Budget Committee - Regular Meeting

We need to order. Roll call, please.

Centimeters Coleman. Here. Centimeters Johnson. Here. Commissioner Delworth. Committee Member Delworth.

Go here.

Committee Member Donnelly. Committee Member Lozner? Here. Committee Member McVeigh? He's going

to be fifteen minutes late.

And Chair Naker?

Here. Welcome, everyone. It has been a minute, so it's good to see everyone back together. Hope everyone's had a good start to spring. And we have two items on our agenda today. The first one is a midpoint update from Doctor. Britt about our current audit, the data practices study. And then discussion I'm really looking forward to because we have a robust set of ideas to choose from. Thank you to Mr. McVeigh and all of the engagement that he's been doing for that to just start thinking about our next topic. So we'll start though with Doctor. Britt. Welcome up.

Hello, hello, everybody. Glad to be here. Thank you for just a few minutes to be able to give you all an update. As I said to Nia earlier today, we're getting close. We're really, really close. So we are like deep, deep, deep in synthesis and stewing and simmering and analysis. So I'll do a little bit of a reminder. I'll do a run through of each one of our sort of data tracks, give you an update, and kinda give you a refreshed and slightly tuned timeline with some expectations in it about how we're gonna go back and forth in the month of June, which is which is kind of our plan. So,

here we go.

Let's do this. Yep. Mhmm. Mhmm. Here we go.

Oh. I

wanna get back.

Alright. Reminder, we're talking about effectiveness, efficiency, and compliance of the city's data practices request processes, tools, policy, user experience. We're focusing on, the use of the city's tool, GovQA, and just kind of alignment with the broader data practices act and just the framework that the state has and its expectations about how we manage public data requests. Requests. So, if you'll remember, we have kind of three data collection tracks.

The first one is this kind of document and system review. So, we have kind of got everything in hand and are in the midst of all of that synthesis. So, I'll just review all of that all of the website review, the portal review, the publicly available information, all of the training information, all of the aggregated sort of performance data, all of the record retention information, and then the model policies and templates from the state. So we've got all of that. We've had conversations with the state and then staff there about all of this.

So doing all of that kind of synthesis. And I think what Audrey and I have talked about is trying to keep that report reasonable in length and giving you a gigantic technical appendix, that is gonna have lots of pieces and parts and materials. We've also asked everybody we've interviewed if everything that they're sending us, if we can just make it available to you all. So it will include as much as we possibly can of other jurisdictions, information, pieces, parts, policies, processes, procedures, all that kind of stuff. So we're just gonna stack that into the technical appendix.

We'll include a summary of those documents inside the report itself, but we wanted to make sure we were giving it over to you in case the city wants to use it in any way to model anything off of for the for the future. Also, let's see. The League of Minnesota Cities is really excited about this report. And so I think there are gonna be some folks who we come back to you and say, would you be open to the report, being released to other folks who are really curious about this body of work? Because everybody we talked to was like, oh, we'd really love to see this if the city would be comfortable with that.

Know the transparency and accountability work of this body is top secret.

No. Yeah. So we were excited that people were excited because it is kind of a, as you all know, something that everybody's grappling with across the state. So, literature and benchmarking. So we've done all that peer review look. We've looked at the audits, the sort of precedent audits. We've looked at all the sort of the documentation, everything that is publicly available for all of those jurisdictions that you pointed us to. And so we're in the midst of kind of the synthesis for that or we've completed the synthesis around kind of the peer review literature and the great literature. And then for the stakeholder engagement, surveys are closed, and we had all but one of our department heads respond. And we did a lot of pestering.

We were pests. And then the portal survey is closed. We didn't get nearly the response that we expected, although I think maybe in hindsight, it was exactly the response we would have expected. So, we invited about 2,000 portal users, anybody in the state of Minnesota, or in that address that had the state of Minnesota. And we had 31 folks respond. So we will the our analysis team is in the middle of analyzing what that data looks like right now. So we'll do the closed ended, and then we did have some kind of, you know, fill in here if you had particular sort of suggestions for alterations to the portal site. So we'll share that back to you. Yep.

Mhmm. Miss Johnson.

Yeah? Thank you so much. And I I just wanted to be able to kinda right size that. So how do you feel about that total responses? And just I when I hear that, I just wanna know how to Yeah.

How to contextualize that. Mhmm. I mean, I think I will say broadly we are watching survey participation plummet nationwide. And it doesn't matter what we're taking a look at from topical vantage point, which is why I think we're moving toward much more engaged ways of actually collecting data and information. Spend a lot more time in community than we do doing surveys or surveys using kind of classic techniques.

Mhmm. Because, you know, folks, you know, we're doing frequently sort of a, you know, often a one time submission or even a repeated submission for the same kind of thing through the portal system. And those repeated submission folks have it down. You know, something that comes in and says, hey, give me some feedback about a process. I'm not surprised that they, you know, weren't interested in actually giving us any kind of response there. Sure. We did do a first round just for folks that were from Saint Paul. And since we didn't see, you know, sort of a big enough number, that's when we expanded it to the whole state, thinking, oh, that'll potentially get us more. So I can't say that I'm super shocked at what that number looks like. I'm glad it's not three.

You know? Sure. I I was hoping for 300, but, you know, I'm glad it's 30, and I think we'll kind of get from it what we can get from it. And then, again, Audrey's done a look at all of the other sort of portal access systems that the other jurisdictions have. So we at least have a little bit of that look for you all to to sort of do some reflection around. So Okay. Yeah. But it's not I think in what we're seeing from a survey response rate vantage point Sure. It's not wildly shocking. And I think folks have probably we have lots of contracts across the country, folks with unreasonable expectations for, can't you get a 35, 50% response rate?

