Board of Commissioners - Regular Meeting

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Well, good morning, everyone. Good morning. We are going to call the Ramsey County Board of Commissioners meeting to order. We want to welcome you to the Budget Committee of the Whole. Today, the Economic Growth and Community Investment Service team continues a series of presentations that focus on performance measures from each department. Today, we are excited to take a close look at measures related to areas like affordable housing, road maintenance, library utilization, and park and rec programs. These performance measures are already available for review online in the Open Performance section of the County's Open Data Quarter. If you want more information about the performance measures presented today, check out the ECGI Department Dashboard, which stands for Economic Growth and Community Investment, which have additional charts and background information. With that, I would like to pass this over to the Deputy County Manager, Carrie Collins, to start the Economic Growth and Community Investment presentation. Welcome, CCM Collins. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much, Madam Chair. Good morning to you all, to the commissioners here. I'm pleased to kick off the economic growth and community investment performance measure budget presentations today. But like my colleagues, I'll start with a moment of gratitude and thank the many people involved in this effort. Thank you so much first to the board for setting the priorities, strategic priorities, vision, mission, and goals of the organization. Thank you specifically to our administrative services director Lorena DeWalt. This is her first time through as Our for all of the administrative services director and the directors. They've knocked it out of the park. So thank you so much Thank you to the planning administrative strategy team to the budget team to our EGC Our leaders who have prepared the measures that you'll see today to our County manager as well for her leadership and guidance. I The economic growth and community service team includes the assessor's office, community and economic development, libraries, parks and recreation, and public works. As the county manager mentioned in the supplemental budget remarks, environmental health will transition to become a new environmental services department and join the service team in January of 27. The service team represents a cross-functional area within Ramsey County That plays a strategic role in the county's mission to build a vibrant, equitable, and prosperous community. So why are we here today? At its core, performance measurement is about asking a simple question, are we making a difference in the lives of our residents? This year, we started with Ramsey County's strategic priorities and worked backward. We asked, what outcomes matter most to our community, and how will we know if we are making progress? The measures you'll see today are the result of years of work. Our directors have spent significant time refining them, including past work with the Center for Economic Inclusion, to ensure they are meaningful, measurable, and connected to our strategic priorities. We intentionally selected a mix of measures. Some look at community impact. Some look at operational effectiveness or organizational capacity. But together, they help us move beyond simply counting what we do and instead asking whether our work is achieving the outcomes we intend. But numbers alone do not tell the story. The challenges facing our residents rarely fit neatly within one department, and neither do the solutions. Housing, infrastructure, access to services and economic opportunity all require collaboration across Ramsey County. That is why these measures are not really about individual department success or failure. They represent the work of one Ramsey County. When we see progress, it is often because departments such as finance, HR, communications, the county attorney's office, and others are working alongside our service teams to deliver better outcomes for residents. And ultimately, that is what these measures represent, the everyday experiences of the people we serve. They represent someone searching for a home they can afford, a family enjoying one of our parks, a resident searching for connection, information, or inspiration at our libraries, or simply the peace of mind that comes from knowing the roads and the infrastructure and services they rely on are there when they need them. We cannot measure every part of the human experience, but these measures give us an opportunity to pause, look back and ask whether we are meeting expectations and whether we are meeting them equitably across all of our communities. As the county manager and others have stressed, these performance measures are one piece of a larger story. Additional information that measures performance more comprehensively can be found on the open data portal, through department annual reports, guiding plans such as the economic competitiveness and inclusion plan, climate equity action plan, or through initiatives like Building Stronger Together. Collectively, these tools help us understand whether our investments are producing the results we want and where we may need to course correct. And that work has not happened in isolation or without challenges. This past year, our teams have continued to deliver core services while responding to emerging community needs, shifting priorities, significant organizational changes, and difficult budget conversations. Through all of that, I've been incredibly proud of the resilience and commitment of this service team. As we look ahead, we know there will continue to be ongoing challenges, particularly around funding, legislative priorities, and the very real strain to maintain our facilities and infrastructure. Today you will hear more about those challenges, but you'll also hear about opportunities. You'll hear how these departments are rethinking investments, responding to community voice, building partnerships, and finding new ways to deliver services more effectively. Some of these investments and or services may need your advocacy at the legislature this session. You'll hear about that as well as we go along here today. Lastly, as we move into the next iteration of the Economic Inclusion and Competitiveness Plan, we have an opportunity to not just look at what external variables may be holding our economy back, but we can look at an intentional look inward as an organization at how we do our work, where we invest, and how best to develop a next level plan that informs our greatest value document, our budget. So thank you so much for this opportunity to have the conversation today. And with that, I'll now ask Director Josh Olson to kick us off with community and economic development.

Thank you.

Good morning, Madam Chair, Commissioners. Thank you for the opportunity to be here today and to present on the Community and Economic Development Department. I will do my best to refrain from our particular acronyms and other things, but I may drop into the inevitable piece of saying CED for our Community Economic Development team or a few other things to describe our funding. The Community and Economic Development Department's core functions support the development, maintenance of county affordable housing infrastructure, expand wealth creation and generation opportunities through homeownership, as well as affordable housing developments, redevelop underutilized properties, support the remediation and cleanup of polluted lands, navigate economic development resources, and encouraging job growth. While the portfolio of programming and projects is diverse, ranging from a housing program to redevelopment programming and projects to an emerging area of focus, which is our enhanced supports for small business and entrepreneurs, CED's budget, And day-to-day operations continue to center around investing in affordable housing infrastructure. Our Community Economic Development Department, CED's North Star and Department Work Plan, as Deputy County Manager Collins noted, is found in the strategies and the recommended actions of the Economic Competitiveness and Inclusion Plan, commonly referred to as the ECI Plan. informed by the Climate Equity Action Plan. And that further informs our work on a day-to-day basis and across all of our different programs. A fuller picture of CED's work and impact can be found in our annual report. And I'm pleased to pass along that our 2025 annual report was just recently published this week. So moving on to performance measures. Over the last several budget bienniums, our Community Economic Development Department has approached the development of performance measures in a thoughtful and deliberate way, ensuring, as Deputy County Manager Collins noted, that they're meaningful and impactful, but also practical and also a strong illustration of our Community Economic Development Department's story and evolution. As such, CED's current suite of performance measures reflects years of continued importance placed by the county as it centers around a couple key areas, including the opportunities for wealth generation, as well as ensuring the production and preservation of deeply affordable units. These two areas are strongly connected to the county's strategic priorities through a strengthened housing continuum, as well as central pillars to the economic competitiveness and inclusion plan and its ongoing implementation. So wealth generation programming, which is a core focus of the CED team, is critical because as we've learned, and as many of us know, homeownership is one of the most significant ways for families to build and preserve wealth over time. Down payment assistance helps households overcome the largest barrier to purchasing a home, while homeowner rehab and repair programs help existing homeowners protect that value of that asset. Together, these investments create a pathway from access to home ownership, to stable housing, to preservation of home value, and to intergenerational wealth. Our first measure, as noted on your screen today, was first established in the 2020-21 budget process. This was prior to the arrival of the HRA, or the Housing and Redevelopment Authority, levy, and prior to major changes made to home ownership programs. With some limited exceptions, the county's geographic focus on homeownership programs has been on suburban Ramsey County, meaning outside of the city of St. Paul. The origins of this decision are in large part to federal entitlement programs, including CDBG and HOME, and you'll have to pause to acknowledge the acronym there, the Community Development Block Grant Program, and home, which is really just home, home partnership, where the city of St. Paul also receives a direct allocation and they are a direct recipient. So Ramsey County serves as the direct recipient for the remainder of the county, specifically suburban Ramsey County. Over the years, the city of St. Paul has added to its array of aligned tools and through its greater funding has built a much more robust array of programming supporting homeowners. However, following the arrival of this metric back just a few years ago, our community economic development team conducted evaluation on our own programming. albeit limited in its funding as well as its geographic scope. Programming showed consistent participation, but a misalignment with the county's equity goals. As a result, the Community Economic Development Department completed a complete revamping of the down payment assistance program in particular, ensuring alignment with the market realities of today and that also resulted in expanded access. This measure was later revised to include disaggregation of homeownership programming by race and ethnicity. I ask, why is this important? Well, it begins to identify how we undress unequal starting points for families and households. Not every household enters the housing market with the same access to savings, family wealth, and inherited assets. Exclusionary practices such as redlining, racial covenants, and et cetera have further widened these starting points. This program, which is, again, targeted in one particular area of the county in most cases, helped to narrow the gap by providing targeted resources where the market conditions alone cannot provide equitable access. Research and reporting by many of our community partners, including the Federal Reserve Bank of Minnesota, noted in 2024 that among its group of 12 peer regions or MSAs, Metropolitan Statistical Areas, Our Minneapolis-St. Paul MSA had by far the largest gap between black and white homeownership at 46.9%. The next highest MSA, Pittsburgh, was 33%. The disparities are real. Our programming also seeks to help expand access to neighborhoods of new opportunity. While financial assistance to housing is available across communities, households are better positioned to choose where they live based on their needs and goals, rather than being limited Even today, when excluding the county's first home program, only three of the 19 Ramsey County cities have operated a down payment assistance program. St. Paul is certainly one of them, as well as Roseville and Shoreview. But this has resulted in a patchwork of a county where opportunities for first-time and first-generation homeowners is limited. Our first-time homebuyer program, First Home, and it comes with two parts, First Home, meaning your first time buying, and First Generation, your first generation to buy a home, averages amounts to about $2 million a year and serves about 50 residents. Its outcomes continually exceed, as noted on the screen today, our own CED goals, and we've adjusted those over time, but also regional metrics. The county's ongoing compliment is to the City of St. Paul's programming to ensure that access to home ownership and wealth generation opportunities exist across the entire county. Equitable access to opportunity means ensuring that a household's ability to build wealth isn't determined solely by whether they have inherited wealth or enough savings to overcome the barriers of homeownership. Down payment assistance opens the doors to homeownership while rehab and repair programs protect that value of that investment and provide stable housing to that household. A key theme of the last five years since CED became an official department, it has sought to fill unserved gaps within homeownership. One area that is uniquely located within suburban Ramsey County is within our manufactured home communities. They serve as an important part of the housing continuum, and our critical repair program addresses those unique challenges. UNIQUE CHALLENGE CREATED BY MANUFACTURED HOMEOWNERSHIP. AND SO THIS IS ABOUT US ACKNOWLEDGING OUR KEY ROLE IN PROVIDING AFFORDABILITY THROUGH THE COUNTY. OVER THE LAST YEAR OUR COMMUNITY ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT TEAM HAS BEEN INTENTIONAL ABOUT TAKING OUR STAFF MEETINGS TO DIFFERENT COMMUNITIES ACROSS THE COUNTY. ONE OF THOSE RECENT MEETINGS WITH THE CITY OF LITTLE CANADA AND I WOULD LIKE TO JUST PROVIDE THIS QUICK STORY WE ENCOUNTERED AN IMPORTANT STATISTIC THAT WAS SHARED TO US BY THAT STAFF. that 10% of all housing units within that community are located within manufactured home communities. But before we had stepped in and provided this critical repair grant program during COVID pandemic, there were very limited options towards residents within these communities to build and sustain their commitment to that community. And so it's those examples of where we get out, we sit down with community members, we sit down with city staff, and we unearth those particular data points that further our work, further our opportunities for partnership, but also identify how important different housing is in different parts of the county. Together, these programs that make up this program consolidated or combined measure of all of our homeownership-related programs in CED, help provide households access, maintain and benefit from their asset, while providing long-term financial stability and intergenerational wealth. I would be remiss if I didn't mention we have some work to do within this measure. We certainly have work within our programs, but within this measure is that we've begun to understand that these measures the disaggregation of information has definitely informed us, but there's opportunities to go deeper. While we have seen certainly increased use within our programs, we know that even within these particular areas that are defined on the screen today, not all, excuse me, not all experiences within those communities are the same. And so they present us with a unique set of challenges, but a unique set of questions and opportunities as we look to expand the program and increase its utilization moving forward. In 2025, community economic development further added a measure that analyzed the percentage of first-time homebuyers who were all first-generation homebuyers. This was important because, as I noted earlier, Ramsey County faces persistent racial disparities in homeownership that have a direct correlation to the accumulation of wealth generation. So first-gen homebuyers First-generation homebuyers are those who, in addition to their previous generations, have never owned a home. First home operates, and I want to make this at times clear, that we operate in a first-come, first-served basis. And as a result, the percentage of first-time or first-generation participants is certainly susceptible to the fluctuation from year to year. If folks come in and they are a first-time homebuyer, we don't turn them away. But it's clear from the data that we have a market that we certainly have narrowed in on in supporting, and that is in the area of first-generation homebuyers. While this represents a limitation in this measure, but by measuring the distinctions in the types of homeowners, we can begin to better analyze wealth accumulation over time. These measures help CED to evaluate effectiveness, efficiency, the strategies in which we do to deploy our program through marketing and partnerships and relationships, but also in their ability to move broader community indicators within homeownership. One of those particular areas where we've had significant work and we've continued to deepen our partnerships with particular communities is within the economic mobility hub and connecting that work. As it was noted on the previous slide, we're continuing to find ways to connect with particular communities across the county. Community economic development programs often, as I sometimes will refer to, often dwell in the sticks and bricks of housing infrastructure. And so our homeownership programming is certainly one of the ways in which we interact more directly with residents on a day-to-day basis. And so over the last year, we've heard from many folks throughout that process. And I share one story that we learned from a lender who was supporting a homeowner who had quite a bit of emotion and excitement as they were the first in their family to ever own a home. We later learned of a different buyer who was able to find a home in Ramsey County that cut their commute by 45 minutes and was closer to their job. Just examples of ways in which our program is moving across the county and also helping folks gain wealth in different ways. In addition to the stories, we also get to see the urgently needed improvements. And so there's an image on your screen of a family whose entryway is crumbling to the ground and how a little bit of support can help transform that particular entrance, but also create safety and long-term preservation of that particular asset. So in addition to these stories, our CED's homeownership program helps to reduce displacement, maintain the quality of existing housing stock across the county, strengthen neighborhoods, and ensure the lower and moderate income households who can participate in these programs are benefiting from wealth building through homeownership.

Okay, let's pause for a moment for a couple of questions. Commissioner Jevonson.

Yes, thank you so much for this. Going back to the first performance measure, I'm just curious. So having lived in suburban Ramsey County for almost, well, three and a half decades now, I will just say, you know, when our kids were going through school in Roseville, the percentage of of kids of color and the diversification of people went from about 15% to over half in the 15 to 18 years that we were there. And then when I was working in White Bear Lake, that school districts were also seeing those changing in demographics. So I'm really happy to see. that we, as a county, are working to make sure that home ownership is following that demographic growth, that the people who are working and going to school and living in our communities also have access to home ownership. The question I have is, are the statistics here just grounding them in... the demographics of potential homeowners in the context of overall home ownership. I believe this is a percentage of people participating in our program, which is what we have control over. But I'm wondering also if there's a way to place this in the greater context of how those communities demographics are shifting. And the reason I brought up the school issue is because the younger generations, you'll see that shift faster than people who are actually in a position to own homes. So the idea of having a first grade have a very diverse first-grade cohort does not mean you have as diverse of a 25-year-old cohort. Does that make sense? So I'm just wondering if that's something you could maybe share with us later, if you have any indication of that.

Yeah, Madam Chair, Commissioner Jevonsingh, I alluded to this point that we are exceeding regional metrics, but I can certainly provide that kind of further grounding in terms of what the demographics as well as the homeownership connections within suburban Ramsey County in particular because that is our area of focus for our programming. And so yeah, we can kind of overlap those and begin to see a little bit more directly where our impact or where we are not meeting those needs too.

And I'm also curious to see if there's any exponential or a positive factor of the cities who also had their own programs, meaning if Shoreview and Roseville have been encouraging some of their programs as well, do we see that having kind of primed the pump or created a culture of those programs being available or any kind of way that we are coordinating them, if we're seeing the results greater in certain communities, and maybe we have more work to do in other communities. I'm just thinking of the role that we can play in encouraging our local partners to take advantage of whatever levers we have to create communities where people can live and thrive.

Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair, Commissioner Jemison. Yes, I mean, so one area where we do absolutely partner with communities, whether they have a program or not, is that we work with them and support, you know, when residents or referrals are coming in. Certainly those communities who have had longstanding programs, who have some kind of some knowledge of how they work over years and years and years, certainly is a way that we layer on top of that to further entice and support residents to move into those communities. I noted in there that there are three. And I wanted to make that known in part because that's part of CED's story where we did, we in some ways provided the down payment assistance program on behalf of the county. It was funded through the Community Development Block Grant Program and First Home. And the reality was is that it was limited. every year, and misaligned with the marketplace in the end. Because what we were offering, what the federal government had kind of laid restrictions upon, meant that most homes were ineligible for this first-time program. And so I think through that revamping, through community conversations, at times through some of that coordination and layering, we're actually able to kind of spread our reach across the entire county. So we work, you know, some of the programs, a lot of the communities have rehab programs, and that's an area of focus for them. And so that's where we do a little bit more, you know, deep connection. But the interesting thing is, is over the last several months, we've seen communities step forward and say, how can we, how do we utilize our own housing sales tax dollars that we've received? to layer on top of your programs. How do we step into that space for the first time in supporting manufactured home residents? Because we see the challenges. We see the calls for service. We get the phone calls related to individuals who are in dire need of repairs on their home. And so I think that's the opportunity that we're starting to see. The seeds that we're kind of... planted here in the last few years through our programs, that I think we're starting to not just see our impact solely focused within these numbers, but start to kind of spill over into other areas.

Well, and I just want to say that throughout my time, I've been at a number of these community economic development and different kinds of meetings with the municipalities and community where Ramsey County has been at the table and providing information. And I really do appreciate that as do people in community.

Thank you. All right. Thank you. Commissioner Zahm.

Thank you, Madam Chair. First off, I just want to say thank you for selecting these two measures, especially about our impact in the community and then also identifying who or which residents are utilizing the program. That is really the only way that we can build in and make sure that there aren't any racial inequities in access to our programs. I know you mentioned some of this too around the limitations of the program. What is the average number of families that we're helping through these two programs?

Yeah, I think so through our homeownership program, so Madam Chair, Commissioner Zhang, we support about 50 families a year related to our down payment assistance program. So the two tracks that consist of there. And then I think somewhere in the neighborhood of 20... I'm 30, 30. Sorry, I'm getting a little bit of support from my deputy director. Thank you, Max. 30 residents within our homeowner rehab programs. And we've seen a steady increase in that. We are revamping of those particular rehab and critical repair programs. Those were started during the kind of the latter parts of the pandemic. And we've kind of seen a steady increase in those programs over time.

And do you also have data on kind of the family size or is that asked?

Madam Chair, Commissioner, you know, I don't have that at my fingertips. I'd love to provide that back to you.

Okay, yeah, I think it's really important as we talk about and how we invest in our programs and then also just as where we've been talking about how we may have a bigger impact and where is that, Overall, we need more housing units, period, across all the continuum of housing. So that's why if our cities are doing rehab programs, the state has home ownership programs, I don't think it's a bad time for us to consider about our role in supporting the development of more housing units as well as more on the continuum that includes both supportive housing and other types of housing as well. So I would just offer that. And then again, I just want to emphasize how important this data is in our program that county manager, I think it's a really good example of programs looking at who users are and also to see if it's reflective of our community and that's the same expectation I would have for community engagement is to make sure that You know, we're keeping track of data, making sure that, you know, in which communities are being heard, which ones aren't. And then when we also look at our data about using our programs, it's like who's showing up and who's showing not. And then the natural curiosity is like, oh, why aren't they using our programs? and identifying partners or having small focus groups to consider that. So that's just what I wanted to name about overall what I would like to see in the next two years for supplemental budget and performance measures.

Just want to piggyback a little bit off of the first-time homebuyers. You're supporting 50 individuals, 50 families, I guess, at $2 million. And was that inclusive of the 30 residents for the rehab program, or was that additional dollars?

Madam Chair, that's an addition. So the $2 million is kind of focused on specifically the down payment assistance programs. And again, that's funded predominantly through our HRA levy. Our rehab programs are predominantly funded through our CDBG funding, so our federal funding. I think that's in the neighborhood of I think 250, 200,000 or so. Yeah. give or take, so certainly not a significant portion of like CED's total budget, but certainly an impactful area, and frankly a really good utilization of how, or great example of how we utilize federal funding within this broader continuum, because this seems to be an area where we can actually deploy it with relative ease and speed.

Thank you. Commissioner McMurtry.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you, Director Olson, for this presentation. My question is around the percentage of the first-time homeowners who are also first-generation homebuyers. As we look, I guess I would love to get insights on the county's role as we look towards the future and knowing that there are a few developments, redevelopment projects that are coming our way, whether it's as Rice Creek Commons or in Falcon Heights or in St. Paul, even though we don't serve as the land use authority for these properties, what role do we have to better influence the creation of more stock to provide this opportunity for first time home buyers to purchase their homes? And how do we do it in a way that may not be solely focused on single-family homes, but looking at other owner dwellings, whether it's condos or any other type, to make sure that we can get them on that path, but may not solely be looking at single-family homes, if that makes sense.

Madam Chair, Commissioner McMurtry. So one of the key drivers over the last year or so in some of the utilization of our programs, there's a couple particular areas where folks have taken advantage of this program that are buying new units, I think, Particular projects in Little Canada that's a townhome development. Part of that is the lenders and realtors who are connecting with community more directly as folks are walking around and understanding where they want to live. They're saying, hey, this is a great development that you can live in and buy new, but also... This is an opportunity for you to connect into our programming. So certainly, deeper partnerships that we've had within that community has certainly accelerated some of the metrics and goals that we've laid out there. Maybe to your central point, though, around how we influence and how we connect. So certainly, we have a project or a couple projects that the county is leading, and we have a lot more influence. And I think that is a great opportunity. It doesn't say it in here, but in terms of the conversations we have within our team, knowing who is taking advantage of some of our programs helps us see the other opportunities on the other side of the department. And so our home ownership leads are ready and excited to start to talk to our project managers and our developers of our projects to say, how do we plug our programs? How do we plug the pipeline of individuals who are seeking homeownership opportunities, whether they are a single family home, whether they're a townhome or a condo or somewhere in between? How do we plug into those? And so I think we're excited to, we're kind of on the precipice with some of those projects because those projects aren't fully defined in terms of what's coming out of the ground and when. But I think Knowing and having this information at our fingertips, I think, is really exciting for us because now we can start to see a connection point. We can connect the supply, which I think is very much like CED's role in the housing continuum, to actually more directly feed the demand into it. So that, I think, is a great opportunity for us. Maybe it kind of goes without saying, but I think one thing I'd add to what you're asking, Commissioner McMurtry, is we're seeing across the county where we are the smallest county in the state. We are certainly the most densely populated. And so many of the new opportunities that are coming are in the form of different types of housing projects. I offer this example. This is not a fantastic example because it's actually a project that's more on the rental side. But it is an example of where the county, through our CED department, has supported a project that's unique and different in the marketplace. And so there's a project down in the West Seventh neighborhood in St. Paul that's kind of co-living, where folks are buying into a room and they have shared amenities like a kitchen and other things. certainly just like examples of where we are kind of helping to kind of connect the marketplace in kind of unique and different ways. So I apologize, it's not a great example of the home ownership connection, but I think it's a great illustration of where our influence and our resources are helping to support kind of projects that are contributing, widening the options within the housing continuum.

