Board of Commissioners - Regular Meeting

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Good morning, everyone. I want to welcome everyone to the Budget Committee of the Whole. Today, the County Operations Service Team continues a series of presentations that focus on performance measures. Today, we are excited to take a closer look at performance measures tied to core processes and functions that keep that keep our county running, like cybersecurity, procurement and contracting, public communication and hiring. These performance measures are already available to review online in the open performance section of the county's open data portal. If you want more information about the performance measures presented today, check out the county operations department dashboard, which have additional charts and background information. And so I want to take a few moments to go off script for a moment and set the table with some reflections on how to move forward today. I want to open up with reminders that we have already passed and approved our biannual budget. And this is year two, which is an excellent opportunity to design, to hear from our leadership who are running programs and leading the administrative component of the organization. We will hear again more about the key performance measures that have been established at the department level and gain insight into some of the priorities that have been identified by the deputy county managers and directors under the leadership of county manager Lene Becker. I know much work has gone into getting us here today, and I just want to thank everyone for that work. I also know that much good work is happening each day, and that this organization, like other counties statewide, are experiencing significant pressures from unfunded mandates with state as well as federal cost shifts, which we heard a bit about earlier this week, but also yesterday. I'd like us to allow the presenters to complete their presentations as best as we can. And I ask my colleagues and the board to please track any questions or comments that arise. I want to keep us on schedule. Today is going to be a four-day. We are here from 9 to 4. So it's a lot of intake of a lot of information, which I know is going to arise a lot of questions too. But if we can hold off with the questions, that would be awesome. As chair, I would keep tally again, and I would be mindful of opportunities for natural pauses and to also carve out time for questions at the end of each presentation. We have a long day again. And it will be one that is full of good information and an opportunity for the board and the public to gain insight to the core operations and infrastructure of Ramsey County as we navigate and lead through what comes next in this second year of the biennial. If very technical or nuanced questions come up, I want to also remind us that we have opportunities to have follow-up discussions. And we can always bring the directors back to do presentations throughout the year is part of our county board meetings. And we also have a variety of workshops that will be forthcoming. And so with that, I want to use our time very well today and put on full display the deep care and commitment that I know the organizational leadership has for our residents and for the people who live within the county, who experience our programs and our systems and operational processes. We will break at 12 o'clock, and we will return at 1. As chair, I am honored to open us up with the introduction of our DC coach. Chief Operating Officer in Jesse Bitt, and share a quick overview of the agenda for today. And so with that, I want to welcome. And would you please just introduce yourself and open us up with today's presentation?

Thank you, Madam Chair, Commissioners. My name is Alex Kutza. I'm the Deputy County Manager for the Operations Department slash Chief Operating Officer. Thank you for having me here today. It's a really exciting day to me. I know we're going to be here a long time, but it's exciting. This is a new service team. This is the first time that we're coming before you as a service team to present our budget. And I think that that deserves a moment of reflection and like, wow, we got here. We did the organizational alignment. We came together. And much of our work influences all of the departments that you're going to see over all of your budget hearings over the next couple of weeks. So today, you're going to hear from the operations departments. And we're also joined by the county manager's office. And you're going to get a presentation at the end of the day of the addenda, which we talked a little bit about yesterday, which tracks the changes from the 26 budget to the 27 budget. Our work as operations embodies partnership and the idea of one Ramsey County. We support the work of every department. And by providing things like space, paying a bill, executing a contract, hiring a person, posting notices on our website, handling data requests, collecting property taxes. That's just to name a few. That is really important work that not only supports our residents, but supports every employee of Ramsey County. It serves our residents in direct and indirect ways, and you're going to hear about that from many of the directors who speak today. It also requires partnership with every department. We literally cannot do our jobs without all of the staff of Ramsey County supporting the work we do. We can't make a hire without having someone ask and tell us what they need in that person. We can't pay an invoice without someone approving it. We can't execute a contract without a subject matter expert telling us what it is they need out of that contract. So our work actually kind of embodies all of the work of One Ramsey County. Today, you'll hear about the work and how we measure it and how it supports our strategic priorities. We will touch on almost every strategic priority. But what you're going to also see is operational excellence is kind of the overarching theme of the work that we do and drives much of how we do our work. You will see examples throughout today that highlight the resident voice in the work that we do. And we will also bring some examples forward of ways that we are finding efficiencies and savings as we think about how we do belt tightening in tough budget times. As you heard from County Manager Becker earlier this week, we are steadfastly committed to serving the residents of Ramsey County and finding efficiencies in how we do our work. in tough budget times. People are doing that every day in their homes, and we are doing it right here in Ramsey County. I can't resist a moment to talk about Workday, our new ERP system that is coming. You're going to hear it in different ways throughout today. And why it's so important is it is the backbone of the finance and HR system. It is replacing a 22-year-old system and will change how we do our work. It'll change how you all interact with when you report your time, when you report your employee expenses, and also how many people in this room do their work every day. And it's a really important moment for this organization. You have invested a lot of money and time and effort into that. And I am so excited to see what that brings. I kind of feel like our service team is built for this moment of tough budget times and a big ERP and serving our residents. And I'm excited for you to hear about all of that today. Lastly, I want to thank a lot of people. Quickly, I want to thank my operations directors who are new to this team and coming together and have supported each other and me during this time. I want to thank the chief of staff, Maria Sarabia, for joining the operations team during this performance year. Melinda Donoway, our new admin director, who this literally would not have gotten done without her. My executive team colleagues, the county manager and the county board for your attention all day today and all of the work you do to support us. And I want to thank all of the operations employees who do the work every day that are dedicated to serving Ramsey County residents. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Director West to do the first presentation on property taxes. We will try and keep you entertained, even though it's going to be a long day. Thank you.

Hello. Good morning, Ms. West.

Chair, commissioners, good morning. All right. Good morning. My name is Tracy West. I'm director of property tax records and election services and also the county auditor. Today, I'd like to provide an overview of property tax records and election services department. I may refer to it as Petrus. That's a little bit of a mouthful. And the proposed performance measures for 2026. Petrus provides information and services related to property tax, property ownership, elections, and vital records. Work related to Petrus includes running county elections, delinquent property tax management, tax forfeited land, document recording, and vital records. Petras is also responsible for the calculation, billing, reseeding, distribution, and reporting of the county's largest revenue source, property taxes. In 26, we expect to collect over $1.4 billion in property taxes. When selecting our measures, we wanted to focus on outcomes that demonstrate how our work improves resident lives while supporting the county's strategic priorities. Collectively, these measures align with intergenerational wealth and economic justice, racial and health equity and shared community power, and resident-centered holistic support. Our three measures are the percentage of qualified properties that end in forfeiture, percentage of restrictive covenants discharged in Ramsey County, and percentage of election judges who serve in the precinct in which they reside. Our first measure tracks the percentage of properties that become tax forfeited. Late property taxes become legally delinquent on the first business day in January following the year taxes are due. After three years of delinquency, properties forfeit to the state of Minnesota but are managed by Ramsey County. This is one of our most meaningful performance measures because every tax forfeiture represents a property owner or business that has exhausted all opportunities to remain current on their property taxes. Preventing forfeiture helps preserve home ownership, stabilize neighborhoods, maintain the local tax base, and reduce future public costs. The results are encouraging. In 2025, about 141 properties qualified for forfeiture, but out of that 141, only 13% forfeited to the state. That represents continued improvement from recent years, declining from 17% in 2023. Our long-term goal is to reduce forfeitures by 10% by 2028 and 5% by 2030. These improvements are driven by proactive interventions rather than simply just administering statutory processes. Staff conduct outreach through phone calls and site visits. So in 26, staff in our tax services department and our tax forfeited land department visited 27 different properties They knocked on doors and delivered material and had conversations about how we can help avoid forfeiture. We also do statutory and courtesy mailings and connect property owners with payment assistant resources before the forfeiture occurs. One example would be a confession of judgment, which is a payment plan. Residents benefit because more families remain in their homes, neighborhoods experience greater stability, and local governments preserve their tax base. Without these interventions, we would likely see increased displacement, higher public costs associated with housing instability, and additional administrative costs managing the properties. Looking ahead, changing economic conditions, housing affordability, Inflation and rising property taxes may increase financial pressures on residents. Continued investment in early intervention and cross-department collaboration will be critical to sustaining these results. Our second measure tracks the number of restrictive covenants discharged from property records. Although these covenants are no longer legally enforceable, they remain in thousands of recorded documents throughout Ramsey County and represent an important part of our community's history. Discharging them advances the commitment to racial equity and shared community power. Performance has increased significantly since the program began. We went from about 9.4% in 2023 to 13% in 2025. So our goal is to discharge all remaining restrictive covenants with a goal of approximately 100% discharge by 2028. Increase public awareness through targeted outreach partnered with the county assessor's office on neighborhood engagement efforts. really drove some of the success we're seeing in 2025. So the county assessor's office visited over 1,000 properties that led to this increase. The county assessor's department has a similar metric, so you'll hear more details on how they went door-to-door to talk through restrictive covenants and how you discharge them. The resident impact extends beyond individual property owners. This work promotes transparency, acknowledged historical discrimination, and reinforces Ramsey County's commitment to equity and inclusion. Our third measure tracks the percentage of election judges who serve in the precincts where they live. This measure reflects our commitment to resident-centered elections and building trust within communities. Poll workers who serve in their own neighborhoods often better reflect the racial and cultural diversity of the voters they assist. This is a new performance measure. And in 2025, approximately 25% of election judges served in their home precincts. Our goals? are to increase that to 60% by 2028 and 75% by 2030. Achieving these goals will require continued recruitment, expanded community partnerships, improved scheduling tools, and targeted outreach to communities. Success depends on strong partnerships with municipalities, schools, cultural organizations, community groups, and our human resource and communication teams. Together, we can build a more representative election workforce while improving the voter experience. So together, these three measures tell a broader story about the department. They demonstrate that Petras is not simply just administering statutory responsibilities. we're producing measurable outcomes that support residents, strengthen communities, and advance county priorities. The external environment remains challenging for residents. Economic uncertainty, housing affordability, inflation, increasing property taxes all contribute to financial pressures. That makes the work represented by these performance measures increasingly important. Second, the results we're seeing will require sustained investment. Early interventions in connecting residents with the right resources becomes more significant because more significant will be critical. This means we cannot approach this work in isolation. Continued collaboration across departments is essential. Finally, our focus needs to shift from simply maintaining the current results to building the capacity to sustain and expand them. That means continuing to recruit, strengthen community partnerships, improving our scheduling and outreach tools, and being intentional about reaching communities that may be underrepresented. Ultimately, our performance measures demonstrate that operational excellence and resident impact go hand in hand. By working collaboratively across Ramsey County, we're helping residents maintain home ownership, acknowledge and address historical inequities, and build greater trust in local government. And one strategic priority I didn't get to talk about in the performance measures is operational excellence. This strategic priority is focused on improving how the county operates internally so it can deliver better, more efficient, more sustainable services to residents. While Petrus does not have a metric around this priority, I did want to call out work that this department has done to help advance this priority. So in elections, we're deploying new technology for interpreting services. Some polling places have little to no interpreting demand, but we still want to provide the service if that demand arises. For the first time in the primary election, we deployed phones with an app that offers interpreters via video chat to some of our polling places. So this is an annual savings about $96,000 per year. And also, we look at positions as they become vacant across the department. So we're cross-training employees to work within the different divisions of Petrus. We have been testing this with an elections employee and have been deploying them to vital records when work is a little slow in elections and maybe an increased demand in vital records. This not only saves money, but it gives our employees opportunities to learn other areas of work. So we expect this to save about $85,000 on an annual basis, and we'll continue to look at doing this as more positions become vacant. That concludes my presentation.

I'll stand for questions. Okay, we have Commissioner Miller.

Okay, just very quickly on our first slide, when you say that the properties after three years of tax delinquency get managed by Ramsey County, what does that mean when we manage those properties?

Yes, so we have to keep maintenance of the properties. So it could mean cutting the grass, securing the buildings so people can't break into the properties. Sometimes we need to demo the property depending on the conditions. So it's really specific to each property. And then we also auction them for sale and then get them back on the tax rolls.

Okay. And how long is that process usually? Because that's all, I'm just thinking that must all cost money, must cost time, right? So how long is that process usually from when we start the management to when we can resale or put them up for sale? Yes.

Chair, commissioners, that's a great question. So in 2024, we do have some new laws that guide our work. And we have to place them up for auction within six months of them becoming forfeited.

OK. Wow, great. Thank you.

Commissioner McMurtry?

Thank you, Madam Chair, and appreciate the presentation. I had just a couple of questions, one on the election judges piece. You mentioned the goal of really putting a focus on ensuring that we have judges that reflect the communities that they're in. I want to kind of get a better understanding of what recruitment has been, what the process has been for recruitment, and what differently you all are planning to do to ensure we're reaching a more diverse pool of election judges. Sure.

Chair, commissioners, thank you for the question. First, I should have elaborated a little more. So first, the state does provide a list of election judges from each of the major political parties. So first, we do have to hire from that list. But once that is exhausted, then we can We work with HR to post the election judge positions and hire just as any other department would. We also can't force them to work in the precinct in which they live, but we want to just educate them on the importance of that. really give them the choice and the opportunity to do so, prioritize that over deploying them elsewhere.

Gotcha. So with us first having to go through the list that the state provides, do we know the demographic breakdown? Knowing that we are really determined to ensure that diversity and representation through these positions, is it... How much of a gap are we currently looking with that current list that's provided from the state?

Chair, commissioners, I don't have the exact numbers so I can get back to you, but I know we hire close to 2,000 election judges. So I'll get that break out of what came from the state's list versus what we hired through additional processes.

Awesome. That'll be helpful. Thank you. And then my other question in regards to elections, just knowing in the lead up to the August primary, and we're continuing to see it in the lead up to the general election, a lot of the concerns that we've been hearing from constituents, are there steps you all are taking to track some of your major takeaways from August and from this coming November, because we know that 2028 presidential will be here before we know it. And just thinking through from a budget perspective of maybe additional needs that might be helpful as we're looking towards those elections. Is that something that you all are currently tracking? And if not, would that be something you all would think of doing?

Chair, commissioners, that's a great question. Yes, we have to set the two-year budget in advance. But we have a lot of good historical information to understand. Like, for example, the next presidential election, what historically have we spent? And also, we'll look at legislative changes or just shifts the operations in general. Like, for example, we're seeing more voters vote absentee than we ever have in the past. And that is more expensive than voting on election day. So we do analyze all of that data to make sure we're understanding what's happened in the past. What are the trends we're seeing now? Are we budgeting appropriately?

Thank you. OK. Commissioner Jepsen.

Yes.

All right, back to the forfeitures. I guess just a general operations question. How much of this do we partner with our municipalities? Is there back and forth with our local partners on this work?

Yes, Chair, Commissioners, yes, we do. Since the properties are managed on behalf of the county, we often will inform them what properties are in pre-forfeiture status, which properties have forfeited. so they have an understanding of the properties in their areas, and also special assessments, what they can place on the properties, what they cannot. And also, we work very closely. Sometimes, if there's a problem property, we'll be in constant communication with the local cities to make sure we're addressing the needs in their communities.

Yeah, I think that was where I was going is more along the lines of code enforcement, safety issues, if a house has fallen into disrepair, if there are fire concerns or other neighborhood issues around that.

Yeah, so code enforcement is still something that needs to be looked at and that's managed by the cities. But then instead of working with the resident or the past owner, they'll work with the tax forfeited land team to make sure that the properties are safe and need to look at the different investments that maybe we need to put into it prior to selling the property. OK, great.

And then moving to a different topic, at the top of the presentation, you had said that approximately $1.4 billion in property taxes will be collected. Can you just remind folks how many taxing jurisdictions that includes? Yes.

We have, I don't have the number off the top of our head, but it's all the cities, all of the school districts, all of the special taxing districts, which are HRAs, EDAs, watersheds, and then we'll collect those funds and then settle on behalf of all of those taxing authorities. Thank you.

And then one other question was when we were looking at the restrictive covenants, do we have any idea of how many properties in Ramsey County still have those restricted covenants? I know that there's a, you know, kind of a search and look kind of, you know, it's not just you do a run a database, but where are we at in having a sense of how many still have covenants on it?

Chair, commissioners, there's close to 5,000 that we've found. that have the restrictive covenants. And I think we're getting close to 1,000 to date, so roughly about 4,000.

And then because while I think removing these covenants is a part of healing our community, knowing the historical harms that were done to be able to understand how we got to where we are today, is that information still held somewhere so that we can see you know, how development was influenced by such of these covenants and what that meant to our community? Yes.

Chair, commissioners, when we place the disavowalment or the discharge on the covenant, it actually doesn't delete it. It's just basically a stamp recognizing that we recognize this historical event and we're not okay with it and we're acknowledging that it is illegal. We're not OK with that.

Thank you.

Yes.

Commissioner McGuire.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you, Dr. West, for all this great information. All of our departments are so important. And the public, they all help our residents so much. Your area, they deal with on a regular basis with their property taxes, with elections and everything. So just thank you and everyone for all of your work. People really see this work. And my questions are on a couple different areas. You've got some great numbers here that we look for. In the area of the forfeitures, What is the reason for most forfeitures? Do we get that? I mean, is it just people that no longer can afford their homes or they've gotten sick? I mean, I'm guessing it's a variety of reasons. Do we keep track? Is there any theme that is more prevalent than others? I'm curious.

Chair, commissioners, we don't know the exact reasons why. Some of them could be financial. Some of them they just simply, you know, maybe they escrowed their payments and then that stopped and they forgot to make payment. But that's why that pre- intervention is so important so we can try to catch some of the reasons before they actually lose their homes.

That's a really good thing. If it can be prevented. I think some people think people just either die or they walk away from their home and it's just sitting there. There's generally a reason that people are not able to make those payments. I appreciate the pre-forfeiture work that you're doing to try to help residents with that. So thank you for that. And then the other, on the restrictive covenants, I love the numbers that were going from 13% to 100%. I mean, this is a really good goal. And I know you have a huge effort in that area. And I just wanted, my question is, you answered part of it with Commissioner Jebin Singh. And I just want to make sure I got it right. Did you say there were 5,000 Total, and we've done 4,000? We have 4,000 left. We have about 4,000 left. OK. Can you just talk a little bit more about how you're getting it to those? to discharging those. I know you're working with communities and you have events in communities and things. So could you just talk a little bit about how you're working on that?

Chair, commissioners, yeah, we've done multiple things to try to reduce this number. Some work better than others. We've done targeted mailings we've done broad mailings such as in our tnt statements we've provided information but what we're really seeing that's driving the numbers is the county assessors while they're going out into the community to assess properties they're also have information on this on what this is and how we disavow them And that's where we're really seeing the impact. I believe they visited over 1,000 properties in 2025. And the team back at Plato really felt that impact. The phones were ringing. The paperwork to get these process started flowing. So I don't want to steal their thunder, but they have some great partnerships that they're doing with. St. Kate's to also bring in some of the community engagement students from St. Kate's to help with this work. So we're seeing a lot of great effort, and it's starting to pay off.

No, I really appreciate that. I know that different events, and I know there are organizations that support this work. I don't want to get the word out. I'm thinking League of Women Voters. I think a lot of civic organizations who can put this word out as well, because I'm guessing that people, when they hear about this and they know about it, they want to change it. I mean, we just sold my house I grew up in, and we didn't know there was a covenant on it. We don't check our deeds until we're selling. So we were mortified, of course. There was a covenant on there that there had been. And anyway, it's good to know, and I'm glad you're getting the word out.

Yeah, and there's chair commissioners. There's one other thing I forgot to mention is, Depending on the property, it could be torrents or abstract. Abstract is a little more complicated in this process. But we are looking at changing laws so we can remove some of the notary requirements to make it even easier for residents.

That's great. We certainly want to help with that legislatively. Great. Thank you. County manager.

Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. So the assessor's office has a very similar kind of a line measure. So we'll be able to hear more specifically about their work. They brought a workshop recently that you'll recall. And I think we had some good outreach ideas that came out of it, including just ensuring that all of you as you're out in community have some sort of postcard or something that could tell people about that. So we anticipate that everybody has some role in helping to make this goal successful. And so that was part of the assessor's workshop kind of takeaways as well. But I like that we're kind of showing how the departments have to work together in order to align so that we can be successful in this goal. So those are good questions.

Thank you. No, I'm just glad we're doing that kind of work. And we just want to keep promoting it. So yes, thank you.

All right, seeing no other questions, I want to thank you, Director West, for your work and your leadership in your presentation today. Thank you. And now we're going to welcome up Director Lindsey, who will speak on our communication and public relations. Good morning. Good morning.

