Board of Commissioners - Regular Meeting

🎵 🎵 Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Amen.

Good evening, everyone. Today is September 10, 2026. This is the Ramsey County Board of Commissioner proposed 2027 supplemental county budget and tax levy public hearing. So just to give some idea of what today looked like, there is no votes taken for the public hearing today. The public hearing on the proposed 2027 supplemental county budget and tax levy is now open. The purpose of the meeting is to allow the public an opportunity to comment on the proposed 2027 supplemental county budget and tax levy. For those who are here to speak at the public hearing, When you are called to speak, please state your name and the city of residence before making your comment. You will have a limit of three minutes to give your testimony. OK, I have a list of those who have signed up to speak. We will take speakers in the order that they appear on the list. I will have you come up to the podium and stand in front of the microphone. We will repeat this process for every speaker who have signed up or show up to speak today at 5 PM. So our first speaker will be Julie Coleman. Julie? Miss Julie. Okay, Ms. Julie's not here, okay. So, and I'm sorry if I mispronounce your name. I'm gonna do my best. Ayeni Homis. Ayeni Homis, Ms. Homis. I.N.E. Homis.

Okay.

We're going to move on to Greg Copeland.

Good afternoon, folks. Greg Copeland, I live in St. Paul. And I'm a lucky guy. It's the only person running for this board that is running against an incumbent this year. And of course, we are enjoying that. And I've been following your hearing. So I'm just going to go through a list of some changes I'd like to see the board make to reduce the tax levy.

Mr. Coleman. We had a billion dollars flow through this. Excuse me, Mr. Copeland, did you give us your city of residence?

Yeah, St. Paul.

OK, thank you.

District 3. OK, beautiful. Garrison can back it up.

Anyway, over on the east side. OK, yeah.

OK, so you got me off my train here. All right, just let me give you a few ideas. Do I get another minute since we had a little interaction there with the board that we don't usually have? I mean, thank you. Blessings. Okay. You know, I know you got a big job ahead of you as a former city manager who had this task of balancing a budget. I always like to cut taxes. And the first year I was over there at Maplewood, we froze them. The second budget, we cut them and we added cops and we added a inspector for the community that they never had in 50 years. I was there when they had their 50th anniversary. And we gave a lot of promotions. And how did we do that? Well, we had a lot of changes in the administrative structure. We got rid of the second level of assistants, typically, although in some cases we had people who decided that they would rather work in Oakdale or retire or whatever. So those things happen. But we don't have to have a big tax increase. We should freeze hiring right now on all vacant positions. We should look for across-the-board savings among the non-personnel items in each department. You should repeal your salary ordinance that you passed in June. I think I was one of two people that showed up to speak against that. And follow the example now of Mayor Herr and cut your salaries. Frankly, I'm suggesting you go back to a 2024 salary of $101. $1,000, that would save you $67,697 right there. And then you could eliminate that $7,200 expense account that you have. That would save another $50,000 plus. The building together thing. Frankly, we just had a guy who bought his third block in St. Paul today. At least it was released today. We don't need to spend all this money from the county to save downtown St. Paul. We're already giving them a tax break. This year it's 7.9%. I think it was 6.7% last year. These people are living good. You know, they're coming to town and buying us out. It's great. Private money. We don't need a bonded debt program for a downtown park. We got 10 parks at least in downtown St. Paul. And we've got the beautiful Harriet Island Park. We don't need that. So save your $320 million. The other thing we should do is phase out the railroad authority. If you guys cut that railroad authority out, that's almost as much money as your budget needs in new dollars, according to your 8.25% increase. And I'm not suggesting that you can cut all of that out in one year, but you should phase it out. The Met Council should take responsibility for these things. Come on. We all know about the trolley. We all know about the rush line. We all know about all the issues with White Bear Lake. This stuff didn't work well with you guys. That 22 grand that you put out there, 22 million the other day, you should claw that back. I mean, cut that contract. Thank you, Mr. Copeland. Thank you, folks.

Thank you, Mr. Copeland.

I'd be happy to share more with you, but... I guess we've got a big crowd here that's going to testify.

Thank you for showing up today. Thank you. Appreciate it. The next person on the list is Casey Cox. Hi, Casey. Good evening. Please, state your name and your city of residence.

It's Karen Cox. I go by Casey. I live in St. Paul, Ward 1. And I just want to say having the meeting in this building is difficult. This is supposed to be a public hearing, and it's difficult to get here, not to mention expensive to get here and park your car. So maybe think about a better place that has it easier to people can come to and speak. My big issue is two years ago when I came to this, I had a pie chart, and 47% of that pie chart was spent on nonprofits. That's got to stop. If you're going to raise my taxes to give my money to nonprofits, No, that's wrong. You need to cut their budget. Cut their 47%. Bring it down to 40, 30. In my opinion, 20. Because it's not the government's responsibility to give these services to these organizations. And I say non-profit until you start asking questions about these. I have the top 10 right here from that same organization. reference. I don't even know what these nonprofits do. You go to their website and you can't even figure it out. But they're getting $3 million of my tax dollars to spend on something. And then you ask them, what percent of your budget is administrative cost? 37%. Seriously? This is a nonprofit. They're making more money than I did when I worked. This is wrong. You need to do some investigating on where your money goes. But the biggest issue is these nonprofits have to go. You can't be supporting them anymore. You have to support us and the services we need as constituents in your county. This money is going to people that shouldn't get it. And that has to stop. It just has to stop. And I agree with Greg on the stuff as far as cutting things that you just need to cut that stuff. I have to cut my budget now to support the stuff that you want that I don't want. And you need to think about that. Thank you.

Thank you, Casey Cox, Miss Cox. All right. Is Miss Julie Coleman here? Julie. And how about Ianna, Ianni Homes? He's not here. He? He's not here. Mr. Homes. OK. All right. So is there anyone here to speak regarding the proposed 2027 supplemental county budget and tax levy? Is there anyone here to speak regarding the proposed 2027 Supplemental County Budget and Tax Levy? Is anyone here to speak regarding the proposed 2027 Supplemental County Budget and Tax Levy? OK. Since there is no one else here to speak in regards to the proposed 2027 supplemental county budget and tax levy, I am declaring the public hearing is now closed. Thank you. Thank you for being here.