Madam Chair, Commissioners, can I just piggyback off that and just add Commissioner Zhang's point about investments or the housing continuum. I think right now we can invest in about 50 homes, but we still feel the strain of limited inventory, which means when those homes come on the market, we're competing with the other first-time home buyers that are out there that aren't that may have means that that aren't utilizing our services and so it it just re-emphasizes how critical these resources are to be pre-approved to have that in hand so that they can compete with all the other buyers who are waiting for homes in a certain price point i will say however a good example of Creating additional housing stock is Maplewood Properties with D.R. Horton, where they're doing a big row of townhomes where we really push them hard to say, don't just make this a big suburban, large lot, single-family development. Create some density, some opportunities where We can partner with the Down Payment Assistance Program and really help to shepherd it from two different sides of the housing continuum. And I think we'll have to do that more and more. We're certainly looking at requirements for affordable home ownership at Rice Creek Commons. That'll be a big piece as well. So there will be opportunities moving forward. But to Director Olson's point, we do have limited ability as a result of the developed nature of our county.

No, that's helpful to hear and encouraging to know that we are, despite the limitations that we have over some of the control of how these things are pulled together, that we are leveraging whatever influence we do have to really push these projects and these developers to really consider the needs that we have as a county. The other piece, it's not listed as a performance measure, but I think it's also really important. And I appreciate you highlighting the performance measures that you did. But I also have been thinking more about the who. Who's developing these different properties, these different projects? And I know the popularity of our Emerging Universal Developers Program, how, I guess, Is there a way to incorporate that here maybe as an additional measure for us to look at really building out that particular program so that we see the pipeline of developers that we're also creating as an organization? I think that's something that has really been impressive, at least over the time that I've been in this role, just to see the popularity of that particular program and how it is really creating that next generation of BIPOC developers who want to invest in their community. So I just wanted to raise that as another measure that I think would be important to consider and just want to get your thoughts on how we're looking with building out that particular program.

Madam Chair, Commissioner Mercury, that is kind of the next evolution in my view of EDD. We certainly started that program with an expressed intent to grow a new generation, the next generation of affordable housing developers. What we've seen, and certainly our data would show that EDD participants are taking full advantage of our programs predominantly within the rental area. I think our next opportunity is how we connect them into homeownership programs next. And I would even go so far as to how we kind of connect the two ends of the line, right? The two points, which is both the folks who are helping to build the supply, as I noted earlier, but also those who are asking for those opportunities within those particular areas or those communities. So I think I certainly envision as we kind of work with EDD participants, and I think we have an opportunity in a couple of smaller sites where the county has some control of the land, where we can begin to test and pilot some opportunities for homeownership, using the skills of developers to kind of help construct it. help to finance it, but then help for us to help connect families into those programs. You know, projects like that, they certainly want buyers. That's a key part of their project. And if we can help to feed that side of it through some supports, through some partnerships and layering with different municipalities and other partners, we can start to do that.

Commissioner Miller.

Thank you. I apologize for my tardiness, so if this has been covered, please bear with me. So on our first slide here, is this data, I understand this is our data from our programming, but is this data from that year that they close, or is it from the year that they go on to our property tax system? And I guess, do you want me to continue where I'm going with this? And I ask this just because maybe it'd be good if we had data or do we have data that kind of shows the bigger picture? Because if this is just for our program, like I see the American Indian community is at 1%, but I know that there are a lot of other programs, both federally and from other nonprofits and other organizations that provide those services and that are just opting to use those programs rather than using our program. So I think that data could help us paint a bigger picture of who's buying who's not because this this makes it look like One person is buying a house in our County, but we know that's untrue We just don't have the data from our partners and with that via a data point that you guys would have or do we not collect that data and

Madam Chair, Commissioner Miller, we don't have that at our fingertips, and I think that's certainly an area of opportunity for us to kind of get a better sense of the full realm. I mean, I noted, I pulled some information from the St. Paul Area Association of Realtors. You know, over last year, they estimated or identified over 5,000 sales within Ramsey County. So if we were to kind of extrapolate that, we represent about 1%, less than 1%. those sales in terms of that so for us you know certainly we want to better understand what everybody else is doing I think we do a lot of coordination with other entities who have these programs to help layer in but I think there's an opportunity for us to kind of glean some additional data from them to get a clearer picture of like the dynamics that are happening you know amongst all these programs but in homeownership altogether thank you

All right, let's move forward. We have two other presentations before lunch.

Go ahead. I think Madam Chair, Commissioner, I think you have one more.

Yes, go ahead.

One more matter, yeah. So if I was to reflect over the last five years of CED's growth as well as a department's, I think CED has sought to reframe a couple key things. One is the what. What is affordable homeownership or what is affordable housing? But more importantly, what is deeply affordable housing? Where? Where is the affordable housing creation and preservation happening? And who? Who are the partners that are beginning to help the county to build a much more robust and resilient housing infrastructure? I know I'm short on time, but I will say I want to take you back a little further in this data. because we started in 2020. But if I was to present you with the information that is associated with 2015, 2016, 2017, et cetera, the number would be zero. In fact, when we first established this measure in the 2020-2021 budget, we estimated, we had a goal of a meager 5% in 2021. knowing that we were limited by our funding, limited by our resources, limited by our tools, but that we would start to measure it because as the ECI plan began to paint a very stark and important picture that deeply affordable housing production and creation is vitally important to the health and growth of this community. So again, this was prior to the HRA levies creation, prior to other housing resources like the American Rescue Plan dollars, local affordable housing aid or the housing sales tax, et cetera. And so 2020 represented a jump. And so you'll see a kind of a story here. You see a jump where the county board chose through a one-time reallocation of CIP funding towards affordable housing projects. In 22 and 23, the county board once again turned to one-time funding through the American Rescue Plan Act dollars. And 2025 was the first year of the housing sales tax, or LAHA. We're now moving into an expected stabilization of reoccurring funding dominated by our Housing and Redevelopment Authority levy as well as our local affordable housing aid. also known as LAHA. While this measure has been very susceptible, as noted on the screen, to the comings and goings of funding and the immediacy of meeting the moment's crises, for example, our nonprofit challenges in the last few years, this measure has served its important purpose for CED in charting a course where deeply affordable unit creation and preservation is a key part of every year and every solicitation it cannot be understated that the county's policy direction to focus on deeply affordable housing infrastructure has moved a large number of units forward and the county's insistence on 30 units has moved the marketplace especially within suburban ramsey county Ramsey County has been noted in a couple places, but has now surpassed $100 million in investments into preservation, renovation, and construction of local housing projects. This funding includes 106 projects, created more than 5,500 total residential units in the last five years. But what's important here is of that total, over 1,900 units of those units have been deeply affordable, at or below the 38% area median income, which equates to $39,000 a year for a family of four. To Commissioner McMurtry's comment earlier around our Emerging Diverse Developers program, in addition to increasing access to affordable options, CED offers the Emerging Diverse Developers program, which empowers new voices to break into real estate. Aligning to the county's Economic Competitiveness and Inclusion Plan, the EDD program works to build economic opportunities for diverse entrepreneurs and foster a more inclusive development community. Since its start, 68 emerging developers have graduated from that program. We look forward to another cohort to graduate this fall. And 39 projects have been funded through our solicitation. So again, as I stated earlier, they are a key part of what has impacted this data point, as well as all of our data points.

I think I'll pause there if there's... Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Dr. Olson. I just wanted to pause on the slide because I think... We obviously want to acknowledge all the work that's been done. It's been a tremendous amount of work. Throughout what Josh shared very quickly, that timeline, that was working muscles across this organization unlike ever before to get that work done. But I also think, while it's a moment to reflect and say, that there's progress. I do think, you know, I think Commissioner Jevenson said one time, like, we're bailing as fast as the water is coming in, right? And so I think it's a moment of acknowledging the hard work, but also a very humble moment for our community to go, we cannot let our eyes off of this. We're not able to say, but for not this investment, where would we be at today? And so I think this is a subdued sort of measure because it's good, but it also recognizes the importance of the work that has to continue. So thank you, Dr. Olson, and I know a lot of you are aware of our huge Yeah, we feel like we're just kind of keeping up with the baseline, honestly, to save units, honestly, in some ways, right? So thank you. Yeah.

So I just want to also say that, as I think about your presentation and the whole conversation that we're having around housing, affordable housing, home ownership, homelessness, the whole piece and, you know, I know the line between CED and housing stability is, I don't know what that is like. Or are we being innovative? Are we envisioning a partnership or investment that also support a growing population of homelessness? And so whether it's CED, HRA, EDA, CDB, or housing stability and, you know, heading on Ramsey County, how are we looking at the whole continuum and working in partnership with something that is really growing and very quickly, right, around homelessness. And as we think about, you know, the market is not keeping up. We have made some ground. We made some incredible grounds and some incredible investments. But the market is just not keeping pace with the need. And we have limited inventory. And I was just looking at, you know, we looked at the housing stability presentation around the average coordinated entry weight, which is 881 days. So we have people, families who are at a standstill. for 881 days. And just think, as we think about the whole continuum, and I think the conversation around homelessness I've heard is a lot about creating a bed for everyone. I want to move from the bed to a place where people can call their home and feel safe and take ownership of that so that we can create pathways. And how can we look at, we're having these conversations around tiny homes. What would that look like that we are investing in and pulling in those dollars from these different places to create those spaces where we can begin to give people the tools that they need and wrap around those services so that they can move through that continuum and then create spaces for the next one to come in. So can you share with me, as you look at your role, Any thoughts about that expansion of how we can invest in other ways too?

Yeah, I think a couple parts. I think I have a great benefit of having a very strong team who understands this area too, and areas of opportunity and connection with our departments that are housing stability, workforce, and other parts of the county. So I think one of those is, I think, knowing, I think we now have a little bit clearer picture, I think, using performance measures. I know Housing Stability very clearly laid out in their presentation to you a week or so ago that they want to reduce that coordinated entry list. That's going to take time. work from our side to help, as I noted earlier, to support the sticks and bricks side of development. Because in most cases, those units don't just exist in the marketplace today. They have to be built, they have to be funded in other places. And so I think partnership is key. um i i think with our our own departments within the county but also our departments across the county that are in cities who have very strong roles to play in the creation as well as preservation of units i think one example i just offer and it's kind of connected to to my last slide but i'll just jump ahead and say it you know over the last couple last year or so our cd department has started to invest in a data program neighborly that allows us to track our projects over long stretches of time something that has is challenged when you start to have you know dozens and dozens of projects that you fund every year But it also creates kind of a process or a structure for us to collect other information. We have because we are required in some cases for projects to collect rent rolls, collect information on who are the individuals and families who are taking advantage of these programs. We just have never really had the time and space to kind of actually take that information and move it to help us make better decisions. um how we can kind of work collaboratively with other departments including housing stability to say are we seeing individuals move um and move up in that through the and move through the housing continuum into a place of stability and wealth generation wealth creation so i feel like we're like i i this is a common theme that we on the cd side like because we're such a new department and I know housing stability is a new department and we're starting to learn to work together more directly. But like we're starting, we have begun to invest in those systems that allow us to actually be able to kind of have those things more at our fingertips in a way that we never had before. So that, you know, certainly an advantage. And I say we invested in this system because we wanted to make sure for accountability and transparency we had those those loans and those things tracked well after many of us retire, but also that we can actually utilize that system to kind of help us in other ways.

Yeah. I like that, Director Olsen. As I continue to have conversations with individuals in the philanthropic community, others who, because this is not just a government problem. It's like all of our problems. One of the things I'm hearing over and over again is finding ways to strengthen the housing and homeless ecosystem, aiming for a Minnesota where every person have a safe, stable home that they can afford. But we have to mobilize those resources, right? And we have to build the infrastructure for that. It is not fair. It is sitting dormant where the wait time is like way too long. And it just throws people off into this unreturned system where they're not able to be self-sustained. And there are so many people that want to be self-sustained, don't want to have to depend on the government. And so whether that's at 30% of the AMI, that makes it more affordable for that to happen. How do we create that? But for sure, there is definitely a lack. And we're doing a great job of building that infrastructure and investing in it. individuals, but we have to mobilize the resources together to help build that infrastructure that is so desperately needed. And it's like all hands on deck. So you want to close out your presentation? Commissioner McGuire.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just thank you so much for all of your work in your departments. When I first got elected here, which wasn't all that long ago, a little over 10 years, I said, what are we doing about housing? And they said, that's not what counties do. We don't do this. That's what city, other people do that. And so you have come so far and it's just so amazing and exciting that the work, that the community and economic development group has done, and I agree, Madam Chair, that we just need more housing. We need more funds to go into affordable housing, and you were talking about the different layering, and there's the different programs that have different qualifications, and then there's the availability of different funding sources. then you've got to find the people who qualify for all those different things. And then having the housing stock available for the different programs. So it is matching all of that up. And I think you're doing an amazing job. And I think we just need, I was going to ask you, what do we need more of? And we probably need more of everything. We need more of all of these. All of these areas, more housing stock, more programs to fund it, you know, more connecting of people. So I just want to say thank you. And if you want to comment on that, because and while you're commenting on that, I'm just noticing this, you know, whenever you see a chart of performance data and the variations are... Noticeable, you know in 21 of 7 percent and then 31 47 16 20, you know, it's kind of goes up and down Just can you comment a little bit more about that? But just I'm I'm just so grateful that we have come so far in this housing, in the housing area. And I think it always was good for counties to step up. I mean, it just became more of what we were supposed to do. So thanks.

I am so grateful for the legislature for creating LAHA.

It opened up a door that was not there. It's one of the things that happened. We didn't have the ability to do it.

Madam Chair, Commissioner McGuire, I think I think it's easy to say that more resources will allow us to continue to make more impact. And I don't want to diminish that goal. I think what we are, as it connects to these numbers, I think we're at a place where we're stabilizing. I don't think there's going to be another big jump in funding around the corner at least next year or two years or three years. And so I think it's really now a renewed focus on values as well as where those areas of importance. And so while we've identified a goal that actually is stable over the two years, that's intentional because it's not to suggest that we don't view that that number going up, but I think we're trying to strive to a number that makes sure that we aren't going through these wild fluctuations between funding. That deeply affordable unit creation and preservation is a core focus of our solicitations every year. It's a core focus of our partnerships with new developers and the Merge and Diverse Developers Program and other partnerships with cities. And so we're going to need our communities and our partners to kind of help us do that because we don't create the projects. We often are one of the last funders of projects in often instances. So we need alignment there, and we need to kind of support them. Yeah, so that's in part. I mean, the fluctuations I noted here are in part because we had these one-time moments. And we made deep strides. Real production was made in those moments, supportive of different projects, supportive housing units, deeply affordable units, projects that support folks who are leaving homelessness. Just projects. Normal market rate projects across the county. Where we've been able to embed. Affordable units within those. Just at a couple units at a time. But important moments. So I think this is our kind of signal. Because as I noted at the beginning. In my talking points. We've been at zero. We were at zero for a very long time. And so now we're moving to a place. Where it's a normal consistent part. Of our unit production. I don't. To, I think, Commissioner Jeven-Singh's point and County Manager Becker's point, the housing space is dynamic. And so there's the analogy that was presented. There's also the analogy of a bucket with lots of holes in it where we try to clog it. We try to pour into it. And it's hard to know if that 15,000 number that we presented in our ECI plan remains the 15,000 number today. I think we have a great opportunity where we're updating the plan in this next year. that we begin to kind of see if all of the 1,900 units that we have impacted over the last five years are making a serious dent in that number. But one thing we very clearly learned over the last five years, there's a lot of housing in this county that is of what we call naturally occurring affordable housing. Mm-hmm. that don't show up on a lot of different metrics. And a lot of those projects are in dire need of supports for ensuring that folks can stay in their homes, stay in their communities, and live with dignity, We have seen and witnessed, our staff has witnessed firsthand, some of these units that we're beginning to step in and support are in severe need of resources to preserve. We're thankful that the owners, the developers of those projects are identifying these projects need supports. But there's individuals who live within these units in often cases. So yeah, so this is like trying to get, collect that information, try to help support the housing infrastructure across the county is a full-time job across the entire community. And it's dynamic.

I'm glad we have you full time. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. We're going to close out with Commissioner Jemisin.

Yes. I just want to say that to the point that we're all talking about, about the role of the county and the newness of the emphasis on this, the idea that we talk about St. Paul and then suburban Ramsey County, but just a reminder that Ramsey County is made up of part or all of 19 unique municipalities. where local zoning code, planning commissions, all the different dynamics within the multitudes of neighbors and goals and wants of the local community come into play when we talk about getting shovels in the dirt and housing built. And so I really appreciate that you talk about new data opportunities so that we can work smarter. And I, uh, again, to our earlier comments about seeing you working in partnership with our cities and our townships, so that just like sharing the urban three data, sharing some of this, uh, you know, demographic data, being able to. assess current housing stock. I think about some of my communities that they have what would be captured into that naturally occurring affordable housing, and not even realizing that if we were to somehow create a grid of parcels across the community, that the neighborhoods they're in are the very things that we're trying to recreate so that the first generation or the next generation of homeowners can live in the same types of neighborhoods that they have had the opportunity to live in. And so I just encourage to continue to use our role as a convener, to share data, and to plan alongside our local communities so that we can collectively meet the needs of Ramsey County. Because I know that it is a partnership on the local level.

Are we done?

Yeah, I mean, I'll rest on this last slide, just to say I think I touched on a few of these already. But I think one thing that I'll mention, because this stretches back to my budget remarks last year, where we were quite concerned in terms of where federal funding was going to directly impact CED's budgets. I think we have at least a little bit of good news that because of the passing of the 21st Century Road to Housing Act, that diminished some of the urgency piece. But I think what I would also share, so we don't anticipate cuts on the CDBG and home side, at least for the next year. But I think... What I would share with you, though, is that we've been on a charted trajectory about moving the resources where we control. We have better control over those at the local level that we can, in a dynamic but also in a multitude of ways, kind of begin to kind of address multiple needs. it's easy for me to go back to the well that is you know emerging diverse developers is a unique example where we're supporting a business entrepreneur at the same time we're helping to build and sustain affordable housing are great examples of where we're kind of doing our best to kind of work between the gray areas of disciplines and gray areas of markets So that is an area of focus as we kind of look forward to the future. I think we, I certainly touched on two core areas of CED's team in home ownership, programming, as well as affordable housing development. But we have another side of our teams who help in that real estate development side, redevelopment programs, and that emerging area around business. i just wanted to kind of close by saying that is our next area that is our our new area and data collection and data kind of analysis is going to be a key part of that in the same way that it kind of drove many of our successes over the last years and developing our programs and refining them and so we're going to do that that's kind of part of the plan we're going to do that in concert with our partners and you know i i think those those CED team meetings on the road, as we've called them, are great opportunities for the whole CED team to kind of witness and understand core issues and pick up on those little bits of data along the way, where we walked away as a team saying 10% of all units in Little Canada are in manufactured home communities. Well, that's going to be a core focus of where our program is going to be kind of fitting in. I think that's going to be the last part I was just going to add, but other than to say that housing, as I noted earlier, is a dynamic space. We're trying to do our best to be, to use an analogy, I guess I'm full of them always, but to be a ship in rocky waters so that we can kind of understand the volatility. Our funding for the HRA levy and now with housing sales tax has certainly become a place where folks come to. It's like a safe harbor for projects because we look at that in a way that ensures that projects are best positioned, not because of what their needs are, but like how that money aligns perfectly and helps to accelerate a project out the door. So I think I'll wrap up there. I know I'm over time, so.

Well, we want to thank you for your presentation today. It's very insightful. We learned a lot. And, you know, it's always great to hear the good work that we are doing, knowing that there's other work to do. But we are making a dent in it. And I feel like the next year or so we may have to defend off just being able to maintain what we have before someone's trying to take it away from us. You know, but great work. Great job. Thank you. Thank you. OK, next we have Director McCabe, who's going to present on parks and recreations.

