Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

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

I'd like to call to order the Ramsey County Board of Commissioners. Roll call, please.

Chabin Singh.

Here.

McGuire. Here. McMurtry. Here. Miller. Here. Moran. Here. Zong. Here. And Ortega.

Aye. Could we stand by the rules?

for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Then acknowledgement, Commissioner Singh.

Every community owes its existence and vitality to generations from around the world who contributed their hopes, dreams, and energy to making the history that led to this moment. Some were brought here against their will. Some were drawn to leave their distant homes in hope of a better life. And some have lived on this land since time immemorial. Truth and acknowledgment are critical to building mutual respect and connection across all barriers of heritage and difference. We are standing on the ancestral lands of the Dakota people. We want to acknowledge the Ojibwe, the Ho-Chunk, and the other nations of people who also call this place home. We pay respects to their elders past and present. Please take a moment to consider the treaties made by the tribal nations that entitle non-native people to live and work on traditional native lands. Consider the many legacies of violence, displacement, migration, and settlement that bring us together here today. And please join us in uncovering such truths at any and all public events.

Thank you, Commissioner. I'll entertain a motion for the agenda of June 2, 2026. So moved. Second. SEE NO DISCUSSION. ROLL CALL.

CHEBEN SINGH.

AYE.

MCGUIRE. AYE. McMURTRY. AYE. MILLER. AYE. MORAN. AYE. ZHONG. AYE. AND ORTEGA.

AYE. I'LL ENTERTAIN A MOTION ON THE MINUTES OF MAY 26, 2026. SO MOVED.

SECOND.

SEE NO DISCUSSION. ROLL CALL.

CHEBEN SINGH.

AYE.

McGuire. Aye. McMurtry. Aye. Miller. Aye. Moran. Aye. Zong. Aye. And Ortega.

Aye. Administrative agenda, Commissioner Singh.

I move the following items for approval. Item number three, appointments to the Personnel Review Board. Item four, appointments to the Corrections Advisory Board. Item five, appointments to the Community Health Services Advisory Committee. Item 6, Appointments to the Park and Recreation Commission. Second.

Any discussion? Roll call, please.

Chapman Singh. Aye. McGuire. Aye. McMurtry. Aye. Miller. Aye. Moran. Aye. Zhong. Aye. And Ortega.

Aye. We now have a presentation on Aging and Disability Services.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to welcome up Katie Mulliner from Social Services, the Deputy Director, to talk about some of the work that they've been doing. This is a continuation of a progress update of the 80 FTEs that you approved to support the Men's Choice Assessments efforts. So thank you.

