Budget Committee - Regular Meeting

In the St. Paul City Council Finance and Budget Committee to order. We've got two presentations today. One will be at ten and the other will be at 01:00 and so we will have a short recess. The first presentation that we have up today is from everyone's favorite department, the city attorney's office and we have none other than our Saint Paul city attorney Lindsay Olson in the house to present to us today the city attorney's office's budget. So with that, are we all ready to presentation ready?

Am. Good morning, vice president Kim. Council members. For your time today. Quick agenda here, our slides follow your basic outline with the exception of we combined recent initiatives and ARPA projects together to talk about updates there.

So the executive summary just shows our divisions. Just one quick note there, we are combining the CEO and the Offset Neighborhood Safety presentation today. I'll be doing the bulk of the brief for that. Our director of neighborhood safety, Brooke Lucky, is also here today. If you have really specific questions for that work, she might be able to jump in on a couple of things.

Here's the mission and values of the office. We want to highlight one update that we made this year which is adding equity to our RISE values and equity has always been a baseline of everything that we do but we felt that especially given where we're at in our community and in the world that we needed to add equity and in specific and so we incorporated excellence into the rest of our values and wanted to double down on our commitment to equity. Here's the city attorney organizational chart. Again, this does include the office neighborhood safety. Here's the onsorg chart.

It's very high level. They are adding several new positions, which we'll talk about in more depth. And if you have questions on that, we please let me know. Our 2025 budget recap, the $23,100,000 number is both CAO main as well as the Office of Neighborhood Safety. CAO is about 14,000,000 of that and the Office of Input Safety making up the rest of that, and that is all of our different types of funds and grants.

We took a budget reduction of 300,000 that was implemented for this past year. We added the designation for the Ethos program funding, so we actually have a line item in the budget for the first time. The program has operated for about seven years without its own budget on a combination of money that we got from the city council as well as some grants that we had that we don't know will be renewed. So we wanted to make sure that that program continued to have an operating budget. We received 100,000 last year and then the ongoing operating budget will be $70,000 We also were able to shift last year one victim witness coordinator from our victim witness unit that has been on a crime victim service grant and several of those grants are ending as well.

We've had them for several years. That's another unit in our office that's funded primarily by grants that we wanna make sure is able to continue its statutorily required work. So updates on recent initiatives. Ethos was expanded last year. We have had a goal to keep expanding it every year.

We were able to increase referrals by 60% from 2023 to 2024, so we wanted to show the full year number. We don't have a full year number from 2025 yet, but we increased from 120 cases into the program into 2,000 I'm sorry, two zero two cases in 2024. And I wanted to include a quick reflection. I know you guys like those. I we did also provide a whole document with several of the reflections.

They were just really fun to read. All of our participants in Ethos, most of them, do reflections as part of their work with the circles. So we always have those coming in, and they just show how much impact this program has. We like this one a lot because it talks about the fact that this participant's, their experience was that this was as close to justice as they could get to in our type of system. They felt that that was just what justice was supposed to be.

They didn't feel ashamed or diminished, and they wanted this type of program to be a model for how people go through the justice system, and we're really proud of that. That's what we want to see from people, and we hope to keep expanding this for folks in our community. Project PEACE updates. They launched a new case system that's called Apricot, and that's a case management system that some other cities use in their gun violence reduction programs. It's a comprehensive case management system, and it's really helped the team to organize their work, especially between the work of the Project PEACE folks in ONS and then the Aspire folks in the police department, and we're also exploring additional public safety uses for the Apricot app as well.

We do have a client success story from ONS, from Project Peace specifically that we wanted to share. We do have to get permission for these. So if you are interested in hearing more of these, we are collecting them and we can share more of those as well. Jay is an individual who began with ONS Project Peace in 2024, and he was in the Red Wing Juvenile Center. He's worked with a life coach and he's been able to consistently attend a Saint Paul secondary school.

He earned enough credits to stay on track for graduation. He's participating in the construction program, gaining hands on training skills, and he's become more independent and he's making progress towards achieving personal and professional goals. And so this is somebody who was pulled out of a cycle of violence and is on the right track now to become successful, to have skills for a job, and remain law abiding and the team has been making those types of personal success stories happen for the last couple years but I think this is the first time we really started publicly sharing those stories so we'll continue to do that.

And I've got a quick question for you. What are sort of the key differences then? Because there are obviously very key like value similarities, like methodology similarities, but what are sort of the differences between ethos and project piece? Is it age? Is it what sort of the distinguishing factor between the two of those?

So Ethos is a program for is a restorative justice program that's an alternative to traditional prosecution. So it's a diversionary program within our criminal division in the St. Paul City Attorney's Office. So when a criminal case comes in from the police, we review it, and if it is a case that can fit into the programmatic guidelines for Ethos, we then ask a participant if they would like to do that instead of traditional court. They have to agree to that and seek counsel for that before they enter into the program.

So it's a completely different type of track. The Office of Neighborhood Safety's Project PEACE is what's called a gun violence interventioncommunity violence intervention hybrid program. It takes aspects of the gun violence intervention program. We use a model primarily from John Jay, although we also have worked a lot with the research and works of Thomas Apt, who ran gun violence intervention for New York. And he has a book that we has a model in it that we also came to place into our hybrid model.

The community violence intervention piece of that is more working with people in the community and community organizations to help intervene with folks in the community that can act as trusted messengers and help support people and pull people out of violence along with city officials. Do you have anything else you want to add about that?

Sure. Welcome Director Blakey.

Good morning. Good morning. City Council. Did not have plans on attending today, but was able to, show up and do, this and talk about the labor of love of the Office of Neighbor Safety Project piece was started three and a three years ago when we started. So it is part of the as City Attorney Olson said, it's part of the gun violence reduction strategy that we have here for the City Of St.

Paul. It is a work with Operation Aspire, so SBPD, Ramsey County Public Health, and several other community based organizations. And so it's the strategy that we have been working with that has bought down our crime statistics and our gun statistics that you see most of the time the police department talk about and their non fatal gun units. So it's a collaborative work between all of us that really have been driving down those numbers, which is in the next slide. So I'll let you go.

Does that answer your question, Council President?

It answers my question. We've got a follow-up question from Councilmember Johnson.

A question, more so helpful, like a nod and also I'm glad that you're here Director Blakey and then also I really appreciate the additional slides from the Office of Neighborhood Safety project piece like in the appendix piece as well just the demographic clientele. I think also just being able to hear a little bit more about both programs. I know personally for me, I know you have to get permission for the success stories, but I think it's always I'm personally interested in reading a little bit more about especially the feedback that we're getting from Ethos knowing that I think the 2025 funding was like the first established ongoing funding for the program. And so I just want to uplift that work and then also say thank you for the response to my questions. And being able to see that really contributed both in your attendance here today, Director Blakey, but also like in the appendix for a little bit more information about some of these programs that I think are really in many ways setting a tone for how the city responds to some of the pieces that I think would really eventually be in a space where it can help really divert from future interactions with our system for some of our neighbors that would normally have maybe a more chance of reentry.

So I just appreciate that and wanted to note that because that was something that I had asked at the pre meetings and so it's just great to see the questions answered. So thank you.

Thank you, council member. This slide is really great. It has a lot of information on it about the we have a thirty three percent reduction in gunshot victims, which is a huge number, really great. Our average age of victims remains pretty young, about 25. So our split of folks in in the program is about 50% juveniles, 50% adults.

It's pretty evenly split. We have over 50 community interventions. We still have a majority of black folks that are coming through, majority male as well. And we have six partner departments in the work. Our gun our murders by gun have gone down significantly as well.

And I think you're you're tracking that. We have nine this year, and that is a significant reduction from previous years. And you can see that here in the chart as well. We also have a focus that we are looking at for prevention on the prevention side, looking at working with folks earlier and that commitment has really been built out by adding our the new team members that are coming on in life coaching as well as case management folks that can really step in and build out those wraparound services.

And I think while you're moving to the next slide, the thing that I do really, really appreciate is seeing sort of what the case load is. And I know for some folks, if you think about case management, two zero two folks through Ethos in 2024 might seem like a small case load given what we know about client management. But two zero two is actually a huge undertaking of time and attention and investment in these folks. And I think that's just really a statement of the success of the program is the level of intentionality you provide to every single person that's coming through that program. And so at first blush you might think, oh, that's quite a small number.

But the amount of work that you are doing to take someone from someone who's caused harm to both restoring and healing themselves like our framework through our public safety committee And also then in turn healing the person that they've harmed and being sort of a much more positively someone who positively contributes to their community. So I just I really want to lift up that case management piece is just so instrumental but also is the bulk of this work. So I just really, really appreciate seeing those numbers.

Thank you, Council Vice President Kim. Yeah, those numbers I just spoke about were from the project piece portion of the the team's work. But there is a crossover program that you might be thinking of, which is our gun violence. It's a gun reduction gun violence reduction alternative to traditional prosecution. Yes. Yes. That has a ethos component.

Yeah. Thank you.

Yep. Here's another Project Peace success story that we wanted to share. It's a little bit longer. I won't read it out verbatim, but please take a moment to read it. This is from a family member.

One of the things that has been really great about the work of the Office of Neighborhood Safety team is that they work not only with individual that is involved in gun violence themselves, but also their family. And so that is part of the work is ensuring that they have stability in their community and they have stability in their home and a lot of times they may have siblings or other relatives that are also involved in gun violence or things happening in the homes. We look at you know what what is the cause what are the causations of that criminality? What's you know, underlying trauma is happening? Know, things like that so that we can really assist somebody in not only changing their own path, but having the supports to keep moving in that positive direction.

