Budget Committee - Regular Meeting

Roll call please. Vice chair Yang.

Here.

Council member Bowie. Council member Coleman. Here. Council member Kim. Council member Joe's. Here. Council president Nacre. Here. Six present, one absent being council member Kim and one expected shortly being council member Bowie. And Chair Johnson. I'm here. Well, it's okay. It's so funny we joked about that. Alright, so long annual I feel like we need a drum roll for this. I know that the council has really long echoed just a commitment and prioritization of what it looks like to have a biennium budget.

And I think that it's really important today to have our colleagues and partners in Ramsey County come and talk to us about their budget process. So really excited to welcome up at this time County Manager Becker and Deputy County Manager Kotze. Good

morning. Two weeks in a row when I was saying I hadn't done this for since I've been County Manager.

You just

can't get sick of you, though.

I know. Did it But one this is a standing item on my Wednesday calendar. Madam Chair, members, thank you for having us today. We're excited to talk a little bit about our biennial budget process, so and happy to take any questions along the way. So we're just gonna give you a little background on our process, then we are going to actually talk about the process, show you our kind of overall budget calendar, and then talk about some considerations because in all these structures, there's some trade offs and some pros and cons.

And, certainly, we wanna be real about what those are. So in terms of background, we are fortunate enough to be, you know, having a twenty year history of doing these biennial budgets. So we've been doing this for quite a while. And we so it started in the o six 02/2006, 2007 budget. The transition has been generally very positive for our organization, both in terms of our ability to plan for things and kind of work through our year a little, our two years a little bit differently as you're going to see.

But also in terms of just some of the pressures on our fiscal staff too and our directors and things like that. So there have been some real positives. But for our county, one reason why this works well is we do have fairly stable revenue streams. Now, obviously, we're in a unique time where those are a little bit more challenged. But in general, property tax, fairly predictable CPA, we sort of have some of those numbers that we can we aren't estimating necessarily too widely on over a year over year.

We definitely have the opportunity to reduce some of the budget fatigue. And then, as I mentioned, this ability to focus a little more on strategic planning. And then more importantly, on our second years, you're going to see we spend a lot of time on evaluation and performance. We want to look at where we put money in the previous budget, kind of what did we buy, and sort of are we getting the outcomes that we had hoped to get. And then and it allows leadership to focus more on implementation instead of constantly planning.

So, I can say right now being May in the second year of a biennial budget, it's or in the first year of a biennial budget, it's really kind of a a good time for us to do a lot of other budget pressure work. So instead of just trying to build a budget right now, we're actually spending most of our budget time digging in on structural things that we wanna see fixed and worked on as a run up into that next budget. So let me just explain to you a little bit of the slide here. So I wanted to show the distinction between what is an odd year and an even year. So on odd years, it's really our year two of our budget year.

And then year so right now, we didn't show you '26. But right now, we would be on an even year, obviously. So on those odd years, we are doing performance and supplemental budget. Is that right? Did I mess that up?

We plan for it in 2026 and the performance year is for 2027.

Oh, got it. Okay. Yeah. We're doing that right now. We're doing our performance year. So regardless of which year we are in, I just want to make sure that you know we still do some of the same processes in both years. One of which is I will present an annual, like one the budget to our board. I will present a 2027 budget in late August to our board. Now, that budget is they've already kind of did a lot of the work on that budget last year. They already set a levy for that budget.

However, they can make some adjustments as we go through this year's process. So once again, our board will pass the max levy every year, even though we have a biennial budget process. In those supplemental years, the levy has typically been unchanged. The only times that we did make some changes was during COVID. However, we know that now with some of these fiscal conditions, maybe some of those fluctuations might be a little more something we might consider doing.

And then in the biennial budget, the board actually adopts two years of levy to build that budget. So last year when they passed our budget originally, it was at 9.25 and then a 7.5 for the two years. And then they ended up bringing down that first year. And then this year, they'll be able to have a conversation about that second number. But the budget itself is already built.

So departments focus on performance on those on one set of years. The other years, the county board, you know, all departments will come and give presentations both years. We spend probably a good four and a half days of every department comes before the county board and talks about their budget. One year, the focus is more on the performance metrics, and we actually open up our open data portal. We talk about the metrics that they're measuring their budget against.

And then in the budget year, we obviously talk about spending priorities and needs much more deeply. And then we started a different type of addenda process last year where the board actually sat down and tried to talk through things that would potentially be cuts. And they could be additions to an addendum process, could be either one. But primarily, we were looking at reductions last year to try to bring that levy down. And so we went through that process in early November so that our fiscal staff could have time to then kind of make those adjustments into the budget.

And then obviously, we do the truth in taxation and then pass the levy in December. So why I wanted to show you this slide is just some things happen both years, if that makes sense.

Yes. And thank you, accounting manager. I really appreciate just I appreciated the slide a lot just to see how it worked when it comes to like, you know, year one and year two. So that was really helpful for me too. I saw that council president had a question, so I just wanted to pause this real quick mid breath. So council president.

Thanks, Madam Chair. Thanks, county manager. And I really appreciate this conversation. I especially love the fact that in the I think we had been thinking about the value of biennial budgeting from sort of a budgeting fatigue, like you mentioned, and not having staff immediately go from budgeting for one year to budgeting for the next year. But this value of the performance metrics is also so important, like time to actually see how a program is working before we have to decide whether or not to budget for it again. So this is great to see. I'm curious. I know you mentioned that the county board in the budget year will adopt new levies for both years, and those aren't necessarily the same. You might have a Yep. 2% levy increase next year, 5% the second year.

It feels at the city level anyway, and maybe this is just because we're on an annual budget process, that each year we are surprised by the size of the gap that we have to solve for in the next year's budget, that we somehow couldn't predict that out last year. I'm curious, so if we were to think about setting the budget levy increase for both this year and next year, we would somehow have to have a sense of what that gap is going to be two years out. And I'm wondering, do you have the same dynamics? Is the county financing just different so it's not as surprising? Or do you have a way of estimating that gap out two years ahead?

Thank you for the question, madam chair. Council members, I'm Alex Kutz. I'm the deputy county manager for Anne's proud Saint Paul resident. So that's a really good question, and I think it's something so I've worked in a place where we did annual budgets, then I worked for the state that does a two year budget, and I've worked for Ramsey County that does a two year budget. It's kind of about like like the county manager mentioned, our revenues are typically pretty solid.