Good morning, Madam Chair, commissioners. Thank you for your time today. I'd just like to start by thanking the parks leadership, Gus Flemer, Liz Flynn, Chris Lankowski, Justin Townsend, for their work on this budget, as well as the performance measures exercise, as well as the finance team, Mercy Munene and Tom Ock, for their work on this budget. With that, I'll get into the presentation. As you know, Parks and Recreation operates a variety of facilities including 11 ice arenas, nine county parks, six regional parks and trails, four golf courses, special use areas including Tamarack Nature Center, Battle Creek, Winter Recreation Area, and Water Park, and we oversee the natural resources management of over 7,500 acres of owned and managed lands. So residents engage with these facilities in a variety of ways, anything from renting facilities to self-guided recreation, things like renting a park shelter or ice time or playing a round of golf, to participating in facilitated staff-led programs or working with our soil and water team to install stormwater infrastructure or other practices like that at their residences or places of business. So I'll take a moment in a second to talk about health benefits, but also want to mention that there are other benefits besides that with Parks and Recreation. For example, those who live in close proximity, like adjacent to park land, their residences roughly see a 5% increase in the value of their home. So there are those benefits as well. Providing access to Parks and Recreation facilities and resources is really about improving the quality of life. So whether staff are maintaining or maintenance employees that are maintaining a park facility and making sure it's clean and ready for use or natural resources staff or stewards of the land that we oversee or program staff working directly with residents, our staff are really deeply committed to being inclusive and welcoming and raising the quality of life for our residents. We know that people need food, housing, and healthcare, but they also need parks and recreation. For better or worse, it's kind of all burned in our brains, the COVID-19 pandemic and what we saw during that time, and that's always a good reminder to me of the massive numbers of people that we saw go out and seek out parks and recreation facilities to really stabilize their physical health and mental health and well-being. And so we saw just how essential these services are for our residents. If you want to have more in-depth information or take a look at that on our website, we've got the link here. Otherwise, it can be found at ramseycounty.gov slash parks. So moving on into the overview of our strategic priorities and corresponding performance measures, we'll walk through each of these. The first measure that we have outlined and we'll get into more in-depth on is the number of culturally specific community engagement sessions that are held each year. So as it states below, this performance measure really demonstrates the department's commitment to working with underrepresented segments community to lift up their voices and help ensure that their recreational wants and needs are being addressed. The next measure, total acreage of restored and enhanced land to date is a high priority as that aligns with the county's climate equity action work. And as one of the largest land owners in the county, we have a responsibility to be good stewards, which includes this restoration work. And then our final measure tracks the number of culturally specific facility, or excuse me, facilitated programs that we're offering through Parks and Recreation staff and partners. And this measure was put into place as a direct result of community feedback where we heard from underrepresented populations about their concerns with safety and inexperience in the outdoors in wanting to have staff facilitate programs rather than just be self-directed. So this is important in increasing engagement and participation and having all residents feel welcome into the park system. So we look at our first performance measure. Here you can see the number of culturally specific engagement sessions that are held each year. And as it states in the narrative, this measure is important, again, unintentionally engaging with residents to solicit their feedback about the design of facilities, types of recreation offerings that people would like, and the amenities of the park system. We know that more affluent residents with power often exert their influence and over others and tend to be the loudest voices in communicating their desires. So it's really important that we be intentional and go out and seek these opinions and lift up these voices so that there's a broad spectrum of what we're hearing from our community to ensure that there's a wider range of park and recreation options that those are heard. And I'd say key examples of engaging with community from the design phase through implementation and construction would be the Tulu Courts that we constructed a year ago at Keller Regional Park, Battle Creek Water Park that was just renovated recently and reopened this summer, and the Manitou Ridge Golf Course that was also renovated and had a grand reopening this summer. I would just acknowledge that this is an imperfect measure. So when the number of engagement sessions is really partly dependent on the funding that we have available through various resources to develop and enhance facilities. So when it happens to be a time where, like a few years ago, there was more money available to the state and we were recipients of some of those funds, we're doing a lot of projects and doing a lot of engagement work. When those resources aren't as available, then we have less projects in motion. But we think it is important in tracking this, again, to ensure that we're doing our job and engaging with community. Again, the next measure that illustrates the number of acres that have been restored to date in the Parks and Recreation System. So this measure, again, aligns with our strategic priority focused on resident-centered holistic support and also aligns with the county's Climate Equity Action Plan, which has a dedicated section on climate-smart natural land that's focused on managing county lands to reduce greenhouse emissions and help natural ecosystems within the county adapt to the impacts of climate change. Tracking our progress on restoring lands helps us measure our progress in mitigating climate change and increasing wildlife habitat. So you can see here that we've restored just under 1,500 acres of land to date. Of the 7,500 acres the county manages and owns, about 4,600 are eligible for restoration. Some of that land is just in active use areas. turf areas, areas where people are actively recreating, and so it's not all eligible to be restored. The impacts of climate change are vast. You probably saw recent articles from just this past summer where this is one of the hottest and driest summers on record in Minnesota. And so along with that, wildfires is making for really challenging conditions for our natural resources work that we need to do to be good stewards of this land. Our staff have done an excellent job of securing non-county resources to restore lands. Since 2011, they've secured around $4.3 million for these restorations and also work with several outside partners and agencies to determine prioritization for the restoration work and to conduct these restorations. So some of our key partners include AmeriCorps, the Ramsey-Washington Watershed District, a variety of watershed districts that we work with, nonprofit organizations such as Tree Trust, we have a strong relationship with. Parks has continued to advocate also with our fellow park agencies at the state legislature for funding to address issues like invasive species and disease that comes along with that. Our third performance measure tracks the number of culturally specific facilitated programs and services that are offered through our parks and recreation staff and contracted partners. You'll see here that there's been fairly significant growth over time in this area. Again, when parks conducted community engagement, we just found a number of residents that voiced concerns really from our underrepresented populations about not feeling comfortable just going out to the park system on their own. or feeling that they wanted a staff member, preferably someone who represented that community, was reflective of the community, to help facilitate a program and kind of walk them through things and get them comfortable. It's also stated on this slide that we've utilized funding from the state through the state's Parks and Trails Legacy Amendment to hire staff and operate programs as well as purchase equipment like bikes, archery equipment, fishing gear, cross-country skis, and more to reduce barriers to access. So these programs have really been successful in reaching new audiences throughout the county, and we expect to continue to grow the number of programs over time.

Okay, I have a question here from Commissioner Miller. I have a couple. Okay. Okay, let me start. Yep. That's pretty short.

Okay, so if we go back to our first slide of the number of culturally specific community engagement sessions held, I kind of have a couple questions. So one, what does that engagement look like, and how did that change the way we do the work? So do we know if this engagement encouraged communities of color who we were engaging with to participate or attend some of these events? these locations. Like I've been to Battle Creek many times, Water Park. I know the makeup of the people who use it, but like Manitou Ridge Golf Course, right? Like did that encourage more communities of color to come and utilize our golf courses or are they still continually more or less being used by outside residents rather than Ramsey County residents? So I guess I want to know more about this engagement piece and do you have numbers, if we held 41 sessions, do we know the attendance of those engagement sessions and who made up those attendance? Because one session we get held, and it could be five people, but they really care about this golf course. And they really want their golf course to have that greenery or whatever.

Commissioner Miller, I would say that, yeah, there's a lot there. And yeah, you bring up a lot of good points that say that it's challenging in the kind of collection of demographic data for people that are participating in engagement. So you asked about kind of the variety, like what does that look like? So engagement takes place in a variety of ways, anything from sending out electronic surveys, and we'll have signs out in parks with a QR code and people can log on through their phone and give us feedback that way to doing point intercept surveys where we've got staff out in the field. So they may be at the golf course or water park just walking up and asking people if they would like to give their feedback regarding upcoming projects, or specific community engagement sessions held either at events that are occurring throughout the community or standalone, like, hey, we want to, we're holding event at this facility at seven o'clock at night on a Wednesday. We'd like you to come out and give us your feedback. So a variety of different methods to try to collect that information. I would say with public trust, you know, it kind of ebbs and flows. And right now, I'd say it's fairly low. So going out and asking people to kind of self-identify and give their demographic information, like, some people offer that and some don't. So I would have to go back and, like, talk to our planning and development team who conducts the majority of that engagement to find out, like, what of that data could we, you know, hand over or what we have that we could send along to you. So yeah, those are some of the challenges. I can just say that the efforts from the evolution of what I've seen as working in the department, being the director of the department, has gone from staff in a room kind of just making decisions about what we're doing to you know, going out and maybe doing an online survey and then kind of making decisions in a closed-door room to really, like, working with our park commission, really going out and talking to community members and recording that feedback, you know, demonstrating, like, the Tulu example that I gave. Community members would go on site virtually every step of that project and verify back, like, yes, this is what we want. No, we don't. Now we're making tweaks on that. I can speak from that experience to say that it's much more genuine, and I think we're really seeing those results. As far as the resident, you mentioned the golf course, we can look for data, but I believe we are serving predominantly Ramsey County residents. the diversity of users that we're serving, I think that is something that we need to look into further and has to do with programs and reduction of barriers to see how do we get a wider variety of audience to participate in these programs.

That makes sense. Thank you. And then the total acreage for the next slide. I know you gave us some examples that, yes, you do partner with other organizations, but can you give me a specific of where? Is this where we're thinking of when you remodeled the golf course and we added in some of that, more of that natural landscape in that area? Is that the space we're talking about here? Or is it more going into our parks and not mowing it or planting more natural or...

Commissioner Miller, it's both. So I would say it's dedicated. We're looking at specific restored acres of land. And within our golf courses, for example, there are acres of land that we have taken that were turf and part of being in play and we've taken that out of play and have worked with like the Audubon Society, other partners to go in and do full on like restoration work and plant native prairie and pollinator habitat and things like that. So it would include acres from golf course land as well as county park and regional park land, and oftentimes tied to specific grants that we've applied for. That tends to be in the park land space. Sometimes we're able to partner with... Watershed districts are also invested in making sure that we have more natural land. So that may be an example of a golf course partnership. But otherwise, the state-funded grants tend to be in our regional park system that we would take an area that maybe we've been mowing for a long time or has just gone feral and restoring that back to a more original condition.

Okay, and then I guess my last question here goes to the last slide. Do we have attendance data on who attended these culturally specific facilitated programs? I mean, I think it's wonderful that we hosted them and we contracted with people, but do we know who attended them and how many and just if that work is being fruitful and it's actually meeting the need of the community?

Commissioner Miller, I would say we are tracking the attendance of the programs as far as the who attends. There are some programs that are like pre-registration that we would have a record of who attended. There are others that are like pop-up kind of like, hey, if you'd like to try fishing at whatever park at the fishing pier on X night, you can just show up. staff are asked how many people participate and things like that, but we wouldn't be recording people's names or demographic data at those type of pop-up events.

And those events are free, correct?

The large majority of these programs are free. There are some that we've charged a nominal fee for, but the large majority of it has been free. And we have been tracking attendance numbers on those.

And then when we charge the fee, do we charge the fee for straight across anybody who wants to attend them? So whether you're a Ramsey County resident or whether you're a non-resident to participate in them, it's the same amount? And I only ask that because I went to Anoka County Park for my son's birthday. Let me tell you, they charge for everything. So I'm just saying, do we have similar fee structures where we're charging non-residents and residents Different fees for using our services with Commissioner Miller.

That's something that the county managers discussed with us recently and we are Looking to evaluate that as we move forward. So right now we do not have like resident and non-resident fees But that is something we've been asked to explore and see where that makes sense to create a fee structure That would you know be one rate for residents and another for for a non-resident I would be in support of that just knowing what other and to also to learn what our neighboring counties do as well

I've heard similar that they charge for use of their dog parks. They charge for use of parking, right? And I'm just curious at how much revenue that helps generate that can go back into programming. I saw in a slide ahead that you haven't got to that some of the funding challenges to restore lands is that maintaining them. Well, I wonder if this is an area that we could use to offset that cost and help with that. So we're still following our climate equity plan, but we're also being you know, fair and equitable to our residents as well.

Yep, Commissioner Miller, yeah, that's exactly what we've been asked to take a look at. We have done kind of a preliminary look at other agencies, and I can't speak to everything specifically right now. I would say most of what we're planning is that most are not charging a resident and non-resident rate for various services, but we'll look and see where examples of that exist, and like you said, that's something that we can explore further.

Thank you.

I have one quick question around the invasive species. What are we seeing out there?

I'm sorry, Madam Chair, can you repeat that question? The invasive species.

Oh, invasive species?

Unfortunately, we're seeing a lot. I would say on the, you know, so for tree species, probably everybody's heard like emerald ash borer. So that's, you know, devastated our ash tree population. And, you know... Public Works is dealing with that on boulevards and things like that. We have it out in active spaces within Parks and Recreation land. So we've gone through and done tree inventories and are doing everything we can to remove that. Dutch elm disease was a big thing a while ago. There's oak wilt that is going through oak trees. Within the aquatics area, there's a lot of invasive species that are popping up in our various waterways that we help to manage. And so that's something our natural resources staff is working on and doing programs like clean boats, clean waters where we operate a number of boat launches. And so having people out on site that are checking to see that boats and trailers are clean when they enter the water and when they leave the water so they're not transferring more species. But it's a big challenge. I mean, you know, animals transport seeds and spread disease and people do, but again, given what we've seen in the way our climate's changing and these diseases that are taking over, it is a major problem and a growing problem.

And so there's a cost associated with that when we see an increase in trying to control that spread. So I see you say that you have been working with fellow agencies at the legislature for additional funding. Are you getting additional funding from agencies, or are you thinking about requests this next session for additional funding?

yeah madam chair i i would say that the funding that the state primarily has allocated or that we've been recipients of along with our other metro park agencies has been in the replanting of uh of some areas where we've had to remove ash trees and things like that. It's been less on the actual removal. So we still have a big issue in trying to obtain funding to be able to do removal work, but there's been some replanting funds that are out there and we've been recipients of that. We work with our fellow park agencies throughout the legislative session to advocate for key issues and that's been one of them that we continue to advocate for. So I think that'll be something we'll be talking to our agencies again in this coming year in our budget cycle.

In our lobbyists?

Correct. And we're working closely with our government relations staff to communicate that as well.

Okay. That's all interconnected. Okay, great. We have Commissioner McMurtry.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you, Director McCabe, for the presentation. A couple of questions going back to the culturally specific community engagement. As you look towards the future in the next few years, are there any specific groups or organizations or even demographics that you're hoping to increase engagement with?

Commissioner Murtry, really good question. So I think partly it kind of depends on what we're working on and where you know where that's taking place so we tend to look at the you know the demographics of the community uh in which like a project is taking place and try to go out and um you know reach out and engage the community and hope and have that be have the representatives that are coming and talking to us hopefully be representative of the population that lives in that area. So if it's a population that's 50% white and we're getting 95% white respondents, then we're not reaching that audience. So that's kind of how we've looked at it versus like, gee, I'd really like to make sure that we're reaching more Hmong residents or other residents.

Gotcha. And kind of a follow-up to that, have we, have you all as a department, utilized some of the different communication platforms? I'm thinking specifically of, you know, Mung TV or the launch of the new podcast as ways to further engage folks in the community.

Commissioner McMurtry, you've got a great segment where I'm on TV at Mung TV this summer talking about the water park. So our communications staff has done a nice job of connecting us to those different audiences, and we have some regularly occurring segments on Mung TV and some of the other... kind of culturally specific communication outlets. And so, can we do better? Probably, but we're certainly aware of those and have worked with our communications staff to get that word out and really try to be targeted in how we're communicating.

That's great to hear. My next question is around the culturally specific programs. Seeing that residents not feeling safe or comfortable to participate in activities, a piece of that I wonder and want to get your perspective is maybe a lack of that representation in the room, specifically of the makeup of our staff, of those who are coming up with these different ideas and ways to engage and ways to to come up with the different programming. Would you say that there is room for us to go to ensure that our staff, parks staff, really reflects the diversity of the county?

Yes, Commissioner McMurtry, yes, that the county's overall goal of being reflective of the community that we serve, I'd say we're on that continuum where the department a few years ago, and this was a prior performance measure. I think when I started as chair of, or excuse me, as the department director, I want to say that our staff was something like, our workforce statistics was something like 94% white, 6% people of color, and now it's something like 78%. white and 22% people of color. So we're making progress. We're not there yet. I think an area that we've been more successful in and being more rapid in increasing the people of color among our population, having that be more reflective of the population we serve is in our temporary employee staff. So if you look at the lifeguards that are at Water Works, for example, or we've had participating in a number of the internship programs, Right Track interns, other programs like that, that we've got a much more racially diverse audience there. And among our program staff this summer, I would say we had a nice job being reflective of the community. But yeah, absolutely, I think that is what we heard. is that it's not just about having a person go out and help facilitate it. It's having somebody that you feel comfortable with that's reflective of the community that residents are a part of. And so that's ongoing work that we need to do to continue to improve and help people feel comfortable.

No, I think that's encouraging to hear and to know that that's something that you'll be focusing on is great. And I just bring it up because as we think about some of the trepidations by residents, of course, who's presenting is an important piece. I wanted to make sure that we're thinking, you know, the step before that of, like, who's in the room making the recommendations and coming up with the ideas to ensure that they, you know, reflect the challenges, the concerns, the different areas that we know we can build excitement with certain communities and to make sure that those folks who reflect those communities and are part of those communities are also in the room making those recommendations. So I'm glad to hear that you that there's still work ahead to ensure that we are having a staff that's reflective of the diversity of the county. So thank you. Thank you.

I just want, I need a little bit more. What are people saying that's making them feel uncomfortable?

Madam Chair, I don't know that we got a lot of specific data around the why, but it was more on kind of barriers to participation, whether or not people do participate or not, and then, you know, why not? And some responses may be, you know, I don't own a kayak, so I'm not going out kayaking. Some were, yeah, I don't feel safe out in the park. And I think our staff during engagements have tried to flesh that out a bit. And some of it, excuse me, we've got a survey right now that is about our overall system plan. And we're collecting data on that. I looked at that the other day. And one of the things that I think the most frequent item that people said would make them feel safer was lighting. So adding lighting in parking lots along certain trails, things like that. So yeah, there's probably a variety of reasons as to the why, but those are some of the things that we've heard. I didn't hear a lot of like, hey, I was out in the park and I had a really bad experience or something happened to me and now I don't go back. It's more like, seems like kind of trepidation of like, I'm not sure I want to try that. I don't know that I feel safe. you know, going into areas. Some of it is really like urban residents who don't have as much experience like being out in more of kind of like a wilderness area, which some of our parks can feel like. If you're out on a trail, you know, it can all of a sudden really feel like you're not in the Twin Cities. And like what is, you know, we're used to wildlife concerns. Concerns about hey, I don't I don't feel safe because I'm afraid of snakes or I'm afraid of you know other types of wildlife so think of a variety of things but it is important to Understand the why behind it so then as we move forward in that design phase It's like okay. Well, you know lighting was mentioned the number of times here so we should really be conscientious of that or you know, having staff just facilitate a program really helps us feel safe and people who are reflective of the community that we're a part of. So yeah, the why is certainly important.

It's very important, because we want to have parks and recs where people feel safe, where it's inviting, where we are seeing it being inclusive. So I think it's really important that we find, I mean, safe and comfortable are two different things. And so it's really important that we get more to figure out what's getting in the way of people feeling comfortable. Makes sense. Commissioner Jefferson.

Yeah, I really appreciate that you're lifting that up, Chair. I come from a park and rec background when I worked in older adult services. And even really well-intended folks, I think that there's a reason why football and soccer fields were accommodating to each other and pickleball and tennis courts have been accommodating to each other. It's because the park and recs department know that their parents and their kids are engaged in those sports. And it may be why perhaps culturally we don't have badminton and volleyball together as easily or cricket and baseball fields coming together so easily because we don't have the folks who are in those rooms who are naturally associating that these would be ways to make these spaces more inclusive and welcoming to all different kinds of folks who want to use those spaces. So I appreciate the performance measures that talk about engagement and rental equipment and all the different ways that you're trying to address those needs. I encourage that we continue that my questions have more to do with, um, the idea of how we're using our parks and amenities in greater sense of, um, uh, creating communities where people can survive and thrive and in some of our other partners and some of our other goals. So we have a, you see where there's about 4,600 acres of eligible land for restoration and alongside the other acreage of park lands and. dimension also, and I think we all have a sense that housing and houses by parks have an increased market value. So we have a choice as a county as to where we decide to invest and really make sure those parks sing for those neighborhoods. What kind of an equity lens are we having when we're looking at where across the county in those acreage are we paying the most attention to, and is it lifting up neighborhoods in an equitable way.

Sure. Madam Chair, Commissioner Jevons saying, yeah, I would say that has been the charge to the department for some time now is making sure that we're looking at areas of you know, concentrated poverty, that we're taking a look at across the whole park system and not being kind of skewed in how these investments are being made. So as you are well aware in your district, having a lot of parkland, there's certain areas within the county that have, are kind of like county property rich in parks and others that aren't. But then say like in the city of St. Paul, there's a, large amount of park land that is City of St. Paul Parks property. So a resident doesn't really distinguish between those two and it's like, what is available? So we try to look at those gaps and then try to look at where are those needs and how can we invest? So I just know the last budget cycle that the board obviously approved in the capital improvement program we asked for funding for renovating Beaver Lake County Park, which is in one of those areas that I would say, you know, lower income area and has some concentrated poverty is not the amenities at that park are not on the same level as you would see in some of our other facilities. And so trying to bring that up to a more equitable standard is something that we're working on there. So I would say that's a, Yeah, it's a big piece of how we're evaluating the prioritization of funding requests and then trying to go about engaging with community and getting the type of facilities that people want.

And that's my follow-up, which is the idea of alignment of park and amenities against the other opportunities within a community, whether it's a municipal park, whether it's school district parks or playgrounds, whether it's private or nonprofit, you know, is there a big YMCA that has really great amenities in the neighborhood? Just to make sure that we're using our investments and the taxpayers' dollars and creating as, you know, in a collective space to say to ourselves, not only where are there gaps that we can fill, but where are there duplications where we could step back? And just making sure that we're doing the best with the dollars that we have in as smart a way we can.

Yes, Commissioner Gibbons is saying that. That's, again, something that we've been, like, we try to lead with being strategic, and we've been asked to do that. And there are certain, like, core competencies that I would say, you know, a municipal parks and recreation department has versus county Parks and Recreation. And so we are, again, in really close communication with our other partner agency leaders and really try to be mindful as we look at where to invest. We're basically kind of mapping out And we do have a map that shows where our community centers, where our YMCAs, where our county park land, municipal park land, so we're not trying to duplicate. So things like community centers, that's not something that our county is in the business of. So whereas St. Paul operates a number of community centers, and so we're not going out to try to duplicate that, or youth sports leagues. We don't tend to do that. Cities tend to offer that type of programming, but cities may not have the type of natural resource-based programming that you see at Tamarack Nature Center that we're trying to move out into different parts of the county. And so we're trying to, again, try to have that variety, but not duplicate, as you mentioned.

Yeah, and I'll just say, knowing that, too, within our Building Stronger Together, where we are doing our best to look at, you know, what is the best use of all of the things that we have? How are we maximizing a benefit to community? And so I appreciate that strategic coordination.

Thank you. Director, you mentioned St. Paul a few times. I know I don't have any county parks in my district. Is there any county parks and recs in St. Paul?

Madam Chair, there are, like, Beaver Lake County Park, for example, is in the city of St. Paul, and then a portion of it is in Maplewood, Beaver Lake County Park. And then there are, same thing on Battle Creek Regional Park, it's right on border, you know, partisan Maplewood. There's section in St. Paul.

Mostly Maplewood, maybe Sliver.

Right on the border. There's a number of arena facilities that are in the city of St. Paul that we operate, but as far as parkland, I mentioned those couple of examples, but most in Peg's Eye, which is part of Battle Creek Regional Park, there's portions of that in the city of St. Paul that we operate. So there are some, but St. Paul Parks and Recreation has a large number of facilities, a really great system, and has property throughout the city, whereas Ramsey County is fairly limited in the city of St. Paul.

Okay, thank you. Commissioner Zahn.

Thank you, Madam Chair. First, I just really want to say the work that your department does is so dynamic in terms of the facilities, the space, and the amount of work. So that's why probably choosing some of the performance measures is difficult too. And I also wanted to say that it's reflective of the work that you are doing in terms of the engagement. and also using that engagement to help inform the programming and the work that you're doing. So I just want to say thank you for doing that. A suggestion I have is I think you're on this track already about the number of specific community engagement sessions is that you're not hearing from other communities in Ramsey County. So that's why you're leading into that. However, I would encourage then you to consider where we currently have large programming investments, such as I think about our large regional spaces, like the Tamarack Nature Center, our TCO Sports Arena, looking there about the programming that we have there, and is it... creating a space where communities of color or other community members feel like they can utilize that space or utilize the programming and if they're able to access it. So I don't know if you have anything to add or like specific to programming at TCO Arena as well as Tamarack.

Sure, Commissioner Zhang. So yeah, I would say that one of the maybe benefits and challenges is that we tend to see users from areas of close proximity to facilities. So at TCO, that's really close to White Bear Lake, we have a lot of White Bear Lake residents that are utilizing that facility, or Tamarack Nature Center. White Bear Township, White Bear Lake, a lot of residents from that area are going to use that facility. That said, we've heard this before of just like, gee, this is an amazing program. How do residents from St. Paul use that? Or can we take the program and bring it over that way? So there's, I think, some of those efforts. Obviously, a little tougher in the ice arena scenario, but I think some things that we've done, we've formed a partnership with the St. Paul School District where their early childhood education programs now have the opportunity to all do a field trip. to Tamarack, so I could get the numbers on it, but I want to say something like 30 different classrooms of early childhood students came to Tamarack this past year and had an experience, and so I think those are ways, like forming those partnerships, and then maybe offering incentives on like, transportation or, you know, we can do programming, can this partner do the transportation piece has been something to like, how do we, you know, serve other residents, not just from like the surrounding community at those facilities.