So, this is, really important as well. And I wanted to call that out because, sometimes it's it's not exactly clear, like, why are you helping a family member? Why are you spending this time on a person who isn't the justice involved specifically. And this individual was also, you can see out on the streets, did not have a a good direction and really, really benefited from the work with the life coach and considers that person to be a support in their life that helped them get on a path to get their GED. And he is saying, if without Andre, my life coach, I would just be another guy out on the streets trying to figure out his life.

And so this is the real work that's happening with those folks every day. This is a continuation of the recent initiatives, specifically the ARPA projects that ONS has been working on. So, as mentioned, they onboarded three life coaches and those are specifically for the project piece, GVI CVI work, and they're working with the group balance intervention folks. The NSCC hosted three goals not guns campaigns in partnership with Face to Face Academy, also St. Paul City School and youth on board.

St. Paul rec centers is hosting the final campaign and that's going on right now. And those contest winners are gonna be announced shortly. I I was trying to get them here today but they're not announced yet. So I don't wanna give away any of the secret information at this point, but we'll be getting, I think three new shirts, right?

So, that's exciting. They're always really cool and we'll be putting that information out so that folks can support these organizations. The money does go back to those organizations. They also piloted outreach with Boots on the Ground Community Patrol in partnership with SPPD and they went to priority locations through one of the micro grants that the NSCC does. And they have also been hosting the ONS podcast, which I hope you've had the opportunity to listen to.

They have partnered with a broadcast organization as well that can carry up to 150,000 listeners. So there are a lot of people that are listening to the work that's going on in St. Paul. So there platforms that are carrying that podcast in addition to Saint Paul's own platform, and that's pretty exciting. And this is just a little more on the three schools that have been working on the Goals Not Guns campaign.

I thought this was really fun. These are the shirts from the April campaign that had been announced. Unfortunately, you can't purchase them anymore but if you're excited about these shirts, you'll be excited about the new shirts. We also have an update for data practices. We'll be bringing in a centralized group to handle data practice requests.

That group will be housed in the city attorney's office and we will have three FTEs at this point that will directly support that work. One is a supervising attorney that will supervise folks in HR law as well as the folks practices. And then the addition of two data practice specialists which are on the proposed budget for this year. And we're working also on building workflow with the council director, the city clerk, yourselves, OTC, and folks from the mayor's office. Here's some brief information on the criminal backlog.

Now if you remember, that's an ARP funded project as well and that there are 6.5 ARP funded attorneys and staff that are currently in the office that will be ending their time this year. You can see the back backlog has come down quite a bit. We still have two fifty cases that are in a backlog status. The reason that it's so hard to clear these backlogs is because that backlog is flowing at the same time as regular caseload work. And during COVID, those numbers went down significantly, but now they're back up to pre COVID numbers.

So we have prosecutors taking on a large amount of cases that is well over the recommended amount cases for each individual prosecutor by the ABA. So we're struggling with large caseloads. In 2026, here are our proposed changes. As mentioned in the last slide, we've promoted a senior attorney to supervising attorney to build that data practices group as well as supervise the HR attorneys. We have two data practice specialists that are in the proposed budget.

We're eliminating a law clerk that has been housed in the litigation division, and we took an attrition adjustment as well for a total of 165,784. And we also took a reduction from the travel and training budget, 9,752, and an ONS reduction from their subcontractor budget of 154,000 for a total of 163,752. And this is a proposed change for the the reduction in staff that's happening in the criminal division. These are all FTEs that are funded by ARP, and the ARP will be ending for 4.5 of those folks as of the 2025. We're able to keep one attorney on in an ARP status for into 2026.

And then we're victim witness coordinator will also be ending their time, and we'll be shifting them to the victim the the grant service, victim witness grant. So we'll be able to keep them for another year as well. And this is just a deeper breakdown of that. Here's a budget summary on our spending by fund. You'll see the grants are taking a large reduction and that's we are still applying for some grants.

We've been we've had several grants for several years that probably won't renew. And you're also aware that the federal government is treating grants quite differently at this point, so grants are harder to get. And then the the 79% reduction in the criminal backlog project is about the ending of the AARP money and and those those staff.

Yeah, we've got a question.

Sure. Thank you, Council Vice President and City Attorney Olson. I have a question just can you help me kind of further quantify just some of the work that that is captured in the criminal backlog project and the of the victim witness coordinator, like the kind of roles that we're referring to and just the work that they do? That would be helpful just to fully like capture. Like I hear the funding pieces of it but like I don't actually know how that translates to the work that is being done that wouldn't be done if we aren't able to find alternative funding sources in the future.

Yeah. Thank you Councilmember Johnson for that question. The work that is being done by those five prosecutors has concentrated largely on reducing that backlog. So you saw those numbers go from over 3,100 down to two fifty cases. But there's still, you know, those two fifty cases that are there.

The addition of those five attorneys has helped shift the caseload across the office as well. Had a huge problem over time with really burdensome caseloads for our folks. The ABA recommended caseload for prosecutors is about 400 cases. Our folks carry anywhere from like anywhere between five to 600 cases. And then it will shift to even more when these prosecutors leave.

Is that right, Jess? Okay. That's numbers off the top of my head. And we do have some numbers in here, and there's specifically in the appendix a breakdown of you can see court appearances have gone up per prosecutor. Court appearances have gone up for victim witness coordinators.

And you can see their individual case loads and we listed out both with showing with the ARP addition as well as what will happen to those case loads when those folks are no longer supporting us. And one of the things that has been an ancillary benefit to being more right sized in staffing with prosecutors has been that we're able to focus more on ethos work and building that. The ethos work is not something that is required. We do it because we feel that it's important. Those diversion programs are kind of taken out of hide for us.

And we think it's important. We are committed to that work. But having the supports to have attorneys going into court for these cases every day, which is our statutorily required work, has allowed us to have other staff that has been building out the ethos work. And and so that has been a real ancillary benefit that we're, you know, we're gonna be struggling with and figuring out how to keep the staff that we need to support Ethos as well as staff cases.

Yeah, think as a follow-up, one of the common things of this budget cycle I feel like that has been articulated from multiple presentations is trying to capture the cost of doing business. I feel like some departments, especially the two that we're here from today, there's a lot of work that goes into it with the staffing. There's a lot of staff numbers that we see don't reflect the work that and the hours spent going Yeah. On that And so I just I would really encourage the conversations for next year to be proactive, especially with the city attorney's office around what the impacts that we are seeing in that because I know with the criminal backlog piece like I'm glad that ARPA was able to afford an opportunity to get kind of caught up with that. It does make me wonder about like what happened when we didn't have ARPA money to do so, like how we managed and then also just you know how do we prevent from getting to a place where we have 3,100 cases of backlog in the future if we're not able to fund those.

And so I consider that a part of the business conversation and so I just I will say that I welcome that conversation in advance of the 2027 budget cycle knowing that we have this potential, I think, to plan ahead a little bit. And this may not be like the most you know, it's not the shiny budget topic that kind of fosters the headlines in different spaces, but it's incredibly important. And so just wanted to echo that and share that that kind of raised my eyebrow a little bit when I was kind of going through that and wondering what some of the work would be if not for the funding if we aren't able to get the grant funding. So just some pieces but wanted to articulate that to you just to let you know like that that is actually something that I slightly slightly raises concerns to me, but also think that we can plan accordingly. And so there are a few places that I see opportunities for that.

This is one area. And so I'm hoping that we can have that we'll continue those conversations as we head into 2026. And I welcome the feedback that you all are either having or the real time numbers and stuff that you're seeing, knowing that the case lock has pretty much stayed similar in the amount of cases over the last several years. So would appreciate just kind of whatever feedback comes from either staff that are working on it or just like impacts to the department as the money begins to run out. So we're aware of just the the real cost of, like, what it would look like to continue with the work that you're doing.

Sure. Thank you, council member, for for those words and that support. Yeah. We are really concerned about it as well. The the numbers that I was mentioning are are start on page 39 in the appendix, and then there are a few different slides that show numbers there and information on the caseloads where we're at.

So unless you have other questions specifically on those numbers, I will we'll definitely be updating you and continuing to let folks know what we're experiencing because we we are committed to doing individualized justice and ensuring that we're giving prosecutors the time they need to thoughtfully review cases and and really, you know, work with folks in the right way to get great outcomes. They need space to do that and I appreciate your recognizing that.

Yep, we've got question from Cherry Yang.

Thanks, Council Vice President. I have a couple of questions here. Thanks so much for your presentation today. Been looking at the 2026 proposed changes slide, and I'm wondering if you can explain a bit more about what the data practices specialists will be doing. And also, like why how did you all make the decision to fund the two additional positions for those two additional positions rather than continuing some of those attorney positions in the office overall, the ones that were funded by AARP?

Councilmember Yang, councilmembers, thank you for your question. So, the data practice specialist, the data practice centralization was a priority for the mayor's office and shifting the work really from the work of departments. So, right now, the data practices is done in a more decentralized way kind of by department. There are each department has a person in their department who is assigned to that work and the data practices work may be their full job or it may be an additional duty for a lot of people. I think a lot of the departments have their PIOs doing that work and so the mayor's office recognized that we could have a more streamlined system, better coordination to if we did some centralization of that work and most other cities have groups that do data practices for the city that focus on that work all the time, so they have training, you know, and and background and specifically working on the requests and then also working with, you know, our city clerk as well in that in that process, of course.