Like, we know what the state is giving us for county program aid. You all know what the state would be giving you for the city portion of that. And then other things like fees, federal revenues, state revenues are pretty consistent. I will say that with a slight caveat with, like, h r one and some of the things with the federal government currently. But then we project out the bargaining. We'll talk a little bit about bargaining later. We have three year contracts. So right now, we know what they are. Otherwise, we estimate them. So the main drivers are our bud of our budget are easily predicted into the second year.

And then if we have to so the reason we would open the budget in the second year is something like you mentioned. Something changed at the federal government. Something changed at the state government. We haven't done it for bargaining. We can plan for bargaining and then bargain within what we plan for. I think it's a it's a shift in mindset.

Mhmm. Mhmm. Yeah. And

and then I also think when we are making new investments, sometimes, like this past year when we've had to make a few investments, we didn't have a lot of investments obviously because it was a difficult budget year. But some things we put in the first year, and some things people had to wait till the second year. So there are things that we already know are going to be additional things that we're going to be expanding or doing, but those don't those don't happen. So they're technically, you know, some people got things right away, but other people had to wait a year in order to get some of those additions. So if that helps a little bit too.

As a follow-up to that, I guess, one of the things that I just wanted to know for the county too, how would does your current, like, budget cycle like your year end close or how do you currently track just like how what you budgeted for year one and year two, like how they're actually coming out at the end of the year? So like just kind of that we've had conversations about the budget to actuals here as a council and as a city. And just wondering how you guys currently do that process in the county too.

Sure. Thank you. Madam Chair, council members. So we have a regular year end close around a calendar year just like the city. So we close we start closing in January and February during the time where we're paying the end of our bills. And then we finish through the state audit. We go through the office of the state auditor and do the single audit that takes us through June or July to try and meet the September 30 deadline. That's always our goal. So in terms of how that interacts with the budget, every quarter we're doing projections of are we making budget? Are we not making budget?

How are our investment revenues coming in? How are taxes coming in for the two times a year that people pay their taxes? And we're estimating. We just did that last We're telling the county manager, hey, it looks like we're good here. It looks like here's where we have a hole. What are we going to do to manage that? And so, the two year budget, it doesn't impact our year end per se. We're constantly trying to balance to that budget. And if there were something so maybe part of the question what you're getting at is if there is something unknown in the first year, now you're carrying it into the second year, right? So you're like, oh, wait, that didn't turn out like we thought it would, and that's going to impact the second year of the budget.

Well, we would try and correct for that in the first year, whether that's moving funds around to correct for it, or making a different decision, or holding positions, or planning for that. So between the quarterly projections, the year end look, and then we get to the second year.

Yeah, no, that actually is really, really helpful. So thank you so much, Deputy County Manager. We've actually had conversations about quarterly budget to actuals here in part for that practice of just that quarterly check-in. So it's cool to hear that that's something that you have embedded in your practice, especially in partnership with the county manager. Am on the staffing end, can you speak at all to the department staffing when it comes to actually being able to pull those numbers together and just like what staffing looks like for that?

Are you talking about for the quarterly?

Yes.

So we just had ours on Friday and they're called you just told me this morning Financial

status reports.

Financial status reports are called FSRs in the county. We get them by service team and then basically we sit for a whole day and, you know, the we have controllers that basically oversee a service team that could be five to seven departments. And we go through and look at all how every single person is doing. And then I can ask questions about vacancies, like this revenue seems off. So, the CFO and I sit kind of with our deputy county manager of that area and we kind of go through all of it.

And certainly, of today, because we just had it on Friday, I know where our kinda hot points are. And then we're already gonna be working on, you know, things that we need to be doing to say, hey. I need we need more information here. Why is this not why is the revenue not coming in on this one? Do we need a work group to so the earlier you sort of get your sight lines into some of that, you can you have more choices, honestly.

I think that's the best part about being a little bit strategic is at the end of the day, the pot of money is what it is. But you can be strategic about how you move resources around based on where you know you have gaps. And so the more information is just more helpful earlier as possible, honestly. So, yeah. So that's kind of how and I would say in terms of staffing, that's one of the main jobs of this controller role is to make sure that they deliver on those FSRs for us every quarter.

So you take Yeah.

Sorry. You take how

many positions were budgeted? What what's your vacancy rate in the budget? How many are vacant now? What are you projecting to fill for the rest of year? When you get down to department, many people know that. Like, do you have some and then you project it out the rest of the year. And then if it becomes a problem in really tough years, maybe we do a hiring freeze. Maybe that's just in the servicing. Maybe it's countywide. We look at ways that we can manage that.

Actually,

personnel is probably one of the easier things to project forward because you've got data every two weeks on that. I think the harder areas are like contracts or legal fees, things like that that or what is the investment market gonna do in the next six months? Sure. Those are harder to project.

Mhmm. Sure. Council president.

Thanks, chair. Just to be clear, though, the once the levies are set in December for the next two years, the levies do not cannot change.

The second year levy can change.

Oh, the second year levy

can change. Yep. Every year, the board has to set a levy. Okay. It's just that the budgets are already set. So I'll come and present a budget, and I could actually present a slight increase or decrease as well if we wanted to do that. But we typically have not. Minus COVID, the county manager come in and said, hey. We wanna have a I think a zero increase, right, during COVID. But generally, I'll present basically back to them the budget that they they asked for or they've already approved, and then they can decide, you know, there's some things that they'd like to do differently, and then we would work on those things.

That's helpful. But, like, worst case scenario, you're not committed fixed to a certain You size could increase that levy if you needed. Right.

Madam Chair, commission or sorry, council members. The I think the main difference first, by law, you have to set a levy every year. And so every year, you're going to set the levy as the legislative branch. And then, the planning is you don't run a full process. So, this year, none of my departments are running a budget process right now. This is the performance year. They're thinking about what are their performance metrics? How are they going to present them? How do they tie to their budget? They're looking at those pieces, not the budget. So if we were to change something in the budget, it would be something coming down from the state, coming down from the federal government, or from our board chair or the county manager saying, hey, this one thing we really need to change. And that's what we would do. Mhmm.

And and there's an opportunity for us to work inside our own budget to keep this levy we passed because we just have to make different prioritizations, you know. So it's really a a balance of do we if there are significant changes that would increase the levy, does the board wanna do that as a part of a levy increase or want us to make harder decisions within the budget that they've already passed? Sure. Yeah.

