Budget Committee - Regular Meeting

you Thank you. Bye.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Council President.

All right, calling the City Council Budget Committee to order. Roll call, please.

Chair Johnson.

Here.

Vice Chair Yang. Here. Council Member Bowie. Here. Council Member Coleman. Here. Council Member Kim. Council Member Joseph. Here. And Council President Aker. Here. Six present and one absent, being Council Member Kim. Thank you. Who is now entering the room? Wonderful. We have two presentations today, one from the state demographer, as well as our also important topic on downtown revitalization. So I will kick it over to our chief budget officer, Kamuth Verma, who can introduce our state demographer, Susan Brower.

Thank you, Chair Johnson. We have Dr. Brewer from State Demography Office to do a presentation on Minnesota state demography trends and impact. Thank you.

Welcome. Welcome, Ms. Brewer.

Thank you. It's good to be here. The data that I've provided for you today, first I'll begin kind of broadly with what's happening with growth. and its impact on budgets, and then I'll go into specifics for St. Paul.

Is there one in here? Yeah, there's one in here. Oh, sorry. Well, we apologize.

Thank you, Ramsey County Sheriff's Office.

Toilets are broken again.

I apologize. Okay, wonderful. Sorry for the distraction and my clumsiness.

Got my adrenaline pumping a little bit here. No, I didn't even know there was a door. Okay, wonderful.

Well, now we know.

Yeah, the button works. It does. Okay. So I've been talking to a lot of people across the state, a lot of regional mayors, including your own, about what's happening with growth across the state, across the US, and its impact on budgets. And so I'm going to start with that. But I do want to assure you that the growth, the slowing of growth that we're seeing in Minnesota is impacting many cities across, not all, but many cities across the state. And so I just kind of want you to understand that foundation as you move into your budget cycle or your decisions that you're making, just to understand that context. This is kind of the long trajectory, basically since we've had censuses in Minnesota or since Minnesota has been a state, to show the trajectory of growth. And for as long as the eye can see, looking backward in our history, we've been growing. This is a statewide number. But you can see just around 2010, that's beginning to bend flat. It's beginning to level off, just not the level of growth that we've seen in the past.

We aren't expecting that or projecting that for the future.

This isn't unique to Minnesota. Many other states are going through this, especially states in the Midwest and the Northeast, and I will show you why it is happening right now. One of the main things that is a driver of growth is what demographers call natural change. And that's just kind of our own internal growth momentum, the number of births that we have each year minus the number of deaths. And that's what we're looking at here, this natural growth. You can see back to the 1960s, close to 60,000 people were added to the state each year just because we had more births than we had deaths. So this is setting aside migration for the moment. If no one moved in or out, this is just how the state would grow. And you can see even as recently as 2010, 30,000 people were added due to that internal growth mechanism.

We've kind of come to rely on it.

We kind of expect that that's how things will always be, that we're always going to be growing because we'll always have more births than we have deaths. But in reality, the demographic changes that are happening right now in the state and in the country and even globally are pushing that growth mechanism downward. In the most recent period since 2020, we're just barely above 10,000 additional people statewide because of births over deaths. That's happening as we age as a state because we have more people in those high mortality age groups. That's just natural outcome of aging. And also as birth rates fall. And that's happening in Minnesota right now. Demographers call a birth rate a fertility rate. It really doesn't have to do with fertility in the medical sense. It's just the number of births. So maybe I should change that just in presenting. The main point is that our total fertility rate or our birth rate is below replacement level right now. 1.7 births per woman of childbearing year is the average. That's important because 2.1 is the point at which we replace ourselves as a population. We continue to grow if our fertility rate is above that 2.1, but we're below and it's been falling. So people are having fewer children in Minnesota. We're actually a little bit higher than the national average here. And so it's not that we're in such a bad place uniquely. It's a global phenomenon. It's a national phenomenon that birth rates are falling. School districts are figuring out what to do with this change. But it's also something that's impacting growth. It's impacting revenues for public budgets. And it's something that we expect will continue into the foreseeable future. There aren't many policies that can touch this. In Nordic countries that have tried to increase the birth rate, to increase population growth, they've had sometimes minimal temporary upticks in their birth rates, but then it's continued to fall. So please think of the falling birth rates, as I do, as kind of part of where we are, kind of woven into our social and economic fabric.

And I'll stop you, Ms. Breyer, because I do see a quick question from Council Member Jost.

Ms. Breyer, I just had a question about your comments just now about declining birth rates. Have you seen in other countries that have better health insurance, better child care costs, and things like that, and support for families, And birthing parents, have you seen birth rates decline similarly in other countries that offer those benefits?

Yes, we have. So think of the Nordic countries in particular with child care benefits, so Norway, Sweden, Denmark, with really even countries like Estonia with really kind of family-friendly, supportive families. policies still have very, very low birth rates and falling birth rates. When a new policy has been enacted in some of those countries, they've seen this temporary increase. So maybe there's a group of people who would be having children if not for that kind of marginal cost. And so the policy kind of brings them over that threshold. But by and large, we're seeing a growing share of people choosing not to have children at all, and those who are are increasingly having smaller family sizes. It can help a little bit, but it's not going to likely turn around the birth rate and bring it up above. Well, it could, but it's not likely to really make a big dent, just given what we've seen in other countries. Thank you.

Thank you. I was going to say, I have my opinions about, like, as a new mom, I'm like, it could.

It could help, you know?

So I don't have any follow-up questions, but I'm like, yeah, no, it could. Especially because some of the, it looks like some of our cost of child care in Minnesota in particular supersedes those of other states around us. So I don't know.

It could help.

But, you know.

Let me say, it's not that it can't help people. I'm just saying it can't help impact the birth rate, likely.

This is a very different thing, right?

Sure, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's not that it's not supportive of the family. It's like, yeah, whatever.

Yeah, that's okay. It's completely a picketed, not factual base, so I trust your judgment, Ms. Brower. Thank you.

No, no, certainly there are, the need for child care and affordable child care is great. My point is just that the impact on the birth rate is likely to be minimal to not at all.

Thank you so much.

Yeah. So we're in good company. Every state in the U.S. has below replacement fertility right now, so. Um, that is, that's just where we're at and that's a number that's been falling quickly. Demographers projections that we've seen, uh, kind of put out over the last five to 10 years are being downgraded in part because we're seeing these fertility rates fall so quickly. So the other way we can grow, if not from our own internal momentum is from migration. And so I want to give you a sense of what that looks like statewide. I do have numbers for Ramsey County coming up as well. But I just want you to know kind of what our long history in Minnesota has been in terms of new residents coming from other states or coming from other countries. So this is a measure of net. income or net migration, it's the number of people who moved here in any given year minus the number of people who moved away. So it's a net gain or loss of people due only to migration. And I'll start with the gray bars, which is domestic. That means anybody who moved from another state in the US to Minnesota minus the number of people who moved out of Minnesota. And you can see in the 1990s that number was positive. It's been pretty much consistently negative for the last roughly 20 years. There have been a few years where we've seen an uptick, where we've seen more people come to Minnesota than leave. It's a relatively small number. You may recall that just above 10,000, we can look. You don't have to recall. We can look. Just above 10,000 was the number of people that we gained from natural change. It's under that amount typically in any given year in terms of a net loss or a net gain due to domestic migration. So it's not a big impact, but it's been a consistent impact statewide that we have more people leaving than we have coming. In contrast, throughout this series, we have seen international migration boost our growth numbers. Those are the blue bars. Those are what we see throughout the series. And we really saw an increase between 2022 and 2024 as the nation did. This is due to the increase in humanitarian admits at the southern border. Minnesota felt that as well as migrants made their way up to Minnesota. So you can see that huge number of 30,000 in 2024. And now the number has dropped down to about 10,000 in 2025. And I will say that the way that these numbers are produced, this is really the first half of the calendar year 2025. If the second half were included, that number would be even lower. And we expect to get very close to zero net migration nationally and also in Minnesota next year when these numbers come out.

I have a question from Council Member Coleman.

