Budget Committee - Regular Meeting

Thank you. 🎵 Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. so so Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

City Council Budget Committee to order.

Roll call, please. Council Member Bowie. Council Member Coleman. Here. Council Member Kim. Council Member Jones. Here. Council President Naker. Here. Vice Chair Yang.

Here.

Chair Johnson. Here. Five present, two absent. Council Member Bowie is expected shortly, and Council Member Kim is excused. All right, thank you.

We have two presentations today, both on budget topics that have come up in one way or shape or form, but also were tough and priority-based conversations amongst the council. So this is a part of that continuation. We'll start off with Evie Karsher and getting an update with the Department of Public Works. So I will welcome up Director Barber. Welcome. It's something that happens at the city council. When you're here, you get through your first budget update, and then now we just keep asking you to come back. So I think that's a sign that you're doing a good job. But welcome, Director Barber.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And never mind coming to present. It's always good to share information so you can learn about all the good work we're doing in public works. With that, I'm really here just to introduce the experts on this particular subject. So for those of you who know me and those who are getting to know me, I'm a big believer in having transportation options. That is how you actually have people get around through communities, through neighborhoods. And one of those very unique options that we have here in the city is the EV car share. And it's been a very successful program. And I'm going to turn it over now to Erin Kaiser, who's going to tell you all about it.

Wonderful. Thank you so much. And welcome, Ms. Kaiser. How are you?

Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair and council members. So I'm going to just jump right in. Can you see? No, not yet. We can now. OK. I've used a computer one time before in my life, so thanks so much. No problem. OK. This is sort of the roadmap of where we're headed today. I'm going to be joined by Amanda Lagrange from Our Car a little bit later. But I'm going to give you an overview of the EV Spot Network, and then talk through some performance, sustainability, and then really go into the budget conversation that I know we're all interested in here. So first, the EV spot network is really made up of two components, EV spot charging and EV car share. Both are programs in partnership with the city of Minneapolis. But for the purpose of today, we're really going to talk about the St. Paul operations for both. And since EV and EV sound exactly the same, when we talk about EV car share, we're going to make our best efforts to say EV car share and the same for EV spot charging. We've also included some slide markers that highlight which part of the program we're discussing. But if there are any questions, please stop and we can make clarifications. So in St. Paul, we have 170 charging plugs, 50 that are used for public use and 50% that are 50% for public use and 50% that are used exclusively for the EV Car Share program. These are owned, operated, and maintained by the City of St. Paul, and the EV Car Share fleet has 179 vehicles. 167 of those are free float, and 12 of them are hub-based, what we call EV loop vehicles, which start at a specific spot and have to come back to that same spot. These are leased by the City of St. Paul using CMAQ funds and CityMatch from both cities, and the vehicles are charged at EV spot chargers in both cities. And just to clarify this slide, I told you that I was going to do one thing. I did the opposite. 170 charging plugs are in the city of St. Paul. All 179 vehicles operate through both cities. They're free float, so they're able to start in one city, end in another, leave the city, come back, just to be clear. And then... OK, the current service area in St. Paul is roughly 18 square miles, which is about a third of our city footprint. This year, we are expanding onto the east side. That's the dark blue line that you see. And this will add about three square miles, bringing the coverage just under 40%, about 38%. You'll notice that all of our chargers, the blue, green, and all but one of the orange dots, fall within the EV car share service area. This is intentional. The infrastructure aligns so that both services, car share and EV charging, have a minimum density per square mile to provide the most reliable service. And funding alignment has really been the driving factor in EV spot charging expansion, which has not been possible without also expanding EV car share. Oftentimes, the funding works totally in alignment with one another. So I'm here today to talk about the EV spot network and what the program needs to continue bringing services to the residents of St. Paul. But I want to make sure that we all understand that the EV spot network is really made up of two distinct parts, EV spot charging and EV car share. It's public investment that makes affordable car share and public charging possible, and car share that supports EV charging in areas where EV adoption might be lower. And if there's one thing that you take away from today, it's that the city of St. Paul owns and operates the largest public charging network in the country, and that charging network supports the largest and only all-electric car share program. These programs have been extraordinarily successful at attracting outside attention and investment We built the system with capital grants, but those grants can't support operations. Infrastructure was almost entirely grant funded from the Department of Energy and the MPCA. Xcel Energy completed the overwhelming majority of the make ready as local cost share on those DOE projects. The EV car share vehicles are also grant funded through the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality, or the CMAQ, funds from the Met Council's regional solicitation. Match for those grants was provided by City of St. Paul parking funds, the City of Minneapolis, and reallocated ARP funds, which we expended this year before their expiration. What this slide doesn't show is the challenge of a drastically different funding landscape than what we saw at the start of these programs. Not only have federal funds been almost entirely eliminated for programs like this, but regional solicitation requirements have shifted and private philanthropy has weaned significantly for programs like this. The budget asked today is for operating funds to keep delivering public benefit and uphold the vision we had when we applied for these funds. The EV Spot Network this year has already had 750 unique users in St. Paul. That does not include the EV Car Share users, as all of those vehicles are also charged at chargers through the system. And that number doesn't account for the users who authenticate using credit cards, which show as anonymous, which makes a slide like this a little lackluster. 750 doesn't seem like that many. And I'm happy to share more about our total charge session data after the fact if you have questions. The average session count for those users is 16 already this year. Some people are using chargers all over the city, and others use the same location consistently. And it's really those folks in the latter category that get to the real core of the mission of the EV spot charging program. We assume that those individuals don't have EV ready infrastructure at home and are using the EV charging spots as their home charging. And demand continues to grow. We're asked regularly all the time, when will charging be in my neighborhood? When will car share be in my neighborhood? When will both things come? And it's important to note that half of the charging sessions, which is what this bar graph is showing, at the EV spot locations come from EV car share users, which is crucial because there are minimum expected usage values at every location that are implemented by Xcel Energy. Not meeting those usage levels can lead to unexpected utility fees. And we can recoup costs from charge sessions at the chargers by both EV car share users and private owners, but we can't recoup penalty fees that result from not hitting our minimums. And Amanda's going to tell you a little bit more about the EV car share performance. So Amanda Lagrange.