And so you kind of bring that process, I guess, as a I think this is where the city and the county has a lot of similarities, especially over the last few years. We've had a lot of things coming at us real fast and have had to really adjust or make changes very quickly. And so even in a dual budget cycle, you found that you can kind of adjust to that need. I know that that's something that, for example, I don't know how you all kind of handled the SNAP benefits piece, but just something that I'm aware of at the county. But how have you I guess to that piece, could you share just in that moment of having to maybe make an adjustment to spending or make a hiring freeze decision or just like in when you're thinking about how things change so quickly and when you need to respond to them in a dual budget cycle, is the process really just that it comes to you County Manager and then to the Board?

I think there's and Alex can speak to this more. But I do think there's a lot of flexibility for the county manager to make a lot of decisions within the county. Certainly, certain things rise up to the level of needing a board action. But there's a fair amount of a level of action that they just expect me to keep their organization running based on the bigger framework of the county priorities, if that makes sense. And then there's obviously, we have specific thresholds where we have to go to the board if we have to move. And you'd be able to speak more to those types of things.

Yeah. Madam Chair, council members, I would say that it's any budget, whether you're doing an annual or biennial budget, things you can't predict. So first, we have a contingency. It's $2,000,000 That's not a ton of money, but it's enough money to cover certain things that you cannot predict and you couldn't ever have fathomed happening. Something like Operation Metro Surge or a federal court case that we had to provide, you know, security for, things that Also, were not we ask our departments to pivot.

If things change in the year and say, hey, you know, this is more of a priority right now than what we had planned, I need you to focus your efforts in that area and make sure that your staff is working on that rather than something else within your budget. The county manager, as we talked about the financial status reports, does a good job of saying, okay, here's where we're spending our time and money, and it aligns with our performance metrics, and this other thing came up, and we need to kind of pivot there and really focus in on a few different things.

Thank you. But most

of it's done by sorry. Most of it's done by the county manager and the administration. There aren't very many things that would have to come to the county board unless there was a change in total intent of the money or FTE, major FTE changes.

Okay. No, thank you for that. And thank you for just kind of going into depth about that $2,000,000 contingency piece. Just it sounds like there's a lot of preparation from that. Do you currently have reserves that you fund or do you fund your county reserves in that relation? Or is it the $2,000,000 contingency kind of serves that purpose?

No. Madam Chair, council members, our reserve policy is at least two months of operating funds as a as I would call it general fund fund balance or unrestricted fund balance that is set by our by our commissioners and also reported to our rating agencies in the state. I personally think that's a little low. We aim for more like three months based on what the office of the state auditor recommends. And so I guess I'll tie your last question to this question.

In order to use money from the general fund fund balance, you have to go to the board. So if we were to have a situation where we needed funds for to close a year, to close a gap that was unexpected, we go to the board, explain that to them, and they have to approve it.

Thank you so much. And I know we will have a shorter time frame, want to just continue to move us along and we'll stop if there's

No, a those question are or questions. Those are are questions. Yeah. So we just wanted to quick show you our timeline for this year. This kind of gives you a little flavor of what I had described in our year one. But folks are working on their performance measures. I actually have them present to me in July so I can kind of help them flush out sort of how they're going to bring that information to the board. I'll present the budget on August 25 to our board. It will be the 2027 budget. Obviously, in the following year or last year, I presented a two year budget.

So it kind of depends on which year if I'm presenting a one year or two year budget. This year, it'll just be the one year. Then all the departments, as I said, like four and a half days, every department comes before the board for about forty five minutes, about an hour, and talks about their department. And the board has a chance to ask questions about their performance metrics. Then we have our first public hearing at the end of kind of that first set of meetings.

It happens that night of the last meeting. And then obviously we have a joint property tax advisory committee meeting in mid September that some of you are on. The board will pass their max levy on September 22. We have tentatively planned to have an addenda conversation with our board should they want it or need it. And that just means anything they want to change with the levy beyond what I presented. If they want to do that, then we would have that conversation. And then we have a truth in taxation and then the final levy approvals. So that's what and every year we go through process. That's the big thing is that this process doesn't go away because we're in the second year. And then why don't you go through Okay.

And so then in a biennial budget year when the county manager presents the two year budget, we've spent the entire year getting ready for that. So, how it starts in the initial budget process, which is between December, so we'll start that in December of this year to present in the following August, through February is basically the initial budget process. Finance, the department and the county manager work to like kind of set the parameters, what is our goal this year, what are the targets, what kind of levy are we aiming for, what are the priorities, where are we going as an organization? What do we know about bargaining? What do we know about the state and federal government and our revenues?

The internal service departments, so things like property management and IT set their rates. The county manager will meet with the executive team and their leaders, and the finance team will write the budget instructions. This is such an important part that I, like, doubled up on those bullets. Sorry about that. So that takes us through February.

Then in February, basically, that process is handed off to the departments or service teams, and the department staff work to make recommendations within the county manager's parameters and target, and they get ready to present to the county manager in May. So every service team will get a target and they'll say, hey, here are our priorities, here's what we want you to do, and they'll kind of look at what are their pressures as we talked about earlier. What are we projecting for costs, for our staff, where are have we had holes, where have we spent more, where have we spent less, and they work on their budget together over that time. Then from May till August, the county manager, that's basically her time to make decisions. So we'll have meetings in May to present.

Every department will come and present to the county manager. Then we'll spend June and July with what we think of as like a core team where there's finance. Our policy folks are at that table to tie the performance measures back to the budget and kind of figure out where where are there places? Are we over target? Are we under target?

Where are the priorities where the county manager wants to lean in and add more? During that time, we also meet with our budget chair and vice chair from the county board to make sure we stay aligned and understand where they're coming from. So when the county manager presents her budget, it is not a huge surprise to them as they try and lead that process. So then the the county manager will do we put together the proposed budget and she presents it to the board in August. After that, the county board takes over the process.

So the county manager presents her budget. The county board takes over the budget process. The same kind of calendar that you just saw for the supplemental budget happens again. So the county manager will present her budget. We'll have four days of department presentations. We set the max levy. We have an addenda process for any changes. Some years, there are no changes. Some years, there are more changes. Then in late November, early December, we have the truth in taxation, and we have a final vote on the budget.

On the addenda, you know, you all know this, when you set the max level, you can't go over it. So the only way you can go from there is down. Okay. So on our last slide, I just wanna say I'm a big fan of a two year budget as a long term financial professional. It's it's time to kinda take a breath and think, well, did we get it right? What worked? What didn't work? Reflect on the work you did. Take time to actually implement what you're trying to do and look at, is it actually working for the people we serve and for our residents, or is it not? And should we pivot?