But we I would say for us in the process, it wasn't a question of prioritizing those specialists over our attorneys. We we did request, that we are able to keep, actually for several budget years we made requests in to keep the folks that were on ARP because of the reasons that we've talked about just in terms of the caseload and the effect to the work. And the data practice specialists were placed at a higher priority to build that program for this budget year in the conversations that we had with the mayor's office, and that's where we landed. I know this year is a particularly difficult year for a couple of reasons. So that that's where we landed out of the process with the mayor's office is bringing those two new positions in and those are non attorney positions that would be folks directly supporting the centralization of that work.

Okay, thank you. I appreciate that explanation and I know that the decrease that we see in the proposed spending for 2026, it's really because of the ARP dollars getting exhausted there. So I know that you all are always looking for ways in which we can seek grants for positions and just programming overall. I want to thank you for that and encourage you all to keep doing that too because it is a significant decrease that we see there, the $2,800,000 And then I have another question too. I'd like to go to the slides about the NSCC goals, not guns campaign.

Sure. So just one thing that stuck out to me is that the St. Paul Parks and Recs that are a part of this, they're all in Ward 1. And so I'm wondering, this supposed to be Ward 1? Is this like a campaign that is Ward 1 specific or not? And if it's not, then can you explain why it's so concentrated just in that area?

Is that something you can talk to or great, perfect.

Thank you for the question. I can expand on that. These were the rec centers that had youth that were interested in attending. The youth on boards represent all of the wards. So that second group represents all of the wards.

And then St. Paul City Schools has a representation of students from across all of the wards in the city. And so that is how those were selected. So I know that they show up in Ward 1, but those were the rec centers that had young people that were interested in engaging with the program, not from lack of recruitment or engagement with other wards, but those were the wards where young people were also more likely affected by gun violence, but were also ready to engage with the work. And so we continue the recruitment through the NSCC, but also because we have circulars and a lot of other things that are happening.

We have youth that don't necessarily live in a specific ward, but come to these rec centers because that's where their support and friend groups are located.

Okay. Just so then the question for clarification, you saying then that there were no use in other wards that were from rec centers and other wards that were interested in being a part of this?

Can you repeat that? I'm sorry.

So rec center used to attend wards rec centers and other wards, they showed no interest in being a part of this?

I would say that the recruitment showed that there was no one that was currently interested to have a cohort in that space, but that recruitment is still happening in various wards. I would encourage you, if you're interested in making sure that your ward is represented, to reach out to manager Jacobson and she can provide and you can help recruit young folks in your ward to participate in the program.

Okay. Thank you. Just have one last comment Yeah, to I'm bringing this up because for me, like if there I do want to have an interest in making sure that programming that is funded by the city, that the work is spread out. And I'm hearing what you're saying, Director Bilicki, about the interest, the concentration being in Ward 1 here. But I'm just recalling other conversations that we've had even at the library board where even in some of the one of our library programming for youth that is Ward 1 focused.

There were many of us at the table who were like, hey, we're really interested in bringing that to our Ward 2. I think it was around one of like the bus vehicles transporting kids to the programming that was offered in Ward 1. And it is really important to spread out the work over the programming. And I mean, there's even incidences over in warfight. This was really recent where a youth carried a gun to school.

You know, we it's so common for us to be hearing stories like that. And so definitely, you know, like the interest is there. I know like in our youth to be a part of these. And if the recruitment is being done, I think that's really great. But I think we should have larger conversations and be more strategic about how we can have the work be more spread out, knowing that there are other areas in our city that have, you know, very deep disparities too and I just want to name the East Side and North End areas being part of those.

Council Member Ying, respectfully, it should be noted that a lot of our work does include, other wards. Again, as city council Olsen, stated, a lot of that information, those individuals don't like to be recognized in the work. And so it's, very hard to come in front of the city council and put things out for individuals that aren't prepared to have their name recognized in that space. But the young gentleman that took the gun to school, we are working with that family. So the work that ONS is definitely represented outside of Ward 1 and other representation, but I would encourage you to engage a little bit more with Director Jacobson and the Neighborhood Safety Community Council.

Then therefore you would be a little bit more clearly informed about the members that are in your board that participate in activities in ONS. It would be welcoming to have a little bit more interaction from you council members so that when we come and talk about individuals you'll be more clearly informed about the individuals that participate in your ward. All right. Thank you.

Yeah. I also really appreciate that invitation. I was at the rec center last night and saw some of the GBI programming stuff there. So and advertised, but again, it's like the the interest of the kiddos that are showing up too. So I I agree and very interested in interested and appreciate the open invitation. We have Councilmember Coleman back to Councilmember Johnson and I see Councilmember

I'm just going to respond to but we can talk offline.

That sounds great. So

Councilmember Coleman.

Thank you Vice President Kim. Thank you City Attorney Olson and thanks for this presentation. It's been very helpful. I just want to go back quickly, sorry to bounce this around, but back to the data practices specialist. I'm curious about that strikes me, I see a lot of value in kind of centralizing that operation.

It strikes me as a place where we might expect to see significant savings either in terms of staff resources that are currently being more difficult to account for because they're across departments. Also potentially in terms of revenue saving for the city if we think that more standardized operations will prevent litigation as a result of things slipping through the cracks around data practices. I'm just curious if there's been any attempt to quantify that or any reflections you know, I don't expect that we'll recoup those costs directly, where we might see tangible value in other ways as a result of consolidating that work.

Thanks, Councilmember Cullman, for that question. Yes. I would anticipate that that's the case. I think that's one of the reasons that we're looking at the centralization of it. I don't know that we have historical data on how many hours are spent by PIOs across the departments on gathering information because it has been decentralized that way.

We we have done some preliminary work. I know that one of my deputies, Orsha Flowers, as well as the HR department did initial work to you know, in thinking about the the idea of centralizing and what that work would entail. We had recommended a few more staff than we're initially getting. And I do anticipate that we'll see, you know, the need for additional staff because our data practice requests have continued to increase just in volume as well as number. So that that accounts for, you know, like, just a a trend line that's that's going up for people's time and attention to these requests.

And I think having folks that do the work all of the time and maybe a, you know, a closer coordinated system between the functionalities of OTC. So how we can pull data and where data is stored, I think, is also something that can, you know, can be closer coordinated. There is an OTC staff member who has pretty much been dedicated to data practices work throughout the city, and this would be a way for that person then to support into this team rather than taking, you know, direction from 14 different points of contact in all those different departments. So we expect to see some streamlining in that work as well, and we continue to work with OTC on kind of centralizing where the data is held and how it's held so that it's easier to pull than it is now. Thank you.

Councilmember Johnson. I guess my question is related actually to council member Ying as a follow-up from on the front of prevent of gun violence prevention. I was just curious and wondering if we're working with at all the World Youth Connect and there's their safe streets, save lives campaign in any way, just more so out of curiosity of other avenues or potential partnership. And I know that some of the young folks are pretty involved on the East Side in particular. And so I just was more curious if there was any sort of outreach to them or coordination that way.

Thank you Councilmember Johnson. Councilmembers, yes. We continue to work with World Youth Connect and they are engaged with we help them secure grant that grant because they did the community based indicators work with Harvard. And so we help support their application to that, and we continue to work with them. We are currently working, they're presenting with us with Vera Institute next week.

And so, our continued work with World Youth Connect in engaging with those young folks, and then as well as several of those folks with life coaches and work that they do from probation. So, we continue a very strong relationship with World Youth Connect as well as Urban Village. And so they do a lot of work on that end of the ward. Again, like I said, a lot of them don't want that recognition because they are trying to protect and not glorify the work that they're doing with young folks that are in places of struggle right now. And so we really try to recognize who and what we talk about in the public eye because as they transition into individuals later on down the line, we don't want somebody to be able to Google them and Google this presentation and see that information.

So we're very particular and making sure that when we engage and tell stories that it just it makes a lot of sense about what we're doing. It's very intentional.

Thank you.

I just have a quick add on to Councilmember Johnson's earlier point around staffing. So I am really bad at math. But just based on my first blush, based on the excess caseload and the number of caseload that each lawyer should have, By my bad math, it appears that you would need 12 more lawyers to be at more of the manageable standard. Okay, I'm seeing that, so I'm not that bad at math. I was like trying to text Art and be like, can you do this

math for me? Can you just check?

But it's to say that as we think about again what is the what's just the cost of doing business, we that is a number that I'm interested in. That is any department would find that and any department director would find that acceptable to be 12 staff short given the caseload that they're working on. And I think we see that across the city for varying sort of services that we're providing. But I just want to lift that up. I really appreciated that point. And I thought, well, how many lawyers would that be? And I came up with no less than 12. So we will hand it back to you. I think I mean, we're still doing really great on time. So we'll just keep having questions as they come. Oh, yep. Have a question. Please.

Well, just had a three prong question before we got too far. But first, I just want to say I'm so happy to see you. Director Blakey, thank you so much for your commitment and your dedication to building this foundation of this work. My three prong question is really for ONS just to, you know, just get a refresher. I also will be following up with questions if there's more like detail.

But the three questions is based off of like staffing and capacity. Just getting an update because I remember last year we talked you were committed to creating unionized positions and I know that had took a while. Just curious around if we have met if you have met the fully staffed goals and also just any impact on program delivery. And then my second question is around like funding with the impact and a reduction of federal funding. What does that mean?