Yes, that's great. And then for the TCO arena or some of our, I don't know if any other big ones, but TCO is the one that comes to my mind. But I know that we have like open skating hours. I think a feedback or like what I've experienced too and also heard is that folks who haven't ice skated, like even though we have ice skate that's free there, folks don't know how to use it. So is there like an intro course or some programming that you can introduce and say this is an intro course or just an hour to learn? basics of how to ice skate as an example.

Commissioner Zhang, there is a program called Learn to Skate that we have and that is available at some of our facilities for that exact purpose. And then I would say just on the field house that you mentioned that's at the TCO Sports Garden. So one program that was kind of funny that took off is we tried out a few years ago is we call top time. So it's just like toddlers that are walking around. So like in the wintertime with families, with parents. But in the wintertime where we had, you know, people are indoors and they're cooped up and things like that, we just had some daytime use that was available. and open that up for free time and the word spread like crazy. It is really interesting to see this exponential growth curve of every daycare center, around or just individual families are going out and utilizing that and just using to walk around or have open play time. And so to your point, trying to not just like it's important to generate revenue and sell this time, but then where there are opportunities, how do we open that up for accessibility and wider audiences to participate?

Yes, absolutely. And then my other one is just around kayaks that you had mentioned too. There is a barrier for just to be able to have equipment, right? Like if you have a kayak, you need a big car. You need storage. And so do we have rentals available for kayaks too? And are we looking at our regional lakes and areas where it is accessible or up to the standard that we have in other lakes throughout the county?

through commissioner so yeah just uh i think this was just our second summer of working with a vendor that has uh stations at various park facilities where we've had like rentable kayaks so there's like kiosks you go in and you can you know scan your uh scan your credit card and check out a kayak for a couple hours and then return it and we've hosted With our staff, we've hosted some like learn to kayak because we've also heard that of like, well, it's not just I don't have one. It's I don't feel comfortable. I don't know how to use this. So having some times where, you know, we've gone out and essentially utilize resources to like rent those kayaks and then offer either a free program or a program that's a paid program, but we're offering staff and doing kind of a learn to program. So yeah, those are resources that we've got kind of scattered throughout a handful of parks right now.

Okay, yeah, that is great to hear. And then finally, I just want to name that for your culturally specific facilitated programs and services slide here, I just want to highlight and uplift that these are things that you're considering and have been doing too, such as purchasing equipment, program equipment, such as bikes, archery equipment, fishing gear, cross-country skis, to reduce barriers to access. So I think it's just really important that we lift that up and about how you're taking the feedback that you're already hearing from community members and implementing it.

Yeah, thank you, Commissioner Zhang. And I would say it's an ongoing, you know, we've got it on our website and trying to kind of make that known. But that's an ongoing, like, educational piece, too, is just making sure that people know, like, hey, this is available. Like, you can rent a kayak. Or we do have archery equipment that you can try or bikes that, you know, you can take out on a trail. So there is a lot in just trying to, like, make people aware that, you know, that's even an option that they can utilize.

OK, thank you. All right, so it's about 5 after 11. We have two more speakers. We want to take a quick break after the two, after Commissioner and County Manager Becker speak. Then we're going to come back to do a presentation on public works in RRA, because I know Director Iason has so much to share with us. And so, Commissioner McGuire.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just thank you so much for your presentation, for all the work that you and your team are doing, Director McCabe. You have a... It's a challenge to be balancing, you know, all of the different needs of our community and, you know, where our parks are and making facilities available for everyone in every way. And I think you're working on it and thank you for all your continued work in that. Just to, I so appreciate the questions of my colleagues. And I just want to highlight that I appreciate that you're available to partner with community when community comes to you. And so that's a great thing to do. And when community brings funding to you, you're always available for that. And some communities aren't bringing funding to you, and so we always have to be aware of that. I'm just going to thank you for, of course, the winter rec community, all those cross-country skiers. You know, they really wanted this place at Battle Creek, and they went to the legislature. We went to the legislature. We got money, got funding for it, and it's an amazing facility. I keep getting gratitude from all the people that use it. It's a well-used area, and they do provide funding. I think you do have free equipment for people on certain days that they can come and learn to ski and use it. Because it's in a community where skiing hasn't been as big a recreation. So I just appreciate that you're doing that. I know out in Lake, which is one of our parks, the community wanted to put some art there. So they got a grant to put mosaics up there. who worked with us. We put mosaics through the park. Every park wants it now, but there just has to be some funding. So I know that you're just so willing to be creative and work with community. And we've got to encourage community to come for funding. I know the Tula courts were there because Senator got funding for that. It's not like we can do everything as a county. We have to get these partners funding. I think we all can encourage members of our community to say, listen, we are willing to partner. Help us with funding. Help us with grants. And we will do this work. I just appreciate so much your willingness to be open to that and doing all of that work. So thank you so much. And you brought up something that I know we're all dealing with, but this trust is low among community with government. And I think Metro Surge Really contributed to that and and it does impact even whether people want to engage in community like how people don't want to go to You know any government sponsored sessions for fear of what they might find that so I just You know know that that's just something we're gonna have to keep stressing the community meeting with us is a safe place and we want to engage in community and I appreciate that you brought that up and we do need to keep continuing to have forward thinking community engagement sessions where we don't just sit in a room and wait for community to come to us. We go out to community and I've noticed that you're working hard to get that to happen and for the parks that are in my district, I appreciate that you're working with our Our city partners, you know, you should partner with Roseville Recreation when we have a park there. You know, we have the park space, they have the recreation program. And I appreciate that you're working on that as well because those are all great, it's great value to our residents to do all that. So just thank you for trying to balance everything and for listening to community and to us and we'll just keep working together. working with our community on that as well to get our people to work with us. So thank you so much. Thank you.

Madam Chair, Commissioners, I just want to say, because I haven't quite seen a slide that summarizes the conversation probably as well as Director McCabe's strategic outlook slide. So I just want to put a finer point on that parks will continue to seek partners to effectively engage with residents. Staff will continue to seek opportunities to lobby the state legislature. Commissioner McGuire, as you just noted, Park staff will work on growing partnership to expand program offerings and to reduce barriers to participation. Commissioner McMurtry, that's on your note. In partnership with finance, parks will explore the resident to non-resident fees. And then I will just add as a compliment to the slide, you know, to Commissioner Jevin-Singh's point, making sure that we understand where to invest, why we're investing, and how we're investing across the geography that is Ramsey County. I just wanted to lift that up as Director McCabe has been very insightful and thoughtful about that as well. So...

All right.

County Manager Vick.

Yeah, Madam Chair. I'm just going to be one second. I think it's just that first bullet around seeking partners to engage residents. And this is a, Mark, I really appreciate the evolution of the work of the department over time. I mean, it's made a lot of strides on that first slide. It's something I'm encouraging every department though Like one one way we can keep engaging is people who are actually coming in our doors and actually are involved in County programs So I would encourage, you know partnering with other departments like as this measure evolves I would love to see a measure says how many engagements did we do in partnership with other county departments? Were you at the mother's first baby shower? Were you at? 1919 occasionally were you at the service center like to me? I? actually being at the park and doing the engagement feels a little bit like those people had to get there. But they are coming to us in a variety of ways in our career force location. So to me, it's like, how do we do that work a little more simply as one Ramsey County? And that's not just on Parks and Rec. I think with limited resources, if we're trying to hit populations that have high need, those are the ones actually coming in our doors. So thank you.

All right. Well, thank you for that. Do you want to?

Sure, Madam Chair. Yeah, I know Deputy County Manager Collins kind of went over things here, but I had a couple slides we didn't hit. So I guess just to wrap things up on the strategic outlook, one thing that I had just reviewed recently that I think our taxpayers can feel good about and our board can feel good about is looking at the kind of percentage of levy funds that this department receives versus our other partner agencies like St. Paul, Anoka County, Dakota, Scott County, Carver, Washington. They receive anywhere from 35% to 65% of their revenues through levy funds, where our levy funds are 30%. And so meaning that we're generating, you know, 70% of our revenues through fee-based programs. So, you know, being pretty efficient as compared to our other partners that are more reliant on levy resources. So I think that's just something we can lift up and feel really good about. Again, Deputy County Manager Collins mentioned a few other things, but yeah, these ongoing challenges that we have, I think she covered that. pretty well. And parks programming and people's recreational wants and needs just do evolve over time. So we do have to continue to be open to new things and continue to evolve. I don't know if the AI bots were looking at my presentation or whatever, but I saw Maslow's hierarchy of needs popped up on my computer screen the other day. And at a very base level, it's like people need their physiological needs, their food, water, shelter, And then the very next level actually was like health and talked about like the benefits of, um, you know, things like, I mean, it doesn't speak specifically to parks and recreation, but the benefits of like physical and mental wellbeing. And so that was interesting because, you know, on the, on the pyramid and going up the scale, I was like, wow, this is really foundational to people's needs is, uh, the things that we do and so again i think that really contributes to our residents overall health and well-being and i really take that role very seriously and i think our staff do as well so thank you for your time

Thank you. Let me just close by saying a commissioner who does not have any county parks and recs in her district.

No. No.

That I have gotten over that because. It doesn't sound like it. Right. Only because when I visit our parks and recs in our suburban areas, how impressed I am with the upkeep, the engagement, the programmings. that is taking place within those locations. It's not often that I see in the urban core, and that's the difference between the urban core and the suburbs, where you have rentals of bikes and archery equipment and fishing gear and cross country. It just doesn't happen in the same type of way. And my experience is very limited in all parks and recs in St. Paul. But I clearly have seen the investments and the work that is put into the county's parks and recs. And so I just want to thank you for the work that you do to keep them up, to keep people engaged, to diversify, and to engage community members in how to continue to improve our parks and recs across Brampton County. It makes a difference, and it means a lot.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And we're continuing to work closely with St. Paul. And so we know what's going on.

I had my conversations with you early.

But thank you so much. We're going to take a break, a 10-minute break. And we're going to come back. and at 1125, and we're going to dive right into public works with Director Isinson. All right, thank you.

🎵 🎵 Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Bye. you

recording in progress

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. ¶¶ Thank you.

Oh, that's quite the thing. Wow!

Take that picture. Well, we wanted to give you a formal introduction and a formal welcome.

Well, I feel properly honored. Thank you. Thank you so much for that. Hopefully my presentation lives up to that lovely introduction. I'm grateful to discuss with you Public Works and all of the measures that we have to bring to you this morning. Public Works is a group of somewhere around 160 plus fabulous individuals. They are engaged in managing over 293 miles of county roads, overseeing construction, maintenance, snow removal, and environmental services, and multimodal planning. Public Works is responsible for the development and maintenance of a true multimodal transportation system that prioritizes the needs of pedestrians, bicycles, buses, trains, cars, and trucks. The growth and maintenance of this system enables people to connect to the places that they want to go within and outside of the county while enhancing the safety and functionality of the county's transportation network for all users and all modes. Today, I'll speak to you about a couple of key performance measures that we track in public works, as well as how these measures advance key initiatives, such as Building Stronger Together and the delivery of an expanded construction program by a board of approved redirected funds to expand multimodal facilities across the county. Oh, I'm advancing those. Thank you. The measures that we are here to discuss today, they weave together a number of both operational and capital imperatives for us in our business. The measures represent the overall health of the infrastructure and how our operation impacts health and safety, the health and safety of the residents and users. So we'll speak to the rating of road pavement condition, the percent of system and poor condition, which I know all of you discuss regularly. We'll talk about the rate of crashes on the county road system, and then chloride levels in Ramsey County Lakes. These measures are important in terms of identifying the places where we make the improvements in our transportation system. And improving on these measures improves the quality of life for Ramsey County residents and the environment that we all enjoy here. The first measure I'll speak to is the rating of county road pavement condition, percent of system in poor condition. The Council on Local Results reports pavement conditions as a pavement quality index as an assessment of the condition of the overall roadway network. Individual pavement segment conditions are combined into an aggregate number representing the overall network condition. This measure provides the state of our pavement and modeling can estimate the anticipated impacts of various investment levels allocated to pavement improvements. This foundational element informs pavement rehabilitation projects based on current and future projected conditions to achieve the goal of having 12% or less of the network in poor condition. Poor condition is defined as a segment of roadway that has significant cracking, potholes, and other issues to the point where the structure of the roadway is visibly deteriorating. A goal of 12% of the network means that at a point in time, there would be roughly 35 miles of pavement in poor condition. This goal is roughly consistent with peer transportation agencies allowing us to benchmark our system in comparison to others and as a benchmark I'll say in conversation with our friends at MnDOT Metro with roads at a similar classification to the county's roads their goal for that poor condition is eight percent they are projecting to be at fourteen percent and so It gives you a good sense for where we are relative to others. Ramsey County invests across all roadways to optimize pavement conditions. This includes reconstructing roads that are in poor condition, as well as doing strategic pavement treatments to keep pavements in good condition. Several poor condition roadways are programmed for replacement, which should lead to a reduction in the miles of roadway in poor condition over the next five years. Public Works also analyzes poor pavement to ensure conditions are equitable across the county. It's worth noting that maintaining good pavement is cheaper than addressing poor pavement. Considering we don't have the resources to reconstruct every segment of road in the county in the next 25 years, our program will need to be a balance of those strategic investments and notable reconstructions. Recent weather trends have proven challenging in maintaining pavement conditions. When temperatures hover around the freeze-thaw thresholds, that has a dramatic impact on pavement conditions. And pavement condition is one of the most frequent issues we hear about, and as such, remains an important indicator for our residents. Next, we'll talk about rate of crashes on the county road system. Again, the Council on Local Results reports the actual number of crashes. Our emphasis for the last several years has been on system-wide crash rates. The crash rate is reported in crashes per million vehicle miles traveled. This system-wide view reflects broader changes we've implemented from the work we're doing converting four to three-lane facilities to implementing calming measures like roundabouts, the goal is to drive the overall crash rate down across the system. We continue to track both crashes and data points on a segment basis, as that is important to design at a project level. While we're doing a lot to affect safety changes through safer road segment designs and corridor approaches to reduce speeds, There are challenges. We continue to see higher average speeds on the overall road network, which contributes to both the frequency and severity of crashes. We also see a continued incidence of distracted driving, resulting in crashes that are unrelated to the road design. The crash rate and number of crashes have plateaued over the last several years. In 2019, there were 1,851 crashes reported on Ramsey County roads. In 2025, there were 1,490 reported crashes. Crash rates are calculated by dividing the number of crashes by the annual traffic volume to develop a crash rate per million vehicle miles traveled on each roadway. Investments in rebuilding roads that have a high crash rate are currently underway, specifically Rice Street, which had the highest crash rate in the county. It is anticipated these investments will result in an overall reduction in crashes and crash rates going forward. Measuring crash rates on the county road system provides a lens as to how safe our roads are for a range of transportation modes. As recent as five years ago, Ramsey County had the second highest crash rate for county roads in Minnesota. This means our system puts our residents and users at a disproportionate level of crash risk. Public Works has been making strategic investments to systematically address the crash rates on our system in two ways. Addressing locations on our road network with the highest crash rates and making changes to the roads in favor of designs with much lower likelihood of crashes. One specific example of this is transitioning four-lane roads to three lanes, which have an expected 50% lower crash rate, based on that design. Crash rates decrease with each investment, although you'll note the rate is very incremental in terms of its change. Safety improvements are funded through a variety of means, including local, state, and federal funds, depending on the project need and funding eligibility. Public Works will continue to transition the transportation network towards safer designs, and the data is trending in the right direction. Some of the continuing challenges to improved safety conditions are related to distracted driving and higher average speeds. The Public Works continues to seek partnerships with various agencies to reduce speeds and improve conditions to address distracted driving. When it comes to chloride levels in Ramsey County lakes, higher salt usage on paved surfaces in the watershed leads to higher salt concentrations. Tracking chloride concentrations is a relatively recent development that responds to rising concerns around water quality more generally. The county aims to use less salt where possible as lessening the chloride impacts to our water bodies protects our aquatic organisms and overall water quality. Chloride levels fluctuate based on a variety of factors, but the overall trend is that the levels from 2025 and beyond look to decrease. The number reported is the average milligram level of chloride per liter. Future work to maintain performance includes working with county staff to devise management strategies to decrease salt use over time. and using technology to accurately track salt distribution and weather patterns as a planning tool, while staying updated on new innovations in snow and ice control and collaborating with other county departments, state technical experts, watershed district partners, in an effort to help teach and advise on management efforts relative to chloride use. Practical management of resources to control chlorides will be beneficial to our budget in addition to helping to ensure better water quality. As a reference, we are in the process of purchasing 9,000 tons of salt for winter use this year, which will cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $600,000. So the degree we can manage that resource has a real fiscal impact for us. Some of the challenges will be balancing public desires for optimal winter road conditions against those chloride levels and assessing the increment that Public Works represents amidst potential other sources. And as we've talked about with the board and others, Public Works is but one contributor to the overall chloride use, but it's still important for us to manage it both from our financial perspective as well as for the environmental impact to the county. We will continue to work closely with watershed districts and watershed management organizations, as well as with partner agencies to manage levels, chloride levels and our impacts. And we continue to make strides in terms of the types of project resources that we implement with our projects to address water quality overall. Public Works is in the process of implementing a number of technologies when it comes to improving these measures. When you think about our transportation plan, our transportation plan engages a lot more scientific approach to where and how we address things, what are the levels at which we're managing the overall system. soon to be live will be our asset management system. We're expecting that to come online sometime next year, and that will give us a much more refined picture, both geographically as well as condition-wise, on where our assets are and how we're most efficient in terms of addressing infrastructure issues in the right places at the right times. Also, as we invest in the key initiatives that we've spoken to, such as building stronger together in the overall increase program, these investments will also help improve these measures. In terms of ongoing challenges, one of the key issues will be about weather, whether weather trends will continue to moderate Oddly enough, when we have a long, cold winter, it actually does less harm to our system than it does to have a more moderate temperature, which hovers around that freeze-thaw point. Last year, I believe we had 38 different snow events where our folks were on the roads, whether they were plowing or just applying salt. That's another impact, too. We have more people on the road more times with more More things, so that's a key issue for us. I'll wrap up by saying.

We recognize the context in which we're living.

Resources are dear and. These are hard times for everyone and so stewardship and cost savings are very important. We're part of the county like everybody else and so. We'll continue to seek other funding sources to supplement our work. We've had great success over the last several years in seeking a variety of different funds, and we continue to have that success. And so we'll keep working on that with the goal of minimizing our impact on our general levy. When it comes to asset management technology, I'm very optimistic in terms of having seen these systems employed and what they can do for the operation of an organization and give you a really refined picture of the assets and their condition so that you're really optimally timing where you are and where you're working, less impact to the public, less wear and tear and better management of the overall assets. When it comes to fleet, I think we look forward to over the coming year or so of looking at how we can update that model. And I think that getting to a new model of fleet and having fleet provide the level of services that the variety of county departments need, It's going to be important, but it's going to take a lot of creativity. It's going to take technology, and fleet's a little further down the path in terms of technology, which I think is going to help us. But it's going to take all of that to see those changes come around. And just as a point of reference, I think at any given time, fleet is providing service to somewhere to 12 to 15 departments in the county. So there's a lot of reach in terms of providing those services to the broader county. With that, I'd stand for questions.

All right, thank you. Commissioner Miller.

Good morning, or mid-morning. Good morning. Okay, my question goes back to, let's go to our first slide. I have a couple questions. So with rating of the county road pavement and I understand that 17% of our county roads are in poor condition or rated in poor condition. My first question, are these roads that we maintain or are they just in general all roads in Ramsey County?

This is just a measure, Madam Chair, Commissioner, this is just a measure for county roads, so the roads that we maintain.

We maintain, not our county roads that the city of St. Paul maintains.

It includes that.

It includes that, okay. And then my next one goes to, is the future investments that we're making and the plans we have to fix some of these roads, does that help us reach our goal or bring us close to our goals of 14% by 2028 and then 12% for 2030?

Yes.

It does, okay. And then does this also, like how does that work with the transfer of roads? I know that we've transferred a few roads into our system or we've transferred a few roads out of our system over the last six to eight months. How does that also tie into, and I know like in White Bear Lake, like we've made it very clear we will not take over ownership of that road until it is fixed, right? Right, right.

So it's an interesting question from a performance measure standpoint. So typically if we were to take on a road, typically you take a road when it's in new condition. Right. And so that would be kind of a net zero to our measure, only insofar as that it would be an ongoing liability. At some point we would need to maintain it to a point where it would stay either in good or fair or out of poor. When it comes to the system and when we fix up a road and turn it over to a city, it's a little bit of a strange thing in that we invest in it for it to be in good condition and then we give it to someone else. And so the benefit of that is that over the long term, we no longer have that maintenance liability. there there's a larger conversation about who's going to give it the right level of attention if it's not a road that really belongs on the county system so that there's it's a complex picture but i it is a i don't know how i would characterize it in terms of as a net benefit or detriment to our measure but it would look like we'd invested in a Segment of road to get it in good condition and then it would disappear from our system. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does Okay, and then the last point it says the data is collected by MnDOT every other year We do our I'm assuming do that we do our own data collection on and assessments on our roads as well Or are we just taking MnDOT's? Collection and what do they do with that information? Is it like score like hey Ramsey? You're up here at 17% but Hennepin's at 20 or Anoka's at 14, right?

Madam chair commissioner. This is a great question And this is one of those places where I always say that we were here for your detailed needs and you've stepped through that door. So I I mean, it's an interesting question. So the way that MnDOT assesses road condition is through a very high-tech van. And they drive it a certain way with a whole protocol, and there's a very sensitive device in the van that helps us understand smoothness. And so the value of that is that it's a consistent approach statewide. It's how MnDOT evaluates their roads. It's how they do it for some cities. Not all cities do that. And most counties do that as well. It's a little bit of an oddity that they only do it every other year, which means that our data can look a little funny from time to time, and it's not current. So typically we don't, I mean, not that we don't understand what the road condition is, but we don't do that level of data collection every year. It's something that we're looking at for a variety of reasons. There are some curiosities in terms of I'll say the VAN and how MnDOT collects that data is probably more accurate and consistent for freeways than it is for the types of roads that we manage. Like things that are normal for a county road, like whether it's a manhole cover or some other local part of the system that's part of the road, MnDOT doesn't deal with that very well. And so it starts to look like every road needs a lot of work, but we're able to sift through that and make determinations on where we need to fix this.

Okay, thank you for that detailed information. Okay, I'm going to skip now to the third slide on the chloride level. I know that this is the average across all Ramsey County lakes. Are we seeing higher numbers in certain areas and are we doing a targeted approach for those areas?

Madam Chair, Commissioner, that's a great question. I don't have the answer at my fingertips, but I would be happy to dig into that for you.

I'm not sure. I know this talks about our usage, but how do we partner with our cities to know their usage as well? I have a few constituents that reach out to me about this topic often, so I'm kind familiar with some of this information. And then with our benchmark, are we measuring, like, is there a water quality benchmark we're trying to get to versus the usage of the chloride?