So that is really nice. I would not enjoy going back to a one year budget. It's you're in a constant state of budget planning, which makes it hard to reflect on the work you're doing. So there's stronger long term planning. Right? You've asked a few questions about how do you plan for that. I think you get in a mindset of constantly planning. Like, I want to push us and our new CFO who's here to do five year planning. So, we budget for two years, but we think about five years. What does the next two to three years of the tails look like for us?

We reduce the administrative burden and how much work it takes to get a budget out, and everybody's kind of set. They know, oh, here's our two year budget. I did want to point out, we do not carry money between the budget years. So it's not like the money just rolls over to the second year. We close out a year and we start a new year. That's important. It yes. It provides some fiscal stability, though. People know what's coming. They can plan.

Department directors can plan ahead for how they're staffing, what they're filling, when they're going to focus on which pieces. It provides a little flexibility there. And there's more more time as I said for oversight and evaluation like the performance metrics. It also aligns with the state budget, which is helpful to us to know when the state passes their budget, have much better idea of what should be in our budget. There are cons too, less flexibility.

So, no one can predict the economy two years out. And if you had told me that mortgage rates were going to stay at this level a year ago when we planned this budget, I would not have thought that was true, yet they are, which impacts revenue that comes to the county, so we have to manage that. And so there's economic conditions you can't predict, so we just do our best. And then, bargaining and state budget impacts can be harder depending on the three year and two year cycles and how they line up with our budget.

I'll just close with I think it's been a really great tool for us too because one of the biggest priorities that I have is reducing long term budget pressure. If you've ever seen the Ramsey County budget book, one of the big questions we ask departments in their narratives is what are what kind of things are you foreseeing like five, seven, ten years out as potential pain points? And we had been asking that question over four or five budgets. And sometimes, by the time you're looking at it now, if it was five years ago, six years ago, those pressures are now the ones of today. And so because we even despite Metro surge, which I was really proud of our team because it's the one thing we were able to keep our goals for this year when we started the year.

Because we weren't trying to start this process, I was able to put all the fiscal people and our directors and the controllers to focus on we actually had a set of hearings to address everything that was in the budget pressures from the last five budget books. And I was really proud of that. Now, we're not done with that work. We decided some of the things are closed. They were not budget pressures.

Let's move on. There were many things that are kind of going to a phase two, And they are going to be things that we have to figure out in the next biennial budget. But now, I have a whole another almost nine months of runway. I mean, sometimes we have to make really hard decisions in budgets. One example was obviously when we had to close our detox facility in the last budget.

That takes many months of research and thinking through the process before you can make a decision like that in a budget. So by having a biennial budget process, you can look at really difficult big things and be able to think through the processes of how can we make this better before we have to make any decision. What's not working? What are the and you can really understand it instead of be on that hamster wheel constantly of like, you know, we're just kind of like staying on top of just getting getting the book out. You know what I mean?

So I I've really benefited from it as a new county manager. It's been really, I think, help us be more strategic and to really make the budget not just numbers and cents, but really a value statement of what we believe in. Because until you can step aside on the metrics part, it's harder that way, you know.

Thank you so much, County Manager and Deputy County Manager. I saw Council President Nacre's hands, so I'll go over her first and then I'll have some follow-up. Council President.

Thanks, Chair. Really appreciate this. Two questions. Alex, you said that during the non budget year, that gives time for reflection and for processing. Curious like if you could be more specific about what your finance staff, because sometimes reflection seems like maybe something more the departments would do. What do finance staff do during the non budget year? And then secondly, I know none of us were here in 2006, But wondering if there's any institutional history that you can either share now or later about what that transition from an annual budget to a biannual budget entailed and how much time elapsed between starting to think about that and actually being able to make the transition because we're currently in that position. We're in 2005 Ramsey County era.

Mhmm. And did you do

a study? Or maybe 2004

or 2003.

We did do a study

first. Should it require a consultant? Madam Chair, council member. So I'll answer your first question first. So what does finance do in the off budget year? Well, so we have a budget team and we have an accounting team and so the accounting team will constantly do the year end stuff. The budget team, we often look back at like, hey, should we go meet with departments and see what worked during that process and what did not work very well? Also, we're constantly looking at how the budget narrative reflects what we're doing so it's more accessible and understandable to the actual residents. But I would also say the budget staff then can look at, hey, you were trying to do all these initiatives. Where are they?

These are staff that have good expertise on understanding different things like the fees associated with mortgages. They could go look at that. We could re we're working on right now, re looking at our property management rates. Every few years, you should be looking at your IT property management rates and rebasing them and understanding, hey, are we actually using the right metrics to charge these out? Does it make sense?

Our indirect cost allocation with the state and federal government, those are things that take time, energy, and like focus work. And so we plan those out for the off budget year. And they stay busy doing that. And then in terms of the transition, I would really have to think about that. I was not here nor have I ever transitioned a budget from a one year to a two year. But I would imagine I I would imagine a table where we could sit down and brainstorm. There's definitely a path to doing that. I don't know. Did you wanna add?

I mean, the only thing I can think of I gotta look back to which county manager was around. But there are a couple that I stay in touch with that are even before my last a couple of predecessors before, and they might be able to help us talk about that. Maybe Chair Ortega, maybe Julie Klein. I'm trying to think of how far back to go, but she's still around. You know, there are people that were here at the time, or even maybe a director or two. Who knows? It's been a while, but yeah. But yeah, thank you for your interest. I mean, we'd be happy to talk to you about anything around this process as we go forward.

Yeah. Could you share just like which systems you currently use to track kind of when it comes to the city databases and things like that of like how we currently are using, what we use to see where our funding is. What do you use at the county that tracks just like how actually people are spending and what the spend plan is and how it goes through by month. Know, oh, there's a vacancy here or they're under spending here. How do you track that actively?

So, right now we have a twenty two year old Oracle PeopleSoft based system that Yeah, exactly. So, don't do that super well. We do a lot of that manually, to be honest. But we are moving to Workday on 01/01/2027. We've spent the last eighteen months planning and getting ready for that.

We'll spend the rest of the year getting ready for that, which will give us more ability to do those projections that you're saying in like month over month because they'll have different types of reports. That being said, our system has the budget piece, you know, Hyperion is our budget piece, Aspen is our accounting piece, and Summit is our HR piece. And they all come together, and that's how we do our financial status reports. You get reports out of those. You look at them, you project them out, and you say, hey, what does it look like for the year?