Like what is the how is that impacting current services? Are we going to see, you know, potential cuts in services? And then my last question is just, you know, connected to the second question, which is like what is the plan, the strategic plan for 2026, just with the adjustments and especially with, you know, we're seeing, like, temporary closures of, like, the library on the corridor. There's gonna be a lot of need. I'm just, you know, wondering around what is the strategic plan for 2026, especially with, you know, the challenges of the deep reductions that we're seeing in this budget.

Thank you, Councilmember Lee for your question. Council member council members, can I just clarify? Are you asking about CEO across the board or specifically with regard to the

Particularly, OMS. Yeah. Think my colleagues really covered some of the staffing questions, but I'm just particularly around like the old Office of Neighborhood Safety.

Okay. Do you want to speak to that? We can both probably answer that. We'll answer that.

Council President, Council Member Boyd, that is a real in-depth question that I think we don't have a lot of time to go in-depth. So I think a follow-up would be more appropriate to answer all of those questions. And we can share the ONS strategic plan. It's located on our website, and so you can look at what the strategic plan for those are. As far as funding and funding gaps go, as you see, there is $154,000 reduction to subcontractors that the office will be absorbing in this cut.

Just as we said, the price of doing business is more and more expensive. The need will definitely outweigh the capacity that the Office of Neighborhood Safety has to do the work, as well as the steep cuts in federal funding as well as our position as a city to support the residents in an equitable way makes us ineligible for several potential federal grants. So we are looking at how do we navigate that arena and making sure that we can provide the services that we have done before. We are leaning into our county partners as social service and human services work. Is where that lies.

The city has jumped in and done those things because we've seen a gap. ONS has filled that gap to the best of their ability with the capacity and staffing that we have. We are reaching our staffing quota based on the dollars that we have through ARPA that we reallocated. And so we have if you see in the slide, I think it's a couple more slides over, it'll talk about the vacancies and the filling of those things. We are still looking to bring on three additional life coaches for Familiar Faces as well that looks at the whole cross section of the ecosystem.

So not only gun violence, which is in Project Peace, but also Familiar Faces, which is also housed in ONS, is housed in CAO. So as we continue to look at what that is across the board, we are onboarding individuals in that space. As far as being able to provide the services to the level that we have in the past, yes, it will be a strain. No, we don't have funds. Yes, we are looking at how do we diversify the funding platforms.

But as we're talking about cuts and things like that, yes, there will be cuts that will happen and it will impact the city about the capacity just as we talked about the number of caseloads of individuals that we have in CAO doing that work. And when we're talking about the human work, I think an average case load should be 12 to 15. And roughly our life coaches have about 25 to 30 individuals that they are working with and managing that are deep rooted in trauma. And so it's not only the individual, but the family as a whole. And then how they show up in our schools, parks, libraries also have an effect.

So, when you talk about the relocation of the library and the things that are happening on corridors, only the university corridor, but our Maryland corridor, our Wright Street corridor, the impacts of all of those different things ONS is addressing. We have Chris Michaels who has a staff of three that has been just killing it, as far as I can say, in doing the work with our unsheltered and our folks experiencing mental health and chemical dependency. Our life coaches have been balancing showing up at hospitals, rec centers, libraries, and other places to provide support, not only to our staff, but to families and other folks in the community that are experiencing the quality of life issues that we're seeing. So there's just a lot of work that still needs to be done, but I think it requires a further conversation and I'm pretty sure that city attorney Olson and individuals and my staff, once I depart, will be able to provide you with some of that additional information. If you can provide them with some pointed questions in an email, that would be great.

Thanks, Director Buckey. Councilmember Bibli, I'm happy to follow-up with you if you have additional questions on any of that. I also want to note along that same line, you know, the federal grant landscape has changed quite significantly and in specific with supports from OJP which used to fund significant grants for programs like GBI, CVI that really have a lot of data behind them for success not only in St. Paul but in many cities. And that work has just almost completely gone away from the federal level.

They're just not they're not funding the work, they're not supporting the work. And so that is a direct impact that the city is going to feel because we had been in the past receiving a lot of support in training and in grants through the White House through a GP and you know supporting the great results that we've gotten so far. The team across the city is tracking where grants are at. A lot of language is being inserted into those grant applications that we find to be illegal, to straight up illegal. Unconstitutional, in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act, the city has filed two lawsuits so far with a coalition of other cities that are currently in process.

We have injunctions on two of them, us proceed in applying for grants for various departments across the city, and we expect to file additional suits in the not too distant future. So we're really tracking a lot of those effects not only to ONS and the work that they do and the support that comes through there, but also to other departments across the city for just you know fighting for the money that's due to our communities. So this slide here begins our budget to actuals historically through the general fund and CAO as the first slide. You can see from 2021 forward, we've normally had a bit of overage. That's pretty standard historically.

We do kind of run a tight ship here. We try to be very responsible with public dollars and just keep doing more with less. And with the exception of 2024, we did, as you are aware, raises across the board for attorney salaries that was a market based shift and really helped with our retention and recruitment. And in 2025, you see a big percentage left. That variance is just due to the fact that most of those dollars are salary dollars and fringe dollars and so they'll continue to come out.

This is as of September, so we still have a lot of money going out the door there and we'll end up somewhere in that same percentage rate at the end of the year or less.

Blew through

ONS here. There we go. This one is the budget to actual general fund for ONS and the office started in 2022, so that's why you see it only back to 2022. The original variance there is from positions that have we've been trying to hire. A lot of these positions are new to the city.

Know you've heard this before, but they've been challenging to hire to find the right background, the right experience with the right individuals to fill those positions. So some of them we've had to build from scratch with HR. Are new classifications as well. So, a lot of that work is kind of behind the scenes work that has pushed out the timeline on our ability to hire. And we've also shifted from the general fund due to the budget this year in specific, money into special funds that were coming out of general fund accounts.

So that is that's the variance that you see this year, has to do with some of that kind of looking at how are we supporting the budget freeze and, you know, and and trying to to recoup for the city. That was a request from OFS. This is our FTE summary. I know we've spent a lot of time talking about some of our FTEs already. I don't wanna spend too much time here unless you have specific questions.

You'll note again the reduction on the 5.5 and that is the criminal backlog project that represents the the prosecutors there. And the the grants account does have a change for FTEs as well. They've been hiring the life coaches and some other folks as life coaches. Correct?

Yes. And

this is some detail on our personnel budget. You can just it's a breakout of where we have the salaries and wages versus benefits and then an attrition number which reflects just, you know, cyclic vacancies that happen within the department. And then the same for ONS here. You'll notice a large shift in the O and S grants fund numbers and that is because the grants are decreasing as well as folks, know, we've shifted some folks off of grants but there are still several O and S staff that are also grant funded or not in a true FTE status, which is something that will come up again before this body and future budget years as we look at how we commit to this really successful work. Here's our current unfilled positions.

We have a senior attorney position that is in criminal. We've asked to fill these positions with the administration even though we're on a hiring freeze. We had a pet we had a retirement and as we've talked about, the prosecutor numbers are low for the work and so filling that position especially considering where we're at with Ethos is really, really important so that we can continue all the work there. The supervising attorney is in the civil division. That's the position that will be the be running the work for data practices.

And then the two specialists would be the new add. And so those were vacancies pending the approval of those two positions. The unfilled positions in o n s, I know that I think council member Johnson had a question about some specifics on these vacancies, and we will be following up with you as well to make sure that your questions are answered. But we the the three that are that are vacant, the three different classifications are the project manager for GBI and the outreach specialists for project piece as well as life coaches. And those have been in process of hiring.

They've done interviews. They have several offers out. So we're hopeful that those positions will be able to be filled filled up quite shortly.

I asked a follow-up from those so I won't go into But I think just for context pieces I know like different positions that were established through the Office of Neighborhood Safety have taken a little bit longer when it comes to setting it up through the HR process and all other things. So we feel like that's the precedence for is that the setup piece that's taking the longest? Or do we foresee some of those continued challenges if we are able to get additional funding for more staff in the future? Since we're doing this for the first time, but afterwards it'll be a little bit more easier? Or do we kind of foresee just like it continuing to take a little bit more time through the traditional bureaucratic

process?

Thanks Councilmember Johnson for that question, council members. A lot of that has been I think initial growing pains for building the work and this work is different than anything the city has done in the past and so there were classifications classifications that that we we needed needed built built that really weren't in any other department, that hadn't been contemplated previously, and that is a process that you're probably familiar with takes a while just in terms of looking at where the classifications go and doing the research and working with unions and things like that. I think we've, Brooke, I'll look to you to see if there's any additional classification that we would need to add that's not reflected, but the life coaches and the outreach specialists, I think that's been a bit of a heavy lift just kind of to get to a place where these folks are being recognized for the level complexity of the work that they do in an appropriate salary band and an appropriate classification that, you know, I'm going through, like, does do we have something that matches this or is this different and getting to an understanding on on where that is.

I think as the work continues to build out, there'll be a deeper understanding of that going forward. We're hopeful that that will be the case. But those have been two of the, I think, the sticking points as well as kind of building out what the management of project piece is and what what positions are needed and, again, you know, how we're classifying those folks. I don't know if you wanna say anything additional.