Thank you. Mr. Chair, Commissioners, County Manager Becker, good morning. Again, my name is Katie Molinaire. I serve as a deputy director in our social services department and have the privilege of leading our aging and disability services division. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you this morning and provide a brief update on the work in our division. I'll begin by providing some context. My team and I were in front of this board in March of 2025. At that time, we shared several of the challenges that our division had been experiencing for the previous several years. This included cost shifts and budgetary constraints which resulted in a decrease in full-time equivalent positions alongside increased community need. In addition, there were a number of changes in DHS policy which increased workload for our teams. All of this together resulted in significant backlogs and long wait times for residents seeking services in our area. After that, this board approved 80 additional full-time equivalent positions for our Aging and Disability Services Division. That happened on March 18th of 2025. Today, I'll share how we hired for those positions, onboarded our new employees, and I'll also talk about the impacts to capacity and choices, specifically initial and reassessment, as well as overall service delivery for residents. Today's update is intended to be brief. We do have a board workshop planned for September where we'll provide a more in-depth update. I'm pleased to share that we were able to hire for all 80 positions. We hired and onboarded in groups or cohorts. There were four cohorts. Three took place in 2025. They started on June 30th, September 8th, December 8th, and then we had one cohort that started in January of this year. And that cohort was specifically designed for seven employees who we welcome from Detox. Our MnChoices assessors and our case managers participated in an eight-week onboarding training program. After completing that program, they joined their teams as mobile workers and began serving residents with a graduated caseload. In MnChoices' assessment, that caseload takes until month six to be a full caseload, and case management, it takes a little longer. They have approximately a half a caseload at the six-month mark and a full caseload by approximately month 11. Now I'll share some operational impacts. The 80 new positions added much-needed staffing capacity that is being used to serve residents more quickly. I'll add some additional context here as well. When we spoke to you in March of last year, our division was in a state of crisis. We did not have enough assessment capacity to be able to assign all reassessments timely. If a reassessment isn't completed timely, the resident risks losing services and or the provider may not be able to be reimbursed. We were utilizing overtime to get as many reassessments done as possible, and we were also doing very few initial assessments because we needed all staff focused on those reassessments. Now we are able to assign and complete all reassessments timely every month. We've ended the use of overtime. We have started completing initial assessments and our division is on track to effectively end the initial assessment backlog by the end of 2026. In fact, we've made some tremendous progress even since the update memo I sent to you a few weeks back. At this point, we have effectively ended two of the three backlogs and I'll say more about that on the next slide. As we've moved out of crisis and into a phase of being able to be more planful and proactive, have done a number of things, and one example is joining a pilot with the Mental Health Division of Social Services and Financial Assistance Services, or FAS. This pilot is designed to expedite MnChoice's assessments and waiver openings for residents exiting state-operated facilities, such as Anoka Metro Regional Treatment Center. This is the pilot that Deputy Director Kenya Walker spoke about during their board workshops on May 5th. Now we're to my favorite slide, where I have the opportunity to share with you some positive impacts to the residents that we serve. The graph on the left of the slide shows the number of backlogged initial assessments over time. On the left column is the number of assessments. Along the bottom row are dates at four different points in time, March of 2025, October of 2025, January of 2026, and May of 2026. The orange line at the top with the squares is the total number of initial assessments in the backlog. The second line from the top, the blue one with the diamond, represents residents under 65 who are waiting for an initial assessment. The third line, which is green and has a triangle, this represents the number of residents who are seeking a developmental disability waiver. Those waivers have to be completed by a specialized group of assessors known as Qualified Developmental Disability Professionals, or QDDPs. And the bottom line, the purple one, represents residents 65 and over who are seeking an initial assessment. So the three lines at the bottom all total up to equal that orange line at the top. You can see that when we spoke to you in March of last year, our backlog was around 17 or 1800 residents waiting for an initial assessment. As we worked to hire and onboard new staff over the course of 2025, the backlog continued to grow, peaking in October at around 2,500 residents who were waiting approximately 11 to 12 months. As we gained capacity and were able to begin doing more initial assessments, you can see that the backlogs have decreased pretty significantly and pretty quickly. At this point, we reduced the backlog by more than 1,800 residents between October of 2025 and May of this year. Wait times for residents under 65 have decreased to within 20 working days. Wait times for the residents 65 and over have also decreased to within 20 working days. This is the statutory requirement. If I had balloons, I would let them fly right now. The green line at the bottom, again, these are the residents seeking a developmental disability waiver, and those assessments need to be completed by a QDDP, Qualified Developmental Disability Professional. You can see that line has stayed approximately steady. We have a smaller number of those assessors, and so that backlog is taking a little bit longer, and I will speak more about that on the next slide. The current wait time for that population is approximately seven months. And while we're on this slide, I do want to make a connection to our performance measures. For anyone interested, we have performance measures on the Ramsey County open data portal. You can click through the social services performance dashboard to see the measures for aging and disability services. And our measures are really around the timeliness of MnChoices assessments. The first measure is the average number of backlogged assessments on a given day. In 2024, for some context, that number was 1,180. As I mentioned a few minutes ago, that peaked last fall around 2,500 assessments, and currently it's just over 500. Our goal for 2027 was 700, so we knocked that one out of the park. The other two measures that we have are the percent of residents under 65 and the percent of residents over 65 who are assessed within 20 working days. And now that we have appropriate capacity, we expect to make very significant gains as we move forward. Those measures are in the process of being updated. One note I'll make here is that the visuals on the dashboard show 2025 and 2027. So the progress that we've made in 2026 isn't visually reflected there. We have written a narrative to speak about the progress, but we won't be able to see it until the update in 2027. While we have made remarkable progress, we still have work to do. We will continue shifting capacity within the division to areas of highest need. The MnChoices assessment is the first step in a series of steps for a resident to access services. Now that residents are not having to wait as long for the first step, the initial assessment, we want to make sure that they're able to move through our division in a timely manner. And so we'll move positions around to make sure that we're able to do that. We'll continue the pilot with mental health and with financial assistance. This both supports residents in discharging to community as quickly as possible, and it also decreases the county cost share for those stays. We have a focused effort underway right now, which has started within the last week or so, to address the residents waiting for the developmental disability assessment by the QDDP. We recruited a number of volunteers from across assessment who will focus on those cases exclusively for the next few months so that we can make significant reductions in that backlog. We'll continue to respond to other pressures, including waiver opening delays, case management capacity, the rolling implementation of community first services and supports, I do want to make a note, for case management, we recently added four new contracted case management providers to support us in adding additional case management capacity. In addition to adding capacity, our vendors provide a lot of other benefits that I'll just speak about briefly. This does allow some additional choice for residents. Not everyone wants to be served directly by the government. We also have vendors who have expertise in serving different types of disabilities. For example, we have a vendor who specializes in providing services to folks with brain injury, and we also have a vendor who specializes in serving individuals with autism. Our vendors also support us in providing culturally responsive service, which is especially important here in Ramsey County. Some of our vendors belong to the communities that we serve and understand the cultural norms and practices and are better able to build trust and rapport than I myself, as a white person, may be able to. So again, we have a board workshop scheduled for September 22nd of this year. We'll provide a more in-depth update. I thank you for your time this morning, and I'm happy to stand for any questions.

Thank you so much for bringing this back to us, and also congratulations on successful hiring and getting so many of those backlogs down. Thank you. So we have to celebrate those wins. My question goes to around just more understanding about the QDDP assessors for the wait times that are about seven and a half months. Is that... Are we meeting like state expectations or mandates around that time? No. Okay. Mr. Chair, Commissioner Zhang, no we're not. May you share a little bit more about that too and just help me to understand a little bit more about the process of identifying folks who are able to do that, and also if we can use our current staff to do the training to become certified to be able to do that.

Mr. Chair, Commissioner Zhang, thanks for the question. We are out of compliance with that piece of the statutory requirement. I will say 20 working days is a high bar, and it's not uncommon for lead agencies to struggle. And we want to be within the statutory requirement. Currently, we have approximately 10 assessors who serve as qualified developmental disability professionals, QDDPs. We call them Qs. They need to have a bachelor's degree in a field connected to serving people with developmental disability, and they also have to have a minimum of one year of experience. So once we clear the initial backlog, anticipate that the 10 ongoing positions will be adequate to serve incoming referrals. But we do need a focused effort to address the initial backlog. So we recruited a number of assessors currently employed in the division who maybe meet the criteria to be a QDDP, but are typically doing different types of cases. And so that group, I think we're going to have between 15 and 20 who will be focused on doing those assessments over the summer. And our goal is to have a significant improvement by the time we speak to you in September.

Okay. Sounds like a great plan. Thank you.

She answered my question.

So exciting to hear that in this time when we know that the work shortages and being able to recruit people to want to do this really important work can be hard. Kudos to getting all 80 hired. What has been our retention rate as folks have gone through their learning and how many folks have stuck through the program?

Mr. Chair, Commissioner Jebbens saying great question. Let me find it on my, I had my team prepare a list of potential questions for me. So it's on here. I just have to find it. Our retention rate is 91% for the 80 positions. So we've had seven staff who were hired and then left. One of those moved within our division from one position, from a social worker to a senior social worker, so it was a promotion. So we've only had six folks leave the division. So we're pretty proud of the 91% retention rate.