I'm so happy to be here. My name is Rose Lindsay. I'm the director of communications and public relations and just want to thank you chair, commissioners, deputy county manager, all of my colleagues on the operations team and my communications staff for the opportunity to be here and for all of the work that goes on every day behind the scenes in the communications department. and the work that got us ready for today. So communications. We, kind of like Director West said, they're called PTRAs. Communications and Public Relations is often called CPR, so you might hear me say that today. But we help connect residents, employees, businesses, and community partners with timely, accessible, Accurate and accessible information to county services programs and priorities we do this by being like the in-house Agency and strategic partner so we provide strategic communications employee communications media and crisis communications we manage the county's brand digital and creative channels and And all of this is to really connect residents and employees to the information they need to make important decisions. We also manage the county's open data portal to support transparency in the information that folks have access to. And so all of the performance measures that are being presented by the different departments are on that open data portal. So the three measures that we are presenting today build on one another. First, we're asking, are we reaching residents? Second, are they engaging with the information that we're providing? And then finally, when they come to us, are they successfully getting what they need? Together, these measures help us understand whether our communications are supporting better access at the county. So I'm going to begin with the first measure. It's a new one for us and one that we're really excited about. It is audience reach across community media. So you might recall back in 2024, we launched the very first pilot program with community and cultural media. After doing research, we selected to partner with Three Hmong TV and launch a Hmong program. After, since 2024, we have produced 34 episodes to date and we have reached nearly a half a million unique views. And so unique views is not me going out there 100,000 times and watching a show over and over again, although I've done that, I've watched our shows over and over again, it means individual folks have gone out there and watched our content. And so you'll see on the slide, 179,000 of those views were in 2025, which means some of those were in our pilot year 2024, and some of those are in this year, 2026. When we launched this program, we had a very intentional collaboration with all of departments because the program, of course, serves every county department, getting news and information out there. But we very intentionally worked with the service center and navigators because we wanted to have a streamlined user experience. So if you come on the show and you hear about workforce, youth justice transformation, property taxes, we wanted you to be able to come to the county and continue to have that experience in the Hmong language. And so we promoted the service centers, we promoted navigators, and you'll see on the slide that we had a 202% increase in Hmong language service center requests following the launch of that show. Now you will note it was at our Maplewood service center. We realized that we inadvertently promoted the Maplewood program, or the Maplewood location on our program, over the other two, and we quickly corrected that to make sure all of our residents knew that we also had a Roseville and a downtown location. Additionally, we saw navigator requests go up by 166% after the launch of the show. So not only were we able to measure the views on YouTube and on social media, but we could get that data from the service center to see residents were actually coming in after hearing those programs. Additionally, we could get comments directly on social media, and residents were sharing things like, You know, I'm so glad this exists because I'm not actually the best at translating things for my mom. So now I know I can go in and Ramsey County will help do that. Or my mom can go in on her own and just be able to get those services directly herself. Our top five programs since launch, I just want to share you some of the data because it's really interesting. Just in January, we had a program on youth justice transformation, and that had over 50,000 views. Earlier, we did one on human resources. 40,000 views. People were really interested in how do you work here at the county? How do we get connected to jobs here at the county? Some folks might be familiar with a law change that happened recently that recognized veterans that served in the secret war. So we did a program with veterans services Sharing those veterans benefits that are available to those who served and that program got nearly 40,000 views as well Additionally, we did a program in extreme heat preparedness We're seeing more and more how hot our summers are and the impacts that can have on our residents that had 32,000 views and And a really interesting cross-collaboration show we did with Community Corrections and somebody who was formerly justice impacted and then participated in our Emerging and Diverse Developers program had over 29,000 views. So we're really presenting all sorts of Ramsey County content to residents and it is really, really resonating with them. So very excited to present that measurement. And further on in the presentation, I'll be sharing what is next in this program, what is next for our community and cultural media. But first, I'd like to transition to our second measure, which is focused on social media engagement. And this is asking, are we reaching residents? And so we're measuring more meaningful interactions than just You know, if you're on social media and you're scrolling, those are impressions. You may or may not actually be seeing the content as you scroll by, right? So what we're measuring are clicks, comments, shares, those thumbs up, our heart reactions. So we know that people are really engaging with our content. And so you can see on the screen there, that there actually was a dip in 2024. And so you might have some questions around that. So think again about your own personal social media, right? You might have 500 or a thousand or 10,000 friends, but you're usually only seeing the content of five or 10 friends, right? That's algorithms are constantly changing. And that's happening to Ramsey County, too, in our content. It's happening to everyone's content. And so some of our things that we were sharing were getting hidden and not going to everybody who was subscribing to us. So we had to look into that and figure out how can we get past it's not going out to everyone, even if they're subscribing to us. And so we started doing things, what I would call as a micro campaign, right? Let's say that HR has a job that is more unique, and they really want to get to those candidates that have that skill set. We suggested maybe we do a really small ad buy, $25, $200, to go further on LinkedIn and really recruit those candidates. And the engagement and boost. Suddenly, there are tons and tons and tons of applications to be looking at. We even had some hiring managers being like, OK, middle of campaign. Maybe you can roll that back a little bit. we have been able to do that with lots of different things. We also worked with environmental health and public health who have really amazing goals for our county to reduce, reuse, recycle, and so we worked with some influencers who were in line with the county's values, who had really big followings, and had them create content about food scraps, about the fast fashion industry and how to reduce waste there. And all of these things helped increase our engagement. All of you commissioners might be familiar with when we finish a media event, we're now offering toolkits of social links, photos, content for your newsletters. So you can help us get the word out and increase that engagement. And so you can see how we have turned that number around with some of these interventions and gone around that algorithm. So we continue to predict increasing our engagement in the future. And we know we're going to have to continue to watch this because in media, in social media, things are constantly changing. And so it's our job to constantly look at that and change with it. Another thing we're doing is me, on my personal social media, I might take a picture of my adorable dog and just post it, right, whenever I have the time. We use software, and we post for 27 departments and five service teams, and we plan that out. We look at the algorithms, and we're like, Fridays are a really good time to post jobs. That's when folks are looking. So we plan that out in advance using software. We don't just necessarily get the request in and then post it in that moment. So all of this is strategy and planning behind the scenes in order to continue to increase this engagement. We get feedback from residents, things are working, they're not working, and then we continue to tweak and adjust so that we can continue to meet residents' needs and departments' needs and the businesses' needs that we're serving. Our third measure looks at average time on website. So this is when residents or businesses are coming to us. Are they finding what they need? And so we get over seven million visits to our website a year. Sometimes this is the only time someone might interact with us. They might come to our website and not come to a building or not talk to a staff member. So we want that user experience to be really good. Once again, you're going to notice that there was a slight decrease from 24 to 25, and then we're projecting a future decrease. This isn't bad. This is actually really, really good. You'll recall we just replatformed our website. And as part of that replatform, We integrated a better search tool. We integrated a language translation tool. Before we had these separate language hubs, And now we have fully integrated language translation. Additionally, we have all been working hard across the county to integrate full digital accessibility. And we know digital accessibility benefits everyone. It makes the website easier to use for everyone. So we do expect folks to get to the page they need, find what they need quicker, and then move on to the next thing. So this measurement might change for us in future years as website changes. The other thing I want to point out is AI is changing how people interact with websites. About 60% to 65% of folks actually get an AI summary now and never go on to the website. And so how we're thinking about this now is we're finding people might go to the environmental center and say, hey, I thought I could drop this off because I saw it on your website. And then we learned it actually wasn't from our website. And so our team is working on a campaign to launch an informational campaign that, you know, AI is great, it's helpful, but always kind of know before you go. Check the source of truth. Check the Ramsey County website. Check the food scraps website. The A to Z recycling guide. Just so that folks really can be prepared before they They show up with that item and then maybe are disappointed because it wasn't the most accurate information. So we want to be supportive. And so those are ways we're continually adjusting to the market. So looking forward. As I mentioned, the first cultural media program was a pilot, and we recognized one show doesn't meet every community's needs. Ramsey County is the most diverse urban community, and there are so many different communities with different language needs, different cultural needs, and these community shows are just one way that we're reaching them. Director West shared other ways that departments are directly going door to door to meet community and residents where they're at. Departments hold clinics, public works does open houses. So again, our new media tools are just part of that overall engagement set. But we are very, very excited that we are launching another one. Originally, we thought we were going to do it in another language. But when we were digging into the data and when we were at workshops and we were listening to departments like public works and human resources and libraries saying, we really need to get in front of Gen Z. We really need to make sure Gen Z knows how to get jobs at the county, knows about our programs. And Gen Z is currently 14 to 29. And 23% of Ramsey County. so almost a quarter of the county, we realized we should do a pivot and we should really look into a tool to reach Gen Z. And the other cool thing about while creating this, it creates job opportunities for folks within Gen Z. And so we partnered with Workforce Solutions and have a Right Track internship, a Progressive internship, and we are also partnering with Environmental Health as kind of our underwriter, our sponsorship of the show. And I'm really pleased, we just recorded our first episode last week, and I'm gonna premiere for you a little clip. Or that's my goal.

I want to give a big shout out to those that made our podcast possible. Because of our environmental health sponsors, we're here today.

I get to meet them. And wherever they go next, particularly if they're back in community, they can come back and loop back with me again. I get to be like, hey, you're getting out soon. I have these monthly sessions in community. Get me up. I'm going to find you a job. I'm going to find you training opportunities. Or we're going to figure out what's next. So it's always that constant kind of feedback with our justice impacted folks.

But before you go.

Here we go.

Hi.

Here we go.

We want to do a series of rapid fire questions. OK. What's your zodiac sign?

Aquarius and dragon.

Where do you fall between your siblings? Are you an only child?

Oldest of five. Let's go.

Who is your favorite artist?

I can't believe I'm saying this out loud. I'm a huge Patrick Boys fan. Yeah. Wait.

We need a moment to digest that later. OK.

So that is a little clip of our very first Gen Z podcast with our amazing progressive intern, Yasmeen Hosting, Long Key from Workforce Solutions, who's been a guest on our Baymong TV program, came back to share. All about jobs, because we know young folks are really looking to navigate the job market, and we have lots of great programming to offer. And then it showed a little bit of how we highlight our sponsor, Environmental Health, on the episode. And then in the future, we have a fast fashion episode planned coming up soon. And so not only are we at the county providing youth experiences, but our partner, St. Paul Neighborhood Network, is doing a youth fellowship on their side. And so folks are learning the technical skills of how to produce a podcast. And so together we are creating lots of youth experiences and I believe some really amazing content. They're also helping us not only launch it on YouTube, but it will be on all of the regular places that you get your favorite podcast coming soon. And then our second episode will be on youth justice transformation that did so well on Baymong TV, on Najong Ramsey County, that we wanted to bring them back. And I have to tell you that even though I've seen it before, I was on the edge of my seat, like creeping up, listening to it. And so I'm really, really excited for that one to drop as well. So that is what is looking forward for us and how we are going to continue to push engagement in that area. We expect it to grow and change along the way as we get feedback from our partners, from our hosts. As I said with social media, we're going to continue to monitor and adapt to the changing algorithms. We're going to continue to explore these micro campaigns. These influencer partnerships continue to provide you all with media and partner toolkits. We also, when we just finished our Babelwood grand opening, we were sure to get our partners toolkits there as well. So we make sure to get them to the cities. We're working really hard to make sure we're constantly in contact with all of our city communicators and getting feedback. We just gave them an elections toolkit. We are working really hard on making sure they have the information to amplify. And then, as I said, we're going to continue to look at that average time on website and how AI and different things, digital accessibility, cause us to need to continue to pivot and explore how we do our work. Looking at investments that were made in our department, I wanna also share a few cost savings that that allowed us to do. So when I joined Ramsey County, we were doing media trainings a couple times a year with an amazing partner. But an investment in the board made in us in our 24-25 budget allowed us to have our very first media relations manager, which was so timely because media relations have gone up for 75%, 24 to 25, and then another 25% on top of that. So that position has been so helpful. But we were also able to bring our media training in-house. So not only did we save ourselves $15,000, and that was just for three trainings, but we have doubled the amount of trainings that we offer. And if a department comes to us and says, can you do one just for social services, we can say yes. And we've opened it up for all staff. In the past, it was just for leadership level. And so this strengthens the confidence that all staff have If media call them, they know the policy. They know the process. It really just also has consistent county messaging, improves our relationship with media. And so this investment in us has just paid off over and over in our response. To media and our ability to serve the community and it's it's saved money as well So I just wanted to share that as I close my presentation and appreciate that investment in us and I'll be so happy to Take questions. Okay, come is news on

Thank you, Madam Chair. I have a few questions. For the engagement, I think it's really good that we're measuring the engagement. How are we incorporating feedback that we get on social media and relaying that to departments? Thank you, Commissioner.

Thank you, Chair. So we have a social media specialist who monitor all the comments that we get. And if it is a comment that we are able to answer quickly because the information is already available online, we'll just respond to it. And if it's a more nuanced comment, we send it to the department, much like a navigator when they get a question in, if they can answer it. I assume they do, otherwise they help process that through the county.

Okay, that's great. And then, you know, I think it's, I really like how you're tying the successes of the partnership around the Hmong language and tying that to, like, you know, the increases for services because that's exactly what we want and that's exactly the investment of why we invested I believe a few years ago we considered also in the Spanish language also to pilot and also in other languages What may you share more about some of the decisions or what what what else you see needed?

Thank You Commissioner Thank You chair first I just want to give a huge shout out back to the service center and navigators because I their investment with us coming on the shows. We did a real live call to a service center on a show to show how the experience worked to the viewers and it was so smooth and I think that really encouraged viewers of this is gonna work smooth for me too. But they help us get that data and get those metrics and so it truly is a wonderful partnership and I just can't shout that out enough. As for the other languages, absolutely want to grow into more languages and see the need. I think earlier this year with Metro Surge, if I could have done more languages, I absolutely would. But these pilots, these launches take a lot of time and intentionality. And so doing one at a time and making sure we're doing it really, really right is the path we're on. But I am really hopeful that we can continue to explore other languages and other communities as well. When I worked at the city of Minneapolis, we did a show on KMOJ for the African American community. We did a show on KFAI for the Native American community. So I think there's a lot of directions we can go in. It's just we're doing it incrementally to do it relationally and do it right. And also financially being respectful that we have to do it in increments there too.

Okay. And then finally just to our online web page, when are we, has that transition and move been finalized now? And are all departments, or I guess like how are you working with departments to make sure that there aren't any broken links or that it's accessible online too on the web page and that it has current information?

Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Chair, Commissioner. So the website replatform and a replatform is a changing from one software to the next. So we completed that ahead of schedule at the end of last year because our software was at end of life, and so we had a hard cutoff. And we did that both for the public site and our internal internet site for employees. So both of those were completed. On top of that, The Department of Justice had a law that was supposed to be this April and they pushed it out to next April that all government content has to be digitally accessible. And so even though that ruling was pushed out a year, we didn't push out our timeline. And we at the county are working to ensure all of our content on our public website is digitally accessible. It's just in line with our values. It's not only the legal thing to do, but it's the right thing to do to make sure everybody can access the content they need. So that work is onward. We've been getting trainings for staff, templates for staff, ensuring all departments and service teams have digital accessibility liaisons. It's really an upskilling across the whole county. As for the links, Broken links, I think, are going to be a thing that happen all the time. But we're constantly working with departments to identify those, to fix those. And we work with our departments all the time when content needs to be refreshed or updated. If a new campaign is coming, one of the first things we do is check to make sure the website, or what we call the source of truth, is up to date. And so before we roll something out, always checking that. Yeah, it's just part of ongoing maintenance.

And last question, Madam Chair, is what is the top search for Ramsey County's website?

Whoa, that is a really good question. And I know someone on my team is sitting there, like, wishing they could phone a friend with me right now. I don't want to guess wrong, so I will get back to you on that.

Okay, great. Thank you.

Yeah.

That's a great question.

Commissioner McGuire.

Thank you, Ben. I love that question. So, yeah, we're all interested in that. And I'm guessing there's a few that people are searching a lot. There's a couple, yeah. Yeah, and thank you, Director Lindsay, for all your work and your teams. I've been, we've appreciated your work with commissioners because we are good ambassadors in the community and we do newsletters and I'm always struck by the fact that I do a digital newsletter, but I have a fair number of people in my district that are still not going on a website or they're not accessing. They probably are looking at their emails, so they probably are accessing my newsletter, but they may not be going on a website. They're still at a point where, like my mother, she's great at texting. She was great. She's passed away now. But she was great at texting, great at using her phone and her email. But she didn't go on websites and stuff. So she wasn't really on social media and not Facebook. She really wasn't on any of those things. And I think a number of seniors in my area, at least, and I think throughout, do a limited amount of technology. And so I'm just curious. I'm torn. We have limited resources. So do we just still keep focusing most of our resources on social media? How do we get the word out to the people that aren't on social media? I actually have a Facebook account, but I'm not really active myself. So how do we get the word out to people? And I know that you're working with our navigators and our service centers. and things like that. And I know we're looking at ways that we can insert things in mailings that we're doing. So I know that's a really good way. If we're already mailing to people like their property tax statement, maybe we insert something else that we need. I'm also torn. I'm going to be giving you different versions of my question. I'm also torn because I know that when we do something in print, that it gets outdated really fast. So I know that to put a resource paper or book out to our libraries or wherever, that that can be out of date pretty quickly. So how are we thinking about how we're reaching? I do this on a regular basis. How are we reaching all of our residents? I mean, I think the social media and the Gen Z and all of the things that you're doing are really great. I'm thinking of the more senior population and just getting the word out to people that may not be on social media. You know, how are we thinking about that? And getting the word out about what counties do, like, because there's a lot of people that still are concerned, you know, that don't know that. And so, just curious, and you can just put that on the list, but I agree with you on... the average time spent on websites that I think that maybe we might want that to be a lower number so that people find what they want faster. But you want them to be on our website to look for things, but you don't want them to be on there because they can't find something. So I think that number will, I want to dig deeper into that number because you want them to. You'll be able to find it. So what are your comments on any of these things? These are just the things that I think about when we're trying to reach our residents, which I think most of our goal is to really communicate our work to our residents.

I think County Manager Baker will respond. Yeah, thank Commissioner McGuire. I just have a really tangible example.

These are all big questions.

This is an operational excellence ongoing effort because the way people receive information. is consistently changing. And we have lots of different populations. But the example around the new public health clinic in Maplewood, I think, is helpful here. We partner a lot with the city, and they anticipated that this new place was opening. So while Rose and her team in public health did all the things that they would do using all the normal county channels, and we will continue to share this new resource, we also asked the city, what is your schedule for your Maplewood newsletter? And they slotted us in. And so most cities, I will say, still have some form of a mail newsletter, which for how expensive that is you know the county isn't doing that per se but that partnership with the city and the communication directors and mine with the city administrators helps us especially on large important pieces of news to leverage they're looking for content sometimes for those um documents right and also just that they would have um flyers and things at their city halls you know so we try to leverage like other layers of government but also then community partners as well you know with the public health clinic we had asked public health to think about what are the, there's a community dental clinic right next door that actually provides low income dental care. So making sure that those folks know about news county services. So it's a web of information and there's not really one way to distribute. But I think we're maximizing our channels where we can, and then the rest of it is leveraging partnerships, if that makes sense.

And I'm glad to hear that, and I want to keep encouraging that, that we do use those community newsletters, use our newsletters, use, yes, all of our communities have those resource centers in their lobbies. Our libraries do, but our cities all do. And if we make sure that we have our up-to-date, any county, it doesn't have to be a huge booklet, but it can be a... any kind of a resource in those lobbies and things. And so I just want to encourage us to keep doing that because our cities do want content and they are willing to post all the things that Ramsey County does.

Chair, Commissioner, County Manager, if I may build off of that example. of the public health center opening We work with every department to learn Who their audiences are that they're trying to reach and what channels we might have that are best for them and then if we don't have the channel and they have a Budget we might be able to go beyond our channels in that particular example They had a variety of brochures for different services they provided so for clinic 555 for the tv clinic and we helped them create one new piece a new brochure that talked about the whole public health center and we had it available for the opening and then we also sent some over to the service center afterwards over to the maplewood library afterwards To some of the partners that County Manager Becker Mentioned and then of course the clinic themselves the public health center themselves would know who else to send those brochures to so a printed piece was Available because they identified that as a need of theirs and then if they go a step further and say hey communications we need that in these languages then we'll work with them on that and So that's just part of our process with any initiative, program. A department would come to a communications staff member, and we would learn, like, who are you trying to reach? What are the goals? What is the best way to reach them? And so as County Manager Becker said, there's not a one-size-fits-all, but that's part of the work we do is to really get in there and understand and then create a plan for them. For example, with the The libraries, we created some templates. And so if they just need to print out 25 copies of one thing and leave it at the door because they roughly know that's how many of their constituents coming in really likes that paper version, they can print off 25 copies. And if they're like, actually, we needed 45, the next month they could change it to 45. So we are really trying hard to meet each department where they are with more than digital first needs, more than just translation needs. It's all just so nuanced. And then again, what we do is paired with the department work. I'm going to keep going back to Director West's example. What they found out really worked there wasn't just social ads or mailing a postcard, it was Director Chapman's team going there and, hello, can I explain this racial covenant work to you? And so sometimes it's all of it together in an ecosystem. But that is what we absolutely agree with you and are working on that.

So thank you. I really appreciate that. Commissioner McNutry.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I had a couple of questions in regards to the influencer partnership. First one, is there a vetting process that we go through when it comes to selecting the influencers that we partner with? And on top of that, are there specific areas that you're hoping that these influencers will cover as they're making content on behalf of the county?

Commissioner, Chair, I'm really glad you asked that question because, yes, yes, there is a vetting process. So we use another vendor to do all of our media buying. And so then this vendor also does the influencer media buying. And as part of that, they have a rigorous process of looking at the different vendors, the influencers that are available. And then they'll give us a slate of, you know, you mentioned you want to do a recycling campaign. Here are some people that might fit with that. looking at the demographics, the ages, the areas that you're trying to reach. And then we look through their historical content because they might say, I'm making this up, they might say that they're very interested in recycling, but then we see tons of plastic use all over their former feeds, and that might not really be in alignment with what we want to do. Or we really want to... be doing something with food scraps but then on other posts it's lots of plastic takeout containers and so there is a really detailed review process and we actually have a vendor that does this not only for us but lots of other organizations so that we can explore this route and we're always exploring new vendors and influencers and it's an exciting area to be in.

Has the program been effective? How do we measure success with that type of program? Are there a certain amount of engagement that we're looking for from these influencers? What does the success look like for this type of program?

Yeah. I'm digging around in my notes to see if I have some engagement numbers. So we did, I don't have all breakdown details, and I can absolutely send it to you, but thank you for the question. So in some influencer videos that were done recently, and this was a larger spend, so we're looking at $25,000. We had nearly half a million and over 85,000 engagements. So again, those engagements are not, I scrolled through and I just kept scrolling, right? This is commenting. This is over 8,000 people sharing it with someone else. It is individuals making sure they heart it. And so when you break it down financially, we're talking $0.30 per engagement, which is a very, very good outcome.

Great. No, I appreciate that. And I know that, as Commissioner McGuire also mentioned, I hope that as we look at the strategy that we continue to utilize the board as a way to continue to leverage our platforms and networks to get the message out even more so. And I'll make a pitch. If you need to reach the millennials, there are three of us here. We're happy to do a podcast together.

Commissioner Chairs, I got it all noted down that you are all part of the Ransom County demographics we're trying to reach.

Just say Gen X. We're doing fine.

I love this. All right. You're all signed up. All right. But I do want to say that environmental health... And our solid waste plan has some really big goals. And so that team, working with our team, they're working at really innovative ways to reach folks who maybe we haven't connected with yet about things like food scraps, about visiting our environmental center, about... reusing clothing, right? So the fast fashion industry. And so sometimes having an influencer share that quick content, we're seeing it's very effective, right? And then some of those influencers come to the environmental center for an event. So it's like a whole connectivity. And so if we don't try some of these new things, we're just not going to know how it's going to work. And so it has been exciting to get to work with departments and try new things. We recognize not every department has that same budget and so that's why we also say these micro campaigns also can work and I'd be happy at a future date to share information on those as well if there's interest.

OK, thank you. I love the fact that we are moving into the 21st century. We've got to be.

We are here for it.

We've got to be there.

We totally are.

OK. Commissioner Jefferson.

