Budget Committee - Regular Meeting

Calling the City Council Budget and Finance Committee to order. Today we have one presentation which is the Public Works five year capital plan. Today our presenter will be Nick Peterson from Public Works. Welcome to the chambers.

Thank you, Council Vice President. Nick Peterson with Public Works. Happy to present our five year plan to you today for the next five year term of 2026 to 2030. This is done annually, starts in the fall of every year that we'll start to have really rigorous interactions. And then, of course, in December, the five year plan is is asked for approval by the city council.

So this year, that will be December 3. When the item comes before council, it actually split up a little bit. And so we tried to get in here as quickly as we could to have this conversation with you. So outline of our presentation, we'll talk through the kind of the chart of the five year plan, show a map of what it looks like graphically, and then also talk through funding sources and projects we did this year and projects that will come up next year. And we want to save some time for common sense at the end, but I do know that we do have Ruben Collins, our Transportation Planning Manager, is in the process.

If he hasn't met with you and your office, in the process of trying to have those conversations occur. So I know we're reaching out, trying to have those and give the one on one attention that you deserve. So this is what the five year capital plan looks like. This chart and really the focus here, we've got a number of columns. We've got a number of rows. The columns, of course, are the five years. The rows are the funding sources. And so this is what it looks like, generally speaking. The five year plan is funded. There's just one year of funding that comes with it.

So it's that first year of 2026 that I really want to talk about in particular that we're focused on here. So we can see that and I'm going go through each of the funding sources individually, but I just know that there's a lot of numbers here, and so I don't want to dwell on this as our primary graphic. So geographically, what our projects would look like for 2026. You can see there's a whole lot of stuff throughout the city and actually for all five years between the county, the state, and city led projects. This is what a lot of the transportation improvements look like in the city.

And particular, we will have some collaboration with the county, some collaboration actually with Metro Transit, which I'm gonna be excited to to talk about a bit later, which is kind of a a first of its kind type of collaboration with with Metro Transit. Transit, but a lot of continued mill and overlay and reconstruction here. And I want to jump through these at a greater level of detail. If you look at that chart, the first row is street reconstruction bonds. These are issued annually for infrastructure improvements.

Dollars 12,500,000.0 of reconstruction funding comes through street reconstruction bonds and $3,000,000 for residential mill and overlay on an annual basis. So that's a total of $15,500,000 Some funding is able to be carried over in a judicious fashion as allowed, but every year, it's about 15,500,000 The next big chunk is municipal state aid. We call it MSA. The primary funding source for this is gas tax. There are a couple of other elements like your license tab renewal and that sort of thing that also help fund this, but primarily it's state gas tax.

It's formula funding based on the size of the municipality and also the needs that that municipality has. Needs is just a it's the way that the statute tries to elaborate on or quantify how much infrastructure we have that is eligible for for our state aid funding. So it's population and needs evenly between the two, and that funding can be used on MSA routes, but it also must follow MSA standards. So it can't be used on on any corridor throughout the city. Then the next big city funding bucket is common sense, and that's the local option sales tax.

And that is three quarters of 1%. And as I noted, we'll have some time at the end to walk through that, but the twenty year program that has some identified corridors and a lot of good work happening there. Then if we continue through city sources of funding here, we've got the general fund. And general fund is one of those really, I I would call it the gold standard funding source because it can pay for things that some of those other sources just simply can't pay for. So the MSA, again, must be spent on MSA routes and according to MSA standards.

But general fund is really helpful that we can spend it on the local system. So we can't spend just any source of funding on our local residential streets, for example. So sidewalks and mill and overlay and alley work are going to require that there be general fund revenues available for those types of improvements. It's also used in projects if things come up that are not eligible for those other funds. So we always try to hold on to general fund until the end of a project.

And even when construction is complete, sometimes we're still going through a process of trying to close out that contract with a contractor. And even after construction is complete, that money might still be needed for a year or two after that. Capital improvement bonds. There's a funding program for capital improvement bonds, and we've got some exciting additions for the future of the five year plan where sidewalk grinding is anticipated to be something that's funded for a number of years, a much more cost effective way of maintaining sidewalks and improving sidewalks. Of course, assessments.

Assessments are applied for reconstruction costs and the mill and overlay costs as well. Externally, we have county, MnDOT, and also federal funding. The county and the state both have competitive solicitations that are available, and we also may cooperate on projects with those entities. So it might be that the city leads a project and they would partner with us, or we might lead a project. We might lead a project, they partner with us.