Yeah, I was going to say, that's really fantastic. And I just wanted to use this as a chance to thank all of your team and your staff. It seems to me that they have been dealing with quite a workload. I'm hearing overtime. I'm hearing helping to train in and bring in and mentor their new colleagues. I'm hearing asks to be nimble and shift to where they are needed, which means additional training and understanding. So while we are here congratulating your team, I just want to lift that up that there are individuals who are stretching themselves every day to make sure our residents are getting served as soon as we possibly can. So please extend our our thank you and our gratitude to the work that they've been doing.

Mr. Chair, Commissioner, if I may add to that, thank you for bringing that up. Our team and our division as a whole has been amazing. The last year plus has been very intense. Everyone across the division has worked really hard, frontline staff serving residents directly with multiple changes coming over time. Our leaders literally participated in hundreds of interviews alongside leading their teams to support the hiring of these new positions. It's been a big lift, so I join you in thanking and congratulating my team. I couldn't have done it without them. I get to be up here speaking to you about it today, but they've done much of the hard work to get us here, so kudos to them.

And I just want to also say that in noting this success, in starting to bring down these backlogs and lifting up the work of our team, this is a way, too, to acknowledge that we have the bandwidth to address these issues. And we take them really seriously. the backlog for the developmental disability, the QDDP assessments that need to be done. I appreciate Commissioner Zhang for making sure that we are not gliding over that. And I appreciate that there is a plan in place to kind of chip away at that as well, as we know that when our residents are waiting for these assessments, when families are waiting for these assessments, when providers are waiting for these assessments, there's a cost in quality of life, in the ability of loved ones to be working rather than being at home caring for their individuals and their family, for providers to go without payment. There are all sorts of things that can happen while we're waiting for those assessments. So we take this work very seriously. I'm really happy to see the progress that's been made and excited to hear more of that progress in some of these other areas in September.

Thank you.

I have two quick questions. Thank you for your good job and your entire team. In one of the slides on the challenges, you had one of the issues as capacity. So tell me what that reference is to.

One of them is case management capacity. So a lot of the positions went to assessment because that's where the biggest backlogs are. Sorry, Mr. Chair. We did add some positions within case management. So some of the 80 went to case management. So we have some additional internal capacity. And then we also added contracted case management providers to support us in making sure that we have enough case management capacity. The more people that come onto a waiver, the more people need case management. And so those numbers continue to grow. When I mentioned kind of shifting capacity within the division, One of the things we're looking at is do we need to move some of the positions over to case management longer term to make sure that we have enough capacity moving forward.

And the other one is sort of related and has to do with the vendors. What communications do we have with the vendors to make sure that some of our residents don't fall between the cracks? That seems to be the area where there might be more confusion with people, with folks. and the shortage of case managers. I'm aware of that. That's where I think things might get bogged down sometimes, and people get caught in the old ping pong type of deal, back and forth. Talk a little bit about that.

Mr. Chair, thank you for the question. We provide a a good deal of support for our vendors and it's something that we're looking to enhance throughout the course of this year. So currently we have a small team of vendor liaisons who provide support to our contracted agencies. We have weekly consults, so any case manager, whether they're internal or with a vendor, can come to the consult and bring if they've got a question about what to do with a resident's case. Our leaders are in that meeting and they can provide some consultation. We have a monthly training session that's required for all case managers, and so the vendors come to that as well. And those are ongoing training topics to make sure that our staff have the resources they need to serve residents well. We have done a lot for some of the things that are popping up right now within home and community-based services. We've been having And additional weekly consults focused on those areas to make sure the case managers are getting the support they need for that. Here I'm speaking about some of the payment withholds that have been taking place. Let's see, I have some other notes here. Let's see if I missed anything. We have a lot of processes and written standard operating procedures. We go through and update those regularly. A case manager just has a quick question. They can go look up the SOP and understand how to work through a process. We have an official grievance process that's required by state statute. But if a resident is not experiencing good case management, They can either contact us informally or they can go through the grievance process and we take a look at each of those very carefully. Our vendor liaison team also does case file reviews for every agency every year. They'll take a percentage of the cases that they have and they mirror the process when the Minnesota Department of Human Services comes out and does a lead agency review for us. Our team mirrors that process for the vendors. So we'll look at a select group of their cases and see how they're doing in comparison to statute. And then, again, the info sessions and the weekly consults. And there's also a monthly meeting just for the vendor supervisors where our team can connect with them from a leadership perspective.

Thank you. When we have the workshop, the full workshop, could we make sure that we talk about that? Because that, you know, we address one week length. Now we've got to address the other one, right? So to make sure we have a good flow. It seems like, let me ask you one last question. And that is, if I apply and I have you as my case manager, will I have you six months later if I have to?

Mr. Chair, that's a good question. In theory, you should. What we are seeing is that sometimes the turnover rates at the vendor agencies is higher than we would like it to be. To be fair, we contributed to that when we hired 80 positions. We welcomed several employees from vendor agencies. And there's some different reasons for that turnover rate. There was a lot of discussion about this during the legislative session this year. And so some of the legislation that came out of that is there'll be a rate study for waiver case management. There's also gonna be a working group to look at waiver case management as a whole to understand where the system needs to make some adjustments. The case manager role has also grown over time and become more and more administrative. And the role's becoming pretty untenable. So there's a number of factors that are playing into this. But that is, we do want for people to have a consistent case manager. That's where you can get typically the best service. And that's one thing we're looking to support our vendors in doing as we move forward.

Thank you. If you could just sort of note it that at the workshop, maybe we get an update and see how that's going. It creates, you know, if you take two steps forward and one step backwards, right, we need to keep pushing forward on all the horses moving together, right? Thank you for your work. I have my trunk. Did you have it? And then Mary Jo.

Just a quick question about the grievance process. Are they able to share that verbally, or does it have to be written?

Mr. Chair, Commissioner Zhang, the resident can submit it in any way that they prefer. So they can call us, they can send us an email. We have a dedicated grievance email. We're happy to take their information however it's easiest for them. We have some folks who prefer one method of communication over the other, so we'll take it however they prefer. Okay, sounds good. Thank you.