I have several questions, but I'll try to keep them tight. Sure. One of them is just, can you just have a sense of which social media platforms is the county using? I mean, when I think about traditional things like Facebook Instagram and all these other things, but also are we on YouTube? What are all the different ways that we're reaching folks?

Yes. Commissioner, Chair, thank you for the question. We are on a lot of the platforms, and then we are monitoring some of the other platforms. I will begin by saying we have one staff dedicated to social media. So if we do want to explore new channels, we have to have the capacity to do it right, because you can't open a channel and then not be able to post content regularly, and you can't you have to be able to pull the metrics. Our current social media management tool, we're doing a lot of the metrics polls manually. When we have to listen when the county is responding to something, we're doing a lot of that listening manually, putting in the search terms and listening for a certain topic, like Ramsey County elections. We're doing it manually. So it's not that we don't want to add new things and explore new things. We want to make sure the capacity is there to do them right. We are in the process of working on exploring a more robust social media management tool that should add more of that metrics pulling and listening automated. So we are exploring some of those things and I'm grateful for my colleague and his team because we're exploring that together. But we have LinkedIn. We have Facebook. We have Instagram. We have YouTube. We have what used to be called Twitter. And then we're monitoring a lot of the other new ones that kind of follow X, the threads, the blue sky. And our team does almost quarterly audits of should we enter this space? What are the trade-offs if we enter the space? And again, we have to make sure we have the resources and capacity in order to add in. Because one of the worst things you can do is open a social media account and then not be there and be active, right? So these are all really great questions that I appreciate.

Well, a second part of that question was, and how much of our CPR team, and it sounds like very limited, has the capacity, but to be consuming, listening, learning about emerging issues and concerns so that, you know, and this could be as broad as, I know we all do this within our own districts, is, you know, whether or not we personally have an appetite for all the different programs potential platforms that have the time to consume it all, whether it's on Reddit or a backdoor app or a podcast or different things like that where Ramsey County specifically or topics that are impacting us locally are popping up so that we can be more proactive as we address those issues. I'm just curious if you've already kind of answered it, that it's limited.

DEBORAH L. Chair, Commissioner, thank you for the question. I would say that our media relation manager is constantly monitoring the media realm. So our local news stations, our national news stations, I would say sometimes podcasts and different things fall into that as well, if we, Ramsey County, have appeared on those. We're also exploring the possibility of a tool that can help us monitor that. more efficiently so it's not manually. And then we monitor the county channels. If there is an emerging issue or response, what communications does is put together a response team. So then we will pull folks from their, maybe they currently support parks or public health and not saying they stop supporting them, but we put together a small team, and we surround that response, and then we might do additional listening. We might do additional, the recent encampment response. Maybe folks are working on communications for that that's outside of their regular scope of work or duties, but we put these response teams together in order to build internal capacity for for those pieces of work but on a daily basis we we don't have the existing capacity to just be listening outside of the county it's something we would love to grow into

Yeah, and I would really encourage us to think about what that means because what is considered media and how people are consuming information right now is anybody with a phone and an audience. And if we're not prepared to be aware of what that means as far as what's happening and how people are engaging with the issues of the day, then we're back on our heels. So I encourage us to continue to explore how we can be as accessible to the residents as possible. To that point, one last thing is I just want to say kudos on the toolkits. I will say that that has been really helpful, I think, not only for us, but I think more importantly for our partners and community. There is nothing better than when I hear from one of our partners to say, I was going to do a letter to the editor, but I saw that you already had prepared something and I was able to share it. throughout all of our social media, that we had already been the trusted source. And once it was prepared, this was on the elections. This has been on many of the different things that you've prepared these toolkits. So kudos to that. Do we have any way of tracking how they are being used and shared in communities so that we know that those efforts, that the return on investment of packaging such a toolkit is actually doing what we think it's doing?

Chair, Commissioner, we are really excited to be rolling them out more regularly. I don't think we've been able to put a robust tracking system in place yet, but we can definitely add that to our list to explore.

Well, only, I mean, you have limited resources. So I just was asking, you know, just as part of it. But I just want to say thank you. I think that they're extremely handy. I know I've had, like I said, I've had a number of trusted partners in community who are really grateful to be able to just share the trusted information and have it packaged in a way and to see consistent posts from cities, from community groups. from individuals, and it's all leading back to the trusted source, it means it's being successful. So thank you.

Thank you. So to our millennials, do we hit it with all the social media? I didn't hear Snapchat or something like that. Are we still doing that? Okay, no one is doing that. I just kind of believe that we need to really capture that younger generation, because there's so much conspiracy theorists out there within that group of folks, where information is coming from everywhere, that I hope that we can be, as a county, a trusted messenger of facts, data, and research. And so that hit me. And one other thing. Is it response to the social media? OK, real quick.

Oh, yeah. I just wanted to name one more thing, too, that I've been trying to work with. It's just also using plain language in our work as well, too, and actually in all government documents. And so I don't know if that effort had been undertaken. plain language is just so important to communicating across diverse communities, as well as how I like to think about is communicating to folks with an eighth grade reading level, because that's where the U.S. is in terms of literacy.

And I would diddle that, that clear, plain language. Sometimes you can read something and say, so what are they saying? So it's clear that we can make that as simple as we can make that to reach, definitely for like Ramsey County, which is one of the most diverse counties there is, it needs to be simple and clear. And not so much words, too, I think would be helpful. I would just say kudos to the pilot program that you had with the Hmong community. As you look at these numbers and the increase in Hmong language navigators and the service center requests, those are really, really good numbers. And I see it's a pilot program. My question is, how long is the pilot program? And how do we begin to, I don't know how to, like, how do we, what's the word, how do we begin to do some outreach with other diverse communities in the same way? And I think it's really important that we do that. But how do we, what's the word, off, I'm trying to think, off shift or, do less with the modern community? Because we don't want to do less. But how do we expand while also keeping that community engaged? And what do a pilot program look like? And how long is a pilot program?

Chair, thank you for the question. And Commissioner, thank you as well. I just want to respond to the plain language. It is a core value of our department. And we have many folks within our department who are plain language experts. and we always work with departments. We lovingly say that your jargon, your acronyms are wonderful, we need you to speak in plain language. So I just wanted to say out loud that is a core value in things that we work in. And our digital accessibility work is helping with plain language as well across the county. So I just wanted to say that out loud. I also wanted to just briefly say that just because we're not on every social platform doesn't mean we don't have access to it. So through even small media buys, we can get into... Really quick. I'm sorry?

I was like really quick. We got like two minutes.

Oh, yep. Even with really small media buys, we can get into platforms like Twitch. We can get into TikTok. We don't have to have an account. So yeah, Twitch is like a gaming platform. We're all familiar with TikTok. So we still can get Ramsey County content into these platforms without having to own and run the platform. So there's always opportunities. As for your question, Chair, about the pilot, I'm very pleased to say that the pilot is going to be a permanent program. When you all approved this two-year budget, you approved a position in our department. So our current program specialist, which was a limited duration position, ends at the end of this year. We have a permanent position coming in in January. that will continue with this program. And through a partnership with Environmental Health, that is how we're funding the program. And so right now, that allows us to have the two shows. As I was mentioning earlier, we would love to expand into more languages, more communities. And really, part of the reason we're going slower is recognizing the financial state the county is in, and that is why we're doing it slowly and incrementally. But if the opportunity comes before us where the funding is available, we would love to explore more languages, more cultural communities. We're here for it. Just recognizing that we want to balance all the things. Thank you.

Thank you, Director Lindsay. I want to thank you for your presentation today, for your information, and for your leadership and your vision to expand. Thank you. Appreciate it. So we're going to take a break, a 10-minute break. It's 10.35, and we'll be back at 10-minute break.

For you, two. Two? I've got to run downstairs. That's going to take me longer than two.

Mary Jo, man.

Quiet, he loves me. All right, we'll welcome everyone back from our brief break. We're gonna open up now with our informational service report from Chaitan Ganatra, who is our chief information officer.

Sorry, I'm a commissioner, board, county manager, CO, CODSA. I had to do that. It means following after an accomplished presenter like Director Lindsay is always a tough act. I do not have Snapchats or Backstreet Boys. I almost feel like that filler group that comes after Backstreet Boys. But all that to say, Director Lindsay, you and your team are just fantastic. So having said that, but who doesn't like information services? Those Snapchats wouldn't work without us. Did I introduce myself? I always forget. I'm Chetan Ganatra. I'm the chief information officer for Ramsey County. And before I forget to do this in the end, I'd like to do thanks in the beginning. I really want to thank my operations team and my information services team, especially because of whose work I am able to stand here confidently in front of you and talk about information services. Good morning. Today I want to walk through the Information Services performance measures, and more importantly, what they say about the role technology plays in helping Ramsey County serve residents and support employees. Information Services supports county operations in three core ways. We are a partner, we are an enabler, and we are a steward. As a partner, we work with departments to understand their business needs and design technology solutions that support their goals. You heard a great example of this partnership from Director Ali a couple of weeks back. Our team partnered with Financial Assistance Division to understand the exact problem they were trying to solve. And we were able to do a quick turnaround on a quality tool that has been immensely helpful to their work. And I always take pride in saying, when they came to us, they wanted a tool from another county. We said, we can do better. And now they do agree that we did better. So I will not name the county. As an enabler, we provide the infrastructure, tools, applications, and support that allow county staff to do their work effectively. And as a steward, we protect the county's digital resources, maintain cybersecurity, and safeguard sensitive data and promote responsible use of technology. The measures we selected The measures we selected reflect those roles. They are not just IT activity measures. They show whether technology is increasing access, improving reliability, and protecting the organization. The first measure I want to talk about is county sites with public Wi-Fi. This measure is directly tied to the digital inclusion and equitable access to county services. For many years, county libraries were the primary Ramsey County location where residents could access free public Wi-Fi. That was helpful, but it did not fully meet the needs of residents who interact with county services across many different facilities. Through the Wi-Fi enhancement and expansion project, Information Services is modernizing wireless infrastructure across county facilities and expanding free public Wi-Fi in resident-facing spaces. This work improves coverage, eliminates dead zones, creates a more consistent enterprise wireless network, and supports both residents and employees. The progress is significant. As you can see on the slide, from 2020 through 2023, about 20% of county sites had public Wi-Fi. In 2024, that increased to 55%. And in 2025, it reached 68%. Our goal is to reach 95% by 2028. and 100% by 2030 that all Ramsey County sites should have upgraded Wi-Fi and all 100% of resident facing spaces should have free public Wi-Fi. This measure speaks directly to a resident focus. For me, this is a prime example of using technology as an equity tool. We know that digital divide disproportionately affects people of color, minority communities. By expanding free public Wi-Fi, we are actively working to bridge those gaps in digital inequity and help advance racial equity in our community. What might just sound like IT infrastructure is actually a lifeline. For a resident, it can mean the ability to complete an application. access to county information attending a virtual appointment or use digital services while they are already in a county facility another point worth highlighting is that this progress was made possible because of cip funding that county leadership and board approved for this work This was an important milestone for Ramsey County. For the first time, Capital Improvement Program funding, or CIP funding, was allocated to technology infrastructure as a true capital investment. That decision allowed us to modernize and expand critical infrastructure in a way that supports both resident access and county operations. I also want to give a sincere shout out to our finance department for partnering with us and helping make this CIP grant possible. And I would be totally remiss if I forget to thank property management for their partnership, because installing Wi-Fi is a prime example of merger of technology with our physical buildings, where wiring and other things are managed by property management. And they have been amazing partners with us on that. Wi-Fi infrastructure is a joint effort between IS and property management teams. The second measure I would like to talk about is timely resolution of technology incidents. This measure looks at how quickly information services resolves technology incidents compared to established service level objectives. We focus on mean time to repair, and that's essentially a fancy word to say how quickly I can get your stuff working again, but we techies don't get to throw out cool words, so I just try to put it in there. We focus on mean time to repair by incident priority, because not every ticket has the same business impact. Instead of treating every technology issue the same, we assign different priority levels to incidents, each with its own specific target for resolution, which is what I mean by service level objectives. For instance, a major event like countywide network outage or ransomware alert requires an immediate urgent response. Think back to CrowdStrike outage that we all very well remember. That would be a P1. On the other hand, an isolated issue like broken keyboard or a shared printer problem has less critical resolution window. Ultimately, the more serious the impact to the county operations or resident services, the faster the response and resolution expectation. Currently, we are meeting our resolution targets rough roughly 80% of the time on an average across all different priority levels of incidents that we get. Our goal is to improve that to 86% by 2028 and 90% by 2030. This measure is about more than speed. It is about trust. Departments depend on technology to deliver services, and they need the confidence that information services will prioritize correctly and restore services as quickly as possible. This data also gives us an objective way to make better decisions about where to invest in automation, tools, training, or stronger processes. I do want to share why we are not immediately chasing that 80% number up to 95%, and why I believe 80% actually might be the right place for us to be focused on now at this point. The reality of service level performance is that it doesn't scale in a straight line. Getting from 60% to 80% is mostly about process discipline, better triage, clearer escalation paths, and essentially doing all our basics well and better than what we have been doing. But getting from 80 to 95% is a different kind of problem. It usually requires more staff, more after-hours coverage, and more redundant systems standing by, which means real cost for a shrinking return. The third measure I would like to present on is block malicious connections. How many of you receive emails where someone wants to give away their fortune to you? Some prince from Nambia thinks you deserve his estate or her estate. Those are the emails. Imagine if your personal mailbox gets so many of them. How many emails does county get? And I will give you an idea when I talk through this measure. This measure tracks the percentage of attempted malicious email communications that are identified and blocked before reaching county staff. I know you still see some phishing emails in there, but it is after all the blocking that we have been able to do with the most modern tools we have available. Cybersecurity is one of the most important stewardship responsibilities Information Services has. The county holds sensitive data and provides essential public services. Blocking malicious communications helps protect residents, employees, systems, and maintains continuity of service. This measure has become even more important as phishing, business email compromise, and other email-based threats have increased since 2023. In 2023, our blocking rate was 69%. In 2024, it was 65%. And in 2025, it was 67%. Our goal is to maintain a strong blocking rate of 68% in 2028 and 2030. At first glance, this goal may look different from traditional, higher is always better. I can almost picture CO getting her calculator out and saying, this is lower than what you were two years back. But I will address it. But in cybersecurity, the story is a little more nuanced. I want to explain why. Because the logic here actually tells you something important about threat environment that we are operating in. The volume and sophistication of attacks against local governments is increasing every year. And that's not gradually. It's increasing sharply. Think of this measure like protecting a city from floodwater. A few years ago, the water coming towards us was like a fast-moving creek. If our floodwall stopped 68% of that water, that was meaningful. But the total volume was still manageable. Today, that creek is becoming a river. In two years, it may look more like a major storm surge. So even if that percentage we stop remains at around 68%, the actual amount of water we are holding back is dramatically larger. That is what is happening with cyber attacks. The percentage alone does not tell the whole story. Holding steady at 68% while the threat volume is rising sharply means our defenses are absorbing and stopping far more attacks than before. It is not standing still. It is the equivalent of building a stronger flood wall while the storm itself is getting bigger. Just to give you a sense of this, in 2023, you must have seen, I said, we blocked 69% of malicious email connections. That equated to almost 17.4 million emails that never reached your mailboxes. In 2025, I said we were 2% less. We blocked 67% of malicious email connections, and that number equates to 20.2 million emails. That's almost three million more blocked emails that did not reach your inboxes. It also reflects something we can't fully control with technology alone. A meaningful share of successful intrusions don't come from sophisticated zero-day exploits that you read about in news. They come from a single employee clicking the wrong link. I'm probably going to age myself if anyone remembers the old movie, War Games, where someone was trying to hack into US government and the layers after layers going down and red dots are coming through. I know I'm old. That is. That is not the reality anymore. Now it is someone clicking a link for a free burrito or a fortune from a Namibian prince.

That's you.

They come from single employee clicking the wrong link. No firewall, no blocking rate fixes that on its own. So when you see this number, I would ask you to read it less as how good are we at blocking attacks and more as how resilient is the county as a whole. Technology and people together. In closing, taken together, these measures show the breadth of information services role. Public Wi-Fi demonstrates how we support equitable access and resident-centered services. Incident resolution demonstrates how we support operational excellence, reliability, and trust with our county partners. And the cybersecurity measure demonstrates how we act as stewards of county systems, data, public confidence, and strive for operational excellence at the same time. These measures also help us have more transparent conversations. They show where we are making progress, where we need continued investment, and how technology performance connects to county outcomes. Our goal is not simply to run systems. Our goal is to make county services more accessible, reliable, secure, and effective for residents and employees who depend on them. Oh, changed on its own. Though this is not a formal performance measure, as you would have heard County Manager Becker mentioning that we are taking a lot of austerity measures and my favorite word from her speech is belt tightening. I've been trying to do that literally and in my budgets. So I also want to call out this aspect of stewardship. Being responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars is also within that realm of stewardship. In addition to protecting county data and systems, Information Services has been looking for practical ways to modernize our environment, reduce duplication, and avoid unnecessary costs while maintaining service levels. So if someone comes and complains to you that CIO Ganatra said no to my system that I really want, know that I'm trying to be a good steward of the county money. If we have a bicycle, do you really need an electric bike is the question I always ask. If you have a Ford Focus, do you need a fully loaded Cadillac? So those hard conversations have been happening for more than two years now. And we have been very, what is the term, thrifty in our spending. My team has given me the nickname Miser. One example of this is decommissioning of public library data centers. By moving away from separate data center footprint while continuing to provide the same services and resources used by libraries, we saved approximately $240,000. We also saved approximately $360,000 of taxpayers money by improving how we forecast hardware needs and creating bulk orders that allowed us to take advantage of vendor volume discounts. Generally, vendor would give you volume discounts, so you would just order more. They get more margins. But if you don't plan it well, they get their margins, but you end up with inventory that is not needed for you. So changing that forecasting process, planning the whole lifecycle replacement of our devices has actually been a big initiative within information services. These are just two examples. The larger point is that stewardship is not only about cybersecurity. It is also about making disciplined, practical decisions that protect taxpayer dollars while still delivering the technology resources that county departments and residents rely on. Thank you. I'm happy to take any questions.

OK.

Commissioners on.

Thank you, Madam Chair. You know, just speaking about cybersecurity, what are the lessons we've learned from other local governments or what we've seen? You know, St. Paul, from St. Paul's experience, they made additional investments this year and last year, too. May you speak a little bit more on the county's investments or previous investments?

Definitely. Madam Chair, Commissioners, I would avoid going into details of our cybersecurity measures, but that's a great question because this is something that I've been passionate about. Just recently, a couple of weeks back, we brought the Lieutenant Colonel Brian Morgan from National Guard who led the effort to help City of St. Paul, and we brought in the State CISO, John Israel, on a panel along with me where we discussed what are the measures. And it was not only for the security team or one team, we invited the whole IS department. Because security can only be done so much with tools and technology. It is a mindset. So that mindset has to be created. I can put the best locks on your doors, but if you go and post on Facebook that I'm going on 10-day vacation, my home will be empty, come rob me, someone will rob you. So we are meeting with these people who have experienced through City of St. Paul yesterday. I was fortunate to be a part of the roundtable conference with Congresswoman Betty McCollum at Metro State University where we talked about the attacks that our water systems have seen. So crux of this is No one is ever going to have enough money to have all the fancy tools we need. But as Alex likes to laugh about it, I always have a contrarian logic on things. I'm like, what are we doing? Yes, there is less resources. But are we talking to other municipalities, pooling our resources together? Instead of each one of us having a car, can we carpool? Security can be carpooled, and we can help smaller municipalities, and we can benefit from their experience. So I have been in constant touch with the CIO, the CISO of City of St. Paul. We have been looking at their improvements that they've made. Some of the things that they... Did add later is something that we were doing for quite some time now. Sorry, I am.

Go ahead. Commissioner, I just want to add in one thing here because I think it's really important what Ciro Ganatra said. We partner with other people, but we also have made major investments over years, over many, many years. We have a new CISO, Saj, who's here, who has a lot of experience, who you've met previously, but we also – We also get cybersecurity insurance and we have been able to maintain that and actually do really well in that space. And that is a really good indicator to all of you that Chayton and his team and the whole county are investing in the right places because not every government is able to maintain that. So even though we don't like to go into all the details, we continue to look at different ways. This is one measure, but we also have a robust years of experience in how we protect the county from difficult situations. And then, as you mentioned, we practice for when something does go wrong and how we would react to that.

Just to add to what CEO Khadja said, and this is something I boast about, to give you the context, I was in a conference recently where a couple of counties were complaining that no one was willing to underwrite their cybersecurity insurance, whereas our vendor decided to give us a break in our premiums, which is unheard of in cybersecurity insurance world. So I don't want to take all the credit. It's also amazing work by our risk manager, Randy Malachick, and the security team's measures that we have taken.

That's really great to hear, and I think that's also something that we should even talk about, because throughout all this supplemental performance measure year, I am actually referencing back to our budget and to say this is the value that our taxpayers are getting. So thank you very much, and keep up the good work.

Commissioner McGuire.

Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. I'm going to add my gratitude to the good work that you're doing. I have heard that in at my statewide and national tables as well that people are not able to get insurance for cybersecurity. And I am really proud to say that you're able to get it and at a discount is really commendable. I just want to thank you and your whole department for all the good work that you are doing and for being available to be at those tables because I think it really helps us learn from each other and to really work together with others. So thank you for all of that. I also just want to say thanks to your team. Whenever I call with a technology question on my computer, which seems really small at this point when you're dealing with cybersecurity, but they're always really available and they're always just amazingly helpful. So thank you and spread that to your team. And I love your bike analogy, and you're right. Even though I own an electric, a really good bike will still get you where you need to go. And so I appreciate all of your explanations. of the work that you're doing, and why we all think 100% is the best. We have to balance it out with what we're able to afford, and if we can still get the good work done, I support all of that. I do have a question, just because it surprised me a little, and I know you're going to give me good examples. When I'm in a county building, whether it's public facing or not, I just think that the public has access to Wi-Fi. I know we do in our libraries. But if I'm in a meeting, I think, oh, I can get access because I'm internally. But the public can't always get access, even if they're in a county building. That's what you're working on, right? What other buildings are you working on getting Wi-Fi in? Because unless we set it for public Wi-Fi, Just because the building itself is Wi-Fi for our employees doesn't mean the public can get at it, which is why one of your measures is public-facing. So give me some example of those buildings that that might be in. I don't know. Maybe it's our parks that I don't know.

Can you share, please?

