City Council - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon and welcome to the regular meeting of the Committee of the Whole for July 14th, 2026. My name is Orin Chowdhury and I am the chair of this committee. I will call this regular meeting to order and ask the clerk to call the roll to verify the presence of a quorum.

Councilmember Payne.

Present.

Wansley. Present. Rainville.

Present.

Vita. Present. Warren. Present. Osmond. Is absent. Schaffer. Present. Stevenson.

Present.

Chavez.

Present.

Whiting. Present. Palmisano. Present. Vice Chair Chiktai is absent, and Chair Chowdhury. Present. There are 11 members present.

Thank you, Clerk. Let the record reflect that we do have a quorum. Before we begin the meeting, let me offer a friendly reminder to everyone that these meetings are broadcast live to enable greater public participation. The broadcasts include real-time captioning to increase accessibility for the entire community, so it's important that all speakers be mindful of the rate of their speech so that our captioners can fully capture and transcribe all items for the broadcast. We ask all speakers to please moderate the speed and clarity of their comments. Colleagues, our agenda is in front of us. I'll ask members to get into queue if there are any amendments.

Chair Chowdhury, if I could interrupt briefly. It seems speaker management is not working currently, so we're gonna use red tags today.

Okay, members, please identify where your red tags are. I will just start by making a motion to amend the agenda and add two walk-on items to our agenda. Before you, there should be... A COPY OF THE REQUEST FOR COMMITTEE ACTION RELATED TO HERITAGE PARK. ONE IS THE RESPONSE TO THE LEGISLATIVE DIRECTIVE AND ANOTHER IS A BUDGET REALLOCATION REQUEST. COMMITTEE MEMBERS, YOU RECEIVED THESE RCAS FROM ME LATE IN THE EVENING. THIS HAS TAKEN HIGHLY IRREGULAR PROCESS. IT WAS SUBMITTED LATE. Because of exigent circumstances and have been in communication with Councilmember Warren about this but wanted to ensure that you had a chance to look over this Really big item before it came to our committee. So that's the item that I'll move and then I'll call on councilmember Schaefer to make an amendment to the agenda And we can take those to all all the amendments together. I

Sure, yeah, this is just a last minute commercial block event application for amplified sound for the aqua tenuel.

Great. are there any questions on this um i'm just before we before we take the vote on it i'll just share what the order of the agenda is going to be in case anyone has any questions about the order of agenda so we will take up the committee reports then we'll take consent and we will add the aqua tenuel sound permit item in consent, and then we will go to the walk-on items for Heritage Park in discussion, and then we will pass this meeting over to Councilmember Whiting for the settlement agreement consent decree subcommittees. Is there any questions from committee members? Not seeing any red tags up. May I have a motion to adopt the agenda as revised?

So moved.

Is there a second? All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Those opposed say nay. The motion passes. We have our agenda. Okay, now we will start by taking our standing committee reports starting with the Enterprise Labor Relations Committee chaired by Councilmember Palmesano.

Thank you, Madam Chair. The ELR Committee has four items to bring forward on Thursday. The first is resolution for the first quarter of 2026 quarterly donations. The second is a resolution for gift acceptance for Council Member Stevenson to attend a summit event in Duluth. Item number three is a collective bargaining agreement for the firefighters, Local 82. Item four is a legal settlement workers' comp claim. And I'm happy to answer any questions.

Members, is there any discussion or questions? Not seeing any of the red tags up. So next we will go to the Budget Committee report given by its Vice Chair, Council Member Schaffer.

Thank you, Madam President. The Budget Committee is bringing forward one item. Item number one accepts the Byrne Discretionary Community Project Funding Grants Program for evaluation of problem nature codes and approves appropriation of funds to the Office of Community Safety. ANY QUESTIONS? I'LL MOVE TO APPROVE THAT ITEM.

GREAT. COUNCIL MEMBERS, IS THERE ANYTHING? NOT SEEING ANY. NEXT WE'LL GO TO THE BUSINESS HOUSING AND ZONING COMMITTEE GIVEN TO ME AS VICE CHAIR. So the business housing and zoning committee will be bringing forward 17 items to Thursday's council meeting. Item one approves a liquor with limited entertainment license for Bill's Bait Shop. Item two approved an expansion of premises and street cafe license for Bryant Lake Bowl. Item number three approved a wine and strong beer with no entertainment license for Antijos. Item four approved the financing for the green exchange conversion project item number five is a variance for the property at 4710 Humboldt North this was sent forward without recommendation I'll just note for committee members. This is a quasi judicial item and there was a motion made for granting the variance with conditions, but that will just require working with the city attorney's office to solidify findings. Item number six, approve six liquor license. Item number seven, approve 24 liquor license renewals. Item number eight, approve two gambling licenses. Item number nine, approve amended business license operating conditions for Breakfast Bar of Minnesota. Item number 10, accepted a bid for snow removal at the convention center. Item number 11, authorized a restricted loan for Jigjiga Business Center. Item number 12, authorized financial agreements for the Minneapolis Homes Rehab Project. Item number 13, authorized revisions to the alternative financing program. Item number 14, approved land disposition and financial assistance from Hennepin County. Item number 15, authorize a loan contract with Metro Consortium of Community Developers. Item number 16, approve two street vacations north of Franklin Avenue West. And lastly, item number 17 is a historic Landmark designation for the Lakeshore arms apartments. This was sent forward without recommendation With that I will stand for any questions that my colleagues may have I see clerk amber and Q Yes, I would like to announce that speaker management is now working so we can get in queue as well Excellent. I highly recommend the members log in to speaker management for this committee of the whole I IS THERE ANYONE THAT WOULD LIKE TO COMMENT OR HAVE ANY QUESTIONS ON THE BUSINESS HOUSING ZONING COMMITTEE REPORT? SEEING NONE, WE WILL MOVE TO THE CLIMATE AND INFRASTRUCTURE COMMITTEE, AND THAT REPORT WILL BE GIVEN BY ITS CHAIR, COUNCILMEMBER WANSLEY.

THANK YOU, VICE CHAIR. SORRY, CHAIR. THIS WILL ACTUALLY BE GIVEN BY COUNCILMEMBER SOREN STEVENSON.

EXCELLENT. COUNCILMEMBER STEVENSON.

THANK YOU. The CNI Committee has nine items to bring forward. One, considering the Landale Avenue reconstruction project. Two, the resolution for the gift acceptance from EquiVolv. Three, resolution for a gift acceptance from Brookings Transportation Initiative. Four, resolution for a gift acceptance from Minneapolis Foundation. Five, resolution of the support for the Minnesota Department of Transportation Highway 280 project. Six, resolution for the land sale of Wedge Point Park to Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board. Seven, authorizing grant applications to Minnesota Department of Transportation for 2026 Federal Highway Safety Improvement Program funds. Eight, accepting the low bid for West River Road phase two project. Nine, approving a legislative directive proposed closure of the Hennepin Energy Recovery Center. I'll stand for questions.

Great members are there any questions not seeing anyone Q. Lastly we have the report from the public health the health safety and equity committee given by its chair council member Chavez.

Thank you chair Chaudhary. The public health safety and equity committee will be bringing forward 3 items. I don't remember one grants consent the mayor's nomination of Caleb McCann the other to the point of position of civil rights department director. Item number two, considers a contract with Skydio Inc. for a drone as first responder pilot program. Item number three, accepts a donation from the University of Chicago for police inspector Molly Fisher to attend the Policing Leadership Academy. I'll stand for any questions.

Council member Chavez, I have a question. Did you say that the Skydio contract was moved for approval or was it without recommendation?

I didn't say it, but it was sent forward without recommendation.

without recommendation. Thank you, just appreciate that clarity. Members, are there any other questions? Okay, seeing none, we will turn to the consent agenda. First is a resolution expressing support for target field workers authored by Council Member Wansley. And as a reminder, the second item is a bundle that approves a block event and sound permit for the Aquitennial Festival. Do my colleagues have any discussion or questions on this item? I will go to Council Member Wansley.

Thank you chair chowdhury I just want to speak to the resolution related to support for target field workers over 500 workers are stationed at target bill in our specifically employed by the Delaware North company and are represented by unite here local 17 which I'm grateful to see many members in the chambers here today, thank you for joining us. These workers serve the food and beverages that are integral to the fan experience and economic success of the Twins and Target field. And workers are currently in contract negotiations seeking a contract that includes living wages and affordable health care. Unfortunately, Delaware North has not reached a fair contract that grants workers the wages and benefits that they do deserve. And workers were forced to even strike earlier this summer. And I felt very honored to be able to join them on the picket lines and showing solidarity, active solidarity with them. as you're pushing for a fair contract. Target Field is a publicly owned stadium which is overseen by the Minnesota Ballpark Authority. It's also home to the Minnesota Twins and is nationally recognized as a cornerstone of the athletic and cultural landscape in Minneapolis. the city of minneapolis has adopted positions supporting living wages affordable health care union representation dignified workplaces and collective bargaining for all workers we are a union friendly city in town and we've also in alignment with these positions have adopted as a body similar resolutions supporting workers be it at delta airlines minneapolis public schools minneapolis parks and recreation AS WELL AS THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA. AND I THINK THAT INDICATES THE COLLECTIVE OBLIGATION THAT WE HAVE AS COUNCIL MEMBERS AND AS CITY LEADERS TO ADVANCE THOSE VALUES IN OUR OWN BACKYARD, SPECIFICALLY IN THIS CASE RELATED TO TARGET FIELDS. SO IN LIGHT OF THAT, I AUTHORED THIS RESOLUTION BEFORE YOU THAT ESTABLISHES A FORMER POSITION OF THE CITY OF MINNEAPOLIS TO SUPPORT and extend solidarity to target field concession workers. And specifically, the resolution urges Delaware North, the twins, and the target field to negotiate in good faith for a fair contract that upholds Minneapolis values and the city's formal positions in support of living wages and dignified working conditions. So with that, I will move this item forward for approval and then ask for a second.

Second.

Great. Next we have in queue, Council Member Chavez.

Thank you, Chair Chaudhary. I just want to thank Council Member Wansley for bringing forward this resolution. I'm proud to support it. This resolution, as Council Member Wansley said, expresses solidarity and support for target field workers and urges Delaware North Company to bargain in good faith and to agree to a fair contract. I think this is something that is really important. Minneapolis is a union town, and this should be something that needs to get addressed as soon as possible. So thank you, Council Member Wanzi, for bringing this forward.

Thank you. Next I'll go to Council Member Rainville.

Thank you. I want to speak to the members of Local 17 here. I was a member for 23 years. I was a shop steward, picket line captain. I hear you. I see you. I'm with you. Thank you.

thank you i put myself in queue thank you council member wansley for really captaining the work of of this and forming a solid position for the city of minneapolis to be in solidarity with all the workers that unite here at target field really appreciate you taking time out of your day to come to the stadium and i all or not to the stadium whoops we're not going to the stadium not crossing that picket line An inadvertent dad joke. That's what I'm known for over here. Thank you for coming to our chambers. We will not be going to the stadium until they bargain in good faith. Just lots of solidarity and really appreciate you being here and representing the other workers that can come today. So I know you have moved that for approval. It seems like this will remain to be a consent item. And so we're gonna move all the consent items for approval. So that is inclusive of the aqua tenuel item as well. So I have moved that for approval. Can I get a second on that?

Second.

Excellent. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Those opposed say nay. The ayes have it and the motion is carried. All right, council members, next on the agenda we have, you'll see it as item number three, but we're just gonna take it up really quick. It's the postponement item before we move to discussion. I'll move to postpone item number three. To our meeting on September 15th. This is because staff Needs more time to issue a response to the legislative directive and I think I just want to highlight for the public that is tracking this item regarding information on Minneapolis Police Department spending in 2025 this was initially presented in May there was Not enough answers to the questions and an extension was requested for this meeting And unfortunately, that was not completed. The Minneapolis Police Department representatives shared with us an agenda setting that's largely due to the leadership changeup and needing to hire THANK STAFF FOR FINANCIAL SUPPORT TO ACTUALLY GET US THE INFORMATION. THIS IS THE LAST EXTENSION IN CONSULTATION WITH COUNCILMEMBER CHUGTAI'S OFFICE THAT I'LL BE WILLING TO GRANT FOR OUR COMMITTEE. AND THE REPRESENTATIVE FROM THE MINNEAPOLIS POLICE DEPARTMENT SAID THAT THIS WOULD BE ENOUGH TIME TO ISSUE THE ADEQUATE RESPONSE. SO LOOKING FORWARD TO THAT. recognize Councilmember Chavez.

Thank you, Chair Chowdhury. I just want to add more context to this item. I'm looking at LAMS. It said that the report was due May 19th, 2026. Now it is July 14, 2026, almost two months later. We have in many instances gone through this in the Public Health Safety and Equity Committee where the administration fails to report on time for our legislative directives. One particular item that I am thinking about is an item that was authored by Council Member Wansley and she then had to submit two follow-up requests because the administration has failed to respond to it. So that's a total of one legislative directive asking for information, two follow-up requests to the administration, and yet nothing has been reported to the Public Health Safety and Equity Committee. I'm using this time to talk about how administration... IS HAVING THIS PATTERN OF FAILING TO REPORT BACK ON IS HAVING THIS PATTERN OF FAILING TO REPORT BACK ON LEGISLATIVE DIRECTIVE WHICH LEGISLATIVE DIRECTIVE WHICH PURSUANT TO CITY CHARTER SECTION PURSUANT TO CITY CHARTER SECTION 7.1 H2 THE MIAMI CITY COUNCIL 7.1 H2 THE MIAMI CITY COUNCIL HAS THE AUTHORITY TO GET THIS HAS THE AUTHORITY TO GET THIS INFORMATION AND I'M FLAGGING THIS FOR INFORMATION AND I'M FLAGGING THIS FOR CONCERNS BECAUSE I HOPE THIS IS THE CONCERNS BECAUSE I HOPE THIS IS THE LAST TIME THAT THE ADMINISTRATION LAST TIME THAT THE ADMINISTRATION FAILS TO REPORT TO THE CITY FAILS TO REPORT TO THE CITY COUNCIL ON INF meant to get into our hands so we can be good policy makers and use our dual authority to do oversight over anything that the administration does and that the city the city has authority over so i hope this is the last time but i will say that i am frustrated that this continues to happen when the city council requests information we should be getting that information next we'll go to council member vita

Thank you, Chair. As a co-author on this legislative directive with Councilmember Chuck Tye, I just want to say that I personally have been in communication with the administration on the delays in this legislative directive. I really do appreciate the passion that my colleagues have for this, but I just want to be clear that folks have been communicating with us about the delays. There's been a major transition in this department, and the person who was responsible and who Councilmember Chuktai and I had asked to present this information is no longer with the City of Minneapolis, and that is not the only Transition that's happened in the city of Minneapolis in this particular department. So I I just wanted to You know make sure that it goes on the record that I don't believe there's any funny business or anybody trying to like stall something there's just a lot of transitions going on behind the scenes and I'm confident that we're gonna get the information. I I certainly have said publicly this is information I've been trying to get for a long time and so I'm looking forward to it, but the conversation feels like something is being withheld, and that's not how I feel about it. I think there's just been a lot of transition and expectation that specific people present this information to us, and I think that's what's happening, and I'm looking forward to the September timeline that has been put in place for us to get the information. And I hope then in that committee that colleagues do ask questions because Council Member Choptie and I were the only ones who really were asking questions about this legislative directive. And so I'm looking forward to a really robust discussion in September when this information is presented to us.

Next we'll go to Council Member Wansley. Thank you, Chair Chowdhury. I just wanted to follow up to some of the things that Councilmember Chavez raised in terms of not seeing legislative directives being complied with by the administration and seeing that be played out of mulch. A MULTITUDE OF DIFFERENT LEGISLATIVE DIRECTIVES, AS YOU NOTED, THAT ALLOWS THIS BODY TO RECEIVE INFORMATION SO THAT WE CAN MAKE INFORMED POLICY OR BUDGETARY DECISIONS, ESPECIALLY WHEN WE'RE DISCUSSING OUR CURRENT BUDGET LANDSCAPE WHERE WE'RE IN THE $30 MILLION ESTIMATED OR PROJECTED DEFICIT. And we know that 23 million or so of that is coming from MPD. So we need to be having these conversations of how we got there and also what we're going to do this budget cycle to mitigate further financial strain that's being advanced by mismanagement within this department. SO I THINK MANY OF US REALLY WANT TO RECEIVE THIS INFORMATION WHILE I UNDERSTAND THAT THERE HAS BEEN SIGNIFICANT TRANSITION IN THE POLICE DEPARTMENT ALSO UNDER THE CURRENT INTERIM LEADERSHIP. SOME OF THIS INFORMATION ESPECIALLY WITH THE OFFICE OF COMMUNITY LEADERSHIP AS WELL AS BUDGET FROM MY UNDERSTANDING SHOULD BE ABLE TO READILY PROVIDE SOME OF THESE REPORTS THAT WE ACTUALLY GET AROUND OVER TIME, SO JUST TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WHY THAT ISN'T BEING COORDINATED OR AHEARED TO, BUT THE POINT THAT COUNCILMEMBER CHAVEZ MADE IN TERMS OF WHAT WE CAN DO TO TRY TO ADDRESS THIS, I ALSO BROUGHT FORWARD, AND I BELIEVE YOU SUPPORTED THIS AS A COAUTHOR AS WELL, the charter compliance and enforcement legislative directive that I think largely the city attorney is taking up so that we can understand what authority we have to better approach the administration around getting these legislative directives fulfilled so that we can do our jobs to the best of our ability and with the information that we need. From my understanding, the city attorneys is planning to come forward with that legislative directive or the staff in general on August 3rd. uh we'll follow up to make sure that that also is presented on because that's one in itself that was delayed as well so i at least wanted to know that um hopefully that will happen in a presentation to this body and that this body as a council can have more options on how we can hold the administration accountable to provide the information that we request and approve uh together so just wanted to give some follow-up on that

There is no one else in queue. So without objection, I will move to postpone this item. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Those opposed say nay. The motion carries and it is postponed to the September 15th meeting of the Committee of the Whole. All right, we're gonna wait to just have the chamber clear.

Madam Chair. Yes. Madam Chair, sorry, I can't get in queue right now, but I did want to mention, I forgot it wasn't written on the sheet, but we did do the appointment. Oh, your mic just went out, sorry, go ahead. We did at ELR committee this cycle do the public hearing for the reappointment of Rebecca Malmquist as our city assessor, and I did intend to say that during the committee report. It wasn't on the committee report, so I didn't read that, but I also plan to be bringing that forward for approval on Thursday. It came through committee with recommendation, I think.

Thank you, Council Member Palmisano. Okay, now we will be receiving a response to the legislative directive regarding Heritage Park. And additionally, there is an action item discussed that allocates 2.5 million from the Affordable Housing Trust Fund to this project. I just wanna make a note to the public I think there'll be a lot that unfolds in this conversation. I think there's a lot of exigent and adverse circumstances that's leading to a walk-on item for $2.5 million. It's highly irregular. And I think we'll get into that discussion. I also just want to... give a thank you to Council Member Warren for her work and communication on this. And with that, I will have Eric Hansen, the Director of CPED, start the presentation on this item. Welcome, Director.