Again, that's a great question. I think that We're tracking towards a Ramsey County specific goal. I don't know that there's like a national standard or another benchmark that we're shooting for. When it comes to your question about do we have an understanding of how our partner cities are employing, I will say it's a really broad range. I know that Some of Ramsey County cities and townships will have very specific thoughts about the level of salt use around specific water bodies. Others are less circumspect about that issue. And I don't know that that's really well understood outside of a very small number of people in terms of what cities and townships have ordinances that are specific to salt use. But our folks are aware of there are places that that are expecting that we'll be very thoughtful about our application of chloride around some of the water bodies.

And then when we do road updates, I'm sure we take into consideration the water runoff and where the wastewater enters the system at and how can we prevent that spread. So maybe adding a curb and here's the sewer or making sure it gets into where it's supposed to go.

I really appreciate you raising that point. That's another emphasis area for us is actually leaning into storm drainage and modernizing that system And that's a big part of it. I know it's been a big conversation with some of our cities. I think you can see places around the county where we've done some more creative things when it comes to treatment of water before it hits different water bodies. And I think we'll continue to do that. It plays an important role in our capital investments for sure.

Okay, perfect. Thank you for that. And I just want to also say, driving on White Bear Avenue is so nice now. So thank you very much for getting that part done.

Did you hear that music at the same time?

Yeah, that's exactly why. So I have no more further questions. Thank you.

Okay, good questions.

I really appreciate your line of questioning, Commissioner Miller. And it goes along with some of my questions as well. Yes, I love it when, after the county has done a road, I just, I love being on that road. And one of my constituents had a good monitor or measure. He would write to me and say, my teeth are rattling on that, you know, on that county road. So now it's a teeth rattling measure. So when I'm driving on a road, I'm like, is this a county road?

My teeth are rattling.

So I really appreciate the work that you're doing because as much as we get a little frustrated by detours, I'm so excited that almost everywhere I go in the county, there's a detour and I'm on a county road and we're getting some work done. So thank you. Thank you for that. I appreciate it. I'm happy to have the extra time to help our roads be safer for our residents. So thank you for that. And just thank you for all of your responsiveness to my constituents. You know, I have constituents, they live in a senior condo that's next to a road that we're redoing. And they're very nervous that the road that we're redoing is under construction now, but that there may not be a bike park. or a pedestrian walkway that's there. And so they're going to the community engagement, and they're talking about this. And I just appreciate that you're being responsive. We may or may not be able to do a nice big pedestrian or bike pedway on every road that we have. But we're going to do our best, and I appreciate your willingness to really listen to community and try to work with them on what we can do. But I just want to say that we've been talking about health, and we just had Parks and Rec, that community wants to be out and about. They want to be walking. They want to be biking. They want to be out using our parks, using our amenities. Thank you for helping that be a priority when we do our community engagement on our roads, that we're looking at the trails. And at some point, like in the future, I'd love to see us have a connectivity measure. How are we connecting our communities to the amenities that we have with pedestrian and bikeways? And we have a bike plan. We have a bike pad plan that we do with our communities so that we are connecting our trails. And since I co-chair Active Living, We get this information, but this is something that our residents really do care about, and so love to see how we're doing on that. And I know you care about it, and Public Works cares. And just that I'm so... grateful that you're paying attention to that, but I'd love to see a measure about how we're doing our pedestrian and bike plans as we want mobility for all in our communities. And then the chloride reduction, This was an issue that I was not aware of before I started going to Ramsey County League of Local Governments. We have a collective action work group that's been meeting all year on chloride reduction. And I'm going to give our watersheds a big shout out because they've joined the Ramsey County League And I think together we thought, now what issue is it something that we can actually do something about? What issue can we all learn more about? And so the watersheds have been instrumental. All the cities care about this. The county has been involved in these work groups. And I'm on what we call the CLAW. the Collective Action Work Group, but anybody's invited to hear them, and we're on a Zoom meeting every second Thursday of the month, and we learn all about the importance of chloride reduction, which is big, because it's going right into our water, all this salt that we're putting on, and so working with businesses who have big parking lots, working with cities. a county to really reduce that level of salt in the water. It was an issue I was not aware of and I'm learning a lot more of. And so is the Ramsey County League of Local Governments. And as I said, Ramsey County has been a part of that and I appreciate that. And yeah, we just need to, keep working on the things we can do to really improve our water quality, but it's just one of those overarching, it's the interconnectedness of the county that we have public works, working with public health, working with, you know, it's just everything connected. So I appreciate that you're um taking this on also to be a measurement because people that know about this care i mean they're like oh my god yes we have to worry about that so with that i just i just um thank you so much for for the work that you're doing and we do get a majority of our calls about our roads so thank you you know it's what constituents what our residents see and care about and um We appreciate your dedication to the countywide approach to that. I do have one other quick question. Can you just expand on the second highest crash rate? You said it's a rate. So it's not just that. We have more roads than probably the second highest number of roads in the, well, it's hard to say because we have bigger counties.

Madam Chair, Commissioner, it is proportional.

Yeah, right, right.

It's a function of exposure, and as we rank, we're second highest county in the state still.

Yeah, so we just, because of just all, is Hennepin the first, is that it? Yeah. And the second, yeah, just because of the times that you can, so it's a density kind of issue.

There's a number of factors to think about. Yeah, okay. Some of it is, call it the, we have a system that's evolved over a longer period of time, and so maybe a little bit more complex movements, access is different. There are other places where their roads are much more highly managed in terms of access, which is, a key criteria for crashes. Some of it is about the design or the setting and some of it is just about just overall.

And I really appreciate that. I will say that you probably all felt this as well when you get new development or redevelopment in your area and the entities want to put an entry level, a driveway in and out of a county road and we say, our engineers say, no you can't because it's not safe. But they said, no, but then you can't get into our business. And we said, well, you have to go this way then. So I have a number of developments in my area, I'm sure we all do, where we've had to say, here's how you have to redevelop this. Because as you said, we're an older county, and we have a lot of access points to our roads that are not the right distance for as much safety. So I thank you for that, and I've been experiencing it. I'm always talking to my cities and the new businesses that want to get in there to explain to them we're trying to balance safety versus excess to your business. So thank you for bringing that up.

And thank you for all your work. And thank you, Commissioner McGuire. And say to your constituent, we have another way of measuring whether or not we have smooth rolls and teeth rattling.

We know we have work to do. I know, it's like, whoa.

That's another measure. Okay, Commissioner Jeppesen.

Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. So given that this is an issue that we hear from our residents all the time, could you just very concisely remind folks, if constituents want to know how their neighborhood roads have been rated and when they may be next scheduled for replacement or repavement, where should they go and how do they track projects that are ongoing in their neighborhoods?

madam chair commissioners thank you for that so they go to the public works website for current and planned projects which will take us out five years so the current we will be coming back to you in November with a tip and that'll be so it's on the annual cycle so they'll be able to see that if they had specific questions about a specific segment of road they could certainly ask they could pose the question to ask pw which is a link at the public works website and we can get that information to folks it's generally not going to be something that we're going to post all the segments and all the conditions so like it would be on a as needed basis and i'm going to say as interested as you all are in this movement of pavement. You're an elite club in terms of the number of people who ask questions about the condition of their pavement as a number.

Thank you. And then if there is a project ongoing, is there a way for them to get updates if it is a major project?

Yes, Commissioner. So there's a very easy way, typically on our Public Works website, or if the project is on the Public Works website, there are ways to sign up for emails. And I think I find them to be helpful even for me, and I work in the building with folks who are doing these projects. And so I find the... the summaries and the emails to be concise and helpful in terms of practical advice about what's happening with the road and what they need to know. And there's always an opportunity to ask more questions if, like we said, we're always here for more details should you desire, and that's true of public works in general. So thank you, Commissioner.

Okay, and the last question, Commissioner Zala.

Yes, thank you, Madam Chair. I just have a question about the rate of crashes, the county road system, too. Is that data that's available on our website, too? Where may the public access this information?

Madam Chair, Commissioner, that's a great question. I know we don't publish it. We tend to work with MnDOT, and MnDOT is kind of the gatekeeper of all of the crash data statewide, because it comes through Public Safety and through MnDOT. I don't know if all of that data is publicly available. It's a great question. I can get back to you about whether it is. I know that our folks have it. We have access to it.

Okay. And then for the county road pavement condition, do you have a list or an order of priorities for this in the work plan that you have for addressing it?

That's another excellent question. So I think a way to think about it is, so we have projects that we're planning on and then we have system-wide data. I think you could expect that at any given time, there's probably a dozen, two dozen, three dozen places where we could go which would have similar pavement condition. And so then it's about what are the other criteria that we explore in terms of why we choose that versus another one. And so then we get into the types of things that we talked about in our transportation plan about what are some of the other aspects for why we would choose. Some of it is about where it is, some of it is about what are the other assets that need work in that area. Is there a crash problem? Is there a sidewalk or some other multimodal facility gap that should happen at the same time? And so that's part of the for lack of a better term, like the sausage making of how we get to those areas. I will say that, again, that's probably not something that we publish in terms of every pavement segment and its condition because it does change, but it is part of the process of looking at a variety of sources. So priority would look like a variety of factors in terms of how we would decide where to go next.

Okay. Yeah, I'm just trying to tie in also just the performance measure here to not only the Building Stronger Together one that you had identified, but our transportation and transit plan as well that I don't know if we'll get yearly or annual updates on it, but I just wanted to

Make sure that you know the public can tie in You know these performance measures with that plan as well too that it's a living and breathing document and Madam chair commissioner We've had a number of conversations about how best to report back to you on the progress of things We even talked about it as a potential measure here as a measure It's a little weird But I think that I hear the concern as can we keep you up to speed in terms of where we're at with some of these projects? And the answer is, of course, absolutely. We would be happy to do that. I think it's just a function of whether it's a workshop or some other kind of report where we're providing you some milestone information similar to any other project that we have. in our TIP, we can provide you information about how the project is progressing and if there are any issues that are popping up.

Yeah, that's great. And then the last point is just around, I don't know if this would be a measure that you would consider, but just around community engagement around the projects that we're leading. making sure that we are engaging community members that are reflective of the community there, as well as the different types of users on our facilities. I know that, at least for the White Bear Avenue corridor study, I'm seeing good results from that engagement, but I think it's equally important to keep track of as we work to build the plan, but also to secure additional funds that's outside of the county levy and county sources because I know that the Met Council has the community considerations that it's trying to achieve is that are we engaging the communities that we are serving? And so it's just

Equally important that we are keeping track of that for all of our projects that we're working on madam chair commissioners That's I really appreciate you raising that point a couple of thoughts one relative to my council in the community considerations I know that that's a topic right now at tab I will say in conversations that we've had with Met Council relative to our work and their familiarity with our planning efforts and our levels of engagement, they've told us that we do a very good job of that and so we would be consistent with whatever ends up being the scoring relative to engagement. You know, they specifically spoke about our transportation plan and the degree to which that leaned on some pretty robust engagement. So that's noteworthy. As a measure, I've really struggled with, and I think Director McCabe did a really good job of speaking to some of the challenges of, and Josh as well, about the combination of the role of government in certain communities makes it pretty challenging. That being said, we're exploring a lot of different avenues, and whether it's about, I've worked with Mary Margaret on trying to expand my personal network so that I'm more engaged with a lot of different communities. to working with people who consult on engagement for public works type projects and working with them to say, how do we get better as an industry? How do we get better results? How do we really touch more people that really are struggling to engage with our projects? But all of that is in the context of our folks. That is an expectation that they are meeting regularly. And if there's ever something where you're hearing that that's not the case, I definitely want to know. But I think our folks are well-versed. And they do engagement for a lot of different projects. I think that they're accustomed to that. explore a lot of different things. Some of our projects go farther because of the type of project they are or where they are. And Rice Street, I think, is an excellent example of the types of things where we can and as a part of that, when we engage with things like Larpenter or White Bear, and I'm grateful that you're seeing that bearing fruit, because as we talked to the consulting community about that project, we said, this was our experience on Rice Street, these are the types of things that we got out of that, and the level to which the community understood what we were doing and were engaged in that decision making, We want to see that replicated here. And so if you come to us with a plan that doesn't do that, you're not going to get our business. And so it's kind of a menu of different options to try to get at the various things. But having tried a number of places where you do seek demographic information to try to prove to people who you've been speaking to, That's even weirder than it was 10 years ago when I was trying to do that for MnDOT. It's just gotten uniquely challenging from a variety of perspectives that I won't get into here.

yeah okay yeah thank you and then um manager just the last point and also for consideration for um a metric in the next two years for the next supplemental one is um i know that we moved uh some of the contracting um and tracking um who we're uh contracting with um whether that be like the small women minority owned businesses for construction um is that we we should be able to track that as well for our public works department that I would like to see us because it connects in with our other strategies around building intergenerational wealth and it's something that's across departments as well.

madam chair commissioner that's an excellent point it has been a measure that we've had in the past i think we continue to track it we just haven't reported it here and as i said before relative to that our our our record is sorry our record is a little spotty when we have a prime that is a CERT or DBE, MBE, WBE, then they tend to bring others that are in that same category. And so the numbers go through the roof with those projects. If it's not the case with the prime contractor, then our record is not as good.

But when it comes to... My point is we made a slight policy change about best value, right? And we were starting with public works. So that's why I wanted us to start measuring that.

For sure. And I think we'll continue to explore better ways to employ that based on board direction. The best value will be a better way to get there, for sure. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay.

Commissioner O'Brien.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Let me just say, yep, we are at... 12-11, I was hoping that we can end at 12-15.

I'm just going to put this out there. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm just going to put this out there because we're all trying to resist the temptation to talk to you about all things public works related. And for me, it's all things like active living, parks and trails. But I'm just going to put it out there because this will probably come before us in the legislative package, I hope. is this new phenomenon that's affecting our trails and our walkers and bikers is the motorbikes. It's these really fast bikes that young kids are using and they're impacting people's willingness to go on our trails. So if we're gonna have these, walking and trails. These are faster bikes that young kids use. I mean, other than e-bikes, which more seniors and people use. So, well, anyway, we're going to have a conversation about it. And I don't know when we will have that, but I'm hoping we can have some legislation that's going to regulate that a little more. But I have talked to Director Isaacson. I know it's tough what we can do about it, but it's just an issue that keeps coming to me now.

Yeah, Madam Chair, Commissioner, I think it's an emerging issue, and I think we're relatively early in it. And so we've had some conversations internal. I think we'll probably want to have conversations as an industry. I think that it's probably mostly a metro issue. That would be my guess, but probably not a lot of basis for that. But say again? You say you think it's mostly a metro issue.

I will say that. do other trails are feeling it as well.

Any trails around like ride those scooters and those bikes. You're talking about me taking away the fun.

I am talking about you.

Trying to be a fun killer.

But the emerging issue, though, is that e-motorcycles.

But it can become very complicated, too, because now you are patrolling bikes and moving vehicles. And what will be the penalty if you do that? So it gets over into that lane also.

Because I own an electric bike. I mean, don't take away my electric bike. But we do want to see some regulation or whatever. I think legislators will be dealing with it. We'll probably be dealing with it. Just wanted to present it as an issue that I think we're going to have to work on, because we want people to have fun.

We want it to be safe. For sure. Okay.

All right. So, okay. Are you, have you completed everything or do you need to close out?

If I could just take the next half hour to talk a little bit more about pavement, you know, really, really dig in.

You can take that. We won't lock you in.

No, I'm all good. I appreciate the time, folks. It was a great conversation, as always. And thank you.

And thank you for your work. And again, you know, the vision and the leadership that you're showing here and then forward thinking, we really appreciate having safe roads and roads that are not bumpy. And, you know, the only way we can get there is that we have to do some construction, right? And so we appreciate the work and the information. So thank you. All right, we are going to break. It's 12.15, and we will come back at 1.15.

Thank you. Bye.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So, Thank you.

All right, I want to welcome everybody back to the Ramsey County budget presentation to the county board. We're going to open up with our county assessor, Pat Chapman. So Director Chapman, you want to introduce yourself and get started.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair. Thank you. Commissioners, County Manager Becker. First, I'd like to thank a few members of my office that have put a lot of time into these performance measures and the budgeting as a whole. My deputy, Corey Erickson, has been instrumental in helping me through this process, along with Aaron Theon in our office, who has developed a lot of work with the performance measures. Annie Sims and Matt Zelmer provided a lot of other work in our office to aid in this presentation, so I'd like to thank them very much too. Not going to be much pavement talk, but, you know, and I know Brian's probably a little sad about that, but... The Ramsey County Assessor's Office consists of 54 employees across three divisions, residential, commercial, assessment services. We're a county responsible service, and responsibilities are established through Chapter 273 of the Minnesota statutes. Also, Statute 383A states, And we have 141 statutory responsibilities. Our work is evaluated annually through the Department of Revenue, and we consistently meet or exceed the high professional standards required of our office. We maintain complete records of all property in the county, and our office researches and analyzes all sales that take place in the county. We also annually calibrate mass appraisal models to ensure fair and defensible property values. Many times, the assessor's office is the only contact a resident will have with the county, and we pride ourselves on being a positive interaction with residents. For more information on the data that I'm about to speak about today, you can find it in our assessor's report on the open data portal on the county website. The department tracks three key performance measures. Two longer term one and one shorter term one to try to capture all of our work. The first one is assessment quality and equity. The next is percentage of properties canvassed for restrictive racial covenant discharge. And the third is percentage of staff with advanced professional certifications. I'd like to highlight these three measures. under operational excellence. The first one, assessment quality and equity, which is the core mission of the assessor's office. The department measures the assessment quality using 24 nationally and internationally recognized standards established by the International Association of Assessing Officers and monitored by the Minnesota Department of Revenue. These measures evaluate the accuracy and equity of assessments across residential, apartment, commercial, and industrial property throughout Ramsey County. Fair and accurate assessments are essential to maintaining public confidence, ensuring an equitable distribution of the property tax burden, and providing stable tax base for local governments. In 2026, the department achieved full compliance with all residential and commercial assessment standards while accurately valuing approximately 165,000 parcels. These results reflect our continued investment in staff training, valuation modeling, quality assurance, and data-driven assessment practices. Our goal is to maintain this level of excellence while continuing to respond to challenging market conditions. Our next measure is restrictive racial covenant canvassing and discharging those covenants. This is a shorter term measure. goal for the office. And it's kind of a finite period of time, which is nice measure every once in a while to get something that tracks your daily work too. Something that impacts guys and gals in the office directly and in that short term. It's nice to see that little window. This initiative measures the number of properties canvassed each year to educate homeowners about restrictive racial covenants and assist them in discharging these illegal and unenforceable provisions on their property. In 2025, our office completed its first countywide canvassing effort. We visited 1,319 properties. Those conversations helped increase covenant discharges from 380 in 2024 to 685 in 2025, the largest annual increase to date. More than 5,500 homes in Ramsey County contain these historically discriminatory covenants. Although discharging them is not a statutory responsibility of the assessor's office, it's meaningful work that advances county's commitment to equity and public service. This summer, we expanded that effort through a partnership with St. Catharines University. Students joined our appraisal staff during the canvassing on July 14th and 15th, allowing us to reach students while providing assessors with valuable community engagement experience. We also continue to work closely with the Ramsey County Recorder's Office, the Examiner of Titles, and other community partners as we move toward completing this initiative by 2030. Partnerships continue to be one of our strengths in the Assessor's Office. In addition to our collaboration with the Recorder's Office, Examiner of Titles, and St. Catharines University, we are working closely with the Community and Economic Development Team on the Building Stronger Together initiative. The assessor's office is helping identify opportunities to return underutilized county-owned exempt properties to productive use, supporting housing, economic development, and neighborhood revitalization. All right, so our next measure here is percentage of staff pursuing and achieving higher-level licensing and designations. This measure is at 51%, and we're trying to get towards 60%. This measure is tracking the professional development in the office above and beyond the rigorous state set standards already in place for assessors. This will create a highly educated and knowledgeable staff. This also should increase the public trust that their values and classifications are accurate, fair, essential to the county's goal of operational excellence. So let's talk about some of the strategic outlook. Looking ahead, I want to highlight emerging opportunities and challenges facing the assessment offices across Minnesota, not only Ramsey County. Working with the assessor's office to grow their knowledge, defend assessments, keep momentum in the space, and get a higher level of licensing for assessors. The education portion of our budget is essential and required by statute. This helps us maintain high level of assessment integrity and knowledge. The county has made an investment to update property tax videos in the five main languages that are spoken in the county, and these updated videos should be available in the next year. Now some of the challenges. We are seeing a rapid growth of artificial intelligence driven property tax appeal and services. These companies are increasingly filing large volumes of appeals that often receive little or no professional review before submission. Many charge property owners contingency fees for a process that's already available for free from the county. And some require lifetime contractual commitments. The office is engaging our professional organization, the Minnesota Association of Assessing Officers, to seek legislation to limit the ability for this to impact the assessors and the residents of Ramsey County. We will also keep the board and Ramsey County legislative liaisons apprised of opportunities to collaborate in this space. Additionally, our office is working hard to interpret a historical volatile market to create fair and equitable values. The assessor's office is working hard in the stewardship area, and we want to expand the use of the online homestead application and make it as convenient, accessible option for all eligible residents. The goal is to make the process easier by reducing barriers and simplifying how residents can apply. It also helps us streamline our work by reducing the manual process and making applications easier to manage. Ultimately, we're looking for better accuracy, consistency, and faster turnaround times. Since October, when we implemented the online application, 50% of the homestead applications have already been submitted this way. making the process more efficient, and staff can spend more time focused on other important office initiatives. The in-office submissions are benefiting from the use of a QR code at our front desk that directs them right to a place to leave their documents, and thus cutting down on time there too. In closing, the Ramsey County Assessor's Office is well positioned to continue delivering accurate, equitable, and professional assessment services. We have consistently met or exceeded the standards established by the Minnesota Department of Revenue while taking on additional initiatives that advance the county's equity and economic development goals. This budget will support the office and all of the mentioned endeavors. To continue to provide this level of service, we need stable funding for all authorized positions and continued investment in people, technology that support our work. Thank you very much. And I'll stand for any questions that you guys may have.

Thank you. Commissioner Zong.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Let's see. I just had first had some question around the first measures, the assessment quality and equity percentage of prioritized compliance measures met. I'm curious, from 2024 to 2025, what helped to make that change to 100%?

Madam Chair, Commissioner, a lot of work in the commercial modeling space is what really got us up to 100%. This is inside baseball. We were having some PRD problems, price-related differential problems, inside of commercial properties. So we dug into the commercial models did some more segmentation and aggregation of different property types, so made the groups smaller to look at, and it made our assessment better.

Okay, great. And then for the restrictive covenant discharge here, I'm glad to see that that's what you're working towards of canvassing and meeting with all of the property owners there. I think that's a good measure for us to continue to look at. And then the other one for consideration for performance measure is actually the property tax refund, the homestead property tax refund rates. Because we always hear from residents about our property taxes, but it's also a low income household, seniors, and even veterans. would be eligible for it, too. And maybe this is a cross-departmental work between Veterans Services and other areas of where we can really push the use and utilization of the property tax refund.