Thanks, Chair. I hear a lot of speculation about why our domestic migration would be increasingly negative, often to serve political agendas. I'm curious if there are any actual facts that we know about why more people are leaving than coming from within the US. Yeah.

It's a great question. I wish I had the answer to. There hasn't been any kind of empirical study that can point to anything. And one reason for that is we're looking at these net numbers. And so it looks like it should be really easy to explain. But in any given year, there's over 100,000 people moving in each direction into and out of Minnesota. And so when there's a small change, either in the inflow or the outflow, we see these these net numbers kind of change. And historically, it's been net negative. We're in a region of the US. We're in good company. Wisconsin, Iowa, all the Midwestern neighbors and out toward the Northeast see these same patterns. And so I would be very cautious about looking to any specific policy. I hear about tax policy a lot. It just doesn't line up with the numbers. That's not to say there's no movement because of taxes, but it just doesn't make sense given both the type of people who move, their age group, and then also the... larger geography that we see ourselves in that consistently loses people. The southern states, the southwestern US tends to gain more people than is lost, and it's just kind of a larger regional pattern. So that's kind of a vague answer. I wish I had the one specific clue, but it's really kind of part of a bigger migratory pattern that's been set for decades.

So Councilmember Kim.

To sort of an attempt to figure out how we answer Councilmember Coleman's question, do we track where folks are coming from? I know like internationally, but what about domestic? Do we track where folks are coming from and the reasons why they come to Minnesota? One reason in my mind that I would make an assumption around for data is that we're a trans refuge state, and we've seen a huge influx of our services for folks to come receive gender-affirming care. So I'm just sort of curious how or if we would even be able to track that information, recognizing there's political context to why people might come here or what opportunities we might have here in state than in others. Is there a way or possibility, or do you even track that information, recognizing that I'm sure everyone's really curious about it, but capacity is different? Yeah.

So there are some clues toward that. It's not directly tracked by any survey that the state does or that the federal government does. There is a survey that asks people for their reason for a move, and you can look at people who cross state lines, but it's a national survey, so you're kind of capturing all interstate movers and their reasons. And at the top of the list tends to be family, a job, and housing. But that includes people who move from Fargo to Moorhead, for example. So it's a broad group. I'm sorry. It's a broad group and not very specific. I will say that most of the people who are moving state to state are in their late teens and early 20s. So a lot of it has to do with college migration choices, higher ed choices, first internship, first job, anything you can think of why a 19 or 20-year-old would move. Those are some of the driving reasons for the patterns that we have.

Council President Baker.

Thanks, Chair. This question hadn't actually occurred to me until my colleague's great questions. But how do we know when someone moves from here to another state?

So the Census Bureau takes an ongoing survey called the American Community Survey. And in there, there's a question that says, where did you live a year ago? And where do you live now? And so that is one way that we measure these moves. There's also administrative data that the Census Bureau uses to create these estimates, social security data, IRS data. They can measure kind of the movement of people between states. And so it's both administrative and survey data that go into an estimate like this.

But it's not precise.

It's an estimate. Generally, what I would take away from this is we have this long history of kind of small but consistent outflows of people from the state. We've had this long history of inflows of people from other countries that we see went very high between 20, 22, and 24, and now that's slowed or almost stopped.

It's kind of where we are.

But again, not super precise, but it's kind of the best we've got. Yeah, okay. We can look at this for Ramsey County. So this is the most recent year for Ramsey County, and this is just looking at the things that we've been looking at. So you can kind of see a more local picture. I would show you St. Paul if we have it, but it only goes down to the county level. Ramsey County is still growing because of natural change. 1,500 people added. But in 2025, it had more domestic out-migration than it had international in-migration. Again, this may not be true for the city of St. Paul, but just know that migration hasn't been a net contributor to growth for Ramsey County, at least in 2025. So again, we're looking at that natural change as the growth component. We saw what's happening with birth rates. We know that as we age, that growth is dampened because of higher mortality rates. I just want to give you the sense of slow growth going forward coupled with a really kind of greater importance put on migration, whether it's people from other states or people from other countries. That's really going to be what drives growth if we have it in the future is that that component of growth. In Ramsey County in 2024, there were a net gain of 4,700 people estimated due to international migration, and just 2,300 in 2025. So that drop that we saw that I showed you for the US and for Minnesota happened in Ramsey County, too. being cut in half, just like we saw nationally and for the state. So just know that the international trends that we're seeing are impacting you locally here too.

And I see another question from Council Member Coleman.

Thank you. Thank you. Just maybe hard to answer question on international migration, because I know we're in a pretty unique moment in terms of how draconian our policies are. But I'm curious if when we look historically, when we've had moments where international migration has been more restricted, and then you have a change in federal administrations, we remove some of those barriers, does it bounce back quickly? Or would we expect that, like, this decline will remain in place even if in 2029 we have a pro-international migration, immigration president? Is that an answerable question?

No, that's a great question. And it does bounce back quickly. It really, there are people waiting to come here if there's a pathway to do so. So the, the kind of, that particular pathway to growth is probably our most viable over changing the patterns domestically for migration or changing people's minds about how many children they want to have. International migration is really the thing that we have the most policy control over, I think, in terms of growth. And you can see, just looking back at our history, you can imagine change in federal administrations or presidential administrations looking back at the last 10 years. And you can see that there was dampened growth in the late 2010s, which changed in the early 2020s, and now it's back down again. So the desire to come to the US if there is a pathway to do so, refugees, asylees, economic migrants, they're all there. It's just a matter of federal policy aligning with the need. As you well know, and I remember last time I was here, there was a comment on using the word foreign-born for immigrants, but it's a very specific term. It's here on my slides, but I just want you to know that if someone is born outside of the U.S. and they're not a citizen at birth, foreign-born is the term that the Census Bureau uses, and there's so many different ways to measure that. new populations and immigrant populations, that this is just kind of a very specific way of saying that group of people who were born outside of the US. I want to show you, as you well know, that immigration is an important part of growth in a large number of residents for St. Paul. We're looking here at the state. Each dot represents 200 people who were born outside of the US. And so you can see the great concentration in the Twin Cities. If we rank the number of foreign born or the number of immigrants by city, St. Paul is very close to Minneapolis at 55,000. So again, that international immigration component of growth and just in terms of your communities, it's a very important source of growth and of your population. I touched on this, that drop between 2024 and 2025. The number was 2.7 million in the US down to 1.3 million, 33,000 net people gained internationally down to 12,000. So we're already seeing that big decline in this last year. Again, I expect to see that go to almost zero when we get those numbers later this year for 2026. Just to remind you, the decline for Ramsey County was 4,700 to 2,300. So it's occurring across the state and impacting growth across many different counties. Population growth had been really robust in Minneapolis and St. Paul in the last decade. but it has already begun to slow this decade. That's true for Ramsey County, a little less so, depending on where you are in Hennepin County. But we're certainly seeing it for the urban cities, for the center cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. You can see that there was growth up till about 2020 or so, and then we've seen a bit of a decline. The two different estimates here are estimates by the Census Bureau and the Metropolitan Council. Both kind of show a similar picture of slower growth, or even in some years, a decline in population was registered or projected. If we look year over year, St. Paul has had really a very varied decade. Many of the cities that are in our region will see growth year over year or they'll see kind of very little growth or very little decline year over year. But what St. Paul has seen is areas or decades of large decline, decades of large growth, so kind of less stability overall. But I want to draw your attention to the fact that the 2010s, what the decade we're just coming off of, was a decade of historic growth for St. Paul. And so kind of to put that in larger context about what this city has experienced in terms of growth is pretty unusual. And what we're seeing now is on par with what we've seen in other decades in terms between 2020 and 2025. The Met Council says that St. Paul on average added about 300 residents. The Census Bureau says it lost about 90 residents each year. Either way, it's not the growth that you had last decade. And as you well know, there are consequences. kind of to the budget, to revenues, and so that is just where we are today in terms of growth. I think that for a lot of cities, this slowdown in growth is going to be, could be difficult to adjust to when you've got slower growth. Well, first of all, it's hard for people to get their heads around that it might be coming, especially coming off of a decade of really high growth. So I think kind of to the extent that you can adjust your thinking and that residents can adjust their thinking to this era of slower growth and really understand that it has its roots in part, in kind of social and economic changes, like in the birth rate and higher mortality, that this is really just the demographic reality that many cities are facing right now. When you've got slower growth, it can make it really tough to do budgets. You can't grow your way out of some of the things that need to be taken care of. You can't expect that the next year you'll get what you need to fund what you couldn't fund this year. And so it's a big challenge. The other thing that happens when there's slower growth is per person costs tend to increase. This happens in school districts, but it happens with health care, with transportation, with utilities, that if you don't have that ever-growing base that people individuals tend to bear a higher cost of each of these services. If you look at these kind of studies across the board about what growth does to cost per person costs in these areas. And so I guess I just want to encourage you and encourage the city of St. Paul that this slower growth is part of a broader natural phenomenon that's going on across the state. And yes, it certainly provides a challenge in terms of budgeting. I do have many more specific numbers in your packets that I thought you would be interested in, but I don't need to talk through them piece by piece unless you have questions about them. I really just wanted to provide you a snapshot of St. Paul's population according to the most recent data If you'd like me to talk through them, happy to do that. Otherwise, I'll just... Yeah, no, thank you.