Madam Chair, Commissioners, that's a great question. There's a two-pronged, a little more nuanced answer. I can turn on public Wi-Fi in any building that I've already upgraded in Wi-Fi. We do not turn it on in spaces that are, you know, they're machine rooms. So public should ideally never have access in there for the security purposes. Courthouse, service centers, everywhere we have great public Wi-Fi now. And I think we covered... I will get back to you. I don't want to quote a number here, but we have covered a majority of buildings. I can actually follow up with a list of buildings that now have public Wi-Fi and upgraded Wi-Fi where I can even turn on public Wi-Fi very easily. And now, just to add to that, even the Public libraries' Wi-Fi is in the same network as us, which is a big win.

Which is something I think we all assumed was happening anyway. And when it wasn't, it was, oh my goodness. So thank you. Thank you for all of your work and your whole team. I really appreciate it.

I'm going to do a quick check-in for us. It's 11.17. We have three more commissioners with questions. And we want to break at 12 o'clock. And we have another presentation. So I'll make my retreat. Commissioner Maynard.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I will make this very quick. Thank you again for the presentation. A follow-up question to the public Wi-Fi piece. As it rolls out and you all make your way to hitting that 100% goal, are we prioritizing certain facilities as the rollout continues? And if so, what does that prioritization look like?

Definitely. Madam Chair, Commissioners, thank you for that question. And that was the first thing we thought about even before we put the first access point up there. We do have a steering committee of all, I shouldn't say all, but majority of departments across the county. How we tried to do that is we wanted to get perspective of what does parks need, what does sheriffs need, what does... public works need and taking that steering committee is the one that decides the priority of lists. And maybe something changes, someone comes to the steering committee and we do reprioritize, but generally the rule, we do have a rule that we follow for prioritization even in that steering committee. Anything that's public facing always gets a higher priority. Anything that's public safety always gets a higher priority. And I don't remember the whole list of rules, but it is in that order. And the steering committee looks at it. If there's an exception required, then there has to be a case made for it. And the committee decides that we do. differently or not.

Thank you. I appreciate that. And the other question I had is in regards to the cost savings, which I appreciate you highlighting what those were. I'm fascinated by the public library data center. Is that something that's a norm in the Twin Cities metro with other counties as well? And since we have decommissioned that data center, where are those services provided through now?

Madam Chair, Commissioners, thank you for that question. You are going to my sweet spots here, so thank you so much. Because I was passionate, and it took some partnership building with libraries. As we know, libraries were a different board earlier, and they were administered differently. I cannot speak to the history of why they were set up this way, but I can tell you essentially it was redundant compared to what we already had built for the rest of the county. So to me, it was a no-brainer decision if libraries partnered with us to give them the same services, because we are all paying into IS rates. Why should you spend a different amount of money on something else? Whereas I have the benefit of volume. I have the benefit of efficiency in numbers. Libraries do have very specific digital needs that not the rest of the county has. So there's a need for them to have specialized people. But the infrastructure services that data center provides or the security services that we provide, they remain the same. I am unable to speak to why it was set up this way, but I am assuming it might have been because it was a different board and libraries were independent board at that time. Now we are all through one Ramsey County.

OK, we're going to keep moving. Commissioner Miller? Nope. Commissioner? Jevenson? No, I already went. Jevenson.

Yeah. So on the Wi-Fi expansion, one of the things I was wondering is if part of the goal is to make sure that our public has access to Wi-Fi so that they can access our services and other needs that they have. Are there any corners of Ramsey County where we don't have Ramsey County buildings that would be kind of a dead zone? And are we working with or just convening other municipalities or school districts or things just to be able to say, hey, this little corner over here doesn't have a county physical presence, but we still want them to be able to have access to Wi-Fi? Have there been coordination with other entities like that?

Madam Chair, Commissioners, That was something we did think about earlier, but that's a very different technology implementation. It's a mesh network that I have to implement.

I'm not saying that we would then take that on. I just mean to say this is what we have done to provide public Wi-Fi. We seem to have hit x percentage of the map And then to say, are there other entities who could also invest in those specific dead zones to maximize their dollars? That's what I meant, just to partner and convene and collaborate.

Yeah, I can help with this one a little bit. So after the pandemic, we had a lot of private partners that really invested in public Wi-Fi in the community, one being, I think Chet and I both think the same thing, Comcast put up a series of many, many what they call lift zones out in the community. So I don't know if we've really looked. We used to have a digital, and we might still have an active digital equity map of where all those locations are that are not just county buildings, but kind of other public spaces. And that's nonprofit organizations. Those would be big ones that Comcast invested in. And I think that infrastructure is, well, you said it's not county responsible. we at least can, that study provided kind of a baseline map of where people should consider investments. Does that make sense?

Yeah, yeah. And that's what I was thinking more along the lines. If you were able to map and say, here, these particular neighborhoods seem to be outside of what we've been able to kind of cover reasonably, and to see, hey, You know, Roseville, there's a corner over here that seems to be untouched. But people think it's five minutes to the library, so we feel confident. But are there places that maybe haven't been touched? So that was more of that coordination. So thank you on that. Yeah, then the other question I have is I really appreciate that we're bonding for IT infrastructure. I think that we have to look at that as infrastructure. And while we don't want to go into the data security specificities, I do encourage you to continue to keep us abreast of any emerging threats and any needs that we need to maybe accelerate or change the investments that we have because we know that these things are always evolving. And I say that because I'm also applauding the stewardship that you had and the cost savings. As a young family, I was home with two littles, and my job was a penny saved is a penny earned, right? So if we can model that across our enterprise, I, at Little Healthy Competition, encouraging folks to be able to, somewhere if we have a repository of the ways that people are tightening up the notch in their belt in responsible ways. but in ways that still maintain the program integrity. I think that that's wonderful, and I really appreciate that. And sitting on the audit committee, we had heard the good news about the cybersecurity insurance. And again, it's not only keeping our costs down, but effectively serving and being good stewards of all of the goals that we have in serving our community. So good work.

Thank you. All right. So I want to thank you so much, Chief Information Officer Linatra, for your work, for your leadership, for your vision, and definitely for the savings. We appreciate that. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

All right. We're going to keep moving on to our next presenter, property manager, Director Cougar.

Good morning, Madam Chair, Commissioners. Jean Krueger, Director of Property Management. Thank you for the time today. I want to thank our service team, new service team with Director Kutza, Admin Director. Dunaway, and the whole team in helping put this all together for this new service team. I also want to thank the whole property management team. Our team, by and large, is behind the scenes, but without them and the work they do, obviously we wouldn't be able to have and report on the measures we do today. So a special thanks to them. Property management, as you know, we're committed to providing operational excellence through continuous improvements to our buildings and the services we provide to the tenants. We embrace one county and strive for consistency in operations across our 30 buildings and approximately 3 million square feet of space. Just for reference, this is about the same square footage as the Mall of America. but ours is spread out in 30 different places, and we do not have staff at every building. So we have to balance our windshield time with the services and the operations within those buildings. We strive to provide welcoming and accessible facilities through effective and efficient operations. We strive to reduce our energy consumption, to mitigate the effects on climate change, We also provide, again, the services that often do get taken for granted until something goes wrong. Our team is out there maintaining our buildings, providing the janitorial services within the buildings, providing for the physical security of our spaces, keeping those IS data closets secure, letting people into buildings who should be in buildings and not letting in those who shouldn't or at the times of day when they shouldn't. We utilize tools and technology much more so than just 10 or 20 years ago. I, too, want to thank our co-department with IS for that investment that they have been making in improving Wi-Fi within our buildings. Not only does that provide greater access and accessibility to the public, but it also helps our teams be able to utilize their tools and technology, such as laptops, iPads, in some of the more remote corners of buildings that otherwise they couldn't use those technology tools. They'd have to be back to the office, to the desk, to connect and utilize or access some of the automation systems. So that's been a big boon to us. Again, much of what we do is unseen. That is, until a building issue arises. It's our team. that runs literally to the fire or to the fire alarm panel, runs to the pipe leak, to the flood, et cetera, to try and stop and or minimize the impacts of those sorts of building disruptions. We really, on a proactive basis, are also out there looking to maintain the investments, the assets that the county has. That includes a wide variety of projects, such as this year, work that's been going on in parking lots and landscape upgrades, the law enforcement campus, a couple of the libraries, recent examples. Obviously, do things to upgrade equipment, to reduce energy. More on that later. Some of you might have been inconvenienced, but hopefully will now appreciate the replacement, if you will, of the terrazzo floor on the lower level of the courthouse here, which was starting to buckle and becoming a trip hazard. Give it another little bit before you go look if you haven't yet, but a massive floor renovation project down there.

Where is that at again?

The lower level, this building. And you're aware of the more major renovations that have been being completed at the government center and at the recently opened public health center in Maplewood. So a wide variety of projects that property management leads. For 2026, we have three performance measures. Two of these you've seen from us before, and one is new. Our workforce participation. performance measure, workforce by racially and ethnically diverse and American Indians in construction contracts has been a measure for us for several years. And it really is in support of the strategic priorities, racial and health equity, as well as intergenerational wealth for our residents. Another of our measures that we've had before is the energy consumption by all of the Ramsey County-owned buildings. And again, that, as DCM Kutzka said earlier, is really all about operational excellence, that effective and efficient operation of our buildings and our systems. New this year is the renewable energy utilization in our buildings, and that too supports operational excellence, but also racial and health equity, as I'll talk more about in a few minutes. Workforce participation goals in construction contracts has been a measure for us for several years, going back to property management's participation in the EGCI service team and a lot of work with our public works and Parks and Rec peers. Our goals, 32%, are consistent with the state of Minnesota goals, and they are to encourage our prime contractors and subcontractors to increase the racial and ethnic diversity of their workforces. In 2025, our percentage was 18%. The percentage varies over the years, and it does somewhat depend upon the total dollars that we spend on the construction projects. 18% in 2025 is slightly less than 2024. 2024 was a much larger construction spend for us, thinking about some of the projects I just mentioned. And we do seem to achieve a higher percentage in the years when we have a greater spend. I think we're in more projects out there. probably more larger general contractors who really do pay attention and focus on their workforce participation and are able to bring in subcontractors as well that have a more diverse workforce. On a macro or industry level, though, there continues to be a gap in the diversity of the workforce within the construction trades. For 2024, the last year that the statewide information was available, the construction workforce was made up of 93.3% white. very challenging to achieve a 32% diversity when the labor pool is so far from that. We continue to work with our contractors. We have kickoff meetings. We engage with them upfront and even as a part of solicitation the process to let them know of our goals, of our expectations, and encourage them to work to help us achieve these goals. We also continue to work with Workforce Solutions to help and encourage people, young people, that careers in the construction trades are awesome and hopefully encourage more to pursue those career paths. As I mentioned, performance measure on energy consumption has been with us for many years. This measure is inclusive of all buildings, those managed by us, Parks and Rec, Lake Owasso residents, and includes things like Landmark Center, Union Depot, so truly all county-owned buildings. Obviously, our goal is to reduce our consumption year over year. This measure is measured, if you will, in energy terminology, which is million British thermal units, or BTUs. So obviously our goal is to drive that number down year over year. Unfortunately, in 2025, as you'll see here, our number, our energy consumption did go up by some 18,000 million BTUs. Although this is not what we want to see in any given year, the degree days in 2025, meaning the amount of heating we needed to do or the amount of cooling we need to do, just because of the weather, was 18% higher. So the fact that our consumption went up 8% in a year when weather would have dictated 18% does mean we're doing a good job. Part of the reason of that increase as well is that we had the government center building exterior envelope project going on for a good part of the year, which if you drove by at all, you know that we had a good portion of the north side of the building somewhat open to the elements. Obviously, we try to control or contain as much as possible, but we were doing a lot more heating and cooling to keep the occupants of the building comfortable through that construction project. We also had the first full year of the Environmental Center. And although it's a smaller building and has some renewables, it does contribute to the consumption. As I said, though, without the improvements that we have been making, LED lighting conversions, improvements to our building envelopes, once we seal places back up like the government center, and address things like window replacements or weather stripping, caulking open joints. Think of your own homes where you have a draft coming in. sealing those things up have all allowed us overall to continue to reduce our consumption. A lot of these improvements have been made possible through our capital improvement program dollars and also more recently through the loan that finance worked with us to take from the county general fund. We would not be able to do these larger investments without those funding sources. I will just add to this, property management ourselves has been tracking energy consumption since 2008. Since 2008, the usage in our buildings has decreased by 41%. Had we not done that in 2025, our utility costs, today's utility rates, would have been $2 million more than it was. So the percents translate to significant dollars saved. In accordance with Ramsey County Operational Excellence and our Climate Equity Action Plan, we, as well as other departments, are focused on not only reducing our energy consumption, but evaluating and pursuing opportunities to utilize renewable energy sources. This is a new measure, and for 2025, does just incorporate the buildings we manage. We'll be looking to expand that for future years. But as we really just take that, I won't say first step into renewables, but as we really start to embrace looking to move towards renewables, we want to track what percent of our power does come from our on-site renewables. So for 2025, it starts out pretty small, just 0.21%. And we're looking to increase that to 3%. and 5% over the next couple of years based on our ability to fund the renewable projects that we have put forward as being our best short-term sites for that investment. Although reaching the goals of 3% and 5% for our on-site generation might not seem like significant steps up, it really does, by 2030, equate to 50 times more power from our onsite than through the utility companies. So it's an incremental improvement, but we'll continue to pursue. I will mention beyond that that we are always in conversation with Xcel Energy for one reason or another. But as a partner and a utility provider for virtually the county and beyond, they too are committed to renewables. And so we can't forget the fact that they are utilizing renewables and have their own goals. For 2025, they were at about a 41% renewables as power sources. And they have their goals to increase that to 55% by 2030. So if they're at that and we had another five, we're really at about 60% renewable sources for the power we use. And they and we will continue to move in the right direction on those areas. Looking forward for our performance measures, we'll continue to pursue improvements in our partnerships with internal and external groups to try and improve our workforce participation numbers. We also have and will continue to work with purchasing and contracting to see what, if any, policies or procedures we might be able to affect changes, particularly as an outcome of the disparity study. So continue to work with them, and as I mentioned, workforce solutions as far as careers and moving people into the construction trades. We also continue to focus on efficient operations of our buildings and, as I said, need the additional investments to make those bigger investments necessary, particularly in relation to the renewables. We consider ourselves good stewards of the county resources. While we continue to be negatively impacted by inflationary costs, which is really what our budget increase for 2027 is all about, we do make responsible choices in order to support the county goals, maintain a safe and healthy environment for all, and truly continue to improve the environment for the residents coming into our buildings. Our reduction in energy consumption, again, is not only good for our budget, but it is also good for our climate. We'll continue to pursue those investments where practical to drive down our consumption and to switch to renewables. As we pursue opportunities for other cost savings, divesting surplus real estate is key. The sale of the Maplewood South property occurred earlier this year. And if you've driven by there at all, the developer is busy turning that into residential housing, much needed in the county. We look to complete the sale of the 160 East Kellogg building in 2027. As you might recall, that is under a purchase and sale agreement. And the buyer is busy doing their due diligence and funding and continues to move forward. Again, the purchase and sale agreement had a timeline there, which we are on. But that does not conclude the sale until in 2027. We'll continue to work closely with Community and Economic Development and others as a part of work groups under Building Stronger Together in order to divest more county land as we identify those for priority action. We also are working as a part of the Building Stronger Together work groups to help improve vitality of downtown and Ramsey County through those initiatives. We also, property management works closely with the Downtown Alliance and the St. Paul Downtown Improvement District as a part of continuing those measures to both create a more safe and secure downtown, but also as a part of some of the vitality measures that are being undertaken. With that, I would thank you for your time this morning and stand for questions. Okay, Commissioner Miller.

Okay, thank you, Director Krueger, for this wonderful presentation. I have a few questions. One on our first slide, you mentioned the maintenance workers, and are they union, I mean, not union, I'm sorry, are they our staff or are they contractors?

Yes, thank you, Commissioner Miller, Madam Chair. Our maintenance mechanics throughout our buildings are employees of the county. Okay.

And then my next question goes to the one with the workforce and the goal of 32% and how it ebbs and flows depending upon projects. And so are some of those projects done in-house with the contractors and the staff that we have? Or is it dependent on the scope and size of the project? And then does that also affect the numbers as well?

Yes, thanks for that, Commissioner Miller. The construction projects that are a part of that measure are large projects, and those are completed through solicitations outside general contractors, other prime contractors, subcontractors. It's not the internal workforce.

Yeah, and this is another goal. I mean, because you said it, knowing that the workforce is predominantly white, and this is a goal that's going to be harder, I believe, for us to obtain. Maybe this is something we should look at, just how do we measure that, or how do we want to measure that so it doesn't look like we're continuously far off from it. As someone whose husband is Native American and Hispanic and in the trades, it's not an easy route to get into, especially unions and We know that firsthand, so I just wanted to note that and say that as well. Yes, thank you. Just that question. And then my last question goes to the renewable energy slide and unitization. Are any of our downtown properties connected to district energy or have that opportunity to connect to there and there would be potential savings there?

Mm-hmm. Again, Commissioner Miller, Madam Chair, thank you for that yes. By and large, we are connected to District Energy. I have to double check to make sure it is all, but it's most everyone other than, for whatever reasons over the years, 160 East Kellogg was never connected to District Energy. But this building, Government Center, Medical Examiner, JFJC, I mean, by and large, Landmark, Union Depot. Yes. Okay. Thank you for that.

And does that just a quick follow-up? Does that also then? attribute to some savings as well in this as yes, I Or how does that, maybe you don't got to go into detail, maybe it's a follow-up email or explanation as well.

No, thanks for that. I mean, Commissioner Miller, Madam Chair, when those transitions were done, that did result in savings to us. It's why we did it. Of course, we had to execute 20-year contracts for it all. But what it also does is lessens the amount of infrastructure, the amount of heating and cooling equipment that we have on site, which lessens the capital requirement over the years for replacements of that equipment. So it is a cost savings, a cost avoidance to us on an ongoing basis.

Perfect. Thank you.

Chair, I just wanted to note for the board that on October 6, we have a mobile board workshop to go over to District Energy. So we'll have Dr. Krueger be a part of that. talk about additional partnerships and maybe how we work together. They wanted to show the board just their operations. So we wanted to do that, especially with some of the newer commissioners who maybe haven't gotten a thorough tour there. Thank you.

So I would like to piggyback on the workforce participation around the racial and ethnic diversity of the workforce around construction. And I think at the state level, 32% was the goal, too. It's not impossible to reach. It may be a little difficult. And we may have to go and be very more creative around how do we pour more diversity into the workforce. I see here you talk about partnering with workforce solution trade groups and contractors to increase participation in careers and to continue work with purchasing and contracting to pursue changes to policies following the disparity study. Where are we with the disparity study in Ramsey County? What do that look like right now?

Madam Chair, I may defer that one.

Madam Chair, commissioners, so as you know, the disparity study, we had a presentation back in June from Dolly Lee, the division director over in purchasing and contracting. We have all of the results. We are working towards some changes, which you'll see in the legislative or a change in the legislative proposals this year to change some language to help us do that. And she's also working on a roadmap of some things we can do early and has worked with places like Hennepin who have done a lot of that work and the recommendations that we got from our King consultant. I anticipate we'll have a decent roadmap later this year. And when she presented, she talked about this being a couple year journey for all of us, including different investments we need to make and tools we need to leverage.

It's a couple year journey to do what?

To use all the tools that we now have access to, because we have a disparity study, previously we couldn't do certain things within our purchasing and contracting. Now, as Director Krueger mentioned, there are ways for us to give more preference to different groups because of the disparity study. So construction is a great area we can do that in. How you do that and how you implement those tools is really important and it has to align with all of the rules and figure that out. So we're trying to learn from people who've done it well and from the recommendations of our contractor to implement those. And some of them are gonna take more time and resources and others we can do more quickly.

So it's going to be a progress. We're not going to wait until 2028. No, no, no. We're already doing something. It's a progress in work. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for that. Okay. Commissioner McGuire and then Jefferson.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm so grateful for all of your work, Director Krueger, and your whole team. We are proud of our buildings and we Appreciate the upkeep that you have because we want our buildings to look good and feel good and you know be be sustainable So thank you for that. I appreciate my colleague Commissioner Miller bringing up district energy. It was one of my questions as well to see if we're using that and those of us that serve on our Recycling and Energy Board, you know, we're gonna be asking questions about sustainability and I I appreciate that you brought up the environmental center and I know we have solar panels on that and I've been on the tour many times there, and I was thinking that we were much more of a contributor to an energy, not a user. So when you said our costs went up because of a full year of the Environmental Center, I was thinking that the solar panels and things were really going to be much more sustainable there. I mean, I knew it wasn't going to be 100%, but I didn't know that we'd actually be a big enough drain on the system to warrant this mention. I just thought it was I don't know. Maybe you could just help me understand that. And maybe I just need to understand more about what solar really is capable of in these buildings. And I appreciate we're trying to get it where we can, because every bit helps.

Right. Commissioner McGuire, Madam Chair, thank you for that. We really didn't, I'll say, turn on the Environmental Center till March, April of 2025. So we certainly had some months of the year where Everything was not operational. And then the solar in all buildings doesn't necessarily cover you 100% of the time either, but it's certainly better than having nothing. I will just add that the environmental center was not the major contributor to that. Obviously, the weather and the government center building were the major contributors. But just want to note that we did bring on a new building.

Okay, thank you. And I'm just grateful that we do have new buildings, that we are looking at the sustainability of them with the solar and with all of those things, which I think is a value of ours. And it brings me to my last question for this time is because now we are going to be 100% – able to collect organics and food scraps in our county starting in February or March when St. Paul will come on board. Then I'm hoping, and I'm just putting this out there, that all of our buildings will be outfitted with our within organics, with our food scraps, recyclables, and landfill bins. Because I noticed in many of our buildings now, we don't have the three bins. And people, because we don't have a way to, I get it that we don't always have a way to distribute the food scraps. That would be a whole different system. But now we will have, and so will be a training for our people that take care of our waste. that they will be bagging that up and putting it into the garbage bin, and it will be separated out at our plant. But I'm just hoping that we have a plan for putting these three tiered bins in our buildings. I'm often at a library and a lot of organizations that use our libraries are using compostable napkins, plates, cups, but we have no place to put them. They use them and it goes right in the garbage and it's such a waste if we don't have an organics bin to put it in so that it can be appropriately composted. Once we get on this system that is a huge value and we're investing lots of money countywide on this, I'm just putting the bug out there and I know that you I know the property manager cares about this. And so it's just giving us a notice that we're going to want to be thinking about how we're going to be collecting all these things.