Hi, Committee Chair Johnson and committee members. Thanks for having me here today. I'm the new CEO of Our Car. I've been in my role a couple of months and I've just been so honored to step in to such a cherished gem in our community. This is an incredible program. And as Erin mentioned, there's been awareness of how innovative this program is, not even just within Minnesota, but we received recent news. that I can't fully tell you yet of an award, a national award, that this program is receiving in early September. And so we look forward to being able to celebrate that with all of you. So this slide shows a lot of data and a lot of numbers. But what I hope you can take away from sort of a deep dive into a bunch of numbers is that residents are really driving impact. And they're driving impact in support of the city's climate action. and resilience plan is sort of right in line. This program was designed to address the disproportionate impact of climate change on low-income and BIPOC communities. And the data is showing that that's been a great success. So a few numbers to call your attention to here. Across the EV car sharing program, we have Right now, so far this year, over 3,000 users. Last year, we landed just a little above 4,000. So far this year, about 80,000 trips, a significant amount of pollution reduction, and continued strong utilization by our BIPOC and low-income neighbors. We continue to see vehicle miles reduced as a result of this work. But this next section that I want to call attention to is from our annual user survey. Every year, we reach out to all of our users and ask them, how are you using this program? What's working? What's not? And this year, we were able to do that in partnership with the National Science Foundation through a grant. And so what we learned from this year's survey is that about 62% of our users are using this survey to get to groceries and other household goods needs. 47% are commuting to work. 41% getting to important medical appointments. And this next one just sort of continues to really ground me in the work that we're doing. That 66% say that Car Share has allowed them to sell or postpone the purchase of a vehicle. And so at a time where all of our households are trying to manage rising costs, the ability to keep transportation at a low percentage frees up people to be able to afford their own food, their housing, their medical needs. And the other piece that I really, as I've been listening to folks during my onboarding, a sort of myth to bust, perhaps, is that our work can be perceived as in conflict with transit. The reality is these are multimodal transit users. So folks may use public transportation to get to an EV or get to a car share to then get to where they're going. They may bike one way and EV a different way. And so 46% of users have said that they're using transit to get to this car share. So that first mile or last mile challenge of transportation is addressed by the service. And of course, it's really easy with these type of conversations to get lost in the data. And so I wanted to make sure we brought in one of the voices of our users from last year's user survey who, of course, gushed about their love of EV car share and how it saved them money and that they have been able to avoid purchasing a car. The other piece that I wanted to call attention to is actually not yet. I'll be right back.

Thanks, Erin.

Yes, thank you. And so we talked about performance for both aspects of the network, the EV spot network, and now we're going to talk about financial planning and cost management for both of those programs and how they feed into the larger network. So for the EV spot charging program, we're actively managing costs and have already reduced our controlled expenses, but there are structural risks that require stable operating funding, which is what brings us here today. I want to be clear that every Excel invoice is manually reviewed, sometimes painstakingly, because we've noticed recurring billing issues. And we're working closely with Excel to correct those issues. But the process is slow, and we're hesitant to approve invoices before reviewing them, leading to a backlog in bills. And so where you see that electricity costs are slightly down this year, we expect that to go up due to our increased use. Even with these efforts, there are costs outside of our control. Electricity rates continue to rise, charging equipment occasionally experiences significant damage, and major repairs come up unexpectedly. That's why stable operating funding is important, not because costs aren't being managed, but because we're an important service of the city of St. Paul, and we need to provide consistent services even when costs aren't. We've experienced maintenance challenges, like the copper wire theft issue that struck many city services, and that led to a large maintenance cost in 2025, which you see reflected here. And we tried several approaches to maintenance, all while providing the highest level of service possible. Operating support allows the program to absorb unavoidable cost fluctuations without increasing prices or reducing services, something that is paramount to EV car share operations. And Amanda is going to tell you about that now.

So as with many organizations and operations, we have seen rising operations costs. It is a shocking number to share with you, but insurance is about 23% of our annual expense of this operation because it doubled in 2025. This is a trend that's been seen across car sharing organizations nationally and globally. We're not unique in this. And I mentioned the important design of the EV Car Share Program to address climate change impacts on low-income and BIPOC communities, one of the ways that that design shows up is in the creation of an access plan that we've had since the beginning of our EVCarshare launch program. Just the access plan, which folks self-identify and opt into that low-income plan and have a lower cost of use through that, Annually, that expense is $1.4 million. So there's a significant amount of investment that's happening through this program. The great part of having a program like this is that there are, in fact, revenue sources built into it. So we do charge folks a monthly membership in the access plan category. That's only $1 a month, very affordable. And then folks are paying for their use fees. Even still, with those revenue sources covering about 55% of the expense, there is a need for subsidy. As we have sort of heard and learned from different other means of transportation, having a subsidy of around 45% is still much lower than where things are for public transportation, for roads, et cetera. One question that I often get when talking about the need for subsidy is, well, why don't you just raise your prices? Why not raise that dollar monthly membership fee for access plan or for the standard plan hire? And last year, our team took the really hard step of doing a very significant price increase to adjust for the fact that insurance costs had doubled. What we saw was reduction in use. And so we have to balance making sure that people can get to where they're needing to go in an affordable way while also covering our costs. And so through that National Science Foundation grant that I mentioned, we've been able to put together a really robust pricing model to help us understand sort of the elasticity of those charges.

I see a question from Council President Naker.

Thanks, Madam Chair. Can you tell us, I may have missed it, but what the monthly access, what the cost monthly is to the user? And also, are we, I understand that the access plan for low-income residents is sort of, self-ascertained. Do we have any independent verification to make sure that the folks who are taking advantage of that are actually low-income individuals?

Great question. Thank you. So there is a dollar per month membership fee that is sort of just set no matter use. And then the rest of the fees to Access Plan users would be based on the number of trips that they're taking. What we see is the average trip for Access Plan members is around $10 per trip. So still pretty affordable. That's a based on time and distance as well, but an affordable piece. And then I'm so sorry, I've already forgotten your second question.

Well, just to clarify, I'm wondering about the cost, not just for access plan, but the cost per membership in general. And then do we have a way of ascertaining income?

Yes. So the standard fee is at $7 per month, so a higher amount that there's no We do also offer a student plan as well that University of Minnesota, McAllister, Hamlin students can access. And so folks are being asked specific questions on our website to sort of help in the verification program. It's not just a, hey, I said I'm good to go. It's asking on size of household requirements. Asking on income, there's a self-vetting process, but we're not using an external stakeholder to verify.

Thank you.

Yeah, excellent.

And as a follow-up, I guess, just on that end, would you all see the data that's coming through or the responses that come through? So even if you don't have a third-party vetting place, are you still reviewing the information that is self-vetted?