Absolutely not. Unless you have an unbelievable amount of money to incentivize response. So Sure. Yeah. Alright. Thank you so much. Yeah. No. Great, great, great question. Yeah. Let's see. Interviews. We talked to everybody that you asked us to talk to except for, unfortunately, Ramsey County. And we became a woodpecker pest with Ramsey County. And John McCarthy became a woodpecker pest with Ramsey County. And so we finally stopped door knocking and we door knocked multiple staff. I think maybe they are just overwhelmed. So we were like, you know what? We're just gonna stop there. But we did talk to absolutely everybody else from a county and a city vantage point, which was fantastic.

We talked to the league. We talked to the state. So we had some great conversations. And at the league, we talked to both their sort of legal team and their data team. So it was a great set of conversations. And again, everybody is interested in seeing us once it's once it's available. So yeah.

Let's see.

Updated timeline. We are in the midst of this draft development. That arrow was supposed to

be a little farther over

to the right. Audrey and I talked this morning. June 5 is the day we should have a full draft report available to you all. We were hoping to get it by the end of May, but we literally just had our last jurisdiction call last week, and so we are a little bit farther. And our survey data is in the hand of our analysis team right now.

So we just aren't as far ahead as we had hoped. We thought we'd present at your June 16 meeting, if that's possible. We would love final edits from you all if we could get them since we do the kind of dance back and forth by the nineteenth so that we could then have the final final version to you all on the thirtieth with all of those edits kind of included inside of it. So so that's our sort of refreshed, refreshed, refreshed, refreshed timeline. And then the rest of this presentation is just kind of the reminder of the key questions, which you all have seen repeatedly. Nia?

I'm hoping that we also put this in the council's either committee meetings or policy committee meetings for the final report. Or in the past, we have presented to the full council during the council meeting. We don't have that listed here, but we can look at that.

Yeah. Why don't we'll connect offline about that and figure out when we might have a date or if it has to come to council, full council. Great. So it looks like we have some questions. Thank you so much for the presentation. Mr. Donnelley.

Okay. Two quick questions. Said one department didn't respond.

Mhmm. What department is that?

I can go find it. I only know by name.

Oh.

Yeah. Mhmm. Yep. I can tell you. Yeah. Mhmm. Yep. We'll find out. Mhmm. Mhmm.

The second thing in this

is I feel like the teacher is like, ah. Yeah. And we did do I will say, we are a Dillman Method house, so we do repeated reminders to folks. We do sort of everybody reminders, specific reminders to folks who didn't respond. I mean and we did multiple rounds of reminders. Yeah.

Got it. Okay. This is a little in the weeds, but it's under sort of your A5 best practices. I do a lot of data requests. And the city has a bad habit.

When you ask for data and they don't have it, they don't respond with no, or we don't capture that. And a non response is not a sufficient answer for a data practices request. Because saying we don't track that is an appropriate response that gives information. So I'd love to see sort of language, either in, like, findings or best practices, how the city plans to handle data practices requests when they don't capture the data that the person is asking for. And it leaves the person sort of unfulfilled when they make that request, and the city just ignores it. So, I think that would be helpful to have a little nugget in there in the report. Okay.

Yeah. Thank you.

And I will remind, the audit committee just to when we set the boundaries on the scope, so you will see the recommendations framed in, here's what we know from other jurisdictions. Here's things that we're observing there that might be helpful here. Here's things that we know from the literature that might be helpful here. The recommendations for this report will feel a little different than the recommendations you have seen before, in part because we were trying to be really careful about how we put the edges around the scope for this one. So you will see that language feel a little different.

It's not gonna be like, Nia and Greg, you need to be doing so and so. It's gonna, you know, feel more like, you know, the best practice suggests this kind of Right. You know, pattern.

Thank you. Thank you for the question. Questions? Other questions? Alright. So it sounds like we're gonna be on a tight timeline. We'll have the draft report on June 5. We will meet on June 16. You will want feedback on June 19. So I would highly recommend we all read the report on June 5 and come to the June 16 meeting, not seeing it for the first time, but prepared to talk about our thoughts on it so that we just have time to get our feedback back to you by the nineteenth. Ms. Johnson?

And then also just as a new commissioner here, I just was wondering what kind of feedback is helpful? Just so when we're looking at that, just what lens should we be taking? Just it'll be my first time reviewing some of the reports and just some of the work here. So just curious what is helpful feedback versus, you know, what maybe is great to hear but not necessarily is helpful?

Yeah, I mean I think we're particularly interested in feedback that is going to shape the report to be as useful to you as possible. So, you know, we need recommendations that are a little more pointed. You know, I need a little more detail in the data collection here. Can you pull this out of the technical appendix? You know, is there sort of something else that you learned from these particular jurisdictions?

Or is there something else from this, you know, peer review or great literature kind of, you know, sort of pushing us to dig a little bit more in a particular place? Or when I look at the questions, you know, I still feel like I need a deeper level answer here. I would say less so on the, you know, copy editing kinds of pieces like that. Sure. Because when you see the draft, we're gonna take your edits back and then we're gonna run it through a really deep version of copy editing on our side.

So we sort of do that kind of dance back and forth. But I would say edits that are about your use, because this is really gonna end up in Nia and Greg's hands. It's gonna end up in the legal team's hands to really make some decisions about, you know, do we wanna think differently about the tool that we're using? Do we wanna think differently about policies and practices we wanna put in place? Do we wanna think differently about staff training? Do we wanna think differently about, you know, other evolutions that we wanna make? So if you wanna point this team, you want this report to be the aid to help point this team. So I think it's kind of anything that would help shape that. If you want us to, you know, keep pulling out those things, right, sort of I'd say, you know, those kinds of things and it would be absolutely fabulous feedback.

Okay. Thank you.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yes. Miss Doroth. Thank you.

I know you said you tried real hard to get response from Ramsey County, but that's a big county. Are you concerned about that?