Thank you, Chair Chaudhry, members of the committee. My name is Eric Hansen. I am the Director of Community Planning and Economic Development. And I want to start first by acknowledging what you said, Chair Chaudhry. This is very unusual for CPED to bring something of this magnitude in front of the Committee of the Whole. And I'm hopeful that the presentation you'll see will explain why we are bringing this in such an atypical fashion. I'm here to present the response to the Heritage Park legislative directive and request $2.5 million in emergency funding for life safety repairs and relocation supports at Heritage Park. I'M JOINED IN THE CHAMBERS TODAY BY LEADERS FROM THE HEALTH DEPARTMENT, REGULATORY SERVICES AND PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT WHO ARE ON HAND TO ANSWER QUESTIONS FOR THE PRESENTED INFORMATION. I WOULD ASK THAT YOU ALLOW ME TO COMPLETE THE PRESENTATION ON BOTH ITEMS AND THEN WE WILL BE ABLE TO RESPOND TO THE QUESTIONS FROM THE SUBJECT MATTER EXPERTS, THE PROPER SUBJECT MATTER EXPERTS. We have a growing property condition problem at Heritage Park that is impacting 685 people in 212 households. The city has been working intensely over the past six months with the court ordered receiver, public housing authority, and funders to identify ways to rehabilitate Heritage Park. it is a complex problem that we are solving it comes from years of under investment into the rental component of the planned neighborhood this under investment has left the buildings in a state of disrepair to the point where the city has come to the conclusion to provide direct assistance for those currently living at heritage park to find new stable and safe places to live in my presentation i will provide some background on heritage park respond to the direct questions of the legislative directive and discuss the requested emergency funding to support the people at heritage park before i begin i want to recognize council member warren for her steadfast advocacy for the people in these units and her invaluable partnership with CPED and the staff team, the mayor's office, and the mayor's office as we develop this plan and engage residents at Heritage Park. Thank you, Councilmember. Heritage Park is a 440 unit mixed income rental community in Ward 5. It was developed in four phases, and you'll see that on the map. Currently only 212 of those units are occupied with an estimated population of 685 people living in those units. The development of Heritage Park is a result of a court ordered consent decree from the Holman versus Cisneros class action lawsuit from the 1990s which alleged that public housing and section eight programs in the city perpetuated racial and low income segregation and allowed households to live in substandard HOUSING CONDITIONS. HERITAGE PARK HAS BOTH RENTAL AND OWNERSHIP UNITS IN THE MASTER PLAN SITE. THE MAP SHOWS THE FOUR RENTAL HOUSING COMPONENTS THAT ARE OWNED BY SEPARATE SUBSIDIARIES OF MCCORMICK BARON SALAZAR OR MBS ON A LONG-TERM GROUND LEASE WITH THE MINNEAPOLIS PUBLIC HOUSING AUTHORITY OR I WILL USE MPHA OR PHA. MBS built these housing units between 2002 and 2006. As one of the defendant parties to the consent decree, the city participated in the planning, site readiness, and funding activities for the redevelopment of Heritage Park. The city initially invested $4.3 million in deferred funds and added housing tax credits into the development. Other funders to the original development include Minnesota Housing, Hennepin County Family Housing Fund, and the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD. MPHA provides tenant-based Section 8 vouchers and funding from an annual contributions contract or ACC contract to fund operations and ongoing capital needs within the development. 200 of the 440 units are public housing, and several others have Section 8 vouchers. Heritage Park right now is in a court-ordered receivership to the owner's failure to pay the first mortgage. Sirtis Financial LLC, or Sirtis, serves as that receiver and would receive any grants for rehabilitation and execute required repairs. They act as the owner at this point in time. CERTUS continues to complete due diligence to determine repair needs at Heritage Park. Staff is working closely with CERTUS and the MPHA through this process and has engaged Hennepin County and other funders in the development on the rehabilitation and relocation planning. The city's primary role right now after the conclusion of the consent decree, which is about 15 years old, are to support and monitor the existing subsidy funding, provide land use guidance in future development phases, operate and maintain public infrastructure, and additionally, the city enforces rental licensing and property maintenance regulation. We responded to the seven, we will respond to the seven questions you see on the screen. You asked staff to respond to the Committee of Whole by July 28th. The body urged staff for a quicker response, if possible, when the full council approved this directive in June. Responding to that request and giving the seriousness of the conditions that we need to support, we are presenting this information ahead of the deadline. Our responses to the question posed reflect the best data staff has available and possess right now during a very fluid situation. In some cases, responses rely on data from external partners. We did our best to retrieve that information and provide a response. Staff has been working daily with CERTUS to best understand the repair and rehabilitation needs at Heritage Park. It is a complex puzzle balancing repairs of the units, assessing the integrity of the overall building envelope and structure, and defining the needs for replacement and repair of the grounds, stormwater treatment facilities, and fixtures like lighting and playgrounds. We seem to learn more every day about the conditions at Heritage Park. First and foremost, we center our attention on the 685 people who live at Heritage Park, ensuring they have safe, stable housing. If that's not at Heritage Park, then we need to help them find it somewhere else. The emergency funding action I will discuss later in the presentation addresses their needs as we continue to determine a strategy to complete the repair puzzle, which will continue to take weeks to complete, months to designate funding to meet the repair needs, and years to complete the repairs. 76, there are 76 residential buildings currently, and they currently maintain active rental licenses. Prior to 2025, the city inspection activities were primarily complaint driven, meaning inspectors responded to concerns reported by residents. As conditions at the property became more concerning, regulatory services shifted to a proactive approach. Beginning in October 2025, the city conducted a comprehensive property-wide inspection and inspected every occupied unit where residents provided consent to allow for entry. Those inspections identified significant maintenance and housing code issues. Since October, inspectors have opened 93 enforcement cases, documenting 975 code violations. To date, 111 violations have been corrected and closed. 84 cases remain open, representing 863 violations that continue to be monitored and enforced by regulatory services. One encouraging indicator is that the service requests have declined since the proactive inspections began, suggesting that more issues are being identified and addressed through the city's systematic inspection process rather than waiting for individual complaints. Our work continues until the property is brought into compliance and have safe, healthy housing. The city's response involved much more than inspection. Throughout this process, housing liaisons have worked alongside regulatory services inspectors, meeting directly with residents, answering questions, connecting families with available resources, and helping residents navigate what has been a difficult and uncertain situation. Last fall, the city participated in a community meeting along with former resident advocate organization, USI, and the residents to explain inspection activities and answer questions. As reinspections continue, housing liaisons are brought in whenever appropriate to reduce the number of city staff entering the units, while ensuring residents continue receiving support. Our departments remain in close communication so that residents can quickly access assistance when needed. When additional intervention is appropriate, housing liaisons work collaboratively with the residents and the property management to help resolve the issues. More recently, city staff have joined Council Member Warren in three community meetings about the conditions at Heritage Park and will continue to engage the community members as we work through the process of relocation. Since the court appointed a point... Since the court appointed a receiver, city staff has worked closely with both, with CERTUS and the new property management team. Together we have established an inspection schedule, prioritized repairs, and developed timelines for correcting violations identified during inspections. Another major priority is returning vacant units into service. Many vacant apartments require extensive rehabilitation before they can safely house residents. Addressing these units require both immediate repairs and long-term financing strategies that support comprehensive rehabilitation rather than temporary fixes. This coordinated effort among the receiver, MPHA, the city, and HUD, and other partners is essential to stabilizing THE LONG-TERM HEALTH OF HERITAGE BARK. THE CITY HAS MADE FINANCIAL COMMITMENTS IN THE RECENT PAST IN ADDITION TO THE $4.3 MILLION IN DEFERRED FINANCING AT THE BEGINNING OF THE CONSTRUCTION OF THIS We have put in hundreds of thousands of dollars each year to help with lighting improvements, security upgrades, parking lot repairs, rehabilitation of vacant units or unit turns, furnace replacement, weatherization improvements, and other investments focused on health and safety. WE ALSO HAVE CONTRIBUTIONS FROM MINNESOTA HOUSING WITH $5.125 MILLION IN ESTATE FUNDING FOR REPAIRS AND $3 MILLION EARMARK THROUGH THE DEPARTMENT OF HUD FOR ONGOING REPAIRS AS WELL AS ONGOING OPERATING CAPITAL EXPENSES SUPPORT FROM MPHA. THERE IS NO SINGLE FUNDING SOURCE THAT WILL SOLVE THE CHALLENGES FOR HERITAGE PARK AND SUCCESS WILL DEPEND ON A THOUGHTFUL, COORDINATED INVESTMENT STRATEGY WITH MULTIPLE SECTOR PARTNERS. HERITAGE PARK ENTERED A COURT ORDER RECEIVERSHIP IN DECEMBER OF 2025 WHEN CERTUS FINANCIAL WAS APPOINTED TO HELP STABILIZE THE PROPERTY. THE RECEIVER IS WORKING CLOSELY WITH ALL OF THE PARTIES INVOLVED TO DEVELOP A COMPREHENSIVE, TO DO A PROPERTY ANALYSIS OF PROPERTY NEEDS ASSESSMENT OF THE PROPERTY, FIGURE OUT A FUNDING FINANCING PLAN AND PRODUCE A COMPREHENSIVE STABILIZATION STRATEGY. WE WILL CONTINUE TO WORK WITH CERTUS AND THE MPHA ON THAT PROCESS AS WE TALK ABOUT RELOCATION. Unfortunately, this is an evolving situation about needs. We are evaluating a threshold question of are the repairs needed exceeding the cost of just rebuilding the building? At this moment in time, we can't answer that threshold question, but it's something that will be at the center of our discussions with CERTUS and PHA and the staff team that is working on this. developing therefore developing and implementing a stabilization plan will require some additional time and It will require a buy-in by the district court Receiver lenders public funders MPHA and all other stakeholders Once we would get funding in place. We would have to make sure that there's a we Before we can get funding in place we have to figure out what the budget would be and what the repairs we would be Given we have answered that threshold question that the buildings are worth being saved and then we would go through contracting bidding and redevelopment and rehab Until the project is completed THROUGHOUT THIS PROCESS, CPED'S ROLE IS TO HELP COORDINATE WITH OUR PARTNERS, MONITOR PROGRESS, AND HELP IDENTIFY FUNDING SOLUTIONS THAT PRESERVE AFFORDABLE HOUSING WHILE IMPROVING LIVING CONDITIONS FOR THE RESIDENTS. OUR GOAL IS NOT TO ADDRESS TODAY'S ISSUES, BUT THE POSITION FOR HERITAGE PARKS' LONG-TERM SUCCESS, AND THAT WILL TAKE TIME. Number six, another important piece of this effort involves understanding the public infrastructure, the property's infrastructure. Public Works maintains records related to the public infrastructure, but does not possess the comprehensive engineering assessment for the entire site of Heritage Park. We are working as staff to identify those documents from the property owner, including engineering reports and technical assessments that were conducted over years before the development and over the years of the development. Those would not have been into the city's hands by the end of July. We will be collecting those and those that are public we will share with the council. the receiver who has been working very diligently and transparently with the city staff has indicated a willingness to authorize the release of all the reports allowing for everybody to take a look at what's going on in heritage park so we appreciate that IT'S ALSO IMPORTANT FOR US TO DISTINGUISH BETWEEN PRIVATE PROPERTY ISSUES WE'VE DISCUSSED AND THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE. PUBLIC WORKS CONTINUES TO MAINTAIN STREETS, SIDEWALKS, BIKE FACILITIES, STORMWATER INFRASTRUCTURE, LIGHTING, FIRE HYDRANTS THAT SURROUND HERITAGE PARK. RECENT WORK INCLUDES ADA which I believe is happening right as we speak, storm water maintenance, LED lighting upgrades, and routine inspections for all fire hydrants. These public assets will remain in good operating condition and will continue to be maintained independently of work occurring on the residential property. One of the most common concerns identified during inspection involves moisture intrusion and the conditions that can contribute to mold. Regulatory services addresses the underlying housing code violations that created these conditions, including water intrusion, damaged building materials, deteriorating building components, and other habitability concerns. Inspectors continue issuing correction orders and verify repairs. Current enforcement activities remains publicly available through the city's rental property violations dashboards to provide further transparency throughout this process. The Health Department is working alongside regulatory services to support residents while long-term building repairs move forward. Current efforts include providing educational resources, connecting families with asthma control supplies such as HEPA vacuums, dehumidifiers, air filters, mattress covers, and coordinated weatherization assistance where appropriate. The Health Department has also been working directly with the receiver and the property management company regarding moisture management. More comprehensive building envelope recommendations will occur after CERTUS completes its mold assessment and develops a remediation strategy. That brings us to the emergency funding request. The conditions at Heritage Park are to a point where we need to decouple the people who are living there and the property conditions that are happening within the development. The development, as you heard, the redevelopment of the property, which we attempted to answer in the responses to legislative directive, are gonna take time. That's time that people in Heritage Park do not have. We are in front of you today asking for us to redirect $2.5 million of affordable housing trust funds into a, towards Heritage Park. And we would want to use those for two eligible uses. And I'm gonna primarily focus on what is likely to be used for which is relocation assistance. We know that 212 residential households will take time and money for them to find new safe places to live. It is a process that the city will have to stand up, almost akin to an emergency response that we had to the Annunciation shooting or the Operation Metro Surge response. We are working collaboratively with the Emergency Management Department to develop that plan and we need resources to help the people at Heritage Park. The other use of the funding that would be authorized with this action would be to help with emergency repairs. We would have a focus on emergency repairs that are only in event of us needing to do those repairs while we're trying to relocate people. We are not trying to invest into Heritage Park if we don't know the threshold question of if this building is worth saving. That is a conversation that we need to have calmly and collectively with the multiple funders, the owner, the court about what's happening, and we need to make sure that we're taking care of the people at Heritage Park first. The authority that we're seeking today also grants me the, delegates the authority to me to make some decisions around the final scope of work for the use of these funds so that we can move as quickly as possible. We'll be working under the direction of the mayor's office, emergency management, and the other funders. We have asked the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority to help us with the relocation planning and to be a lead agency in finding new places for people to live. This is a way for us as a staff to move as quickly as we can. The idea here is to have, in the next number of days to a week, a plan and then to start administering relocations assistance as soon as we have a plan to execute. And with that, I am, I have a heavy heart being in front of you today about what we're asking for, because it is not the city's CPEDS or the city's, it is not our typical course of work to have to rescue a project like Heritage Park. And I think it is important for us from a staff perspective to communicate to you about how focused we are for the people that are at Heritage Park and how this is a very unique situation. It will have a consequence on the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, but it is more important for us to meet the needs of the people that are in these conditions now. than it is for us to discuss affordable housing production later this year. And with that, along with the staff that are in the room, I'm open to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you, Director Hanson. And then members will go into discussion. So if you'd like to speak, please get in queue. First, we have in queue Council Member Rainville.

Thank you, Chair. I have some questions about slide seven, if you want to call that up, please. So it looks like as a city we've invested 2.5, or excuse me, $4.3 million in the last four years in this private sector project. And now with this additional 2.5 would be 6.8, almost $7 million. Does this stop the bleeding? Are we gonna continue that? That's about $2 million a year we're giving this project. And I'm not saying it's not needed. Don't get me wrong.

Chair Chowdhury, Council Member Rainville, the table might be a little confusing. $4.3 million was the initial investment of the city back in the early 2000s. So that's in a deferred loan. The articulation of investments in 22 to 26 Those are individual yearly contributions. It is not uncommon for a affordable housing, a mixed income affordable housing development to need to go back to public agencies for additional resources. We were hoping that this was a way to effectively address the problem, getting units turned. We were noticing that more and more of the units were vacant because they weren't habitable, and so we're trying to get them back on, because if you can help get an occupied unit one, you have an occupied housing unit in a time when people need safe housing, and you get revenue to help with the stability of this development. So that's the rationale behind the investments we made in 22, 23, and 25. The $2.5 million does not stop the bleeding. The $2.5 million gives us resources where we might, where we're gonna potentially, we'll have to ask Hennepin County MPHA and others, if they can help fund it as well. It's a very fluid situation, so I'm not able to talk about whether or not we're successful with that yet. But the $2.5 million is to address the living conditions of the people that are there, after which there is a full conversation about what should happen at Heritage Park. And that's a full recapitalization of Heritage Park. And that'll be in the tens of millions of dollars. And in that, there's potential requests from public entities for funding. The $5.125 million that comes from Minnesota Housing is contemplated as one of those sources for the major rehab of Heritage Park. of Heritage Park, but at this point in time, we're just trying to settle where the people are and how the people are living and then have those conversations, because it'll be very complicated. I'd like to talk about Heritage Park right now seems to be like constructing a three-dimensional puzzle, and we need to make sure that we're doing that thoughtfully and being mindful of the public investment and what's the appropriate public investment, if any, when it comes to Heritage Park, but we can't do that on the backs of the people that are living there now.

Well, and thank you for saying that the people come first, because of course, I'm sure all of us share that concern. Another question I have for finance is, how much does the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority say they have operating and capital repair support ongoing? What do they put into this housing project? Like a yearly figure or total in the last four years?

Chair Chowdhury, Councilmember Rainville, we did not have that specific number to put into the response. We will follow up with you in an administrative response with that number.

Okay, well thank you and I'll be voting for this today.

Thank you, next we have in queue is Councilmember Warren.

Thank you, Chair. I greatly appreciate it. Thank you, Director Hanson, for the attempt at the delivery of the legislative directive that I submitted earlier asking about the current status of the housing inspections and other regulatory activity at Heritage Park. past, current, and future resident outreach efforts, summary and coordination efforts between the city MPHA receiver and the current property manager online maintenance. I wanted to go back to where we're talking about the rental licensing with Heritage Park. How was the rental license issued in 2025, and what was the reason for removal of that license in 2019? Just so that this information here goes on the record. Can I get somebody to answer that question publicly for me, please?

Chair Chaudhry, Council Member Warren, thank you for the question. I'm going to defer to Director Velazquez about that.

Thank you kindly, sir.

Good afternoon, Chair Chaudhry, Council Members. I'm Enrique Velazquez, the Director of Regulatory Services.

Can you bring your mic down just a little bit?

Yes, ma'am.

Yes, thank you.

I am a little bit shorter than Director Hanson. So the question, how is the rental license issued in 2025 and what led up to the removal of the rental license that was previously in place? So for all intents and purposes, the land itself is owned by Minneapolis Public Housing Authority. So when our rental licensing inspectors conduct our analysis and we look for rental licensing and look to see whether a property requires rental licensing, it appears like Minneapolis Public Housing Authority, even though it's McCormick Barron that owns the buildings, the structures on top of public housing authority land. So we had been working for quite some time with the public housing authority to gain rental licensing for all of their portfolio and hadn't reached that point until the state legislature made a change in 2024 requiring all property owners that engage in rental of housing dwelling units to hold a valid rental license within the jurisdiction in which they operate. And the effective date on that was January of 2025. That's what led us to license that entire portfolio in 2025. And when the Public Housing Authority provided us with their entire roster of their properties and locations, this location was absent from their rolls. That's when we saw that there was a gap and went back to McCormick Barron and licensed them.

Okay, thank you for that. And what were the conditions based on the inspection report summary that was provided and also presented at the community member meetings that I held at Summit Academy OIC, there is an inspection report that goes along with how rental licenses are issued based on property inspections. So being that we know and understand what the current conditions are and the drastic measures and means that we have to now take and embark upon as a city that these things did not occur overnight, that it took years for the decay. It took years for the mold to be as prevalent as it is. I am definitely trying to understand why did it take little old measly me to come here and sit on this council and be elected for individuals to pay attention to the needs of the residents at Heritage Park. So how was that license issued and instrumented? Help me understand. Thank you.

Certainly. Chair Chaudry, Councilmember Warren, As we thought this was public housing authority, the agreement with public housing authority in response to a prior lawsuit that was settled was that the city would handle complaints. So we would receive complaints through 311. We were not conducting proactive rental license inspections at that time. So as we received these complaints, we would go and inspect them and pass the information to the public housing authority as well as to McCormick Barron.

So help me understand that, and please forgive me, colleagues, because I need to hear this very clear. You said you went and conducted an inspection and then passed that information on to Minneapolis Public Housing Authority? So are you explaining to me that the city of Minneapolis had no jurisdictional oversight over ensuring that those buildings were par and not subpar? Like you're doing an inspection on a property and you see that it is in deplorable condition and you pass that information on to somebody else, there's no action that happens at that time. Is that what we're saying here?

When we conduct the complaint inspection, we evaluate the validity of the complaint to verify that yes, it's founded or no, it's not. If it's founded, we pass that information over to the public housing authority for resolution as we believe that they were the property owner. AND THE RESPONSIBLE PARTY JUST AS WE WOULD FOR MARKET RATE OR ANY OTHER PROPERTY. WE WOULD PASS IT ON TO THE MANAGEMENT FOR RESOLUTION. AND IT WAS THEIR ACTION SINCE THEY ALSO HAVE THEIR OWN INSPECTIONS PROTOCOL TO FOLLOW THROUGH TO RESOLUTION. BUT WE DID NOT HAVE ANY SORT OF AUTHORITY TO GO IN AND VERIFY THAT THE ISSUE WAS RESOLVED.

So here in the city of Minneapolis, we have a rental tiering system. So knowing that there were a number of complaints that came in prior to when the license was removed and then reinstated and what have you, the cases. So what tiering was this property issued a license at at the time that a tiered license was issued? And how many of those units in 2025 UP UNTIL CURRENT HAS MINNEAPOLIS UP UNTIL CURRENT HAS MINNEAPOLIS WALKED INTO? WALKED INTO? HOW MANY INSPECTIONS ACTUALLY HOW MANY INSPECTIONS ACTUALLY HAVE BEEN PERFORMED?

HAVE BEEN PERFORMED? I DON'T HAVE THAT INFORMATION I DON'T HAVE THAT INFORMATION READILY AVAILABLE BUT WE CAN READILY AVAILABLE BUT WE CAN RESPOND TO THAT QUESTION. RESPOND TO THAT QUESTION. OKAY.