Great question. Yes, absolutely. My team just gave me a good thumbs up. Yes. Yeah, our team is, we have an entire department that's called our member services team that's looking through making sure that folks are, you know, answering as truthfully as possible.

Yeah. Thank you for the question. Yeah, thank you.

Great. So just to continue to add on to Aaron's comment around the sort of the use of significant grant funds and federal funds to get to where we've built today, what we're also seeing is a changing landscape in the same way that I'm sure you all have been as well. And so where we've been able to rely previously on federal funding and other sources of funding like foundations, Even those foundations have been impacted by the current federal administration scrubbing initiatives connected to ESG efforts and DEI efforts from their funding priorities. And so it's part of why there is a significant need for local support to step up so that this program can continue. We've been also having conversations like this, as you would imagine, with the city of Minneapolis, with Ramsey County, Hennepin County, and the Met Council. because there is this importance of stabilizing where we are today so that we can continue to move forward. And so that's what this slide is sharing here is our focus this year and into early next is around stabilizing our operations, making sure that the service continues, that it continues to be both affordable and reliable, and balancing the need to close this funding gap with making long-term strategic decisions and so we're grateful to local partners that have confirmed the need for this service here locally we're working to improve efficiency and we also see a lot of opportunities within the car sharing portion of this work that gives us sort of that long-term hope and so on sort of the EV spot charging side, which I'm sure Aaron's happy to go deeper into. There's some really great improvements that could happen around the charging network analytics. Our team has been working on demand-responsive fleet management, and so trying to bring that National Science Foundation grant information into where are neighborhoods that are constantly in need of EV free float cars, and where maybe is there less of a need. And so making sure that the cars are in the right spot for users is important. We continue to have conversations around the need for the definition of transit to include car sharing. This would also open up funding. and other sources. We are not currently, while we're a 501c3 nonprofit, we are not tax exempt in the state of Minnesota. And so our organization is paying a significant amount of sales tax and property taxes as a result. And so that would also help the long-term sustainability of our model. And then there's been a really exciting greenhouse gas emission offset program that's been passed through the legislature and now is sort of waiting for its first prototyping, where because of the impact that our team and our members are making and the data that we collect, we could receive funding through MnDOT projects to offset the environmental impact of those programs. And so that also would add revenue into the mix, helping to subsidize those access plans and other work that we're doing. And all of this is so that we continue to grow and continue to grow our impact, that we can move into more neighborhoods in St. Paul, that we can increase the vehicle count. As Aaron mentioned, there's constant questions on, when are you coming to my neighborhood? And there's always, and when will there be more cars? So I can make sure every morning when I come out ready to go to work, there is one available to me. And so figuring out what's working of the model and continuing to test, learn, and improve and grow. All right, back to you, Aaron.

So what we're really asking for here is in this middle column. To support the EV Spot Network, we need to support both the EV Car Share program and the EV Spot Network. And I do want to apologize. The initial ask from Public Works, there was not an operational request for EV Car Share. So this is different than what you've seen in the past. But as Amanda relayed just recently, the financial picture has shifted really dramatically. But there is some ways to sort of reduce some of these costs or shift costs. As of yesterday, the intent to apply for state competitiveness funds was approved by the grant team here at the city of St. Paul, and I'm going to continue being creative in making sure that EV spot charging stays operating at its highest capacity. This is a big jump in expenses. And I want this committee to know that I'm working on financial analysis of the charging network very regularly, because increased use does mean more revenue, which we're already, of course, seeing this year. And I'm actively in conversations with Xcel Energy to discuss rate adjustments, since we're being charged commercial rates right now on the EV spot network. But given the extreme shifts in the funding landscape, there is a small ask here for charging expansion, especially to areas of the city where EV car ownership is higher, closer to the core of the city and where expansion would yield significant results. So the top two lines that you see, a slight increase in operating expenses for the EV spot charging network and EV car share operating support on an annual basis are of the utmost importance here today. operating budgets for both programs of the EV Spot Network. I really thank you for your attention, and we've saved some time for questions and would love to answer them at this time.

I see Council Vice President Yang, and then we'll go to Council President Naker.

Thank you, Chair Johnson. I want to say thank you for the presentation here. Every time you all come and present to us, I'm learning something new every time. I'm a strong proponent of our EV car share program. And I just wanted to applaud you all because when it comes to surveying our users and just keeping track of trends of them, you all do a really phenomenal job at that. And if I recall correctly, there's an annual report that comes out by our car. They also do a really great job capturing statistics about this work overall. I wanted to ask a bit about the minimum expected usage. I don't recall this being brought up in the past, so this is something new that I learned about. It seems like, I mean, it just seems a bit backwards. It seems like it's something that can bite us too in the future, especially if we're in a state of crisis, a pandemic, for example, even Operation Metro Surge. And so is this something that is negotiated at all? And can you talk a bit about the purpose of that penalty fee existing?

Mm-hmm. Yes, Madam President and Council Member Yang, thank you so much for your question. Yeah, that cost came as a pretty significant surprise to the program as well, and it's been something that we've been negotiating really heavily for the last couple of years. I do think that part of it, part of those minimum costs is in order to sort of bind the city in partnership with Xcel Energy as a sort of guaranteed income based on all of the make ready that they did provide to the program. But yes, it does mean that chargers that are getting used less frequently are costing more per kilowatt hour, which is energy dispensed. And so a big strategic plan goal of mine is to negotiate a rate that eliminates and or reduces that. and allows us to bring charging rates cost-wise back down closer to at-home charging. But it's a really significant cost to the program. And I don't know if any of you have tried to negotiate with Xcel Energy, but that can be a little bit challenging and takes a long time. We're in conversations with the PUC. We're also working on our franchise fee negotiation. And we do have some really strong partnerships with Xcel Energy. But this is something that we also may have to adjust some of our services. Our DC fast chargers are really expensive to operate. And it is something that we may need to reduce some of the speed at which charging happens because of these minimum costs.

Thank you. I appreciate you providing insight into that. all in favor of getting that eliminated. So I just wanted to share that to you all. I mean, when I think about the significance of EV car share overall, I mean, it's something that I would want to see citywide, especially in areas where we know that there's low car ownership. And I'm very pleased to see the expansions going into the east side. So I want to say thank you to all for that. I know we've been in conversations many times about that already and your commitment just speaks volumes in making that happen. I do recognize too that on the map there are still big chunks of the east side and also north end that are without the stations and so we just wanted to overall express my interest in making sure we're spreading Expanding into those areas too, I'm wondering for the $60,000 ask around expansions for next year, what does that cover and what does that mean long term too for those areas that right now don't have service?