I mean, we John gave us multiple people. We called multiple people. We emailed multiple people. We talked to Hennepin. We talked to Duluth. We talked to Bloomington. We talked to Minneapolis. So, we've talked to a number of jurisdictions. So, I'm not as worried about not having Ramsey, especially since we have Hennepin and we have Minneapolis, you know, and we have, you know, a couple of other bigger, you know, cities. So yeah.

And I think also because talked to League of Minnesota cities and they have a sense for kind of what's happening across the state. We talked to the state. So I do feel like we've got a, you know, what is everybody up to kind of viewpoint. So I think I don't think we're feeling like we haven't talked to enough other kind of communities about this. And I think John was probably as frustrated as we were. So and that that's not a judgment. I mean, I think we Ramsey is in staff rebuild, hiring. You know, they are in an evolution period right now, and I think that's fantastic. So an opportunity for them. And, you know, I think if you're open to kind of sharing, I do think one of the things we say back to them is, hey, here's the report.

Even though we didn't hear from you Yeah. We look forward to that future partnership that you're going to have with the city of St. Paul. Just as a way to broker some

statement as to how they're handling. Yeah. Mhmm. Right. Mhmm.

We should do a data request to get the answers that we asked. Okay. I only partly jest. That is super frustrating. Other questions or comments? Right. I think our appetites are sufficiently wetted for the final report. So thank you so much, Doctor. Britt. And oh, one just slight point of order. We do have a new city clerk since you began this process. Yay. And I think she, Nicole Tillender, should definitely see a draft of this as well because as you as we think about who is going to want to make the most use of this, it's definitely going to be our the people on the clerk's side, mayor's office. So Okay. Awesome.

She's yeah. Oh, yeah. I'll follow-up with you

on that.

Okay. Yeah. Sounds good. Fantastic.

Alright. Thank you so much. We will see you next month.

Alright. Sounds good. Thank you.

And hear from you in the meantime. Yes. Thank you. Alright. So we are gonna pivot, and I'm gonna look to Ms. Vang and Ms. Romero to take close notes of the next conversation because we're going to definitely need to make sure we capture what I think is going to be a very robust discussion. And I want to make sure we know where we're landing. So we need to start thinking about our topic for the next audit. What we are hoping to do is to actually land on two topics so that we are not constantly in a cycle of audit topic selection.

So that we have kind of our next year, even though we're in May, almost June, our next twelve months worth of auditing. If we want to land on two, I think we are hoping to eventually send three possibilities to the city council, of which they would choose two. So we would have kind of three recommended topics, and they would choose their two favorite. And then we can decide if we want to land on three topics to recommend, how many topics do we want to put through our risk analysis? So essentially what we're doing now is we're going to have a very high level conversation about the topics we have in front of us.

Included in that conversation will be, are these all the topics we should consider? Or do we want to try to cast a nut to get more topics in this list? If we're ready, we will if we can, if we have consensus, try to get down to a certain number of topics that seem to have interest. And we don't want to have an inordinate number of those because those would be the topics that we've then put through this risk analysis. And then we would come back and look at the risk analysis of those and figure out which three we want to recommend to move forward. So that's everything I'm hoping we can do. The memo that we have in front of us, let me just Okay. So the memo is from Mr. McVeigh. And he did a ton of work on this.

And he is coming. And he will be able speak to it in more detail. He was substitute teaching all day. And the school had like a scheduling snafu. And so had to come late. But basically summarizing not only what we heard back from people who completed our survey, but also all of the different board members and staff and different district councils that he's been talking to over time. So this is sort of the most comprehensive list I think we have right now. And what I'm hoping we can do is, again, talk in high level about what stood out to you from this. Also talk about whether or not you think we need to try to cast another net for topics, and then see where we land. Mr.

Donovan. Just a quick clarifying question. Are you saying that we would do two audits in a twelve month period? Yes. I love that idea. Yep. And you could sort of make the scope a little tighter probably on some of the topics?

Yep. And we have been doing two ish a year.

Okay.

We have a $50,000 budget and Wilder has generally been able to do two $25,000 audits. We If ever had like a massive one, we probably wouldn't have the budget

to But do yeah. Cool. Like it.

But what we haven't ever done is chosen two at once. So we've kind of been in a constant choosing cycle. Other kind of background questions before we start? Because I recognize that three people are totally new to this process. And I don't want to assume any prior knowledge. Okay. Well, so with that, I hope folks have had some time to look at this in advance. There isn't a great way to present it because it's a list of topics. So I guess I would just look to the group to see what topics are of the greatest interest based on what you saw or general thoughts about what's in front of us.

Once can I make one comment? Yes. I think what I would look at like, if you look at it like how OLA picks their topics, they have categories. And so there's like things they have to do by statute.

Mhmm.

And then things they're kind of interested in that fit. My comment would be maybe next time we can work on sort of categorizing some of these because some of these are good things to talk about, but not a fit for an audit. And I think this list could be paired down dramatically. And the questions and the the criteria that you need to fit an audit, I think, is missing here. Mhmm. So we can start big and whittle down, but I would really, really highly suggest that we get really detailed into the scope, the question more so than what topic because you need a good fit to have a good audit.

Mhmm. I couldn't agree more. And I think one of the downsides of the gathering process that we have is it's very one of the plus sides and the downsides is it's very community driven. And explaining in any setting, in any amount of time to community members what an audit is or isn't and what question is and isn't appropriate for an audit is something we haven't yet cracked the nut on. So I think you're right. You're 100% right. What we're seeing here is sort of things that people are generally interested in or have questions about, many of which don't end up lending themselves to being a real audit topic.

Can I give one example of what would Please? Be Okay. So like you'd have a big topic of potholes, but the audit would be when I as a resident have to notify the city of a pothole, I submit an email. Now your audit would actually be that process of the email submission process, and that's like what you would audit. And it's a great thing to audit because everyone hates potholes and they have a bunch of them and there's clear anyway, so like that's sort of how you take these big things and sort of get it down into this. So, like, the intake submission process for potholes would be, like, a good fit audit topic. Does that make sense?