OKAY. SO THIS IS AN INCOMPLETE SO THIS IS AN INCOMPLETE DELIVERY OF MY LEGISLATIVE DELIVERY OF MY LEGISLATIVE DIRECTIVE REQUEST AND I'M JUST DIRECTIVE REQUEST AND I'M JUST GOING TO SAY THAT. GOING TO SAY THAT. THE WHOLE INT out here as I was beginning to dig deep into the issues that were unfolding at Heritage Park was so that there was a track record of understanding and that people in our city departments and everywhere else was being held accountable to their positions of authority as it pertained to what was happening at Heritage Park. So I believe my colleagues talked about incomplete delivery or delayed delivery. I understand the means of where we are now. I also understand that we can't go backwards, but in us going forward, right? And us implementing direct change and accountability for every public dollar that holds an assignment here in the city of Minneapolis that comes from every taxpayer, I want to ensure that there is thorough inspections that are done on every property that is out here and existing before rental licensing is issued and that individuals and residents are not overlooked in these circumstances. that the relationship between CPED and regulatory services is as tight as a frog's bottom. Because right now, I don't see that existing. And that is why this right here is not just upsetting for me, but it is damaging to my community that we are revisiting these harms again, that the pain and perpetuation of marginalization and distrust and damage to families continues to cycle itself over and over and over again while we play a game of plausible deniability. I apologize to the residents of my ward because now as I'm sitting in this seat, It makes me feel like I'm opposing everything that I ran for. Because I'm having to backtrack behind people and go do subsequent inspections myself. Because I can't trust MPHA. And I can't trust the city of Minneapolis and regulatory services. that I have to show up on the site while they're cutting open buildings so I can make sure that the truth is being told to the residents of the city of Minneapolis and the constituents of my ward. That I have to walk through buildings and climb stairwells where there's no heat because that's what my constituents have to go through on a day-to-day basis and that they've been going through. And I sit at a community meeting with about 80 or so of my residents last night and listen to them tell stories about how they're the only people living in an eight unit building by themselves. And their homes are riddled with rats. And they're being held hostage in their bedrooms by rats. And they're coming out of their stoves. And their ceilings are hanging. And they have called and they've reached out a number of times, not just since I've been here, but way before a long time ago. Then I hear people sit and say how they've lost their housing voucher and been retaliated against for complaining about the living conditions. for complaining about the safety and the sanctity of a place that they should call home. A door that they should be able to close to shut out the ills of the world and feel safe. That they are endangered and entrapped with their shoulders pent up against the wall with nowhere else to go because they're low income, moderate or no income. that they are punished and reproved for not having the means and feel like this is what they're deserving of. This is sickening. This hurts me extremely bad and I know it hurts the constituents of this ward. It should hurt every taxpayer here in the city of Minneapolis to know that there have been people right here where we say we stand up for our neighbors. I had three different translators there last night. Mothers sitting there saying about how they have gone back and forth and back and forth and back and forth to the hospital and telling people at the management company and telling Minneapolis Public Housing Authority and calling 311 with the city for years. People with cancer now, cancer diagnosis. People who are in there currently on oxygen machines. People who are signing ROIs with me. And if I can walk in there and see this, I'm trying to understand, is it just Pearl's vision or is everybody else got the same one I got? Because this is disrespect. It's inhumane. I'm fighting for the 2.5 million because you know what? The relocation of the 686 residents at Heritage Park needs to be treated with the most delicate care ever known to man. I've walked in those units and gone in to see a lot of those residents and I know no one else has been there but me. And ain't nobody else coming. I know that. I want people treated with dignity and respect before they're counted on a sheet of paper like a number. I want you to hear and examine each and every one of their cries and answered questions. And give them the same respect that you'd give your own child, parent, or whoever it is that's valuable in your life. You better treat them the exact same way or better or I promise it'll be hell to tell the captain I'm north side and I'm gonna be there. This is just the worst of the worst in my ward. Just the tip of the iceberg. But I suggest somebody clean it up quick or you gonna get sick and tired of me. The end.

Thank you, Council Member Warren. Next is Council Member Wansley.

Thank you, Chair Chowdhury. Again, I just want to echo Councilmember Warren's leadership on this issue and some of the things that you raised. I'm also struggling to comprehend based off of the presentation that we just received from staff and also I know Mayor Frey released a press statement affirming what we also heard today that the city only became aware of the deplorable conditions at heritage park starting last year and as you highlighted council member warren this didn't happen overnight there are numerous 311 reports that residents have submitted over the years documenting and trying to bring attention to the horrible and just unacceptable conditions that they've been living in and i'm also trying to get some understanding and this leads to my first question of AND I HAD TO GO BACK AND LOOK AT OUR ACTUAL EXISTING HOUSING CODE. SO CAN SOMEONE IF IT'S CPET OR REGULATORY SERVICES AFFIRM TO ME THAT ARE WE SAYING THAT NOTHING IN OUR HOUSING CODE, I'M LOOKING SPECIFICALLY AROUND DIRECTOR'S DETERMINATION OF NONCOMPLIANCE. AND IT LISTS IN THIS SECTION the different options that the director themselves can take or even give to council when a rental or building or dwelling unit fails to meet our licensing standards. And in no way, shape, or form should most of these units have met that licensing standards. And that's the next question that I'm going to get to. But I'm trying to get a sense of, are we saying, or based off of you all's feedback that nothing in our housing code could be enforced prior to 2025 when it came to Heritage Park. And while you're mulling that over, I'm just going to highlight two. For instance, there is one piece here where the director of regulatory services, when they find a rental dwelling that does not meet the standards set forth in Section 244.1920, that essentially the license holder or applicant can be given 60 days to correct the defects. I think we were alone past 60 days. And then also the director could have the ability to proceed immediately for denial, non-renewal, revocation or suspension of that license based on this section. And I'm not seeing the exemption in our code anywhere for public housing, but I at least just wanted to get a sense of basically was this not able to be applied prior to 2025?

Chair Chowdhury, Council Member Wansley, essentially that's correct. Since the Public Housing Authority held no rental license, we could not move forward with many of those different elements that you speak of, of the director's determination of noncompliance because they were not required to hold a rental license with the city and were outside of our jurisdiction.

So there's nothing that we could, so that meant there was no inspections being carried out by the city, though we were receiving 311 reports.

We were completing complaint-based inspections when we received them through 311, and then passed the information over based off of our inspection of those complaints. Those were passed over to the Public Housing Authority and then Public Housing Authority held the responsibility to remedy those different situations and conduct their own inspections.

So as the oversight body of MPHA, I know they report directly to HUD, but in that instance, were there no corrective measures outside of submitting complaints over to MPHA that you all could take up when we saw or when you learned that corrective actions were not being made as it pertains to improving the conditions of those units?

Chair Chowdhury, Council Member Wensley, essentially that's correct. We could pass the complaints over. It was their responsibility to take action. As we received further complaints, it became the cycle.

with that i am going to know a staff memo follow up on this because i do recall we actually were sued uh i recall a lawsuit where we were were sued because of the city's lack of inspections on public housing units and was found that we should have been inspecting them um and this was way prior to 2025 so if there's already a legal precedence that was determined that we should have been doing this way prior to 2025 i want to understand there what's the discrepancy here so i don't know if the city attorney has any understanding right off the bat that you could refer to or if you can give this as a staff follow-up memo which regardless i will note BUT I'LL GIVE A POINT TO THE CAO. ARE YOU AWARE OF THIS LAWSUIT?

I WOULD LOVE TO GET THAT IN WRITING THOUGH SO WE SHOULD GET THAT IN A MEMO.

YES. I'M AWARE OF THE MIRABELLA CASE WHICH THE OUTCOME OF THAT WAS THAT WE WOULD DO THE COMPLAINT INSPECTIONS FOR MINNEAPOLIS PUBLIC HOUSING AUTHORITY. PRIOR TO THAT POINT WE DID NOT CONDUCT ANY INSPECTIONS ON MPHA PROPERTIES.

WHAT YEAR WAS DATED FOR THAT?

THE LAWSUIT WAS 2021 AND I BELIEVE THE SETTLEMENT WAS LATE 21 TO 22.

SO WE DO HAVE A LEGAL SETTLEMENT THAT POTENTIALLY IN 2021 SO AHEAD OF 2025 THAT GAVE US THE ABILITY TO INSPECT M.P.H.A. UNITS. SO IT SOUNDS LIKE AGAIN SOME FOLLOW-UP ON THAT OF THEN WHAT WHY WERE WHAT WAS THE ISSUE THEN STILL?

We were authorized to do complaint based inspections, not the proactive inspections, not to fold them into our rental licensing structure, only complaint based through 311.

So complaint, so meaning then you will only do, you still receive a complaint and then you just relay that complaint to MPHA, I'm assuming then under that.

We would receive the complaint through 311. Inspectors or complaint-based inspectors would go on site and evaluate whether the issue was founded or not, report the issue to the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority with an order to correct, and then the issue was passed to the Public Housing Authority to follow through and resolve the issue.

Do you know between 2021, again, you already have the figures for 2025, but between 2021 when that settlement was finalized in 2025, how many complaints were filed?

Anecdotally, I can say that it was very few complaints were received. THROUGH, SPECIFICALLY THROUGH 311. THAT'S SOMETHING THAT I WANTED TO TAKE A LOOK AT FURTHER BECAUSE THERE WERE NO DOLLARS INVESTED INTO OUTREACH AND ENGAGEMENT EFFORTS TO TRY AND MAKE SURE PEOPLE WERE AWARE THAT THEY HAD THE SYSTEM AND THAT IT WAS AVAILABLE TO THEM.

AND OUR STAFF, I WANT TO MAKE SURE TENANTS AREN'T THE ONLY ONES THAT CAN MAKE COMPLAINTS, CORRECT?

CORRECT, COMMUNITY MEMBERS CORRECT, COMMUNITY MEMBERS COULD ALSO MAKE COMPLAINTS.

COULD ALSO MAKE COMPLAINTS. THE REASON WHY, AGAIN, THE REASON WHY, AGAIN, KNOWING THAT THIS ISN'T JUST KNOWING THAT THIS ISN'T JUST SOMETHING THAT HAPPENED SOMETHING THAT HAPPENED OVERNIGHT, WE ACTUALLY HAVE A OVERNIGHT, WE ACTUALLY HAVE A STAFF MEMBER THAT SITS ON THE STAFF MEMBER THAT SITS ON THE BOARD OF THE MINNEAPOLIS BOARD OF THE MINNEAPOLIS PUBLIC HOUSING AUTHORITY, PUBLIC HOUSING AUTHORITY, WHERE I'M ASSUMING THAT COULD WHERE I'M ASSUMING THAT COULD HAVE BEEN AN OPPORTUNITY HAVE BEEN AN OPPORTUNITY EITHER FOR

I CAN'T ANSWER THAT.

OR DIRECTOR PORT, I KNOW YOU HAVE BEEN THE MEMBER OR DIRECTOR, IT SEEMS LIKE HANSEN.

Chair Chowdhury, Councilmember Wansley, one of the challenges we had as a city staff team was getting information out of the owner about property conditions. And so we had been working, while regulatory services was able to start inspecting in 2025, we were not given the information that we needed to understand the property conditions in order to make cogent assessment of what was going on at Heritage Park we have learned more in the last six months with the receiver than the collective six years prior to that and that's the that's the challenge that we had over the years is trying to figure out what's going on so now that we know what's happening we need to act

SO YOU ALL DIDN'T RECEIVE ANY ANTIDOTAL INFORMATION EVEN PRIOR TO AS STAFF?

COUNCIL MEMBER OR CHAIR CHOWDHURY, COUNCIL MEMBER WANSLEY, WE WERE RECEIVING INFORMATION ABOUT THE CONDITIONS IN HERITAGE PARK. to the extent of how bad it was, we did not have that technical data until we started inspecting.

But again, I think why I'm asking for the representation on MPHA, because within that, we're saying it's kicking the can down to MPHA and saying that they should have resolved these matters. We have staff and we have a board that this council appoints on MPHA, the commissioners. No one raised complaints formally to staff, especially in known inspections.

Councilmember Chaudhry, Councilmember Wansley. So the way I would say that is if we talk to MPHA, MPHA has affordable housing units and MPHA units within Heritage Park, but they do not own Heritage Park that is owned by McCormick Baron Salazar. So we were getting, as Director Velazquez said, we're getting complaints. They were responding to those complaints, but we did not know the totality of the conditions of the property until we were able to get inspections and then get information from CERTUS as we've been working over the last number of months.

This is, again, a complete oversight that I'm not getting at the core. For my understanding, I'm asking for a complaint. An MPHA commissioner or the staff could have made a complaint using the existing tool that we had given by that legal president in 2022. Why that wasn't enough for staff to also go in and say, oh, or commission themselves to do essentially what Councilmember Warren did and to use a simple phone camera and say, oh, this is really crappy.

Yep.

So I'm assuming that did not happen. That's the question. Moving forward to 2025, then getting to the tearing piece, looking on the city's website, I saw nearly every rental license in Heritage Park had a tier one rental license, meaning the best. except for 20 units that were tier two and six units that were tier three. But again, the other 200 units there received a top tier license from the city. Someone please walk me through how you all came to designate these as tier one.

I'M APRIL BOGART, DIRECTOR OF INSPECTION SERVICES. INSPECTION SERVICES. INSPECTION SERVICES. THE TIERING SYSTEM USES A TWO-YEAR LOOK BACK AT A HISTORY OF VIOLATIONS IN ORDER TO DETERMINE THE TIER. I BELIEVE THAT THE MAJORITY OF THE PROPERTIES AT HERITAGE PARK tiering which is a our default when we don't have enough information to assign any other tier in some cases we had conducted enough complaint inspections that we had enough of a history that's why you see a two in some cases but i believe most of them are a 1d meaning default so with your tearing process does that not automatically until an inspection so you can verify yourself it does not The tiering process involves a two-year look back. And in this case, we did not have a two-year history of inspections.

Knowing that this case, you didn't even get the chance to, quote unquote, inspect the properties in 2025. Knowing the unique conditions that you will only have one year to look back, you did not do automatic inspections. We did not. okay and that said i will name as someone who has been vocal about the city's tearing process and how it allows some landlords to just skate through and get rental licenses and allow tenants to live in deplorable conditions hearing that makes me question further you know how we're approaching other units that we've deemed tier one and just our overall tearing system um next my other major concern around this is can someone speak to Why are we giving the receiver, who has also fumbled in the handling of this property, why are we giving them $2.5 million in host of a stabilization plan as opposed to using the city's tenant relocation assistance program which for my newer colleagues that program allows in conditions like this that we're seeing for the city to front money to relocate stabilize housing conditions for tenants living in properties that have been condemned by the city and are not meeting up to our housing code and then we then go after the landlord to recoup the costs

we are now giving this money over to the receiver directly who have been able to do this proactively and have failed to do so so now we're having to come in why are we not using our own program chair chowdhury councilmember juan's a good question one of the things i failed to mention during the presentation it was a miss on my hand there are two eligible users of the funding there is um There is CERTUS financials receiver for repairs and rehabilitation costs for Heritage Park. And those would be related to something that's an emergency situation that we're looking at. We will be using funding for a relocation service provider, to your point, for the relocation services. We are going to be working out that plan with emergency management and the city apparatus, Hennepin County and others. We do not believe that there is funding, there's revenues to reclaim funding. We're being very honest with you. Right now, Heritage Park operates at like a deficit of $200,000 a month. So reclaiming that funding is probably less likely. We will use the tools we have if we can. to recapture that, but the idea is CERTUS would not do the relocation, and I did not make that clear.

And we couldn't, because I also know under the tenant relocation program, it allows us the ability to also sue and litigate for recouping of costs. So we couldn't sue the original property owners of McCormick to recoup that cost then.

THAT IS A LEGAL QUESTION THAT I THAT IS A LEGAL QUESTION THAT I DO NOT FEEL COMFORTABLE TO DO NOT FEEL COMFORTABLE TO DO NOT FEEL COMFORTABLE TO ANSWER. ANSWER.

ANSWER. I WILL NAME SOME OF THE I WILL NAME SOME OF THE I WILL NAME SOME OF THE OUTSTANDING, BECAUSE I REALIZE WE OUTSTANDING, BECAUSE I REALIZE WE OUTSTANDING, BECAUSE I REALIZE WE HAVE A NUMBER OF PEOPLE IN QUEUE. HAVE A NUMBER OF PEOPLE IN QUEUE. HAVE A NUMBER OF PEOPLE IN QUEUE. OF COURSE I'M MORE THAN HAPPY TO OF COURSE I'M MORE THAN HAPPY TO OF COURSE I'M MORE THAN HAPPY TO SUPPORT US TAKING ACTION TO GET SUPPORT US TAKING ACTION 200 plus residents who have never had, should have never had to suffer under the conditions that they're living under in the first place. And it's a fumble on the city side, the MPHA, everyone involved who allowed this to go forward for many years, just a massive fumble. fumbling um so of course i support the action i'll be working with council member warren and also following up and um definitely harassing staff to figure out two pieces i would love to see the city on the piece of the tenant relocation assistance program and to see us use that as a tool as opposed to giving it to literally the player that is putting us in this predicament in the first place. And secondly, I would also like to note maybe this is a staff follow up. I don't understand why we can't use contingency funding also as a source for the first half of this year. We constantly heard about all the impacts that will be made to the Affordable Housing Trust as we kept making cuts to it to respond to Operation Metro surge. So I don't understand why we're not using contingency funding, which this falls under a credible and eligible proposal of an emergency expense that we did not foresee as a city. So I would love to also be able to work with Council Member Warren on exploring that ahead of Thursday. So I just want to note that for the public record. I can't even say, thank you, Council Member Warren, again, just echoing your leadership, also for blowing the whistle on this. You did what many staff who got paid tons of money to do failed to do, and you also demonstrated the power of council using our oversight authority, be it with a phone, with going and doing door knocks, with... connecting with our residents and seeing how they're living repeatedly repeatedly and bringing attention to it and while it might be uncomfortable many of us have faced pushback pressures to silence ourselves when we've done these things this is just a testament to your leadership and your commitment to your constituents and specifically black folks who shouldn't be given the worst DESERVE QUALITY AFFORDABLE AND DIGNIFIED HOUSING AND I HOPE IN THE MIDST OF ALL OF WHAT WE'RE DOING THAT IS WHAT WE'RE GOING TO GET TO NOT ONLY JUST FOR HERITAGE PARK BUT FOR EVERY SINGLE RESIDENT SO I JUST AGAIN WANT TO ECHO KUDOS TO YOU THANK YOU COUNCILMEMBER WANSLEY I'M NEXT IN QUEUE I JUST WANTED TO START OFF BY SAYING THAT I CAN'T EXPRESS HOW ANGRY I AM

right now. And that pales in comparison to the grief, the anger, the frustration that I've seen my council colleague go through and pales in comparison to the pain of the constituents in there. I think it's really important to share with the public the things that are going on in Heritage Park and what that's looked like. There's mold everywhere. It's on the walls. Council Member Warren shared a lot of those details with me and my team. There is broken plumbing. There's clothing matted to the floor. There's people sitting by themselves in a one unit building. There's people worried about their health due to the mold. There's holes in the ceiling. And the list just goes on and on and on. I think the video that Council Member Warren posted on her official side, Facebook, does a really good job of illustrating just in part how deplorable and undignified those conditions are. And there's no way, there's no way that that could happen in just a single year. This is a compounding issue for sure. I have a lot of A lot of frustration with how we're proceeding. I am supportive of getting the help that needs to be given to the Heritage Park residents, but I am concerned in the way that we are moving about how human-centered this will be in caring for the residents that are there. We're having a discussion about a $2.5 million allocation on the fly, essentially, because this was brought to us last minute, highly irregular. And I say that not to blame anybody, but to say that puts this council in a difficult position by the administration. It is an extremely difficult position to be in. One thing that I'll just note right up at the top There needs to be better communication between all of us here in the city, city council, mayor's office, and our departments. And I'm not seeing that happen currently. And the place that I can point to is it's extremely frustrating that we have this last minute item coming before us and there's a press release sent out by the mayor's office. We haven't even had a briefing or a chance to go through the legislative directive. And quote, in that press release, it says, the 20-year-old complex fell into disrepair last year. That's just not true. And it gives me pause on the information that we are sending out to constituents before we get to have a conversation together, before council members who have to vote on $2.5 million to help residents, our ability to stand up and say that we actually did our job, to do our due diligence on this matter. So a couple questions that I have kind of going into this. Director Hanson, you said that there are 286 residents that will need to be relocated. Is that accurate?

Chair Chowdhury, the best of our information, it's 686 residents in 212 households. 212 households. Households, 686 residents according to the receiver.

How many of those units are in disrepair?

Chair Chowdhury, I can't give you the precise data of what the levels of conditions are, but we're to the point where in order for us to really make an assessment of what repairs need to happen, we have to make sure that the people there have a place to be, and then we can continue that work. That's going to take some time. We've had mold inspectors out last week. We're giving a second opinion. This week we had an instructor, the SIRTIS brought out a structural engineer yesterday and today. We had our building official out there shadowing and then officials from development services shadowing that work. Regulatory services has been shadowing the mold inspections. We're continuing to learn more about the conditions. We're trying to answer that threshold question of, is it worth saving the buildings or not? We have not answered that question. And until we have that question, we don't know what the strategy would be for Heritage Park and the buildings. And so we want to decouple the people from the buildings.