Yeah, Council Member Yang, thank you for your question. This is a pretty scant ask. $60,000 with some support would probably give us two charging stations. And just due to the cost of equipment and MakeReady costs, since we no longer have Excel as our long-term partner for MakeReady, which is not an impact of sort of a bad partnership but just their commitment has been for the east side expansion and we don't expect there to be more um one thing that i i really think is important to drive home as we talk about expansion for both systems is we do really want to make sure that vehicles stay at the same density that we have in our existing system right uh to amanda's point about making sure there's a vehicle outside your house when you're ready to go to an appointment or to work or to recreational activities. We want to make sure that as we expand, we aren't spreading that density too thin. And so the $60,000 in expansion of the car share network expansion does kind of go hand in hand with our CMAQ-3 and potentially CMAQ-4 funds, which would allow us to expand the fleet sort of in tandem. And I'm happy to provide more specific details, but Yes, this $60,000 is sort of us making an assumption that we're not going to see federal funding supporting electric vehicle infrastructure in a while and to try to help us keep up with some of those expansions. To your point about the North End, we hear a lot from Como. We hear a lot from other parts of the greater east side, which are not represented in our current expansion.

And I just have one last question, which is I have a request around just sharing data to us later on about, or if you can email us a follow-up on the usage based on the stations, just because earlier I mentioned an interest in having the stations be in areas where there's low car ownership, and I'm wondering if the data is showing us that in those areas there is higher usage.

Yes. Yeah. So this is just from quarter one and I will share this and the data that goes along with it. But this is what really drives, you know, as we think about expansion and also making sure that we're engaging with the public around some of these lower use stations and our car staff to make sure that we're seeing usage at the stations. So, yes, happy Council Member Yang to provide more data and would love to have a conversation about sort of some strategies for how we might increase use sets of them at the lower use stations.

Thank you.

Council President Baker.

Thanks, Madam Chair. I really align with the Vice Chair's line of questioning. Those were some of the same thoughts I had. And I would really like to get more clarity on what specifically the team is doing to talk to both Excel and the insurance provider. It seems that if we're the largest public charging network in the country, that we shouldn't just be using public dollars to pay as much or more than private individuals would have to pay, that we should be using that purchasing power to be driving down costs. It really concerns me about the unused hours being charged. It concerns me that we're being charged a commercial rate. And then that we are just the additional public dollars would basically just be going into insurance companies in Excel. So that's a really important conversation. I'm curious, two questions. The jump in costs, I know you talked about the changing funding formula. In the appendix, first slide, it looks like maintenance more than tripled from 2024 to 2025 and electricity almost doubled from 23 to 24. I'm wondering if that's due to expansion in vehicles or charging stations or what's leading to that. And then my second question is, what are the asks and commitments from other partners? You mentioned other entities are part of this. The city is actually the only one of the entities that's not a transit entity. So I'm curious what some of the transit entities, like Met Council, Metro Transit, the counties, are being asked to and are committing to contribute.

Yeah, Council President Naker, thank you for your question. Yeah, so I'm going to talk about this specific slide and really talking about the EV spot charging program. And I'm going to let Amanda respond to some of the other partner conversations that have happened. But before I dive into this, I would love to continue having more conversations about how we use our purchasing power at Accel to really drive home some of the things that we're talking about here. It's been a huge, huge conflict for me since I was brought on. The way that the structure was set up was... maybe more challenging than we thought when we had predicted usage. So a couple things here. So I think your first question was about maintenance costs almost tripling. So a few things. So 2024 was our big year for cable cuts here in the city of St. Paul and a little bit into 25, even though that legislation went into place. So we saw almost $20,000 in just replacing cables, a cable that oftentimes yielded less than $10 in copper, cost the city $500 to $600 just to replace. And so that was a huge cost. So that legislation made a huge difference for us. Additionally, in 2025, because we had planned for those very frequent cable replacement costs. We did go into a service level agreement with Zeph Energy, which is our charging manufacturer. That allowed them to be more responsive and provide us some lower costs hourly, sort of being under contract. When this program was initially set up, it was intended to bring that maintenance inside the city of St. Paul, which seems to be a challenge that I don't personally know how we would make that happen. And so 2025 was a way for us to kind of reset the system, make sure that everything had a maintenance check every six months, and making sure that things were in really good working order. We opted to not do that for 2026, since we expected that cable cuts would go down. We saw that trend at the end of 2025. This number is quite a bit lower than we expect, based on some invoice delays and significant challenges with getting those real costs into our system. So that's number one. Happy to provide more information. Electricity costs from 23 to 24 really are a result of more chargers coming online. So we built out, we completed the system in 2024, and we really saw full network coming online. We also saw a lot more errors in 2024, if I'm just being super honest. There were some pretty erroneous bills that happened. And I would be happy to chat more about how we fixed that.

But it's a big sticking point how much we pay Xcel Energy.

Another thing before I pass just about insurance, one of the things that we have considered and we have talked to the city's risk management team about in the past, we haven't had that conversation certainly this year, is about bringing the insurance underneath sort of a municipal fleet insurance. We're told by lots of folks that, oh, maybe that is a way to bring those insurance costs down. To date, the risk management folks here at the city, of great respect to them, have said that that's not something that we want to take under. But that would be something that we could pursue further, whether that be with our own fleet or partnering with another fleet. And that is something that we continue to have conversations about.

And Councilmember Naker, to finish or continue the conversation there, because we're continuing to pursue sort of creative approaches to insurance, as Erin mentioned, we also are taking steps within our own team's process. And so as much as 23% of annual expense for insurance sounds bananas, we actually saw a year-over-year decrease because of some of the efforts that were completed last year. One specific example of that is the addition of a Lytics camera system. Sorry. Sorry. analytics camera system that allows us to evaluate risk and hold more accountability with drivers to make sure that they're not running red lights or speeding or a lot of other activities that we could talk about at a different time. So we did see impact and improvement from the insurance, but the reality is this is a significant fleet and we continue to sort of broadly have the challenge of climate change on the cost of insurance. As far as your question around other asks, we are in conversations with Minneapolis, Ramsey County, Hennepin County, the Met Council. In total, our ask is roughly $1.1 million across those entities. And so just as we've laid out here, it's not a one-time ask. It's to make sure that over these next few years, We have this sort of stable subsidy to make sure that the service continues and that we aren't having to suddenly, for those that have relied on our service, to not need to purchase transportation and to be able to get to the places that they're going, that they have a sudden disruption in that.