Thank you so much, Ms. Brower. I really appreciate just kind of getting the deep dive into it. I think back to last year's presentation and just kind of the numbers and how, you know, now we're post-2025 and so seeing some of the numbers come through for last year. also help. I saw a hand from Council President. Before we go there, I just wanted to get a clarification. Do these numbers tend to track individuals regardless of status?

The answer is kind of. So the surveys are meant to count all people. They're mailed out to all households. in a simple kind of, not a simple random sample, but on a random basis. And so it's meant to capture, it's designed to capture everyone regardless of status.

And do you think, I think as a follow-up, do you feel like, are we seeing anything that indicates maybe that all of this with Operation Metro Surge has somehow impacted 2026 numbers in any way, or not necessarily too early to tell?

Yeah, it's a great question. Well, I will say, Even though the surveys are meant to capture everyone, we know that the response rates are much lower for people who have reason to fear the government and the federal government, including immigrants and especially undocumented immigrants. And so we expect that in some cases up to 30% lower is the number that we think is captured by the survey.

So my full answer is it's meant to capture everyone, but it really doesn't.

I do think that... it will become harder and harder to, given the current political context and the activities around immigration, it will be harder and harder to get those true numbers, because people need to give those willingly. And if people are afraid, we'll just see kind of a degradation of data quality. We're going to do our best with the 2030 census. We're starting to work on that. But it's going to be tough.

Sure. Yeah. Council President Acre. Thanks, Chair. I really appreciate the additional slides, Ms. Bauer. And I don't necessarily think you need to talk through them. But I'm just curious. I wanted to highlight the slide on St. Paul poverty rate by age. It's striking to me that we have 20% of our children in poverty and 15% of our seniors. And I see the data here about how those compare very unfavorably to the regional average, the U.S. average, Minnesota average. Have those numbers changed much over time? I'm trying to remember from previous presentations.

So they've moved basically with the economy as kind of from the Great Recession up until 2020 was a period of expansion and we've seen kind of poverty rates tick downward across many different racial and ethnic groups, across age groups, we've seen kind of generally lower poverty rates. I will say too that there's another poverty rate that I'm not showing here called the supplemental poverty rate that takes into account state specific like child tax credits and things like that. And that has really, that provides a much more optimistic picture of poverty. in Minnesota, given that we have state-specific programs to help children. Around the pandemic, poverty increased as people were unemployed, and we started to see that come back down again. So there's been a movement that broadly moves with economic changes.

But the 20% up and down over time, but not dramatically higher or lower now than on average in the past?

You know, I don't think we have a measure at the city level of the supplemental poverty measure, but it's much, much lower than it is for this official poverty rate. So I guess that's optimistic. On the other hand, a poverty level is really, really low. You know, it's twice the poverty level that typically qualifies for free and reduced price lunch, for example, or almost twice the poverty level. So we're talking about people with really very, very low incomes if they're in that range. Thank you. If you're a data person and want to dig in, the links below here will let you let you dig into those numbers. I've also provided a handout from the last census that shows really detailed race and ethnicity for the city of St. Paul that we don't have an update on. That's why you have the 2020 numbers. But it shows you kind of the best snapshot that we have for very detailed groups for the Somali population and the Karen population, which is in part under Burmese and the Census Bureau data, but you can start to get much more detail there.

Thank you so much, you know, just for being here as well. So as providing some of these, we do have those in front of us as well. You know, I think that it's always important and especially for kind of gearing up our next conversation too around downtown vitality. I've talked a lot about just who we're building, you know, our downtown for, who we're building our city for, you know, just kind of going through it, plugging some quick numbers, right? When you have over half of the population under the age of 40, here in St. Paul when you have just almost half of the population being people of color in the city. There's just so many things that when we think about what does this look like in our next, almost like our next centennial version of what our city embarks on, what it entails, what our budget pressures will be, what our budget release will be. I think all of this is really relevant to that conversation. That's the reason why we really appreciate having you here every year to be able to give us an update on just some of the things that we're seeing statewide as well as in the region. So I really appreciate your time today and just for being here. I will just do a quick little check around. I don't think we have any other questions for you, but thank you so much, Ms. Brower.

Thanks for having me.

We can get a little bit of a head start on our downtown vitality conversation, our downtown revitalization conversation with Assistant Mayor Sumer Langer. Welcome.

Thank you. Let me just get this pulled up.

While we're gearing up that, I just want to take a minute to acknowledge that we also have Joe Spencer and Dave Higgins and Josh Olshan present in the audience for this conversation as well. So I do appreciate you guys for making the time to come on over. It's super important to see folks continue to consistently show up on something that we all care about. So thank you.