Do you have a timeline to see? Commissioner McGuire, Madam Chair, that is a plan that is not fully developed yet. But yes, in working with Environmental Health and the Recycling Energy Center, we have to work out those details in conjunction with the various haulers. So it will be a...

A big initiative to get to it. We're happy to work with you and, of course, environmental health and recycling and energy. We work with all the haulers. They are all conditioned to do this work, too. Thank you. We need a timeline. I just want to make sure that we're online for that.

I'm putting it on the radar that it's coming online. Thank you. That's really good. Just one quick question before you haven't seen the government building. Has it been completed or is there a date for that to be completed, the outside exterior?

Thank you, Madam Chair. Think carefully before I answer that. There are still some smaller items to be completed internal to the building. And the exterior is to be completed, the windows, by the end of September. Actually, this weekend, we are moving the generator down into what will, over the next month or two, transition into a plaza, a green space, on the corner of Jackson and 7th. So not all done yet. But the impacts internally to employees or residents is very minimal. But it will take the next couple of months to really wrap up everything.

That's awesome. Thank you. Commissioner Jefferson.

OK. So you mentioned that property management does play a role in identifying some potential facilities or properties to be reviewed as part of our Building Stronger Together initiative. And I'm just wondering how much This might be another department, but conversations with our municipalities as they have dreams and visions for the development of their communities. And we are fairly built out as a county. And is that part of it? Have you had anybody knock on the door and say, well, if that corner is free, we have a vision? Or are we not really in that place yet? It's going to be a very thoughtful process. I'm just curious how you're engaging the cities in that discussion.

Yeah, thank you for that, Commissioner Jevenson.

I'm happy to just start with that since it's a partnership with Jeans Area and CD, but we certainly are talking to the cities through these economic development summits that Director Josh Olson hosts. We've been in significant conversations with the city of Maplewood, for example, because they like to talk about the percentage of land that the county owns within the jurisdiction of. maplewood they have a lot of areas that you know we're kind of already doing some pre-conversations about where we want to do some looking of small site planning and considerations together so i i think all cities in ramsey county understand that there's opportunity here and that no parcel whether they own it or we own it should go unearthed in terms of consideration of what better use it could be if it was put back on the tax rolls We've even seen just like kind of fairly small parcels up in like off of Wright Street there where I think we sold a parcel that ended up being like a fast food. You know, I mean, there's just like they were sort of not very big, but they can become something to a private developer that, you know, sees a need. So I think CED is definitely doing those conversations and working closely. And sometimes the county has property as well that can kind of be, what do you call it, to make something even slightly more attractive. And so we are having those conversations with our cities. So good question.

That's great. And then another one is the managing and administering county leases and property use agreements. I'm just curious, what is the cadence for reviewing these agreements to make sure we're best positioned to maximize the county's dollars and assets?

Yes, thank you for that, Commissioner Jensen. We certainly have less leases at the moment than we used to, but we have a staff member who really does look at those leases on an annual basis to make sure that we are utilizing those spaces, need those spaces, and that we're appropriately paying rent, etc. On the use agreements that are a little more... maybe out of sight, out of mind, some of the easements or access agreements, they too do get looked at on an annual basis. But there, there's nobody who is impacted if something isn't being done right or performed right. So it is really just kind of an annual eyes-on.

Okay, great. And then taking a little bit of a twist, I was with my role with DCT, I toured St. Peter yesterday and witnessed how from staff themselves and residents there, how some intrinsic redesigns improved the experience of the people who are in those buildings as well as the safety of the people who are in those buildings. And I know that that is something that we are constantly in discussion. balance with as we modernize our spaces to be the most efficient, but also the most welcoming and also keep, again, you know, given the large, you know, public facing that we have, whether that's libraries or services centers. And I'm just wondering, do we have some kind of an ongoing internal measurement or way that we are, you know, reviewing spaces and updating spaces so that they are balancing those sometimes competing goals?

Commissioner Jebensingh, I think I would honestly have to say there probably isn't a established cadence or roadmap of looking at those, particularly with that lens. Obviously, we kind of look more holistically on just the renovations of buildings and knowing that there's a cycle that we need to be doing that. But I can say to that, the changes that, for example, were made here to the county manager's office during the renovation or all of the different areas that were impacted in the government center, there's a lot of different lobbies there. And as a part of that, the suburban service centers and even libraries, we try to look at particularly those public-facing counters and ensure that there is equity. and consistency and trying to keep them all both professional and welcoming, but also safe and secure for employees.

Yeah, I would say I think that that's something we should kind of be keeping in mind as we, and I'm sure it is, but I mean, I just raised that up. It was such a stark difference in some of the changes that they made that it's investments that I think are worthwhile in other kind of outcomes. And then lastly, I just want to raise up, thank you for sharing the cost savings on the energy consumption investments. As we are part of the JDA and Rice Creek Commons, We are often faced with folks who think that our sustainability guidelines somehow are contrary to our affordability goals, but really having this kind of example shows how they really are in alignment. So thank you for sharing that.

All right, well, I want to thank you, Director Krueger, for your work and your leadership and really the hard work and the passion that you bring to providing effective and efficient operations of over the 30 buildings that we maintain and own. So appreciate the work. Thank you. Thank you. So we are going to break for lunch, and we will be back here at 1 o'clock.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Commissioner Zhang, if you hear me, can you turn on your camera?

Yep, I do. Do you hear me? Awesome.

If I hear you one moment, I'm going to add a spotlight. So you should see it's dual screen now. It's you and the presentation of the council chambers. Oh, yeah. Thank you.

Thank you. ¶¶

We're going to reconvene and come back. And we have several presentations this afternoon. But we're going to start this afternoon with the Chief Financial Officer, Ms. Coover.

Thank you. Thank you, Chair and board members. Can you hear me all right? OK, good. Everything's working out for lunch? Wonderful. So I'm Amelia Kruver. I'm the county's chief financial officer, leader of the finance department. I am relatively new to the county. I'm about to start my six months here, so I have a lot of thank yous to give while we present these performance measures on behalf of the department that I now lead. I want to thank our admin director, Melinda Donoway, our finance division directors, and our county COO, and DCM Alex Kutza for their support in preparing for this supplemental budget process. So finance. In finance, we are stewards of the taxpayer dollars from the moment that they come into the county as revenue in the form of property taxes or state aid to when they leave in the form of payments to provide services or support for residents or to maintain our roads and buildings. Finance ensures that every step of the way funds are accounted for, protected, invested, planned for, and spent to support our county goals and meet our obligations to the people that we serve. As a public entity, we are using compelled dollars to operate. To put it plainly, residents and businesses do not get to opt out of paying taxes. And because of that, we rely on those to function. We must meet really high standards for transparency, for governance, and for the safety of those funds. To meet these high standards, finance performs a number of functions. We conduct an annual audit, we set up biannual budget, and we manage the procurement process and the selling of bonds. So these are the three performance measures that we're going to talk about today. The measures we selected shed light on the accounts payable process, contracting, and investing. For each of these functions, we must do two things. Maintain those high standards and meet rigorous state statutes on transparency, ethical governance, and fraud prevention that I mentioned in the intro, as well as we must move quickly to meet the needs of our residents and make the most of our assets and diversify our revenue sources. So the first of our performance measures looks at the percent of invoices that we pay on time. We measure on time using the state statute and so any invoice that's paid before 35 days is on time and after that it's late. Minnesota laws require that all municipalities pay valid invoices in 35 days. In addition to the statutory requirement, the faster bills are paid, the sooner businesses receive funds. This is particularly important for smaller businesses who may not have the resources to wait on a delayed check. Our goal is to make doing business with Ramsey County easier while making sure that every invoice is thoroughly reviewed before being paid. In addition, a delayed check results in negative financial impacts for the county as well. Late invoices begin to collect interest when they pass the 35-day mark. Because of this, we aim to pay as close to 100% of invoices on time as possible. While we acknowledge that there will always be some issues that take a little bit more time to ensure that payments are made properly, in recent years, we've paid between 97% and 98% of all invoices on time. In order to do this, we rely on partnerships and coordination with departments to do this work. Departments receive and verify that goods are received and manage the first part of the process. Then finance finalizes the checks and cuts them with the bank. Okay, so the next measure looks at the number of weeks to execute a contract using a solicitation process. So this measure looks at the work of our purchasing and contracting team. The purchasing and contracting division of finance works with departments to enter into contracts that provide the services and goods needed to support their work. Public purchasing, like payments of invoices, must follow all applicable state statutes, must be done competitively and ethically, and the faster that process goes, the more quickly services are delivered to our residents. While there are many ways to enter into contracts and procure goods, we are focused on solicitations because they provide a competitive, transparent, and equitable process. An effective solicitation process does multiple things that benefit the county. It provides needed services or goods to residents quickly and efficiently. It allows for transparent and accessible process for businesses to work with the county. It ensures that public dollars are spent in compliance with legal requirements and fraud prevention measures. Before the formation of the Purchasing and Contracts Division within finance, solicitations took around 36 weeks to complete. Our goal is to bring that down to 18 weeks. And in 2025, the average was 23 weeks. We rely on our partnership and coordination with departments to do this work effectively. In addition to the departments seeking a contract, we work closely with the attorney's office, risk management, and information services to ensure that contracts meet all appropriate regulations and internal policy, internal county policies. This performance measure helps us as a department track progress towards our goal, facilitating fast and effective solicitation. The Purchasing and Contracting Division also works to track and connect departments with small and minority-owned businesses. More data on that work and the county's progress can be found on the Ramsey County Open Data Portal. So after this performance measure, we wanted to pause and hear a voice from small business owners. So in addition to meeting, again, the many regulations that we follow to uphold an effective and legal contracting process, we also work to make sure that the county does business with small and local businesses and organizations. And we perform a lot of community outreach to make it easier to do business with the county. These are two examples of feedback that we've received from small business owners who have connected with finance staff through the community engagement department. Or through the community engagement the department does. And you'll see Joe here is a member of our purchasing and contracts division. Got a shout out. All right. OK, so our last performance measure is looking at our rate of return on our investments. So this work is done primarily by our treasury division, specifically around the rate of return that we get on our investments with the cash that we can invest at the county. Investment earnings strengthen Ramsey County's overall financial stability by providing a flexible source of revenue. Many of the sources of revenue the county receives outside of the levy are dedicated to specific purposes, so interest income, can be used flexibly and is an important part of our revenue mix at the county. While any additional income from investment is an asset, how do we measure if we are being effective investors of the county's assets? Particularly because the county must prioritize the safety of public dollars, we have very low risk tolerance for investing, and we must operate under narrow statutes that allow for a limited number of investment options. For these reasons, the county investment performance is evaluated against U.S. Treasury yields. We are never going to get what you get back by investing in the stock market because we have such low risk tolerance. So we try and look at what are the U.S. Treasury yields looking like as another really risk-free rate of return. By actively managing our portfolio and working with our partners in banking and consulting, we've been able to take advantage of the higher interest rates in recent years. And in 2025, we earned over the US Treasury benchmark. So US Treasury rate was around 3.48. And in 2025, we earned a rate of return of 4.2%. Our goal is to maintain that strong rate of return on our investments and I want to add a caveat to those goals that are in this slide right here. 4.3 is what we think we should be aiming for right now because our rate of return is so based on the external economy. Those will be adjusted as we conditions adjust because we must make sure first that all of the county money is safe and then we invest and see how much we can get. That is my note on those goals in the future. All right. So looking ahead, looking into the future, how will we continue to meet those goals and improve? So finance has a number of systems and partnerships that will help us continue this progress. As a part of the accounting alignment work between finance and the operations staff, we're participating in quality improvement processes to standardize and improve accounts payable to make sure that invoices are paid on time and every payment is reviewed and authorized before it leaves the county. Workday implementation will be a large undertaking of finances, as well as operations in all departments starting in 2027. Streamlining processes using technology more effectively will be a huge asset to our performance on invoice payment and solicitations, and staff are hard at work on those implementations as we speak. Lastly, strong partnerships with our partners that provide goods and services on behalf of the county in the community and with departments that manage that work are critical to meeting our goals. We aim to make it easier to do business with Ramsey County while ensuring that all payments and contracts meet the rigorous standards that we must meet for spending public dollars. So that is my outlook. That's the rest of my presentation. I'm happy to answer any questions you guys have.

All right. So I'll open up by just asking on page 40, the percent of invoices paid. Yeah. So here you talk about that we are required to pay interest on invoices taking more than 35 days to pay. Who do the interest go to? State, county, the vendor, who?

We pay that out, I believe, to the vendors that have the late payment that they're waiting on. So it's a cost to the county when it's late. And so how have we been doing with that process? So really, the amount of money that we are paying on interest varies quite a bit. So you'll see in recent years, we have been between 97% and 98% paid on time, which is great. But if one of those invoices is for a really large amount of money, that interest really racks up quick. So in the last, I think, since 2022 through 2025, it's ranged between 100,000 and almost $300,000 that we are paying in excess interest on these late invoices. So it's a really important performance measure for us to make sure we're being good stewards.

Madam Chair, Commissioners, thank you. CFO Krueger is correct that it goes to the vendor and we always get audited on it. So if you think back to our audits, they go through and check when you were late, did you pay the interest to the vendor? And so it's You know, it's wide-ranging, right? So if you're getting paid late, you're getting interest, but that's not good for your business. We want to be able to pay within 30 days and have these businesses get that money from us. And also, as a county, we don't want to be spending that interest on something we could avoid by paying in a more timely way.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Commissioner Miller.

Thank you, Commissioner Moran, for bringing that point up. I hear you mention businesses, but where does that fall in for our other, like our grantees, our nonprofit partners, or even our daycare providers? Where does that fall in? And then it's all of it, okay? And then do they have to request that interest? No, it's just something that you guys will automatically be applied to it if it's late.

And the one caveat I would put on that is if there is a dispute or a question or the invoice isn't quite right or it's a duplicate invoice, the clock doesn't start until we've resolved those issues. So the 35 days is after we have a good invoice that we know we need to pay.

With the grantees or the vendors that are funded through grants that we receive, and it's maybe pass-through dollars, and then we owe interest, that comes off of what? Where does that come from? Our levy? Then when we are late with those interest payments, because that's, I'm assuming we don't factor in, we could be late on a payment, and so we need more of an administrative cost, or we need more on our end if it's a pass-through grant or if we're a grantor.

Yeah, so it depends on the department that the check is coming out of because we are making the payment based on the budget and the coding for that specific invoice. So I would need to go back and look at it. For large invoices that are late, those are typically in our capital budget where we have these really big construction loans. So those have a broader mix of funding sources. I would need to go back and look where do they largely come from.

Well, why I ask that is like thinking of some of the grants we have and some of the programs that we run and how we grant them out or we partner with community to execute that work. Once that dollars is gone, the dollars is gone. So where does the additional cost then come up for if we're late on an administrative end?

I mean, it comes from, go ahead. No.

I'm trying really hard not to weigh in here a little bit, but Chair, Commissioners, I think there's a couple nuances here. First, I want to be careful to say invoices that Ramsey County is paying, so sometimes we review things on behalf of the state and those have different rules. Or on behalf of a different grant thing, they might have different rules. Any invoice that Ramsey County is paying with a Ramsey County check or that we have 35 days. And then to your other question about who pays for that in the end, I think the answer is it depends. If there is grant funding available and it is within the grant that we have to pay, we try hard not to pay interest, we would charge it to the grant first. But if not, you are absolutely right. It would go to levy. By law, we have to pay that regardless of how much money we have. We can't not pay it if we are paying it from Ramsey County.

Okay, and please correct me if I'm going too wrong in the weeds here, and you just need to be like, stop, lady. With some of the grants that we have, though, the federal dollars that we have, and tell me if I'm just on a hill and you need to get off this soapbox, Kelly. I mean, that's OK, too. The check's still coming from us. So it would still be on us. It's not like it's just, oh, this is from Garrison. It's coming from us. That's right.

OK.

Thank you for that. So I think you are correct, Commissioner, that.

It doesn't matter what I'm trying to say. It doesn't matter the source of the payment. If the check is coming from Ramsey County, we have the 35 days to pay. And funds that, in the end, I think would depend on an individual grant or revenue source and how much funds are remaining. But much of it comes from levy.

OK, and then just a quick follow-up question. What are we doing then to make sure that we hit this goal or we get closer to this mark? Is that additional staffing? Is that software systems? Is that maybe making sure we also get the invoices in a timely manner? Or how are we working to improve this goal? Because you said that sometimes that's a lot of dollars that we're paying in interest. And how do we kind of cut that cost as well?

Yeah. I mean, I think you touched on all of the things we are working on. First and foremost is we make these payments on time when we have really good partnerships with our departments. Because finance needs to know that the invoice is for a real thing. And it's for a real vendor. And we need to make sure departments are doing that work on the front end. Once we get it in finance, we need to make sure that our systems are working quickly. that our connection with our treasury team to make those payments to the bank are working fast. And there's two things I'll highlight that help once that gets to that stage. One is the implementation of Workday. So the new system, having an ERP system that's not 20 years old will be amazing. So that will help us move quicker and more efficiently once it gets into finance's hands. And then the other one is the accounting alignment that we are doing. And so historically, folks doing this sort of operational finance work, accounts payable, accounts receivable, have been distributed throughout the county. By aligning them and making sure that everyone has the same operating procedures, the same management and training, we hope to make it very even across the county so everyone knows what to do, they're following the same instructions, and they have a newer system to do it.

Okay, I just want to just note before, and then I'll move on, or I'll be done. This is a great example of how we can save dollars, and without cutting staff, without cutting services, and without cutting programs, is being more efficient at work like this. So I appreciate this, and I appreciate the goals and the plans you have to deliver on this.

So when you said a good invoice, what I thought about was, like, some of the biggest complaints from vendors has come from small, diverse businesses, right, who have said we submitted something and we still have not gotten paid properly. Right, huge frustration. And so you mentioned a good invoice. And so we talked about this before around the submission of invoices have not been correct, and there's delay to go back and redo it. is your department doing to front end that? Are you training individuals with new businesses who are now partnering with the county? What is that process like to minimize the wait time so that on the front end, they are doing exactly what they need to do the way Ramsey County want them to do the invoice to get paid timely?

So one thing that I can think of off the top of my head, and I'll go back to my team and see if I've missed anything after this. We are working with, this is a partnership with departments, right? Departments are the ones that are working with those vendors, verifying that we've received the good or the service. They're the ones that are setting up those contracts to begin with. We're working on some trainings with folks around what does an invoice look like to be proper. So that rather than waiting for something to get to finance, because at that point they've already gone through a few steps before finance says, well, this is incorrect or this is a problem. We want to make sure that folks that are approving invoices as the first step know exactly what they're looking for so that we can try and get that communication going as soon as possible to make sure that when there are errors, it doesn't take as long.

I was thinking more about the vendors themselves. Is there some training up front? Is there a process that you walk them through so that by the time they're submitting it, it is correct?

I can help too here, Madam Chair. So I do believe that departments have a best practice to do orientation around the invoice submission and sort of the programmatic reporting kind of blended with like an orientation and intro. We also, for most programs, provide sort of a template of an invoice and sort of help even some small, I've seen us even help people get set up on some of their accounting software even. I mean, it doesn't, we only do that when, it has to be a mutual partnership that they also want to be supported, but I think that does happen when requested. And so I think I know those happen across departments.

Yeah, I just want to thank you, Madam Chair, Commissioner. I want to add in, I'll send you a link later today. If anyone's listening, you can go to Ramsey County Vendor Resources. There are sample invoices on there. Also on CFO Krueger's team, there's a group that work in purchasing and contracting that we learned from ARPA recently. that some of our vendors need a little more assistance. It's kind of the, after you've executed a contract, what's next? And so County Manager Becker is right that we do a fair amount of individual departments working with individual vendors, but we also have a team that once you get a contract, they say, here, here's the things you need to know about doing business with Ramsey County. Here's where you get a sample invoice. here's what's next, here's how we'll be interacting with you. We're getting better and better at that. That is something ARPA taught us, how to do better, and we're doing better. But I'll make sure I send that out so you can see where you would go as a business person or any vendor who wants to do business with us. I keep saying business, but that includes, to Commissioner Miller's point, nonprofits, small businesses, anybody who's doing business with Ramsey County.

Thank you for that, and really working towards getting that front-end part done so that, you know, that was, I know when I first came in, it was some of the biggest issues I was hearing from maybe non-profits, smaller businesses, ethnic businesses, who were saying that what is the delay? It's taking really long, and, you know, and so we talked about the fact of going, you know, doing the orientation and the trainings with these individuals so that, we wouldn't have that huge outcry of what's going on here from those entities. So thank you. Okay, Commissioner McGuire.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, CFO Coover. This was a great job on your first time presenting to us. I think it's the first time in this setting. So thank you for all this good information. My question is around the procurement process, and let me know if there should be a question at another point. But we've talked... at other times about the importance of our procurement and really making our process much more available to minority-owned businesses and our diverse vendors and things. And so how is that going? And I don't know if there's a, I know we only could pick three measurements, but I'm curious how we're doing on our process being available and something that That's really recruiting a lot more small businesses and culturally diverse businesses. And I just want to give an example of a person, someone that I think we all might remember, but someone in my district who had a small business. She was a woman, minority-owned business, and kept trying to get into the county, but she was so small she couldn't. apply for any big contracts, she really needed the big contractors to employ her. So to what degree do we work with the bigger contractors to make sure that they're looking at the smaller contractors to help that? Because that's the way that I could see us giving more business to smaller contracts, because sometimes we do have really big contracts. Anyway, so that's kind of a question about how we are. helping that process go faster? It's a great question.

So we chose focusing on the solicitation measure for this performance, for the performance measures that we're talking about today, because it really measures finances work. Like, we can really get our arms around it and control the speed that we are executing contracts for the departments. We do have a lot of data on the business that we do and the spend we have with small and minority businesses, and that is on the open data portal. But we also consciously wanted to leave that as a countywide goal. Because we can set up the process, and we do a lot of work on engagement, on thinking critically about how our process works and how to help people through it. departments have a really strong role in that as well, and that they need to make sure that the businesses match up with their needs. So we really try and leave that as a everybody's got skin in the game in that goal, and that's why we didn't speak to it specifically today. I'll say Dolly Lee, our division director for purchasing and contracting, gave a lunch and learn presentation in June or July, I believe, where she talked a little bit more about those things. But to your question, that is something that we think about as well. In addition to the outreach that we're doing, we know that whenever we can take a big job and break it up into smaller parts, It gives opportunities for smaller businesses. And so those are the kinds of things that our procurement staff are working with folks on as they are coming through the purchasing and contracting process.