And then the people, the controllers, the budget analysts look at them and give projections on paper. And regardless of how good your system is, you're gonna need a human to look at it and think about does it make sense and does that line up with where we think we're gonna go and go talk to your department heads and say, hey. What are you gonna fill? Are you planning to let a big contract? Where are you working with the state on different things? How's your revenue coming in? What state statutes have changed that might impact that? And so it's both pieces. It'll be great to have a new system that's more automated than what we do, but our work won't change significantly due to that.

Sure. Yeah. Thank you. And I guess as a follow-up to one of the things that you kind of shared that I noted was just that there's no carryover per year. And I just wanted to have have you say two more things about what that actually what that translates to. Is that just that throughout the end of the year, everything rolls back into the general fund, so there's no carryover, not even of programs that maybe just are on spent dollars or just like what exactly doesn't carry over from the general fund Oh, per

sure. I can talk about that too. Thank you, Madam Chair, Council members. So, what that means is sometimes people think when you do a two year budget, you have two years to spend the money or flexibility, and that's not how we run this budget. The end of each year, we close the year, we have a year end, and that money does go back. If there's a surplus, it goes back to the general fund fund balance, which is what we talked about. It needs to be a minimum of two months of operating. But we do have things called projects. So, projects are where something might take longer. Often IT initiatives are projects like the ERP to going to work day or a larger construction piece would be a project or something that's gonna take more than two years.

We would go to the board and ask for authority to put the money into a project with a specific intent. And so that money would go into that project. That project stays open across years until it's closed or spends all of the money and is closed by the county board. And those are for bigger things and that's how we manage things that will last longer than one to two years.

Thank you. It was such a great this is such a great conversation. And I really appreciate just being able to see it. I see council member Yang's hand. Thank so much for this presentation.

I've been looking forward to it. And I want to share that, like, the council here has been very supportive of the transition to the two year budget cycle. I've heard it from many of my colleagues, and also even my former colleagues that I served on the council with, too. Also well, you may have heard from the mayor's recent I can't remember if it was like I think it was the state of the city. It's also in her interest to transition to a two year budget cycle.

And so think it's just a really great timing for the city to do this, because we see a lot of the challenges in just how we operate. I personally am seeing how performance review is missing from our cycle overall year after year. And so this is why I'm very hopeful and excited about this. I'm wondering in the timeline here, can you talk a bit about what community engagement looks like, whether it's driven by the county at the staff level or commissioners?

Yeah. So, it happens in a a variety of different ways. So, we kinda see community engagement as happening across the board in every department based on the work of their department. So, within the budget narratives, for example, there's a whole section where they have to write on community engagement of their investments of their work. And certainly, county has taken especially a role of creating sort of some framework plans, like our economic competitiveness inclusion plan, our all abilities plan, or climate equity action plan, like those have community engagement baked all in them.

We've been fortunate enough to have a board that's really been committed to giving a framework based on that feedback that we hear from community and not having to reengage the community necessarily over and over again on things that kind of fit in the framework at times. There's certainly project level engagement, but we also don't want to go back to the same conversations if we sort of have the frame and we let staff. And then oftentimes even community members sit at the table with us while we are executing against projects, if that makes sense. So, in terms of the budget itself, I assume that many of the new investments and the current investments are things we are talking to community about. And those are things that we talk about in those budget hearings and through those narratives and things like that.

I know it is one of our goals. And we did it, I believe, a couple of years a few years ago, where we tried to go out to the community a little further ahead of sort of develop like sort of informing people of the budget process itself. I think we that is a goal of ours, again, I think, to have more transparency about the budget process itself. We also do a fair amount of engagement with staff town halls and informing our staff of how the budget is created as well throughout the year. I do that whether it's in my county manager columns or we host, like I said, these town halls for employees.

And then, in terms of where the commissioners come into play, you know, their job is to listen to constituents all year long and have conversations with me, as well as our exec team about things that they're hearing from the community. We make sure that we're thinking through those things as they're both in real time passing policy every day, as well as they launch into the budget process. Once I have presented my budget, we do equip them with some of the tools to be able to go and host meetings and talk to their community about things that are in the budget and to be able to get that feedback. Because after August, it becomes a little more of their process and where they can have an influence as to asking the questions to the departments. So they use that time to engage the community.

And then, all the departments have to actually come before them for those conversations, if that makes sense. So, I hope that's helpful a little bit. But I kind of see and hopefully, you guys too with your elected roles. I mean, your job is to listen to your constituents every day of the year. And so, it's our job as staff to make sure we're prioritizing and building in those considerations into the things that we're bringing before you for consideration and investment.

Thank you. I've two more questions. Chair Johnson. Go ahead. Yeah. And then, with those budget presentations from the different departments, do you make sure that all of those are completed before the vote on the maximum levy? Yes. Sometimes is it

We do finish those before the board passes the max levy. Though that's not necessarily that's been our historic practice. That isn't necessarily the practice of all municipalities. I will say that like at Hennepin County, for example, they do it after the board passes the max levy. How they do it is they adopt the county manager or their county administrator's budget levy number, and then they listen to the departments because then where they're going to make any adjustments is as when they pass their levy. Does that make so it's sort of their process is a little bit flip flop, so I don't want to give the impression there's only one way to do it. There's you could go on either side of that max levy number technically on those department presentations. Thank you. Yeah.

My last question, it's on that last slide under consideration. So one of the cons you have is estimating bargaining and state budget impacts. That can be harder. And so can you just say a bit more about that because I'm like in terms of the how like what happens at the state relates to your work in the budget, I can see sales tax, the local government need, and all that. And so it may be hard to get those projections. And so how do you are there other pools of dollars that you're thinking of too that's hard to project? Then how do you plan and prepare for that?

Excellent question. Thank you, madam chair, council members. So, for example, the next year for the state budget is a budget year for us. And the state will pass their budget hopefully sometime in May and then we have less time. We will only know sometimes they don't pass it till July, right, or the June. And so, don't have as much time to plan. We have to make adjustments to our budget. We will plan for what we believe the state budget is gonna be. All the departments will say, okay, here's my plan. Here's what I think is gonna be in the state budget.

And then when they actually pass it and we understand the language, we might have to adjust. We might have to go to the county manager and say, hey, this didn't turn out the way the department thought. We need to make adjustments in July and August to account for the state budget. That's one specific example. Another example is depending on the bargaining year, so we do three year contracts. Right now, it's '25, '26, '27. So we will be bargaining going into the 2829 budget and hopefully we won't know. Right? Because we won't know we won't finish bargaining for '28 till the '27 and we will already have presented our budget to the board. So what we do is we sit down with our labor relations partners and our HR partners, and we say, hey.