Yep.

Yeah. 100%. Okay. Which I also think would be a good topic we wanted to think about something.

I saw Ms. Yang and then I saw Ms. Johnson. Yeah. Did you want to clarify something? Sorry.

For Johnson. But I just wanted to indicate that this is the first kind of gathering of all survey responses and all community engagement. So it's pretty long. It can feel overwhelming. But the risk analysis that Chair Nager mentioned earlier is what we will go through to identify a topic that meets our criteria for doing a study. So that's one of the reasons why we do this because we don't want to just ignore the responses that came in. And that's why Mr. Mubay spent quite a bit of time kind of categorizing them into different topic areas, if that's helpful.

Ms. Jonathan? And just a procedural point, do we typically just bring up topics that we saw upon review that we thought were of interest or just is that what we're okay.

Yeah. I'm looking to folks to say what in here was of interest to you as you went through it and or if there are things that you're interested in. I mean, we all have our own awareness, knowledge of things in the city. We've all driven over some potholes recently, I'm sure. We can bring those into we don't have to be limited to this.

So I guess as a follow-up sorry. As a follow-up, I was just kind of there's a few there was a few things that as I was going through, I was like, okay. Well, maybe how it's written here could be tweaked a little when it comes to it being a credible, audit topic, but had the potential to be something that I think we should that we could look at. There was a piece on here about district councils, and that actually caught my attention as well in part because of a lot of the conversations that I have come up around district councils, including the way that it's funded. We've made some changes internally, but also just the structure. We have 17 district councils

in the

city. That number and the overall effectiveness and responsiveness that we've recently gotten and received data regarding updates in population, population size, the staffing makeup of them, some district councils having executive directors, some not. Just the overall piece of it, wasn't sure where I know that it was listed as one of the topics, maybe like district council reform, but I think just kind of in a piece, could it essentially be a topic of something that the city has funded for many, many years, which might be a tool? I think one of the other topics that I thought timely in what we've already been doing surrounds the business licensing topic. And I think just like the process and the procedure overall of some of our programs within the Department of Safety Inspections.

So like I thought six and seven were of interest, like the the building code functions and the business licensing only because of the I saw an avenue for maybe going through that process through DSI and seeing what that looked like. I know on the East Side, we have there was interest in the lead line replacements. And I think it's in part really trying to understand, like, where the project is, how effective it's been, the what what it would be needed to actually accomplish all of the pieces. And I just noted that several east side district councils have requested that, so I thought I would bring that up as well. And I I have more, but I'll stop there.

Those were, like, three initially that had jumped out at me of potential things that could could be spaces. Oh, and then the opioid settlement funds. But I wasn't sure what would be that one, I think, eventually will be an important piece, but I just don't know. That's one that I feel like I think people are more so interested in what will come of those versus maybe an audit of them currently because there isn't a lot of uses. But I think one of the pieces that could be looked at is our opioid response thus far in the city.

And so there's the funds itself that we've received, but we've been responding to opioid we've had an opioid response now for years. And I think just being able to look at just the overall departments that are involved in that could warrant a response beyond just looking at the funding we recently received. And so when I read the kind of write up on that, I was like, possibly. Right? But, like, also, there's been a deeper overall dive in the response at the city to opioids.

Multiple departments would be involved in that. So really just understanding what the city would be doing there and how effective it is, what things were working. It kind of goes back to when we had, you know, we had different presentations from the police department and from fire about their responses and the either the decrease or increase. So I'll step back. But, yeah, those are

my initial ones. Thank you so much, miss Johnson. I some mister Lester and

So, Chair Naker, just maybe for the benefit of the people that are new, you mentioned the risk assessment that it sounds like what we're doing this time is kind of narrowing down the list. And then we put it through a second process, the risk assessment, which I think gets to some of the concerns expressed about would this be a good audit? Department be responsive potentially? Would we see moving of the needle? Those type, I'm just trying to recall the elements of the risk assessment off the top of my head.

I can't remember them all, but I think that's part of what it gets to. So if you see a topic area, I like that there's kind of the proposed scope. But to your point, Dylan, there's not kind of the audit objectives laid out of like what questions are we trying to answer. I think that would be great. But this is amazing to have 50 topics. You know, this is I think we're continuously improving like this since my time on this committee, think has been the most kind of robust list we've probably had to choose from. So it's a good start.

Thank you. Yeah.

Miss Coleman.

Thank you. A couple of thoughts. One is just sort of things that I'm considering when choosing a topic. One, it's obviously incredible to have this list. And I know I haven't been in the room for a lot of these conversations. A lot of them are coming out of district council board meetings, which I think is really helpful. But also trying to look at these with an eye to what else are we hearing about from residents, recognizing that district councils aren't necessarily reflective of the entire community all the time? So that's one thing that I was looking for as I first went through this list sort of impact. What are are topics that have citywide impact or have a significant impact on either a critical mass of residents or really our ability to operate our city in a major way. So that's one factor for me.

And obviously, what makes good audit. And there's one other piece that I wanted to mention, which of course I'm now blinking on. Oh, just what information might be harder to get through other avenues? I think some of the topics that are raised in here are really, really important to have public transparency around. And there might be other venues to get there.

I think some of these cover information or topics that can be really hard to get at for the public. And that to me could make them a potentially very good topic for an audit where it allows us to dig in a little bit deeper than we can in other forums. So those are a couple of things that I had in mind. That said, I share Councilmember Johnson six and seven are just obviously things that we hear about all the time. Business licensing and kind of building code DSI cannot overstate how often that comes up.

So both of those are of particular interest to me. Number 14, public works and snow removal. I imagine others hear about this also, but just seems like sort of when we're talking about core city services, is like potholes, a very good and relevant one. And then the last two that I had marked down were 41, which is oh, TIFF, obviously, hear about that a ton. I think that there I I will say that's one where it feels like there are potentially other ways of having the conversation. But to get into the real leads, I think that an audit could make sense there. And then the final one that I had marked was 46, which is pedestrian safety.