I really appreciate that. And thank you. I'm glad it's countywide. And then, of course, the question is, if everybody's doing it, is anybody doing it? You know, if everybody thinks everybody else is doing it. So at some point, the countywide... effort will come up. And maybe you'll address that, Deputy County Manager Kutza. I'm not sure she's a director.

She knows that yet. But we are going to be coming forward later this year with a CERT. You're used to seeing the data on the CERT. How are we doing on our CERT, Certified Small Business Program? And since it's a countywide measure, as Amelia mentioned, we'll be coming forward with one for the whole county, much like Human Resources did on the workforce statistics. But that'll be a separate presentation before the end of the year.

Great. Thank you. I just wanted to know when to look for that. Thank you for all that work. Yeah.

And I do think, Commissioner McGuire, that on our construction side, there are conversations on thinking about how to debundle. That's the key word, right? Like debundling so that.

Thank you.

the larger projects can be in more digestible chunks for a smaller business. That could be peeling off components. It could also be something like, you know, If we have a county-wide service that is around the whole county, could we do it by geography to sort of make it more digestible for a smaller business, potentially? I do think it's part of those cert aspirations and goals that we expect our departments to do, that they do think about those things. But there is also, we have to balance costs too, right? And so sometimes there is, the larger you are and you're working, kind of with a large project. So it's a balance of what our goals are, and each project is a little bit different, too. So thank you for your question.

Thank you, and I appreciate all the thought that's going into this, that people are thinking about it. So I appreciate that.

OK. OK, Commissioner Jenison.

Yeah, I just want to say, looking at our measurements, it looks like some of the changes in procurement and contract time improvements are going in the right direction. I know that we had a workshop recently that looked at some of these updates and changes. Keeping in the lens of our chief information officers, Chaitan Ganatra, about health, there gets to be a point where you get past that initial hump, but then you get to the point where any further improvements, you know, the juice might not be worth the squeeze or the pain point is too much to get to that ever-fine amount. And I'm just wondering, how are staff absorbing some of the changes, and are we at a place where we still have room for these new processes and procedures to show greater incomes? Or are we putting too much pressure on a team? I just want to make sure we're cognizant of the expectations on all of this.

Yeah.

So I think that's a great question. The purchasing and contracting team are very invested in this 18-week goal. And I think it's the right goal for us to be shooting towards. The team is still very much in an all-out sprint to implement the new processes that we're doing. We're also looking forward to the new systems that we will be implementing starting in 2027. It also means a lot of sort of layered work where we have some people working on making sure the county business is operating well and some people that are looking forwards to start working on how are we gonna make this change? How can we get ahead of the game so that in January we can have a little more breathing room and focus on implementing our new systems. So I think we have a really good goal, and the team is still working towards implementing our new processes, and we'll be implementing a new system soon. So it's going to be, we can see the light at the end of the tunnel, I'd say, but it's going to be another 12 months of really working to build new muscle memory and continue lowering that time.

OK, well, and I would just say, you all have ways of managing these things as you go through all of these different changes. We trust that process. But just to know that we independently, outside of our board time, have probably gone through change management and processes implementation. And if it starts to get too much, feel free to share that with us, right? And the other one I would just say is that on the performance measures on some of our assets, the idea of outside economic forces impact our returns. For those of us who don't do this every day, can you just give us some ideas of what are some of the things that you're navigating that might be normal and might be unique to this particular time and time threshold that we're looking at?

Absolutely. I think that when you're talking about our investment returns, we have really benefited from the very high interest rate environment we've had in the last few years. So one of the things we try and look at, and this ties into some other things that impact the county more broadly for sure, but for investment earnings, if we were to reach a point where we have inflation coming more under control, and we see, or where we have inflation, sorry, continuing to get worse, we see those interest rates will go up, we'll stay in an environment of high interest rates, we should be able to maintain these kinds of returns. If the flip side happens, and we start to see lowered interest rates, because inflation maybe looks like it's okay, looks like we're going to return to a more normal pattern in the broader economy, or if we're in a situation where we start to see rising unemployment and our economy really slowing, we would expect that those interest rates would start to come down as a boost to the economy. When that happens, it's good for a lot of folks, but it means we will make less money on the cash that we have on our assets. So if we're in a situation where we stop being at really historic highs for interest rates, those start coming back down to normal, lots of other things will feel better in the county, but we will probably make less of a rate of investment on our assets.

And then I know I've asked this before, but given that we are in a time of high interest rates, is there anything within our sound and solid financial position with the AAA bond rating, with us being having some navigation in the maximum amount that we can bond for, other kinds of things, are we taking advantage of our strong position with the high interest rates right now? In the most conservative and safe way for our dollars, but I mean, given that we have some extra tools that maybe other entities don't have, how are we leveraging that?

Yeah, I mean, I think our treasury team, which was formed in the last few years, has really done a lot of work looking at our portfolio and getting some outside help and taking a look at how do we best use our position where we have a highly rated bond rating and we don't have problems borrowing. How can we maybe be more aggressive with investing everything we can? And so that's where you really see changes between 22 and 23. There's obviously economic impacts there too, but We have been really strategic in the last couple of years, moving things into place to get us the highest rate of return. I think when we're talking about our existing debt, that's something that we do look at periodically. We are very well positioned when we go out to the bond market with our strong rating. That will get us the lowest possible interest rates. So that's something that we do look at annually. And coming up in the next six months, we'll get started on preparing for the 2027 bond sale. So that's when that review will happen as we get ready to take those bonds to market.

Thank you. All right, so thank you. I just want to end by saying or expressing one of the biggest issues in the past that I've heard from vendors or others around executing a contract to purchase good. And the length of time it would take. People complain about how slow government is. Why is the process so low? But I want to say kudos to this department from in 2023, where it was taking 36 weeks. And we've gone from 36 weeks to 23 weeks. And he set a goal to cut that right in half by 2028 to 18 weeks. And so I'm sure that takes a lot of work to make that happen, to be efficient and effective, to get something out, to get the work and the contract done. And so just kudos for that work, for making that happen. And welcome to Ramsey County. Thank you. Very great, your first presentation. And thank you for your leadership and being part of the team.

Thank you so much.

OK, so we're going to move on to having our chief human resource officer, Patien Ferguson, come up to present on human resources.

Thank you. Can you hear me? Yes. Thank you so much. Thank you, Chair and Commissioners. First of all, I'm Patience Ferguson, the Chief HR Officer for Ramsey County, and I want to take a moment to thank so many people. This will be my first presentation related to performance measures, but I think it's about my third or fourth presentation. And each time I come to you all with humility and awe and wonder. because I really am very excited and happy to be in this county. But I would also be remiss if I didn't thank so many people who have supported me on this journey and my team on this journey. First with County Manager Becker, who has been a strong advocate and supporter. Alex and her team and Melinda and all the folks in the operations team. And last but certainly not least, the people that are in my department who have trusted me as being their leader. And I would also like to last also thank my own leadership team, Kristen, Abby, and Miranda, who put up with me every single day and tell me that it's going to be OK.

So I just want to take that time to thank them.

And I must also thank Chief of Staff Maria, because she's also been a strong supporter of my department and the things that we are attempting to do. So I want to talk a little bit about human resources, obviously, and our performance measures. First of all, human resources supports the people and practices that enable Ramsey County to deliver services to residents. In partnership with departments, our work spans the employee experience from attracting and hiring talent to developing, supporting, and retaining the workforce. While most of our work happens internally, its impact extends far beyond this organization. The strength, readiness, and stability of our workforce influences our capacity to deliver effective services to the more than 500,000 residents who call Ramsey County home. Today, we are going to have a conversation, and I will do a presentation around the measures that we have chosen to talk with you about today. As County Manager Becker shared during her presentation on Tuesday, in an environment where resources are constrained, Ramsey County must continue to make intentional choices about where we invest our time, capacity, and resources. With that in mind, the three performance measures I will share with you today focus attention on critical points in the employee journey, how we prepare people to serve, how effectively we bring talent into the organization, and whether we are creating the conditions for employees to thrive and succeed in our organizations and ultimately with the communities. For each measure, I'll briefly cover four areas. The specific performance measure, why we're measuring it, why it matters, how it affects our ability to deliver reliable and effective services consistent with our strategic priorities, connection to the resident experience, how the measure could relate to the quality, timeliness, accessibility, and consistency of the services residents receive, recognizing that two of our measures are new and that their relationship to resident outcomes will need to be evaluated over time. I've also included a reflective question, what we're asking, which helps us to consider what the measure may be telling us and where further attention, learning, or action may be needed. At its core, the purpose of these measures are to help inform our decisions, intentionally guide investments, and strengthen the workforce that delivers essential services to our residents, reinforcing our commitment to operational excellence and service driven by community and focused on people. Our first performance measure is new hire racial equity in action foundation completion rate. Now why does this matter? Ramsey County hires approximately 550 employees per year. This measure demonstrates whether new employees are receiving a consistent foundation, framework, and message regarding Ramsey County's commitment to racial equity while also developing a strong understanding of how that commitment connects to their daily work. Establishing this foundation early creates for our new employees shared expectations for how employees engage with colleagues, communities, and residents. Now, how does that connect to the resident experience? I'm so glad you asked that question. Employees serve diverse communities with different experiences, needs, and perspectives. Preparing employees to understand and apply the county's racial equity commitment can support equitable, respectful, and responsive interactions and service deliveries. So then what are we really asking? What is the reflective question we should be asking? Are we preparing employees to serve our diverse communities consistent with our values? So on the next slide, I'm just giving you an example of a participant voice that came directly from our most recent training around racial equity in action. And the person said, I've been to several DEI trainings in my career. This training was the most concise, accurate, and closely followed the mission and values as directed by the county manager. And it's our hope that as we begin roll out and improve our trainings that we can begin to use some of those anecdotal messages or those anecdotal, what we're getting from these to really help everyone understand how valuable the racial equity and action sessions are for the employees, our new employees here at Ramsey County. The second measure is average numbers of business days to hire. And I want to share with you why that matters. This measure helps us understand the efficiency and responsiveness of our hiring process. Prolonged vacancies can increase workloads, affect employee capacity, and make it more difficult to compete for qualified talent. The objective is not simply to hire faster, but to maintain a process that is timely, equitable, legally compliant, and is effective. Now, what is the connection to the resident experience? Every single vacancy has the potential to affect a department's capacity to deliver programs and services. Effectively filling positions helps ensure that departments have the people they need to maintain quality, continuity, and responsiveness in service delivery and programs. And so the reflective question that we can be asking ourselves is, how effectively are we getting the people we need into positions that serve our community? I'm going to talk a little bit more when we get toward the end and give a specific example of how some of the changes we've made have caused us to really excel in this particular area. But I'm going to hold and wait off toward the end of our presentation to talk about that. The third measure, new hire retention rate, why it matters. Hiring is only the beginning. New hire retention helps us understand whether onboarding Leadership, workplace culture, job expectations, and employer support are creating the conditions for employees to succeed, stay, and thrive. It can also help us identify areas where more targeted intervention or investment is needed. What is the connection to the resident experience? A stable workforce preserves organizational knowledge, strengthens capacity, reduces recruitment cost and onboarding demands, and supports greater continuity in services. Simply stated, workforce stability contributes to service delivery consistency and stability. So what is the question we can be asking? Are we creating an environment where the people we hire can succeed, contribute, and stay? So I'd like to take a moment now to just bring these three what seem to be simple measures together. These measures create a clear line of sight. Prepare people well, hire people effectively, retain people successfully, and serve residents consistently. These measures are not intended to give us every answer. Rather they give us a starting point for asking better questions, understanding trends, identifying opportunities, and determining where our attention and resources can make the greatest difference. When resources are constrained in the times that we're living in, measurement becomes even more important. It can help us move from simply doing more to making more intentional choices about where we invest our time, our energy, and our resources. So I want to talk a little bit about a very concrete example of why and how we have been able to take an intentional investment to produce a measurable operational result. In 2023, Ramsey County implemented NeoGov, which is a cloud-based human resource technology platform built for the public sector. It's designed to handle the unique regulatory demands in the public sector. Over 13,000 public sector organizations nationwide use this platform. And we have very many, quite a few city and county organizations here in this state who use this to automate the hiring and selection process. Now, in 2025, 21,186 applications were processed in Ramsey County. Right now, I know, let that sink in. Already in 2026, we have processed approximately 12,808 applications alone. Prior to the launch of NeoGov in 2024, the county's average time to hire was 160 days. Per NeoGov's recent time to hire report, the average time to hire, which is an industry standard, I might add, for public employees is 130 business days. After Human Resources, through the generous support of Ramsey County and the support of our fabulous IS team, made additional investment. You see how I got that in, Chayton? But anyway, I digress. Made this targeted investment in the hiring. After getting the application, hiring the NEOGOV administrator, investing in talent acquisition specialists, creating hiring managing training, and extensive process improvements, I am happy to report that the average time to hire has been reduced to 76 business days, which is well below the industry standard. HR's goal will continue to be to maintain that 76 business days to hire, Despite fluctuations in hiring demands, particularly during seasonal hiring and large cohort hires, we are now in a position to not only beat that industry standard, but to have it be consistent because of deciding to invest in this particular technology, but to also recognize the importance of investing in the people, investing in the training, investing in the process improvements needed, which ultimately benefits the residents that we serve. Our investment in this NeoGov application was more than a technology investment. We invested in the people and practices needed to make the technology effective, including the hiring of the system administrator, as I mentioned before, talent acquisition specialists, and providing training for hiring managers. Together, these investments contributed to significantly reducing our time to hire, as I said before, well above the industry standard. This specific example reinforces why these performance measures matter. The measures help us identify where we are, but the real value comes from using that information to ask what is working, where barriers exist, and where targeted investment can improve performance. Particularly when resources are constrained, we cannot invest everywhere at once. We have to invest in intentional, make intentional investments about where we invest and understand whether these investments are making a difference. And that brings us back to why we measure in the first place, to make better informed choices that strengthen the workforce to deliver essential services to residents. Ultimately, these are more than HR performance measures, and they are more than numbers on a dashboard. The measures give us an opportunity to understand where we are, ask better questions, and make more intentional choices about where we invest, especially when resources are constrained. Because behind every single measure are people. The people we hire, the people we prepare to serve, and the people we work to retain. And behind our workforce are the residents who depend on us every single day. because behind every measure is people. Strengthening our workforce strengthens our capacity to serve. This is how we continue to deliver on our commitment to operational excellence and service, driven by community and focused on people. I want to give another example of how, when we made the investment around NeoGov, and we've talked about Workday. I've come to you and we've talked about the great initiative that will be led by Abby regarding Workforce Forward. And I want to try to pull all of those together, if you will bear me for a moment. So a few months ago, we talked to you all about our Workforce Forward initiative. We've also heard lots of conversations about Workday. We've talked a lot a bit about process improvements. So we invested in NeoGov. And so the question might be asked, are we going to throw NeoGov away now that we have Workday? Absolutely not, because we believe in stewardship. So one of the things that we're doing with human resources, with the people that are working on the Workday project and IS, we're taking NeoGov and we're integrating that into Workday. The investment we made, we're still going to continue that investment, even though we are now having the Workday platform. Now, if you think about when we did the presentation related to Workday, I mean, excuse me, related to the Workforce Forward, we talked about really trying to strengthen the onboarding experience. Well now, because we're working to integrate those platforms, we will be able to deliver on that promise of strengthening the onboarding process. Because both of those systems are going to talk to each other, which means that our staff will not have to spend so much time doing manual processes, which means that we can have a consistent onboarding process for any person that comes into this organization, which means that those individuals are going to be up to speed about what the onboarding process is which ultimately is going to hopefully help the hiring managers be able to work with their teams to get them out and about in a much more efficient manner to ultimately serve the community. So that is just an example of why the technology is important. That's why it's important for us to use the technology to help us create the opportunities to streamline the things that we need to do. Because at the end of the day, it's about the people. At the end of the day, it's about the residents. And at the end of the day, all of this helps us to deliver off our promise around operational excellence and one Ramsey County. That is the end of my presentation, and now I will open it up for questions.

Questions?

Okay, Commissioner McGuire.

Oh, thanks. I'll start it out by just thanking you so much, CHRO. That's what it is. Chief Human Resources Officer Ferguson, thank you for your great presentation, for the work that you're doing. Just a personal note of thanks. When I've referred situations, questions to you, you've been really responsive, and you've been great. Your team's been great, so thank you for that. One thing, I haven't heard it lately, so I'm hoping that it's being addressed, and maybe you just could talk a little bit about it, is when people do apply to Ramsey County, and we do get a lot of applications, because we have a lot of people that are looking to work for a good employer, but they didn't always hear back in a very timely manner. Like they said, well, I don't know where it's at. I haven't heard back for, you know. And then they kind of chalked it off to, oh, well, that's just government. Well, we don't want that to be that answer. You know, we want to be better than that, I know. And so I'm just curious how we're doing on that. I mean, I'm grateful for the onboarding process once we hire somebody. But I think it is help that is good, obviously, for us to have a process that, you know, makes people still want to work for us, even if that one didn't work out, that maybe they would apply some other time. But talk to me about that. how that's going.

Chair and Commissioner, those are one of the areas that we are, you're absolutely right. And so one of the things that we have discovered in that process, and we are going to do a deeper dive on that, we actually are going to bring someone in. We're finalizing with our procurement partners I'm getting someone in to help us do a deeper dive. Because you hit on a very important area. That gets back to what we call One HR. We want everybody to have the same experience. And where we're struggling, and we've had these conversations on our team, is we have to figure out where those bottlenecks are. We know some of it. We know it anecdotally. But what we're going to do is bring someone in to help us look at that entire process. Some of it, we think, is because we have had some turnover, quite frankly. We have just now shored up. We now have a leader in that talent acquisition piece in terms of Abby. So she and I have been having those conversations. We have a statement of work that is now in procurement. We're just waiting for it to go through the process so that we can do a deeper dive in that area. And so I don't have that information for you now. But no, I've even shared some of that with Canada Manager Ling. We want to get to where those bottlenecks are and then ultimately figure out where we need to improve it. So thank you for that question.

Yeah, and I just want to say thank you for having it on your mind. I'm not surprised because you The things that I think we were concerned about with human resources, you've been just one by one sort of helping us feel more confident and trustworthy that we are one county, that our employees don't get different experiences depending on where they work in the county, and that our public is getting similar responses to whenever they try to interact with the county. Thank you for all of that. Well, thank you for asking. And I know it's ongoing, and we just want to support your work and all of your people's work to keep moving forward in this way. Thank you very much. Thank you.

May I have a question? Oh, Commissioner McGuire. No. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

Yes. Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you, Ferguson. I had a question around the retention rate. And I was wondering if we know that some areas in the organization has higher turnover rates than others. I'm thinking specifically of dispatch or FAS. Are those higher numbers reflected in why these numbers are where they're at? I guess because of those higher turnover rates, do we kind of see the average being brought down a bit more? How does that work with including those numbers in this overall average?

Chair and Commissioner, I could say yes, anecdotally, but that's why we've got to dig deeper. I'm always very cautious of just saying absolutely, because that's one of the reasons why we're doing this additional work to dig deeper. Because as I said before, there are some parts of our organization, business model-wise, I use 911, no matter where you are, no matter what organization, they tend to have higher turnover. This is me talking now. That's not enough for me, because I think we have to dig a little deeper. And even though in any industry, whether it's public, whether it's nonprofits, those numbers tend to be higher for sure. But I'm not satisfied with that. That's why we want to go in and do a little bit a little bit deeper to just see for sure if that's what it is. Because that is not to say it can't change. But my question always is, is there something else, even though that is the industry standard, can we be doing something differently? Do we need to look at how we recruit differently? Is there a way that we, because that is something that's not going to go away. People need that critical service without question. But that's why I want to be able to definitively say we've done everything. We've looked at all of these things. And we don't know what else to do. And I'm not there yet. So thank you for that question.

Okay, Commissioner Jeveson.

Just a follow-up on that. I'm wondering, though, if there is a report when you are, since this is a key target measure, to be able to tear out to say here are the outliers. Yes, absolutely. And then to be able to say that's a sector-based reason, we have some internal work to do, there was a bunch of... you know, retirees in that group. We expect that that won't be an ongoing trend. I think that would be helpful, and I'm sure you're doing that internally, but then that would be helpful to show us as well.

Chair and Commissioner, we're not there yet. But that's exactly what we want to do. We want to say, OK, here are the outliers. Because we have the data. But the other part of that just about data is not enough. That's why we want to come in and dig a little deeper. Because I agree with you. We have to segment it a lot more. The other thing is we have a commitment to really strengthen the partnerships with the department. That's where partnership comes in. And I know that my team is in agreement to this. We want to have a dialogue with the departments. And I'll just give a quick example. Last week, we had our CMLC meeting, and Kristen and Miranda did an excellent presentation. But what was so interesting was I normally leave when it's over, right? But what I saw was the conversations. And what I saw were we're beginning to develop something in HR where people are comfortable in speaking their truth, where people are being transparent. And for me, that's ideal. And that shows that even though we're making small measurements and we've still got a lot of work to do, when you have leaders that are speaking truth and they don't feel that we're going to beat them up, that to me is like a win. So that's why I say that even though we have all this information, We want to begin to even work a little closer with the departments in partnership so we can have the dialogue and the conversations, and we can find out specific solutions together. And in addition to bringing the consultant in to help us, we can really try to figure that out even more. And then we can maybe partner and look at what we can do to really get more of that information. Because I believe that once you build trusting relationships with the leaders and the employees, you can begin to get even more of that information that, quite frankly, numbers don't tell you. And I think that that's our North Star where we're attempting to go. And we want to bring that information back to you as commissioners. We want that information. We want to share it. We want to do it in an environment, though, that we are solution driven versus pointing fingers driven.

I like that so much. I know that HR. for my tenure here has been some bumpy grounds, to say the least. And to take the time to really dig deep and go deeper, I think, is needed. I appreciate your investigating or taking the time to dig deep or want to go deep and find out what's at the root of how we can do better and be better as an HR in relationship to staff, employees, and others. Because it's important to look at the morale. Is it up or is it down? Is retention up or down? And why, if it isn't? If it isn't flat or steady? But building a trust, I think, is really key. And it was good to hear that you stated that after the last training that was held, people didn't just walk away. People stayed. And they got engaged. And they asked questions. And they spoke their truth. And I guess they felt good enough or felt that there was some type of trust there to be able to do that. And I think that's what we need within whether we're looking at a business or we're looking at a government entity is to have that type of relationship building, especially within HR, which is really critical to having good morale and good staff and trust at a place that you want to come to every single day. And so I just wanted to mention that because I We've gone through a few HR directors here, or maybe a couple. And so it's good to see that we're working internally on ourselves, which can be a hard thing to do sometimes, to look at self and say, how can we improve what we do and how we engage staff and become bigger and stronger throughout that?