Madam Chair, Commissioner Zong, thank you for bringing that up. I like to say it every time I'm given a microphone. The property tax refund, if residents just go to put in any search engine MN space PTR Hit enter you will get the Minnesota property tax refund website and it'll give you All the information on that and many people are eligible that don't think they're eligible So put your information and see if it happens the challenge commissioner with maybe what you're asking is We're more of the outreach arm instead of the research arm at the end. It's a state program So we get data way behind when it is, so I'll think about how we can analyze some of the outreach that we do in that space to make sure that we're reporting back to you on what we are doing.

How many years behind is it?

So when we get the data, we probably hear about three or four years ago, because the window to apply for the property tax refund is very wide. Like this fall, you can apply for like two years ago's property tax refund. So the window stays open for a long time. So by the time the state has the data available for us to analyze, it's significantly older.

Yeah, okay. Yeah, and I don't know where this lives or which department it lives, but I know that there was an effort by the county a few years ago encouraging residents to utilize a website about where they are owed dollars and actually collecting it, right? So I don't know where that can live or where we can continue to measure that, but that's essentially money that's left on the table that our residents are leaving. So I just want to make sure that we continue to monitor and or find a way to continue to promote that.

Yeah, I can address that a little bit. I don't think they're related necessarily because, again, those state dollars are probably in a spot that we don't have access to information. But what you're calling out is the unclaimed information. funds that have to do with county related county funds. So that still exists that I think on open data portal people can look at a report on do you have any unclaimed funds from Ramsey County. It'd be great if there was something like that. beyond us, but we can only control what we have information on. But I think we could maybe through your assessor's group, if you bring that as an interest, maybe between all of them with a similar interest in wanting people to maximize. And I also would wonder, we should talk to our government relations folks, because I wonder if in different seasons where we've pushed for that to be legislated, I wonder if people haven't gotten some data as a way to make that case, if that makes sense. So maybe some research has been done by the state, you know, in the House or at the Senate already, or there's some reports or something. That's just a thought. Thank you.

Can you share again where one would go to to apply for the homestead rebate, the rental rebates?

I Madam Chair, yes. If you go to the assessor homepage on the Ramsey County website, the link to the online homestead will be right there, right above the property tax videos and the five languages, and everything's right on our home splash page.

Home page.

Yeah, the county assessor on Ramsey County, on RamseyNet.

Thank you. Commissioner McGuire?

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for all of your and your department's great work, Director Chapman. We really appreciate it, because we do get calls from residents about their property taxes and their values. have a lot of questions about maybe if they've gone up or not because they've done some work on their house, or maybe the person next door did. So I appreciate that you are answering all those questions and are helping our residents understand their differences in value. So first of all, just appreciate that. applaud your efforts to deal with the restrictive covenant discharge. I've said before, we had one on our house and I was mortified to find that out. I would have loved to have discharged it before we sold. So we just didn't know about it or weren't aware. So that's a really bold, I love the goal of 100% in three more years. So I'm grateful that you're reaching out to Other campuses and saying Kate you mentioned and maybe others will help I think this is a great learning tool for students to do this kind of outreach so kudos to you for finding those partners and and I do like personally knocking on the doors of these of these people and then of these residents and then Talking to them and if they're not home you leave something. Is that how that works? Is that how you reach reach that many more people? I

Madam Chair, Commissioner, yes, literally, I've been out on a canvassing effort. Two years ago, I went on the first one, and I went to your childhood home and knocked on the door. I know. Thank you for that. But yeah, our assessors, along with a student, walk and knock in neighborhoods in St. Paul and around the county that have these restrictive covenants and We provide information To the resident there and if not we leave a sticker with a QR code on it and that QR code goes to the page that gives all of the information on how to discharge the covenant and the process for that so we've had a lot of success with interactions and The interactions have been very positive for the most part. And so it's a unique opportunity for assessors to really get into the equity field and make a difference that you can see. So it's a fantastic opportunity.

It's a great connection to communities. Really, I agree. Just being out there I think helps people feel listened to and heard like someone is paying attention. Okay, so thank you so much for that. I know it's not one of your measurements. I'm just curious, you know, about calls to the assessor's office regarding their property tax values. You know, does that pretty much stay about standard or, you know, the same? Are there times that that's been way higher than others? This is calls about value and, you know, property tax and such.

Madam Chair, Commissioner, yeah, we track all of that. And as you guys are aware, but the residents listening might not be aware, the appeal season starts in March and runs through June. So through that period, our calls get elevated because people can call and ask about their appeal. value at that time and and they can interact with an assessor and we can come out and and look at their property and make sure their value is accurate and It ebbs and flows a little bit through the market. This last year was kind of a down year as far as calls go and tax court petitions. So our tax court petitions, we received about 100 less than the year before. And we annually receive somewhere around 800 a year. And so we were near 700, then we were 800 this year. And our phone calls were down a little bit. I have all the numbers back in our office, and if you guys want to see a history of that, I can certainly provide that. And so, but we handle thousands of appeals maybe. Corey, you don't happen to have that off the top of your head.

Yes, it's thousands.

1,000 to 1,500 informal appeals, phone calls to the assessor's office during that March, June period. And those are all great opportunities for the assessor to interact with residents. I would say most of the time they are looking for information. And once somebody talks to them about the process, what their options are, they can feel confident and move on. Some want a review of their property, and we go out to their property and review the property with them. And then some are still not satisfied. They can go to the next level, the Special Board of Appeal and Equalization. We had two people attend that. then tax court, they can go to tax court after that. Or they can skip and right go to the tax court process. But there are a number of informal free appeal options that happen from March to June, and then after June, then their only option is the Minnesota tax court.

And I just want to say, I appreciate that we're stressing that March through June, because we do get calls at the time that they're paying their property taxes, which is now coming up this fall in December. And so we get calls about their value then. And we say, no, no, you've got to do this from March through June. So I think we're all working really hard, making sure that people understand when they need to ask us questions about their value when they need to appeal it it's not when they're paying it it's when they get their property stats tax statements in march so we'll just keep saying that as loud as we can and i know we're all putting it in all of our newsletters but i uh so appreciate that um that work that you're doing. And then I just have to give a shout out to our Equalization Board, which is people that we, that's what it's called, right? The board that we appoint to. Special Board of Appeal and Equalization, yep. Yeah. So we appoint people to that board. It's a board of our residents that look at some of these appeals. And I know I've appointed someone from New Brighton. Give them a shout out, Patrick Taub. But they sit on these. These are people that are residents of ours that volunteer and sit on these boards. So thank you. Thanks to everyone who participates in this.

I think County Manager Becker would like to respond.

Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair. Well, I just really want to take a moment and three points. I didn't want to lose my head right now. I wanted to just thank you, Pat, for the board just to know, you know, similar to elections, there's different seasons and moments in the history of a community that things become more focused on. And I will say, Right now, property taxes are a big focus. It's extra work for the assessor's office to be the subject matter expert, show up at meetings, do extra analysis. I know I've talked to Pat a lot more than probably other times in the history of time, and you're just kind of asking questions, right? And then I also think I appreciated him mentioning the Building Stronger Together, I think this positioning of assessors in EGCI has been so opportune. While the work that they do, and I know the first measure was really about all these licensure, it is so precise and legislated, and we really appreciate the technical aspects of this very highly important work to do accurately, and you guys are obviously doing that. It also provides us a chance to think strategically because we have an ability to have a subject matter expert, a statewide one at that path, that can help us think about things differently and knowing what you know is like a sight line that we actually didn't have in EGCI that directly. So really thank you for adjusting to that service team and Carrie for working on that. And then the last one is just I appreciated what you mentioned, Commissioner McGuire. We intentionally have tried to broaden the year of the budget and decouple things that shouldn't necessarily go together because then they confuse people more. You might recall many years where we would do the county manager budget, and then we would do a workshop with Pat and Tracy. And then we would talk a little bit about Pat's work, and then Tracy would do all the property tax impacts, and then everyone would be kind of a little muddled in how those two time together. Instead, we sort of decoupled it. It's more Tracy's show then at that time, because we're talking about property tax impact from the previous year's assessments. But we also make sure Pat's like always in the room in case there's questions and all that, right? Because sometimes it's not just about the process. People do have some questions about what's happening in downtown or whatever, right? But then we've tried to put an intentional focus and we will continue that in that March to June timeline. You know, we will have, again, you know, Pat will stand there again. I'll ask him to like probably in mid-February, you know, add a board, just a quick little presentation, talk about the open book meeting. remind us about what the things. But it has to be at the right time of the year so you guys can sort of amplify and the county can amplify at the right moment. So we understand there's a little bit of a delay. And when people feel the property tax pressure, you want to immediately make your case or talk about it. But that's not how the timeline works. And we don't want to make it more confusing. So Pat, for all those things, I want to thank you. It's been really great to learn from you, and I appreciate the way you've leaned in, but also how you've made some things that are pretty complex a little more understandable for us. We really are trying to understand tax-exempt properties, how they work, what, you know, even, you know, when we think about our redevelopment opportunities, we want to know, okay, well, if we decide to do this, like, what is the benefit to our tax base? And to understand that you actually assess every property, regardless of whether we're getting property tax on. So Pat's actually assessing a lot of properties that we actually, that aren't necessarily tax-paying, but he's understanding of them. So thank you so much. That was just a little context of the work of this department that I think just the measures themselves don't totally illuminate as deeply as they impact. So thank you, Pat. Thank you. Commissioner Miller?

Well, I don't know if I want to go back in now. Sorry. I felt like you kind of wrapped that up. No, no, I didn't mean to do that. Go ahead. You can do it. On the first slide, thank you so much for this, Pat. Can you kind of help me understand this equity piece a little bit more on the 24? I know we're in compliance. I know we're at 100%. I appreciate that. I also appreciate Commissioner Zhang's question on what changed to get us there. But with these 24 measures, how are they assessed? Because they're not ours, right? They're the... the state's measures that we measure. So where's the equity in that piece across different neighborhoods and property values? So how does that work out with this? Or are we just meeting this goal that the Department of Minnesota Revenue puts on?

Madam Chair, Commissioner. Yes, I won't get too nerdy. I'll stay a little bit above. But let's talk about how we look at the measures. The state measures us by jurisdiction. What that means is by city level. As an assessor's office, we measure ourselves almost down to a neighborhood level, because we want equity across the entire value column. So we generate the statistics that are required for, say, the city of St. Paul by every jurisdiction in St. Paul so that we make sure everybody is being treated the same. Some of the names, most of them measure value equity in the value column. So the low valued houses are being treated the same way as the higher valued houses. They use things like sales ratios and coefficients of dispersion to do that. But we look at the whole complete picture. We don't just say, St. Paul meets it, so we're good. We want to know that every neighborhood and every area of St. Paul is being treated fairly. And so we drill down in our office as far down as we can go to make sure that everybody's being the same.

And so do we see that across different neighborhoods, though, in different areas? And how do we... Maybe I'm just... I'll have to go back to you on that one because I'm not sure how to say what I'm thinking.

So I'll try to give you an example and maybe this will... clarify something so like let's say sales ratio which is the easiest one to understand a bunch of sales happen in an area you take the median sale price against the median assessment and see if they match up okay and so that'll tell you if that neighborhood is being treated how that neighborhood's being treated now if you just do that on a global scale You got this big of a thing, and we're judging this much. But if you take little segments of that whole value column and look at it, now you're suddenly doing that to every piece inside of the big picture. So when you make sure the little pieces are all being treated the same, then you know the whole picture is being treated the same instead of the other way where you just look at the big one and assume the rest are the same. We actually look at the little pieces to try to make sure.

Thank you. That's very helpful. I appreciate that.

Yeah.

I have a question in regards to that. So sales versus increases in property taxes, which comes from the assessor's office, right? Is that another department?

The valuation, Madam Chair, we handle the assessments like the valuation piece. We don't really have much to do with the tax calculation piece or the tax piece other than we set the value, classify the property, which sets the class rate, which will create the tax capacity that will eventually lead to taxes. So I don't have... Like, you could have properties. If every property in the whole county went up 10% and the budget didn't change, nobody's taxes would change. And so that's kind of the metric, right? I deal with the values and classification. And then the taxes paid come from budgeting and needs.

OK, I'll hold my question. Maybe I'll go one-on-one with you.

Yeah, that would be perfect. I'd love to do that, yeah.

Commissioner Ortega.

Can you talk a little bit more about AI and the appeal process I think you were talking about?

Madam Chair, Commissioner Ortega, thank you. This is something that has – it's really – Probably in the last five to seven years we've been seeing some AI appeals where a company puts together a value model and it picks sales and creates a value and they send it to us and they say, you're overvaluing these properties. Without any expertise looking at the AI model, without any local knowledge, without any professional oversight of what is developing that value. They're getting more and more prevalent and more and more bold. Last year, we got a company that filed a bunch of appeals on us in this manner. Now, they appealed the wrong year. They don't have all the knowledge they need to do it. But they do have the potential to learn. And so they're going to figure out a few of these things. And they have the potential to overwhelm the appeal system. If they get enough people to sign up on their website and they just send us 100,000 appeals from residents, we have to handle all those with just the staff we have. And it really has the potential to overwhelm an assessment office. And our professional organization is taking this very, very seriously. It's an interesting conundrum because we're right at the cusp of a new technology that anytime there's something new in a space, people try to figure out what's going to happen. So we're hopeful that we can. In Minnesota, we have a few protections. An inspection required for an appeal if you don't like the value model appeal and you want to appeal your value, I come to your house, but I have to do an inspection because I have to verify that my data is correct. That is extremely important in the valuation process. These AI companies don't have any of that local knowledge. They don't inspect any of these properties. So they're making a lot of, for instances.

So let me ask you this. Some of their assessments, so they do differ from us, right? Is what I'm hearing. Is that correct? Yeah, yeah. And how has that been decided either through the appeal process? I mean, to what extent have they been correct?

So... uh... madam chair commissioner a lot of in the past let's say before this last year they would send us just these pile of houses that they got an engagement letter from somebody to say yeah you can do this for me and soon as i tell them i got to inspect their property and i'd like them to be there so they can show me what they're thinking it ends the appeal because the company is not going to come from new york out here to inspect a property they're gonna get to the point where they're gonna come to do the inspection and then we're gonna have to deal with it, deal with the appeal. What their models are doing is the comp selection process inside of modeling is super important. So if you took a Highland Park house and didn't choose properties from Highland Park to value that house, you could get a very different result than if you chose the real comparables from Highland Park that needed to value that house. So that's where their biggest gap is. They look at St. Paul as one big thing. And so they just pick the lowest sales from the area, apply them to that house, and say that's what it's worth. So they don't have the institutional knowledge.

And I get all of that. I'm trying to go down the road of where you're concerned.

Yeah.

If you get 100,000 appeals and 50% of them are correct.

Well, they won't be correct. I see what you're saying. Yeah, I wouldn't say they're correct, but let's say 50,000 want an inspection. I've got 54 people, how am I gonna get to 50,000 inspections?

No, I understand. I'm trying to get to a couple of things, Pat. And one is that maybe the status quo isn't the best model to begin with, right? And if it needs change, then how do we learn from what's currently in the environment and get ahead of that curve instead of trying to fight it? Because you might be fighting a losing war here. So I'm trying to get a sense with AI if I understand the mechanics. And then the other piece is one of equity. How does this impact Is this a plus to a lot of folks that are lower income that can't afford to go through the process? Is that a more economic route for them to, not take advantage, but to use the system as it's intended, right? And that is to appeal. Most of the folks in the low income communities are not appealing.

Madam Chair, Commissioner, I understand your question more fully now. So as far as the affordability of it, all they have to do is call our office and they're going to get the same treatment whether they have this AI program. company do it or not. They're going to get the exact same treatment, and we're going to look at the house with the exact same lens. So they're going to lose... From your end? From our end. Yeah, they're going to lose...

But they don't have to do the... But the homework to get to you is part of the process, right?

Well, for the appeal, all they have to do is call us. They don't have to have an appraisal or nothing like that for open book. They can just call us and we'll look at their property and go out and inspect their property. And if there's an adjustment warranted, we're going to make it. And so if this AI company comes, and they are charging them 30% of whatever their perceived tax savings is, which they still can't figure out because they don't know how our tax system works, that somebody's value could go down, their taxes could go up the next year. They're paying someone to do this, but they're getting the same treatment. Just because they came with an AI thing that shows something that's erroneous but says their value's lower, we're not gonna vote.

But what if it's correct?

If it would be correct, we would lower it whether they had the information or not.

There's something missing in there that has to do with the value. Because on one hand, you told me you got 54 people, and I don't think you could cover the waterfront even now.

Right. Correct, Commissioner. But everybody has the opportunity to appeal by just calling. They can just call us to appeal. I am not arguing the opportunity. Yeah.

I had a lot of opportunities, so a lot of things doesn't mean I can get there, right? Yeah.

But to your other point, Commissioner, about the AI and what we're doing with it, we're evaluating AI right now. Our industry is evaluating AI to make sure that is there a way we can check our models with AI to make sure that our models are creating credible information.

Well, and that's what I'm getting to. And that's what we're doing a lot of it. How do we utilize it rather than try to in any way impede it?

And to circle back completely, those measures that the Department of Revenue grades us on are integral into telling whether your assessment's online or offline.

Thank you.

Thank you. Commissioner McMurtry.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Two quick things. One, I just wanted to go back and highlight again, like you have, Pat, the importance of the property tax refund program. And to Commissioner Zhang's point, something that I think we should for sure on our end do what we can to continue to gain exposure to the program. also i think it's it's an important thing for us to continue to push uh amc on uh to make sure that this is a a statewide effort especially as we push i think should continue to push for making it automatic through the state legislature so i just wanted to name that because i i do think it is bigger than just us at ramsey county this is something that um Counties across the state should be encouraging their residents to take advantage of, and I think it behooves us to make sure that this is something we push AMC to continue to advocate for as we look towards the next legislative session. One question I had is around the professional development and looking at you know, our role to encourage staff to get those advanced licenses and destinations. Out of curiosity, are those different licensures and designations, are there costs associated with them? And if so, do we assist with helping staff pay for those as they get this development?

Madam Chair, Commissioner, thank you for highlighting the PTR thing as always. I should wear just a sign. I should get a lapel pin, PTR. On the designation, in the course of each licensing cycle which the county pays for, for the requirement of their license, there are opportunities to take advancement courses that count for their current license, but also the next license. So the short answer is yes. Inside of my education budget, there's opportunities for people to do this in the normal course of taking their education for their next renewal cycle. They can take the next level's courses, and they count double for pre-licensing for their next license and also continuing education for their current license. Gotcha. So we're double-dipping every opportunity we can to keep people advancing and then coaching them to get these higher designations. Okay.

Commissioner Jefferson?

Yes. Actually, that was the question I had, was what kind of support we were giving to staff if we were expecting this greater... professional acceleration, so thank you for that. Following up on the question of AIO, listening to you talk and having had this question raised earlier this spring around the generation of these letters, my mind just goes to the generation of any kind of thing. I mean, the idea that anybody could just decide to say, sign up for this and we'll send out any possible request to any possible government entity at any possible moment. Don't miss out. And the volume of just completely wasted time on everybody is the thing on the off chance that maybe somehow, somehow a nickel got attributed wrong in your account that now you're spending all your tax dollars at every level of government in pursuit of these AI requests. Just saying that out loud. So I think it's bigger than this tax assessment. I'm just wondering if you all were the canaries in the coal mine with those first initial letters, we may need to amplify this higher than just this.

Madam Chair, Commissioner, thank you for that. You're exactly right. I was sitting with a state representative the other day talking to him about this exact issue. And he was worried about the things that you're worried about. I'm just in my little space worrying about the card I'm pulling, all of these other spaces. And he had mentioned that there is a state AI board that I was unaware of. And they're looking at these issues at a state, but I mean at the legislature this year, I could see the Judiciary Committee, the Tax Committee, all of the major committees looking at AI as a real, really something that they gotta dig into because there's an opportunity to really impact a lot of areas.

I think what Commissioner Ortega was describing is maybe a lack of trust since we are the entity that's taxing for an individual to call and say, hey, can you take a look at my property? Are you sure you have it right? Knowing that we're also the entity that's taxing and therefore it might be attractive for an entity to hire a third party to do that review. And so I think what this does reflect is maybe an exercise in trust building with communities so that they gain access insight into the process of valuation to the extent possible so that they can feel confident that when they get that first notice that they've gained some insight into the process and go, yeah, they're probably within a really solid range. As I think about this kind of AI phenomenon, I see it as somebody coming in to a home that they want to buy and saying, I'm not paying what you put in your listing. Zillow tells me this. But Zillow is very comparable. It just takes these comps, right? And then it's like, eh, it's probably this, right? Yeah. Of course, somebody's saying, well, no, you haven't even seen the home. Let me show you our improvements. And that's kind of what they're describing is you need to see the home. And one real, not easy, but one solid kind of approach that Director Chapman's describing is that in-person inspection. Because since these are kind of like, you know, bought kind of letters going out, there's pushback as to why this third party should meet at the house and do an inspection of the property because they're probably sitting in another state just kind of launching them out. And that's one way around that. But it's going to take a lot of work and research. So, yeah. Thanks.

OK. Commissioner Jemison.

Yes. And I just want to have you further elaborate on that appeals process, that there is a community board that are colleagues and residents outside of us that are part of that process. Can you explain that? Because that's another level of trust, that it's peers that are.

Madam Chair, Commissioner, yeah. The end of the informal appeal process is the special board appeal and equalization, and that's built of residents throughout the community, and they are the final check and balance on our system. And let's talk about... How the office plans to deal with this right because I'm bringing up an issue and I'm and I'd so I'm just going to elaborate a little bit on this next spring It's going to take a concerted effort by my office and the communications department To put the message out that people don't need to hire these outside people that are going to take money For something that we're going to do for them for free So we're already developing a communications plan about the timing where to reach them, Hmong Radio Network, Facebook page, all of the different communications. You might see me on the news, who knows? It's gotta be something that we have to do to communicate to people that we are open to your questions about our process and our value. You do not have to hire someone that's gonna take some of the money if you are owed. We will do it for free. Contact us first. And so it's going to be a communication outreach that we're going to have to do.

So as we talk about trust, because not everyone trusts government, even if it's free. They don't always trust government. But as I'm thinking about the restricted covenant discharge and your lofty goal to do 100% in three years, with 5,500 properties to complete, it's probably that great partnership that you have with St. Caves and the young people who's knocking on doors that people can sometimes trust more than, you know, calling into government and talking to government. It's like that real kind of interaction that happens with people, real people, right? So is that one part of your goal, to continue to engage with communities, to go out and to knock those doors, to talk about the covenant discharge, to reach your goal by 2028?

Madam Chair, yes, that is a key piece, is when different entities in a community are together with the same message, it brings stronger. That's for sure.

And I would say that can also be part of the message, or not the message, but one of those goals that you can set to help build the trust that's needed. With people saying, we do this work, and we'll do it free. But have many messenger of the message that comes from the community, that's in the community, to be a part of that message.

Yeah, Madam Chair, in the past, I've been to a lot of the local, you know, Frogtown Neighborhood Network. I've spoke at a number of community places, and that always helps. That always helps build the trust.

Okay. All right. Have you closed out, or are you done? Well, thank you so much for presenting here. You gave us a lot of good information. We appreciate your work. So we're going to move on to our library director, Director Yang. So welcome. Could you please introduce yourself, and then you can start with your presentation.