Just a clarification. Thank you. Is the $1.1 million total asked? So what percentage is the city of St. Paul being asked to bear of that? I'm not sure if this is all to be added together or. Right.

So it would be roughly about 30%. Yeah.

So not adding these things together.

Correct. Yes. Sorry. That's only for the EV car share operating support line that is factoring into the 1.1. This is the muddy waters of bringing the two under the umbrellas. I'm only speaking to the EV car share portion.

which in this case would be the $300,000 line item in this spreadsheet. And then for clarification, can you just also share, so the budget ask is like looking at this, if we are reviewing this, it's often where we see kind of like what the total ask would be, so just putting this into context, because the total ask in this case The full, is this 590? Terrible math offhand, but is that a total ask of the City of St. Paul or is it just the EV spot charging? Is this all kind of put together? Can you verify what the actual ask is for the City of St. Paul and what portion it is from the total ask that you have in your partners?

Madam Chair, thank you. I sometimes get lost in the sauce here as I'm describing this. What we're proposing, what we're here today proposing, is about a $440,000 above base request for these two programs together from the city of St. Paul. So that includes a 14% increase in operating costs for the charging network, the operating support for EV car share, as well as a little bit of expansion funds and cost share for a CMEC3 program. So what we're asking here today is $440,000. in addition, above base of what we've had in the past. And then as far as EV car shares, since it is benefiting other folks, other jurisdictions, we see lots of usage in Minneapolis, Hennepin County, Ramsey County. That is the $1.1 million that our car is pursuing to make sure that their fleet operations are stable. And our $300,000 line item here fits under that $1.1 million.

OK, and then just for my awareness as well, you mentioned a couple of things about the presentation, one being potentially adjusting the charging speed. Is that taking that into account here?

This is not taking that into account. This also does not take into account, which I have a small note here, the agreement for CMAC $3, which is an expansion of about 40 vehicles into the fleet, has already been signed. And we have funds committed for Minneapolis. And Public Works will be submitting an application for state competitiveness funds, which could bring that dollar down. It's hard to make sort of predictions about what might happen there. There are lots of levers that we can keep trying to pull on.

Council Member Bowie.

Thank you, Chair Johnson. Thank you so much. I also just want to say I, every day, have the pleasure to learning about new services and new networks. I'm really excited to hear that we are one of the leading, if not only, in the nation when I think about just how other places across the globe, like Switzerland, Vermont, Amsterdam, has these electric car networks. I'm really happy that we have that right here at home. But my question is more so around the internal financial operations of just how St. Paul has... I think we were able to cover how we were able to invest in launching and supporting in our contract in terms of leasing the vehicles. These aren't city-owned. The infrastructure is city-owned. But I'm just curious, and maybe our chief budget officer can support this answer, but is there a certain department that is in charge of leading this effort? How does the EV car share shows up within our own internal finances? Is this something, is the budget asked of council? Is there a director that is leading this work? How is the city's internal operations in partnership?

Thank you, Madam Chair, Council Member. Obviously, the Iwikai Share lives within Public Works, and so this is part of our budget. So the line item, like the standard operating expenses and the first one is what's in the budget as we've been looking at it to date the other things are new so I think they've as Aaron has taken over this program has been able to dive into the finances and figure out working with our car exactly what really is the need and so those are things that we will be building in as we go forward but it is right now it is a public works program.

Got it. I appreciate that, because I was just wondering if this was just kind of like an addition, or if this will be inside of the public works budget. But thank you for answering that question.

Madam Chair, if I might?

Yes. At least at this point, what's in the public works budget is the first line item, which is the operating expenses, the one that Because that is what has been in the budget typically year over year at this point. And so the rest is in addition right now. Thank you.

I really appreciate you guys making the time to be here as well just to talk about the topic. I don't think we've had an official budget presentation on this or a presentation on this in quite some time, so I think it's just a great refresher. As we get ready to head into the budget season, if folks have questions, Director Barber, should we direct those to Ms. Kaiser? Where would the questions around if people are interested in having further conversations of some of the topics we heard today, insurance questions, questions with Excel, related questions, or questions even about the line items, especially because of the increase, who would they gear those to?

Thank you, Madam Chair. You can either direct those questions at me or directly to Erin. We'll make sure that we get you answers, and especially work to get you answers quickly, because we know things are moving fast.

Wonderful. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. As we transition, the second topic that we have is around district councils. Obviously, this has been a continued conversation amongst the city, but also here in the city council. We did make that change from 2025 to 2026 to have CDBG funding removed. And so this presentation really is to give an update on that piece of the funding streams and also just to hear a little bit from Zoe around how it's been going. So, welcome.