Yeah, thank you, Chair Johnson. And council members, these are my adoring fans here in the audience. So I did want to note, yeah, they are here. So thank you for acknowledging that. And as I'll talk about in the presentation, for the record, Nick Stumelanger, Assistant Mayor for Housing, Economic Vibrancy, and Infrastructure. Just wanted to note that the power of the downtown revitalization work that's happening is the power of partnerships. The city can't, shouldn't, and doesn't do this alone. And so I wanted to emphasize that that is a huge priority. I think this slide's projecting. Just want to make sure. OK, great. I wanted to start off with this quote when I kind of go through a little bit of the agenda here. So obviously in a much different time, in a much different iteration of St. Paul, fewer people included. But the last three words of the quote are something that I just really like. It kind of speaks to the work that we're doing here at St. Paul. It's not done yet. That's why you're all here. That's why we're here. There's a lot that we can work through together. Honest Brick and Stone, we've got some really beautiful buildings here in downtown. And I also love the air of intending to stay. We're here for the long haul. So generally what I'll go through in this presentation, kind of walk through why we focus on downtown as revitalization, as investing in that area. the focus on partnerships, some of our city's investments, and the external investments, and then a map. I'll credit all the folks that I totally stole some of these images from as we go through, and then just a small roundup of the new business openings that have just happened in the last little bit here, and just an example calendar of events that are happening in downtown, and then some time for questions at the end. Thank you. So credit to Urban 3. I believe the council, sitting as the policy committee, had this presentation in June. Just a few of their slides from Heather Worthington's presentation are useful here. Why do we want to spend time investing in downtown St. Paul? A lot of us think that that's table stakes. That's why we're here. We want to increase the tax base to reduce the burden of property taxes on residents. But the numbers are really stark. If you look at the Roseville Walmart That is a total tax value of about $14 million in a lot of land in Osborne 370, your temporary home. There's a huge amount of property taxes kicked off per acre there. And so the concentration of the property tax benefit is just not even comparable. Another one of her slides that I shamelessly stole, so thank you, Josh, for paying for these slides that I get to use here. Just the productivity of downtown St. Paul compared to the amount of area that it takes up. I think the questions you asked her and the conversation there were really great, so it's just useful to kind of reiterate this as we go through. these slides. One thing, you know, obviously those are the positive sides. One thing is talking about the impact of the declining values in downtown ends up having. So these came from the Ramsey County tax records. And if you look at a few of the different buildings here about kind of the decline in value and the impact that that ends up having on property taxes. You can see 2006, and there's a variety of different years that have the beginning points here. The values have really gone down. The shift that ends up happening when these values have gone down, when we get fewer property taxes from these buildings downtown, means that we are shifting that burden to our residential folks, folks across the city. And if you look at Ramsey County, that also has a huge impact on them as well. So I call this the logo slide. There could be, honestly, many, many more logos on here, but it is just a useful group of entities to just note that this work does not happen alone. It's entities of government. It's folks that are associations of businesses, large institutional businesses, the Downtown Alliance and the Improvement District and the Downtown Development Corporation. visit St. Paul, and like I said, many, many more folks could be part of this. And one of the priorities that our administration is kind of leaning into as much as we can is emphasizing that just because an idea doesn't come from us does not mean it's a bad idea. We want to lean in, create the environment that a lot of policy, investments, those types of things can kind of hit well and they can get executed well. So it's our job to create the circumstances that these things can land well. I'll go through some of the investments that the city itself has made in downtown St. Paul, because I know the budget committee will be kind of having conversations over the next few months here around the budget. So it's useful to know what we've done so far. HRA Commercial Corridor Program, all of downtown St. Paul, utilized by the DID, is considered a commercial corridor. The Downtown Vitality Fund, obviously 5 million total in 2026. This 40 interest form for projects, I think that's even just a little outdated from when I made these slides. Neighborhood and Cultural Star, as these are the hottest numbers right off the press here from last week's action around the grants for Neighborhood Star and the projects funded in the Cultural District of downtown St. Paul. Downtown Parks investments are fairly significant as well. Obviously, Pedro opened in 2025, Wabasha Park in 2020. It's supposed to be completed here in the fall. And then a number of park activations in 2025 and 2026. Lunch in the parks, the fitness classes, the yappy hour over at the dog park at Kellogg Mall Park makes downtown and the different areas of downtown more vibrant and having a lot more folks walking around. A lot of these ones here that I'll note, and this was a map produced by Public Works, notes a number of the construction projects. To be clear, not all of these are our construction projects. The transit improvements are from the Met Council. And then we have a number of different entities that own and operate and construct our streets in the city, in downtown, I should say. So we kind of are hopefully in good coordination with our partners, with Ramsey County, with MnDOT and other folks, Here, but you can see that there are a significant number of investments happening Across a number of these of these different crucial corridors in downtown I also note here so the downtown 2050 plan which I think a few of you have set in with the consultant that PED is working with on the 2050 plan will help us with development and planning considerations how can we ensure that downtown is a A little bit easier to have some creative uses and looking at land use as really that kind of that foundation of how we execute on this. You all approved and we signed the Galtier Plaza housing conversion TIF financing that's going to result in about 166 additional market rate units in Lowertown. And I'll note it's kind of a partnership with the Downtown Improvement District. They've utilized some of their funds from their dues or their assessments of property owners for a community prosecutor. It's hired by the city attorney's office, and they'll start service in the fall. And they will focus on a lot of the quality of life crimes that I think folks hear about pretty significantly in downtown from businesses and residents and other folks, and will be a good addition to the docket there. I'll note some of the policy investments. So these are not monetary investments, but some of the policy ones signage district zoning study Obviously council president has done a great job of saying just because it's a zoning study does not mean it's not exciting We're all very excited and I think it will have a particularly large impact on downtown and how some of our exciting innovative businesses can advertise to folks who are visiting and living here and There is a request for proposals on consolidating the HRA-owned parking ramp and lots to be under a single operator or just a couple operators. Right now, these operators are pretty vast, pretty diffuse, and we don't get, I think, the outcomes, the integration of technology, the kind of Innovative thinking on how we ensure that parking is able to be utilized for businesses and for folks coming downtown And so that process is rolling and then Public Works has a downtown streets and sidewalks plan That has contributed to a lot of the investments that have already been happening and are kind of in constant Re-looking at that to make sure that it works well for for everyone experiencing downtown. I I'll note, too, because there has been a lot of conversation over the last few years over public safety in downtown, and a lot of this information from SPPD and kind of the general coordination across a number of different agencies related to security I think are showing some real results. There are still definitely pain points that a lot of folks are dealing with. I will say that there's both the reality of crime and those are, you can get the numbers on those, who, what are the citations, tickets, the different calls happening, and then there is a perception of crime as well. Those are two related but also separate elements. So private building security, the DID safety ambassadors, SPPD metro transit officers, and Ramsey County Sheriff's deputies all share some of the pieces of the puzzle in downtown St. Paul and those feelings of safety. I'll say that the coordination between the agencies I think is ever improving and there has been a lot of actual REALLY GREAT DIALOGUE AROUND THE BRT STOPS AND THE DOWNTOWN SAFETY AMBASSADORS, AND I KNOW THAT COMMANDER CAMERER, FORMER COMMANDER, NOW DISTRICT CHIEF JAKE PETERSON, EVERYONE IS VERY KEENLY AWARE OF WHAT THE NEEDS ARE, AND WE CAN KIND OF SHIFT TO WHERE SOME OF THE PROBLEM AREAS ARE. You all know this. St. Paul Police Department has a designated downtown beat, and there's a designated downtown parking enforcement officer focused on enforcing the meters and issuing violations. I actually just heard this morning at another meeting that they have issued more parking citations in downtown St. Paul this year than they did all of last year, and I think that number was from early June. So in general, that's a great thing, I will say, because... Positive churn for folks to visit businesses is great. Obviously, it comes with a little bit of short-term pain for folks to change how they approach parking in downtown. But we do want to make sure that we're getting folks utilizing the ramps and getting the revenue from the parking citations and the HRA-owned ramps so that we have more people feel like it's easier to come in and do whatever they're doing in downtown. Last thing, a couple of things I'll note to the real-time information center. ARTIC has opened this spring, which monitors downtown and hotspots, and was actually utilized to disrupt copper wire theft in progress, which is very challenging to actually have that happen in progress, but really does help us attempt to get ahead of an issue where I'm sure I think you have a conversation on copper wire theft and streetlights coming up in a couple weeks here. But you'll hear there about the budgetary impacts of that, but it is a challenging situation. Last thing I'll note, the downtown beat officers, as you've probably seen, they utilize a lot of different modes of transportation. So squads and bikes, the segways, the trikes, which I had to look up. I mean, literally, they're a trike of people standing on them with three wheels. Very helpful for all the various downtown spaces. Sometimes it's easier to get into an alley if you're on a Segway. Obviously navigating the skyways are a crucial safety element here, but just all kind of contribute to the mix. And I did include Commander Kammerer's phone and email. He readily gives it out, so I was okay to put it on these slides. But he's a great partner and I think is learning all the different angles and small pieces of downtown that make it what it is. I'll also note, too, this is a one-pager about retail theft and shoplifting. If folks have heard and talked to, and this is not just unique to downtown, there are a number of different folks that are doing retail theft. It is retail theft... groups of folks who are targeting Walgreens in particular, a number of different chain stores that they will assume can bear the brunt of merchandise walking off the shelves. The Downtown Beat has focused on retail theft and shoplifting, and that initiative was developed with training sessions for the Downtown Beat folks and focused on a number of kind of edge situations of trespassing, police response, non-emergency versus emergency, Education for the business owners as well as physical hardening of their different entries and locations and that is done in conjunction with the downtown improvement district and I'll note a few of the housing projects downtown. One thing to just note about housing in downtown is that we have a very large concentration of affordable housing in downtown, and that's great. And folks can and should have a neighborhood that they can walk around and have access to a grocery store, hopefully with Aldi coming in later this year, and having a pharmacy and a number of different elements too. We kind of need to do