Good afternoon, everyone. Can you all hear me? I always feel a little insecure whenever the mic is above my head.

You can push it down a little bit.

No, we're here. I can project a little bit to reach the mic.

Can you fold it down?

There's a sign that says, do not move the microphone.

Oh, OK.

Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Pang, and I'm honored to share Ramsey County Library supplemental budget performance measures. Before I begin, I want to extend some deep appreciation to the team of, wait, me? Let me go down. Let me find libraries. All right. I want to extend some deep appreciation to the team of 130 passionate library employees that make these performance measures happen. In addition to that, I want to acknowledge the individuals that helped bring this presentation together. Ivory Love, Director DeWalt, Director Greenlee, DCM Collins, amongst several other people that helped pull this together. So Ramsey County Library provides services at seven suburban locations across Ramsey County. We also provide services online and out in the community. Driven by community engagement, our collections, programs, services, and spaces reflect a wide range of interests and needs to connect children, teens, and adults to access support for learning, work, creativity, and personal growth. So Ramsey County Library oversees collections and resources for public use, including books, DVDs, our library of things, online resources. We also host programs for growth and development, such as story time, computer classes, maker programs. And then we also have our facilities, which include spaces such as study rooms, meeting rooms, areas that facilitate engagement opportunities. Our work is guided by Ramsey County's strategic priorities, community engagement through the Ramsey County Library Advisory Board, and further informed by engaging communities to develop the library's strategic plan. The performance measures covered today reflect Ramsey County's strategic priorities of racial and health equity and shared community power, which you'll see in the performance measure library materials purchased that reflect racially and ethnically diverse communities. We'll also cover operational excellence, community connections per 1,000 Ramsey County residents. And then resident-centered holistic support. So suburban Ramsey County residents with a library card account. And we have a sub-measure down there, which is Ramsey County residents with a library card account. The performance of a strong library system is reflected by how and who we serve in the Ramsey County community through our acquisitions, our transactions, and card ownership. Library measures are community indicators of utilization, such as circulation, the amount of times people are checking out materials, responsiveness to resident requests, how relevant the programs that we are facilitating and the books that we're that are being checked out, as well as informing our partnerships with key community partners, which identifies who we are serving, addresses who we must prioritize, and then also who we are missing. Our first measure that we're going to be looking at is library materials purchased that reflect voices that reflect racially and ethnically diverse communities. One of our most important assets behind our team and our spaces is our collection. Our books, our DVDs, the parks, snowshoes, sad that Director McCabe left, state park passes, e-books, amongst several other items. We strive to provide a collection that is diverse, that is relevant, that is reflective of the community it serves, and spans a wide range of subjects voices, and formats. An enriching library experience includes a collection that is diverse, that is relevant, and is reflective. The metrics that you see here specifically reflects any new materials purchased within that given year. Historically, about a third of our new acquisitions of materials are by or about people of color. People check out and use our materials based on how relevant it is, how popular it is, how accessible it is. And the selection of the material is done extremely intentionally. Right now, we have staff that work directly with specific publishers, well-respected curators of lists. They are reaching out to partners like cultural liaisons at school districts for recommendations, as well as partnering with some of our internal community partners. We have a program with the Ramsey County Correctional Facility, and we go in there, and we're like, hey, what kind of books do you want to check out? And so they give us recommendations, and we have curated a collection that they are very committed to and has an extremely high circulation. I feel strongly that the metrics that we are at are actually very good, even though this represents only a third of our collection. We're projecting a slight incline in 28 of our 30 goals, partially because the publishing industry is still catching up. So as they continue to catch up, a couple things that I want to go through is that in 2025 alone, we checked out over 3 million items. The public checked out over 3 million items. And so that essentially means that every single person in suburban Ramsey County checked out a book at least once a month. Two-thirds of the items that are checked out are physical materials, and one-third is the materials. Half of all of the items that have been checked out are children's materials, which highlights the importance of continuing the reflection of our community. And we are pretty much back at our pre-pandemic level of the over 3 million circulation. A handful of challenges that we face are keeping up with existing demands, holds ratios. How many people are waiting for popular items? How long are they? We like to keep that ratio a little bit low so that people are not waiting years for a book. And then in addition to that, inflationary costs. High costs for print materials and high costs for e-content. We do benefit greatly, though, through our partnership with MELSA. MELSA pays for Libby, which is the platform that we use for circulating e-books and e-audiobooks. We continue to be the number one circulating consortium in the whole world. And in addition to that, our partnership with Ramsey County Library of Friends helps supplement this budget. Our next performance measure is community connections per 1,000 residents. This is our newest measure. So anyone, whether or not they have a library card, can come visit the library, utilize any library resource, and look at a book off a shelf, have it back on the shelf, or leave it at a table for us to collect and grab. And this is where we have two parts to this metric. We have our physical library visits and our virtual library visits that we have combined together. In 2025, physical library visits accounted for over 800,000 individuals walking through our doors, like literally walking through our doors. So that means every single person in suburban Ramsey County visited the library at least three to four times a year in 2025. They come in, they engage with our largest and most important asset, our staff. They ask for books, stuff about History Day projects, and where that recipe they can find next, maybe a specific tractor from 1915. That's a very real question that I have received before. It's like a very specific tractor. They wanted to paint it. You know, they come in and they look for help finding jobs, seeking resources, one-on-one tech help. During the fall, last fall of 2025, there were a lot of requests for food resources and assistance. Remarkably, during Metro's surge, our notary services and notary requests quadrupled. And then they also come to attend programs, connect with partners. story times, preparing kids for school, connecting with community, connecting with all of our other partners that come in with us to do services at the library. Workforce Solutions, the Service Center, Public Health, WIC, and the Public Health Department bring in parents to our Maker Labs. They love the sewing machines. They love creating. And then also to get engaged with our community resource advocates. They also come into our library for our spaces to use our copy, fax scan, computer machines, 3D printers. What is growing is our study room usage, gathering spaces, and meeting rooms, which the reservations have more than doubled since 2015. And so that was one metric. The other one is our website visits. Website visits account for over 10 million visits in 2025. That essentially means every single person in suburban Ramsey County visited our website about 40 times in the year, almost every single week to access our library catalog, our calendar of events, or our digital library, which is a resource of over 95 databases. that include academic and peer-reviewed medical journals and articles, like homework help, car repair manuals, ancestry genealogy databases. This is a pretty imperfect measure though, I have to say. There are some things that it does not count. It doesn't count whenever we do outreaches. So our children's librarian visit over 100 kindergarten classes every single fall. They visit over 2,500 kids. That's not included in here. When we visit the Ramsey County Correctional Facility, make engagement points there, the numbers are not counted in here. Or earlier this spring, when we engaged every single second grade student across two school districts, that's also not counted in here. And it doesn't include, unfortunately, any hits to our Ramsey County Library app or the Libby app. But I think this measure is a pretty great example of our services. Now looking at our library card accounts, suburban Ramsey County residents with a library card. I want to make sure that I separate the two. Ramsey County is served by two separate library systems, St. Paul Public Library System and Ramsey County Library System. Ramsey County Library System is everything excluding anything in St. Paul. St. Paul Public Library, absolutely wonderful library system. Everything else is us. And so while people are not required to have library card accounts, almost half of suburban Ramsey County residents do hold an active Ramsey County library card account, which we strive to increase. Some of the benefits include the ability to access the wide resources, take home the books, the 95 databases that I was chatting about. And then also access to our MELSA partners, so they can go to St. Paul, register their library card over there, and then utilize any and all resources that they have over there, or across any of our eight metro area regional library systems. And then they also get access to interlibrary loan, which is the ability to borrow books from libraries across the nation. So in general, we want to make sure that we are also removing obstacles to barriers for getting a library card, and then also barriers to accessing our library resources in general. So trying to limit the requirement to have a library card account to get to our resources. We provide guest passes for folks that want to use the computer. We don't require people to check in with their library card account when they come to a program, et cetera. So while we track this measure, we should really look at all three. And then I'm just gonna briefly review this one. I'm not gonna go very much in depth, which is Ramsey County residents with a library card account. This just means the St. Paul residents that are registered with their library card account in the Ramsey County library system. So about 10% of all St. Paul residents have their library cards account registered in suburban Ramsey County library system. So looking at improving our performance measures here, specifically to the first measure, library materials purchase that reflect racially and ethnically diverse communities. I want to note that we are overall constrained by inflationary costs for physical materials and limited by restrictive language around e-materials. Increased inflation costs for physical materials are essentially at 20% to 50%. So a book that would have been between $25 to $30 in 2020 is now $35 to $40, or a little bit more than that. E-materials cost between three to five times the cost of their physical counterpart. So let's say an audiobook might have cost, you know, $45, $50. When we're looking at the e-audio version of it, it's 100 and something. It's almost $200. And the thing about the e-material is that there's only two different ways that we can license materials, e-content. You can either do it by time frame, so you can have it for two years, or you can check it out for 26 times. And so once you have exceeded either that time frame or that circulation, the item disappears back into the ether. Whereas for the physical counterpart, we might keep it until it falls off the seams, or we might repair it, actually, if it's extremely popular. And then we'll toss it back down the shelf. So we have an opportunity to pursue legislation that prohibits restrictive electronic e-book and digital audio book contract language. Looking ahead, I would really recommend reviewing and supporting legislation to cap the costs for e-content. And this would provide us more purchasing power, essentially. For the next bullet, I also believe that partnerships with key organizations will only improve our connections with communities. We recently partnered with the Roseville and Mounds View school districts to grow home libraries of second graders. And this was a project that was supported by the Ramsey County Library Friends. These types of connections are the extremely meaningful ones that bring students and more users into our libraries. In terms of ongoing challenges, our meeting room usage has been extremely just flying off the chart. Earlier I noted that meeting room bookings has essentially doubled since 2015. This will require capital investment, essentially. When we look at our buildings and when we look at our structures, people come in for books, for staff, et cetera. And then people also come in because we are the community AC, or we are the community heat. And so while we have large attendances, while we have people utilizing the resources, some people are really just looking for a shelter, a place to stay during the day. Um, sometimes they use our study rooms to, to not even study, not even go to that court hearing or the interview for the medical appointment or that tutor or the mentor or the court, like, or studying, like sometimes they're just there to exist. Um, and so, uh, as the volume continues to increase, like we're going to have to, um, really, uh, think and prioritize our capital investments in our spaces. In addition to that, libraries continue to see challenging and or complex conditions and situations. The incidences and experiences that happen in our communities also happen in our libraries. The needs in our communities are very high right now. People experiencing oscillating mental health conditions in our communities, they come into our libraries. Staff have to manage these situations in a very public space, and then also at the same time ensure the safety of the public and their colleagues. Beyond this, staff are managing complex and highly nuanced situations that require several referrals to nonprofits and partners, such as Suburban Ramsey Family Collaborative, Housing Stability, Financial Assistance Services. And so I just want to do a tiny shout out to, kudos to Deputy Director Ray Lockman, who's reviewing and assessing a lot of training and support opportunities for staff to connect with experts and colleagues around this type of work. But then as we continue to move forward, we're going to continue to need to figure out some solutions for supporting our staff and the public. So in terms of operational changes to improve efficiency, we have been reviewing our processes, procedures, and practices to identify operational changes. You may all be receiving library notices via email or phone. We also have a camp of people who are very committed to their print mail home notices. And so in the past year, we've been working on transitioning a lot of those individuals either to phone or email notices, that's actually saving us quite a bit of money. And by quite a bit of money, I mean like 500 bucks a month, which I'm going to say like, yay! $500! This is saving us on postage, and this is saving us on printing, as well as staff time. In addition to that, we also procured a new integrated library system. And ILS, the integrated library system, is essentially a database that manages library card accounts, and then library materials, and then the relationship between the two. So folks who have a suburban Ramsey County library card account probably recall in July when I'm like, hey, there's going to be a little bit of pause in services, but then it'll be coming back up. July 2026 was when we transitioned our ILS, and the last time we did it was 25 years ago. This is resulting in a cost savings of about $50,000 every single year. And then in addition to that, we also adjusted our staffing structure. For the 26-27 year, we essentially eliminated our sub budget. And so we used a lot of those subs to ensure that we can operate our buildings and have staff in the public desk. We transitioned to long-term subs and supplemented those employees by vacancies to ensure that our doors can remain open for public service. As we look forward, I already plugged in a note for this, but we will have to strategically review our complement of facilities and ensure that any capital investment that we make is the right investment for our residents for the next few decades. Considering the increased requests for meeting rooms, high foot traffic, anticipated increased use, we'll pursue a facility's vision to ensure that we are moving in the right direction. And then we'll also continue to maximize our relationship and partnership with Ramsey County Library Friends. Previously, they contributed probably about half of a percent. And now we're looking at a contribution of 1%, which funds a portion of our programs. There is significant opportunity for us to continue to expand the support as well. And so with that, I'll conclude my presentation and stand for questions.

All right, thank you. Commissioner Miller.

I thank you, Director Yang, for everything that you and your staff do. As somebody that has three libraries in their district and who visits them monthly, I appreciate each and every one of your staff that welcome me into their space monthly. My first slide is gonna go to, our first slide, my first question goes with, This is great seeing, and I appreciate the effort to purchase more culturally and ethnically diverse material. What is the utilization on the material that's being purchased?

So that is a difficult metric to track, partially because we do not, while we flag it at purchase, we don't track it after a purchase itself. I can tell you that we have... For a moment of time, we did track utilization of the books purchased that were referred and recommended to us by Ramsey County Correctional Facility inmates, and that was extremely high use. There were some books that we were essentially like, let's just keep it there. Can we donate a couple copies because we're just not going to see it back again? And so there's been some microcosms of tracking some of that, but then there's really no way for us to...

Then my next as we were purchasing these materials I just want to make sure just like I just want to add the note in is to make sure that we're purchasing materials that are written by Authors that are reflect what they're writing. So I know often time in the native community Non-native people like to write about us But it's just better to purchase it from an actual native author for that's an example that I was just wanted to give I

Right. I really appreciate that note, Madam Chair, Commissioner. We believe in own voice. And so that essentially is what you're speaking to. And so we partner and we work with Birchbark Books, actually, to ensure that the materials that we are purchasing are reflective and is reflective of and not on tech voice. Yeah, that'd be great.

And not just for the native community, but for all communities. Okay, and then my question, I did have a big question on the slide, but I did see it that it's on the next slide. So when we go to the performance measures, can you talk a little more about these challenging and complex incidents that you and your staff are experiencing? Maybe give us an example would be helpful. And then how are your... how do you respond to that in real time, right? Like, if you've mentioned here and you said in your presentation that, you know, you've required more staffing or, you know, partnering with service centers, so... And then I'm going to, are you seeing the incidents at the library happening with library patrons, people utilizing the library, or people utilizing the space for a safe place to be, or more of us utilizing the library because there's a service center there? I just want to make sure that, one, that there's the right type of people in that right type of space. So if we maybe don't, it shouldn't be a library staff responding to it, maybe it should be a social service staff, or Service center staff helping respond to that instead. How can we help in that area?

Madam chair commissioner all of the above Okay I think every single situation has been extremely and highly nuanced in terms of the needs and the complexity of each situation In August there was a situation of an unhoused family and three generations of families that essentially parked themselves outside of one of our libraries. And we had to employ as many resources as we could to provide the support for that family. And so that library location was Mounds View, and it did not have all of that. And the Mounds View Library is very well loved by the community for a handful of different values. it's not a gigantic library it's not intimidating you know who the staff is every single day that you're walking in there and so then you can build a relationship and you can build trust with them that's something that you don't really experience at let's say roseville shoreview or mounds view because they're so large there's so many people that work there um for that particular situation like we had to call multiple different partners We connected with housing stability. We connected with service centers. We connected with as many resources as we could. We connected with the city as well to just try to get support. But then that's one incident, and that's one scenario. And then we also have other scenarios such as an individual who is experiencing a mental health crisis that what we need to do is deescalate, ensure that that individual is safe, ensure that staff and patrons are safe, and then actually just get them out the door or to the support that they need, right? And that's not going to be us. I'm a true believer that we cannot be the expert at everything, and as much as we know people and try to develop and gather resources, we won't know everything, and we won't know all the resources. And so then those are sort of the types of situations that we do just hand off and pass it off to other experts, such as, like, our public health nurses or the mental health unit of a police department to say like, hey, we really need your support. All hands, let's wrap support around this individual. And then let's develop a plan outside so that whenever they do return to the library, that there's very clear set expectations. But to your point about what happens at the time of... it's very difficult. Staff are having to make some judgment calls for situations that have never happened before. And so every single situation is extremely different and extremely nuanced and carries varying levels of weight. And so I really appreciate the staff that are managing these situations.

While we're on staffing, you did mention in the last slide the steward and cost savings. You did mention the update on the subsystem. And I'm just curious to see how that has changed and how is that working. As someone, again, who's in the libraries, three different libraries monthly, I can kind of see and I can kind of see how busy sometimes it really is. And so I'm just curious how the subs are working and... if that's successful and that has actually played out or if that's something that we need to reconsider. And why I say that is because I don't want it to get us into a situation where now we're utilizing more staff rather than filling positions and then staff feel overwhelmed, worked, burnt out. You know, whether it's I can't take time off so I'm just going to call in sick and then you kind of get that whole cycle of... staffing issues.

Madam Chair, Commissioner, the transition that we made from 2025 to 2026 is that we no longer have folks that are on call that just picks up one shift and then lets it go. or completes that shift and then they're done until they pick up another shift. Now we have transitioned it to long-term subs to ensure that there's a regular cadence to some of the work that they're doing. We're still trying to fill every single role that we have. And so that doesn't pause. Filling and having any long-term shift doesn't pause our ability to hire. And so we haven't paused any hiring time. And so we do hope that staff do continue to take their vacation, do continue to take leaves as needed. And then we'll figure it out. But then that has been a transition. We've been looking at ways that we could alter, we could change it. The deputy director has employed a handful of strategies to also keep us updated. And so we've had shelving blitz over at Roseville. Roseville is an extremely popular, I think one of the highest and busiest circulating libraries in the state. And so that essentially means you could blink and then all the carts are full that someone needs a shelf. And so we still have been having a handful of tiny one-offs to ensure that libraries continue to keep up. Though it is a little imperfect. We're going to be reviewing and assessing it. We're now eight months in, nine months in.

Okay. And then you mentioned also evaluating facilities across Ramsey County to identify where to make strategic investments. What does this look like, and when, or what does this, or could this look like, and at what point, or when should the board expect to be updated and be engaged in these conversations as well? And is that just more like maintenance and modernization, or is that decisions on a different, on providing services?

Madam Chair and Commissioner, So in 2018-2019, Ramsey County Library developed a facilities master plan. And as a part of that work, it essentially assessed all of our buildings and then made recommendations. A big disruptor to that plan has been the pandemic and how people use our public resources and public spaces. And so I think what we would be pursuing in 2027 would be a reassessment of what our buildings are, the current status of them, and then make some recommendations on are they in the right places? Are we with the right partners? Are we making the right considerations for how people actually use these spaces for today's day and age? Because as we have seen from the renovation of the library at Maplewood is that the plan actually did not describe what that library needed. And we did a complete redo based off on some community, three very intense community engagement sessions that essentially said we need way more study rooms, we need way more engagement places, and we need way more meeting rooms in addition to a living room. And that's what we put in into that library, and it is now being well utilized.

Okay, thank you. I appreciate that.

Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair, Commissioner Miller. I think I've talked to DCM Collins quite a bit about this and I appreciated Peng's strategy around it. It's in alignment. I think we just really want to think smart about how we co-locate. I mean, we've seen a lot now around our service centers or how we work with community partners, with our cities, our other nonprofits. To me, it feels like at a moment as needs are increasing and the county isn't the only answer for what people need, and while libraries are trusted spaces and a scarcity of resources within multiple levels of government, we need to just think more smartly. about how to co-locate things so that people, both for costs and all those things, but also for accessibility. Like when families, they don't need to go on eight trips to take their kid to the library and maybe go get a county service and maybe see a public health nurse. I think we really need to think about integrated services. And that could even include doing some business with the city, too. So I just think those are a multitude of partners. There's different models already out there. that have been happening, but maybe not as intentionally. And now we need to think about that before we make more investments. We should have a framework.

So thank you. So I was also thinking the same thing, that today we're not where we were five years ago or 10 years ago. And populations are diverse. They're different. There's more challenges in the world with families. And I was just wondering, as you look at the changing environments that we are in, and I hear you talk about this, but do staff need different types of trainings to prepare them with the engagement piece of people coming to the library? and how to respond to that, and maybe use some trauma-informed training or whatever. There's different types of training to use as you deal, as you encounter publics. So maybe think about that, too, what we need to be doing today that we didn't have to do yesterday. And I wasn't sure about that family that you talked about, that three-generational family that came into the library. Why did they need help, service? What were they doing?

Madam Chair, that family was unhoused. They needed food resources. And they needed a lot of other resources for their children.

I mean, what did they do that made them stand out that the staff had to engage with them?

Madam Chair, they were sleeping outside of the building.

OK, that's the difference. I'm trying to get to why they was encountered. So they was outdoors sleeping. And so we made some phone calls to get some support in there. That's what Ramsey County do. Hopefully we showed up and was able to meet some of the needs of the family.

OK, because I wasn't sure.

I'm like, OK, what was happening with the family? And I would agree, you know, as we try to evaluate, looking at integrated services. What did that look like today and now? That's different from where it was. Public spaces are not where they used to be. And so how do we transition to meet the needs of today, individuals and families and communities? And what do that look like? So I would hope to hear back from you about what you think that needs to be. What are we doing differently? What have we learned as we see different issues or different situations that arises where public spaces are being used and maybe used in a different way than they were used before. Because I can remember libraries have always been a safe place for families to go and be for many different reasons. And what is that role? What does that mean for the staff and others who are there to support families and communities?

Madam Chair, Commissioners, on that note, we actually just talked about this very thing over lunch just an hour or so ago. And although I think libraries does get kind of a concentrated dose of some of these complexities, you know, we are the assessor's office. They go into homes and they're experiencing it. Our park staff are experiencing it. So to your point about trainings, I do think that there's probably a broader organizational approach we should be looking at if you are facing the public in any way, service center staff. You need to be equipped. with this high level of training. I think that's the reality. So I appreciate you raising that.

Thank you. Commissioner Zong.

Thank you, Madam Chair. You know, I had similar questions that Commissioner Miller had just because we are seeing that level of need in all of our public spaces. So I have a question about are we working across different departments? I'm also thinking about our public health, like for our ARI, our public health responders there. Has there been a relationship that has been formalized or what is the cadence of the partnership?

Madam Chair, Commissioner, there are certainly strong relationships and ties across all of our departments. I meet with Director Caron pretty regularly. I also meet with the Director of Workforce Solutions, the Director of FAS and Social Services. It's absolutely necessary that we have all of these ties and relationships, and it's also been necessary for us to have ties and relationships with cities and with communities. our nonprofit partners, engagements with Solid Ground, Tubman Center, has been extremely crucial for us to continue to be able to provide the supports for the complexity of the situations that have been experienced. In terms of public health we engage with multiple different divisions and we do have a hand like the cadence over at the Moundsville library in particular I believe they visit the library at least twice a month and then over at the Maplewood library we have what we call community resource advocates where we actually have like people Inc come in and We have a handful of internal department partners that come in as well, and then a handful of other external partners that come in that sort of provide that wraparound support for anyone who's looking for any resource. Okay.