Thank you, Ms. Coleman. I want to make sure to pause here and acknowledge that the author of this entire report is in front of us, Mr. McVeigh. Thank you so much for your incredible work on this coming from a busy day teaching. We've just started to dive in. One of the things we were talking about a little bit is that these are not yet audit topics. They are much higher level than that, of course you know. And we were kind of talking about how to get from the level of topic that community members, district council members might suggest down to the level of specificity and objectives that we need for audit. And then we started talking about what was interesting to us here.

So I don't know if you want to say anything about this or about that question or about anything related to this, but I want to give you the floor since this is really your work product and we're very grateful.

Happy to do it. I am a servant of the taxpayer at this point. All I have in terms of commentary is that what I kept hearing over and over again from residents at these meetings with our district councils and also from folks that reaching out to me outside district council context has been really focusing on core service delivery as a focus for any audit topics that we may ultimately fine comb, maybe try to narrow down and make them more usable for. Us. Obviously, some of them are quite broad, and it was really hard actually translating some of the issues that were brought to us during our town halls and translating into something that is a usable product that we can then act on through some audit engagement with the help of our consultants.

Because people have a lot of really great ideas, I will say that as well. But my focus really I would implore the committee to really look at core services and really areas where we have really high risk. And what I mean by that is where there are ongoing issues that we have as a city that relate to our responsibilities under either city ordinance or state statute. And for certain programs, maybe even federal law, that's getting a little messy right now. There's some ongoing changes in terms of policy from the federal government.

So public safety, public works, public health, things of that nature, that's what I would suggest that the committee consider when it's delivering its topics. But the beauty of all this is that we are an independent body, so we can make recommendations to the full council and act on them as we so please. So that's all I have to add, Madam Chair.

Thanks so much, Mr. McKay. Other topics that came up that were of interest besides what have been shared or echoing things that have been shared.

What do you think, council member Nayker? You didn't wait in yet.

I it's funny. I had a lot of the same topics as my colleagues, which is not surprising. So, I also had business licensing and business code functions. I wrote instead of snow plowing, I had street maintenance activities. Lately, have been really fixated not just on potholes, but on the work that we do or don't do, usually don't do on maintaining our infrastructure investments that we've made recently.

So we talk a lot about, like, our streets are falling apart because they have generations of deferred maintenance. But then we go in and we reconstruct a street in our lifetimes, in my time on the council. And then that little scene where the asphalt just overlaps and isn't even really a scene at first, The next season is like, oh, or a crack. And then the next season is like a crack. And now, like, on Wabashaw, which was done nine years ago, is a crevice. And but for a little bit of, like, coating or filling earlier on, like, that fully reconstructed street could still look like a brand new street. And it is a brand new street in terms of street life, but it's falling apart because of maintenance. So anyway, that's more editorialism than needed. I put district council reform as well. I put college savings accounts.

I know Mr. Donnelly has decided recently that maybe it's not worth auditing that. And this is a good example where I think maybe we should decide. It might be the problem with some of the program programs is that they're very juicy and auditable. They're not basic services. So we may want to just decide that we're not going to even audit the juicy pilot programs because we really want to focus on the core services. But I put TIF as well. And those were mine.

Ms. Johnson? I guess just to weigh in on the pieces around the programs that are juicy, I also think whether or not they're funded through taxpayer dollars matter in my level of prioritization. I think we have different grant funded opportunities. And the distinction with some of the things in the list is that some are funded by external resources. Others are funded with city tax dollars. And so just when I thought about that, when, you know, when I thought about the college savings savings accounts, that is where I landed. I'm just like, is this funded the general fund? Is this funded through taxpayer dollars? And maybe somewhere along the lines, could probably make the make the argument that if it's coming from the government in one, two, shape, or form, there might be some where that we're paying for it.

Right? But I think on the local level, there's just certain things that I can you know, as a council member, there are certain things that when it's funded either through the general fund or through our own funding from our levy, we have a little bit more the ability to react and respond to depending on what the findings of the report are. If you do the audit with the, you know, the college savings account, I'm not sure what we would change on our end to, like, address that versus, like, six and seven or even just throughout. I also was looking for a way that the city could effectively respond to the findings. So that's just I'm not sure what the outcomes would be of the college savings accounts versus whether or not we do them, but the funding source was something that ultimately didn't lead to me putting on my short list.

Mhmm. Okay.

Miss Dulworth? So I so I also I guess I had the college savings account only because I know that when we had the mayor here, that was something that she was really interested in. And so, you know, I think we also have to listen to, you know, where some of the questions are coming from. Now, whether or not it's audible, I we'd have to put it through kind of a test to see. Though I did have I also had the six and seven, the business licensing and the building code.

But, I was looking at a lot of these more on a financial risk, which is tends to what I my lens. So, some of these I went over just because they were not they didn't appear to have a financial risk.

Mr. Donnelly. Okay.

Quickly at the college savings accounts. There's a big loud mouth who made a big stink that this program wasn't living up to the standards that was me. And the truth is, I help eSiders everyday get a job and I haven't heard one person talk about CSAs, but they do talk about jobs and bills and the city does spend a lot of money in these programs. Millions and millions and millions of dollars and it's not helping the ciders. And I think someone needs to stand up and say, if we're not doing these things well, we shouldn't be doing it.

That was my point. Potholes quickly, you don't have to pick it, but my kids day cares in your ward. It's Lexington and Thomas and it's a cool place. The entire alley is full of potholes and I'd email the city. And first of all, emailing a city is 2005 It is.