Yes, Council Member Johnson. The only positions that are left are mental health and behavioral health folks that we will be hiring for familiar faces and again, as city city attorney Olson said, these are not positions that are readily available in the city. So they have to be designed to make sure that we are getting the appropriate certification levels that we need for some of the referral work and pieces that we have found necessary as well. The other sticking point that we have found is also making sure that we are hiring people that have lived experience and going through that process so we have individuals that, yes, have had previous criminal backgrounds or other types of social determinants that make it very difficult to get them through a traditional civil service hiring process. And so the city and ONS have been committed to making sure that we hire residents from St.

Paul that are representative of the work that we do. And so it has taken just a little bit more time, but I think thought and carefulness and planning has been put into it. So it's kind of worth the growing pain and just making sure that we are giving people livable wages for the work that we do. A lot of the individuals in the work that we're doing are very similar to those that we find in our police department and trying to make sure that we equate the the work that they do to the same work that some of our officers are doing as well is super important. And talking with the chief and things like that, they he finds value in that as well because it brings legitimacy and long term sustainability for the office together.

And so it's worth the growing pains. It has it's been a lot of growing pains in that sense, but I think we once we get it all solidified, that it won't be a continuing thing. So we will gladly take all of the funding and money that you give us to fill those positions, and we'll be able to fill them once we have the funds to do that. I think also just some of the uncertainty of where city you know, people hear about hiring freezes and things like that. And so they're just looking for some stability. And so we want to make sure that if we're bringing people in to do this work, that we have the supports and the right pay that they deserve to do this work. Thanks. Thank you.

I know we've got a little bit of time here so I'll move into the appendix. And we have a few more additional slides on ONS. This is more of just sort of their their day to day work that they're doing, updates on what's happening with the partnership with Xpire, building out the case management support we've talked about, building out a referral mechanism. They continue to partner closely with SPPS as well as Ramsey County juvenile probation and implementing the new case management system as well. Here's a slide on client demographics.

I spoke a little bit about this earlier just in terms of the clientele that is coming into ONS. You can see there's a large percentage of that client base is black or African American and descent and the client age we have almost an even split but more juveniles than adults as well as more males than females. So here's the outputs in terms of what folks are achieving. Mobility has been a huge one as you can see, but the folks continue to work them in kinda all aspects of stability and community engagement and education and and family life. So we're truly doing a wraparound process, and the interactions you can see are pretty high here, five twenty one, and that's just client contacts working with folks and two hundred and fifty total hours along with 47 custom notifications in the in the GDI process.

For familiar faces, and this is the work that Christine Michaels leads, she is working with a target group of unsheltered residents who are our most frequent folks that we see out within the community and have frequent interactions either with our paramedics, police, or in our justice system. These folks are also coordinating closely, and you may have seen a recent article that talked about the partnership between Familiar Faces and the police department in that work, as well as working with DSI, and St. Paul Fire. They have hired two additional outreach specialists, that are coming on board and, still working on best practices integrate into a coordinated system for community first public safety that would build out the capability of familiar faces as well as provide a more coordinated support for the homeless work that the city's been engaged in for these past few years. And here's the outputs.

You can see how busy Chris has been. She's got 343 individuals outreach since September 2024, and she's been, you know, slow to build staff. She has a couple of folks now, but a lot of that is just Chris. So the work that you're looking at is often middle of the night work. It's twenty four hour work.

It's weekend work. It's holiday work. And and that's what, you know, director Blakey was referring to when, you know, it's very similar to the work of our other first responders. And I think, you know, we should be considering our folks that are on the front lines of gun violence reduction and homeless outreach to be first responders as well in terms of, you know, coming to these difficult, stressful, tragic events that happen for folks in our community and the toll it takes on them for doing that big work. Her interactions are at nine seventy five, so close to a thousand individual interactions.

You can think about, you know, what's happening, where that puts her on a daily basis around the city. And she's working with 25 active folks and 23 individuals housed through those efforts just in the the short time that she has been here.

And I think attorney Olson, if you can, I'm really interested in hearing about the community, the neighborhood safety community council, but I think at that point we'll hold questions after that.

Okay, why don't we move forward to

previous discussion? No, just like keep on your role because so I finish the familiar faces and then just if we can get through the Neighborhood Community Council, Neighborhood Safety Community Council slides, that would be fantastic. Absolutely. Thank you.

Yeah, I do want to share the success story again. You know, we have many success stories and many of these folks, you know, don't want their stories shared publicly, but this one is a particularly heartwarming one too that we were able to share that an individual and his brother were both housed through familiar faces, and they sent this communication forward to to the team to just say how much it had changed their lives. They were, you know, unsheltered and they were moved from an encampment that was unsafe. And they were able to be housed and this individual has been stable in housing and you can see just through his words that we're both here safe, warm because of your work and thank you from the bottom of my heart. And that's that's what every, you know, every interaction, every effect can lead to housing folks off the streets in our community and so that's that's just the really important work that's done every day in that team.

The Neighborhood Safety Community Council, Lenia Jacobson runs that work with a 15 member group that is selected through the leadership of the city and represents all of the wards across the city. And they have been doing grant work. They have some current grants that I think are listed on the next slide and they have an open application on grants right now that goes through the end of this week. So I know that there's been encouragement to put forward any organizations that might meet the criteria that maybe you're aware of or just publicize this great opportunity for folks to be involved in the gun violence reduction work and community safety work across the city and put in their grant proposals. These are some of the things that they have been working on and we had a slide earlier as well about a lot of things that they had done with some of the ERP funding that had been provided.

They've done nine meetings to date as a council, and they have been involved as safe summer nights as well. And they've done a listening session that happened last year at the Unidea Library and there was a report that came out about the work there and some of the conversation that happened with community in that space. They've also had discussions and done research on zoning and work with the libraries and rec spaces as well as the goals not goals not guns work and the podcast. So here are the three three current contracts that are coming up to an end either at the 2025 or 2026. These are three of the contractors that they've been working with, Boots on the Ground, and Komura, they've done the OMS podcast and and been able to help us put that out.

And then the hired organization has youth gun violence prevention events, and we've served almost 200 participants, youth participants across the city. And they signed safe gun commitments as well and work with youth on on gun safety.

Great. Thank you. It looks like we've got a question from council member Bouley.

Thank you, vice president. Thank you so much, city attorney Olson. I have a question just particularly around it was like the 52 signed gun commitments. Can you explain a little bit more what that means?

Sure. I'll have Brooke come and give you some of the details of that work. Thank you.

Council members council member Bowie, the, the gun commitment is basically a commitment to not carry, a weapon, on their persons. These are youth that have made a pledge. It's kind of the same as you see in DARE to stay drug free. It is pretty much a signature from young folks that have participated in their program where they have vowed to not carry weapons.

I have a quick follow-up.

So, the youth who have made this commitment and I think that's really profound, are these youth have formally had possession of a gun? Are these just youth just in general? I'm just wondering in terms of like

It's a combination. It's a combination of that. There are young folks that we have gotten referred to us from various different organizations and have worked with hired in various different spaces. And so they have listened to some of the work that World Youth Connect has done, that Charlie Adams has done, that some of the work that got I'm going to misrepresent it so I'm not going to say it, but another organization that has engaged with the young people and so with that they've put that pledge together to really not to stay gun free.

Okay. Thank you.

Councilmember Coleman. Thank you. City Attorney Olson, this goes beyond the scope of the presentation today, so it might be more appropriate for follow-up. But I just wanted to ask about the Joint Immigration Legal Defense Fund with the county and if that's something that city attorney office resources either in terms of time or direct financial investment are going to and what if so, what that might look like for 2026 as we experience what we expect will be more deportations and more need for that fund.

Sure. Thank you, council member Coleman, for that question. And I can absolutely follow-up with you. And I don't know if you've had a chance to meet Edmundo LeHo, who's, in our office. He does, runs he's the director of our immigrant and refugee services program.

That work is actually only funded by the city at this point, and that funding will run out the end of this month. So, the county, hasn't hasn't joint funded that for a couple of years. It began as a joint program with some funding from Vera as well. And over the years, the the funding streams have just changed. The council, recommitted to that work along with the mayor's office the last couple of years, and, it just it it didn't make it didn't make the the top line this year. So so, yeah, the work that's been done for removal defense will you know, we we won't be continuing that fund from this point.

Thank you.

Cherry Yang. Thanks. Can you remind me how how much we put into that for this year?

I will probably have to get back to you on that. I don't recall I don't think there was a new I'm not sure that there was a new amount put forward last year Mhmm. Or not, and I will check on that. I know that we've had funding that was rolled over. So I'll make sure that you get a direct answer to that.

Thank you. I just a a comment I wanna make, and I really appreciate council member Coleman for bringing that up. I I agree that the need for that, like, it's we need it even more compared to years before, especially with this really horrendous Trump administration. And we know that deportations are happening all across our city and that people have already been taken in Ward 5 recently. That was really just traumatizing.

And there were many neighbors who witnessed that as well and elected officials. And I'm glad that they were there to speak up and also defend the people who were taken and detained. But I would be I would appreciate if the numbers could get shared. And also if we can get some through email, like some sort of report back on how that program has basically any sort of like end of sort of end of year results that could be shared I back to would be really interested in figuring out how we can tweak numbers a bit to provide continued funding for that next year.

All right. I will do that for sure. Thank you, council member.

And now just one last thing. It would be helpful to hear from the city attorney's office what would be a meaningful amount too for next year if the council were to support funding it.

Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that. We will definitely get that to you.