Yeah, that's really good to hear because I'm sure you're tracking the conversations in St. Paul about closing a library and really they're trying to make up some of the costs for community safety type personnel for the other libraries too. So those are some of the things that they're balancing. My next question is about the fees for using the community spaces. Do we have fees and are we asking for different fees for nonprofit, for profit partners?

Is that me?

If you're a county resident, non-county resident, are we charging fees?

Madam Chair, Commissioner, we are not charging any fees for any uses at any of our buildings. It is absolutely free. We only allow nonprofit partners. and community gatherings to occur there, we don't allow celebrations either. So if you and a group of your neighbors wanted to meet and have an eight-hour meeting at one of our libraries, you very well can reserve a room and a space for that. But we do not allow commercial activity in our buildings. At this moment we are not charging any fees. I believe maybe two decades ago we may have charged fees and it got very confusing for the public to understand what was a library program and what was not a library program. Although I believe St. Paul Public Library System does have a charge for room usage.

Yes they do.

Okay, thank you. Wait, wait, wait, wait one moment. Sorry.

Yep, we have Commissioner McMurtry and then Jevesy and then, I mean, McMurtry, McGuire, and then Jevesy. So McMurtry.

Awesome. Thank you, Madam Chair. And this is a really quick question. Going back to the library materials, I'm glad that you were highlighting the effort to make sure that those materials purchase reflect the communities that we're serving. Out of curiosity, out of those diverse materials, how many of them are from local authors or artists? Do we track at all how many are local to Minnesota?

Madam Chair, Commissioner, unfortunately, we do not track it. We are very thirsty for any material that is by or about people of color. And so we do purchase locally. We partner with local authors and booksellers and publishers locally. And then we also have a very expansive wide reach to ensure that we're covering as many bases as we can. Gotcha.

Thank you. Oh, okay. Ms. McGuire.

Thank you, Madam Chair. My colleagues have asked such good questions. I'm going to try and distill mine as well. First of all, Director Yang, thank you so much. We just so appreciate the work that you're doing. The libraries are, as many of our departments and entities are just transitioning all the time to be the best that we can be and provide the services that our residents most need. So thank you. And I've been lucky to serve on MELSA, which is our regional library system. So I get to hear a lot of the good things that we are doing and to hear things that other libraries are doing. And I appreciate your involvement in MELSA as well, because it helps me. I appreciate also that we, as much as possible, and it's really hard to do because it's just easier to say the Roseville Library, the Moundsville Library, but to say the library in Roseville because these are all Ramsey County libraries. And I always want to educate people about what libraries do versus what cities do. I want to make sure that the library in Roseville is a Ramsey County library and that we don't give Roseville all the credit for that. But it's a great library. It's my home library. I've used it since I was growing up. And it's a very busy library, as you know. So I have a question. about the room usage as well, because I don't even try to get a study room anymore. If I wanted to have a small meeting in a study room, they're never available. But do you have limits on the, like, two-hour limits? Or can someone, I've asked this before, but I think I know the answer. Someone could come in and just use it all day. And I just... I think that maybe there's a two-hour limit. I'm thinking back to my college days when you could only use a study room for two hours. So just curious about that.

Madam Chair, Commissioner McGuire, it really depends on what room you're talking about. For study rooms, depending on which library you go to, it might be a two-hour limitation. It might be four hours. If no one's waiting, then we could likely allow you to stay quite a bit longer. In terms of our meeting rooms that you have to reserve, You could reserve them for the whole day. And our limitation is actually that you cannot reserve any more than two. You cannot make any more than two reservations within a month. And then you can make a reservation 60 days in advance. And some individuals have become very savvy with being able to reserve literally the day that the room becomes available. And we do not restrict people in terms of time. Some of our nonprofit partners that don't have the space to have full team gatherings do come and reserve the space for the full day as a part of, like, some of the nonprofit work that they do. And so we want to make sure that we're allowing for that to happen too.

And I appreciate that. And our community loves this availability. And I really do appreciate it. I'm glad sort of that we don't charge for it, because it does allow access to everybody. And we also need to be sensitive about the cost to us, too. So I know that that's in your mix all the time. I do have a question. We do charge for copies and for 3D printers, though. Do we charge for that?

Madam Chair, Commissioner, we do charge for copies. It is an honor system for printing. and copies, and so I believe it's 20 cents for black and white, 75 cents for color copies. In terms of our 3D printing, I'm going to have to get back to you on that. Although it is well loved and well utilized. There's some really cool stuff that comes out of there.

I know that. And I know a lot of people really love to use it. I'm not opposed to charging a bit for that. Because I think that that just goes along with copies. And that's a pretty good deal for copies, let me just say. So I'm hoping that you do look at the charge for 3D printing items. And... Also, the mailing versus virtual notices, I'm very conscious of this. You know, when you have seniors in your community that really want hard copies and, you know, I do a virtual newsletter. So, you know, we do have a couple people that we print it out for and either hand deliver it or mail it, which, Lord, you know. And so I will say that... because they've asked us so nicely um but we uh i appreciate that you're we're trying to mail anymore and i would say that a good meeting point is that we just print out copies and have them at our libraries you know i mean just have hard copy notices um where they can pick them up because they can get to our libraries and things so i'm just saying i'm glad we're trying to find a a place where we don't have to spend so much money mailing things out and that we maybe just have hard copies available for people.

The county people?

Pardon me? Yeah, as a county. I think you said that you have a whole mailing list of people that still want to get hard copies. So you're printing and mailing hard copies.

Madam Chair, Commissioner, yes, some of our patrons and library users do receive mail home notices. We will likely be keeping a tiny form of that, to your point, which is around accessibility.

We do have a handful of patrons that are homebound.

And essentially that means they physically cannot access the library, and this has been certified either by a medical professional or their current housing situation, et cetera. And so in those situations, we want to continue to provide notices to them if this is the only way that they can receive it, so that they know that an item that we have sent to them, they need to also send back to us.

Well, I appreciate that. I know that we're trying to be accessible to everyone that we can be, and I appreciate that. I was just curious. You said 10% of the St. Paul residents register for Ramsey County library cards. Do you know how many percentage of Ramsey County of the suburban library people register for St. Paul cards? And I sort of thought they were interchangeable, but clearly they're not. And you can just explain that one more time.

Madam Chair, Commissioner, I do not have that information. The population of St. Paul is around 333,000. We have about 10%, so about 33,000 of the St. Paul residents registered in suburban Ramsey County library system.

Yes, and I know that our library cards are available in all the seven counties. I mean, we can... Can we use our library cards in the other counties, or do we have to get a card there? I forget.

Madam Chair, Commissioner, you can take your library card to any of the metro area library systems and register your library card there to utilize resources. Maybe Dakota County has a cooler 3D printer than ours. I don't know. I would say ours is pretty cool. But then you should be able to utilize all the resources and supports. from anywhere else. And then one really great thing about being a part of the Melsa Consortium is actually that if you are a St. Paul resident and you wanted to get your first card in Ramsey County, what we do have is an interchangeable library card system. So you'll get a temporary library card. And then we'll let St. Paul know. And then St. Paul will send you your actual library card. Or you may go retrieve it.

And I really do appreciate that coordination, learning from each other and everything. And that's commendable. So great job on that. I will say that other libraries are doing really amazing things. And I'm not sure we could ever do this, but I think it's Dakota County. They're allowing people to get access to their libraries at all hours, like when there's no staff there. Not all hours. Pardon me? Not all hours. Oh, really? Is it just from when to when?

It's a certain time frame.

We went into it. Okay. Is it just certain hours, like till midnight or something? No, it's not that late. It's just a few hours before. Is it just a few hours before and a few hours after? Okay. Okay, good. I heard it differently, but that's good to know because, yeah, that's really interesting. But I think we're just learning and understanding what other libraries are trying to do to serve their residents. And so... Just curious, just a couple more things, Madam Chair, because this is all so fascinating to me. I love our library of things. Can you just explain what that is? Because I think it's so exciting. Me too. That was my question.

Madam Chair, Commissioner, our library things is a collection of non-book DVD or CD materials. And so you can come in, check out a bin of markers if you have a meeting and you don't want to buy a ton of markers for a meeting. Or if you wanted to check out a handful of yard games, but you don't have the garage space for it. Or there's a wide variety of things in our library of things. If you wanted muffin tin pans, but you despise storing them in your kitchen, and you only use it during the winter anyways for holiday gatherings, you can come to the library, check out that muffin tin, and then return it back when you are done using it. And so a wide breadth of items that we have as a part of our library of things.

Thank you for that question. I'm always amazed at what our libraries do.

That was my question. You do everything. And our community loves libraries for all the things that you do. I really appreciate our county manager talking and you working on any location of services for any of the things. We used to have bookmobiles. I think St. Paul does. We may do. But, you know, we have library, I think we have bookshelves at our service center in Maplewood. Or, you know, I mean, I know that the libraries, maybe that was just when the library in Maplewood was under construction. But, you know, all the things that you're looking at to really serve our residents I think is really great. So thank you. Thank you for that. And last, Madam Chair, I do want to say thanks to the Friends of Ramsey County Libraries. The Friends are a great group. They are raising money all the time for resources for our library system. And just thanks so much to them and their work and to the many community members that are part of that for our partnership.

And thank you, Director Yang. For clarity. As a St. Paul resident, can I use my St. Paul library at Ramsey County Library?

Madam Chair, please do. Bring your St. Paul library card over. If you don't have one, we'll get you registered for one. OK.

And so you'll get me registered, which means I can no longer use my St. Paul. OK.

So Madam Chair, you can take your St. Paul library card and then use that as your one universal library card at all eight libraries. So you wouldn't need to carry around eight library cards. It would just be the one.

Thank you.

Yeah, that makes sense.

And I just want to say I appreciate the honor system for the copier, you know, because sometimes people are there, they're looking for a job, they need to do a copier. They just need to do it and may not have even 75 cents or a dollar. So I appreciate the honor system that you have. Or, you know, would you say no if someone didn't have money to pay for a copy?

Madam Chair, we don't really keep eyes on the honor system box all the time. And so if an individual ended up walking away with prints, unfortunately, since we're not tracking it, we're not going to be able to identify. Although there are situations in which we do say, hey, you know what? You're interviewing for a job. This is a resume. Or this is an extremely important pay stub that you need to submit to. Ramsey County, go ahead and take your print.

OK, thank you. And you still have, are people still taking out DVDs?

Madam Chair, yes. People are still checking out DVDs. Yep. Still popular.

They're popular. OK. They're popular. OK. All right. That's it for me. Commissioner Jefferson. Yeah.

My guess is that in your library of things, do you have both DVDs and the DVD player?

Madam Chair, Commissioner, we actually have DVD players right at our desk. And so if you wanted to check it out, I'm not sure if it's a part of our library thing. But I do know that if you checked out a DVD and you were like, I want to watch it right now in the library, You can ask for a disc player and we'll give you one and you can plug it into a public computer and you can watch the DVD.

Okay, that's impressive. The question that I have is along the lines of this conversation around reviewing our physical spaces within the libraries, reviewing, and I love how you're deciphering out the different populations that are using the libraries in different ways. And then how some library renovations in different locations look differently because of the needs of that community. And one of the things that I've really been a part of a number of conversations throughout the different communities where we have our libraries in the northern suburbs. And I have to say that there's a lot of conversation around local food shelves, other providers, the community center, the library itself, local school districts, things where there may be adult education or other programs, early childhood, things where they are already co-locating within community outside of school buildings themselves or specifically outside of City Hall. And so I know that there are a number of different conversations, and they're going to look unique in every community. But one of the things that I really appreciate is it seems as if you're collecting the data and having the conversations with those partners and with community to have a very strategic look at, one, how do we physically lay out our libraries to meet the current needs? If we're hearing that there are a lot of people using the libraries as a public third space, whether that's for personal reasons, study reasons, professional reasons that aren't commercial, but still like part of their own taking a call or doing, you know, co-locating outside of their home or something like that. And that's different than half of the materials are children and family based. Like how do we physically set up the spaces in a way that recognizes that somebody might just be coming in looking for a quiet place to take their call and doesn't necessarily have to troop through children's story time to get to that bat kiosk, right? Or if we're thinking about having extended hours for people to have Wi-Fi access, or if we're worrying about do we have enough staff to cover every corner of the library, can you stage open and close to say, like, our aisles are closed, but the library service area where you have meetings and other kind of things are still open? I mean, I just heard different conversations and different iterations of this, along with the idea of how are we co-locating in these other public spaces. So it could be that there are times when we are staffing some of those third spaces, and maybe we're sharing nighttime staffing when, again, maybe the stacks are closed, but the spaces for business use and stuff are open. I mean, I think these are conversations we really need to encourage with our partners. The other thing that I was thinking about is having been part of a community center for older adults. One of the things that was really, I saw what happened when we had a social worker on staff and when that position was no longer supported. And so to the question of there are lots of people who are in the position of being, not unexpectedly, but more regularly encountering a situation, whether it's the county assessor's office or the library, where they're encountering somebody who needs more than that person's job title, no matter how awesome they are with customer service can handle. Do we have a staff, like a navigator or a social worker or somebody whose staff have a warm line too? So it's not a public number that anybody in the world can call any time. But if a county assessor comes into a house and they think, this would be a situation I'm having a really productive conversation, but it's gone beyond my skill set and I want to take advantage of this person's connection to the county and warm hand them off to the next step. Or if somebody at the front desk had more of those housing navigator questions that rose beyond, here's the number to call. Do we have a warm line for somebody to call that would be a staff to staff referral?

madam chair commissioner um i um i really appreciate how uh library staff have reached out to other departments when necessary we have benefited greatly from previously partnering with service centers service centers in 2020 2021 were at all three regionals roseville shoreview and maplewood and um Even though Service Center no longer is over at the Shoreview Library, those relationships were maintained. And so my understanding is that when there was a family that was experiencing unstable housing and also had unstable food resources, the staff at Shoreview reached out directly to the public health nurse that worked previously at Shoreview. And so I hope that some of those ties remain. And as we continue to partner, such as whenever the WIC nurses come in with All the parents and everything, those are strong relationships that I hope that we continue to maintain. And so then if we don't have that warm handoff, we're hoping that one of our resources or networks also has that connection that would provide us the resource to get to what we need.

Well, and I'll just kind of go further on this and say that I'm really happy that over the years, the library has had representation at the Suburban Ramsey Family Collaborative's collective table, and there's a weekly call of service providers who get together because it's always a changing set of faces and needs and resources that are available. So it really is that constant communication that is above what we can expect a librarian, even a very invested one, to be able to keep up with. And I'm just wondering, what resources do we have collectively to the library as itself? Is to say, who would be, if I'm three months into my site and I don't have that history of those relationship buildings, what's the hotline on my desk that says, here's the place to start your productive conversation to getting somebody connected to the right person in the county?

I can try to take this one. Madam Chair, Commissioner Jevenson, I think this is an opportunity. Like, really, that front door of the county is a service center. So I'll just encourage Director Yang, when you have your next conversation with Director Ali, to just have that conversation and see if there's maybe a point in time where there's a faster teams call or something that we can do to make sure those service centers and navigators. And then I've always just encouraged, you know, as part of like front facing customer training, I appreciate what DCM Collins was saying around the de-escalation training and those things too. Like the people who are front facing need to know a certain sort of portfolio of information. And I've talked to CHRO Ferguson a little bit about that. You know, when you think about someone's training life cycle they need to know things as a county employee in general like we have our inclusive workplace policy you know those things that everyone needs to know you have some things you need to know about your very specific job like how you turn on whatever how you have your policies and procedures whatever that job is but then there's just some things you should know because you are a category of an employee and that category would be a resident-facing person. And that could include de-escalation training. It could include connecting residents to resources. So let's keep building on that. I think it is those layers of training that we need to build in. Because it doesn't matter, actually, if it's the service center, library, the environmental center. People can come in in their state of need to the county at any moment so if you're resident facing you should have you know those things and resources at your fingertips if that makes sense so we'll work on that that's great that's part of the holistic uh strategic priority that we have so i think we can do that and then then i just want to follow up too and a smaller thing is i know we've had some conversations around the

the study carrels, the meeting rooms, and reservations, and all of those things, and fees and things like that. And I know I said this last time when we were in budget season, and I'll just throw it out again. I don't think it has to be an on or off binary toggle. The idea, if we have multiple rooms and multiple study things, I think I mean, my guess is we can still have a no-business activity policy and have, you know, 20% of the rooms that are fee-based reservations so that you can collect a little bit of money. And if somebody does have that very important nonprofit community activity, you're like, you're going to have it for eight hours? Well, maybe it's $10 an hour to do it that much, and it's a one-off, and it's still cheaper than you having this facility in your thing. It doesn't preclude most people being able to walk in and find a room whenever they need to, but if it offsets, the reason why I say this is because it would be great if we could provide all of these things without having to think of the resources behind them, but if this helps to offset something like the free printing, then we have to be thinking about how are we providing all of these things to the community members that need them, and if there's a way to to somehow charge folks who it's a nice to have and not a need to have and capture some of that, it might offset some of those costs for folks where it's a need to have and we can then continue to find ways to pay for them. Something to consider.

I wouldn't support that. I think allowing community nonprofit organizations, maybe a for-profit something who can afford it, but to have the access to a meeting space for whatever reason that may be. I know the Rondo community is one of the most visit library there is in the city. And they have meeting rooms. But you've got to get in there and book your room, because you're just going to know it's going to be booked, because people are utilizing the space to gather community. I mean, if there's other ways that you need to recoup with fees, I mean, I think you need to be really strategic of what that needs to look like. It's a public space. And I think it should be available for public gathering or meetings and interactions. And it's a part of the staff to be equipped with different types of tools and skills to know someone is abusing that. And then for that individual or that organization that may be abusing it, then that's a conversation you need to have that needs to be held with that individual. But it is a public space. And there's always been a welcoming space. There's always been an open space for people to come for refuge. Back in the days when parents were working all day, the kids could go to the library. and sit in the library, and there would be events and activities. I'm hoping those things are still happening, where there's a puppet show, or whatever we do these days. But those type of things are still happening within our libraries, because they are an asset to our communities across this state. And so it's important to have that type space available for individuals, especially in these times when people are feeling Not always. Parents are working more than ever these days. There's two family households that are working after school program. We don't have many free after school programmings anymore. So where do young people go? Where do our teens go? Where those spaces are that they can go and feel safe and feel some comfort? There may be some things that we need to, have more control over the space to make sure it stays safe and secure. But I really like the idea that it is there to serve the public. And yeah, I really like that piece. So I want to .

You know, I try to get all my things in there.

I do want to say one more thing, then I'll hand it over to you to close it out. I was just reading, and we talk about the uses of library. It says the library card account holder have access not only to Ramsey County resources, but also to materials from across 48 states. You can take that library card with you. And use it, right? And I just love that and love that idea of being able to do that. Commissioner McGuire.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I always try to get all my things in one, but then I always think of something else. And thank you for this. And I just thought we might want to give a shout out to our advisory board of our library, who we do appoint. And I'm guessing, I'm hoping that they are really helping contribute to the conversations about how we are providing the resources that our community needs. And I'm going to ask if you want to, you can comment on that. But then also, just to say that, We talk about us being one door, and I remember hearing this, how amazed I was that sometimes our libraries are the first place that our families experience the county because they're coming to it. an early childhood program where they bring their two and three-year-olds to come to a library program. And I was just amazed by that, that sometimes it is the first time that they reach the county. And so as much as we can have them connect to any other services, when they very first reach the county through a library program. So if you wanted to comment on any of those things, but that's just a, Another tribute to the great work that we're doing and to our community that are great partners with us as far as our advisory board.

Madam Chair and Commissioner, our library advisory board continues to meet monthly and pretty regularly. They provide us feedback on our programs, our policies, our practices, and procedures. Very, very engaging group. So fantastic kudos over to them. In addition to that, for a lot of new Americans, people actually think that our libraries are a scam. They're like, are you sure? Three? We're like, yeah. Come on in. Come on in. We are not kidding. Yeah, check out these books. You can take that pan home. You can borrow those markers. You can use this room. And so it is. It becomes the first point of engagement for individuals and communities that come from communities that don't have public resources that are free. Because they may come from a country that has public resources, but you still have to pay for it. And so we have public resources that you don't have to pay for. And so it is a very new and interesting concept. And to your point, we strive to be a positive touch point and positive first engagement for a lot of folks.

And reading is still fundamental. Reading is still fundamental. So I wanted to thank you. Thank you for being so insightful. I learned a lot here about what's happening with the library and how we're supporting and doing really good work. And so thank you for your leadership. Thank you for your work. Thank you, Director Yang, for all that you do. And so with that, we are done with our presentations for today. I want to thank you to the Economic Growth and Community Investment Service team for their presentations today and for their commitment to connecting residents to life-enriching resources. like green space and books, and supporting economic and community development. We appreciate how this service team is stepping up to address unique challenges and fiscal pressures, for example, through the Building Stronger Together initiative. The next presentation... I'm going to stop there and let Carrie close now.

No more presentations.

And let Director Collins close out, and then I will just share when our next meeting is.

Thank you so much, Madam Chair, and to you all for the conversation and thoughtful dialogue today. I hope what you saw in the presentations is a lot of pride in the work that we provide Ramsey County. As I think about performance, we've been talking about it in the macro sense, and then there's also performance on an individual basis. And all of the directors and all All the leaders in Ramsey County are high-performing leaders. And as you think about the 40, 50, 60 hours a week that they put in, this is their life, right? They have families and friends, certainly, but this is a huge, huge part of their life.

Fairly.

to do such meaningful work and to do it well, you know, they take these performance measures seriously because it is their day to day. And so I thank them for that. With that said, you know, I think about oftentimes you see them in these presentation capacities and they're like ducks on the water, but their feet, they're just pedaling, pedaling, pedaling. And they carry a lot with them, but we sometimes don't sit and acknowledge that performance and our services can sometimes be impacted by loss and our service team has lost some colleagues over this last year erica redden and shoreview library manager and white eagle and parks and last week joey lundquist and the public works program to build program delivery area as an engineer many of these folks have worked with their colleagues for decades And to then carry forward and to pick up each day to keep the work going when you see that empty desk is hard. And so we lose our colleagues. We lose friends and family. But the work continues because this is important work. And I'm just so impressed by the professionalism and the high performance of the leaders today. So thank you for the time. Appreciate it.

Thank you so much. So the next presentation will be on September the 10th. From 9 to 4, the Safety and Justice Service team will present their performance measures. As a reminder, we encourage public participation in the budget process. You can participate by attending a public hearing, contacting your commissioner, or submitting a written comment to the chief clerk. Instructions on how to participate and a full schedule of upcoming meetings is posted. is posted on their budget and finance page of Ramsey County website. Thank you all for being here. Thank you for spending your time with us. And we are adjourned.