Are there any? Oh, Mary Jo.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just thank you for this great work. And we know that we're very excited for you, for all of our residents, that hiring these positions are. are happening. I have a question, because this is the Aging and Disability Services. Do we have an idea of our numbers as far as our demographics go? Do we anticipate we'll have more need in this area? Are we keeping up? I know you've been talking about capacity issues, so even with just the current need, will we continue to see this need growing? Can you talk a little bit about how you see this? I know we're an aging, somewhat aging county, but also I don't know if we have a sense of that and the disability services coming up.

Mr. Chair, Commissioner McGuire, thanks for the question. At a high level, demographics do have Minnesota population aging, as you mentioned here in Ramsey County as well, so that it seems probable that we might see more residents 65 and over who are seeking services to remain in the community. I don't have any hard numbers for you today, but I anticipate... I think it's probable that it could continue to grow. I will say, generally speaking, we've also seen... an increase in residents of all ages seeking services through our area. When I spoke to you in March of 2025, the average weekly referrals was about 100. And at this point, that's increased to about 117. So we are seeing more people requesting the MnChoices assessment.

And Mr. Chair, if I just, just a bit of clarification, do we think it's because we're getting the word out more, which I'm glad, you know, we're letting people, more people know about it or more people need it and maybe a combination of both is what you're probably going to say, but yeah.

Mr. Chair, Commissioner, I suspect it's a combination of both. Yeah.

Thank you. Any other questions? Thank you so much. Thank you. County Connections.

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair. I wanted to provide a brief update on the relocation of our public health services that were at 555 Cedar. I'm pleased to report that after lots of work on behalf of our property management team, public health, and our contractors, the clinical services successfully opened yesterday morning at the new public health center, which is located at 1850 Beam Avenue in Maplewood. So we anticipate having a grand opening later this summer. Services now operating at the new location include Clinic 555, the immunization clinic, the tuberculosis clinic, and the public health lab. There were a couple of services that were located at 555 that did not relocate to Maplewood. Those are House Calls, which has moved over to the environmental health offices, which are in Maplewood, and the SOS Sexual Violence Services transition its operations to other county locations. The syringe services program will continue to operate at 555 while we are finalizing arrangements of a new downtown site that will meet client needs. So that service will stay in downtown St. Paul. The public health team has undertaken, in partnership with communications, extensive outreach to clients and the community through direct mail, text messages, signage, ongoing public communications, for a smooth transition and those continue. If you've been following the county social media, there's been a lot on that as well. This move happened on quite an accelerated timeline to take advantage of a really unique opportunity to be able to move into a former medical clinic that was very much ready to be able to be used. So I want to thank all the departments and teams for making that transition possible. In addition, I want to briefly acknowledge the work of our chief clerk's office. I'm going to surprise him here. Last week during our senior management team meeting, Jason was able to provide a helpful refresher, really, to board processes and the many resources and tools that he has available on the chief clerk's web page. I want to take that moment to recognize the office that Jason oversees, but also the many staff across the organization who contribute to the board processes. A lot of you obviously have packets in front of you every Tuesday, and it's the work of a big team over many weeks that gets those items before you. Operational excellence depends on having really strong systems and clear accountability to thoroughly review things. And so before an item actually gets to you, it has been reviewed by program staff, likely multiple levels, fiscal team, legal counsel, and county leadership to ensure that commissioners have complete and accurate information. to support your policy making. So it's not a super exciting part of the work that a lot of the public gets to see, but it is actually a really, really important part to making sure that you all have what you need to do your most important work, which is make policy at this table. As a reminder to both commissioners and the public, our board materials are posted by Thursday afternoon for the following Tuesday board meetings. This practice reflects our ongoing commitment to transparency, preparation, and providing sufficient time for review and public engagement. So I want to thank everyone across the organization for taking this duty, is what I would call it, very, very seriously. And so thank you, Jason, to you and your team for all your good work. Lastly, I want to invite Director of Property Management, Jean Krueger, up to talk about train days. So we got some things to even hand out.

Thank you, County Manager Becker. Our deputy county manager, Kutsa, is handing out a few swag bags. These are items that will be part of train days this coming weekend, that will be part of the festivity, part of the free, if you will, handouts to attendees. So train days this year is June 6 and 7. This has been an annual event at Union Depot since we have reopened and had trains there. If you have not been, it is a fun event to come to, to see the number of people at Union Depot, to see the diversity in the people visiting Union Depot. Whether or not you like train equipment, freight trains, passenger trains, et cetera, or not, I will say it is pretty awesome to be able to be right next to some of this equipment and understand just the magnitude of this equipment and that some of it, as well as the depot itself, have been around for decades, if not 100 years. This year, Union Depot is celebrating its 100 years. Portions of the Union Depot opened in years prior to 1926. It was practically a nine-year construction process to build what you see today as Union Depot that included the elevated train deck and, at the time, 21 sets of tracks that came into Union Depot. Right now, we have... two sets of tracks, two and a half sets of tracks. We would love to have three or four or five, but the train traffic, the train volume is obviously what is considerably less than it used to be. Again, train days is the sixth and seventh. In addition to the train equipment, there are many vendors, concessionaires who set up in the waiting room out on the south lawn selling all sorts of items, toys, books, photos, et cetera. As well as this year, in honor of the 100 years, we are having Music Fest, which will literally be an outdoor concert on the South Lawn that will go Saturday afternoon from 3 to 9 PM. The train days event and the access to the train equipment closes a little bit sooner than that on Saturday, but then Sunday as well. We expect to see crowds each day that could be throughout the day in the neighborhood of 10,000. 10,000 is the number of passengers that used to be in Union Depot daily. Last year, Union Depot, in total for the year, surpassed a million visitors for the first time since the reopening. On average, that's still less than 3,000 a day. So if you really want to see the excitement of the depot and when it's full, please stop by. Also, visit the retail tenants that we have at the depot. When we opened, Commissioner Ortega will remember, we had some buses. We added a bike shop, Lower Town Bike Shop, and they have expanded to serve coffee as well. That was a dream from the beginning, was a bike shop, coffee shop. It's there. We have Hertz with rental cars. We have, obviously, the buses, including the Metro Transit, the MVTA, Flick Bus, and the Regionals, Jefferson, et cetera, and, of course, Amtrak. And with the addition, in the recent years, of the Borealis, has been hugely successful, that we really have achieved that multimodal center that was the vision of many who came before me. In addition, the retail shops, the Storyline Books, the Choo Choo Bobs, the DG Pilot are all doing very well. And if nothing else, stop by and check out 1881 Eating House. With that, any questions for train days? But stop on.