I'm not being rude but that's like watching a DVD for a movie. You you can use Claude today and get a new system up in a week. And so we have 2005 and when I emailed the city, they were polite but they said we don't prioritize non non main roads. And so we so day cares with parents and children and grandparents and educators in one of the poorest parts of our city, their potholes aren't prioritized and it's a small childcare business. That's a perfect topic for an audit.

That's saying we're not meeting the needs of children and our small businesses and our municipal services are twenty years behind where they need to be. And it would be a pretty easy audit to be able to sort of say here are the findings of best practices and municipalities that are doing this differently. Here are the resources we would need to make sure that our child cares don't have huge holes in their in their front lots.

Mhmm.

That's where I sort of came at potholes. Mhmm. And that's why with CSA, I let it go because the data is there. It's whether the city wants to take it and act on it or not. But that's where I was at on that.

So just to clarify, Donnelly, I first, for college savings accounts, are you saying it doesn't really need an audit because the data is already Great. Okay. Thank you. And by the way, I we did reach out to the mayor's office to try to get any further topics that came to her mind after she was with us, and we didn't hear anything back. But I will say just from how she has generally been spending her time and how she's been speaking, I know that being open for business is something that is very important to her.

So it sounds like a lot of us are kind of zeroing in on this. And core city services in general. So nothing we've said yet has struck me as something that would be a nonstarter for her. I also we used to have this criterion in our risk analysis that had to do with change recently. So if something had just changed or if something was being studied so for example, snow removal, we have a pilot program right now for, like, alternate side of parking.

We didn't wanna audit something that was maybe about to be changed or had just been changed. I still think that's probably true. But I think there is an opportunity when there is a certain kind of change, specifically when a new director is being appointed of a department, which is happening a lot right now, especially, like, for example, in DSI. There's a new director coming in, where an audit might actually be even more welcome and more germane than telling someone who's been doing it for a long time, like, you haven't been doing this, right, we would recommend. And, of course, we want all of our existing department directors and staff to know that this is always nonjudgmental, noncritical, and supportive or critical, but supportively critical.

But I don't know. Sometimes when a new person comes in, it just is received in a different way and might be valued in a different way. So that might be something we want to keep in mind as we choose a topic in a department that it relates to as well. I am hearing a lot of so far, what I have heard is business licensing four times, business code functions four times, Street maintenance activities, if you include potholes twice. District council reform twice. College savings accounts twice. NTIF twice. Opioid settlement dollars once, snow removal once, and pedestrian safety once. But I have not heard everybody's interests yet. So anyone who didn't share their interest? Mr. Laston.

Yeah, Chair Nieker, so I can talk through kind of so I chose nine different ones. Don't know if you want to hear all nine. We do. Absolutely. Well, some comments.

So my thinking, I'm kind of interested in so in how certain monies have been spent. So like the 1% sales tax, but I'm also thinking like, is this the best way, is the audit the best way to get at the information? I don't know like is there something already underway to share? Oh, this is how we spent this new 1% tax or would an audit be welcome that that's not otherwise going to happen. So that was on my mind.

I like looking at, okay, this is this new taxes. Is it meeting the goals of why we wanted to add it in the first place? The opioid settlement funds, how are those funds being used? Just from my experience in my job, I've seen that it's kind of difficult because you don't know when the money is coming in. And so being able to plan, my understanding is that the settlement is coming over a long period of time, but it's when the plaintiffs or no, the defendants want to pay it.

So you're not getting it maybe on a regular basis. It's kind of when works for them to pay the money and so it can be hard to plan and do programming. Kind of it could benefit from looking at that, like how is that being handled? And is it an effective use of the money? I did like the college bound Saint Paul idea because it's partnering with the mayor.

But if there is data that already exists, it makes sense looking at that and seeing would this audit look for something that doesn't, you know, add to data that doesn't already exist or would it be repeating that same thing? But I did choose so to go through kind of my list. Number one, arts programs to see how how is that money being divided or being spent? Park infrastructure improvements, so that's an example of the the 1% taxes kind of is that meeting the goals, the youth sports programs. Number 11, the lead line replacement.

Number 12, Skyways. 14, the streets and highways that's been mentioned. So I guess the pothole one, snow removal. Then came number 21. What was that one?

The district council reform. So I live in the Lexington Hamlin neighborhood, and that's been an issue for us. You know, how do we work with Union Park? Because I guess Lexington Hamlin from my understanding is a holdover from the previous system when there were more numerous entities and then Union Park came along and it's never really gelled. I don't think, you know. So looking at it, think makes sense. 25, that's the college savings one. And then the last one was 30, the opioid settlement.

Okay, great. I think the only person we haven't heard from is Mr. McVeigh in terms of specific topics.

To be honest, I don't have very strong feelings towards any one topic. I will say that meeting with our district councils, there was they're gonna have some bias towards a little bit, but there was a considerable amount of mention regarding district council operations and if whether the current system as designed is actually working very well or if it needs to be improved. What also came up a lot, like every single meeting, was anything related to function of public works, any activity performed by public works, but especially with streets. I think that's really on people's minds just because of our deferred maintenance that we've been slowly chipping away at, but it's still a significant issue. Cybersecurity was another one that was mentioned periodically.

And

really getting at core services, a lot of folks are just really wanting the we'd love to see the audit committee making sure that we are looking at things, whether it's public safety or parks and rec or anything else of that nature. I mean, we do a lot as a city that does meet that standard of core service delivery, and we're cash strapped as well. And so looking at where we can really provide value for taxpayer money and where things are going well, where they aren't, and try to make recommendations to administration. I think that's important. But in terms of actual specific topics, I'm not really feeling strongly one way or another.

I felt my role throughout this process was really facilitating the public and bringing all this information to the committee, so that way we could all have a discussion and then make decisions based off of that. So I will respect the decision that is made by the committee with what topics we do make. I will add, though, that I think the sheer quantity of topics that we have received this year, there is a lot of people that are learning about what we do for the very first time in conversations with our district councils and with the presidents that did come to our meetings. And they're really interested in the work that we do. They want us to see us doing more of it.

