and to be able to get to the places that they're going, that they have a sudden disruption in that.

Right.

Yeah.

So not adding these things together.

I'm only speaking to the EV car share portion.

Can you verify what the actual ask is for the City of St Paul and what portion it is for the total ask that you have and your partners?

And our $300,000 line item here fits under that $1.1.

Is that taking that into account here?

Thank you, Chair Johnson.

Like how does that how is the city's internal operations in partnership?

operating expenses and the first one is what's in the budget as we've been looking at it to date the other things are new so I think they've as Erin has taken over this program has been able to dive into the finances and figure out working with our car exactly what really is the need and so those are things that we will be building in as we go forward but it is right now it is a public works program okay I think that's I appreciate that because I was wondering if this was just like a

But thank you for answering that question.

Madam Chair, if I might?

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

We'll make sure that we get you answers and especially work to get you answers quickly because we know things are moving fast.

All right, as we transition, the second topic that we have is around district councils.

So welcome.

Just wanted to be able to provide a good overview of kind of what this work looks like.

I did see one question from Council Member Bui.

I have a quick question, particularly around, is there requirements in terms of how many staffs or FTEs a district council must have?

So that helps us have an idea of what staffing looks like across the system.

Is there ever a case where there's a vacancy of leadership or staffing for a district council?

Yes.

How do we address that?

Thank you.

Awesome.

Excuse me.

How has that changed

and so I know when we went into the 2026 year many folks were eager to know that that was you know lifted and now they're going back to how they already operated with the city but it didn't take away some of those underlying challenges and so I would say the broader answer is that's probably something that would be helpful to ask district councils specifically do you feel you know a little relief from that and I imagine the answer is yes but can't say definitively

Just as a quick follow-up, will you be asking district councils that?

what that feedback of changing the funding source has looked like so it can get back to folks too.

Good question.

Thanks.

So kind of looking ahead at this, this seems like a redundant slide from what you've previously shared, so I'll just ask for the interest of time for you to proceed to the next slide.

Are there any questions about the formula before we move on to the last section?

Or I can wage it.

But I can be open for remaining questions.

Thank you for letting Zoe finish her presentation.

I would say that's a mechanism that we still kind of need to figure out but that we would be

Yeah.

And because that was a conversation and what felt like an intentional decision made by this body, we thought that it would be more appropriate to have it stand alone in this conversation platform.

So really appreciate it.

And thanks to the team as well for putting together those numbers and resources ahead of time.

and I know this is the first time this information has kind of been a more formal program update so hopefully it provides that baseline and we can follow up if there's other questions or areas of interest.

With that, we are adjourned.