Gene, can you repeat the days?

Sure. Train days and the train equipment is Saturday, June 6th. The train equipment is available for viewing from noon to 6 p.m. The train equipment's available Sunday for viewing from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. And the Music Fest portion on Saturday is from 3 PM to 9 PM. UnionDepot.org website would have all of this information and more for folks to check out. But it is truly a fun event to see Union Depot full of people, both inside and outside.

Are there any other further questions? Well, thank you, Jean, and especially for your stewardship over all these years. You've really glued all the pieces together for us. Thank you so much. Thank you, Commissioner. Great.

Are you done, Lee?

Outside board and committee reports, why don't we start with Commissioner Singh.

All righty. I had a chance to be in community this week, this past week. I was at the Small Sums breakfast. Small Sums is on University. They provide access to tools, training, and transportation needed to start and succeed in new jobs. I really appreciate this organization. They work in conjunction with a lot of different organizations to get people started. I know as a parent of a child who started many, many jobs, you always need to have that tan pair of pants or that red shirt or the black steel-toed shoes or whatever. And sometimes those expectations come before the paycheck comes in. And Small Sums kits people out as they enter new jobs and make sure that they can get that little boost. I was happy to be able to learn more about that program. I was at the White Bear Lake Area Schools Certified Nursing Assistant's pinning ceremony there in partnership with Century College and their Career Pathways program. I will just say my mom was a nurse, and the pinning ceremonies are very sentimental. It's a long tradition that goes back. There's a different pin as you go through each one of the different certifications. And it's just wonderful to see young men and women who are interested in our medical professions. We need more of that and excited to see them get that lift right as they're going to high school. With many of my colleagues, I was at the Wakantipi Center opening, and what a tremendously beautiful day. And I know that Commissioner Zhang was able to speak at it. I'll let her speak more about it. But great to see community coming together and to see that land as it should be. such a sacred space for folks to gather. I was able to do an introduction to one of the events at the Flint Hills Family Festival. And if you have never, as a family member, come down to the Flint Hills Family Festival, all of Rice Park, the Ordway, there's kids, there's music, there's crafts and art. It was just joyful. So I encourage folks to keep that in mind for future years. And then went over to the Water Fest on Lake Fallon. And again, wonderful to see our parks just alive as we come into festival season. A couple of more substantial updates. The Rice Creek Commons GDA met last night. As we had our workshop recently and talked about the hybrid approach to our RFP process being presented to the board, it was approved and we directed staff to continue moving in that direction. So what that means now is that both the city and the county and the JDA staff, instead of just creating lists and thinking about how alignment would work, there may be some slight changes that have to go before their planning commission. There may be some bits and pieces that have to be more with fidelity encoded to make sure that the decisions that can be made by city and county to be in alignment so that when we go to presenting the RFP to either, to multiple potential developers for the different sectors of the Rice Creek Commons, that we have those pieces in place. It puts us in a nice position of being able to clearly define what the expectations of the project are We'll just keep moving on that. Another piece to this was we did get a note that the MOU with the Army for a TGRS system has been in place. This was one of those kind of administrative behind the scenes bureaucratic snags that we were a little worried about. There was a bit of a pause because of the government shutdown last fall. And thank you to everybody from all the different entities for keeping that moving. This allows us to continue with the work for the planning and the construction and site preparation as we prepare the site for grading, and then also for the Spine Road or Rice Creek Boulevard. And then there will be an opportunity for public engagement with our public works around Rice Creek Boulevard at the 75th anniversary celebration in Arden Hills later in July. I held for a number of the mayors from the municipalities in my district what will be the first of quarterly gatherings of the mayors. That's just a lunch where we can gather and see collectively what's happening in our communities, how I can be a better connector to the county and some of our services there. We were reflecting on our experiences and continued activities in our areas around Operation Metro Surge, and we anticipate future conversations as broad as how are people handling e-bikes in the parks and on their sidewalks, to issues around better understanding Ramsey County resources, timing of public works projects, communication with the Sheriff's Office and other departments. So there's a broad number of topics, and I'm excited that that group is going to be coming together more regularly. And then while this is not something that was specifically that I attended, I just want to lift up on the discussion of Operation Metro Surge. Over the weekend, the people of the Twin Cities were honored with the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation's Profile in Courage Award for defending immigrant neighbors and constitutional rights during Operation Metro Surge. And I just wanted to quote Carolyn Kennedy. from that award ceremony. She said, the people of the Twin Cities reminded all Americans that we cannot take our democracy for granted. Their compassion and unwavering commitment to the ideals that sustain our democracy inspired communities across the country and forced the federal government to back down. We especially remember the courage of Renee Good and Alex Preddy, who gave their lives for their community and our country. And I just want to take this moment to again thank all of our residents who came together in support of their neighbors and who faced a violent occupation with their acts of kindness and courage.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair. A couple of things I just wanted to highlight. Last week I had a chance to volunteer at Zion Community Commons. I tend to go there monthly to volunteer with Colin Anderson and their team. They have an open market in the Hamlin-Minway community and also serves dinners two nights a week. They do amazing work, especially during Operation Metro Service, to ensure that folks in our community who were in dire need for assistance and for help were getting at least a meal. So great to connect with Colin. They're also going to be expanding and doing an open market in July at Caton's. Records and Coffee on Payne Avenue, so looking forward to that as well. Last week, I also had a chance to meet with the Executive Director of the International Institute of Minnesota. I know many of us attended their annual gala a couple of weeks ago. Their facility, their office is in my district, and so I wanted to get a chance to once again connect and learn more about the things that they've been experiencing over these last few months. and to provide updates on what we've been working with the county. I think there's a tremendous opportunity for us to maybe renew some collaboration with the International Institute and had a chance to connect the executive director with our FAS director, as well as hopefully to provide their staff with an update on HR1 and the implications for their clientele. Looking forward to just continuing to grow that partnership and that collaboration with the amazing work that they're doing at the Institute. Last week, I also met with Vivian Tran, who is the new Executive Director for the Payne-Phalen Community District Council. I like to keep in touch with all of my district councils because they are really on the ground and doing instrumental work with folks in the community. So we had a chance to connect. I know that they hosted last week a listening session with Mayor Herr around the Northern Iron Foundry, which technically is in Commissioner Zhang's district, but we know the remnants and the impacts is felt in communities throughout the east side. So I had a chance to connect with Vivian on that front, as well as just sharing a little bit more about the things we're working on at the county. So really looking forward to growing that partnership. Saturday, as Commissioner Jevin Singh, I had a chance to attend the Flint Hills Family Festival. It was the first I'd ever been to this festival, and it was great. Absolutely packed with families in Rice Street and in Ordway. I got a chance to introduce Click Clack Moo, which I'm telling you, it was like the Beatles. I walked on stage and people were like, that's the commissioner. No, they didn't do that. But they were excited.