So since we are relocating individuals, does that mean we are revoking the rental license?

Chair Chowdhury, we are not to the point where we have made that decision. Everything's on the table. I've been focused on standing up the response for relocation, and then those other things would come after that. My conversations have been with Director Sayre about how to structure what a response would look like, as you can imagine, for 212 individual households, all with their unique needs. We will need to have a force of staff that would work on it in a coordinated way with our colleagues at the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority and Hennepin County to see what we can do to make sure that they're getting there, and then those things would come later. As I said, this is a very fluid situation, so not everything is answered at this point in time.

I really recommend we find a way where we can both decouple the people from this and help them and revoke that license, or at least not give them a 1D tiering status.

Understood.

DO YOU KNOW OF THE UNITS THAT ARE THERE, THEIR STATUS OF BEING CONDEMNED OR CONDEMNABLE?

CHAIR CHODRY, WE'RE TRYING TO GET THAT DATA NOW.

IS THERE ANY PRELIMINARY INFORMATION?

I'M A LAY PERSON. IT'S BAD. It's bad. And so that's why we're engaging with regulatory services, but also the building official about the conditions of the building, the technical reports, the structural engineering reports that will be coming out this week to get assessment of whether or not we're at that decision point.

Do you know how many of the individuals that live here and will be relocated are residents that have Section 8 vouchers?

Chair Chaudhry, I don't have this precise number of Section 8 voucher holders. I know there's 200 public housing authority units within it, and I'm just going to see. About 160 with additional with about a additional 160 units with Section 8.

OK. I'll ask for a follow up to just for the precise number, because I think it's important for us to understand the number of participants that should have gotten the care. Everyone should have gotten the care from the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority, the city of Minneapolis service. and the property management company. Did you ask MPHA to come here today to be here to answer questions to this body?

Chair Chowdhury, we did ask for their presence in the meeting and they declined to come.

Did they give a reason for why they declined to come?

What was the reason? No, they did not. I do not have the reason.

They did not give a reason for why?

I do not have the reason.

I think that's deeply concerning that Minneapolis Public Housing Authority is not here to answer questions about what's going on at Heritage Park since there are tenants that use Section 8 vouchers and this is on Minneapolis Public Housing Authority land and all of the complaint-based inspections, as we learned, were getting passed off to Minneapolis Public Housing Authority. I'll also share, I think there's a lot of time between 2025 and 2026 where we are, where I think a complaint-based inspection could have indicated, if you went into that building, that there was something completely wrong going on. And I guess I have a very quick question, if the council member of the ward will allow me to ask her. Sirtis is obviously not in the room, but you've had communications with all stakeholders. I'm really straining to understand what their role has been in this, and I think we're failing to fully understand their role in the dereliction of duty in the property. Is there any insight you could provide?

At this time... Minneapolis Public Housing Authority is not interested in taking the lead on the relocation of individuals being removed from there into additional housing. And also, SIRTIS... also sent me a message and told me that they did not want to take the lead on any housing or relocation at this time. And I think just being quite frank, I'm going to say this, you know, everybody has different interests in this project and in this role, where my interest is in the constituents and the safety of the families in there. You gotta kinda look at this situation like this. A property is in receivership. If there's no longer anyone living there, then is there a need for somebody to receive anything? There's not a necessity. So they have a different vested interest, and they're saying, oh, yeah, it's bad, but it's not that bad. But it's bad. And I'm going to tell you from someone who has knocked on every door in Heritage Park more than once.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I'll just share with you, Director, and just everyone here that's a part of this. I find it just deeply striking that CERTUS did not reach out to the city of Minneapolis as things were falling apart for us to help in addressing this sooner.

CHAIR CHOWDHURY, I DO WANT TO CLARIFY. WE HAVE BEEN IN ALMOST DAILY CONVERSATIONS WITH CERTUS. THEY HAVE REACHED OUT TO US. WE HAVE BEEN WORKING WITH THEM SINCE THEY TOOK OVER. I WANT TO SAY THAT IT'S BEEN AN ABSOLUTE CHANGE IN INFORMATION SHARING SINCE CERTUS HAS TAKEN OVER FROM THE OWNER OF MBS. I DON'T WANT TO PAINT CERTUS AS BEING SOMEBODY THAT WASN'T PROACTIVE. THEY'VE BEEN VERY TRANSPARENT. They've been very open to us. They've shared all the information. I shared earlier about some of the technical reports that we're trying to uncover. They're going to sign off to make sure that those are public. So we've had a very constructive working relationship. They are in a challenging position. They are a receiver from the court. They have a fiduciary duty to that role. And what we're trying to do is work collaboratively to help them figure out how to solve this complicated process and project. But I would say that the working relationship is strong with CERTUS and the city of Minneapolis.

Thank you. I appreciate that information. They took over earlier in- In December of 2025. 2025, OK. So in this action, we're delegating authority to you for future financial actions, correct? Who are we delegating it from?

Chair Chowdhury, in typical city council fashion, that would be something we would come back to you for allocation of funding for contracting and that sort of thing. The delegation of this authority would do it through an administrative process. We'd still have an approval process. It's called a director's report as opposed to a request for council action. This is similar to what the authority that you delegated to me during the resiliency fund earlier in the Operation Metro Surge. We're asking for that delegation so that we can move quick.

Okay, thank you. The thing that gives me a little bit of pause on that is I think we lose a necessary touch point on public communication and place for us to discuss. I just would like some contemplation on how we would go about that. And I'll also ask following this meeting, your department and the COO's office work on scheduling briefings with council members.

so we can continue to have a discussion of what's going on again like we got the information about these rcas last night so we need to have further communication yeah chair chowdhury uh i will um acknowledge if you grant us this delegation you will be responding to the full council on all the actions that we're doing we're going to continue to work with council member warren on the relocation plan. She is a very strong partner in this work, trusted by the community. We need to continue to maintain that working relationship with her and her office. And as far as communications, much like the resiliency plan, we're communicating to you. And then I will apologize again. This is not the situation that CPED likes to work under. For the last you know even in the last week since agenda setting for this council for this committee meeting The conditions have changed up until you know through the weekend and so we have been kind of working as best as we can with the information we know and it's not something that we hope to be a Pattern for us, but we do appreciate that that the council needs to know, but we've been working as hard as we can just to get to the point where we can assess what the problem is, identify some resources, and then get to planning to assist people at Heritage Park.

Great. Will you commit to reaching out for briefings absolutely thank you i'm almost done here and then i'm going to pass it to councilmember chavez i'll just start by saying that this is an entire system break breakdown over many years and i think a piece of what needs to come to light is who is accountable for what for this to happen because the public deserves to know the residents here deserves to know and there's a level of justice that needs to be brought and there hasn't been anyone that has taken full-throated accountability But there needs to be because this has gone entirely wrong. And we need to understand how this happened. The last thing that I will say is we should look into how we can recapture funding for relocation assistance. We need to. We cannot, in this type of budget situation as a city of Minneapolis, dole out $2.5 million, cannibalize the affordable housing trust fund that we use to make projects happen. And I think I'm interested in exploring what Council Member Wansley brought forward of the city attorney's ability to recapture funding through litigation if necessary. I think McCormick Barron has funds on assets that he owes to the taxpayers of the city of Minneapolis if we're about to dole something out. And I'll just say, plant the seed, that I am interested in us, if we can make a recapture plan, and just in general, for looking into the contingency funds. Because I'm not interested in cannibalizing the Affordable Housing Trust Fund because McCormick Barron CREATED AN ENTIRE DERELICTION OF DUTY AND NOW WE'RE FRONTING THE BILL. COUNCIL MEMBER CHAVEZ.

THANK YOU, CHAIR CHAUDHRY. I HAVE A FEW QUESTIONS AS WELL. DIRECTOR, THE MAYOR'S PRESS RELEASE SAID THAT THE 20-YEAR-OLD BUILDING COMPLEX FELL INTO DISREPAIR LAST YEAR AND THE COURT APPOINTED RECEIVER TOOK OWNERSHIP OF THE PROPERTY. DO YOU AGREE THAT THIS JUST FELL INTO DISREPAIR LAST YEAR?

Chair Chowdhury, Councilmember Chavez, the way I read that sentence was a little different as the 20-year-old project fell in disrepair last year. There's a court appointed a receiver. MAYBE I WROTE THAT WRONG. MAYBE I WROTE THAT WRONG. BUT I DO NOT AGREE. BUT I DO NOT AGREE. BUT I DO NOT AGREE. I JUST WANT TO MAKE SURE. I JUST WANT TO MAKE SURE.

I JUST WANT TO MAKE SURE. I'M HEARING THIS HAS BEEN I'M HEARING THIS HAS BEEN I'M HEARING THIS HAS BEEN ONGOING FOR MANY YEARS. ONGOING FOR MANY YEARS. ONGOING FOR MANY YEARS. I WANT TO MAKE SURE OUR STAFF I WANT TO MAKE SURE OUR STAFF I WANT TO MAKE SURE OUR STAFF IS AWARE THAT THIS ISN'T JUST IS AWARE THAT THIS ISN'T JUST IS AWARE THAT THIS ISN'T JUST AN ISSUE LAST YEAR. AN ISSUE LAST YEAR. AN ISSUE LAST YEAR. I WOULD BE CONCERNED IF THAT I W Is that true?

Council Member Chaudhry, Council Member Chavez, that would be the inspections done by regulatory services.

Through the chair, council member Chavez, that is true. We began inspections in October of 2025.

Okay, thank you. So October 2025, we've been earlier. Okay, great. So I guess nine months, I thought it was eight months, but nine months later, we now have this presentation because my colleague, Council Member Warren, used her phone to blow the whistle. Why did it take this many months later to come before the council to let us know this issue was happening?

Chair Chowdhury, Councilmember Chavez, that's a great question to ask. So the city had been working with the former owner, McCormick Barron, and not very productively, I'll be honest with you. They had noticed, they'd notified the city that there was conditions, substandard conditions at Heritage Park, and we were working on it, and we needed verification. since the receiver took over in December, there's been a flood of information. And so we had been working towards what this complex project of can you repair in place, Can you make improvements? What is first the extent of the improvements that need to be made knowing that there's substandard conditions in Heritage Park? And then can you do that with folks in place or not? As recently as... two weeks ago, for example, council member, we were looking at one of the buildings that had six units that was fully vacant and that was being used potentially as a turn and then you'd move people into that building and clear up some of the buildings, fix some of the other buildings, move them back and forth, kind of do some shuffling of of tenants. At that time, when they started looking at that building, that's when they recovered mold behind the walls. They found water infiltrating the windows. They found failures in the windows. So at that point in time, that stopped that condition. The path that we were taking with respect to the work with CERTUS was deploying the $5.125 million, working on a short-term, near-term approach to it, which would be like, what's the emergency? The building envelope, the roofing, the siding, and unit turns, that was what we were working on until we discovered the mold infiltration. behind the walls. And so from that point in time kind of changed. So we were on our, we were working towards conversations and requests for funding for the major plan with a discussion about near term, which would have been roofing, siding, and unit turns, or roofing furnaces and unit turns. Until last week and now we're to a point where we're just continuing to learn more as we learn more We know more and as we know more we have to do more Well, I think you that's nearly five months nine months ago.

What structural changes are being made.

So this doesn't happen again councilmember Chaudhry and Councilmember Chavez that's another excellent question, too We're in the crisis mode of this situation, and we are thinking about the well-being of the residents of Heritage Park. We are collecting information. We're in the information collecting phase, but now we know we're to a point where we need to work on relocation, and then we have to figure out what safeguards we need to put in place and do a real analysis of where this went south and see what we can do to make improvements. That has to happen after we focus on the well-being of the residents. And we'll be focused on, yeah.

How many complaints were made in 2025?

Chair Chowdhury, Councilmember Chavez, I've looked at reg services. They don't know how many complaints were made, but we can look into that.

I think that's really important. I just want to say that this case is not isolated. There are many of us that have many concerns with how inspections happen across the city of Minneapolis. Is there any plan, and this is maybe for Director Velazquez, to increase rental license fees to help us hire more inspectors?

Chair Chaudhry, Council Member Chavez, I'm gonna have to defer to Reg Services about the answer to that question.

Through the Chair, Council Member Chavez, Director Velazquez had to step out. We are right now having conversations about our rental licensing fees. We did increase rental licensing fees across the board by 10% last year, and those conversations are happening now.

I think we need to increase it a lot more if we're going to be able to hire more inspectors across the city. We know particular areas of our city are disproportionately impacted by how inspections are handled. Does the city have a plan to adjust the city's current tiering system?

Through the chair, yes. We have been embarking on a lengthy process to revise our tiering system and that work continues.

And I would hope that this case that we're learning about today, which is happening across our city in general as well, is a reminder of how much quicker we have to be working on those tiering systems. I guess, do we know how many households have been functioning without heat or water this year there?

I do not have that information at hand.

Chair Chowdhury, Council Member Chavez, I don't believe that we had a water service issue, but I can look at the furnaces. That was something that was on our repair list.

So I guess for heat, do we know or no?

Chair Chowdhury, Council Member Chavez, we'll look into that information. We'll have to ask that from them.

I think that's really important if we can't figure out how many homes don't have basic necessities. That's a concern. I guess for staff, why did it take a video from my colleague rather than the city's own inspection process to force a public conversation around this?

uh... chair chowdhury council member chavez uh... members of the committee that is an excellent point uh... i was on that tour with the council member where she uh... was able to take that uh... video We, as a staff, were working towards understanding what was going on there, but a picture tells a story of a thousand words, and that was, I think, an important part of the story of Heritage Park, to bring forward in full color what the conditions are at Heritage Park and whether we as a city decide if that's an acceptable place for people to live or not, and I'm hopeful that we as a city will agree that that is not acceptable conditions, and that is why we're here today answering your questions.

What is the administration's response to the NAACP's letter?

Chair Chaudhry, Councilmember Chavez, I do not have the official administrative response to the NAACP letter. It would be great if we can follow up.

If the city, if we as a body are allocating the affordable housing trust fund, which I think we should be using contingency funding, but I want to be able to have this conversation. If we end up using affordable housing trust fund, is there a commitment from staff to not replenish it with the rental assistance funding that we have from those who are impacted by Operation Metro Surge?

Chair Chowdhury, Council Member Chavez, I want to say to you, the answer to that question is yes. I do want to just be transparent. The way the council has allocated that funding, $1.8 million had a requirement for a higher area median income cap. That is not been accepted by the county We started having conversations with councilmember Wansley in her office about that So you're gonna expect to see likely council action so that we can contract that 1.8 million dollars But there's no expectation for the city or CPED to use that money for backfilling What will happen is that we will have two point three two point five million dollars fewer for affordable housing production in 2026

Thank you and that was my hope. I just wanted to ask publicly so we can hold those accountable if that plan changes. I will say that I just want to thank my colleague, Council Member Warren, for being relentless in her advocacy for her constituents in Ward 5. I think it is important that we as a city use the tools that we have to support the residents in a heritage park. I think that what I have heard is just deeply concerning. It makes you concerned for what this means for rental units across the city of Minneapolis. There needs to be an audit about how we do inspections in general in the city of Minneapolis, because I've had my own experience with some buildings where there's been inspections. Nothing is an issue, but the constituents tell me that there still is issues, and I think that means that there needs to be a complete overhaul on how we do this work, so I just wanted to mention that. SO THANK YOU, COUNCILMAN WARREN, FOR BRINGING THIS ISSUE TO MY ATTENTION. I'LL BE SUPPORTING THIS MOTION TODAY. AS WE HEAD TO VOTE COUNCIL, I HOPE THERE IS A BETTER CONVERSATION ABOUT WHAT FUNDING STREAM WE COULD USE. I THINK CONTINGENCY FUNDING IS AN ADEQUATE USE OF FUNDING. IT'S AN EMERGENCY. IT'S SOMETHING THAT WE SHOULD BE USING. THAT WAY IT DOESN'T HAVE IMPACT ON AFFORDABLE HOUSING STOCKS. SO THAT IS A RECOMMENDATION THAT I WOULD AT LEAST PUT OUT THERE.

Thank you council member Chavez next we have council member beat up.

Thank you chair. I first off I just want to say thank you to council member Warren for this work, you know, I think you call me maybe an hour before you put the video out on social media and We probably talked an hour. And so that day when you called, I said, we got to get to a place of where we're talking about what we're going to do to help the people in heritage park. Like it's cool to have the video and show it, but like, what are we going to do? And so, as you know, I was, I was a little nervous about the video because I didn't know what we could do as a city in that moment. And I knew how bad it was. So I, I'm so happy to see right now before us like what we can do as a city. And I completely support you. I appreciate how you built this table of people to figure out exactly what we all need to do, what our part is. I want to encourage you. Um, to continue leading this work, because I can hear and see some things happening that happen often when you're a north side council member, others tend to tell you how to do your stuff. And so I really do want you to hold firm to doing things the way that, you know, you and your constituents want to see them being done. Others have ideas, that's great, but you know better than all of us what those people at Heritage Park need and what they want to see done. You know what justice looks like to them. They will tell you what kind of justice they want. And so I really am proud of you. I'm so proud that six months in, this is where you're at. You come here to work for your constituents. You come here with a voice for them. That's what they send you here to do. They send you here to be the voice of them If you fail, you have to face them, not anyone else up here. And so I'm so proud of you for coming up here and representing your war and represent people at their absolute worst. This is absolutely terrible the way people are living there. And you and I have seen it. We know it. There's always been rumors circulating. There's always been this talk on the north side, Heritage Park is sinking, buildings are leaning, like all of these things that people have been talking about for years. You can drive down Olsen Highway and see the roof of some of these buildings. There was one that had a fire and was just kind of sitting for years. Like, we live there, so we know. And we know what people have been talking about. And so I am I'm just so proud of what you've done with such a terrible thing and trying to fix it. And I want to make sure that you remain the leader in fixing it and that you lead not only this council, but also the staff and the administration. I also don't want this to become a political fight. Because what we've heard today is 686 people need to be relocated. I don't care what press release got released today. I could care less about a press release or anything else. 686 people need to be relocated. That's what matters to me. Not what the mayor said, not what I said, not what anyone else said. This is 686 people who need somewhere to live. somewhere to lay their head. This is serious business. And guess what they're not caring about? A press release or what we're in this room talking about if it's not about solutions for them and what's gonna happen. I think the one thing that we're not talking about, and I know Council Member Warren knows this and others, is there are people who are living there that are terrified and the way we're talking is even more terrifying. I've had people approach me that live there and say, yes, this has been like a spotlight on us. People are showing up to where we live with cameras and talking to us and scaring our kids. And like, we don't know what to do. We still live here. This is a community. This is a really big place in North Minneapolis where a lot of people are. And it's not even just this place. There are other apartments around there. And the average person doesn't know the difference between Heritage Park, Cecil Newman, City View, like this entire area. So there's been an invasion on this area that we as leaders have to be cognizant of and respectful of, that there are still people who are there, even in Heritage Park. This is not the entire facility over there. The numbers of people that you're moving out, it's not everyone that lives there. There are homeowners there. There are townhomes there. There are single-family homes there that are all a part of Heritage Park. And there is a lot of fear in these people about the way we conduct ourselves as not only elected officials but a city enterprise. And so we got to be mindful of that. Like, I'm supporting Councilmember Warren. She's the leader on this, and we need to listen to what she's saying here. She is over there every day, all day. talking to these people, trying to ease what is happening. This is serious. Someone, it's not easy to be a whistleblower. That's why it's a name for it. And she's the person brave enough to make the video, but there's people who told her to come and make a video. There are people who live there who had the foresight to say to her, hey, come over here, see what we're doing, without knowing what could happen, without knowing if the next day they were gonna be on the streets. Because I can guarantee you, we don't have 212 available apartments or housing options in North Minneapolis right now. And guess what's hard to say, you gotta move somewhere else. You gotta move out of your kid's school district. You got to move away from your church. You got to move away from your auntie who babysits for you. And you walk to her house. Now you got to figure out transportation to get your kids from somewhere else. Because I don't think we're going to find 212 households if that is the actual number to relocate people in that area. So I really do. We have to be mindful that these are humans. These are people who are looking to us to lead. And leading is not fighting. Leading is not politicizing a real life tragedy that is happening to people right now. Leading is certainly not blaming. Leading is taking what has happened and making it better, certainly, but blaming is going to get us nowhere. We need to fix this now and come back to blaming later if that's your thing. But we certainly have to get from up under this right now. We need to spend every single bit of energy, time, resources we have on fixing this right now for these 686 people. And that number feels very fluid to me. I feel like that number can change by the end of this day because I've been there and I know what's happening. And so I really don't want us to lose sight. I think we all probably feel angry towards somebody or feel like an individual or something is responsible, but that's not what I wanna use my energy on. I really want us to focus as a city on how we do better, how we make this better right now. And then we'll come back and figure out the system and all the other things, but we gotta fix it. This is urgent. She called me a month ago now about that video. That means we are 30 days behind or how many ever days that was on making this better for people. And so I really do want us to focus on like how we're actually gonna do this. And so director, what is the plan for how we're gonna relocate people? Like what is the timeline if we vote on this on Thursday and the money is there, how do we do this?