This is what I think it's going to be. Here's here's what we think we can afford within the parameters that the county manager sets. And we do our best to estimate, and we pass a budget that's estimated, and the county board is aware of what that is through closed sessions and other conversations. And if we get it wrong, we have to make adjustments. But I also would say if you're in that mindset of here are the parameters with with with in which you need to bargain, then it's you don't get it wrong because you bargain within those parameters and planning.

But then then just to move it forward, the next time we bargain three years on that two year cycle, we'll know exactly what we bargained just like this time Because it's a six year, if you do the math, then you end up with two years where you know exactly and you can put it in and there's no guesswork at all. So it's a little bit about timing. Thank you. The rest of the information, we do trends. Like, we'll look at a ten year trend and work off of that to make anything that's more consistent.

Yeah. Excuse me. And the other thing is, you know, like, now, I'm about to when I leave here, I'll go meet with the other metro county administrators. Sometimes we share information. Like, I have a lot of understanding on where people are landing. They're on different bargaining cycles, so I can understand where they're landing right now with certain groups. It's just all that information, while not perfect, it helps to create a very informed decision when we go or recommendation when we go in with our board in a closed session to say, hey, I think we're going to need this much authority. We're going to do our best to get within that. And then the things kind of happen from there. So we try to get a lot of information and make very informed forecasts.

And could you share a little bit more of an example of just like what when changes are made to the general fund or just like department changes, what does or does not go to the board?

So, anything that needs general fund money. So, the county manager has no authority to provide general fund fund balance for anything. So, for example, at the end of a year, if there is a deficit in a department or in a service team that can't be managed within that service team or within the county manager's authority and we need to go get fund balance to basically close out the year, that has to go to the county board. We don't have any authority to get that money. We also don't have any authority to spend the contingency.

So if you want to request contingency funding, which we typically only do in the last quarter of the year because we expect people to manage into the budget even if it's unexpected. But if there comes a time where, like, we couldn't we couldn't manage it and we couldn't have anticipated it, the county board has to approve all use of contingency as well. But your question was about, like, department priorities and different things within that. They can fill the FTEs and different things to make sure that the work's getting done based on what the county manager and the county board have passed. And so there's flexibility there, just not in fund balance.

Well, and historically, while we have departments, we've also had these groups of service teams, and we sort of expect the service teams to support each other in terms of managing budgets too. So we don't have to go to the county board to sort of move money from one department to another to sort of close a gap and say, hey, this is a really big problem over here. It's a high priority. You need to just pause on this aspect of your work while we close the gap here. So, we're making those internal prioritizations.

Generally, looking department by department, but we certainly feel like there's some synergy of a service team that should be considered first and foremost of like, how do you help out kind of this collective of five or six departments in and of itself? Is that a good way of saying that? Yeah. We sort of expect people to manage our deputy county managers oversee six to seven service teams, And sort of that collective budget needs to be balanced as well. So and they sort of lean on each other. Now, with our we're certainly expanding that to recognize work is across the county. And sometimes, it needs to be more fluid. And that's where we continue to have conversations. But at the end of day, here's what I've been telling a lot of our county leaders. One of our biggest themes this year is One Ramsey County.

And you just hold the work super loosely. Like, the money doesn't belong to you as a department. The FTEs don't belong to you as a department. They belong, actually, to the people, but they belong to the county. And if we need them more in one area than another area, that's a conversation we're going to have. So I think that's a little bit of a change of mindset versus having we have 27 departments. It can feel like this is my budget. This is my FTE. But we're breaking that down, that's no longer the case. So like, for example, it is rare for me to go to the board for FTE.

If there's a vacant FTE sitting anywhere in the county, I'm going to say, I think you need to go give that to this other department because you're not using it right now. Like this idea of that we kind of have things that are just for our department, that's kind of a relic of kind of a past organizational operation.

Yeah. No. I'm really one, will just say I'm really excited about the leadership at the county as well right now. I think county manager Becker was really excited when that first initial announcement came out because I knew that there was a lot of thoughts and a lot of conversations. Whenever you're trying to shift culture, especially in an institution such as Ramsey County or even in the city of St.

Paul, it can always be a challenge because sometimes people have a practice of doing something, but not necessarily a policy of doing something. And so it's cool to hear just a little bit about this process, but also I think how you've just named some of the pieces that incredible, like the staffing, the funding, all of these things don't belong to us as government entities. They do belong to the people, but also they should be responsive to where the need is. And sometimes that varies, especially right now in this period of unpredictability. And just like I would describe it as it seems like sometimes some of our really high valued programs are under attack by the federal administration in many ways.

And so sometimes we have to adjust the local level when other places are not when we're seeing something get out of proportion or something being more of a need at the time. And so that mindset is super important. I am looking across just to see there's any other commissioner questions. I'll hand it to Kamud for the last word here and just appreciative of the time that you both have spent to do this and to have the presentation. I know if folks have questions, which you probably will, I will say as a follow through of just yes, if you talk to former Commissioner Reinhart or anyone that can provide some insight that 2005, 02/2006 council members are really interested in understanding what kind of went through that transition because I think sometimes complicate a transition that might be actually smoother than we anticipate.

And hearing from people who have done that transition would be very, very helpful. And so that's something that will be a follow-up through. And if people are thinking and there's extra questions that come up, don't hesitate to reach out to them directly. Kamud?

Thank you, Chair Johnson. Thank you, County Manager and Deputy Manager for the presentation. I do want to go back to the contingency funds, 2,000,000 that is budgeted. So to the extent that contingency funds remain unutilized, you don't need them, you did not access that pool. So are those funds applied to the general fund balance at the end of the budget cycle or they are carried forward and adjusted within the next budget cycle?

Thank you for the question. They are just they go to the general fund fund balance.

Okay.

They close out at the end

of the year. Thank you.

Thank you. Alright. Really appreciate your time for both of you, and thank you for coming over Of course. Two times in a row, accounting manager.

I know. I'll see you next Wednesday.

Okay. Don't say that too loud. We might actually have something for you. Alright. Welcome, Chase.

Good morning. Good morning, chair Johnson and council members. My name is Chase Maxwell. I'm with the office of technology and communications, and I'm joined today by Bonnie Schumacher, the executive director of St. Paul Neighborhood Network.