Harrison, did you sing?

I did what I was asked to do, introduce Click Clack Moo and get off the stage. And the festival itself really is a chance for families to come together and to just celebrate the arts and so many other things that we're doing in our community at an affordable price. So I really appreciate that. And then I will give one update for an upcoming event that's happening on tomorrow. The city of St. Paul and Ramsey County will be collaborating for a blood drive in partnership with Memorial Blood Center. The blood drive will take place here in the courthouse in room 40 in the basement from 8.30 AM to 2.30 PM. So wanted to make that plug as well. That's it. Thank you.

I don't know how to talk the click-clack movie. It was hard to talk that. Last week, I had a WIB executive committee meeting. The full board meeting is this week. I also attended the joint powers. I'm not sure if you were going to mention this, but I'll just quickly... The joint powers meetings on behalf of Commissioner Ortega, the board approved budgets, updated policies. It's the wind down. And congratulations, you are the vice chair this year. We also had the Ramsey County R&E board meeting, which the full board approved the proposed budget. There's no changes. And then the next step is they'll come to the Ramsey and Washington County boards for approval. by August and Also, we did get a presentation which I thought was pretty cool about the odor that they do order monitoring in Newport around the ramps around the R&E Center and They have an actual sniffer it literally you put a little thing on your nose And it looks like a gun that they have to be trained to sniff. I wish I knew the official word I was trying to google it quickly, but it was pretty fascinating And then I attended ISD 622, State of the District at Tartan High School. Last Thursday, it was really cool to see a tour of the new high school, the updated high school, and really just an opportunity to continue strengthening those partnerships with our school districts. And then following that, I joined Commissioner Jedman-Singh at the White Bear Lake Area High School pinning, CNA pinning ceremony. I just want to congratulate the graduates for this. This is really a great example of workforce development in action through partnerships between the school districts and colleges. And I also wanted to recognize and thank Long Kee Vang from Workforce Solutions for his leadership and partnership in helping create this and be a part of this. And kudos to him and the team that they're doing. And congratulations to all the graduates. With that, I am done.

Kelly, you learned quick. Ortega's not here, so give it to him.

Yeah. It was a very easy meeting. I was like, yeah, you'll be vice chair.

He's got this.