Sounds great. I don't see any other questions. So I just really appreciate the time. I think I'm just going to use a few moments to embarrass our now exiting Director Blakey. I just I said this to you right before the meeting started and of course I encourage my colleagues to join in on the fun.

But I saw former city staff member and director, Munukh Archer Ramos and I had the opportunity to tell him this last night as well. But it's not often that you get to be the first to start a department in a city and certainly a city like St. Paul. It's not every day that you get to establish legacy programs that have just a positive ripple effect through my neighborhood, neighborhoods like mine, the ones I represent. And even though we haven't had a ton of time to get to know each other, I can absolutely tell you for certain that the programs that you ran stood up and now will be, I'm hoping and I believe to be the goal, just sort of the pillar programs of ONS.

My constituents feel it and they know it and they see it. And so, I just really have such a deep gratitude for your work. It's this quiet but steadfast commitment to values that are really hard sometimes to implement in big systems and values to implement in systems like our that intersect with our carceral system and our justice system. And so, I just really commend the work that you've done and you will be missed. Yeah, so I couldn't pass up the opportunity when you're in chambers to commend you on the work and yeah, you'll be very missed and best of luck to everything that you have in the future. I can only imagine wherever you went, we'll just be incredibly lucky to have you. So thank you so much for the service to our city. Yeah.

Thanks, Council Vice President. I want to echo everything that you said to Director Blickey. And Director Blickey, I really commend you for the work that you do in the Office of Neighborhood Safety. It is really tough to build something from the ground up, but you came in with a determination to do that. And I really appreciate how every time you are here in the chambers and your staff are here too, you all uplift those stories of people who you work with directly.

And for us council members who are not there, know, day in and day out doing the groundwork, is so important to hear the impacts that the Office of Neighbor Safety does have to people in their community, which I know that the situations in which they are in sometimes find themselves in are some of the toughest too. So you really came here determined to deliver. And I know that there were a lot of challenges along the way, but do believe that you and your staff have really overcome a lot of huge hurdles whether it was bringing on a staffing capacity, hiring them on or even building out the programs and I really look forward to seeing the Office of Neighborhood Safety continue to grow and I know that there will be more hurdles for us to overcome but we have a will to figure it out. So thank you and I know there's probably like more more opportunities for us to honor your work and your service here to the city. So I wish you all the best as you transition out.

Thank you. Wonderful. Seeing no other comments or questions. The finance committee is adjourned until one. Recess. Recess. Thank you until 1PM.

We go about our lives every day, especially in the public sector trying to do our best. And one thing that I've come out of with this recovery and coming out of this incident is a renewed love for the city. My colleagues here, our colleagues here are top notch. When we were going through this, if I went to any single director. If I needed something. If they needed something from me. They came to me with, what can I do to help you? We're okay. Everything's fine. And I know that everything was not fine.

But I just want to highlight how critical it was to have these really close partnerships and relationships. And I just I absolutely love being here and I'm so glad to be in front of you today and not right there. We will get started.

Okay.

Our executive summary focuses on our three year strategy. OTC remains fully committed to our 2024 to 2026 three year strategic plan. From the outset, this plan was designed to be forward looking. Deliberately aligned to the major changes needed to improve our security posture. Modernize city technology and strengthen resilience.

That foresight matters. Even in the face of this summer's digital security incident, we are not changing direction. Our plan anticipated the challenges ahead and it positioned us to respond with confidence. Now as we enter year three, we are doubling down on the same strategic priorities honoring our people, powering city services, and securing city data. While ensuring our budget reflects both fiscal responsibility and target future targeted future ready improvements.

Honoring our people is about investing in the people who make our city work. We're rolling out a talented talent and performance management platform to support and develop our workforce. We embarked on a reorganization plan that highlights career pathways for our talented staff. We're expanding Hey OTC with its self-service chatbot. Giving staff easier ways to find answers and resolve issues quickly. And we're advancing title to ADA digital accessibility. Ensuring city digital services are inclusive and compliant. Powering city services is about strengthening the backbone of city operations. We're completing a timekeeping system modernization. Yeah.

No worries. And we can connect to the main if that's easier. I just.

Was it working before?

Nick came over and helped me get set up.

Yeah. He said it was working.

You know, it's And if if we can just put you if we just pull it up there.

Do we have a drive?

I think Camud can help us get it on here. It's, yeah, it's super

easy to do that I think.

Of course technical difficulties during the technical presentation inevitable. Actually

have the presentation.

You can get in there. Yep. Perfect.

Back

in action. I was talking about honoring our people. I was moving over now to powering city services and the work that we've been working on including our timekeeping system modernization. Implementing enterprise reporting our enterprise reporting platform, enterprise technology governance framework, and really this is all about bringing alignment and accountability across city departments. I want to focus on our optimization of stpaul.gov which is wrapping up right now.

That's about modernizing the city's digital front door for residents, businesses, and staff. We've improved six departments web presence including hero, PED, police, public works garbage and recycling, and parks. In November, we'll launch the new version of stpaul.gov that will include improved navigation and wayfinding for the site. Responding to user feedback about the site using data driven and a user centered approach. And we're providing critical support of enterprise priorities via the community first public safety and downtown revitalization efforts.

Safeguarding city data has always been at the heart of this plan. We are advancing network and infrastructure modernization. Building resilience into the city's technology environment. We are completing network event recovery and hardening. Ensuring lessons from the summer's incident lead to long term defenses.

We are working toward a data governance framework for the city that will strengthen security and privacy while enhancing departmental collaboration, operational efficiency, and AI readiness. And we're formalizing identity and access management. The framework for secure reliable access across city systems that was previously distributed across our OTC teams. I'll provide additional details about our budget in the coming slides. But here's a quick 2025 to 2026 snapshot which includes net reductions in both years with the addition of a one FTE proposed reduction in 2026.

However, there are some critical investments being made for 2026. A $60,000 special fund investment on part of a joint initiative between OTC and OFS to audit and plan for a consolidated and more efficient enterprise mobile data management plan. Cyber security investments totaling a million 1 a million $81,000 added to strengthen the city's ability to prevent, detect, and respond to cyber threats. That includes a $700,000 one time investment and 381,000 in ongoing funding for enterprise digital security technology in the central service fund financed through a general fund transfer. Our 2025 budget recap this year is focused on the digital security incident.

The work we were doing leading up to it to secure the city, the work we are doing right now on the post event event to continue and protect to protect our data and our systems. Council members, it's important to understand that this response didn't start on July 25. It started use years earlier. We had already been investing in modern defenses like endpoint detection, operating system upgrades, and secure by design methodology. We had to consistently maintain offline backups.

I just want to give one more shout out to David and the amazing server admin team who do that work every single day. They did that so we could restart our recovery immediately after eradicating the threat actor from our system. We had worked to build a culture of security across the enterprise. Citywide multi center multi factor authentication, email system protections, tighter credential controls, phishing awareness training, and our firewall newsletter. Most importantly, our dedicated staff have developed deep knowledge of the city's infrastructure over many years.

That expertise meant we could adapt quickly and contain the incident. That experience mattered. We did make the hard call to shut down the city's network. That decision while disruptive was the only way to fully contain the threat and prevent further spread. We engaged in a national incident response team and partnered with federal and state experts.

The Minnesota National Guard cyber protection team was mobilized to work alongside our teams to expand capacity and sustain our operations. We implemented a citywide reset of more than 3,000 employee accounts spearheaded by Mary Blake Matthews right here. A job that no under normal circumstances would probably take months of planning and she did it in like three days. That massive undertaking not only restored security, but it built in back stronger controls for every single user in the city. At the same time, we deployed advanced endpoint detection across every workstation and server.

Verifying that the systems were clean and putting in place world class protections for the future. These were bold decisive steps that required coordination across every department in the city. And because of our preparation, we could execute them swiftly and effectively. We're coming back stronger. The recovery has been remarkable and it's not by accident.

We had clean unencrypted backups so systems could be restored with confidence. We implemented a structured check-in check out process for employees for the devices ensuring that no compromise machines were logged back onto the network. Modernization efforts already underway like Poly, the WAX asset management system, the WFM timekeeping system, and Hey OTC. Meant that we had new cloud based resilient platforms ready to support critical operations. Instead of slowing us down, they accelerated recovery.

This was a coordinated citywide event. We had we have top notch emergency management department led by our enterprise maximizer director Rick Schutte who has been a collaborative partner and leader every step of the way. That partnership was key to our swift action and recovery. Every department leaned in. More than 3,000 employees were supported through new security protocols and partners at every level have helped accelerate our timelines. The result, we're not just recovering, we are coming back stronger. Our network is more secure. Our defenses are hardened and our modernization roadmap is moving faster because of what we've accomplished together. Let me be clear. While WiFi is back.

Applications are up. Network drives are available. That doesn't mean that everything is back to normal. We already had a backlog of critical projects prior to the incident and our recovery does continue. We are still actively rebuilding deliberately, carefully, and strategically to ensure long term resilience.

You've requested updates on recent initiatives. I'm going to focus on our modernization in flight. Our modernization efforts are strategically aligned. We are powering city services, safeguarding city data, and telling Saint Paul's story in ways that strengthen trust and improve how the city delivers every day. I won't go through each of these but I'll highlight just a couple.

I'll start start with the In for cloud. Because we had already moved many departments onto In for's workforce management platform, payroll and timekeeping continued uninterrupted during the digital security incident. Departments on this platform didn't have to revert to manual paper based processes. Now, we are accelerating the move so that all departments are in secure cloud platforms for payroll procurement and vendor payments. And then the bottom item civic newsroom.