Well, I thank you for that. And I want to say also, it's very easy for us as individuals to take things personal. Personally, and I'm just going to be totally honest, I really don't have time to be putting on boxing gloves. I mean, if we're not doing something right, let's have the conversation. But I'm not going to spend 24 hours of my day trying to justify why we did something wrong. Life is too short. And being in the public sector as long as I have, I just feel that if we, and I will be honest on this too, sometimes I have to remind myself, and then these people over here talk me out of the tree. That's why you have a good, strong leadership team, because you have those candid conversations, and then they tell me you need to check yourself. And I said, OK, but next time you're going to have to check yourself. But at any rate, we can't take this personal. I mean, and that's the whole thing. And something Ling always tells us, county management, you have to hold things loosely. You can't take this stuff personal. And it's not that you're being glib about it, but everybody has their own truth. And so to be able to not be defensive about something, you get to the magic of the solution. And it may be messy sometimes. And that's OK, too. But at the end of the day, it's about that resident. That's the part. How do we help the community be better? And I think that's why you have the dialogue and the conversations, although sometimes they're messy. But at the end of the day, let's not forget why we're here.

That's a part of the process.

That's a part of the process. Absolutely.

And so I'm glad that you have created, along with your staff, created that space for that to happen, right? Because at the end, hopefully, it will get you to a better place. Absolutely. To do the work for the people here. For the people. Yeah. Commissioner Miller.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you for this, CHRO, Ferguson. Okay, I just have a couple questions. For the performance measures on the new higher retention rate and the data, what is our sample size or what is the number of people that we're comparing it to for how many people started and retained? Or is this just, or maybe I'm understanding it wrong.

I don't think I quite understand the question.

So when I look at these numbers, right, one slide tells us the retention rate for new hire retention rate is 76% or 77, 76% with a goal of 80%. Then I look at the next slide and it's broken down by demographic. I guess I'm just curious about the more of the demographics and on like what was the individual numbers for each rather than the percentage? Oh, it's the individual number. I think that would be a little more helpful with the percentage. And then are we taking lessons learned from the exit surveys to improve and work on this goal and this outcome?

Great question, Chair, Commissioner. So the reason why I will go back to the... the lessons learned, et cetera. So yes, we are looking at exit interview information. That's one piece of the puzzle. And we're also looking at other kinds of information that we have that helps us to inform that. So it's a lot of different types of measures that we are looking at to to begin to try to understand. And this is still fairly new for us. So we're looking at various different measures that can help inform why people are leaving. Part of the reason why I should say why people are leaving is retention in general. But the other part, which I think is going to be one of the most powerful pieces, is we are rolling out a much more comprehensive onboarding process. And that onboarding process reaches employees at the 30, at the 60, and the 90 day marks. And so we'll have just in time data that is going to give us even more information than we have now. Unfortunately, with exit interviews, people are gone. So, I mean, even if we, when we gather that information and the percentages of the return rate and people that do them are low, and that's no matter where, what organization you work with. Because people really don't want to, typically they don't want to tell you why they're leaving. But we do gather that. But if we can do the entry points when people are coming and Abby and her team will be leading that. And we can get just-in-time data that maybe helps us to make course corrections, tie that to what we're doing here. It's our hope that that's going to give us much more richer data so that we can learn and correct whatever it is we need to correct. in a just-in-time fashion. The other piece of that also is pulling the data back to see how many of these are maybe retirees, because everybody's leaving for different reasons. That's what we want to get to. So that's a part of that. Now in terms of the numbers, in terms of the numbers versus the percentages, do you have any insight, Kristen, on the reason why that is tracked that way, numbers versus percentages? Right.

OK. Thank you. That's what I was getting at. OK. And then just wanted to also mention, it might be helpful to look at the data of why people were screened out or why people did not even make it to an interview or didn't even make it to the hiring process. Maybe we have great candidates applying for positions, but maybe our requirements or some of our generated screening process is not really up to par or not really... Accessible maybe if that's the right word, but maybe like how do if we is there a way to track? Who applies and why were they screened out? They didn't have lack of experience lack of education or you know Whichever reason because that could also tell us a point too on how do we you know? And most of those people are you know could be our own community members, and how are we keeping them from? Being employed with us

Right. Now one of the things I know that has done, and this I think was done before I was here, is the equivalency requirement has been changed. In some organizations, the requirements could be artificially inflated because my, I'm going to give my own example. So you have a position and you say that you need a PhD. You don't really need a PhD. Now some you may, right? So then you put an equivalency in there that broadens the pool. But there wasn't really a business reason to have a PhD. And if I'm not mistaken, that was done quite a while ago in terms of changing that equivalency requirement. But that's a concrete example of what you're saying. Not totally, but it's one concrete example of what has changed so that you could broaden the pool because of the fact that people may have lived experience that could be substituted for the . Now, in certain areas, that if it's around maybe a social worker that needs a license, et cetera, that's understandable. But there are some other areas where that does not apply. But we can also do a better job, and that's part of what we will be doing, to look at other potential barriers that we weren't even aware of. But we want to do it organizationally versus individually.

I understand that.

Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Just on that point, because it was, I don't know, people will remind me how long ago it was. I think we had a standard required a four-year degree. And so many of our positions, that's not, you don't need a four-year degree. And we were, all these amazing people were being stopped before they could even get to the application, before they could even get in. into a selection process. So have we, we've removed that, I think, already. So we've sort of universally already done things like that. So we've done an initial kind of, okay, that was not what we need. So I think are we in continuous, I really appreciate your question, Commissioner Miller. Are we sort of in continuous review of what are we requiring that we may not need to? Yes. Great. Because, yeah, we, I think we're all like, what? You know, so.

Good. Madam Chair, Commissioner McGuire, that happened shortly after in 2023. Governor Walz did that executive order that removed the four-year requirement. But I think we were really thoughtful in how we thought about it, because it's not only People who didn't, you know, you don't want to penalize people who did get the degree either. So you sort of have to count both things as sort of equal in a way, right? Because we, you know, we have a lot of, you know, people in our community that worked really hard and took student loans and did, you know, sacrificed a lot to go get a four-year degree. And then, you know, I kind of worried when I was a workforce director that sometimes you flip the rules on people and all of a sudden now people who have been told, hey, this is the way of a trajectory to get these jobs. And then all of a sudden, things sort of changed. So we needed to make sure we evened out the playing field. But we didn't necessarily make it negative to be one or the other. Does that make sense? Thank you.

No, I appreciate that clarification. It was an equivalency, yes. Thank you. That was really important. Yes. Really important clarification.

That equivalent piece was, I think, really important, too, because my thought, we do not want to penalize someone for having a degree and spending tons of money to get it and work and the sacrifices that they made. But as we do know, lived experience and years of experience can be as equally as important, too. And so removing that criteria, I'm sure it opened up a pool of people that we could pull in to do this work. Yeah. All right. I don't think I see any other questions. So I just want to thank you, HR's chief resource officer, for your work and for your dedication here. And thank you for sticking in here. OK, so what do we have up here? OK. OK, up we have our chief of staff, Maria Sarabia. Good afternoon.

Thank you, Madam Chair, County Manager Becker, Core Budget Team Leader, Board. My name is Marissa Rapia. I am honored to serve as the Chief of Staff for County Manager Becker. As I look across the organization from my role, I can confirm and agree that an organization's budget decisions and performance measures are indeed a blueprint that sets the priority and the trajectory for the work that lies ahead. It is our duty. for our performance measures to be reflected in the needs of the organization and the community in these times. This is a collective effort and one that requires partnership and good measure. I would say a special thank you to the chief clerk's office and the team who supports the board and the board proceedings, as well as the county manager, for our day-to-day administrative and operational work. I also want to give a special thanks to the Chief Compliance and Ethics Officer and her teams who help mitigate risk, oversee compliance, and audit controls, workplace investigations, and much more. as well as the Office of the Chief of Staff, which includes our Deputy Chief of Staff, Greenlee, and who's been really stellar and I've not been able to do this work without that support in helping us establish cohesion throughout the enterprise-wide efforts across varying topics and varying programs. Also within my reporting lines, we have our equity team, which is comprised of the RIAS and the American Indian Relations Administrator, the policy and admin strategy team, which I belovedly call the policy shop, and our newly adopted evaluation team. Within the CMO, we also have the government relations team, who leads the organization and the board in our state and federal legislative platforms. and bonding asks. We work alongside our delegation, where we hold up our proper place as the second largest, most densely populated county in the state of Minnesota. We host the capital complex, and we view our uniqueness as a strength and a benefit to the entire state. and where we see significant investments, both public and private funded investments, in needed development to alleviate the pressures that the Ramsey County taxpayers are experiencing. In the CMO, we have programs and policy evaluation. We conduct research. as well as equity practices and methods for population-based approaches to address disparities and increase capacity for the organization to help improve outcomes through our core county responsible services to increase access to services and sustain communities and zip codes where there are opportunities to strengthen community wellness, growth, development, and increase vitality. The leaders at all levels contribute to the excellence of the county manager's office. It's a strategic decision to be looped in here with the operations service team and lead alongside my executive team colleague, DCM Chief Operating Officer Alex Kutza, as well as Chief Human Resources Officer Ms. Patience Ferguson and the leadership presenting today. of today has really the backbone of the organization and I'm gonna give a side plug to the administrative services director Melinda Donaway as well as other folks across my team are helping me keep on track here I couldn't do this without acting manager Lindsay who's overseeing the policy team and for all the work that we're doing that I will share more about here the first Strategic priority that I'll present today, the first strategic performance measure that I'll present today is gonna be, really we're just gonna look at a snapshot of the critical work and the various functions that live within the County Manager's Office. The work across the County Manager's Office is comprised of critical and core administrative supports and functions, and they're tethered to the Racial and Health Equity in Shared Community Power Strategic Priority. This is going to be illuminated in our performance measure for the Chief's Clerk Office, as well as the emphasis on operational excellence. This is also work that's rooted in the Chief of Staff Office. We are leading strategic planning. These beautiful slides that you're seeing today were only as good as our partners in working with CPR. But we also have admin policy development, maintenance, review and adoption of policies. You'll hear more about this throughout my presentation. And then we also have operational excellence being exemplified by the Chief Compliance and Ethics Officer, where we have fiscal responsibility and strong stewardship. We're showing diligence. in these times and collecting on third party claims. So together we're centering community voice, we're governing administrative policies, establishing guardrails, compliance, as well as lifting up being good stewards of the public dollar. And an important part of this work is to collectively set goals and establish performance measures. So here I'll begin going a little deeper. with the percent of applicants to community advisory boards that are racially and ethically diverse and or American Indian. a performance measure established with the chief clerk's office. And so the first performance metric here, this is a percentage of applicants, again, who apply for community advisory boards. The board holds the authority to appoint the members to community advisory boards, and the recruitment process is managed by the chief clerk's office in close partnership with the board office departments. For a little bit of historical context, it's important to share that prior to 2022, the recruitment process was not centralized, nor there was opportunities for increasing standardization. And that's what we did with the chief clerk's office. But prior to that, there was a little bit of inconsistent recruitment timelines. Sometimes we had challenges with attendance. And we found out that we needed to dedicate resources and just get some more alignment in order for our recruitment processes across the enterprise. So our current process is recruitment and appointment. After 2022, we stood up a pilot in 2023. And the current process realigned and leveraged existing recruitment processes countywide, and we established standards. And we utilized a one-stop shop application portal for all the community advisory boards. The current process also provides an opportunity for commissioners to interview applicants who are applying to community advisory boards. If you would notice here in 24 and 25, there's a decrease in applications for community advisory boards. And I wanted to share a little bit, get ahead of maybe some questions, some considerations for that decrease during those years. It's important to remember that there was a little bit of a shift, an intentional focus on restructuring the advisory boards. and updating bylaws, and there was a little bit of a lag in recruitment during that time. And yet the work continued. The CABs utilized expertise of their current membership, and they revisited and updated crucial policies and structures for their advisory boards. We also improved recruitment processes that decreased vacancies during this time. So one of the major successes of centralizing and standardizing the recruitment process is decreasing the vacancies across all of the advisory boards. And this led to community advisory boards being eligible being able to review policies and procedures and provide recommendations to departments in a timely manner. And this ensured community input was embedded in the county's work. So as we look ahead, the average percentage of applicants applying for count for CAVs are racially and ethnically diverse or American Indian since 2022, approximately 36% is reflective of diverse populations of Ramsey County. The chief clerk office continues to work to increase that representation and working more closely with departments and commissioners. And again, we just want to increase and expand the pool for excellent talent and representation for our community advisory boards. And that's the premise of this performance measure. I will go to the next performance measure. And this is around measuring the percent of revised countywide administrative policies. This work also lives in the county manager's office. And I will explain that there's maintenance and management needs for our administrative policy. And we have a cycle for this. It's rooted in partnerships, including establishing advisory review councils where we partner with HR, the county attorney's office, the compliance area, and with businesses and departments to help build and make that connection for needed administrative policies. The CMO we serve as, in the policy shop, we serve as the vehicle and the mechanism and strategic support to delivering research, posting administrative policies for publication, and adopting work with departments on the rollout of these required administrative policies which includes training and communications as well. This work also requires sorting out the requirements of the administrative policy versus some of the operational procedural processes and that's going to help us really maintain our three-year review cycle. We currently have an estimated 150 total administrative policies across the organization, some of which we know there's opportunity to revise, enhance, Some we need to sunset. And then we also know that we need new ones in a changing environment, and where we're mitigating risk, enhancing accountability, increasing compliance with relevant regulations and requirements, and then also just establishing more order for the organization, for our workforce, and the public. Here we'll go into our third performance measure, which is around the rate of recovery for damages caused by a third party. So this is all tethered to operational excellence, and this measure tracks the percentage of damages recovered from third parties who are responsible for county property damages and other losses. The process of recovering damages and other losses, I can give you an example. So if we have employees who are throughout the county and perhaps using a fleet vehicle, and they get rear-ended by a resident. There's a little fender bender. The resident is insured by their private insurer. It might be Hall State or Progressive or GEICO. And our enterprise risk management area works with the resident in that private insurance company to recover the cost of the damages. Recovery will be sought from businesses and insured individuals. Claims involving uninsured individuals, we don't pursue those because recovery is often very unlikely. But this measure is important because it supports long-term sustainability of the county's self-insure program, reduces financial impact of claims on taxpayers, ensures responsible parties bear the cost of the damages that they have caused, and demonstrates the financial value of a claim's Administration Program. The Enterprise Risk Management Area formalized a subrogation program in late 2024, and that's where this work lies. In 2025, it was the first year where recovery data was systematically tracked, and the 2025 subrogation data, there was $168,357 worth of subrogation eligible claims. And our county recovered $141,463 eligible for that. That's an 84 plus, 84.03% recovery rate. And so as we looked at setting the goal for 2028, we set it at 70%. And in 2030, we set it for 75%. You may be like, why are you doing less? Well, in 2028 and 2030, goals were set because 2025 was exceptional. It was an exceptional year for subrogation. But one year of data doesn't sustain or establish a long-term trend. So mature, well-managed programs have average recovery rates between 50% and 70% of the smaller programs, and the average recovery rate's less than 50%. The insurance market sometimes influences and affects our recovery rates as well. And when the market is volatile, insurers are much less willing to pay. We have to maybe fight a little bit harder. And so we will evaluate future targets when additional historical data becomes available. So this is a very focused, I would call it a diligent approach to us not leaving any funding on the table. Here, we'll talk about sort of the outlook. Again, you'll hear me say, and you may hear your county manager say, diligence, efficiencies, effectiveness. Our work that takes place in the policy and compliance area, we want to be in alignment with our strategic partners and be strategic partners for the organization and our workforce. Mitigating risk, collecting the revenues that are available to us through the new subrogation program, collecting claims from the insurance industry and not from individuals, and within the chief's clerk office, continue to support the board to ensure you have a pool of excellent contributors that are representative of the rich diversity of our great county. Increase representation and tap into the wisdom of community voices. With this, I'll take a moment just to highlight a bit of the intersectionality. While I haven't called out explicitly our equity evaluation and research work, I would be remiss if I didn't share a little bit about what you've seen up to now and what you will have seen by the time we are completed doing our performance measures. And this is where we... Estimated, we have approximately 100 different performance measures that will be brought to you through this process. And about 25% of those performance measures align with racial and health equity and shared community power as a strategic priority. The board should be incredibly proud of our evolution and our equity journey as an organization. as well as the leaders who have been working on this to integrate and weave equity and focus population-based or even place-based disparities, addressing those challenges, increasing our service delivery, enhancing our operations, but as well as our behaviors and our organizational culture, and establishing the parameters and the expectations through administrative guardrails and participatory processes. striking a healthy and responsible balance in the county's response to significant challenges and hardships that we've faced recently. Increasing pressures of highly divisive time, we've seen political violence, we've come out of metro surge, as well as responding and supporting and serving our most vulnerable populations who are experiencing homelessness and sometimes mental health stressors or substance misuse, or just falling on hard times where the cost of living is creating hardship and not keeping up with earnings, And life is just taking unexpected turns in some cases. as well as the accumulation of hardships or sickness, sometimes building up over generations. So with that, I would say I've asked my team to pull together. You guys heard from, pardon me, the board has heard from FAS, human services, veterans, workforce solutions. You will hear from folks in the health and wellness service team. We heard from property management, Petrus, so many other areas that we haven't even got to yet, and racial. And health, equity, and community power, strategic priority is woven throughout the fabric of this entire organization. It's something that should be called out and that we should be proud of. As I go to coming up on my last slide, I would say serving here in public service, I consider it, I think we all take it very serious, and it's a precious duty. It requires stewardship, focusing on cost savings, focusing on core duties, serving the people. And this work is taking place, as you've heard, Earlier, with the enterprise risk work that we're doing, we're working to have every dollar count as we tighten our belts and move forward with discernment. We are also doing this work in-house, increasing awareness and skills within the CMO and with our budget management practices, limiting costs where possible. This requires discernment. It also is taking time to manage and sequence out certain spends, not always making easy decisions, but making the right decisions. It requires being in relationship and negotiations for rates. For example, you'll see here. Whoops. OK. I knew I was going to do this. Pardon me. Recovery.

One more.

Here we are. I was on the right. OK. You'll see here what the federal lobbying service is. This is an opportunity where we've decreased costs. And these are federal lobbyists who much of the board has met in DC during the NACO conference and who were actually visiting here last week, actually this week, and heard our county manager's budget presentation at no extra cost to the county, but to get really immersed and better understand, do site visits, meet with leaders, and partner with us to manage as we prepare for federal policy shifts. And this work is ongoing. It's layered. It's complex. And we're trying to be very diligent. We have order and intentionality as we go forward. And I'll stand here for any questions or clarifications that you may need.

OK, we have a couple of questions here. I'm going to open up with looking at the advisory boards. And I'm just looking at the numbers, the percentage of diversity or the lack of much diversity within the advisory boards. And I think for me, as one who's been over the last few months doing a lot of interviewings to advisory boards is that, how do we find ways to diversify those boards more? And one of the things that I notice is that once folks get on the board, they don't leave. they don't leave. And really, it's not an opportunity for the diversity to be shared, or other people who may have some experience or expertise to add value really do not have the option of being on a board. And so I'm just wondering, as we continue to think about this process that we currently have in place, I'm not saying that I am one for time limits, but maybe we need to think about time limits that really allow others the opportunity to bring their voice and their expertise to these advisory boards. So my question is, have we thought about creating another process? I mean, some have been over 10, 20 years on these boards. And I know, and I can understand when staff is like, oh, they have all the experience and expertise. You know, they're good.

We want to keep them.

You know, versus saying, oh, we want to train someone new to come in, or we want to engage someone new. Have we thought about a different protocol process?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I would say now that we've established a centralized process to keep all of the advisory boards in a focused time schedule for recruitment, I do believe that creates room and order to establish more timely review of bylaws and more opportunity to modify current practices. or establish safeguards to prevent past practices that no longer serve us. I think the establishment of centralizing this work creates the opportunity for us to examine that and do better in that space. And I am taking notes on your reflections, and we will bring that back to the work to address that.

Thank you. I know, right?

You know I'm going to come. You can call me later. But yeah, I do have my hand up. But you know I'm going to talk about it.

OK, Commissioner Zong.

Thank you, Madam Chair. You know, I have questions about just two items. One is on the revised countywide administrative policies. What are we measuring the percentage out from, for example, from 2025? The 6%, is that 6% of the 150 countywide administrative policies?

Madam Chair, Commissioner Zhang, that is correct.

Okay. Let's see. I think my feedback around that is just we should be basically more intentional about our goal for each year rather than saying that we're doing just a percentage of it. We should be setting a goal that we're going to tackle on five administrative policies this year because this is the amount of time that it's going to take versus measuring out of the whole of 150 administrative policies. So that's my feedback about that. And that would be more valuable as a policymaker for us in tracking and making sure that the most important policies are the ones that are bubbling up and also being prioritized.

Madam Chair, Commissioner Zhang, thank you for the feedback. And we would agree, and working diligently and providing resources and focused efforts to address the gaps that you've seen in the previous years. And the proportion for 28 and 30 is based on the same baseline. if we go deeper, more granular in terms of the operational processes, definitely prioritization and assessment of where we have more risks in the organization to prioritize those types of administrative policies or refresh administrative policies that are needed. Great.

And then may we also just get an update as well too later on in terms of like what the priorities are or what your office is going to be focused on?

Madam Chair, Commissioner John, yes, we have a risk matrix that we refer to. And we've been supported as an exec team in adopting that so that it can impact the work at this level when we're in the policy administrative work. So I can definitely follow up and provide more details about that.

Okay, perfect. And then the other one too, the recovery for damages caused by a third party. May we also get information more on the dollar amounts for those previous years? You know, and I just also want to take an opportunity to just thank the team for recovering such high percentages compared to the general, you know, just general claims. So kudos to that. Yes, thank you, Dan.

Can I note just quickly that the The dollar amount that we saved is on the stewardship and cost savings slide. I think it was just over $140,000 in 2025. And then the reason we don't have numbers from earlier is that this subrogation program from risk management just was formalized in 2025, and that's the first year we've been tracking it in this way. So we don't have data going back farther than that.