Can you guys hear me? Perfect. Good morning, Chair Johnson and council members. My name is Zoe Borgeret, and I'm the district council coordinator in our planning and economic development department. I've been in this role since July 2024 and have been working directly with our district councils and our community engagement agreements. So like Chair Johnson mentioned, just appreciate the opportunity to provide an update and overview of the city's work with our district councils and The main kind of goal of today's presentation is to have a shared understanding of how the district council system is organized, the role district councils play in our supporting citywide engagement, and diving into those details of how the city financially supports district councils. Let's see. So I've structured the presentation today to go over three different sections. I'll begin with the overview of the district council system. Then we'll cover some of the recent budget actions affecting district council support, including the changes in the fiscal year 2026 adopted budget, and cover how funding is distributed out to all 17 district councils. And to end, if there's time, can provide ways that residents and community members can get involved with their district councils. And of course, we'll do my best to address questions as they come up. Again, first section, sharing the shared understanding of the district council system. And so our district councils are independent nonprofit organizations that represent St. Paul's 17 planning districts. They are governed independently, hire their own staff, elect their own volunteer board of directors. And we have our annual community engagement agreements that we provide. So they partner with the city to support neighborhood engagement, planning, and identifying local community priorities. And those agreements run January 1 to December 31 each year. And so our community engagement agreements have four required responsibilities that we expect all district councils to carry out. First, we seek district council support in gathering community input on planning, development, and licensing proposals and to communicate that feedback to city staff. So when we're reviewing work plans, it's important that we know how they do this function and whether that's through newsletter notices, their website, social media posts, or that they become agenda items at committee and board committee meetings. Any feedback that our planners receive is considered as part of project and application reviews. Second, we ask district councils to share information and amplify city messaging with residents through their established communication channels. And so district councils really do serve as an existing communication network that departments use to help with our outreach efforts. Third, Planners, project managers, program coordinators, and outreach specialists do routinely engage with district councils to ask for support in our own community engagement efforts. And so examples of that, if there's a street reconstruction project, a park redesign project, the climate action resilience plan, and even our comprehensive plan we update every 10 years in the planning division. It's just good to know that when we need to get citywide engagement or input on projects that we can go to district councils and figure out ways to cement some of those engagement opportunities in those communities. And then the fourth is having district councils maintain an active district plan. And so those are intended to be updated every 10 years and along with our comp plan, but the timing can vary based on district council capacity. And so these really cover like the four, as I mentioned, required areas, but some of the community engagement funding can be used for activities and programming that respond and reflect the needs that they see in their communities. And then wanted to be sure to cover, sorry, it's a little out of scope. the different ways that PED supports district councils. And so while those past kind of core requirements district councils carry out independently, we do play an important role in administering the community engagement agreements and supporting district councils throughout the year. And since my time being the district council coordinator, I see this work generally falling in these three areas, which is program and contract administration, I personally manage the community engagement agreements and oversee that contract renewal process, process reimbursements, and monitor reporting requirements throughout the year. And this past year, we've been doing a lot of work to create SOPs to help just standardize and have a shared understanding of how we manage these agreements with district councils. Second is providing technical assistance. And so district councils regularly reach out to me for support on understanding our contract guidance, especially if there's turnover, questions about reporting and other administrative pieces. And again, this past year, we have been working on developing and having conversations about what tools and resources we can provide to help district councils effectively manage these agreements, even when there's turnover. And then the third area is really just supporting our planning team and connecting with district councils. sharing information about our planning processes, and being available to help with improved coordination between city departments, external partners, and district councils. Part of that work also is maintaining and building stakeholder relationships with district council staff and their kind of leadership to further support communication and coordination and to understand program challenges as they arise or just to be a little bit more responsive of what's taking place. Are there any particular questions before I move on to more of the funding pieces? Just wanted to be able to provide a good overview of kind of what this work looks like.

I did see one question from Council Member Bowie.

Thank you, Chair Johnson. I have a quick question. So particularly around, is there requirements in terms of how many staffs or FTEs like a district council must have?

No, there's not a requirement. So that can vary across the board. We do ask that they just let us know how many or what positions are supported through the funding. So on the back end, we have an idea of, yeah, primarily one person staffed at this organization, or if they have a part-time communications person or an organizer. Some have co-directors. So that helps us have an idea of what staffing looks like across the system.

And one last question. Is there ever a case where there's a vacancy of leadership or staffing for a district council? And how do we address that?

We just kind of have to know that there's a vacancy and kind of have a point person. It's usually their board chair. It's actually good to share. I don't think there's a single vacancy in the executive director positions. When I started, I believe there was two in a transition. And so what that had looked like was either working with their board president or an appointed interim director. But at this point, everyone at least has a staff person, which is really good. Thank you.

Continue, Ms. Bougerie. Thank you. All right. Awesome.

Let's see. And so this next section really is meant to focus on how the city budgets support for district councils and how those budgeted dollars become individual community engagement agreements with the 17 district councils. And so I'll begin to cover the fiscal year 2026 budget outcomes, provide an overview of how today's budget is structured, and briefly review how funding has changed over time, and then can walk through, again, that funding formula and how we distribute funding. Let's see here.

Make sure nothing cuts off.

And so this is probably where we're going to spend a lot of our time. This table summarizes the budget and administrative changes that occurred between the 2025 and 2026 contract years. And to better understand some of these budget outcomes, it's helpful to just understand where we were in fiscal year 2025. And I do apologize. explicitly written on the slide, but the adopted budget allocation for 2025 was a total of $1,441,211, and that was consistent of $1,096,211 from the general fund, and then $345,000 from federal CDBG funds. that funding level had remained unchanged from 2018 through 2025 at that approximately $1.4 million. And so additional context for the budget outcomes was During the fiscal year 2025 budget process, the city council directed the administration and PED to evaluate district council funding in response to requests we received from them to develop a recommendation to be considered during the fiscal year 2026 budget cycle. And so this table really outlines where the results of that work of coming up with a recommendation. And so in the mayor's proposed budget for 2026, there was a $200,000 ongoing increase through the general fund. The city council then approved an additional $59,660 in ongoing HRA general fund investment, and then a one-time $345,000 transfer from HRA parking fund replacing the previous CDBG allocation and so again to kind of pause on that point there I would say that's probably the most significant budget action that was included in the fiscal year 2026 budget and I know it was an area of a lot of discussion between district councils and probably that reached your office and so Yeah, just kind of the financial makeup in 2025 and before, that being general fund and CDBG funds. They had previously historically been funded in part by CDBG dollars. And then in the 2025 contract year, there was clarified guidance that impacted our ability to reimburse district councils for certain operating expenses. And so that did cause immediate financial strain and administrative challenges. And so that's why we kind of just made sure to facilitate that conversation with the HRA and city council. And so seeing that the removal of the CDBG funding from the 2026 budget allocation, Our community engagement agreements are no longer subject to those federal cost allocation requirements, including the 15% indirect cost rate limitation. So effectively, our 2026 agreements, which are currently underway, have the restored ability to fully reimburse for the activities we experienced challenges with in 2025. And I'll just do the last closing before pausing is addition to those budget changes. We did have two administrative updates also take place, which was increasing the minimum allocation from $62,922 to $75,049. And the funding formula was updated to use the most recent demographic data that we had at the time of the recommendation. So I'll pause. I see a hand.

Council President Naker. Thanks, Madam Chair. Two questions. One, with the one-time transfer of the $345,000 from the parking fund to get rid of the CDBG, does that mean that in 2027 we need to find another source to fill that 345 or there will be a gap? That's one question. And then I'm wondering if you can say, I appreciate you talking a little bit about the effect of shifting off of CDBG. I know we did that in part because we were hearing so many concerns from district councils that it was just becoming inordinately bureaucratic and difficult to use the dollars. But can you say a little bit more about what that change has meant practically on the ground for district councils this year not having to abide by CDBG guidelines? How has that changed?