And I think in the long term, I think the work that Wilder, what they do for us, is wonderful. And I think we're going to have a relationship with them for a very long time. But I do think that in the foreseeable future, we need to bring staff to this committee and actually have an office that reports the council through this committee to do our work over time because there is a sheer amount of clearly, there's a lot of interest in terms of performance auditing. And we don't have the capacity as a city for that compared to peers of similar cities at our size or even over Minneapolis. And there's also a lot of issues that have come to my attention attending district councils that I we don't have the capacity currently to address because they relate to matters that concern potential violations of state statute regarding city operations that I think we'll need to have a discussion about.

I'm not sure if this is the forum to have that discussion and then bring these matters to the attention of the state auditor's office. But these are matters that we'll need to be addressing at some point as well. So that is my rant.

Not at all. Can I just ask one clarifying question when you said that they would be you said something about how district councils would feel about the topic of council reform being chosen? What did you say about that? That they would be

They have a natural inclination towards that because they're

an But interested they have an inclination toward that being audited? Yes. As opposed to an aversion to that? Okay. Yeah. Because they can go either way.

There are overwhelming support. All of the district councils you have listed there that actually supported that, that just came up from them over and over again, like from district board members. And it was a consensus. I was like, Okay, I'll bring that to the attention of the committee.

Thank you. Ms. Coleman.

Thank you. Two thoughts. The first is just based on this conversation, thinking about the mayor's interest, thinking about interest on this table, thinking about core services, and also thinking about how many of the topics come back to the fact that the city needs to be able that we don't have enough money to do all the things that we want to do. I mean, right? Like, when we're thinking about public works, works, part of the problem is that our public works budget is not small.

There is not large enough for a city of this size. So I'm really thinking about it. I'm saying that I'm thinking about a lot of things, but I am thinking about a lot of things. Thinking about how we have two audits coming up in the next year. I would put in a plug for doing one of those on a topic that is about both core services and it relates to tax base growth. I think that six feels like a really obvious answer there. And again, it seems like that was a shared topic of interest. That's business licensing, really thinking about making it easier to do business in the city. I think that that has so many benefits, like an alignment between the council and the mayor's office. So it just seems like that could be very worthwhile.

And if we did that, then I would do a strong plug for the second audit in this twelve month cycle to be something that really looks at how our service is being delivered to the residents currently. Even though we all know business licensing is very important, for the average person in the city of St. Paul, that is not something that they are doing on a daily basis. But they are interacting with our public works department. They are interacting with parks. They are interacting with a whole host of our other departments. So I don't have strong feelings about what that second one would be. But that could be one way for us to think about how to make this decision.

Thanks, Ms. Coleman. That's really interesting. So one that's more about a long term solution to the ultimate problem of not having enough tax base and enough revenue, and then another one about what we would do if we potentially Yes. Had Okay. Very interesting. Well, with five minutes left, I think I want to identify the set of topics that seem like they are rising to the top. And my suggestion would be that if we can agree on five to six of these, that we would designate a subcommittee. And I would definitely recommend Ms. Dilworth and Mr.

Lostutter, because they did it last time and they were fantastic. And maybe Mr. McAfee anybody can volunteer to be part of this. Sorry. But to take those broad topics, draft specific get them into sort of auditable form in terms of specific questions, specific outcomes that we might ask for from an audit, and then to do the risk analysis on those which we would then review when we next come back together.

And if that seems like too tall of an order for June, we could wait until July, especially because in June, we're gonna be receiving that full report from Wilder, which I expect will take our whole time together. So that would be so keep that in mind as my, like, proposal for what we do with this. But it sounds like what's rising to the top is and we have to decide if these are the same or different. But business licensing and business code functions as two separate things are both getting a lot of attention. Street maintenance activities and potholes, district council reform, and college savings accounts are sort of the top vote getters, if you will.

And

that's five topics and could probably be broken up into, like, maybe more than that specific questions.

I imagine we'll have many research questions that can be part of any of those topics. I mean, our data practices audit currently, I think don't we have 12 research questions for that topic? Miss Vang, maybe you can correct me on that. I don't recall off the top of my head.

I'm trying to be cool too.

It's a lot, isn't it?

Yeah. I would take them too.

Oh, they're in the PowerPoint. There's like

Yeah. 20. I could probably look at

that too. That would

make good sense. My bad.

Could you list those again, the five?

Yep. I got business licensing. Business code functions. Yep. Street maintenance activities slash potholes. It goes in there, but potholes was called that specifically by a certain cranky constituent. District council reform.

Street maintenance. Yes. You drop off. I thought I heard.

Street maintenance and potholes. Kind of lumping them together. Yep. District council reform and college savings accounts. College savings. I would be I was one of the votes for college savings accounts that brings it up to worthy status. I am somewhat compelled by what Mr. Donnelly is pointing out about the fact that this may just be a situation where we I mean, sometimes we have the data and an audit is what's needed to, like, buttress the data and build the case for or against something. And currently, the data we have well, I know you could cite your sources is from your email. So it's possible that we still want to put more of a case behind that.

But I'm also swayed by the argument that this may be something that it's just it's not working. We could easily see that. We don't need to audit it to see that. And then it's just a matter of political will as to whether or not we continue a program.

Madam chair. Mister McVeigh. How many audits are we doing for 2026 since we're at this we're basically be starting in June or July, most likely, with the next topic?

Yep. Sorry. So just to back up, we want to choose two. They will not be completed in 2026, but we want to choose sort of a twelve month's worth of audits, even though that will take us into next year.

Is it possible that we could fit a third into this cohort, do you think, because of the fact that we are starting later this year? I'm not sure where we are with our line item appropriation for the audit committee's program budget, but Or is that not

We'll we'll likely only have 50,000 for next year as well Okay. Is my guess. We're looking at a significant budget gap, as I'm sure you can anticipate. I Back to the need to study business licensing. No, I'm just kidding. Yes, we'll probably not have enough for

So you don't think that whatever we have unencumbered for this year will not carry over into next year that we could still use?