Thank you. Reena? I have a few things. I met last week with a couple of women from Council Memorial, United Methodist Church, Marin, Reddale, and Saran Choir, who is a part of the Isaiah Coalition of just organizing around issues that are impacting individuals and families. And it was a discussion around mental and behavioral health care. So I was able to just share some of the work that we're doing here in Ramsey County around behavioral health and how that partnership could possibly be shared within communities and the work that they're doing and how to lead on the issues in partnership with Ramsey County, but also at the legislature. It was a pretty good hour meeting just to hear and learn from them and the great work that they're doing. I also am a part of the St. Paul Children Collaborative Strategic Planning Work Group, where we met to prioritize we created a working group to just do some type of reflection on the St. Paul Children Collaborative beyond grant making over the next three to five years. So it is a unique role in one of the priorities is looking to addressing our priorities around effective grantee reporting processes. who wanted the SPCC target audience and a few other ideas as we move forward. But it was just a chance, the first meeting, to come together to really look at, you know, what did that mean, what did that look like, and how do we move forward intentionally as St. Paul Collaborative, Children Collaborative. I also had the honor of, as I'm... to attend the heading home Ramsey County Governing Board, which I was honored to be re-elected as the chair of the Governing Board. I am truly grateful for really the work that we're going to do together moving forward. And you know, to remain committed in advancing our collective effort to prevent and end homelessness in Ramsey County. We believe that through collaboration, innovation, and continued focus on housing stability, we are working towards sustainable solutions that help individuals and families attain and maintain safe and stable housing. Just kudos out to the work that's going on with our staff here at Ramsey County. in this work, which is also a partnership with the city of St. Paul. And so we're moving forward. I am hopeful for the work that we can do together. I also had the great opportunity to partner with the Flint Hill Family Festival on Friday to deliver brief remarks and introduce one of their feature performances. I mean, it was just really, really awesome to walk in. This is a partnership that the Family Hills family, the Flint Hill family have had over the last 26 years in a partnership with the Orkway Theater. But to just see everything close off to see all these schools in attendance, and the kids just doing just an array of different activities and events. But then to go inside the Ordway Theater to really introduce the feature of the day was really, really awesome, just to see so many young people there, and just to hype them up a little bit so that they can get ready and prepare for the performance. It was a really, really great evening, a great way to start my day off. I immediately called a couple of my daughters and said, get the kids down there. They need to. So it was on Friday and Saturday. So they did show up on Saturday for the events on Saturday. It was really great. Let's see here. On Saturday, my district, Dave, there was an unveiling of the David M. Winfield statue at the Tony Stone Field in St. Paul. The event celebrated the remarkable legacy of the Hall of Famer, who is Dave Winfield, and highlighted the importance of preserving and honoring local history and achievement and community pride. This is one of our own, came out of the Rondo community, who went on to become a Hall of Fame, a Hall of Famer. So they have a beautiful statue, baseball, of him presented in the park next to Central High School on Marshall Avenue. It was inspiring to see residents, leaders, and supporters come together to recognize the St. Paul native, whom accomplishments continue to serve as a source of inspiration for future generations. So on Saturday, they had the unveiling of the statue. Then on Sunday, I attended the 50th annual Winfield Annual Banquet at the Intercontinental St. Paul Riverfront Hotel. This is also an event that recognizes individuals and organizations whose leadership, service, and commitment strengthen our community. But the afternoon was really illuminated with the recognition of students of excellence. So there was, I think, at least 18 students from different high schools who were recognized for their achievement in academic success, sports, and leadership within St. Paul Public School. It was a great afternoon of recognition of our future leaders. But I was just really, really amazed at the work that these young students have done and are doing, many of them over the four years that they've been in high school, but what they have achieved. And their outlook for the future and moving on to college, it was just made me so proud. Sometimes we look at what's happening in the world, and we don't know what this means for our future leaders. They have showed us what it looks like when we invest in our young students. So a really good evening of just gathering with good people, a good meal, and recognitions of our students in St. Paul's schools. And that's it for me. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. The great thing about being last is I can just add on a little bit more context. With the Gold Line Board, I'm pleased to share that ridership has more than doubled from last year. So those are really good updates and just numbers and trends we're seeing. In addition to that, the electric buses was recalled last year. The vendor is still working on it, and the plan is to get it online later this year. And then the other part with the update around this is the extension. to Minneapolis, and all the stops would be included along all the stadiums that are in the metro here going into downtown Minneapolis. I also wanted to share that the Kellogg Bridge will be reopening later this year in November. So that means that it will decrease travel time by nine minutes for the Gold Line. So that is a huge improvement and will just support the reliability and the travel time to make Gold Line much more appealing. In addition to that, at WacomTP grand opening, I was honored to be one of the speakers and really it's a big project that both the legislators were part of, Senator Feng He, Senator Mary Quinnish, and then also the city of St. Paul played a big role in this too because this was originally considered city park land and And the city worked to deal with, you know, giving this to Wacom TPL1 Yakapi's organization to, like, manage, to lease and manage, essentially. And the St. Paul Public Parks director was there, in addition to Mayor Herr and also Councilmember Shaniqua Johnson. I received a comment about an eraser of the late Congressman Bruce Vento. But I've just been reflecting a lot on that and that this doesn't erase anyone's legacy, that this is really about providing and preserving history about the legacy of what colonialism has done. and the erasure of an entire indigenous population. So that far outweighs with what the center is trying to do is just to connect us to this legacy as well. And it's not an erasure of any one person's legacy as well. In addition to that, I toured the CLUS childcare hub. This two years ago, two, three years ago with ARPA funds, we were able to help support CLUS with this and also with community partners in hearing about just the need for one, childcare access, and two, just supporting home-based childcare. that it's actually businesses, right? So we also helped with that. They gave a presentation. I was proud to tour the rooms, the classrooms now that they have available. Unfortunately, because of Operation Metro Surge, we're just seeing a slow enrollment into the classrooms. And folks are either not taking their kids to child care centers anymore and or are relying on other sources to provide child care. They have openings available. It's a model in which even though they have multiple rooms, each individual room is operated by an independent owner. So it's a hub type model. So they were able to receive a lot of and raise money for new equipment and everything. So the classrooms are beautiful. It's a great place for kids. So they have openings. And this is on the east side. Where is it located? It's right behind Metro State on Maria. Maria and East 7th Avenue. And with that, I give back my time. Thank you.