They might lead a project, and we partner with them. But they both have cost participation policies. And so one of the things that not just the city of St. Paul, but also when we talk about the county, all of the cities in Ramsey County are working on trying to come up with a more equitable policy with Ramsey County to make sure that we're not paying we're paying our fair share and no more than that. All counties across the state have developed cost participation policies, and we can spend a lot of our money county projects if they let us.

And so that's a big initiative that we've got going forward. Likewise with MnDOT, there's also every city and every county in the state have a requirement to cost participate on MnDOT projects, and we're going through a process with select cities and counties throughout the state to make sure that the state policy is equitable as it can be for us. And then on the federal funding end of things, of course, we can get earmarks and also regional solicitation grants that are competitive. And then some more more recent big external funding sources here. When we look at the Kellogg 3rd Street Bridge, it's a great example of a legislative appropriation.

We have bonding on that bridge. That bridge couldn't happen without a substantial amount of funding from either a federal earmark or state bonding. So just a great example there and very specific projects that those have to be used on. Then relatively new is the transportation advancement account, which is TAA is the short abbreviated name of that, and that's that metro delivery fee that came out last year. And we were counting on that to pick up our local share on federally funded projects in particular.

Our transportation planning division does a fantastic job of getting federal money. However, it comes with the requirement that we bring some local money to those projects. Typically, it's eightytwenty is the split. The city is usually or the local county or city is required to bring a 20% local amount. So it's a really great way to leverage our local money, but it means we have to have that local funding available to do it.

And so TAA is a great example of how we can leverage those federal dollars. Now taking a break from funding. Doing a lot of talking, trying to get through that quickly. Street projects for 2025, this has been an enormous year. I think if we were to add up all the projects we're doing, including bridges, it's somewhere on the order of $200,000,000 I think, for construction, which is enormous, absolutely enormous.

So public works, particularly on the capital end, very busy, very, very busy this year. And some representative projects here are Jackson, which is a common sense project, just kind of up the hill from the, from the hospital, Robert Street, and I'll show some pictures and talk a little more detail about these. But, you know, two two really big projects. And when you talk about the bridge, there there's a lot of stuff going on in kind of the east end of downtown, and it's not lost on us trying to really ramp up our efforts to communicate and be proactive with affected stakeholders. As we move outside of downtown, Grand Avenue, another common cent project, a challenging business district that looks fantastic.

One of the first common cent projects to get done. Pleasant Avenue, this is over by the Pleasant Arena and the yard waste site that I might frequent. The Wheelock Grotto Phase one project just East of Como, the lake there and then a bike boulevard on the West Side and the Cleveland Railroad crossing. And I want to talk a little more about those when we get to the pictures. Our mill and overlay projects, actually had a lot of mill and overlay projects happen this year.

George Street, really excited to have George Street done, a lot of safety improvements and just pure condition. Fronts from Western to Rice, there's also some bike elements that go with that. I hope we can all do that. Ruth Algonquin, that mill and overlay on the East Side was delayed because of the metro transit work that was occurring. So really excited that that was finally able to get done because whether it was on the detour route or it was just simply closed for a while, it made it challenging, and we didn't want to make things worse.

So really excited that that got done. And then a number of phases of residential mill overlay projects that got done. So super excited about those. And what these look like, we're adding facilities that weren't there from a multimodal standpoint, making things so much better. This corridor was really challenged before and really excited to see that we've got multimodal connectivity here and people don't have to trip over things.

There's, you know, we don't have street lights in the middle of the really narrow sidewalk, for example. So really great stuff that happened here. Robert Street, this is one of those projects that a lot of engineers and contractors alike try to avoid because and it's so risky. Not every contractor wants to bid on something like this, and a lot of people don't have the skill set to go in and construct it or to design it or manage the construction. So really challenging. And I mean there are utilities everywhere. And to protect them, work around them, make sure they don't get damaged is really complicated. So this is a really complicated project, and it just has all kinds of surprises because it's really old around every corner.

Thank you, chair. Mister Peterson, like, I appreciate you bringing up this picture of Roberts Street just to show how, like you mentioned, complex and the high level of risk with reconstructing the streets. Could you share, like, this level of complexity? How common is that in in a lot of the streets that we're looking at reconstructing? Is this something typical that you would see in a in a street downtown? Or, you know, are most of our streets gonna be this this difficult because of how old that they are?