It will carry over into next year. I think we're planning to still do an audit this year and then another audit this year and then another audit in the beginning of twenty twenty.

So technically three is what I'm hearing.

Three, but In

the next eighteen months?

In the next eighteen months.

Yes. Basically. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Are you saying, oh, maybe we choose three that gets us through the end of twenty seven? We could. Okay. I'm open to that as well. It would be nice to get on an actual calendar schedule where we're

We will get

there. We have the two at the beginning of every year. Why don't we do this, though? Because we can always land we can choose how many we want to land on afterwards. But if folks are okay with those five that I mentioned, being the narrowed down group that then get the specific questions drafted and the risk analysis done, and we have a rubric for risk analysis that we can send out so everyone knows what we are using. And then we look at that in July and make a decision about some number that we want to send on to the city council recommended. Does that sound like a good process? I'm seeing heads nodding. Miss Johnson?

I have a question about just not to put a wrench. Can you remind me again how much college savings had?

How many votes? Yeah. Three.

And then and Tiff Two.

Okay. Tax increment financing does have a significant impact on the city's tax base. So it may be worthwhile considering that as well.

If I rescinded my vote for college savings, then TIF and college savings accounts would be tied.

I think so I mean, here's what I will say is I feel like there's other way there's a lot of different avenues for the TIF piece, but I I did have that one on my like lower priority list of like, but it made the list over college savings accounts. Oh. But you know.

Can

we send that one as well for consideration?

I don't see why not. Are people?

For is that one more time?

Adding tax and current financing as a topic to evaluate.

There's so many rigorous processes around tax and current financing already existing. You do all this analysis to say if not for this, does this exist all the time. And so it's like, we can continue the conversation, but it's there's not an absence of process there and there's not an absence of data in the TIFF and it's very subtractive at the end of the day whether you think it makes sense or not. So I would say like, it for me it'd be like hard to understand what you're really gonna audit. That's gonna have sort of a clear endpoint particularly when you have so much data on the financial side that already shows it.

And at the end of the day, if you wanna do tip for the grand in Victoria project or not, it comes down to whether you think it's a good idea d or not in the space. So I don't know. I just don't see TIFF as like an audible topic, but that's up to the team.

And I guess as a I will just share that. A lot of our TIFF analysis as a process happens internally as well. And while there is a criteria, there is a process when it is internal amongst staff, including internal amongst committees, internal amongst review. I think there's been a lot of public interest just in that overall process. And so I also see the audit looking at how we are currently handling our own TIF financing as a city.

But I think when you're looking at that, that's at least how I envisioned it, which involves a lot of cooperation with our planning and economic development department. But I think so much of our current process is maybe to the outs maybe to an external audience, could be difficult to really comprehend despite multiple every year, multiple presentations with the Housing and Redevelopment Authority, multiple different avenues in which we share that information. There could be elements of it that are just both process and effectiveness and how we review it. And if we have appropriate staffing forward, if we have also just the review process that's keeping up with what the rest rest of of, our communities in the region are doing as well. St.

Paul is always compliant in the state piece, so we won't be looking at where we should be. That's something that we've continued to maintain. But when you look at it region wide, there are some differences that may be notable. But I just know that also in community, there's been a lot of conversations surrounding TIF. And so this body always brings in a third party to look at something.

And so there might be a credible non it's not the city just doing it. It's not an external group of folks just doing it. It's something that we would solicit. But I hear you on that as far as process and procedures. But that's why it rose kind of on my list, because I think it's different when the city says that versus when there is an audit that actually goes through and affirms the process and procedures that we currently use and walks that through the public eye.

It just has a different lens. And some of the pieces I also think are really important for folks to understand that when they look at it, because not everyone knows the complexities of TIF. And the average person just truly may not talk about it as much, but this big daunting thing that people see, millions going through a project not fully understanding the why. So that's something that for me was more like, could be educational, could be helpful for but definitely something that, again, didn't rise to the top of my list, but just definitely made it to, the top, you know, six, but didn't rise to be notable because I think there are other places that we could directly influence. So given that we're

five minutes over, and I really appreciate this exchange, I think what I'm going to recommend is that we do stick to the original five. We can only choose two or three, and we don't lose the other topics. We just can also use look at them at another time. I also think there's a question in my mind as to whether Wilder is an amazing partner. But they've been clear that there might be some topics that are extremely specialized that they would not be able to handle on their own and would need outside help.

And I think TIFF might actually be one of those, so if we were to do it well. So I think for now, I would suggest let's look at the top five. I'm going to make an ask that folks who are willing to be part of a smaller subset of people to do the subcommittee work, let Mia know of your interest either right now as you leave or by the end of the week so that we can get that group together. And then we will be back in June for the final report and in July for this more detailed analysis. Is there anything else folks feel like has to happen between now and July to be able to move forward here?

I just have a logistical question.

Ms. Soarth.

Because I know you said, you know, our budget is 50,000. Is it is the contract with Wilder so like they don't go over 25,000 per so like this one is gone longer. Is it a fixed price?

It's while they're bills me based on their hours and staff involvement, so it's not always going to be 25 ks per study. It could be 25 or 30. So, their first study, they didn't use the whole 25 ks, so they were able we were able to use the remainder, which is about 30 ks, to finish up. And so, our $50,000 if we go beyond, which we are now going beyond our timeline, could hit into the 2026, like, 50 ks budget for 20 our study this year. So, we could run with a smaller budget.

Which could just mean that we it takes longer to do that next study because we need to go into '27 when we have the money to So finish yeah, that's a great question.

Yeah.

Okay. Well, with that, we are over time. I apologize to everyone for doing that. I hate to end late. But with that, we are adjourned.