both. We need to have market rate and affordable housing and supportive housing. And so noting that Landmark Towers opened last year, 187, a mix of ownership and rental. Mary Hall has just opened in last month in June, 88 affordable housing units. The Stella residence is right next to Osborne 370, is now leasing and has 178 units. And the Galtier Plaza with the TIF dollars has 166 units coming on board. One thing to note is that the more folks that you have downtown in all times of day, weekends, evenings, those types of things, as the baseline, the floor, you're raising both the safety profile, you're raising something that's exciting to me is with the HAMS building and hopefully the redevelopment of the Government Center East. is that we don't know the things that the residents there will see as missing. And I have a lot of faith and trust in our residents to be creative about where they see gaps in their neighborhood. Adding more residents downtown will help lead to more vitality of new businesses opening, small businesses even out of their apartments or their units. I'd say the general goal is to move from 10,000 residents roughly living in downtown to 30,000. And the way that actually happens is not setting a number goal and issuing all challenges to that, but just doing a project at a time, working consistently with all of our partners to make sure that that ends up happening. I'll note there's a number of other public development and construction projects. So St. Joseph's campus, a large portion of it is slated for demolition and establishing some green fields for investment. That's administered by the St. Paul Port Authority. um approved earlier this year obviously we were up at the legislature asking four dollars for the grand casino arena river center roy wilkins complex we received 50 million from the legislature and we will be back up asking for more of that investment as well as an extension to our half cent sales tax so that we could bond off those dollars to fund our portion of the project Also at the legislature this year, the city received $13 million for sewer redevelopment on West 7th. I won't get into a long history of is West 7th and that entrance part of downtown. For the sake of this, I will say it absolutely is because of the kind of connection to the entertainment district and investing in the sewers, the absolute bottom level of that street will really help us with the work we're doing with MnDOT, Met Transit, and Ramsey County for all stretches of West 7th. I wanted to note as well, tentative developer status is held by Flaherty and Collins on Central Station. And then our county partners have committed a lot of dollars into downtown's work here. I've called it elsewhere, kind of the slapping money on the table moment for the park at River's Edge, housing conversions, public realm improvements, and some further economic development investments. The Downtown Development Corporation, so kind of a related entity of the Downtown Alliance, holds a number of buildings downtown. The Alliance Bank Center, the Endicott Arcade, the Empire Building, U.S. Bank Center, and the Capital City Plaza parking ramp. Those are all undergoing, and I'll let other folks answer questions if there are those on there. But they're undergoing an evaluation of how best to approach these crucial buildings in our kind of city core. And we'll see a map of the different investments and where they're slated across the downtown. And then I'll note that there is a number of significant private investments happening. The Downtown Revitalization Trust, which is the purchaser of First National Building and the Great Northern Building, by Jamie Rand, so bought those two buildings earlier this year. Securian, Ecolab, and Travelers have all invested significant dollars in their campus improvements alongside of Wells Fargo Place. The St. Paul Hotel has recently changed hands with the promise of renovations happening there with a group led by Craig Leopold, the owner of The Wild, and then the Downtown Investment Fund for the Downtown Development Corporation as well. So this is, I would say, this is probably Joe Spencer's favorite series of maps. I don't know what else is on that list of series of maps. But this, I think, will hopefully be demonstrative of how widespread the investments are across all the different partners. So you can see in yellow here, there are a number of, and I want to make sure I get all these right here. So let me flip to my notes. There we go. So you can see the Downtown Development Corporation focus buildings. A lot of them are in that core here between the Entertainment District with the Grand Casino Arena and Lowertown. And obviously, the focus is connecting the multiple different elements of downtown. You can see here, these are a projected vision of what the Grand Casino Arena, River Center, and Roy Wilkins complexes could look like. I'll note that this visioning has a connected convention center hotel as well as some parking or other structure on the traveler's parking lot. The next is the county's properties. And I think, just because I'll do a little nudge, I actually think we're missing one building in this from the counties for Union Depot. But these are useful to note what might be occurring there on the river's edge as well. And then this is the St. Joe's site with some of the buildings there slated for demolition and green fielding with the remediation. The private investment happening, such as the Stella, the Ham's building, Avalon, and a number of different investments. Galtier Plaza is on this as well. And then last is the campus improvements by Ecolab, Securian, and Travelers. And what is kind of the interesting, if you kind of layer all these together, you can see how the different groups are touching basically every part of downtown. And there are just a number of different investments and kind of projects happening right now, which is that environment that we're hoping to cultivate that we can all work together to make sure that these act as well as possible. I thought it was important to note here that it's not just the large investments. We're not just wanting to celebrate the investments of an Ecolab or a Securian. We also want to create an environment, raise a floor for small businesses to feel that they are able to open, that they can have a level of vitality and vibrancy in downtown so that folks who are newly living down here, who are newly working down here, as folks bring more people back to the office, so they can all really enjoy what downtown can be, which is both this kind of hub of economic activity as well as a neighborhood. Jenny's Cafe, I've surveyed all the coffee shops in downtown doing this job the last six months. Jenny's Cafe is a great one in Landmark Center. Lenoir Bridal has relocated right off of seventh place. The Aldi, which will be opening later this year, filling a crucial need in downtown for a grocery store. Pino's Pizzeria, the relocation there. St. Paul Indoor Farmers Market, Six Mirrors, River Valley Coffee, Hepcat. You can see where I bias towards coffee shops, just of what I frequent myself. Vintage and Thrift Shop, and then by Mr. Martinez, which is a menswear store just off of West 7th. And this is not a comprehensive list of the new openings here, which I think is really significant. And folks can definitely kind of see that there's a lot of opportunity here for folks. Something I wanted to do here just to kind of maybe put it in a little bit of perspective, and I'll thank the Downtown Alliance for their website that they have with a number of events on here. I'll just note, this is these two weeks, and this is a snapshot of what's happening in downtown that can basically be replicated every two weeks. Maybe not on the coldest of a February, middle of February time, but I'll just say that a number of these different activations that are happening are because of investments that have been made by the city and also our partners as well, too. So you can see the Minnesota Yacht Club Festival is happening this weekend. There's a number of activations on the different parks by the Parks and Rec Department. community craft nights at metronome brewing and lower town the tattoo fest at the river center just wanted to provide at least a little bit of the scope here and noting that there are some resident events here the five dollar skyway progressive dinner in lower town and a number of those the weekly skyway walk as well Last, I'll just say, in the spirit of these partnerships, I'll note, too, that there is an importance of residents and cultural institutions in downtown. So we have the Capital River Council, our district council, that includes downtown St. Paul, the new-ish-formed Fitzgerald Neighborhood Alliance, which is the northern part of downtown that kind of butts up on 94, and just a number of different... Interesting groups and exciting opportunities. So the Friends of the Skyway groups with their activations that they have, the Friends of Downtown Parks, so Mears, Pedro, and Rice, the Parks Conservancy, and as I mentioned before, the entrepreneurship, a number of small business owners that we've met with and talked with that have shared some of the concerns they have. also have concerns as residents. They live in downtown. They live near where they operate their business. And then I'll just note that we have a number of cultural institutions in downtown St. Paul that draw people in. And the goal shouldn't be just to draw people in and they leave from a festival or an event, but to kind of find ways that we can make downtown sticky so that they stay. We're having a show at Amsterdam. could maybe lead to them looking at the Stella across the street if they want to go to Amsterdam shows pretty frequently. Or being at the History Center and going to a show there can maybe have them look at different parts of downtown in a different way. So I think there was a kind of a last question from the prompt here of kind of what is the strategy that we're working through on this. And while I'd love to say it's a specific number of businesses we want open or a specific number of units we have operating and in effect by the time the first term of Meriher is over, I think it's a little bit more It's a little bit more nebulous than that. I think we want to make sure that we are coordinating partners and playing that leadership role, providing a direction for a number of the different partners that we've noted here. The second one is answering every request or outreach. We get a number of, I'm sure as you do here, calling office tenants who are looking for a space, looking to leave the city. responding to programmatic questions, inquiries about what dollars the city has available for folks, and then working and coordinating on city departments. So this is a combination of a number of the departments that I oversee, PED, DSI, Public Works, and then coordinating response from the police department, the fire department, those types of things. And then also doing what I would deem as more of the fun things of actually cutting a ribbon at a new business. What was the actual thing we ended up doing for the Aldi? It wasn't a ribbon cutting. It was something exciting about noting that we had the Aldi. And I know that Joe Spencer led a really good chant, which I think was really fun. And then the last thing is just encouraging that downtown is this geographically bonded space. It does provide a number of really great opportunities Good investment opportunities, good property tax kickoff, but just knowing that we should be nimble and have downtown operate a little bit as a pilot zone for other things that could work across the city. Being nimble and starting with yes is kind of something that we are trying to institute across the city, even when things haven't been tried before. And then... Just some of the next steps that we have here, and this is not a comprehensive list. Wanting to continue the advocacy up at the legislature relating to the entertainment district with Grand Casino, Roy, and River Center. Working on facilitating the reopening of the Skyway closure at Alliance Bank, Central Station, and Athletic Club. working to ensure better regulatory coordination between PED, DSI, and Public Works, and working across these investments in public safety response. This list could be very, very vast. It takes up a decent amount of my time. It also touches on a lot of the work that you all do, so happy to be in partnership. and happy to take questions. I'll note, contributing to vibrancy here, this is the Skyway 5K that ended up having the first instance. I think a couple of council members here ran it. That is my older son, Gus, who was needed to high-five everyone coming through into Union Depot at the tail end of it. So he almost got run over quite a few times probably by... the council president's aide, Megan Jackett, at one point too. But I will just say this was kind of one of the kind of excellent examples. It was a bitterly cold morning in February, had about 900 people going through the skyways. And anecdotally, folks have said they discovered new, exciting restaurants, new places to go. They'd never been through the skyway before. And that is just the possibility that we have here.