Thank you. Mary Jo? Thank you, Mr. Chair. Great things going on. I'm excited about that child care hub. That's wonderful. So I mentioned last week that I was going to be attending some of my city council meetings. And it's always great to obviously be at our city's meetings where we get to talk about the things that we're working on together. So I was in St. Anthony. where they thank us for our organics recycling that we put at their city hall. St. Anthony is a city that has two counties, Hennepin and Ramsey, which they love being in two counties, because they get to use both of... both of the resources of the counties, and we have our organic recycling there at their city hall, so they love that. And they also participated in an emerging and diverse developers program, and they acquired a three-unit rental on one of their roads. And so it's great to be working with our cities on different things. And then we were at Little Canada, and I think our county manager, who did a great presentation in Little Canada about the work that we're doing with our Building Stronger Together. And I want to give a shout out to Nick Schwalbach who was just appointed to be a new council person in Little Canada. There was a retirement or a resignation of another city council person and so Nick Schwalbach was appointed and sworn in when we were there. So congratulations to Nick and welcome to public service. So that was exciting to be there. They also in Little Canada approved a housing program with Lupe Development, a senior housing building. So it's really fun to see our communities really embracing housing needs of our communities and using our diverse and developing developers. So that was great. I also met with our former colleague, Nicole Fretham, who's now the Director of Strategic Initiatives and Community Relations for our County Attorney's Office. And it's great. And I'm we do some restorative justice in our County and I know the state has a restorative justice Department now and I'm really looking forward to us doing a lot more Restorative justice practices and a lot of the work that we do so I'll be talking to our County manager and hopefully we'll be able to find out how ways that we can Really immerse or insert a restorative practices in a lot of our work also My colleague, Commissioner Miller, talked about the Ramsey Washington Recycling and Energy Board meeting that we had, which was very interesting. It's always interesting because we get to hear all about the programs that are out there. And you mentioned the... the odor machine, and so it gave me a chance to look it up. So I will give the name of it. It was the Nasal Ranger Field Olfactometer. So who knew? Who knew there was an olfactometer? I wanted to find some way that we could compete with the moo. What is it? Click clack moo. Yeah, we got to compete with that. But anyway, it is great that our center is obviously so community-centered that we are very conscious of the odor that might come out of a recycling and energy center. And they do these tests, which we all learned about. So that was great. And they are talking also about the food scrap program that is continuing on. And by the end of this year, we are going to have our food scrap collections will be countywide. So we're all excited about that. July 6 is another rollout of cities. And then by December, all of our cities we'll be able to do, including St. Paul, and my city of Roseville. We're the final cities. We'll be able to have organics bagged in special bags and put in with your garbage pickup, and they'll be sorted out at our processing centers. So we're all really excited about that. More to come as we continue to roll that out. Also, just to let you know that there is a podcast by our executive director there called Trash Talk with Trista. And so I encourage you, wherever you get your podcasts, to go to Trash Talk with Trista. And that's all about the work that we're doing with our recycling energy. Energy board all right and with that list made one more thing mr. Chair I Oh, we had active living Ramsey communities met yesterday. Oh my gosh. It's always exciting This is a coalition of cities and and members of the public who come together. We had members from st. Paul from the suburban communities We get public works their parks and rec and we talk about how we can have a you know mobility for all in our communities and I So we talked about the Roseville bicycle and ped plan. Noel Bakken, the sustainability specialist there, gave a great report on the Roseville plan. And then we had a review of the Ramsey County bike and ped plan that we're working on. And we just had great conversation about how all the communities do want to connect and how we want all these trails to be connected. You don't want a trail to end with one city and And when it comes to another city, so we want all of the connections to be made. So that's great work. And then we had a representative from the high school, the climate action team in the high school, a young gentleman who told me that they have started now, you've all heard of Green Step Cities. These are cities that do a series of things that allow them to be considered green-step. School districts have started this. So you can be a green-step school district. And the Roseville Area School District is the first school district in the state to be a green-step school district. So we're going to have them be working with Arby's Light King and Energy. But I'm guessing that a lot of other school districts are going to want to become that. But it's always great to have the young people interested and involved in this. And so we're going to be continuing to work with them on our active living and, of course, in our solid waste issues, too, because that's a part of being Green Step as well. Just want to give a shout out. Coming up, there's a Rhubarb Fest in New Brighton. This is a very exciting and really fun event. And after you've done train days, you can go over to New Brighton Depot, which is in Long Lake Regional Park. It's the train depot there. And they have amazing rhubarb pie. And so go to the Rhubarb Fest. And that's on Sunday. Then I just want to say I'm glad that my colleague brought up Commissioner Jebin Singh, brought up the Profiles in Courage Award. I was glad to hear that. And it reminds me, as I go by my manufactured home park in Roseville every day on the way to work, that we still have volunteers with their safety vests on that are still making sure that our kids get on and off school buses safely. And so it's still out there. People are still nervous, and we still have volunteers. amazing community members that are helping people feel safe. So thanks for those. It's great to be honored for these awards and to know that we still have members that are working on that. So thanks to everyone for their work.

Let me just say that I had planned to attend the family fest with my four-year-old. First of all, my five-year-old granddaughter went there with the school. She came back just talking about it. She loved the whole day. And I was planning to take my four-year-old, but she talked me into taking her swimming. How that happens, I don't know, but it happened. But I heard it was a great event. The kids loved it. The other thing is, I attended a Regents... I had a Regents board meeting this last week, and usually I don't talk about it because it's usually... I call it mundane business, but it shouldn't be. But it's just the operational business, the board. But this last meeting, we had a one-hour presentation by some of the medical staff. And, you know, there's a lot of innovation going on in that hospital, first of all, because they want to get – more efficient in terms of trying to keep their costs down. And so I'm on the finance committee. And over the years, we've been looking at how do we offset the increasing costs, the cuts in uncomfort city care. And there's a lot of innovation going there by employees. And we now have this going to be moving into an area where there's interest by outside corporations, where we, Regions Hospital, would monetize some of these innovations. by having licensee, because other hospitals then start copying the same. It could be a procedure. It could be, I mean, we have a burn unit there. It's an urgent, et cetera, et cetera. So there's a lot of innovation by employees. The first thing that came into my mind is that that's a culture where we at Ramsey County should try and see how we could spark more innovation by our employees, by the people on the ground. So I just bring that up because it's a very good conversation. I just turned it off. Your four-year-old wants to get some help. The innovation by employers, the Mayo Clinic, I'm talking about like 100 million plus in licenses a year in revenue. And they are the leaders in this. It's fantastic. But they've already have been doing this as a whole. organizational culture for 80 years, 50 years. So Regions is getting, is starting to move in that direction. I thought I'd just tell you because it's one of the things we should keep an eye on and see how, as we work together with Regions, how we can learn some lessons from them in terms of creating more innovation in Ramsey County.

Can I ask you a question about regions? Because we're looking at, and that's great work and innovation, great. But as we look at what's happening with ACMC and so many other hospitals across the state and the country, How is their financial? I mean, they do a lot of uncompensated care and things like that, too. So are we feeling anything at Regions?

There is concern, especially if the Hennepin Medical Center was to close, we would get swamped, quite frankly. And that would then cause a lot of issues, including financial, but also one of capacity. Okay. So they were very supportive in advocating at the state for a Hennepin Medical Center. In comparison, we're miles apart. Regence is financially healthy. It's a business that fluctuates. It depends on how many births are in the hospital, how many surgeries are in the hospitals, how many people come to the ER room, and how many of those are uncompensated, how many of those cannot pay the bill if they lost their jobs. I mean, all of that is uncompensated care. But if we look at April's report, financially we were ahead of the game. So it's financially in good shape. but it has a lot to do with a lot of those things about innovation and so forth. I mean, it goes down to the people in the supply room. Over the years that I've been there, the folks in the supply room, how do we do things differently to save money and become more effective and efficient for the client? It's not just about saving money, it's about also how is this better for the patient. So it's something that, as I heard the medical team present, I just started thinking that maybe that's something that the board should start thinking about. How do we put a little spark, or at least start heading in a direction of that sort.

Thank you for that.

Following the board meeting, we will have a closed meeting chaired by myself regarding Wilson versus Ramsey County. Then at lunchtime, we have a lunch and learn, where we will be learning more about the operations of purchasing and contracting. Then this afternoon, Commissioner Jemison will chair the Ramsey County Girls Report update. We can take about 10 minutes before we go into session. We are adjourned.