Okay. All right. Thank you. Commissioner Miller.

Okay. Thank you, Maria. This is fabulous. Chief of staff, Maria. This is great presentation. My question goes back to the advisory boards. I just want to make one comment real quick. Rena, we can say no. I mean, it's okay. We're the ones that... And we can say no to some of those long-term standing people. We can go against staff opinion and requests. And if we want to diversify those boards, we can do that. But my question kind of goes to, is this number the percentage of applicants that were applied and selected or were just applied?

For the advisory board.

Sure. Thank you, Madam Chair, Commissioner Miller. My understanding is this is the number of applicants.

Okay. And then my next question kind of goes in the same process. I don't want to cause more work for our team, but do we re-reach out or re-engage with the people who applied and were not selected when there's a next round of applications open? Because believe me, these things are on our calendar. At least... at least twice a year where we are interviewing four boards because different positions roll off and different positions come on and it's a different time frame for each board. But do we re-engage you in the people who have been applied and then not selected?

Madam Chair, Commissioner Miller, that is the strategy is to be more focused and we have all of the data of the people who have applied since 2022 to ensure that we're having those targeted outreaches. Not only to the previous applicants but also to Specialized. Yeah.

Groups of them?

Groups, yeah.

OK. And I think that's it. That's all that I had. Thank you for the wonderful work you guys are doing.

Thank you. And I would like to say that we have suggested, if there was a great candidate, that maybe we can place him on another board that needed a fill-in. But you are right that we might have to say we need to get more applications in and just you know, say no to the incumbent who's been there for 20 years, 10 years. So, yes. So I do have McMurtry, McGuire, and Dan Jevis.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I also have a community advisory board's question. So How much demographic data do we track or collect when it comes to the boards? And I'm just thinking of, I appreciate the focus on the racial and ethnic diversity, but also thinking of making sure we have gender identity diversity and make sure that we're looking at renters versus homeowners, people with disabilities. There's so many different demographics that make up the diversity of Ramsey County that I want to make sure that we at least attempt to try to have reflected in these community boards. Is that a level of data that we currently receive when we are putting out these applications or something that we would consider in the future?

Madam Chair, Commissioner McGregory, that is data I believe we do have on hand through the application portal process. It's a matter of deciphering that data and then analyzing it and presenting it with more granularity for this board.

Thank you, Madam Chair. We have a lot of conversation on community advisory boards because, of course, we all serve on them. And I just want to remind them. When I first started, there was no coordination there. It would come to our offices and we would just pick. And I would say, no, no, I need to know. What's the makeup on the board now? Who do we need? What's the diversity? And we kept saying that this is what we needed. So then finally the county manager's office said, OK, we'll take this on. Because it was really hard as a commissioner to know that we needed diversity. diversity and to know what everyone else was doing. And, I mean, my office was, I said to my assistant, do this. Find out what everybody else is doing. And we were like, well, this is definitely not something that should come out of one commissioner's office. This is definitely something that should come out of a central spot. So the county manager, and I don't know if it started with our county manager or if it started with the previous one, but thank you for taking this on and actually centralizing this work. so that we would have a better sense of how we can get the kind of diversity that we want. And so thank you. I mean, this is a very new process. It's maybe four or five years old. And we've all been doing this work. And we never interviewed people either. We just picked. And so the interview process has been great. It's a lot of work. And thank you for doing that. We are going to keep revising it, I think. And Commissioner Moran, to your point, we have struggled with having people on the boards that we think, and some of them are the diversity we want. And it's hard to take them off to put someone else on just because they've been there longer. So we have tried to balance it all out. And we do all want a bigger pool, though. So I think we're all going to focus on, making sure that all of our networks, that we reach out to all of them, that the county manager's office reaches out to as many of these groups as we can to say, please apply for these boards. Because we can only pick, we can only choose people that come to us, and we can obviously recruit. But we're with you on that. I think as board members, we want to recruit, and we want to get a lot of diversity in the pool. that we get to select from. So it's such a different process than when I started. And it's all so much better. And we'll just keep refining it. And I appreciate all the work that your team is doing on this and the county manager's office. And it's amazing. So thank you for that. And the other areas that you're working on, of course, everyone's coming to us with all these amazing areas. The whole... the underpriced risk management, where we're finally getting data on the subrogation. It's not that we never got money, that we never collected on that. It's just that we weren't keeping track of it. So we were probably, you know, getting some of that. But it's so much better to be tracking it. I'm hopeful that we were getting some of those dollars in, but just not tracking. So good job that we're tracking. And then, of course, I can't let your whole area go by without saying that we really have the most robust now government relations team than we've ever had. And so we have high expectations. And we're all going to be working hard to make sure that we're successful with our government relations work and really galvanizing our own departments to come forward with things that we need, and then to obviously be working with all of our partners and elected officials in getting this work to be done. So just thanks for pulling a robust team together and looking at Julie Wood, too. Just the great work that we're going to all do together to get this to be successful. So thank you.

you commissioner a lot of opportunity here to go uh to get this work done so thank you hi may madam chair commissioner i just uh commissioner mcguire thanks for the opening on the subrogation funding and uh you know risk management led by mandy malachek is doing great work and i just want to remind the board it used to be in finance and you all made some investments a few years back with foundational excellence in that work so Yes, we were doing it, but not with the intentionality we are now. And investing in that team overall has really helped the county. Not only you've heard it a couple of times today mentioned about how we partner with risk management, both from this perspective of getting more subrogation money into the organization, but also when you heard Chief of Staff Sarabia mentioned the risk register and then you heard before how we partner with risk to look at the work that we do. Those were great investments that the board has made and has paid off in a lot of different ways for the county.

Thank you.

Commissioner Jefferson.

Yes. Going back to the community advisory boards, we've all had a chance to be part of this now and of these interviews and one of the things that I think would really help us as commissioners, as we were reviewing applications and doing the interviews, is to have a greater nuance of the skills set and commitment of the different boards. So for instance, the watersheds oversee really large projects, significant public dollars. Those are a certain type of skill set, commitment, and responsibility. And then also knowing what Within our own departments, maybe there are some strategic projects that are on the horizon within the next one, two, five years where a particular need of that type of engagement from an advisory committee will be crucial rather than just a general or broad participation. I think that if we're asking folks to be part of these boards to give their time and expertise, if we're looking for it to represent community voice, and then we're actually incorporating it in the work of the county, that a little bit more prep would maybe make those application process and appointments a little bit more intentional.

Thank you. Madam Chair, Commissioner Devon Singh. I agree and understand and work side by side by our excellent chief clerk, Jason Yang, to make sure that we're enhancing those processes. I will note that there are over, there's 13 community advisory boards, and when we're at full capacity and every seat is filled, there's 104 individuals total that would be full membership of complement, and we have that information available on our Ramsey County website as well, and it explains each of the cabs, if you will, and a description of that. So lifting that up and helping with our process is a good call out. Thank you.

And then another follow-up I would just say, and this is just I know that there are dashboards and other performance measures that are available, and then obviously we have a direct line to request information at any time. I know I sit on the audit chair, and I will just say I look forward. I know that we continue to build out that team and have a more robust team. internal look at some of our work there. And I look forward to a time when we have more performance measures to show our work and have more transparency to the community. And I know that's a work in progress. So just having that noted for future time.

Thank you.

And so before we close out on this advisory board, there's a few things that I would just like to share that I think will be helpful. And we're getting better at notifying commissioners that there's open seats for your district. And I would like us to make that a priority, that before they send us something where a candidate who's already on there that they share that there is an opening in our district and allow us, since we have the authority to appoint members, that they allow that to happen before we are given a list of individuals to choose from. And I think that is important, of course, for race, but also for male and female. I think gender is important, too, that we look at who is on there, because we want it to be as diverse as possible. And of course, you know, as we're looking for that and doing our due diligence, we always want to make sure that the individual that we are choosing to be a part of any board have the experience and expertise and some interest in being a part of their board. Because they have to bring value on to those boards. It's not just because we want to diversify it. We definitely want to make sure that there's an interest there and that they have the skill set for that particular board that has an opening. So that would be helpful for me.

I have a question on that, Madam Chair, because when I started, they would give us these and say, oh yeah, we need a District 2 rep, so how about you appoint somebody? And I had no idea who else was on the board, so that's why we're so grateful for this process. I think it's never a given. It's just a suggestion that we have balance with the district. So I don't know hardly any boards that require that we just say we want district representation. So That's why we set up this process, so that each one of us wasn't picking someone without knowing what the general group was. So like when you said, I want to know if I can appoint someone just for my district, I don't know that any of our boards are set up to require a district rep. I think we just want that kind of balance. And that's why we go through this interview process to say, yes, we don't have anyone from District 4. So we should look at them. If there's nobody good, if there's no one that applied or that we think that we already have District 4 reps or we already have that skill that we maybe need a different skill, we have that ability to change it around. But it's a suggestion that we have districts. But it was not a good practice that we just get to pick because it didn't give the balance that we needed. Right.

I don't know what the process is, what the process came from, what that looks like. That might be helpful for us to all know that too. Because good decision making that is inclusive is important. And so we just like to see that.

Thank you. So I think we are done.

So I want to thank.

Let's do the addenda.

We need the addendums. Is that coming from? We have one more. So we're going to work on the proposed 2027 budget addendum. That's coming from Director Louie.

Good afternoon, commissioners. For those of you I've not met, had a chance to meet yet, I am Kelsey Louie, the new budget director on the finance team. I look forward to working with you all during this 2027 supplemental budget process, as well as looking ahead for the upcoming work we will do on the 28-29 biannual budget. Today, I'm going to walk you through the 2027 proposed addenda sheet, which is included in your packet within the detailed list of financial reports, to highlight what has changed since the 2026-2027 approved budget was passed.

Hold on one second. I'm sorry. I just want to make sure everybody knows where we are. What does it look like? Is it this one? We don't have page numbers.

It should be like page five-ish of the financial reports.

Yeah, it goes just sideways. Oh, wait, no.

You're right.

Is it on the page? Yeah, I got it.

Here it is. There you go. At the top. It's in small text. Okay. It's just this. Okay. It says 27 supplemental proposed budget addenda. Yeah, sorry. Yeah.

Once it's on my tabs already. Mm-hmm.

Look. What tab? What tab? Nope, I got it. I combined it in my books.

Such a nerd.

Too many books.

I'm going to bring my little post-its. I like that.

Next time, we'll include page numbers to make it a little easier. So we prepare the agenda twice during each budget cycle, once at the beginning, which I am presenting to you today, and then once again in December when the final budget is passed to adjust for any new information or changes that you all have approved. I'm going to start with the items that impact the levy, and then I'll walk through all the net neutral changes that are shifting funding between departments but don't actually add to the total county budget. First, as you all have heard about during recent board meetings, in the county manager Becker's budget presentation, federal HR1 legislation has placed a significant burden on the county. In order to meet all the new federal requirements, this budget recommends a $1.5 million increase for 17.5 FTEs in financial assistance services to meet this increased work and eligibility requirements for SNAP and Medicaid. This increase is offset by an estimated $514,000 in federal revenue for a total net levy impact of $1 million. The second increase in the proposed budget is for the 32 FTEs, eight of which are unfunded, for the adult detention center at the sheriff's office. These FTEs were recommended by an independent staffing study with the goal of ensuring a safe and secure facility and reducing the reliance on overtime. This increase has a $3.1 million impact to the levy. Both the FAS and the sheriff increases were offset by a $1.3 million reduction associated with the belt timing measures that will be implemented throughout 2027 to ensure that the levy increase is no higher than 8.25%. Additionally, the county received a small $44,000 reduction in county program aid from the state of Minnesota, a general purpose aid that we receive each year from the state. Across the county, these changes have to $3.3 million in additional appropriations and $470,000 in additional revenue, netting to a $2.8 million levy impact. Now I'm going to walk through the changes that do not impact the levy, which include the net neutral shifts across departments. These document shifts that have already been operationalized but due to timing were included elsewhere in the 26-27 budget. First, during the 26-27 budget, administrative directors were funded centrally for every service team to further the goal of operational excellence and implement the organizational alignment restructuring. This agenda moves these five FTEs and salary costs to each service team, formalizing the structure that is currently in place. This agenda also shifts FTEs and salary costs to the new county operations administration team. In addition to the director of administration, it also shifts the chief operating officer the controller of operations, an executive assistant, and an accountant into this new service team. Starting in 2027, the Appropriate Response Initiative, or ARI, was operationalized into the budget. This initiative was previously funded through ARPA dollars. In the approved budget, these 21 FTEs and salary costs were built into the Office of Safety and Justice. $2.4 million of these costs were funded through the levy, and $451,000 of it was funded through the Opioid Settlement Fund for a total of $2.8 million. Due to the nature of this cross-functional team, this addendum moved 17 of these 21 FTEs to social services and two of these FTE salary costs to emergency communications. There were also a few smaller scale changes where a specific employee's changing role necessitated a shift in FTEs across departments. These included one planning specialist from Workforce Solutions to the County Manager's Office and one planning specialist from Health and Wellness Administration to Public Health. Finally, the addenda included the addition of seven grant funded limited duration positions across the Sheriff and Ramsey County Attorney's Office as approved by the County Board through the RBA process. So that is what's in the agenda sheet for the general levy. And then for rail and housing, consistent with the 2026 approach, the 2027 regional rail authority levy is proposed to be held flat. And the housing and redevelopment authority levy is recommended at the max levy, which in 2027 results in a slight decrease given the changes in estimated market values. Um, so that is everything that is on the agenda sheet. So all of the changes from the 2027 approved budget to this proposed budget. So I'll open it up for any questions.

Okay. Uh,

The only question I have is could we possibly get like an executive summary of everything you just said?

Because that was very helpful and I was trying to

track all of that, but if I had what you just said, it would be better. So if we can get that, that'd be great.

Perfect.

I have it right here, so it's ready to go.

Do you, maybe this question's for you, County Manager. Do you know why we would have gotten, or why we will be getting a reduction in county program aid?

I'm going to turn that over to DCM .

OK. Madam Chair, commissioners, that's an excellent question. So the county program aid is based on a statewide formula that has two pieces that go into it. And every year, it is just recalculated. And this wasn't our year, and it went down slightly. I mean, $44,000 out of a $26 million line is pretty minimal. I would say it's break even. But there are other counties that did go up, right? And it's all, you know, there are many factors that go into that, including, you know, the number of people on SNAP, the number of people over the age 65. So based on our demographics, that'll change every year. And it's published on the state website along with the Primer. So I'm happy to send, or Director Louie can send you a link to the CPA website for the state. She's like, no, thank you. Okay. Your explanation is wonderful.

Well, isn't it also true that the county program aid is based on some factors around anyone that's 500 and over? And by default, that happens to only be like Ramsey County and Hennepin County?

Yes. Madam Chair, Commissioners, so there are two pieces to the formula. And one piece is the same for all counties. And the other piece is for any county over half a million people, it is multiplied by 0.25 or 25%. So we would get 25% of that versus any county that is any county except Hennepin and Ramsey would get the full which is why a county like Dakota gets about the same amount of CPA as we do, even though they are significantly smaller in a lot of ways.

Yeah, something is wrong with that number. Right. That equation just doesn't add up. And so that's definitely a conversation that we need to be having with our delegation, our Ramsey County delegation, and maybe even others about the inequities that is built in

And we are. We have had these conversations for a long time on this. And we've tried to work the formula differently, but we need such an investment of money into the formula that that's why the legislature won't pass it, even though we have talked to our people about this. So you'd need such an investment into the formula if they can't do it. But we have started the capital complex, the host capital complex tax credit. So that's uniquely us, that will uniquely help us because we're getting, this formula totally doesn't help us. This formula is bad for us. Although we will get another ally because Dakota County is about to have over 500,000 people. And when they enter this, they're going to start, you know, they're going to start complaining as well, because it's hard. It's hard to be without these dollars. But we have been making this point, and we've been trying to redo the formula. AMC, we've asked AMC many to do the formula.

Well, that's an inequity right there. So when we are at a disadvantage within that .

So that's why we're doing our own thing with the capital, with the whole capital complex.

You know, and I get it. It's hard to say to someone else, give up some of your dollars.

If we put more money in the formula, everybody will be fine.

Well, Ramsey County has been superb at opening our doors to anyone who come to us, right? We don't, you know, we've been very good of serving everyone. And so I don't know quite what that message has been. I've never heard my county delegation individual ever talk about this. Maybe they might be talking to somebody else, but I've never specifically heard them lead on this or have a conversation as they may have solved the inequities within. And how long has this been in law?

Madam Chair, Commissioner, I mean, anyone else? Forever.

I think you were on some of the original groups to set up the CPA, weren't you? Were you on an original work group to set up the CPA? Were you on an original work group to set up the CPA when it first, yeah, that's what I thought. Do you know how long it's been in existence?

So it might be time to re-look at that, Stan, if it's been that long.

It might be time to look, to have another look. Well, we've been asking. They have looked at it again, and it would just cost too much money.

And to create another narrative. Commissioner, what have you seen?

Yes. I just have a couple of questions just in point of protocol for greater conversation. So we received a fuller budget packet, and the addendum is a couple pages of it. When would be the time to ask some of these just overall general budget questions? Is it now? Is it later? I just want to make sure I'm doing this in order.

Are they related to a specific department? Because I thought that's what you were doing yesterday.

No, they're just a little broader than that. So should I throw one out? Yeah, you can throw one out. Throw one out? Okay. So this is a broader thing. When we look at the, there isn't a page number, but it just says the Ramsey County budget. Comparison fiscal year 26 approved to 27. It talks about intergovernmental revenue, and it lists the federal, state, state aides, and other governmental units. It holds relatively flat. Actually, it's down almost half a million. So that doesn't include any inflationary costs or cost of living costs or anything like that. And then there are some drops. And then that impacts... the revenue that's seen throughout the department budgets. And I'm just wondering if there's a place where we can see where the specific shortfalls that have happened. I mean, when we think about our role in advocating, it's not just in a particular county government aid. It's broader than that. And I'm just wondering if there's a place that outlay that so we'd be able to match up one, in our role as advocating to our state or federal partners, but also in articulating the challenges of this budget when we talk about mandates that are given to us or tasks that we are mandated to do from a highly prescribed place of the federal and state partners, and then we see a hold flat or a reduction in costs. It's good to know if those are at all tied together. I mean, was it transportation costs or revenue versus health care revenue versus something else and the work that we're doing over here? This is just a little high level.

Yeah. We can definitely provide a follow-up chart that has more detail.

Thanks. And then the other one is on the addendum, we talked about some of the different changes in the FTEs that are kind of clean up from before. Is there a way for us to get a... comprehensive FTE change in the proposed 27, or is that what this is? This is it.

These are the changes. These would be the movement of FTEs from the budget you passed in December last year, less any RBA changes, like Is that right, Alex, if there have been RBA changes throughout the year?

There's also a chart towards the back of the financial charts that summarizes by department. Oh, perfect.

It's just on a different page. Thank you very much.

Sorry, Madam Chair, Commissioner. To add, so there is a chart, as Director Louie mentioned. It's on page 12, if we had page numbers. Yep, it'll be, if you keep going past the addenda to the 12th, It'll have FTEs that changed. And if you think to yourself, hmm, I wonder why that changed, there are two places you would find the changes. One is the 26-27 budget that you already adopted. So if we added a position in there, that would have been included on there, that it moved from 26 to 27. From the 27 to the 27, from the 27 supplemental to this new, sorry, the 27 base budget to the new supplemental budget, that would be on the addenda. So there's two ways that FTE can show. And you have all of those columns on that. You have the 26 approved, 27 approved, and the 27 supplemental.

This is what I was looking for.

Thank you.

Okay. Are we good? All right. Commissioner Ortega.

No, I just want to add that when we're talking about any of these county program aids or anything else, We really need to be talking with all 87 counties because it's really difficult for any one county or even two or three. Especially when it's the metro and the differences in some of the dollars have to do with the fact that you have

And Madam Chair, I will just say, and this can be done at the Legislative Committee before it comes to the board, but I truly believe after talking to the Metro, you know, other county administrators, this is our year to get unified as a state around those cost shifts and to sort of bring into the room something that divides a bit of the counties isn't especially helpful. You know, you have to get kind of singular, and I don't know if you've had the conversation at the AMC board or anything, but I think You know, we have a moment where some years there are some differences, both even Hennepin-Ramsey versus the collar counties versus greater Minnesota. This is a year where we all can focus on some of the same things that are pain points, and that might be more worth our energy.

I think I'm going to ask Commissioner McMurtry, because we just came out of the strategic planning session with AMC, that everybody is unified on some of these things. I mean, every county... is hurting because of the SNAP and Medicaid. You know, there's certain issues that we do are all unified on. I mean, clearly we have issues of our own that we need to keep pushing. Yes, we need to keep. And AMC is looking for those places, as Commissioner Ortega says. If we can get every county to care about this, and they do. We have to really focus on that.

No, I agree. We always have a collective AMC legislative agenda. We always come around common concerns and issues and what needs to drive all counties in general. But I still believe that Ramsey County needs to be a messenger of our message.

Well, we totally are, and we have. And we have a good message.

I think we can always do two things at once.

Yes, absolutely.

But yeah, it's a 15-year-old conversation, and counties are hurting, and they're going to hurt more. So we get it. I get it. Yeah, for sure. Anything else you want to close? So what do we need to do with the addendum?

Nothing. You just can ask questions or knowledge. It seems like we have some follow-up things to send, so we'll do that. And then I think your last thing before we wrap up is just give DCM Kutza a couple minutes to wrap up. Okay.

Thank you. Well, it is Friday at 3.15, so I'll just say thank you so much for your attention today and all of the work that we've done together. I hope you have a good weekend.

Oh, wow.

We're here until 430.

Don't you remember? 22 years. Wow.

It's been 22 years.

It's close. So I just want to close with some closing remarks. And I want to say a big thank you to the County Operations Service team for their presentations today and for serving as the operational backbone of this agency. On the heels of the 2026 primary election, we know how important it is to keep county operations secure, efficient, and free from disruption. The next presentation will be on September the 1st from 1 to 4. The Health and Wellness Service team will present their performance measures. As a reminder, we encourage public participation in the budget process. You can participate by attending a public hearing, contacting your commissioner, or submitting a written comment to the chief clerk. Instructions on how to participate and a full schedule of upcoming meetings is posted on the budget and finance page of Ramsey County website. Thank you for being here. Thank you for joining us. Have a great and safe weekend.

Thank you.

We are adjourned.

I'm out of here.