Chair Chowdhury, Councilmember Vita, we are standing up a team to develop a structure and it will be worked together with Department of Emergency Management. We're gonna be working with the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority that's gonna be giving some planning assistance and hopefully financial resources and technical staff. we're gonna likely have to assign, delegate some staff from other jobs to work on this. This is an enormous setup, but I think you can think about if you were up at the Emergency Operations Center during the response to an annunciation or... OPERATION METRO SURGE. IT WILL BE SOMETHING TO THAT LEVEL.

WHAT'S THE TIMELINE, THOUGH?

HAVE YOU ALREADY STARTED WORKING ON IT? WE'VE ALREADY STARTED SCOPING OUT THE FRAMEWORK. WE'LL BE DOING THAT OVER THIS WEEK AND THEN NEXT WEEK WE'LL BE STARTING TO SET UP THE PLANNING AND THEN HOPEFULLY WE HAVE MORE TO REPORT. I DON'T WANT TO OVERPROMISE ANYTHING, BUT WE'RE DOING, WE'RE PUTTING TOGETHER THE STRUCTURE AS WE SPEAK.

And then where did the $2.5 million number come from? What are we configuring for families?

Chair Chowdhury, Councilmember Vita, this is repurposed money. When we first were talking to the receiver a few weeks ago before we were aware of the extent of the mold, this was emergency. They needed a grant for some emergency repairs. We were focused on furnaces, unit churns, and roofing. And that cost... was in the ballpark of three million. The city has already appropriated in the CPED budget half a million dollars for Heritage Park for this year, and so that's where the 2.5 million comes. As we are working through the budgeting, as we're working through the process for this RCA, we kept that number static. We're consulting with Hennepin County about the amount of THE PEOPLE WHO TYPICALLY GET WITH THE PEOPLE WHO TYPICALLY GET WITH THE PEOPLE WHO TYPICALLY GET WITH RELOCATION AND IT SEEMS IN RELOCATION AND IT SEEMS IN RELOCATION AND IT SEEMS IN LINE, WE'RE LOOKING FOR LINE, WE'RE LOOKING FOR LINE, WE'RE LOOKING FOR POTENTIALLY SOME ASSISTANCE FROM POTENTIALLY SOME ASSISTANCE FROM POTENTIALLY SOME ASSISTANCE FROM HENNEPIN COUNTY AND THE HENNEPIN COUNTY AND THE HENNEPIN COUNTY AND THE MINNEAPOLIS PUBLIC HOUSING MINNEAPOLIS PUBLIC HOUSING MINNEAPOLIS PUBLIC HOUSING AUTHORITY.

AUTHORITY. AUTHORITY. WE'VE ASKED THEM TO MATCH THE WE'VE ASKED THEM TO MATCH

I THINK IT'S THROUGH THE CHAIR, COUNCILMEMBER VITA. IT'S MORE COMPLICATED AND COMPLEX THAN WHAT YOU'RE SAYING TO YOUR POINT. YOU HAVE 212 UNIQUE HOUSEHOLDS THAT HAVE, YOU KNOW, THERE ARE DIFFERENT SIZES OF HOUSEHOLDS. THEY HAVE PEOPLE WITH PETS, PEOPLE WITH HEALTH CONDITIONS, PEOPLE WHO ARE TRANSIT DEPENDENT. EVERYBODY HAS A UNIQUE SITUATION AND WE NEED TO MAKE SURE THAT WE'RE TAKING THE UTMOST CARE OF WHAT THAT SITUATION IS. in finding where they should be and What we what expenses so we were going to be developing also what what all of those expenses would be So it's not just a simple, you know first month last month plus a damage deposit It's it's what is what does it take for us to move forward and that's something we'll be working on. I

Thank you. So last night, I know there was a community meeting hosted by council member Warren and a lot of you came. I guess I'm curious to know how you left it with folks yesterday. What did you tell them was going to happen last night? Like what are next steps for the community?

COUNCILMEMBER VITAB. SO MAYOR FRIE WAS IN ATTENDANCE. MAYOR FRIE MADE SOME OPENING REMARKS EXPLAINING TO THE COMMUNITY MEMBERS THAT WERE IN ATTENDANCE THAT THIS IS A PRIORITY FOR THE ADMINISTRATION AND HE HAS DIRECTED US TO PRIORITIZE AND RESOURCE THE RELOCATION OF HOUSEHOLDS AT HERITAGE PARK. We were frank with them about we were coming to the council for funding today, and we will be developing the plan, and we're trying to move as quickly as we can to get that information. And Council Member Warren, who was the host of that meeting, communicated, if I may, to the community that we would probably have another community meeting next week, and then that's when we – so we're probably going to have – We're going to have to have a regular cadence of communications as things become available and we find out what What are points of contact? What kind of resources we can offer? What are resource centers we could potentially stand up at Heritage Park so people can get their questions asked? We want to make sure that we are addressing people's concerns and fears about this. We know that there are people who have lived in Heritage Park since it opened. This is their home. This is where they live. This is their community. and this is really a shocking situation to be in and we understand that it's traumatic and we need to make sure we're taking the care to make sure we meet their needs and we're hopeful that we meet those.

Thank you, I appreciate that. And you did answer my question around, I'm trying to understand if you've set up a mechanism separate, so like people don't have to call 311 and like filter through that, but can, like a Heritage Park hotline is what I'm saying, like something where people have an opportunity to reach out about things specifically.

Council Member Chaudhry and Council Member Vita, yes, we're figuring out that. While 311 is the front door for communications with the city and everybody can use that, we are not expecting that to be the primary communication tool. This will have to be proactive communication. We're gonna have to understand who's there and reach out to them as opposed to having them reach out to us.

Thank you, thank you. All right, thank you, Councilmember. Next, we'll go to Councilmember Whiting.

Thank you, Chair Chowdhury, and thank you, Director. I will only have one question for you, but I want to kind of start. Firstly, it is not, I think, lost on me. It was after Councilmember Warren brought this forward to us. I did some research here on the history of Heritage Park, that Heritage Park was built through a court mandated consent decree because of how bad the standards were for a historic north side Section 8 and government funded housing. And so Heritage Park was brought about through a consent decree criticizing and holding to the fire a public housing program that talked about the city's perpetual living standards for just substandard housing conditions and then we built a continuance of that same exact condition and it just is really really hard for me to wrap my head around the continuance of the substance conditions based on a lawsuit that was supposed to uh... avail the north side of these conditions and so i think that that just the history of it i think is is helpful for uh... the public to know that this isn't just some version of a of a uh... public housing authority that we wanted to by the goodness of the heart of government to come through, but this was actually mandated because of how bad the circumstances were before this. And so just wanted to kind of start there. And the question for you, Director, the only thing I have is do we have any level of, and I know you kind of spoke to it a little bit, that this is a massive investment or there will have to be a massive investment into the THE REPAIR AND REALLOCATION OF THE REPAIR AND REALLOCATION OF THE REPAIR AND REALLOCATION OF FUNDING INTO THIS TO GET THIS FUNDING INTO THIS TO GET THIS FUNDING INTO THIS TO GET THIS TO A VERSION OF LIVABILITY. TO A VERSION OF LIVABILITY. TO A VERSION OF LIVABILITY. DO YOU HAVE ANY ESTIMATE OF WHAT DO YOU HAVE ANY ESTIMATE OF WHAT DO YOU HAVE ANY ESTIMATE OF WHAT THAT TOTAL COST IS GOING TO LOOK THAT TOTAL COST IS GOING TO LOOK THAT TOTAL COST IS GOING TO LOOK LIKE TO MAKE HERITAGE PARK MORE LIKE TO MAKE HERITAGE PARK MORE LIKE TO MAKE HERITAGE PARK MORE OR LESS LIVABLE?

OR LESS LIVABLE? COUNCILMEMBER WIDING, THANK YOU FOR DOING YOUR RESEARCH. FOR DOING YOUR RESEARCH. WE CAN SHARE MORE INFORMATION WE CAN SHARE MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE HISTORY OF HERITAGE ABOUT THE HISTORY OF HERITAGE PARK IF YOU'RE INTERESTED AND PARK IF YOU'RE INTERESTED AND THE HOMELAND CONSENT DECREE. THE HOMELAND CONSENT DECREE. AND TO ANSWER YOUR QUESTION, WE AND TO ANSWER YOUR QUESTION, WE HAVE TO HIT THAT THRESHOLD HAVE TO HIT THAT THRESHOLD QUESTION. QUESTION. LIKE, ARE THE REPAIRS THAT ARE LIKE, ARE THE REPAIRS THAT ARE REQUIRED EXCEEDING THE COST OF REQUIRED EXCEEDING THE COST OF REPLACEMENT? We are not at that. We do not have that much information. So the way I think about it is in magnitudes as opposed to precision and we're thinking tens of millions of dollars in repairs that are needed, but you also need then a recapitalization program or project structure so that That you can you know finance the repairs and then stabilize the operations of Heritage Park and that you know exceeds the cost so that the raw costs and then all of the things that you need To do to get to the repairs will exceed that so you're looking You're looking at a lot of money.

Okay, and then really the only reason I ask is is right if we are PUTTING $2.5 MILLION INTO A, AND I PUTTING $2.5 MILLION INTO A, AND I PUTTING $2.5 MILLION INTO A, AND I KNOW IT SOUNDS LIKE THERE'S ELIGIBLE KNOW IT SOUNDS LIKE THERE'S ELIGIBLE KNOW IT SOUNDS LIKE THERE'S ELIGIBLE USE OF REHABILITATION AND USE OF REHABILITATION AND USE OF REHABILITATION AND RELOCATION, BUT IF WE'RE PUTTING RELOCATION, BUT IF WE'RE PUTTING RELOCATION, BUT IF WE'RE PUTTING $2.5 MILLION INTO THE REPAIRS OF A FACILITY OF A HOUSING PROJECT THAT WE DON'T EVEN KNOW IF WE'RE GOING TO EITHER TAKE IT ALL DOWN OR REPAIR IT. I THINK THAT EDGES HIM. ARE THE REPAIRS, BECAUSE IT'S THE LIVABILITY KIND OF PIECE, IS THAT WHAT IT IS, KIND OF THE EMERGENCY LIVABILITY PIECE TO THAT? SORRY, I GUESS I ASKED THE ONE QUESTION THAT I PROMISED TO DO.

YEAH, COUNCIL MEMBER SHAWDRAKE, COUNCIL MEMBER WHITING, THAT'S A GOOD QUESTION. SO WHAT YOU'RE PROVIDING IN THE ACTION THAT WE'RE ASKING IS to put funding into renovations emergency life setting renovations and repairs and relocation okay it is our intent to focus primarily on relocation the reason we are asking for that other repairs because to your point we haven't made that threshold question so we don't want to invest money into something that we might say that is not salvageable but we're not to that point yet is if there's something that we need to do because it has had immediate health risk or safety risk to somebody, then we want to have that latitude. But our focus is on the relocation component of this. And then we're going to, once we have relocated, then it'll be the structured conversation with funders and the owner and you know, how that receiver process works through the district court about what is the threshold question. That stuff, that technical work will continue. It's not like it stops. We'll have the technical staff work on it, but the focus of the administration, the focus of CPED, the focus of the city is going to be on THEN WE CAN, YOU KNOW, WORK ON THAT OTHER STUFF AS IT COMES UP. THEN WE CAN, YOU KNOW, WORK ON THAT OTHER STUFF AS IT COMES UP. THEN WE CAN, YOU KNOW, WORK ON THAT OTHER STUFF AS IT COMES UP. THANK YOU, DIRECTOR.

THANK YOU, DIRECTOR. THANK YOU, DIRECTOR. AND THEN THE LAST NOTE, I JUST AND THEN THE LAST NOTE, I JUST AND THEN THE LAST NOTE, I JUST WANT TO AGAIN REITERATE COMMENTS WANT TO AGAIN REITERATE COMMENTS WANT TO AGAIN REITERATE COMMENTS FROM MY COLLEAGUES AS WELL. FROM MY COLLEAGUES AS WELL. FROM MY COLLEAGUES AS WELL. I THINK WE'VE SEEN COUNCILMEMBER I THINK WE'VE SEEN COUNCILMEMBER I THINK WE'VE SEEN Decades of agreements, reports, regulatory frameworks in six months, and so just wanted to make sure that we are all appreciative of your leadership. Council Member Warren and please continue to tap us in where you need us.

Thank you, Council Member Whiting. Next we have in Kuhn Council Member Stevenson.

Thank you, Chair. I wanted to thank you, Council Member Warren, for being the first and slash or last line of defense for your constituents. You and I are learning in real time that role. And I appreciate you for bringing this up and for not giving up on your people. I'm glad to see us responding to this urgently. Of course, I'll be supporting the money to go and relocate folks out of Heritage Park. That the south side is with you. People on the south side have lived in deplorable conditions and none of them have reached the grandiosity of what your constituents are experiencing right now. But we're with you and we're going to work with you to make sure that the folks in Heritage Park are taken care of and that there's justice for the entire neighborhood. Yeah, I wanted to point out that we, the city, are the ones left holding the bag here, even though MPHA owns the land and McCormick and Salazar and something else have spent the last two decades making money off of these buildings. Yeah, I wanted to point out that there are only two groups of people who care at the end of the day about whether Heritage Park is livable, and that's the people who live in Heritage Park and that's the city of Minneapolis. And I think we just need to recognize going forward that there really are only those two groups of people or those two groups who will, at the very end of the road, which we're at now in terms of the livability of Heritage Park, actually care about whether Heritage Park succeeds. So we need to act accordingly when we take our next steps. So to me, that says that if we're putting public dollars in, the public needs control. Either that or the residents themselves need control over the buildings, the conditions, the finances. Because the residents and the city of Minneapolis seem to be the only two groups who care about whether Heritage Park continues and continues successfully. Last, well, two more things. This seems like a perfect opportunity for us to use contingency funds and not spike our ability to build affordable housing this year. This seems like an unexpected expenditure for city services. And I would absolutely expect that we are going to be seeking this money back from McCormick, Salazar, and whoever else. um they're the ones who put this situation together and they're the ones who need to be paying this it's they profited for the last two decades they can find that money for us once we front the money for our constituents And lastly, I'm glad to see that we're all agreeing that this type of living condition is unacceptable. And I hope that as we look around the city and we find other folks living in these types of conditions that we can have a similarly powerful response to remedying their terrible living conditions and putting in the type of policy and the type of investment that we need for everybody across the city who's living under the conditions that slumlords have put them in to get justice and to get a living situation that's worthwhile for any human being. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember. Next is Councilmember Warren.

Thank you, Chair. Before I move this forward with recommendations, without recommendations, can I get a second? Second. I have just a couple of more things that I want to say. In the beginning of me first learning about the conditions of what was happening at Heritage Park, the very first thing that I asked for was a mold inspection. and a mold inspection report. And I was told at the time that the city did not have the capacity or the funds or the financing and that was not something that the city of Minneapolis did and that maybe they could go to Home Depot and get some test strips and see if that was something that could happen. Second thing that I asked for was the structural engineers report with respect to the integrity of the buildings because there are 38 roofs with holes in them that have been in that condition for a number of years, which still leads me to really struggling to tap inside of my brain of how it is that my great city of Minneapolis issued a rental license to a property that is in that deplorable of a condition. that the oversight and the power for buildings and structures that are within our city limits and jurisdiction have to meet a specific code compliance. And we are responsible for that code compliance. That code compliance was not met. It's still not being met at Heritage Park. And I mean, to walk into a building and taste mold, to smell the rot outside of a building, to smell it. It smells like decaying flesh, it really does. Like I sent security to go, can you do a welfare check? Because something just does not smell right around here. The sad part was 168 HVAC units were replaced over the winter because people were there with no heat in December when the receiver arrived. He arrived the 4th of December. The HVAC units were replaced within that first two to three weeks, like right over the time that people were celebrating good old fashioned Christmas and everything else, there were children inside of these apartment units at Heritage Park that were freezing. space heaters presenting fire risks at Heritage Park, a time when we could have came together as a city then, this was before I was elected, and said, hey, here's a life-saving measure. Let's get them out of there. And I understand, Director Hanson, that you are saying, you know, this $2.5 million, the only problem that I have with this in this RCA is that I am really, you know, I appreciate CERTUS. They've been so helpful and responsive and all of those things. They've provided us with a lot of transparency around a lot of things.

Good guys. Appreciate them. Mm-hmm.

The extenuating health concerns right now to me is these 94 and 97 degree heat waves that we have had. And the fact that there are seniors in those buildings with oxygen tanks that do not have any cool air flowing through there and they're sitting in mold, damp moisture, condensation, festering, having trouble breathing. We heard these stories last night. I didn't advertise my community meetings because they're not for advertisement because my constituents are not on display. They are not advertised. That is unhumanizing. And I don't want anybody picking them apart like pieces of old whatever. Not interested in the media being in there. Get your story elsewhere. These are people's lives. So I'm curious as to find out what situation do you think will be extenuating enough before we start moving people into hotels and getting them out of those situations on this one-way ticket, putting people's things into storage units and helping them start the path of recovery because that is what's needed right now. Every time it rains, I can't sleep. When it's hot like this, I am pissed off. Because I know what my residents and the children are going through in Heritage Park. I know. Because I'm over there. Been taking Zyrtex D like Tic Tacs. Just so I can breathe and get through this. So the fact that there is definitely a cooling condition over there, had a nine month pregnant mama stand on the third floor of a unit in building eight plex by herself, the only resident living in that building baby do in one week, she got bring her fresh new baby home to that environment. Would you wanna bring your fresh new baby home near Director Hanson?

Chair Chowdhury, Council Member Warren, no.

So let's think about that. I want some justice for the constituents of my ward and I want them treated with dignity and respect. There's not anything right now that CERTUS needs from us in the immediacy to put a Band-Aid on another bullet wound over in Heritage Park. the original numbers for my council colleagues that we were softly fluffing up and around. I know there was a question earlier about what we thought the capital amounts were gonna be. Probably about a month or so ago, they were talking about roughly a $35 million capital improvement project. But now with the things that we have learned with regards to these buildings pretty much being gutted down to the envelope, to the studs. you know, and the amount of roof repair, and the street paving, the foam that they said that they're gonna utilize underneath the steps and the concrete in order to lift it and raise it and balance it, you know what I mean, until they can figure out what the structural, yeah, we're looking at over 100 million. And just so we keep in mind, the home and consent decree was $118 million. MPHA inputted 27.8 million. HUD denoted 16 million, right? City of Minneapolis, 4.3 million. Did McCormick, Barron, Salazar come to the table with any money? This was supposed to be a $225 million development, 900 homes in totality. 900 homes as we saw in this presentation right here were not developed. What bag did he come with? McCormick Baron Salazar was sued in 2018 in St. Louis, Missouri, Clinton versus Peabody. Check that out. Sued 2021, 2023 in San Francisco, East Plaza for again, more of the same deplorable living conditions that we're experiencing here in the city of Minneapolis. And in 2022 in New Orleans, the Department of Justice settlement for fair housing violations. What we see right here is a developer that has a habitual practice of bad business. What I don't wanna see that's in my power here as a council member representative of the city of Minneapolis is developers who have habitual practice of bad business. I'm not interested in people who are not truly interested and invested in my community doing absolutely anything that has to do with building anything in my community. I'll have a large glass of no thank you with a side of please move around. So that's where I'm at. I think that we do have some extremely extenuating circumstances there, and Director Hanson, yourself, and everyone who was present at the meeting last night heard firsthand what those circumstances were. I'm gonna let this be on record. Minneapolis Public Housing Authority, you need to return the Section 8 vouchers of the residents who you retaliated against and removed their Section 8 and housing vouchers back to them. We got people living in hotels that are displaced with their children that need their vouchers back. So you need to give them back to them because you were wrong, not them. The end.

Thank you, Council Member Warren. Colleagues, is there any further discussion? Just checking my queue. We don't have any further discussion. The motion before us is to move this forward without recommendation. I'll make the point that I think to staff, I think it would be valuable for you to be present at the council meeting and be inclusive of all departments. I think it would also be valuable to have emergency management looped into the conversation as well. I know that's something that we just didn't touch because there's so much to cover here today. SO WITH THE MOTION FROM COUNCILMEMBER WARREN TO MOVE THIS FORWARD WITHOUT RECOMMENDATION ALL THOSE IN FAVOR SAY AYE AYE THOSE OPPOSED SAY NAY THAT MOTION CARRIES THANK YOU DIRECTOR ALL RIGHT NOW WE'LL BE RECEIVING A PRESENTATION THAT WELL Sorry, I'm a little out of script. Long presentation. Now I'll return, now, okay. We're moving into the Settlement Agreement Subcommittee. I will turn the meeting over to Council Member Whiting, the Chair for the Settlement Agreement Subcommittee. I'll also share that we have captioning until 5.30 p.m.