I'm here this morning to provide an update on OTC's telecast services, following my update to the committee in November. I define telecast services as how we make public information and city meetings easily available and broadly accessible to our constituents on the platforms they use every day, whether it's online, on social media, or still on linear TV through the city's government access cable channel, Comcast eighteen and eight fifty nine. OTC provides these services to the city council and the Ramsey County Board of Commissioners through our two year telecast services agreement which runs through 2027. Today, I have two updates for you about telecast services. We'll talk about YouTube simulcasting, We'll also give you an update on our ongoing partnership with Saint Paul Neighborhood Network, is why Bonnie is here today.

I'm excited to share today that as of last week, we started testing simulcasting of city council meetings on YouTube, the world's most popular video streaming platform. Starting next week, we are confident that we will be able to publicly announce that YouTube is now an available platform to live stream city council meetings, which is very exciting. This is a significant step forward for the accessibility of our public meetings and information. We've heard from many community members including members of the mayor's advisory committee on people with disabilities that YouTube is the preferred platform for highly accessible video content. Moreover, we know that this is where our community is regularly going to access video content and information, and we want to meet them where they are.

It also comes as our legacy technology with Granicus was reaching end of life, and as we prepared our annual renewal process for our Granicus subscription. So making this transition made good sense for our technology road map for council chambers technology. OTC is working closely with council operations and communications team members to prepare messaging for the public that meetings are now available on YouTube. This will include a media announcement, flyer, social media graphics, and information on stpaul.gov that you can share with your constituents. If possible, please help us get the word out next week.

We're gonna be sharing that information through through Jay and council operations with all of you towards the end of this week once the testing is completed for YouTube. I wanna give a big thank you to our OTC and council operations colleagues who made this possible. Jay Wilms, Nia Vang, Greg Weiner, Josh Wiederin, Jesse Zimmerman. Thank you so much for everyone who who chipped in and helped us get to this important point. With that, I'll pause for any questions that you have on simulcasting of YouTube.

Council president.

Thanks, madam chair. Not a question, but a comment. Really excited about this and not only that from a this is where everyone is watching videos perspective, but also something I and I think others have heard loud and clear from the mayor's advisory council on disabilities that it is very difficult to use Granicus for any kind of accessibility. And YouTube is exactly the opposite. So this was something that was really exciting to be able to actually meet with them a couple weeks ago and say, since the last meeting where you mentioned this, we are now going to be on YouTube. And it's really exciting.

Great. Thank you, Council President.

Council member Bowie.

Thank you, chair Johnson. I also just wanna make a comment and a quick question as well. I'm really excited to be on YouTube. I know coming into city council, I chuckled a little bit receiving an email from my husband asking why he can't find me on YouTube. My parents also had some challenges navigating Granite, so this is something that they now can watch me from home.

So it's kind of a good thing, it could be a bad thing. But I just wanted to share just thank you for this endeavor. I'm happy to hear that St. Paul's in modern times now and we're able to ensure that we're accessible. I do have a question pertaining to us being uploaded on YouTube. Would it apply to all of the city or committee meetings or would it just solely be city council?

Great question. So any meetings of the city council and your boards and commissions that are publicly available right now for web streaming will also be on YouTube. I'll just note that the Ramsey County Board of Commissioners has not yet made the decision to simulcast on YouTube. So for now, we'll just be St. Paul City Council.

So We don't mind still in the spotlight. But I think it would be very it'll be very helpful to just hear back on just how the first few know, first few takes are are going just especially as a new transition. I am excited to be on YouTube, but I know when I first heard about that too, was like, oh, great. I hope everything is well, because now we'll be really streaming to our millions of viewers at home. And so it'll just be nice to hear about how that's going, especially because I know that it'll be like, you know, the first few takes always are working out the quirks of it all.

And so just kind of knowing that when we feel like we've gotten to a place where there's a rhythm and there's a start and finish and all of those things will be really important. Because I think one of the things that comes to mind is that we've had a couple of times where the sound has lapsed on a meeting. And I would hate for that to be the case for YouTube and some of our lives, being that they'll be live and can't be edited on the back end and things of that nature. And so it will be helpful to just hear about it. But overall, really, really excited. And yes, thanks to the team and to SBNN and to our staff as well that worked on trying to get this together because this is much easier to send to my mom and to my constituents to watch than the link to Granicus. Yeah.

Thank you for that feedback.

Councilmember Yang.

Thank you, Chair Johnson. I want to say thank you to to you both and everybody involved in this work. Doctor Bowens, I see you in the crowd there too. So I want to say thank you to you and our council staff. I'm very supportive and excited about this. I really appreciate that it was the voices of our community members that really shaped the decision to make this change possible, especially by utilizing platform that folks are already very familiar with. I'm wondering, do you have like the slide here says, the meetings are now available. Is there an official data, like all videos starting from this day and after, we'll get it on there? Or are you like going back to a certain date and want to make sure everything's uploaded to it?

Yes, thank you for the question. So we're actually testing right now. So actually we're doing a live stream right now on YouTube. We're just in soft launch. We are very confident that we'll be able to go live and announce it next week at the first public meetings next week. We just wanted to kind of close out our testing period this week, get some additional feedback from council staff, and then align with Director Wilms on that decision of officially when we're going to cut over.

Great. And then just a follow-up question. Like, for example, is it that you're going back to a date to try and get all videos uploaded? Like, for example, all videos, all public council meetings in 2026, for example.

Yeah, they'll be future looking. So all meetings starting next week moving forward. And there will be an archive both on YouTube and on Grant Kiss.

Great. Thank you for the clarification.

All right. Thank you so much, Council Vice President. We have like the two slides that I wanna make sure that they get through, but then we'll ask any additional questions after we meet the team.

Wonderful. So my next update is about our partnership with Saint Paul Neighborhood Network. So last year, presented OTC's plan to work with Spin staff to support the city's telecast services both for city council and for Ramsey County. Since then, we've been working closely with Spin to train their team members and have them shadow, OTC team members to learn the ins and outs of our broadcast systems and procedures including simulcasting to YouTube. The shadowing started in February, and we plan to transition fully to Spin managing the day to day meeting direction duties under close OTC supervision, starting later this month.

Since early April, SPIN team members have already proven to be proficient in managing meeting production independently and we're excited for this big milestone later this month. I want to invite Bonnie to just share a little bit of information about her team.

Hi. Thank you all for allowing me to talk today. We're very excited to be a part of this process. We at SPNN also feel that this is a beneficial for us as well to be able to see the city council meetings, interact with the council, and just really be able to share what's happening out to our constituents. And the when the folks come and talk, we also get some information that we can hopefully help do a better job of representing our city as well.