Yeah, I would say to the first question, yes, that would be something that needs to be figured out in this next upcoming budget. And Director Green is here if we have more questions about that. And then secondly, it's probably going to take some time to really understand what that impact was. I would say it basically was an additional barrier to an already kind of strained funding environment for district councils. The reason why they submitted that request was the minimum funding wasn't enough. They didn't think the data and the formula was representative of the communities they serve today. And there hadn't been an increase in a while. And so all of those components were already on the table when we were discussing an increase. As we got clarified guidance on limited uses of funds, it was more that immediate, oh, so I can't reimburse for this, or how do I solve for that in this budget year? And so that was kind of an ongoing, we probably don't have a very clean evaluation of what did that mean. I know at the time it was, oh, we hired a lot of part-time staff. We might have to cut hours, or how do they manage that on like a month-to-month basis? And so I know when we went into the 2026 year, many folks were eager to know that that was lifted. And now they're going back to how they already operated with the city, but it didn't take away some of those underlying challenges. And so I would say the broader answer is that's probably something that would be helpful to ask district councils specifically. Do you feel a little relief from that? And I imagine the answer is yes, but can't say definitively.

Council President, yes. Thanks. Just as a quick follow-up, will you be asking district councils that?

I'm happy to. It's kind of interesting. We meet monthly at our EDCO executive director organizing committee meetings, and so how we bring items, one that are just for discussion or to get a robust feedback, can be a little difficult to facilitate, but I'm definitely open to make sure that they know that they can share information what that feedback of changing the funding source has looked like so it can get back to folks too.

I think that would be really helpful just as a refresher for folks. The increase or the one-time shift also stemmed from it not being included in the administration's budget last year, but it still being a council interest to have a funding increase for district councils. So the resources that were placed there actually had a deduction for some district councils, was not funded at the level in which we had initially requested. So the one-time funding was created there to both change CDBG funding, but ultimately to also add back to the dollar amount that was originally requested in order to ensure that every district council received an increase versus what they had received in the past, or at least the minimum increase from what district councils were receiving in 2025 to this year. So those are changes that we made in a one-year time based off of that allocation. The one thing I would share, too, is this feedback. I think that, you know, to the Council President's point, the reason why we need to understand the change is because with the CDBG funding, it seems like on my end, some of the HUD CDBG funding has been reallocated in different places. But as far as just how we've done that doesn't necessarily, to me, has seemed as equitable as ensuring that district councils are receiving funding across the city. So just where that $345,000 has went has kind of led to just a question that I pose for our staff to be able to have additional input for it. And I see Deputy Director Green walking up. But I think that that's just one place where, like, if we do start to see some of the federal guidelines for HUD CDBG dollars change or evolve, you know, being updated on that in real time because, and or if we get feedback that, you know, I didn't really notice much of a difference between the city dollars and CDBG dollars, I think that also matters in that equation because that line item will remain in the budget for 2027. And so just wanting to know, Deputy Director Green, I'd adhere to you. Thank you, Chair, Commissioners.

Good question. I so noted, and I will take that into consideration and make sure that we monitor, the reallocation of the CDBG funding from district councils I think is ongoing. All the dollars have not been reallocated yet in their various processes. that we would apply to reallocate them. So I can work with Beth Ulrich in our grants department to provide some updated information on that. And I just also want to note that, again, the changes that we made last year, those contracts are in process and implementation of a change, you'll hear me say this, I'll continue to repeat this, Those changes usually take at least a year. And sometimes, most often in my experience, may take three years to see the results of the change. So you're asking for the results. Our district councils are going through their contracts right now. Once those first year contracts are implemented, they will reassess. And then, as Zoe said, through those meetings, we will begin to gather that information. And then that initial information that we receive will be adjusted again once they have more practice and get more acclimated to the funding. And again, the 345, the one-time funding we've provided from the parking fund, if that is required as an ongoing source, I just want to add our conversations earlier this year was whether or not that was an eligible source or an eligible use for a parking fund. And we've just recently received a word from CAO. We think it is. And so it was one time last year because of that. And so that's another consideration. I don't know that it's directly noted in future budgets, but it's something to consider. Thanks.

Thank you, Deputy Director Green. I'm going to just for a time check, we are at about 11.07, so I'll have you go through the next slides as I do think it'll answer some of the questions on the end of just how maybe funding of things that we're able to support has changed. So kind of looking ahead at this, this seems like a redundant slide from what you've previously shared, so I'll just ask for the interest of time for you to proceed to the next slide.

Perfect. Yeah, the main thing there is just the $1.7 million is the new figure, and that's roughly the $259 million. 259,000 increase from 2025 to 2026. And again, this one can be pretty quick as well, just mainly trying to provide an overview of what our funding levels for district councils has looked over time. Main thing to note, in 2013, two programs were merged to become the Community Engagement Fund, which now solely supports district councils. And then in 2018, there was a $250,000 ongoing increase that brought us to that $1.4 million. And then the 2026 brought us to the $1.7. And then I know there's been, you know, just kind of questions and interest of what is the funding formula and is it kind of like elusive, but basically after the annual budget is adopted, we distribute funding to all district councils using the city's adopted formula. And the funding formula only needs to be recalculated when the adopted budget allocation for district council support changes or when updated demographic data needs to be incorporated. If neither of those things change, the district council allocations remain the same because they have the same inputs from the previous year. And the formula uses four demographic measures, taking into consideration population, poverty, non-English speaking residents, and employment as well as incorporating a minimum funding allocation to ensure every district council receives that baseline funding. So that's kind of the distribution, very heavily population-based. And then just for further clarity, these are the definitions that we use and the sources in which we pull the data from and their associated weighting. And then to get more into the you know, mechanics of how the funding formula works. It's typically pretty straightforward. It just takes a lot of numbers and a spreadsheet. And so this is on the slide, but also as a supplemental attachment. And the worksheet just demonstrates how the budget allocation is applied across those demographic measures and basically each measure provides a partial allocation by district council based on the data for that planning district. Those amounts are then combined, and if that initial allocation is below the minimum, we apply the minimum, have an adjusted total, round out the number, and that's how we get to their 17 grant allocations for that year. Just a kind of note, I know this has been area of interest and conversation with district councils and when we did the 2025 recommendation We're very explicit. There's not much we can do within the formula besides raise the minimum and it was also really important to keep whatever recommendation Within this funding formula that is established and adopted but it is from 2005 so That kind of plays into some of the conversation with district councils around does it represent some of the needs we have today, but it is a way to consistently and transparently distribute the funding as we adopt it each year. Are there any questions about the formula before we move on to the last section?

Council President Baker. Or I can wage it.