Perfect. Thank you, Chair Chowdhury. As our chair mentioned, I'm the chair of the settlement agreement and consent decree subcommittee, which resides within the committee of the whole. And this has been our second meeting of this subcommittee. Members, we will next be picking up item number two. which we are receiving a presentation from Effective Law Enforcement for All, or ALIFA. ALIFA is an independent nonprofit organization that serves as the official independent evaluator overseeing the Minneapolis Police Department's compliance with the MDHR settlement agreement alifa is comprised of experts in civil rights policing policy and its primary role is to objectively monitor mpd's progress on mandated reforms and regularly report its finding to the public and the court the purpose of this oversight is to measure the city's progress towards systemic reform and build community trust in policing the report that we will have today is alifa's most recent semi-annual report which covers the period of october 1st 2025 through march 31st 2026 and and just to note here this is the first of what we hope to be a regularly scheduled presentations after each semi-annual report from alifa and so i will pass it over to our independent evaluator david douglas and deliver this presentation also want to thank uh MR. DOUGLAS FOR THE QUICK TURNAROUND, AS WE ASKED, FAIRLY QUICK, AND YOU CAME AND MADE IT A POINT TO BE HERE. SO I APPRECIATE YOU AND THANK YOU FOR THE PRESENTATION.

CHAIRWOMAN, THANK YOU FOR THE INVITATION TO APPEAR BEFORE YOU ALL TODAY.

MR. DOUGLAS, I WILL JUST NOTE IF YOU'RE ABLE TO HAVE THE MIC RIGHT THERE. PERFECT. THANK YOU.

THIS TAKES ME BACK TO ONE OF OUR EARLY PUBLIC MEETINGS WHERE I DEMONSTRATED MY INABILITY TO STAND IN ONE PLACE AND TALK. without pacing, but thank you all for allowing me to appear today. We appreciate it. The work we do can't be done in isolation. We have to be part of an ecosystem that will drive transformation and sustain it after we leave, so I and our team, we really appreciate the interest that you've all shown and the support you've given us. I ALSO NOTE I CAME FROM WASHINGTON, D.C. I APPRECIATE YOU ARRANGING THE HIGH HEAT AND HUMIDITY FOR MY COMFORT, BUT REALLY, YOU SHOULDN'T HAVE. SO I DO HAVE A FEW SLIDES HERE TO WALK US THROUGH. SO SIMPLY FOR OUR AGENDA, I WANT TO TALK A LITTLE BIT ABOUT OUR PROCESS, WHERE WE ARE OVER THE FIRST TWO YEARS, AND THEN, OF COURSE, WHERE WE'LL BE GOING OVER THE NEXT TWO YEARS. THIS INVITATION COMES AT A GOOD TIME BECAUSE WE ARE WORKING ON OUR REVISED EVALUATION PLAN FOR YEARS THREE AND FOUR, SO THIS IS A PERFECT TIME TO UPDATE ALL OF YOU. Start with process. As Chair Whiting explained, we're the independent evaluator. Our role is... Our role... Simply put is really do three things we monitor we coach and report I work with a team of about a dozen subject matter experts and they lend their knowledge and guidance and insights to help the city and the police department achieve the requirements of the settlement agreement If I can zoom out, however, for just a moment, what we're really talking about is institutional change and transformation. So what you see on the screen here is a wheel. There's been studies and there's thought about the elements that go into a successful transformation. And we follow that model in our work. It informs what we do. It guides what we do. We follow a path. And so just briefly, those keys are you have to have a sense of urgency to have great transformation. And that, of course, is very true here in Minneapolis. You have to form a powerful coalition. And you have that in Minneapolis as a big part of the reason that we were selected because of broad community support.

There has to be a vision for change, and that's captured

specifically in the settlement agreement, but more broadly in the demands for change throughout the city. You have to communicate that vision, which we try to do for our part through our public meetings and appearing here before you. We have to empower others to act on the vision. We do that by empowering people in the department and in the community as well. Got to create short-term wins, and some of what I'll be talking about today falls into that category of short-term wins. But as you build those wins, then you consolidate those gains, you expand them, and ultimately, what you want is have culture change, and you want to anchor the changes you've made in a new and sustainable culture. So in the big picture, that's what we're trying to do. It's why this takes so long, because it's hard, and there are a lot of moving pieces. In the category of small wins but important wins, let me just highlight a few of them. There are many more listed in our most recent report. But some of the key achievements are the full use of force policy suite. Use of force is one of the foundational elements and one of the issues that brought us here. So that's a significant accomplishment. We've also approved policies for non-discriminatory policing. Although in that one, we're still working on a corrective action matrix, but in the main, the bulk of those policies are complete. Similarly, stop search citation and arrest policies are largely approved. I think the one we're working on is warrants. And a policy and resource hub has been launched that will make policies more accessible to officers. I'll talk more about that in just a minute. Then we are also working on the training. The training needs assessment was completed. The department-wide use of force training has been delivered, and that policy is now live. The crisis intervention training, refresher and supervisor leadership training has been delivered, as well as officer wellness and early intervention system training. On the operational side, the peer support team has grown. There's now 27 members. It has responded to several critical incidents and has done a terrific job. The Cortico Wellness app has launched. There are now six public facing dashboards. The data systems plan has been submitted and is being implemented, although that will be a long path. And we conducted community and officer surveys in June, and we'll be reporting on those later this summer. Where we are in terms of approved policies, I'm not gonna go through this list. I just wanted to show you visually that in addition to those that I summarized in the key achievements, we have approved a number of policies. There's work continuing. These policies are in the development process, which is a collaborative process with us and MDHR, as well as these. So there's a lot going on on the policy front. I just want to take a moment to give you one example, and we've done this in our public meetings, of some of the beneficial changes that these new policies put in place. So the old escalation policy was much vaguer about de-escalation. It was much more discretionary to the officer. They shall attempt to use it. but it wasn't very specific. The new policy is much clearer. Sworn members have a clear affirmative duty to deescalate. Members shall not use tactics that unnecessarily escalate and encounter or create a need for force. And there was an expanded list of deescalation techniques and tactics tied to training concepts. And of course, policies only work if they're effectively trained, and we observed the use of force training. It was really quite good. And there are many more examples I could give you, but that's just a sense of it. But these policies will make a difference. This is a screenshot and a GIF, I guess, showing you there is a new policy hub. And that's a significant achievement because one of the number one things we heard from the officers is that the policies were too long and too inaccessible. They were just in a long manual. So now this is an online platform. any officer or, for example, or for that matter, any member of the public can go to. If you need to know something about a policy, for example, here, the duty to deescalate, you can click right on it. Within the policy itself, if you hover over a defined term, it pops up. One of the questions we received from officers, will these policies be more concise? Well, the truth is the policies are not more concise because it is hard to be concise and comprehensive and clear all at once. But the real question I think they're asking is about accessibility. Are these policies going to be more accessible? And through the policy hub, the answer is absolutely yes. They'll be able to access this from their vehicles, through their phones, and the policies are clearer. So we believe that they will find this to be a meaningful improvement for the department, but also for the city as a whole. So the path to compliance has three key elements. First, policies, where we've been putting a lot of our attention, then we'll move into training increasingly. And then ultimately, accountability, which is the last and most important element because the policies and training really don't make a difference if it doesn't translate to change on the street. And so that's where we're looking at accountability. We do that through audits, and we'll be conducting regular audits. We'll start a use of force audit this year, now that the training has been completed. But there are other forms of accountability, the Internal Affairs and Misconduct Investigation System, is critical to that. We'll talk about that in a minute. And of course, close supervision is also critical to ensuring that officers understand what they are expected to do and help them do it and then hold them accountable when they do not. So there are challenges, and there have been challenges over the first two years as documented in our report. First has been staffing shortages and turnover. That's been most acute in the internal affairs unit. It's also been a factor in the officer health and wellness unit. But it has also been an issue over the last two years. More generally, as one would expect, there's always some turnover. The big one has been the internal affairs backlog and the reviewed bottlenecks. As we said in our last report, there really has been virtually no meaningful progress on that, and that was a significant failure that we had observed previously, but really came to a head in our most recent report. We've talked about delays in the policy development process, although I will say I feel much better about those. There have been a lot of lessons learned, efficiencies achieved, improvements made, and I feel it is now working much better, so I'm optimistic that over the next two years we will see policies developed and approved at a faster rate than in the first two years. training quality and delivery gaps. We've seen issues of turnover and lack of internal coordination or alignment. That's something we're really beginning to focus on now as we increasingly move from policies into trainings. That will be a major area of focus for us over the next two years. The technology and data systems, you can't run a modern police department without robust technology and data systems, and that process has been much slower than we had hoped, but that will be key to implementing and sustaining any of the changes, or almost all of the changes under the settlement agreement. And finally, organizational culture and leadership. We've commented on the lack of understanding of officers, lack of communication from department leaders about what this process is, what its importance and what it will mean for officers. And we'd like to see that change. I SHOULD PROBABLY PAUSE JUST TO NOTE THAT THESE CHALLENGES ARE FROM THE FIRST TWO YEARS. AS WE ALL KNOW, THERE HAS BEEN A LEADERSHIP CHANGE IN THE DEPARTMENT. WE'RE ENCOURAGED BY WHAT WE'VE SEEN. IT'S BEEN VERY EARLY, BUT I DO WANT TO MAKE A DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE CRITICISMS WE'VE OBSERVED GOING BACK. WE'RE NOT YET MAKING OBSERVATIONS ABOUT THE CURRENT STATE. many most if not all of you are aware of our criticisms of internal affairs. We had been reporting on that and expressed our concern about it in each of our reports. The backlog is a serious issue and as we've said it's serious for the public but it's serious for officers who have complaints hanging over them for not just months but in many cases years. So this slide simply really captures what we had reported over time but just to be candid it was in the last several months that we sort of came to the point that whatever changes had been promised and changes that were being were really making no difference and in fact it did not even seem that they were really designed or intended to make a difference it just seemed like churn quite frankly and so that's when we uh became very pointed in our criticism um in our most recent report This slide just gives you an example of some of the timelines and delays we've seen in the case management system for internal affairs and OPCR. The root causes that we've seen are vendor staff attrition and slow follow-up on configuration requests, particularly in the first year or so. The department was very slow in articulating what it needed from the system, and that was a first step in that process. The project was under-resourced, and it was the current vendor, the department leadership deprioritized the project in favor of a preferred alternative vendor. But there had been a lack of commitment from the department to driving these really critical system changes. We also note here that the early intervention system phase two deployment has been paused due to staffing turnover and leadership changes. We hope that will be rectified soon and that that will get back on track. in our last report we made a series of recommendations that we hope the department of the city will act on some they already have in fact this first one reassess personal capacity roles and responsibilities uh... they've begun to do that the uh... department has asked our team for technical assistance on the staffing in its internal affairs unit uh... and they are looking at other issues to ensure that Hopefully ensure that they have the right people and the right alignment of roles and responsibilities. Establishing clear supervisory authority and reporting. As you may know, there's this odd constellation. There's the MPD implementation unit. There's the city attorney's implementation unit. Of course, there are the department subject matter experts they need to talk to in developing policies. And often it just was unclear what the roles are and where the authority lay. And that just led to delays and inefficiencies. So we are hoping that that is clarified. uh... supplement communication and coordination channels there are a lot of different small work streams here and there are big meetings with many groups but sometimes you just gotta get a few people in the room talking to each other this is all within MPD to get a line on what they need to do to move things forward and we found that that uh... was not happening as it should and uh... needs to be improved there are a lot of people uh... who have responsibility for implementation under the agreement, but not all of them seem to have a clear understanding of what their role is, how it fits in. Many of them have responsibilities beyond implementation, so setting priorities and making sure they understand their roles and responsibilities and how it fits in has been lacking, and we hope that that will improve, and we've recommended that the department take steps to do that. Standing meeting times, again, sometimes we observe delays just because people were busy and they could never get all the right people in the room. So we said, well, just set a standing meeting time and let everybody know Thursday at 2. This is their time to address issues. We've done that. We have meetings with the parties on a weekly basis. We have standing policy meetings, standing data meetings so that people know we have an hour.

This is the thing that we need to address next, and we've encouraged the department to do more of that.

And then keep department personnel informed. We find that a lot of officers know very little about this agreement, know very little about its implementation and how it will affect them. And you can imagine in that vacuum, it leads to morale issues and confusion and misinformation. So we would hope the department would establish better lines of communication with the rank and file about this important work. So where do we go in years three and four? So you see on this slide, we generally have had to use this construct, the foundation phase, the evaluation phase, and finally a compliance determination phase. First two years have mostly been foundational. So now hopefully we will begin slowly to transition to the evaluation phase. But to be clear, the foundational phase has gone slower than we thought. The majority of policy goals were not met for the reasons I discussed, so we're still in that process. But we are beginning to uh... transition to uh... the evaluation stage and what that means is we'll be doing audits for example will do a use of force audit now that there are new uh... policies in place our view has been we knew that things were bad that's what brought us here so we didn't do audits just to tell us what we knew we decide to wait until a new policy has been adopted trained on and implemented we wait three to six months for officers to get used to it and then we'll start auditing and we expect We would not be surprised if there are higher levels of noncompliance early on, and then you focus on the education necessary for officers to understand what's expected. And so we'll do those audits on a recurring basis as we move to compliance and then finally the settlement agreement uh... specifies what constitutes compliance and that will be the final stage of this where we make our recommendations and ultimately judge janice will decide uh... whether the city if the parties don't agree then judge janice will decide ultimately whether the uh... department has uh... met its uh... responsibilities under the agreement there's no numerical measure for that. The agreement specifically says we don't use percentages, that makes sense. So it's a much more qualitative performance based assessment that we'll be making. So, The specific things, priorities for years three and four, we have to complete the remaining policies, standard operating procedures, and training requirements. We have to ensure that supervisors implement and reinforce approved policies. We'll be focusing on reducing these accountability backlogs. We hope that that will happen in year three and not continue into year four. We want to deploy the early intervention system and improve the wellness resources and workforce support systems. We'll be expanding our audits and compliance reviews STRENGTHENING DATA SYSTEMS, DASHBOARDS AND REPORTING AND THEN ULTIMATELY OR ADDITIONALLY WE WANT TO SUSTAIN COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT AND PUBLIC TRANSPARENCY. YOU'LL NOTE HERE ON THE SLIDE THAT ONLY TWO PARTS POLICY AND BODY WARN AND IN-CAR CAMERAS APPEAR LIKELY TO ACHIEVE COMPLIANCE WITHIN THE INITIAL FOUR-YEAR TERM OF THE AGREEMENT. I should also note here that in the first two years, we approved a facilities plan that called for a new training center. So I understand that hasn't been funded. So the city will, to achieve compliance, will have to come up with a plan that meets the agreements requirements and obviously that that's a call that we don't make what i will say is that the current training facilities are just woefully inadequate for the needs of the department or or the needs of the community quite frankly as you know they're in an elementary school they don't own it at least it's not in any way configurable to the needs of a A big city police department, and even if it were, it's a leased property. The health and wellness unit is not there. The training plan called for a single source of training, which would bring not only MPD, but also fire, and I believe EMS. which is consistent with sort of the ultimate public safety ecosystem that you want to see in a city. And it also called for the health and wellness unit to be housed there with training, which we believe is a very beneficial relationship. In fact, at our last public meeting, a woman stood up and very eloquently talked about the trauma that the officers in her neighborhood had experienced. And she talked about the importance of taking care of our officers' mental health. Most impressively, though, to me, she made the link. She said because the officers who are traumatized inflict their trauma on us. So officer health and wellness is critical to public safety and to protecting the public. So we don't look at this narrowly as something for officers. training officers to do the things we demand of them to do requires a facility or configuration equal to that task. So that will be something that we will be expecting to see from the city in this next phase. A few next steps, so as I mentioned earlier, we conducted community and officer surveys. We'll be releasing those later this summer. We'll probably do it in a virtual meeting so that the public and everyone will hear it. Our year three and four evaluation plan will also be released this summer. And we do a lot with community engagement in addition to our regular public meetings, which are very well attended. We meet with other groups, small groups, individuals. So we try and spend a lot of time talking to folks here in Minneapolis to educate them about the process and to hear their questions. I think that's really it. I would just like to say this. It's been a tough slog, but I will say, personally, I am as optimistic about this process as I have been at any stage in it. I am encouraged by what we're seeing in the new leadership, and I'm really seeing in the public at large They're beginning to understand this process and the engagement in our meetings is we get 60 to 80 people. The questions are good, they're constructive. Members of other city departments show up, so it becomes a discussion of issues. And that, I think, is taking us down the road to where we need to be, which is creating an ecosystem around the police department so that when we're gone, all of you are educated and able to engage effectively with the department and hold it accountable. And we're starting to see that happen. So I recognize this has taken longer than people would have wanted and probably longer than people would have thought. But it is happening and we're optimistic about it. I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have. Thank you.

yes and and thank you uh mr douglas one and also want to thank you and your team for for the work uh as it relates to these uh progress reports as well i know it's helpful for myself and i know a large number of my colleagues as well and so with that council members i know we have a few uh of my colleagues here that have questions and so we'll open it up to our colleagues here and so uh first on our list is council member

Thank you, Chair Whiting. I want to first start by expressing my frustration with NPD's lack of progress regarding the state settlement agreement and my concerns with Alifa and how often they report to the city council or how they withhold their opinions. It should not have taken the resignation of former Chief O'Hara for Alifa to speak up. Residents are paying for accountability, not silence, and I hope that you take my word seriously today in saying that I hope Alifa is more proactive in reaching out to the city council and that it should not take a public debacle for you to speak up to address accountability and the concerns that my constituents in the Ninth Ward have. For those of you that do not know, here are some concerning highlights with this report. and MPD's lack of progress. One, there are significant delays in the critical agreement requirements will persist. Two, there's no meaningful progress when it comes to concerns about MPD's lack of progress to reduce its internal affairs case backlog. Three, progress toward implementing an early intervention system has also stalled. DUE TO MANAGEMENT WEAKNESS AND PERSONNEL TURNOVER. FOUR, POLICY AND TRAINING CURRICULUM CONTINUES AT AN UNEVEN PACE. FIVE, THE CITY HAS NOT ACHIEVED MANY OF ITS GOALS SET UP FOR THE YEARS ONE AND TWO FOR THE IMPLEMENTATION PROCESS AND PROGRESS. THAT'S JUST A FEW THINGS HIGHLIGHTED IN THIS REPORT. And I'm going to reread the last part I said out loud because I hope people hear it and how it's frustrating. The city has not achieved many of the goals set up for years one and two for the implementation process. One and two. We're paying a lot of money to have some work on police accountability and reform and nothing is happening. The Minnesota Department of Human Rights also said the City of Minneapolis and MPD remained far from achieving the transformational change necessary to the root causes of race-based policing and pointed to MPD continuing to have flawed accountability systems.

Still,

And where's MPD? If they can come in this room, please, to answer some questions, because these are not going to be just directed at you. Victims of police violence and neighbors deserve a lot better. Wondering if MPD or the mayor's administration is here to answer some of my questions, because I have a lot of questions. And it's going to be directed at you, the mayor's administration, and MPD, and everybody, because this is one of the first times we have you here in these chambers to address the concerns that I have. First, the report says there are observations that some individuals lack an appreciation of how their work relates to other implementation tasks or how others depend on their work to meet their implementation responsibilities. It also appears to us that some individuals, and this is what the report said, who have implementation responsibilities do not understand how their work relates to the agreement overall. What? What is being done to address this? If you can answer this, what oversight with Alif are you doing? And MPD, if someone can please come in. I don't understand why MPD is not in this room today. This is the whole report.

And just know, Council Member Chavez, so we are working on the cadence because I think you're exactly right. And so we are hoping to get a consistent status report on the reform work from MPD themselves where they will come and report to this body. And so we are working on the cadence of what that will look like. My hope is that it will be probably bimonthly. And so we are looking at that exact point. Sorry about that.

So I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to phrase my questions because my questions were phrasing it towards MPD who are failing to address and meet our settlement agreements completely.