So we have three staff who are mostly working on this, Tajadine Hale, Emma Dabor, and Steve Brunsberg. Steve has been with SPNN for thirty four years. He'll actually be retiring at the end June ish, but will stay on as a contractor to continue to help with this process. Emma is new to our staff, but has proven to be very excited and interested in this process and does a really great job. Dajadina Lee is stepping up actually into our department as a director of technology and productions.

He actually came to us as a youth, went off, came back, and so it's been a really wonderful process for us to be able to watch him as he's grown into his roles here. So I think that we have a really good capable team. Everyone has a lot of good technical skills over the process. It has been a learning process as we've been going through it. There's a lot to keep track of. I'm sure as you all know and I'm sure it hasn't been without some of its bumps. So we do appreciate, you know, as we navigate this new process for us too that you've been understanding. So yeah, I'm super excited.

Thanks Bonnie. So I just wanna again thank Bonnie and you know, as we prepare for this transition later this month, I just wanna let you know that we remain in close contact with director Wilms team. We meet with them on a monthly basis to review our technology roadmap for council chambers and telecast services. And my colleague Josh Wiederren remains in close contact with both Bonnie and the spin staff, as we provide oversight of telecast services moving forward. With that, I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, mister Maxwell. Thank you, Bonnie, for being here today too. I see a question from council president Maker.

Thanks, chair Johnson. Glad to see that this is going well. Thank you for the update. This is going back in time a little bit to November in the appendix, which I was anticipating a longer presentation, I realized it's all appendix, which is also awesome because there's great information here. Can you just remind us of the I I know that from a financial perspective, this decision to partner meant that we did not fill a role, that we were we will not be filling a role, that we're losing an OTC.

We had four folks. One is retiring. We're not filling that role, I I believe. And it allows the county to get on board, although I'm not actually sure I understand why the county wasn't participating in the cost of broadcasting their meetings before, but separate matter. Wondering then what happens with our staff who were doing this work from OTC. Is the idea that they are now free to do other things? Like, kind of give us the sense of how this all financially and operationally breaks down.

Absolutely. So we are anticipating a retirement on the video production team. So we will have that available FTE. The current plan is that we'd like to maybe transition that role into more of a broad generalist role for communication support citywide. We don't have a specific timeline on that plan retirement, but we do anticipate that in the next couple years. In terms of so sorry. Can you repeat the latter half of your question, council president?

So I'm just wondering from

the city's perspective the value

of this partnership and financially and operationally. Like, does it save us money? Does it allow us you to do other things? Your team to do other things? What are they doing if they're not doing this, etcetera?

Absolutely. So we anticipate about 300 a year of my staff's time to do the broadcast for the county and the city. So that's three hundred hours that we have back to do other types of communication support. A great example of that is a video that we just partnered with you guys on for the response to operation Metro Surge. We'll have more capacity to do those high impact communications pieces for the council, for other departments in the city as Spin works on the partnership for Telecast Services.

And will a corresponding amount of those hours be specifically for the council, or do you anticipate those being spread out more broadly?

Yeah. So I think they'll be available to all of our partners in the city who use the services in OTC for communications.

So I guess as a follow through, what would you need from council, the department to hear a little bit more about just what we would be looking at and hoping to partner with? I know when I joined in, being able to there's been a lot that's changed since then. But I know one of the things was around getting my header, my newsletter set up, doing some photos within my ward was a really great opportunity to do so. And kind of introducing folks to especially because we have some wards in residence on the comms team. But I think it'd be really cool to know, especially now with the council hiring a communications person Mhmm. Just what that partnership could look like and what information you might need from us to know just what our you know, what we would like to see or our desires would be.

Absolutely. So I would say from that perspective, AOTC is a great place to is kind of the front door. If any council members have a communications request or project, you can come through that front door and we'll provide those services to you. That's how a lot of our our video projects, photography projects get started. With that said, we also meet regularly with, Beef two, your current communications lead on the city council.

And we're actively in conversation with her as projects come forward. Also in conversation with director Wilms as part of our monthly check-in on the technology for council chambers and, you know, bring forward ideas specifically related to telecast services in that forum. But always happy to have a conversation with any of you on your communications priorities and projects that are coming up.

Thank you, Chase. And just to clarify too, are we currently for the county, do we they haven't signed on to do their broadcasting through YouTube, so they're not a part of the partnership right now?

They're still they're still kind of debating that. They wanna kinda do their own change management and and roll out to the public. So they have the capability right now. We actually collectively made the decision to move to this new Granicus live cast system which is kind of the next evolution of their technology, allows the simulcasting. So the county does have that capability and they're actively exploring when exactly they wanna make that announcement and move forward. We'll be able to support that transition.

Okay. But currently, the city staff is doing their broadcasting still?

Yes. And so, St. Paul Neighborhood Network, that transition fully over to spin will happen at the end of this month.

Council president.

Thanks, madam chair. Following up on your line of questioning, but the county is paying for half of the cost of spin. Right?

They are. Yes.

Okay. And we are doing their meetings as well.

Wonderful. Thank you so much, Bonnie. And I see director Wolmes has some things to add. Just ask you to come on up to the mic. Hi.

Thank you. I was

a plain Can

stand between the two mics? No.

I'm just kidding.

Can I

adjust these? Thank

you, chair Johnson and council members. I wasn't planning to speak today, but just wanted to comment on a couple things. The first is the great partnership we have with Chase's team and OTC. And he was very charitable in his thank yous to our staff earlier, but honestly the heavy lifting has been OTC and really has established a great partnership with them. And I think one of the things that I just wanted to comment on was in terms of their team and the communication support they provide, have been very responsive to all of our requests, but I think we've seen and why we established the communications lead position, is we need the leadership in that space to really unlock some of their capacity and partner with them in a more sustained way.

So I anticipate that great relationship will continue and I'm looking forward to you know, that comms lead person leading, know, channeling our voice, but also working with the expertise on their team.

Thank you, Director. And thank you for your work as well, I think just also providing that extra context. All right. That's the items that we have, so I know that

I was just going to can I just offer one? Sure. As we feel like as SPNN, we feel like we are the community response to a lot of what's happening. If you all see things that are happening in your community, please reach out to me. We have a program called the SPNN forum where we're happy to do interviews and things like that. So I'm happy to have direct communication for things that you feel like we should be at or covering or having communication with.

Wonderful. Thank you so much. And if you want to send that link out to us as well, just of where it is, I'm happy to to make sure that our staff knows about it too and disseminate it amongst us. Thank you.

Thank you.

Alright. We are adjourned.