Modernization also means rethinking how we communicate. The Civic Newsroom is our effort to tell St. Paul's story every single day using the talents of our incredible and award winning communications and digital media team led by Chase Maxwell. It showcases the work of staff across departments and ensures residents see themselves reflected in the work their government is doing. Safeguarding city data. I'll focus on Hey OTC, our new service platform. It was just launched last week I believe. These weeks still seem a little bit long here. Hey OTC is our secure front door for IT and communication services. At launch, we already have over 30 catalog items and 60 knowledge articles.

And those are going to continue to grow as we work to get more help directly to our users. Additionally, a new implementation we're focusing on is the Esri GIS addressing platform. Modernized addressing data is foundational for the city. Supporting public safety systems and the next generation of service delivery under community first public safety. We are excited for our latest project to modernize addressing data across critical systems and departments.

I also want to mention what isn't up here. You know, one of I think I always talk about it as our top priority is honoring our people because without our people you know, we're we can't support the city. A couple modernization efforts we have on that side include number one, monitoring our systems and platforms. So, we can take advantage of automation. Reduce some of the repetitive work that our teams are doing and have them focus on higher level work.

Revising our job classification system which is over two decades old. Technology has changed a little bit in that time. And formalizing our career pathways for everybody. So, whether you're new to OTC, you've been in OTC for decades, or you're a new city employee or you're a city employee who's moved into OTC. We want to be able to support your career and professional development in technology.

Now, to the fun stuff. This budget year is about absorbing reductions and making one time strategic security investments. The cuts are ongoing and build on reductions from prior years. They represent our commitment to being disciplined and responsible stewards of public funds even as we lead recovery from a major digital security event. The reductions include one FTE, reducing support for stpaul.gov, and trimming some mobile costs.

At the same time, we're making a targeted addition. The Move Works service automation platform to better support our 3,000 employees who need technology support and guidance at hand. This year's budget also includes about a million dollars of new security investments. Which include recurring ongoing costs for endpoint detection, and new one time funding that will be used for continuing our security recovery, security tooling, staffing OG, and other ways that we are going to protect our city. Councilwoman Johnson. Thank you. I guess could

you maybe or you kind of talk a little bit about how the funding sources for some of the central service fund and the general government fund pieces were identified as this is where we're gonna use the the funding for. Just noticing that most of the million dollar funding is actually coming from the fund two eleven government special projects. So ARPA funding instead of, like, fund seven ten for innovative technology. I'm just kind of curious, like, what went into the thought process about deciding that was going to be the use for it.

Absolutely. Thank you Councilmember Johnson and I will refer to our budget representative or we can take that offline. I'm not aware of how that came to be.

Yeah, Chair Kim and Council Member Johnson. I'm not either. So I would say we should I wasn't in those conversations when they happened. I would say we should we should follow-up with that.

Apologies that Madeline Mitchell is out sick today.

Yeah, no worries. I think and also as a caveat and an additional, I'd be curious to know on the side of Office of Financial Services as well, other efforts that we took to potentially find a more compatible funding source. Sincerely thinking that some of the cybersecurity pieces, the 700,000 for example, in this piece or this capacity could be important. Definitely not coming from a place of, you know, not understanding kind of fully what the magnitude of it is. I just I'm curious as to if we have like other funding sources that also could be able to be utilized for that as well.

Absolutely. We'll work with our partners and OFS to get you that information.

Thank you.

So, really briefly, you know, we are very appreciative of the million dollars of additional funding. You know, we really do believe it's going to help support our recovery, help secure the city of Saint Paul. You know, one of the difficult parts is that platforms today are not one time funding. Right? It takes recurring funding.

And so, we need to be very thoughtful to ensure that these one time funds can can lead to enhanced security for years to come. Our history of budget to actual shows our dedication to fiscal responsibility. We're projecting a balanced budget based on assumptions we've received from the budget office. Regarding the use of salary savings to cover our needed staff augmentation and reimbursements for overtime for the security incident. For our spending summary, our general fund increase is due to the investment in cyber security.

Our historical spending but I may just kind of gloss over this. I talked to a council president Kim about this and the instructions we received might not have aligned with the intent here. So I'm just gonna skip over that but if you have questions please let me know.

I can just say one more thing about it that you know we sent over the form to all the department directors and certainly with really good intent and assuming like that we want to see these historical trends. But it's not the most dynamic way to present the information. So we're going be going back and asking for a different way for this information to be presented to us because for the most part every presentation we've seen the line is just very flat. But we know that's not necessarily true. It doesn't illustrate the amount of changes changing that is actually happening year over year.

So it's just to note that is why it is not as dynamic of a visual as we had initially thought. So thank you for the flexibility and just for the context of the council members. We're going be asking for this to be in a different form for all the presentations we get just to have a better sense. But, yeah, I think this is a great example of why this image is not the most dynamic one to use. So thank you. Oh, Thank

you, Director Scala. I appreciate your presentation in front of the council today. I just have a question about the history of the budget actuals. So it looks like for this year the department has used up the like all exhausted the funding for this year already. And so do you have any thoughts on what the projection will be for how much is spent in the department by the end of the year?

Yes. We are working on that right now. When it comes to the response to the cyber incident, we are still working on those numbers. We are you know willing to talk to you all offline about that but for right now we don't have that information ready to go public.

Okay thank you. Yeah I know we're getting bits and pieces of the proposed budget for next year, like through all these different presentations. And so if if as as you all are working on it, if you can explain like, hey, you know, we here's what we're thinking the end of the year will look like for OTC and where we may be using spending dollars from other departments from, that would be really helpful.

And Chair Kim, Councilmember Yang, I think on the slide you're referring to, the historical budget to actuals, the 11,000,000 $11,800,000 in that column is a projection based on spending trends. I don't know what the actual is right now. It's probably like 8,000,000 or $9,000,000

Okay.

Year to date.

Got you.

Thank you for clarifying. And their own internal projections and otherwise have indicated they're very close to that. Now cyber incident, you know, is still a big question mark as to what we reimbursed and that sort of thing. Yeah. They're projecting to come in very, very close to LinkedIn.

Oh, great.

Thank you. The general fund.

All right. Thank you, Brian.

Here's our FTE summary. This year we are being reduced or going into 2026, we are being reduced by one FTE. That continues a mostly downward trend from our peak at 2020 of 76 FTE. OTC currently has 10 unfilled positions. In June, after a targeted initiative to rethink our teams and how we work.

OTC presented our organizational plan to our partners and talent and equity resources. The plan focuses on three things. Streamlining technology services, embedding cyber security into daily operations, and aligning our workforce around specialized roles. Filling these critical positions is very important. These are key positions and we still have several critical leadership promotions that remain unfilled.

That means that modernization work may be slowed. We can't complete all of the essential security work we want to complete. And our existing staff who got us through this summer's emergency can't get a break. With continued reduction on our resources, it's imperative that we fill the right specialized roles that make the most of the staff we do have. These positions aren't discretionary. They were deliberately identified in June as essential to sustaining our progress. Leaving them unfilled means the city continues to carry risk. Prolongs recovery timelines and delays promised modernization benefits. And for another view of what that looks like for within OTC here is an updated org chart.

We've got a question from Councilmember Thank

you. I just was wondering, know, so what would you say to someone who's like, okay, listening to some of that feedback as well as the openings and then saying, okay, so then what's the barrier to filling them?

The barrier to filling the positions?

Like, you know, they're they're vital, they're part of the work, they're kind of a part of the planning in future years, including some of the things that you've kind of shared with us about the goals and where we would like to see where we'd like to see us go in 2026. So it's more simplistic of just like so then what is the plan to fill the positions?

What is the plan to fill the Yeah, absolutely. I believe council member Johnson, council members, chair Yang, we are currently in a budget and hiring freeze that started a few weeks ago. We are working with the administration with talent and equity resources to put forward a plan to continue this hiring. Like I said, we did bring this to talent and equity resources in June. We weren't able to make any progress and steps too many steps there in terms of getting those hires out there.

The RECs out there, I know we do have a couple of RECs out there that we're hoping to complete that were there before the hiring freeze. But it really is about working with our partners and talent and equity resources to prioritize these as key roles that we do need to fill and move forward. You know, like I said, one of our strategic projects is to revisit the job classifications that are twenty years old. These roles, the majority of them aren't really easy to fit in there because they are so much more advanced nuanced or different than than that. So, it really is about trying to work within a system that has been around for decades as technology evolves very quickly and trying to match our needs to this old system.

But again, we're gonna be focusing on working with our partners and talented equity resources as soon as we can get those recs out and get these vital critical positions hired.

Great. We have a follow-up question with council member Yang.

Thank you. I just want to make sure I'm on the same page with you. All of the positions under the unfilled positions list, you'd like to see them continue to next year's budget. Is that right?

Yes. Okay.

And I see two positions that have been unfilled since the 2024. So can you just explain a bit about what you're hoping to see with those two positions especially since they've been unfilled for almost a year now?

Absolutely. So we undertook with the lead under the leadership of Mary Glyke Matthews a review of our org chart of our work of our strategy to figure out how can we do more with less. How can we continue to modernize and to provide the daily support every day. And so that work started at the 2024 and went through the first quarter or two of this year. So we held a couple positions knowing that we wanted to make sure we were making the exact investment that we believe the city needs.