Well, Chair White and Council Member Chavez, let me start with this. So we have met with many of your colleagues, met with you in this process. We are always happy to meet with you. So It's an open invitation, and anything we can do to facilitate individual meetings or to appear here regularly, we would like to do that. A central part of our role is to get the word out, and so if there's any perception that we've been reluctant to do that, let me clarify it, apologize for it, but we are not only happy to meet with you, we're eager to meet with you. We want people to know what's going on in this process. With respect to the relationship between our report and the forced resignation of Chief O'Hara, to be clear, we gave this report to the city, the mayor, and the chief, Chief O'Hara, prior to his renomination and prior to the scandals that led to his misconduct, I should say. that led to his forced resignation. In fact, prior to giving them the report, I met with both the mayor and the chief to tell them what we would be reporting. So to be clear, it was not his forced resignation that triggered this report. We have a cadence. We issue two reports a year. And when we issued this one, we fully expected Chief O'Hara would be the chief. So there's nothing about his departure that altered the timing or the language in our report. As to the deficiencies you've just decided, recited, I think my short answer, at least initially, is we agree that we've reported them. And we are working with the city. I can say that they, from our perspective, are making some changes, but I don't think I'm the right person to address everything that may have been done or what their plans are.

I want to be clear. I'm not saying that the debacle is what led to what was in the report. I'm saying that Alifa made comments publicly and did not brief counsel when they knew this information. There were comments you made to the media, and there was not conversation with council members pertaining to what you were talking about publicly. So I just want to at least mention that. When did you give this information to the mayor? You just mentioned that.

We gave... The mayor of the report and the city, I believe, Chair Wyden and Council Member Chavez, on May 11th and probably a couple of weeks, two, three weeks prior to that, I had met with the chief and with the mayor.

And so you had already talked to the mayor in a meeting that this was a problem? Yes. And he was still renominated. Okay, thank you. Can I also?

Yep, go ahead. I wanted to address, I'm glad you asked the question about public comments. So generally, I don't talk to the media. And I'm not authorized to talk to the media unless the parties give their consent. That's a little bit of a challenge because most people will only learn about our work through the media. So while we don't want to discuss or present our work through the media, there are times when the parties have allowed us to speak to the mayor. And the resignation of Chief O'Hara was one of those times because it was such a matter of public concern. And we could see the narrative about what did the monitor know, and when did they know it, and when were they going to tell us. I will say the only real statement I made about the chief I use the word, not an ally. I will say, and I said it, but just so that you understand the context, the question I was asked was, moving forward, will progress be made? And I was saying that, yes, there are a lot of people working very hard to implement this agreement. It's what we said in our report. And I said, but I acknowledge that in that, Chief O'Hara was not always an ally. But it was only that later piece, as I recall, that was really quoted, which I think led many people to think I was making a broader statement than I had intended. To be clear, it is true. When you look at the criticisms in our report, those fall directly at the feet of the chief. But it would be unfair to say that he didn't contribute at all to the process. Many of the changes that happened, happened under his leadership, and he made some changes even before our arrival. So, it is fair to say he was not always an ally in the process. It would probably be too strong to say he was never an ally in the process. And to your broader concern, I think underlying your question, We generally speak through our reports and our public meetings. We don't do it through the media. So we don't make public statements to the media. You in the main will not learn of our work through that channel.

Thank you. The report says there are observations that some individuals lack an appreciation of how their work relates to other implementation tasks or how others depend on their work to meet their implementation responsibilities. It also appears to us, as I mentioned earlier, that some individuals who have implementation responsibilities do not understand how their work relates to the agreement overall. Do you know what is being done to address this concern that is outlined in your report?

chair Whiting councilmember Chavez I have some sense that the city is in the department are working to tie more closely together that work done by the by the various people have to contribute to the project I I don't really know the details of that and I should say that our report is fairly recent so I think they're still they may still be working on that but other than my own sense of the meetings we've had for example in getting ready for our evaluation plan when we looked back at the plan for year one and two you're right many of the goals were not met A big part of that reason was the goals were unrealistic. I think the city didn't appreciate it at the time. Most cities in this situation have never been through this. So they didn't know how hard it would be to revise policies and how long the process would take and all of the other things that frustrate timetables. So in preparing for this plan, we sat down with them and we went through their timetables and asked them about them, and they worked to make sure they were much more realistic. So it is our hope that the timelines for years three and four will prove to be more reliable than the timelines set forth in the initial plan. So to that extent, I have a sense that they have taken steps to better align personnel with their responsibilities and to ensure that people know what they're supposed to do. But I don't have a very granular.

The report shows that no meaningful progress has been made on the internal affairs backlog. MPD has been made aware of this for years. Do you know what has specifically changed in MPD's approach and why we should as constituents, as folks that we represent as constituents, should expect a different result? And yeah, I guess what is the change that's going to happen as a result? Because we know that a lack of progress in this is a lack of justice.

I know some of the changes. So first, we have met with the new, I hope I get it right, Lieutenant Schoonover, I believe, who's now in charge of internal affairs. So far, I'm impressed by his assessment of the problems and the need for change. And in fact, to restore some of the systems that were in place when he was in charge and that lapsed when he moved. So that's an encouraging sign. As I mentioned earlier, I believe, THEY HAVE ASKED US FOR TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE TO LOOK AT THEIR STAFFING. THE INTERNAL AFFAIRS UNIT IS UNDER RESOURCED. AND SO WE'RE PROVIDING ADVICE THERE. AND I'VE HAD SOME INITIAL MEETINGS. I KNOW THEY'RE LOOKING AT WAYS TO AUGMENT PERSONNEL.

MPD HAS WRITEN A PLAN TO ELIMINATE THE BACKLOG BY 2026 BUT SET NO DEADLINES. DO YOU KNOW WHY THAT WAS THE CASE? AND HAS MPD COMMITTED TO SPECIFIC MILESTONES AS OF TODAY?

I DO NOT KNOW WHY THAT WAS THE CASE AND I HAVE NOT SEEN A NEW PLAN. I BELIEVE ONE MAY BE IN THE WORKS BUT I HAVE NOT SEEN IT.

THE EARLY INTERVENTION SYSTEM IS A SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT REQUIREMENT. PROGRESS ON THE EARLY INTERVENTION SYSTEM HAS STALLED DUE TO MANAGEMENT WEAKNESS AND PERSONNEL TURNOVER. WHO IS ACCOUNTABLE FOR THAT STALL AND WHAT IS THE CURRENT TIMELINE TO ADDRESS THESE CONCERNS?

Chair Wine and Council Member Chavez, I believe the former chief was most directly accountable for it. He made the personal assignments. He allowed the, either made or allowed the transfers and things that the personal turnover.

I will say that there is one boss of the chief. Uneven progress on policy and training development has been flagged across multiple reports now. Do you know what is causing this unevenness that is really frustrating to our constituents? It's indicated in your report.

Chair Whiting, Council Member Chavez. So looking back over the two years, in the first year, we worked hard with the city to sort of restructure and realign how the policy development process worked. The policy development process requires MPD to develop a policy that meets the settlement agreement's terms, and then to work with or collaborate with us and with MDHR to ensure that that policy meets the agreement's requirements. That is a long, hard process. But what we often found was the quality in the first year particularly found that the quality of draft policies that came to us were not where they should have been. I think, candidly, in the meetings with the parties, there were just inefficiencies. A lot of things went back and forth. You know, we would get documents that had extensive, you know, 20 pages of just red lines that you're slogging through. There were hard time scheduling meetings, so we really worked hard to address those. I think we've made significant improvements to that process. I hope we will see the fruits of those labors in the coming two years.

MDHR said the city remains far from transformational change needed to address root causes of race-based policing. What's the plan of action to address that?

Chair White and Council Member Chavez, the settlement agreement is a means to an end. The MDHR agreement, the investigative findings are really designed to get to race-based policing.

Can you repeat that again? I missed it.

The overall goal, I think, and intent of the settlement agreement is to eliminate race-based policing. How we do that is through policies, training, supervision, and accountability, and the support of technology systems. So let me give you an example. If we're talking about race-based policing, what we first want to make sure is that there is reasonable suspicion for a stop. We want to make sure the policy is followed so that when we audit and do every stop, we can look to make sure that every encounter follows the policies. Then there'll also be the much more challenging job of looking at disparities, which is one of the most complex areas in policing. So the way we get to the end of eliminating race-based policing is through the means of the right policies, the right training, and the right accountability systems.

the semi-annual review again affirms the mdhr documented in its april 22 2022 investigative findings and i'll read specifically that the city and fpd have flawed accountability systems the city and mpd systems are inconsistent delayed or opaque this is concerning what is being done about it

AND AGAIN, THAT WAS YEARS AGO. I AGREE. WE WERE VERY POINTED IN OUR REPORT. SO THAT SYSTEM WAS BROKEN. IT REMAINS BROKEN.

fix it but i it there has been a lack of accountability it's a lack of accountability in the culture in the department it has to be fixed and i think that's the honesty i'm i've been waiting for alifa to be very public about i hope that alifa is working to rebuild trust with the community i think the constituents that i represent are very frustrated with alifa and how forthcoming they have been with information um how forthcoming they have been about the actual progress we have done as a city it's very clear that we are failing to address and meet the settlement agreement with the state when we are failing to meet our goals for year one and year two and we're In 2026, that is a deep concern. And I think whether MPD was invited to this meeting or not, the fact that we don't have a single person from MPD or the city administration in this room to hear the questions that we have as council members, to hear the concerns that we have as council members. is concerning. I represent the area where George Floyd was murdered. My constituents have many concerns that are decades long of police violence that has been forced upon the people I represent proudly. And what we are seeing is a lack of, in my opinion, compliance with the settlement agreement. When you're not meeting years one and two goals, that should be a priority for the city of Minneapolis. And it is disappointing that the administration or MPD is not willing to be in this, or is not in this meeting to answer the questions that I have about how we are failing to meet our commitments for police accountability. So I want to express that today, and I hope Alifa does the work that is needed to rebuild trust with, at least I'll speak for my constituents. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Chavez. And I would note too, and it looks like we actually had a few drop off here as well. So we only have about four speakers left. I would note we have, I think, captioning until 5.30. And so just having that mindful for colleagues. Council Member Warren.

Thank you chair and thank you for your presentation. My question just a little bit similar to my colleagues and wondering about the internal affairs complaints but I did not see anything in the presentation with respect to what is being done in order to ensure that officers that are coming to work for our department do not have a number of infractions in their side shield when being employed with our police department here. Can you speak to that?

Chair Wine and Council Member Warren, actually that's not an area I can speak to. It's not really within the scope of our work, but it's an important question and it's going to go to changes and accountability. But the recruitment and hiring process is not within the scope of our work.

So is that something that is in, but that's in the, is that in the purview of the settlement agreement or is that something that is being discussed? Is that something that's written into the plan where we're talking about? Because I think that, Here it is, we have two things can be true. Some are training deficiencies and some are learned behavior and behavioral practices, right? And so if you have individuals who may have been removed or asked to leave from somewhere else, right? kind of what we've had in this situation here, then does that officer have the ability to move forward, be transferred to another department that then accepts him, doesn't see what was in his side shield, now we inherit a problem with someone who may not be you know um abreast to the culture and the climate that we are diligently working so hard to develop and achieve here in the city of minneapolis of integrable officers that now we we got somebody who a is not from here doesn't know here and is bringing a different level of lawlessness here that would then in turn add to the internal affairs complaints that we have i want to kind of nip the i want to do an intervention right where we don't have those type of things being um indoctrinated into our our systems here

So Chair White and Council Member Warren, yes, I agree. So while it's not within our purview to look at the recruitment as a general matter, you're exactly right. Departments should not be hiring officers that have had meaningful infractions in other departments and they should screen for those and not hire those people. on the narrow question of our role in that, it's not within our purview, but it is, it's an important point. And standing here before you today, I can't recall whether it was in the consent decree that the mayor has committed to implementing, We're not yet working on it. So if it's there, it's not coming to my mind. But I also wanted to address other important points you made about training. And I want to talk a bit about culture. So we want to improve the culture. A good culture weeds out bad actors. A bad culture amplifies bad actors. So when you get the right culture, you will weed out those people. They'll be caught in training, or they'll be caught in the field training officer piece of their training, and both of those are within our purview. One of the things that has been stalled is the field officer training operating procedures. So that those institutional changes will at least in part address the issue of bad officers coming into the department.

Mm hmm. And and now we want to tread lightly on that because that's kind of a that's kind of a little murky water. We know Derek Chauvin was a field training officer, right? OK, now come on now. That water is a little murky. THAT'S WHY IT HAS TO CHANGE. RIGHT. SO IN ENSURING THAT INDIVIDUALS WHO ARE ELEVATED TO POSITIONS OF DIRECT INSTRUCTION AND LEADERSHIP, RIGHT, IF THERE ARE A NUMBER OF INFRACTIONS THAT ARE that have not been investigated, that are allegations, as we are sitting with all of these over 300 plus internal affairs complaints that have not been effectively responded to, which I'm hoping that we do obtain someone who is a very dedicated and committed internal affairs investigator that has the privilege of staying with the department more than a few months. I'm hoping that that will be the case here. so that we can get to the bottom of some of these issues because then that concerns me. If there are no disciplinary actions for individuals who have carried out some behaviors that have awarded complaints, then people think they've kind of skated by the system, right? And so what, no one saw me do it, I hid my hand, let me try it again and again and again. You know, we don't want more of the same. We just really want better for people and I wanna see people win and be great, but thank you for that. I really hope that we can write something in and ensure that officers that are coming to us from other places, you know, like 13 colonies and everywhere else, that we are getting what we need and that they don't have a bunch of backburnered behavior.

just really want to make that clear thank you thank you and thank you council member warren and to your point it's as a director doug's noted the the recruitment and hiring piece is in the consent decree not the settlement agreement and so there is a specific few paragraphs in there about that uh council member wansley and i would note to council members if you do have to take off if you let me know i think we are on verge of losing quorum here so

Yep, thank you, Chair Whiting. A few of my colleagues have already highlighted some of the things that I wanted to comment on. One, it has been a frustration. I think a number of us have spoken at length, especially last term, around Alifa's handling of lack of engagement with the public, with the lack of engagement with this body. I know it was hard. uh journey and fight um with try with working with council president payne last term to try to get a presentation scheduled for alifa to come before this body because we had a number of concerns just based off of the progress reports and how things were handled um so i i'm happy that we're finally able to have a presentation in this chambers following the second progress report that you did um this year thus far but i do want to echo the sentiments that councilmember chavez has raised and my staff even attended one of the most recent community meetings where those frustrations were loudly expressed as well and you made note of that I also want to echo since been shared by my colleagues regarding internal affairs. A dysfunctional internal affairs division signals to other officers, existing officers within the department, people who are looking to work here, that misconduct can be tolerated. And there is no formal processes of accountability to handle those things when they come up. And the fact that it's it leads to a place where people who do want to come forward and i want to know we have been sued when we've had officers come forward in the past um and they face retaliation um for doing so to hold their fellow officers accountable um having a dysfunctional ia only enriches a culture that led us to be in this predicament where we're in a consent decree for violating the human rights of black and indigenous residents human rights so i i can't emphasize too of i would love to know what the city shared as their rationale for why no corrective action was taken even after your your first report because this is something that has been detailed in multiple reports now so would love to know what was the city's rationale um for not taking more immediate corrective action on that

Chair Wyden, Council Member Wansley. First, let me talk about the issue of appearing before the council. I'm not sure what the source of that miscommunication or misperception. We've always been willing to meet. I maybe attribute to it. We're not from here and not knowing how it works. Maybe we were waiting for invitation. I don't know. But we did appear. We've appeared every time we've been asked. When we issue reports, we do notify the council and we've always BEEN WILLING AND OFFERED TO COME AND APPEAR, AND I'M GLAD WE HAVE THIS OPPORTUNITY NOW. WE'VE ALSO OFFERED TO MEET INDIVIDUALLY WITH COUNCILMEMBERS. SO WHATEVER, LET ME JUST BE CLEAR, GOING FORWARD, WE ARE EAGER TO BE AVAILABLE TO THE COUNCIL AND TO ALL OF YOU AND TO THE COMMUNITY. IT'S A CORE PART OF OUR WORK HERE. IN TERMS OF THE lack of progress in the uh... in internal affairs spoke with Chief O'Hara about these issues. The explanations were attributed. There were three, I think, explanations. Some were he did bring in people in the hopes that they would improve the situation. That didn't work out, and I don't think it's attributable to the individuals. I think it was the culture in the institution and maybe lack of direction from the chief. He expressed concerns about... personnel uh... having the people to do this because he was very focused on crime fighting and reducing response times those are obviously very important but they're a little bit apples and oranges and our view when it comes to the issue of the internal affairs investigation and officers on the street uh... and in any event can't sacrifice one for the other that's the challenge that's the leadership and management challenge to get both of those things done, and he expressed concerns about morale and the impact of making these changes on morale, which was not really defensible, candidly. So I think, I do think that some of this, with the personnel changes, when they happened, we thought, great, this is the solution, now things will get better. But then they didn't. And in my dealings with the chief, where I came away was it was not a priority.

Thank you. And I'm going to try to speed round through some of the rest of my questions, because I know there's a few folks in queue. And we're trying to make the deadline that we have for when we have closed captioners at 530. But just also next question, because as you highlighted, this body had extensive debate around the wellness, community safety and wellness center. And oftentimes we've learned that Alifa and the settlement agreement was used as a place to say this was mandated. And I just want to clarify the comments that you also or ask for additional clarification. First, anywhere in the settlement agreement requires us to purchase. In this case, the city was seeking a $40 million building. But anywhere in the settlement agreement says we have to do that. purchase a whole new facility.

No, it's not prescribed in the settlement.

Okay, thank you for that. That was not often communicated appropriately or accurately from the city. Also, in your recommendations on page eight, I believe, where you said we should maintain this as a priority, just for clarification, too, in the settlement agreement or for my understanding how we can relate to you, can the city also bring you a subsequent, let's say, or modified facility plan that doesn't warrant a $40 million building that addresses the explicit training needs? of its officers. Can they bring a modified proposal to you for consideration?

Chair Whiting, Council Member Wansley, from our perspective, the city's obligation is to meet the terms of the settlement agreement. So yes, I wouldn't suggest that the training center is necessarily the only way, but to be candid, I'm not sure they're, based on what we know, that I am aware of other good options, but there may be out there. So yes, if the city has an alternative that fulfills the requirements of the settlement agreement, that's- So we can't bring an alternative because in the settlement agreement, as you just confirmed, it does not require us acquiring a new facility in itself. It does not, but it does prescribe an assessment being done as to the best way to meet the requirement. That was, I recall, the recommendation of the assessment.

THE ASSESSMENT THAT THE CITY PROVIDED. THE ASSESSMENT THAT THE CITY EXECUTED PER THE SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT, YOU JUST HIGHLIGHTED THAT. SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT REQUIRES THAT WE DO A FACILITIES ASSESSMENT. CORRECT. THAT'S IT. IT DOES NOT SAY YOU HAVE TO PURCHASE. WE CAN THEN ALSO DO AN ASSESSMENT THAT SAYS GIVE US ADDITIONAL OPTIONS. because I don't know if you followed the community safety process, what we heard was this is going to give officers massage rooms. This is going to give officers simulations. And it did not connect explicitly to what are the hours that are required in our current consent decree, what training things or provisions needed to be adhered to. So it was essentially a blanket canvas as opposed to actually outlining what was credibly needed. So what I want to get at is, and you highlight this, alternative proposals could be brought forward for consideration in order to meet the needs of our facilities improvements.

Chair White and Council Member Wansley, yes.

Okay. Next piece, too. Council Member Chavez highlighted this. I think what is very jarring about this report is initially the very first report that we saw. And that was like, COMPLETELY REITERATED IN MULTIPLE PRESS RELEASES AND NEWS ARTICLES WAS WHEN YOU ALL SHARED THAT MINNEAPOLIS SPECIFICALLY IS ACTUALLY FURTHER AHEAD IN THIS FIRST YEAR THAN ANY OTHER CITY THAT WE'RE AWARE OF THAT WAS ALIFA'S UH COMMENTS SO NOW THIS MOST RECENT REPORT SAYING THE CITY OF MINNEAPOLIS AND THE MINNEAPOLIS POLICE DEPARTMENT REMAIN FAR FROM ACHIEVING THE TRANSFORMATIONAL CHANGE NECESSARY TO ADDRESS THE ROOT CAUSES OF RACE-BASED POLICING I mean, that signals also for a lot of the frustration that residents have been hearing to say within less than a year or a year and a half, how do we go from that to this? And how did Alifa see these things kind of fall short? So you mentioned qualitative metrics as being the determination of how to measure progress. Can you specify a little bit more of what that means, of the qualitative metrics that you're employing?