I'll wait, okay, thank you. And yeah, so the last part of the presentation is just to leave everyone with some tangible ways that they can get connected with the district councils, learn more about their work. Much of the work district councils do is to engage new voices or maintain the level of engagement that they currently have building relationships and creating opportunities for community participation and in our role that starts with being kind of responsive and engaged on things that kind of are challenging for them but also to help and do our part to share with the public these are our district councils this is how you get plugged in and hopefully you experience them for yourself and also give us that feedback of what it's like to participate with our district councils. And so last year, we did celebrate the 50th anniversary of the district council system. And so part of our efforts were to redesign and update the city's website to make it more informative and accessible to residents. Yeah, this website has an introductory video that covers a lot of what we covered in the first part of the presentation and has a directory with contact information and website links for all the district councils that we keep up to date, as I have new information about who's working at the councils. And so these are just a couple of ways that folks can get involved with the district councils, find your district council on our interactive map, whether you live there, work there, play, and you're just in that area often. There's a lot of opportunities to get connected. Our early notification system, you can sign up by district council so you can stay up to date on applications and proposals that we send to district councils for feedback. You can attend an event, board committee meeting, volunteer at an event or with an initiative or to run for an actual seat on the board. And then these are just a couple takeaways that cover district councils being our neighborhood partners. that connect residents to city government, that we administer and distribute funding as the budgets are adopted, and that the fiscal year 2026 budget did include an increase in funding that is really supportive to district councils, and that there was a one-time investment to support that CDBG funding, and that we really do encourage folks to get involved and make our district councils stronger. have my contact slide and can address questions and this is a flyer that we recently created distributed out to a lot of our communications and outreach staff to have out in their efforts and have district councils use them that's a big part of we want the city to help us with the visibility of our work and how to get connected so Slowly but surely, we're trying to meet some of those needs with our existing resources. But I can be open for remaining questions.

OK, we'll pivot back to Council President Aker. Thank you for letting Zoe finish her presentation.

Thanks, Madam Chair. I'm a rule follower. First of all, thank you. This is really helpful. And to my colleagues, if your appetite is whetted for more information about district councils, it is, not to be a spoiler alert, but it is one of the three topics that the Audit Committee is considering. So as Council Member Coleman, Chair Johnson, and I come around, if this is of interest to you, this is something that the Audit Committee could also dig into further. And Zoe, I guess I was just wondering, going back to the funding formula, as you noted, it does give additional dollars and so additional consideration for the fact that a district might have more residents in poverty or more residents who speak a language other than English. I'm wondering if, along with the additional dollars, do we have specific expectations for them how district councils are supposed to be providing additional services to engage those residents. I'm thinking about things like translators and interpreters. I'm thinking about child care. I'm thinking about food, which they're actually expressly not allowed to buy with our dollars. We're giving additional money, and then what are we expecting on the back end in terms of how they're engaging differently with those folks who have those additional barriers?

I would say that's a mechanism that we still kind of need to figure out, but that we would be you know, in a position to have clarified expectations around. I think previously to this increase or any conversations around the increase, I don't know how much we've tied, yes, we're increasing the funding because we know we need that to stabilize and sustain our operations, but also how are we evaluating how you're going the extra mile for some of these areas, and so things that I've thought about or have seen opportunity, we have our language access coordinator in HERO, we have our language access plan, and we have areas where we know that there is language barriers, and so how do we make sure that that information is, one, coming to district councils, they're aware that they may be in a district that experiences language barriers. And so that's something that we can follow up a little bit more intentionally in the work plan process of what does that look like. Right now they have equity evaluation forms, which they kind of elaborate on barriers that they have or communities that they're looking to do increased engagement with. A lot of it is around how do we provide child care, transportation, engagement incentives, increased Language access support. And my response lately has been, we have this increase in funding. It is an eligible use of funding. Prioritize it. Share it with us that that's how you're doing it. And also share what that budget impact is. Is it more or less than you're experiencing? Would you do it for all your monthly board meetings? Or is it only certain community meetings? Or is it your forums? That's where we want to have a little bit more conversation to have them, one, help initiate and lead that, but that we're having a back and forth and having more information to help address that. So I would say we haven't been in a position where it's like, oh, this contract here, we want to prioritize X, Y, and Z. It's been primarily these are the four required activities. We want to make sure we have clear understanding of how those get carried out and reported on. And then we're also tracking what your individual district is prioritizing. And so I think that's just that other layer of asking for more information and how are we bringing the information, and then following up on that same one. Yeah.

Well, I appreciate just being able to hear through that. And for folks that just want a refresher on the distribution, on the overall funding allocation for this year, it's on page 27 in the contract form for the application to just show you the different breakdowns by district councils. Predominantly large amount of the district councils that are receiving additional resources are on the east side so I think as long as I think being able to hear a little bit more of how they're intentionally engaging communities of color and I know several of the organizations have organizers and Task force that have been in existence to try to engage renters and have been showing up in different ways within several of our communications and our or communities that are there. So just placing that in as a refresher, but really, truly appreciate you taking the time as well to provide that update. And if folks have additional questions, we'll be sure to reach out as a follow-up. I just thought it would be really important because we don't have, we'll hear from PED's budget and the HRA budget in a couple of weeks. But I don't know if it would go into a steep of a dive into district council funding. And because that was a conversation and what felt like an intentional decision made by this body, we thought that it would be more appropriate to have it stand alone in this conversation platform.

So really appreciate it. Thank you.

And thanks to the team as well for putting together those numbers and resources ahead of time.

Yeah, and I know this is the first time this information has kind of been a more formal program update, so hopefully it provides that baseline and we can follow up if there's other questions or areas of interest.

Okay, let's make sure that we ask that question for district councils and see if we can't bring that forward for budget conversations as well. Just wanting to know specifically if they noticed a difference. related to whether they think the funding piece has been helpful to not have to deal with some of the federal pieces of CDBG. And if the answer comes back that because of the allocation and the timing of the allocation, we might be better suited to have that discussion in 2027, also let us know that.

Okay.

Thank you so much.

Sounds good. All right. Great. We don't have anything else in front of us. I just wanted to share and take personal time of privilege that the next community engagement on the budget will be on August 13th in my ward. So it'll be over at Battle Creek Rec Center from 530 to 7 on August 13th in the evening. We have a busy day on the 13th, so there'll be more details as well coming out of the mayor's office, I'm sure. regarding the state of the budget address and the library address and all the details. But August 13th will be a great day for folks to make sure that there are all things budget. With that, we are adjourned.