And so that's why we do have a couple that have vacancy dates that are older. I am by no means an expert in how we hire and how we track these things. One thing I do know also though is that in order to promote people in the city, you have to have an open position. And so, don't know if one of those positions could have potentially been held for promotion and then and then kind of moved forward. So, it it's it is complicated and I probably should just not say anything else because I don't know all the details.

But yes, they are very critical positions and we wanted to make sure that we were making the right steps that we needed for the city instead of fast tracking and just throwing people into a team where we knew we were doing really strategic modernization efforts across our teams.

Yeah.

Please. Yeah.

Okay, great. Thank you. This is just a general question and it would probably be something more for OFS and HR, but I just want to make sure that all of the unfilled positions that are being proposed to go into next year that there is an adjustment to the dollar amount for it because I'm sure that the hiring process is going to take a while and so there's probably going to be a delay and even when the hiring date is going to be. Are you all adjusting those numbers to make sure that they are accurately reflecting the amount that we plan to pay off for that position?

Go ahead.

Yeah, Chair Kim, Councilmember Yang, OTC currently has, I think, a $493,000 attrition adjustment in their personal budget. So that number hasn't I mean, we haven't cross checked that number with the hiring plan that we see here, but it, you know, it does allow for, you know, roughly well, almost half $1,000,000 of, attrition within their personal budget over a year. So it hasn't been planned as specifically as you're describing right here, but there is not money for 71 FTEs for an entire year in their personal budget. So it's kind of halfway of what you described.

Okay. Okay. I just want to reaffirm that I do feel it's really important for us to make sure that the proposed amounts or, you know, at least for the council before we vote on our final budget we really hone in on that and get and get the numbers to be accurate.

Yeah. Yep.

Yeah I feel like there's like when I look at this sheet, see like the vacancies. I think about the financial dollar amounts allocated for these budgets, then I kind of have a similar question to to council member Ying about, you know, like when I look at this slide and then assuming just even if we're being fair, like if we said 80,000 per position and there's 10 of them, that's like 800,000. To me, that's your cyber investments if you needed it, if you needed to use those at this time, or there's like something that can go towards the overall initiatives around the hiring freeze or around being able to compensate for some of the the pieces that we're trying to do right now actively at the city for the budget solve. So I guess I'm just wondering like how much are you how much of your budget that you have allocated right now for staffing positions or wages is not being utilized?

Thank you council member. Think I will defer to OFS, but essentially in light of the security incident, we are utilizing every penny. I'm assuming because any positions that are unfilled that that funding, I'm assuming, is going to be going toward filling the security incident.

Yeah. Chair Kim, Council Member Johnson. I don't have the numbers in front of me because they're dynamic and evolving, but I regularly check-in with OTC staff on personnel, like current year personnel projections. And in those projections, they account for vacancies. Like, for example, this physician has been vacant for three months.

We project two additional months of vacancies before we hire. We will save x number of dollars from this particular projected vacancy. So we, compare those numbers with the attrition budget that we already that is already built in. So, you know, don't quote me on this, but the last time I checked in on this, it was they were coming in pretty close. Like, the attrition budget was matching up pretty closely with their projected savings in fiscal I year 2020 haven't checked in on that in a few weeks. So, I mean, you know, those like I said, those things change regularly.

Yeah. Yeah. As a follow-up, I've been a helpful note and something that I'm really, really supportive of the budget to actual conversation with our city and how we do our budget process and even just being able to track some of the numbers that people are asking for and has come up in this budget cycle. I really hope that we can overall like as a city continue to strive towards that having an accurate understanding of the budget to actuals more than twice a year. And especially during the time when we should be talking about some of those pieces, not necessarily to the piece of the responding, but planning for one thing that was very clear to me in several of your presentations and just how passionate you are about planning for some of the cyber security issues that we are seeing and planning ahead and years in advance is planning for catastrophe and for the times in which something happens that we don't account for.

And it's something that I actually think that we could do as a city better in ensuring that we have it actually allocated in the budget that we've planned for. And so I am really supportive of thinking ahead of what that could look like in future years, especially going back to this aspect notion that you know when something happens or a city is experiencing a cyber attack, there are potential other things that could come up and then you know we don't want to speak about it, but it's something as a matter of you know not if but like when and a lot of these things that we're thinking about and have learned about in this experience. It makes me hesitant to then replicate you know a piece where when I'm looking at the vacancies list and even if they were to move within the hiring freeze into next year and if we take what we've learned from HR four to six months or so to even get some of these positions hired for, you're talking about a half a year price of cost savings in your budget for next year if we put all these in.

And so that is something that like from any department as well like something that I've just raised as like initial feedback for us all. But when I look at that and then I see some of the proposals for some of the things that are one time funding that are more immediate like things you could move on in the beginning of the year, I do wonder how important it might be right to fill that HR consultant role if you've operated without it for a year and survived a cyber attack and been able to do so much with your team capacity. It gives me pause I think and I think a reason to dig further but for the pieces of of OFS and I think some of the follow-up pieces when we have not just your department, there's other vacancies and other places that are unfilled. If realistically the timeline for those filling of positions especially with the current state of where we're at with the hiring freeze isn't until the middle of next year. I hope we are also taking that into account of our actual expenses as well.

From budgetary sense, it doesn't make sense to plan for that all year knowing that half of the year you might be behind in 10 positions when we may have a need to invest in things like cybersecurity on day one. So that's just something that I'm seeing just because I see the importance of all the things you're presenting and all the goals that we have. It's just one has a January 1 timeline of hitting the ground running and actively working on it now, while others, including several positions on this list, may not even get to it until June next year. So that's just something that I put forth for thought for my colleagues and also just like initial response that I had when I reviewed the list.

Thank you Councilmember Johnson. Council members, quick response to that. First, OTC every single year has to give back $400,000 of salary savings as attrition. Right? So I can't hire all 10 positions next year because I have to give that money back to the city to shore up the budget deficits, right?

That's an ongoing thing. Second, I think you've mentioned you know the $700,000 that we're getting could go towards staffing but again that's just one time, right? We need recurring staffing. Really quick, a really just quick story to tell you about a couple of the positions here. So, we have an identity and access management lead, a network administrator, and a server administrator. Oh, and a server storage and database lead. So, four really really key positions. A lot of the work across those four positions is being done by one person. A lot of it. Everybody has to you know, we're in public service.

We know when someone leaves, we have to take that on. But a lot of that is one person. And in the first couple of days of the security incident, when we were working seventeen to twenty hours a day fighting for our cities, data, our systems. One comment that came to me that I shared with my team in that room we were in way too way too long every day was, wow. Now, know what it's like to be Brian every single day.

Because Brian plays those four or five or 10 roles every single day in the city and that is not sustainable. We are we are seeing impacts of these long hours, of these the responsibility and duty that these people feel. And so, can't keep working at that pace. We can't dishonor our people by not filling these critical roles that are gonna keep us safe for years to come. And so, just wanted to share that because yes, we are doing all of all of the work and more without these positions.

But heck, if I could have saved one to two hours a day during those seventeen hours by not having to schedule my own meetings which I had to do. And that that and as you know if anyone who scheduled meetings before, it is a lot of work to get people in a room. And I had to do it on the fly with you know third party law firms and you know incident response planners. So, we are here because we love public service. We love this city.

But, we can do better and really you know shore up our security and provide better modernization if we do fill these positions. Thank you. Just a really quick view. I wanted to show you of what this looks like. And I wanted to just talk about the work that Mary Glick Matthews led. We're moving to something called a demand developed service model. And that's what this org chart shows. So, on the demand side, it's about engaging departments to understand business needs, gather requirements, and prioritize work that aligns with city goals. That's what you see with the executive team in the office of the CIO. We just have one FTE open right now.

We're able to work on that pretty well once we're you know full further on in our recovery. The develop is where our teams design build and test IT solutions. Everything from software development to systems integration. That is the team under enterprise applications and digital experiences. And then finally, service.

You know, we we ensure reliable day to day support, managing infrastructure, resolving security incidences, and keeping our systems running smoothly. And that's where we see the majority of our open FTEs. Four FTEs under infrastructure and security. Four under our service management that those are the people that help the city run every single day, answer questions, provide guidance. So, that's just a really brief picture to show where we are right now.

And just to go back to our strategic priorities. You know, in honoring our people, we are building up the teams that perform critical infrastructure and security work to deliver our services. To reduce that strain, you know, we really want to see these vacancies filled both on the infrastructure and security team and on the IT service management team. Reduced staffing, you know, really reduces our capacity to meet our strategic goals. Alright.

Now, get into the revenues. Here is our revenue overview for the general fund. As you the story has been over the past couple of years. Our cable TV franchise fee is decreasing annually as residents move away from cable TV service. Our council chamber technology and PEG grant funds.

Again, those PEG franchise fees continue to decrease as the cable subscriber ship goes down. And then, final revenue overview is really about the phone and employee computers that are internal charges from for OTC. And that covers our budget for this year and going into 2026. Other

questions for discussion? Any

additional questions from my colleagues? Great. So our budget officer, Kamud is taking notes for follow-up. So any additional questions that we ask later, they'll be sent to you through Kamud. Thank you so much for the time today. Extremely informative. Thank you for sticking to our format and just giving us a little grace on that one slide. But just really appreciate all the context and information you provided on OTC today. So thank you so much. And with that the Finance and Budget Committee of the Council is adjourned.