Chair Whiting, Council Member Wansley, it's not just qualitative measures, there are quantitative measures as well. The settlement agreement says, however, we can't measure compliance purely quantitative by a percentage, and that makes a lot of sense. So it's maybe less prescriptive, but I wouldn't say it was entirely. qualitative, the number of policies approved, that's a number. Certainly we'll look at, when we do audits, we will look at percentages. That may not drive the final compliance determination, just to give you an example. If you train 95% of officers in use of force, you say 95% is pretty good. But if you have 5% of officers on the street who are never trained, that's not good enough. But at any given time, there's probably 5% that have been on vacation, left the department, are new. So you would look at the reasons for that untrained percentage, whatever it is. and you would look to what corrective action is the city taking to make sure that ultimately all officers are appropriately trained in use of force. In a different area, some like stop search and arrest officers, these legal concepts get a little vague when you're stopping a car at 2 a.m. and you get many officers doing that. Then you might really be very hard to get 90% compliance on what a pat-down versus an arrest search incident, a search incident to arrest. That's the thing we see. And so you give a little more grace, because I'm not sure there's any department in the country that officers get that right 90% of the time.

So that's what I was saying, it has to be context specific.

And let me just say briefly on the ARC, our job is to evaluate, and share with you what we found. And it's true, in the first year, Minneapolis was off to a good, fast start. They had a lot of people devoted. They were organized. They had a plan. As we reported over the subsequent reports, particularly in the issues of internal affairs, it deteriorated. And that was the point of the slide that I presented, that we were documenting this process all along the way. So it is not as if we said something year one and then pivoted to something completely different in year two, we did report the path along the way.

Yeah, I think it's the rapid deterioration of what was perceived of a really strong start to leading to my next piece that you highlight in the recommendations of one of the hindrances you're seeing is that there hasn't been clear supervisory authority responsibilities and reporting established along with standing meetings for all those who are responsible for this work. I think that was also jarring to see because I know on this body, even when it pertains to health and wellness, we've devoted staffing positions to this work. We've been constantly told that there is a robust implementation unit that's in charge of this work. and also we know there's a chief there's an office of safety commissioner and then there's the ultimate boss mayor jacob fry who oversees this so i think also this two of as we're approaching year three how do we get to a place where it doesn't seem to be there's no chain of command um and i don't think that's a question you could possibly answer that is leading to like what councilmember chavez said i think those are questions for staff themselves of what How are we absent of management structures, as you cited? The last question that I do want to raise in regards to IA and misconduct is looking at what happened with former Chief O'Hara where the administration did not move to put them or put him on administrative leave as other jurisdictions have done when misconduct allegations have taken place. I want to know, are you all advising about any potential examples of policies to the Fry administration on how they can make sure that's not repeated to have actual clear misconduct process um that outlines leave requirements when misconduct allocations are being advanced for mpd officers regardless if they're rank and file or in leadership uh chair white and council member wansley the short answer is yes that is something we're working on currently with the city Okay. Thank you for that. I'll concede to the next questions for my colleagues.

Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Wanzi. And for the expedited questions, I appreciate it. I know we have two more members left, and we are, again, close to losing quorum here. So I'll pass it over to Council President Payne.

Thank you, Chair Whiting. I want to share an appreciation for your optimism and also an appreciation for your attempts at remaining neutral and objective. But I think those things are a little bit intention, right? And as we go into year three and four, what we are looking to you for is that independent and objective truth telling about what's actually happening. And I think that optimism can sometimes, what we ultimately need from our independent monitor is credibility. and i think what councilmember wansley was highlighting you know you know most impressive department we've ever seen in a settlement agreement to failing to meet like the core foundational objectives that that's a credibility risk right and as we get into year three and four i'm really wanting to know how are we, it's not just that we have our policies in place on paper, it's not just that we've trained to those policies, but how are we knowing that it's actually translating to meaningful change on the ground and in the community on how officers are conducting themselves. And I think that I wanna understand as we get into year three, what is that criteria that we're using for evaluation or audit? And I'd love to hear if you have a meaningful distinction between those two approaches to make sure that we have a credible source of truth, because objectively, our former chief interfered in an investigation that was sitting in ia which you've highlighted has been a deteriorating functionality within the department which translates all the way through the chain of command to say that you don't need to take investigation seriously because the person at the top certainly doesn't. That's what that communicates. And we appreciate the optimism about progress, but I think what we need is credible truth about that progress. And the credible truth is that we had a chief interfering in an investigation, undermining any concept of accountability at a cultural level. And so if you could just speak to year three, four,

AUDIT AND EVALUATION AND HOW YOU'RE GOING TO MAINTAIN CREDIBILITY AS IT RELATES TO SOME OF THOSE EXERCISES CHAIR WHITING COUNCIL PRESIDENT PAIN I APPRECIATE THE SENTIMENT AND THE CONCERN UH I DON'T KNOW THAT OPTIMISM IS INCONSISTENT WITH OBJECTIVITY AND I THINK THAT IF YOU THINK ABOUT IT IF YOU LOOK AT OUR REPORTS I THINK THEY ACTUALLY DEMONSTRATE OUR OBJECTIVITY IN THE First report, the city was pretty happy with what we said about them. You can imagine this report less so. Sometimes one side will like what we say and another side might not. But our job is to share what we see. And when I say optimism, I deeply, I appreciate optimism. The trauma that the city has been through and the skepticism, as I think I've said publicly, many people think of us as the most recent promise waiting to be broken. And we take our responsibility to see this through seriously. But it is also true when we say we work every day with people in the department who are really working hard to get this done, some who came to the department to get this done. And I don't want to be unfair to those people. That's why That's why in my answer in the media was, well, sometimes the chief was not always an ally, but it didn't mean the department is not, or most people are. So I think there's a balance there. I think there's some limits on the way we report. We only write two reports a year, so we really only have those two opportunities to cover a lot of change. We do have three public meetings, and when we meet with people, we tell them what's going on. So I understand some of the constraints on that. process but I think if you look at our findings we stand by them and I don't think anyone could reasonably second-guess them to turn to your broader question about

Audits versus evaluation.

Thank you, audits. So, yes, so when we do audits, like any, we will look, if we're doing searches, let's look at searches, we'll look at was there articulable suspicion? Was there probable cause? Was there procedural justice? We go through a very elaborate checklist of all of the elements that the settlement agreement addresses. And then we'll take a sample of reports and we'll look at reports and body worn camera and we will review them for whether or not they meet those elements. That would be sort of on the performance piece when you're looking at what officers do on the street. Otherwise we do audit by system. It's off? It's off? Is it on now? There we go.

Sorry.

I must have bumped it. So that's how we do those audits and we share that methodology and the results so you'll be able to see it.

And then a follow up is, as it pertains to race based policing,

figured out a methodology to suss that out and be able to bring some credibility around knowing that we are in compliance with some of those aspects of the settlement agreement chair white and council president payne we have not yet that is one of the thorniest issues in policing we dealt with it in new orleans we'll be looking at it here but i i don't know that anyone has come up with a widely accepted way of looking at disparities but is it something You know, we'd love to be the first. There are different ways of looking at it. We'll be assessing all of those.

And then my last question is, we have been pushing this administration time and time again to get to a finalized discipline matrix. What's the holdup? When can we expect one? I think I'm losing patience, and I think we just need a hard timeline. And if I'm at a loss at what to do, what tools do you have to get us to a definitive discipline matrix, especially as it relates to having some way of accommodating THE CHIEF'S ROLE AND WHEN THE CHIEF NEEDS DISCIPLINE.

THE CHIEF'S ROLE AND WHEN THE CHIEF NEEDS DISCIPLINE. THE CHIEF'S ROLE AND WHEN THE CHIEF NEEDS DISCIPLINE. THE CHIEF'S ROLE AND WHEN THE CHIEF NEEDS DISCIPLINE. THE CHIEF'S ROLE AND WHEN THE CHIEF NEEDS DISCIPLINE. THE CHIEF'S ROLE AND WHEN THE THE CHIEF NEEDS DISCIPLINE. THE CHIEF'S ROLE AND WHEN THE THE CHIEF NEEDS DISCIPLINE. THE CHIEF'S ROLE AND WHEN THE THE CHIEF NEEDS DISCIPLINE. THE CHIEF'S ROLE AND WHEN THE THE CHIEF NEEDS DISCIPLINE. THE CHIEF'S ROLE AND WHEN THE THE CH THE EXISTING MATRIX HAD TOO FEW DISCIPLINARY LEVELS AND THERE THE EXISTING MATRIX HAD TOO FEW DISCIPLINARY LEVELS AND THERE THE EXISTING MATRIX HAD TOO FEW DISCIPLINARY LEVELS AND THERE WAS TOO MUCH DISCRETION, SO WE WAS TOO FEW DISCRETION, SO WE WAS TOO FEW DISCRETION, SO WE HAVE WORK WITH THE CITY. HAVE WORK WITH THE CITY. HAVE WORK WITH THE CITY. WE NOW HAVE A FRAMEWORK, I WE NOW HAVE A FRAMEWORK, I WE NOW HAVE A FRAMEWORK, I THINK IT'S GOT SEVEN LEVELS, THINK IT'S GOT SEVEN LEVELS, THINK IT'S GOT SEVEN LEVELS, WHICH WE THINK IS APPROPRIATE. WHICH WE THINK IS APPROPRIATE. WHICH WE THINK OF THOSE BUCKETS WITH WHAT KIND OF OFFENSES, WHAT KIND OF OF THOSE BUCKETS WITH WHAT KIND OF OFFENSES, WHAT KIND OF OF THOSE BUCKETS WITH WHAT KIND OF OFFENSES, WHAT KIND OF PENALTIES, AND THEY'LL COME OFFENSES, WHAT KIND OF PENALTIES, AND THEY'LL COME OFFENSES, WHAT KIND OF PENALTIES, AND THEY'LL COME BACK TO US. PENALTIES, AND THEY'LL COME BACK TO US. PENALTIES, AND THEY'LL COME BACK TO US. THE WORK IS UNDERGOING. BACK TO US. THE WORK IS UNDERGOING. BACK TO US. THE WORK IS UNDERGOING. I DON'T HAVE A DATE FOR WHEN IT THE WORK IS UNDERGOING. I DON'T HAVE A DATE FOR WHEN IT THE WORK IS UNDERGOING. I DON'T HAVE A D FOR THE FILL-IN, FOR THE EXACT VIOLATIONS FOR EACH LEVEL OF THE MATRIX TO BE PROVIDED TO US.

I'M GOING TO END IT THERE SO THAT MY OTHER COLLEAGUES CAN GET THEIR QUESTIONS.

THANK YOU AS WELL, COUNCIL PRESIDENT PAYNE. COUNCIL MEMBER STEVENSON.

THANK YOU. Thank you. I have a couple of questions for you and then a couple of comments in general that I'll be looking at you, but they won't be to you. First off, in the presentation you said at one point that something was held up because IA had a preferred alternative vendor. Can you talk about that? Just for the sake of time, the way it was laid out made it sound like they wanted to give a contract to a preferred vendor, which to me sounded like corruption. So I just wanted to hear from you.

I DID NOT MEAN CORRUPTION IN ANY WAY. THERE WAS JUST IN THE EARLY STAGES AS THEY WERE SORTING THROUGH WHICH WAY TO GO. DIFFERENT VENDORS OFFER DIFFERENT CAPABILITIES AND PACKAGES AND SYSTEMS AND IT WAS JUST ONE OF THOSE BUT IT'S NOT IN ANY WAY.

OKAY. IT RAISED RED FLAGS FOR ME AROUND THAT AND YOU'RE SAYING THAT'S NOT THE CASE?

NO. THANK YOU FOR ALLOWING ME TO CLARIFY THAT. THAT WAS NOT IN ANY WAY MY INTENT.

OKAY. THANK YOU. I guess this isn't a question for you, but one of the things that you highlighted is that they were not holding standing meetings. And I'm just really at a loss. We have standing meetings for everything. Everyone has standing meetings for everything. I mean, this is before the baseline. So I'm frankly at a deep loss. Yeah, there was a lot of very concerning things in this. And all of the things in your presentation and in the report that you highlight that we're not on a path by 2028 to have complete policy, standard operating procedures, training requirements, among many other things. That's just the one I could write down before the slide flipped. It is really highlighting for me, and this isn't to you, sir. This is really highlighting to me who is not in this room right now. Commissioner Barnett couldn't bother to be here. The mayor or someone from his office couldn't bother to be here. The chief of police, the interim chief of police couldn't bother to be here. There's a lot of folks on this body who couldn't bother to stay or be here. And it's really highlighting for me the importance that this has for other people. We heard a lot about uh... the settlement agreement recently and how important it is and now the the absence of certain folks is screaming loudly uh... the frustration that you're sensing for me uh... is coming from my experience in the experience of my community uh... my personal experience of it being against sorry it being against policy for a minneapolis police officer to shoot someone in the head with a rubber bullet and yet that happened to me while that policy was in place And no discipline has ever been levied against this officer. My community, one of my constituents was murdered by ICE and my community really thought MPD was going to protect them from ICE and that did not happen. And yeah, so George Floyd, I represent much of George Floyd Square, not the actual spot where he was murdered, but the rest of it. YOU KNOW, MY COMMUNITY AND MYSELF, WE ARE JUST SITTING HERE EXTREMELY FRUSTRATED WITH THE LACK OF PROGRESS AND THEN WITH THE LACK OF ATTENTION. I MEAN, FOLKS WHO ARE NOT IN THIS ROOM CAN'T SEE THAT THE SEATS ARE EMPTY. NOBODY IS HERE. AND I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT COMMUNITY MEMBERS. I'M TALKING ABOUT WHAT IF WE HAD A QUESTION WE WANTED TO ASK MPD. I MEAN, A SINGLE QUESTION THAT WE WANTED TO ASK AND HAVE ANSWERED. AND THEY ARE NOT HERE. The mayor's office, other folks from the administration, they were here for earlier items. This is the lowest hanging fruit to make progress. The lowest hanging fruit, aside from standing meetings, to make progress on the settlement agreement, and yet here we are. And so I'm flabbergasted, I'm dismayed, I'm a lot of things. Yeah, I have some other things written down that maybe I'll have to skip, but I guess I just want to reiterate that the message that I am receiving by nobody being in this room to answer any questions is that this doesn't matter to them. And if that is not the case, then I encourage those folks to be in this room next time. Yeah, yeah, really, really disappointed. Thank you for the report. Thank you for answering our questions.

Thank you.

THANKS CHAIR WHITING AS WE END THIS CONVERSATION TODAY I JUST WANT TO CHALLENGE THE NOTION THAT THE RESPONSIBILITY IS JUST ON THE CHIEF AND THAT BECAUSE THE CHIEF THERE WAS A CHANGE IN LEADERSHIP THE ISSUES ARE RESOLVED THAT IS JUST NOT TRUE THAT IS HOW WE WILL LEAD TO MORE CONSENT DECREES IN THE FUTURE THAT'S AN EXCUSE AND AN EXCUSE IS NOT ACCOUNTABILITY SO I JUST WANTED TO MENTION THAT I READ THROUGH OUR COURT OF ORDINANCES THE CHIEF OF POLICE UNDER THE IS UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE MAYOR And I at least wanted to mention that. So I just want to be clear that, to Alifa, that just because, and to my colleagues, just because there's a new chief does not mean issue is solved. So I just want to make that clear. There's also the role of the Office of Community Safety. What is their role in this? And again, I want to echo the concerns and maybe we should just delay this item a cycle so we can have folks from the administration answer our questions next week. SO I WILL MAKE A MOTION TO DELAY THE CYCLE. THE CYCLE. THAT WAY ADMIN ANSWERS THE THAT WAY ADMIN ANSWERS THE QUESTIONS NEXT WEEK. QUESTIONS NEXT WEEK. SECOND. SECOND.

DO WE HAVE IT? DO WE HAVE IT? I MEAN. I MEAN. AND I WOULD JUST LIKE TO KNOW, AND I WOULD JUST LIKE TO KNOW, TOO, JUST A PIECE ON THAT. TOO, JUST A PIECE ON THAT. RIGHT. RIGHT. THE HOPE FOR THIS PRESENTATION THE HOPE FOR THIS PRESENTATION ITSELF IS SPECIFICALLY, RIGHT, WE ITSELF IS SPECIFICALLY, RIGHT, WE WILL HAVE TWO OPPORTUNITIES baked into this committee, particularly ask questions of our independent evaluator, particularly on how they work through and come to the decisions that are in those reports and talk through any of the evaluative process to get to this point where we're seeing with MPD. I SHARE THE SAME, I THINK, CONCERNS AS MY COLLEAGUES HERE, PARTICULARLY ABOUT INFORMATION AND BEING ABLE TO HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO ASK QUESTIONS OF MPD. WE ARE WORKING WITH MPD SPECIFICALLY. INTERNALLY THEY HAVE A REFORM STAT LIKE COMMUNITY, SORRY, WITH INTERNAL MEETING. THEY DO THOSE, I BELIEVE, MONTHLY. THE HOPE FOR THIS BODY We are working again on the cadence now, but having those again baked into this committee and this body so that we do have the ability to ask those questions of MPD in a space that is outside of the work, particularly that Alifa does. I think the hope for this committee is to do that work specifically with Alifa, have the opportunity of Alifa to ask within their role on independent evaluation, and then ask about the actual progress and the day-to-day work that MPD does. And so that is why we've kind of delineated the two versions of that so that we have time and ample time. The hope, I think, again, is bimonthly to ask any questions on reform work of MPD in a specific setting. with MPD here, and the hope, again, is for the chief to answer those questions and present that, and then, again, ask for a venue with Alifa to ask monitoring questions that are above and outside of the broader context. And just the piece there, I know kind of, as we are wrapping up here specifically, I guess we have a motion before us, right, council member? I guess what I'm trying to get at is,

obviously this is about oliva but the city has a role here the administration mpd office of community safety no one is here in this room it is literally empty we have questions about the report how are we supposed to address accountability if we can ask ask questions about what we are sealing and what my opinion is failing to meet our settlement agreement goals year one and two I want the administration to answer our questions. Absolutely. Is that going to be on the agenda next week? My reason for delaying this item is so we can ask those questions and get answers to our questions next cycle. Another way to address this is by putting it on the agenda, which I'm happy to submit an RCA.

Yeah.

you know, walk on an LDFO council requesting them to come next week. But like, the easiest thing here, because it's less work to do, is just delaying this item cycle so MPD can answer our questions next cycle. That was my reason for delay.

I mean, if that's the will of the body, I think if it's helpful, I think let's have a conversation as well outside of the setting here to figure out what cadence is helpful to have these conversations, particularly for MPDs. I think we're all on the same page here of wanting

MPD and specific members from the enterprise to answer questions about the property I think if we have them next cycle, that would be great and then you figure out the cadence after that Sure, so I'm happy to withdraw my motion if if we can get on the agenda We are in conversation with with MPD leadership at the moment.

And so I think that's something that they would be open to Councilmember Warren did you have question or was that just I

We sure do. We will wrap up with that. I think we will ask then the clerk's office, and thank you, Mr. Douglas, for the presentation. I appreciate your time being here to receive and file.

Wait, I don't think we have clarity. I think the motion is still on the table. It has not been withdrawn. I will say my opinion. Why do we want to work on an RCA if we don't have to? would just let's just forward it let's just take this to the next cycle and then our alifa presenters thank you so much for being here and then you don't have to be here next time around that can just be administration i think we should just vote on the motion and save ourselves some work

Yeah, and council member, I think the only worry for me, if we, and this might be a question for the clerk's office, if we move forward with, or sorry, delay this a cycle, does the topic only have to remain germane to the Alifa presentation? Because I think the hope is that we could ask any version of questions for MPD, and that's why I think if we remove it, it can be outside of just the Alifa presentation. Because that is my worry, is that it would have to be specific to the Alifa presentation.

I believe it would have to be specific to the title.

I just want to make sure that next cycle, which is literally, I think, July 28th, there is a report or an item on the agenda that is going to allow us to ask for an update on the progress of the LEFA report that shows we're completely failing. That's it.

Our office is more than happy to get it on the agenda. Yeah, our office is more than happy to get it on the agenda.

Okay, so that will be on the agenda. If anybody has a different opinion, I'm happy to answer.

Can I just say this? I think it's also important that you know whoever it is that you need to get those answers from, that those individuals are who you are requesting to be here. Because you can ask the same questions over and over again, but if the people who have those answers aren't requested to be here, you're not going to get the answers you're looking for.

Council Member Stevenson. Yeah, I think the report is expansive slash specific enough that I would prefer that we just move this to next cycle and we can stick exclusively to the report slash presentation. And then we can, I mean, the world's our oyster, we could just every single time have additional, which I would prefer. But my strong preference is that we stick with the original motion and just postpone.

Yep, if that's the will of the body, I think it's this.

Yeah, and if, let's just say that we find out from the clerk's after council that we have to submit an RCA, we'll just do that. Yeah, exactly. So, good, let's just keep it.

Perfect. So it sounds like, do we have to then remove since it was withdrawn, or?

It's a motion to continue one cycle. Yeah. Second. We're still on the table. Just do a voice vote then.

perfect thank you uh clerks if we're able to do a voice vote that would be wonderful uh all those in favor please say aye aye that is passed wonderful and then i will pass it back to our chair without objection we are adjourned