I'm happy to take questions. The gentleman in the suit, is that how he ran the 5K?

Yeah, Chair Johnson, that's not how I would run a 5K if I were to run a 5K. So it's an interesting way to do it. Here's just one more.

He just happened to be there and was running through. Well, I appreciate just kind of continuing to have this as a conversation, Assistant Mayor. A couple of questions that kind of came up to me also as someone who really kind of looks through these but aren't actively in every single conversation regarding the downtown revitalization. Could you just share... To this piece around public safety investments, are there things that we are considering with the Aldi's opening proactively just on the side of near and around the area and also just being able to address the needs currently in the area proactively?

Yeah, Chair Johnson, it's a great question. So I would say the short answer, that's yes. And part of what I mentioned before on the Retail Theft Initiative is that proactive communication with business owners, I actually think that we have an opportunity as they are reopening a space to kind of from day one have a better security situation here. It helps that Pedro Park is open I would say that some people could view that as not a help but I actually think that because Pedro is so well utilized by the residents that are around there you are getting more eyes on that area and Thankfully a lot of the construction on the road is done as well And so you're going to get more eyes on that area in general I won't say that there won't be bumps in the road But I know that commander camera and other folks have been in conversation already on how they have that be a special not special enforcement area, but just a monitoring of potential problems that could happen there. And I also think that my understanding is that the folks that are working on investing in the Aldi have already been in good conversation there. So that engagement is super important.

Thank you. And I believe I saw Council Vice President Yang's hand first, and then I'll go to Council President Maker. Thank you, Chair Johnson.

I really appreciate the presentation today. I'm taking away a lot. I have a couple of questions. And I'm wondering, in terms of the progress and development we're seeing, Well, it's 2026 now, and so I'm just curious if you have any thoughts on what year are we aiming for in terms of when our residents, when we want our residents to be able to feel like a positive impact when it comes to property taxes, where we do have, we've, We've made a big dent in being able to expand our tax base, and they're basically feeling that through their property taxes by feeling, just like seeing that burden be alleviated in some way.

Yeah, Council Vice President and Council Members, it's a really good question. I would say that part of it is the number of transactions happening are a good thing. There was a time where nothing was moving, building transaction-wise, or things had bottomed out where an entity, which we're grateful for, the Downtown Development Corporation was kind of Grabbing buildings that were really at risk. I would say that any amount of positive movement helps with kind of the overall values I'm not positive we are done on every building reducing in value right now But kind of back to what I had noted here on the housing projects of it being one step at a time I think we kind of just have to be aiming for singles and doubles and putting runs on the board because that incremental improvement I think will really help. And so having some kind of time-based comparison of where have the values across a number of these properties maybe bottomed out, where are they increasing in value, where are folks investing, all of that will matter. Part of it is, numerically, is it going to help from the property tax burden? Part of it is, do folks feel like their investments are safe when they come in downtown? Not just on a physical safety, but a financial safety. And we can do part of that by talking about all the momentum comprehensively, boosting a lot of the work that the Downtown Alliance and other folks are doing, and being in coordination together. But I wish I could tell you a year that it was going to feel better, especially as we're going through budget conversations and will be. It would be nice if I said, okay, by 2020 something, it could work well. But I think we just have to have nose to the grindstone and work hard to make sure that we have everything moving forward together.

Great, thank you. And I just wanted to share, too, that what I observed about downtown is that we have been seeing more folks, more foot traffic, folks just being out in the streets, going to the different commercial stores. And so that's really exciting and makes me very hopeful about the progress that we are making in downtown overall. I am still seeing many vacant shops and storefronts. And so I was wondering if you can talk a bit about the current portfolio of our commercial businesses in downtown overall. What's the strength in that? And are we seeing that there are more businesses overall coming in compared to those that have had to close down or just maybe made a decision to close down for other reasons? And so if you can share your insights on that, that'd be really helpful.

Yeah, thank you, Council Vice President and Council Members. So I think a big component of the vacant storefronts is processing through what the commercial rents end up being from individual commercial property owners. Some of them are overall buildings that have kind of fallen into a level of disrepair that you don't want to have a restaurant in a building where you're worried about your roof leaking onto your food, just speaking super frankly. Part of it is also, I don't know if we have a specific number on commercial vacancies, but part of it is that we have made our individual vacancies for retail and businesses very visible. When you have an empty storefront that is an empty storefront, has a big for lease sign in front of it, it's very noticeable for folks. And people would say, okay, well, why are there so many spaces that are available? There's an opportunity there because likely the rents are a little bit lower. But I would say that we are instituting, and thanks to PED and Daniela's team here, a kind of welcome package for new businesses across the city, not just in downtown. as small as it seems, a handwritten note from the mayor welcoming them into downtown. So if you hear of businesses that are opening across the city, you should send them to PED's team. We can get them added to the list there. I think anecdotally it helps us to have those initial touch points so that we can actually see if they're going to have problems or if they are running into issues regulatory-wise or even with their landlord. I think that there are... there are opportunities for us to lean in with them if we know that they're having trouble. But I don't have a specific number on the amount of vacancies we have in there. A lot of them are just very visible. For instance, on Wabasha, Pimento is very visibly not there. And so I'd love to explore a little bit of what we can do in the meantime for vacant storefronts of making things feel a little bit more full and vibrant to kind of match what I think the momentum you noted is happening.

Thank you.

Council President Neeker.

Thanks, Chair. Assistant Mayor, thanks so much for the presentation. Thank you for your partnership. Every element of the mayor's office strategy that you have on the slide is not just words on paper. It's absolutely been true and demonstrated by you and the mayor's office in general, especially the being nimble and starting with yes. So I feel like the positive momentum that we are seeing in downtown St. Paul is very much Due to your leadership and I appreciate it very much. I also want to thank my colleagues chair for bringing this item forward on this agenda and just in general for everyone's support. I say it all the time, but it is never a struggle in this council or on the HRA to convince anyone that downtown is critical to not just St. Paul's, but the region's success. And it's wonderful to feel like. Um, everyone's got downtown's back. So, um, my two questions are, um, one, and this just came up at an event I was at yesterday and I realized I didn't actually know the answer. So I thought I would use this public opportunity to ask you, um, someone asked me whether or not we were still sort of to the vice president's question about small scale retail, which I feel like I have a better handle on. Someone asked me, are we still trying to attract large employers to downtown? And I realized I'm not sure if I know we're in the middle of an economic development strategy. So some things are probably on pause, but. Is attracting big employers still a thing? And if so, is it a thing that we're doing? And my second question is, I know often all of our offices hear about quality of life crimes downtown. We've made amazing progress in violent crime. And I think we need to talk more about that. And we're doing a good job of it. But quality of life, smoking outside within 25 feet of doors and windows, which we, as a council, worked hard to pass an ordinance against, gambling, public urination, things like that. I'm wondering if those are currently being enforced by St. Paul police, or if that's also one of those, once the community prosecutor is on board, that's the kind of thing that that person's office will deal with in a more holistic way. And so we're maybe waiting a little bit on enforcement until that person is on board, or a little bit of a mix of the two.

Yeah. Thank you, Council President and Council Members. I'll take the first question first. So I think the answer to that is yes. We are definitely attracting or trying to attract large institutional employers. That has changed, I think, a lot over time. Folks with work from home, their space needs are just less. But we've convened and worked with BOMA and a number of other commercial real estate folks to understand the – things that they are running into when they're trying to attract folks to downtown St. Paul. And being responsive to those questions, it won't surprise folks here to note that parking is a huge one and the rate of parking. That's why I'm really excited about that RFP, because if we can offer, if we know, for instance, which right now we just don't, if we know a number of our parking ramps are at, 60% capacity. That's a delta of 40% that could be incentivized to use. I'm not saying that's exactly what we do, but right now we are flying a little blind on the strategy of that around some of these buildings. So we're absolutely in the market for attracting big institutional employers, but to the point, and to torture a baseball metaphor, I guess, for the Saints, when you see a pitch come down that you think you can hit a home run just because you're going for singles and doubles, you should still swing at that pitch. You should still try to knock it out of the park. And so just because we're focused on these smaller wins and tangible wins, we're not going to say no to something. And I think actually it raises the floor of a lot of the work that we're doing to just know that there is kind of this like positive churn that's happening.

Maybe we just pretend like we're in the home run derby. Sure. Which I just watched the other night.

That's spoken as someone who goes to a lot of baseball tournaments on the weekends, I think, so that's good. On the second question, I don't want to get ahead of PD or CAO, city attorney's office, on exactly what the enforcement kind of mechanisms are for those things, I know the community prosecutor will help. There will be more time, more holistic evaluation of ordinances that are, as they're written probably in our books right now, unenforceable through constitutional concerns and equity and implementation concerns. But I do know that working through the individual situations you've talked about you know public urination gambling um what are the the ways in which we've been enforcing them currently and what are the avenues an example of this which i think folks in this chamber likely heard about is folks who are gambling on the sidewalk and the enforcement mechanism even though we have gambling statutes public gambling statutes and codes here in st paul and the state are for obstruction of a sidewalk so if someone's not obstructing a sidewalk they maybe are okay with gambling uh on the on the gutter part of the uh the street unclear and so i think we want to make sure that we have all that buttoned up and also that we kind of apply a little bit of of logic and common sense for what that signals for folks as they're coming into downtown too and kind of what we are hoping to to cultivate Sorry for the tortured baseball metaphor. I think I just sapped all the questions out of the room with that.

No, as someone who doesn't watch baseball much at all, I was like, I think I get that. Possibly, no. But Assistant Mayor, I think what will be really helpful for me, too, is I often, when I go through the downtown revitalization conversations, I really appreciate the maps and the graphics, too, to show the reach. What would you share as the overarching what do we want people to experience downtown like what are the goals that we're striving for and just like what is if i were to ask the mayor's office just like kind of like the city's vision for downtown what is it yeah chair johnson council members so i think my answer that question is that

The downtown is a vibrant place 365 days a year, not just around events that are happening, but that it's workable and walkable in both the middle of winter, the middle of summer, everything in between. and that folks feel safe and able to think creatively about this place. So we went through the Downtown Reimagine with the Downtown Alliance. And I actually really loved the three-day sessions that there was. I went to part of each of the three days. And when I mentioned earlier that downtown should feel sticky, I don't mean like we're not cleaning the sidewalks. I mean that you should be down here for something, for work, for visiting a friend at an apartment. and you should say, hey, that's a cool restaurant I would love to try. Or you can say, hey, that's a really nice park I would love to do. I've actually started taking, not today because it's extremely hot, but I have been taking meetings out at Kellogg Mall Park because I don't want to be in this building all the time, but also because it's important to kind of show that we have public infrastructure that works for people. And so doing those kinds of things I think is important. It's a good indication of that. But I think that would be, I guess, the shorter-term answer. I'd also say if you want to pitch that really easy softball to someone like Joe Spencer, I would be happy to hear his answer on this, too, because I think he thinks about it even more than I do because of his job, essentially.

While I take Councilmember Joseph's question, I will come up as well. We have a couple minutes. I want to make sure that Josh and Dave and Joe are able to come in and also just kind of perfect segue in. I think the county partnership too is really important and integral to the city spaces. First, I'll start just with asking Josh Olson to come up from the county and just talk a little bit too about... The county partnership, I know that we've had different types of presentations as well with the county where we learned about just taxable land versus non-taxable. I know that there's been ample amount of conversations around the county's investment in downtown too, so anything that you might add is welcomed. Welcome.

Thank you, Madam Chair, council members. Yeah, I mean, I think we are committed to this partnership. I think what we laid out as a county over the last couple of months around Building Stronger Together, as I brought to you previously, centers downtown as part of that economic development initiative. And so downtown is central. on multiple pieces, central because it's the central business district for the county, but also central for a lot of other things. And so I think it's a great opportunity for us to partner with the city and Downtown Alliance, as well as all those that were on that previous slide, to really activate downtown on a multiple set of levers. I think the assistant mayor talked about housing a lot. And I think that's a really key part of that. That's a key tenet of some of our work around building stronger together. But we talked about infrastructure. We talked about business vitality. To Nick's point, too, around that stickiness, because we have also our anecdotal data that says, and there's some great resources in the last couple months that have been presented, the communities that have the highest levels of vitality are those who have the highest level of dwell time. And what it means by that is folks who are coming for one thing and staying for two or three things. And that's important. That's important for public safety. That's important for economic vitality. That's important to property taxes. But that's important to just continuing to have St. Paul and downtown St. Paul in particular on a global map. because we are, you saw a little bit of the data from this morning, and I'm gonna connect the dots, because that's what I do in my own other job, is that having migration and talking about population growth are linked to how our places and how vital our places are in the minds of residents, visitors, what have you. And so I just say that that's the stickiness. that I think has been discussed, that we have the good attraction, but then we have the ability to keep and stay. And I think downtown housing is going to be a key part of that, but those other components are really, really important. Infrastructure-wise, making it feel as though you're walking down a sidewalk that feels safe and cool on hot days, but also warm in the winter, because the best downtowns are... super vital, and I say vital in vibrancy, 18 hours a day, four seasons a year.

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Olson. Council Member Burgess, I want to go back to your question. I wasn't sure if I'm assuming it's for the Assistant Mayor. I do have a question just around our homelessness response, so don't go too far, but go ahead, Council Member Burgess.

Oh, thanks, Chair. It was a comment to the Assistant Mayor. I appreciate what you said about downtown and that they're you know, are things happening downtown 365 days a year? I really like that vision for downtown. I recently visited downtown Chicago and I went into downtown Chicago without a real plan of what I was going to do, which is really unlike me, but I knew that there was so much to do that I didn't really need to think about it. And I hope that people in our city or people visiting can see St. Paul that way too, that there's museums, there's parks, there's There's libraries. There's so much happening that if you just come into downtown, you'll be able to find things to do. So I really just appreciate what you said about that, and I think it's a great goal.

Yeah, likewise. I also was in downtown Chicago. And I think that when we're thinking about investments and even just how we best utilize the river, I think there's a lot of things that Chicago is doing well when it comes to that front that I hope to kind of see in some places. I think downtown Milwaukee, too, is an interesting comparison. But I guess my question was really just to put the two of you. I talk about how important it is to have part of downtown revitalization inclusive of those, of making sure that we have a comprehensive response to folks that are unsheltered. I think that's really relevant to the now, too. And I know that there's going to be

futuristic conversation so it doesn't need to be as in-depth but i think when we talk about opportunities for city counts county partnerships i can't think of a better one um than that and so i just was wondering how you guys are thinking about that as we talk about revitalization yeah uh chair and council members i'd say that the county is a crucial partner in any of the encampment response and homeless response work that we're doing it's as a service provider as folks who kind of oversee the social service programs um and as a partner in kind of the shared geography that we have the county is absolutely at the at the table with us and kind of coming up with the creative solutions i think specific to downtown on response um it's kind of about those the four e's um that i think uh chief henry likes to highlight which is the for the three e's i should say I think it's educate, encourage, and then enforce, and it has to be in that order. Educate around the ordinances and around kind of the rules and regulations are for the public space that we have kind of encourage say you know we shouldn't really be doing this here those types of things and then enforce and like i said that that continuum has to be the way that it ends up working and i'll say too this is not a one-size-fits-all problem i think each individual business owner resident anyone that's experiencing some of these things in downtown including our unhoused residents too, have a specific story and individual experience of how this actually operates. And so I'm proud of the work that Familiar Faces does, proud of the work that PD does, proud of the work that the safety ambassadors do. It has to kind of take all of us to work together on that. And there is not a one-size-fits-all solution or else it already would have been done.

Josh, do you want to add anything? No, I'm good.

All right.

Council President. Thanks, Chair Johnson. I'm grateful for the question and also glad we're going to have more conversation about it. It's a really important topic. Mr. Olsen, thanks for being here. I'm curious, I know Building Stronger Together, the chair mentioned it, it was announced by the county almost exactly three months ago now. We had you in and were asking some questions about the details of the the $50 million for housing and for public streetscapes downtown. I think at the time, not a lot of detail yet figured out about where those investments would be made or how the decisions would be made. Can you give us an update on what has been done over the last three months and where we're at in terms of figuring out how those investments will be made?

Madam Chair, Councilmember, I adjusted the microphone. I know I'm not supposed to do that. So we are spending quite a bit of time internally making sure that we're well equipped to deploy those funds as quickly as possible. And I realize three months is a period of time, but to deploy $100 million along our timelines takes some time. I think what we are beginning to do is to do our targeted engagement with government kind of core partners and core stakeholders in downtown in particular because a lot of those, no pun intended, intersections happen between economic vitality, housing, and infrastructure on the streets. So we're spending some time there, but we should be really kind of starting to roll out more detailed planning in the next month or so as we kind of take in that input and begin to kind of layer it into more of an action plan. We are I would like to plug, though, that our county, though, does have a couple of programs that will be coming live that intersect with this funding, but is independent of that $100 million. So the county's critical corridor program which has been a program that's run through our Community and Economic Development Department for the last couple years. We actually amended it for, starting last fall, but amending it for this coming spring into summer to include downtown as an eligible area. That's a change from us from where we were the last several years because, as you can imagine when you're talking about a transit-oriented development program, more or less, your most rich environment may be eligible for almost all of your money. And that's why we kind of held back in previous iterations to kind of foster projects across the county to do that. But I think we're recognizing the moment and recognizing the kind of timing piece. And so one thing to Councilmember Nakers, one thing we're kind of doing in the interim is kind of aligning our programming in with what is expected to be the larger deployment of $100 million through our housing program programs, through kind of infrastructure program timelines and such. So I would say expect to see a lot more in the next month to two months, but we're kind of starting to find that groove and finding a chance to align all that

Wonderful. And I will just note that if there's going to be a rollout or if there's going to be more details around it, please consider the council with an invitation. Thank you, Mr. Olson. We'll end with Dave and with Joe, just because I know I'm being conscious of time. And I do appreciate you guys sitting through that. And I think we'll just bring up the question of just the vision that you all have for downtown and maybe just anything that you want to share with folks who are either looking to connect with you or even looking to know more about the work that you guys are doing. I know you've been with us for a while. So thank you, Mr. Spencer.

Thank you, Chair Johnson and members of the council. There was a question about timing. And one of my observations is that because of the way assessments work, the property tax assessments and collections is going to lag the market. And so it's my hope that we're maybe in, maybe on the tail end of market bottom. But I think you can expect to see falling assessment values for the next few years, just because of the way that process works. And so I think, to some extent, that cake is baked. And we have some very serious challenges in front of us, and the opportunity is to see how quickly we can recover, how quickly we can kind of surpass any kind of historic high downtown has had. And so while I'm really, really optimistic about all of the partnerships we have and the really fantastic coordination and investments we're seeing from especially the county, also the city, and in the private sector, The reality is we're going to be asking for more. This is a commitment that is going to have to be lasting, and it's going to have to be increasing over the next few years if we're going to, again, accelerate that recovery and provide the property tax relief across the city and across the county. I think that's just our reality. And I think it's so I want to create an expectation like we're going to be back asking for more and more over the next few years so that we can essentially shrink the population sort of pain period of this downside of the market cycle. But in terms of what we're working toward and the vision for where we're heading, I'll say historically, since I've had this job, the way I've described it is that you can come to any given corner at any given hour, and you're going to find a place that's alive with people. That's the phrase that rings about what is a vibrant downtown like for me. But really based on the work of the downtown investment strategy and the work of the engagement, I've sort of refined that a bit in a couple of ways. One is I think our strategy needs to be much more targeted and much more focused. So rather than sprinkling the investments onto any given corner or any given block face, we've really identified key connecting corridors, Fifth Street, Kellogg, Wabashaun, Robert, And so that you have the experience – if you visit other cities, go to Chicago, you see – you go out into the streetscape and the street kind of draws you down it. And it tells you which is the street to go down. I want to explore down this street. There's something to see or kind of – Every 15 feet, you're seeing something new, a new treat, and it draws you down. And you can walk miles without really even thinking about it. That is, I think, our vision for downtown St. Paul. You'd come for an event or to visit a friend, and you're just drawn down the street toward a vibrant opportunity. And then the language that really came out of the engagement work is, I think was inspiring to me. I talk a lot about pedestrian friendliness or walkability, but the words that got used were much more evocative. It was about wandering. It was about strolling. It was about meandering down the street, because there's something interesting at every next step. So I think that's how I think about it. And then finally, I just wanted to say, When we look at the best revitalizations of downtowns around the country, again, we do see it requires this kind of partnership. And it requires this kind of major investment. In Chicago, it was a massive, hundreds of millions of dollars of TIF that got put into the LaSalle district in order to help revitalize that. And that's a credit due to the Loop Alliance there, as well as the city of Chicago. A lot of these investments. They come with a degree of pain. It's hard to spend that kind of money. But then you see the return on the investment and how quickly it accelerated the recovery of Chicago. You see it in Milwaukee. You see it in Detroit. You see it around the country. And so we know from best practices. We know from some of these model cities that maybe hit bottom before we did how it can be done. And we also see in cities that stagnate and don't recover quite so quickly the risk of not making the investment. So I'm really appreciative of your partnership. And again, I think we have a period of years ahead of us. We're going to have to continue to really dig down, work hard at this work. But I also, again, when we look at those maps, when we look at the partnerships we have, the new investors we have, I think we've turned the corner. And if we capture this momentum and we build on this momentum, we're going to get there. This is going to work. I've worked on this downtown essentially my whole career. And I love it deeply. And I've always been optimistic. We're going to have that day when we are the it place in the market. We've seen it move around. It's coming here. We just have to stay focused and stay committed to it. And our best days are ahead of us.

Well, thank you so much, Mr. Spencer. And yes, I think one of the things that has been really clear is that this council and the administration also have downtown at the center of what we do. We recognize the importance of the investment because it impacts all the city. And as we continue to see, whether it's the state demographer or Ramsey County sharing the tax base, we recognize that we have to invest here to also be able to relieve our constituents citywide. So thank you so much for everybody's time. And with that, colleagues, we are adjourned.