Council vice president, council member, I would offer that every street downtown is gonna be very similar to this. Mhmm. The commercial corridors tend to be the next tier of complexity. But really, just about everything that's downtown, there are so many utilities, and they tend to be really old and haven't been touched in a while. Residential streets don't have that level, but I would say just about anything we do downtown is really challenging.

And not only are a lot of people impacted by those projects, but they tend to be the ones that are riskiest. And we did all kind we tried to use every tool we could to investigate things here, but all those corridors require that higher level downtown of of investigation. And to answer your question or

Yes. Yeah. Thanks.

Alright. Then Pleasant Street. So this is Pleasant near the arena. A lot of water over here. And one really exciting thing about this project is this will be a solar lighting pilot for us, where we've partnered with a university and got funding twice, actually.

People liked the idea of doing this study so much that we actually got additional money through the local road research board to study the feasibility of solar lighting. And so the corridor will be designed for the ability to have conventional lighting on it, but also we will be working with really, really technical people to make sure that it's as optimal as it can be and to see is this something that, you know, at some point can be scaled, you know, not just in St. Paul, but elsewhere. So it was really it's really cool to see so many other cities, counties and DOT engaged in this to see whether that's feasible in the future. So excited to look into that next year.

I've got an uninformed question. So on the previous slide with the picture, can you tell us like when I look at that I just see a giant hole in the ground, not going to lie. Can you tell us what we're even looking at? Sure. Like what if because like I hear you say there's a lot of other infrastructure in place, you have to work around it and I feel like that's probably depicted in this picture but I just don't know what I'm looking at. I have no reference point for this. So can you tell us like we're looking at a huge hole but like what about this picture, like why did you choose it for the presentation? I'm assuming it's showing us something that we're not inferring or I'm definitely not inferring. Can you tell us what we're looking at in terms of like I'm assuming there's yeah, I'm not even going to say it. There's things in there.

Will you tell us what we're looking on the right for the right hand side with all the cables and things?

Council vice president, on the left, we if I just kinda start left to right in The the picture on the left, you can see that there are a lot of pipes laying on the ground on on the right side. So there's a lot of water main that's out here being staged, and those materials are, you know, going to be kept on-site. The excavators are kind of in the intersection, so to speak. So they dig a hole inside the hole on the right. And at the end of the day, projects begin with the stuff that's deeper, a road a road projects, and they can be really frustrating for people because it looks like there's you know, you're digging a hole, you're filling it back in.

You're digging a hole, you're filling it back in in the same spot. Riley ahead. A very linear fashion get installed in the ground, and the trench continues to move. You know, they do removals, and then the pipes go in. And the types of things that you encounter are the picture on the right where, you're playing reverse Jenga to try and put things together and work around utilities that are there.

So the types of utilities, there's a lot of telecom conduit that's in the picture. The orange facilities, generally speaking, the type of orange pipe that you might see out and about is going to be a telecom type of a pipe that might have fiber optic or copper cables, that kind of thing in it. There can be a lot of metallic pipes that are out here. And so you'd have gas services, you know, like the the the rusty pipe there towards the top. You can also have water services that are gonna be metallic.

There is a a sewer in the kinda background that's teal ish. And, you know, there's gonna be even outside of the picture, there will be things up out of the excavation that's temporary to make sure that those services are maintained. So there can be a lot of stuff out there.

Yeah. I really appreciate that. Yep. Councilmember Jones.

Thanks, chair. I'll just add, mister Peterson, could you talk about, like, the ability to locate these items underground before excavation? Yeah.

Council Vice President, Council Member. Prior to construction starting or even prior to putting together plan documents, we had hired a few firms to help us doing some subsurface utility engineering downtown, just acknowledging that this was going be a challenge. And we did ground penetrating radar for the whole corridor and tried to look for anything and everything. Anomalies were flagged. Ground penetrating radar is kind of like going to the doctor and getting a I'm totally going to mess this up with the, like, the sonogram, you know, to see what lies below.

I mean, you can tell my kids are older, so I'm not going to remember the name of the procedures. But, you know, you're looking to see, you know, what anomalies might be there. Is there a box below ground? Is there a pipe below ground? Is there, you know, some kind of a void? Is there a big foundation or something in there? So we went through that level. And then when those things were flagged, we did some potholing to to to then do do

And

about Pleasant, then the Westside Bike Boulevard. In this picture, you actually see staff painting out in the field. This is an exciting project to do some quick build improvements here to see what types of things might work out in permanent fashion in the future. There are materials

that are

put in place rapidly, not necessarily meant to be there forever and ever and ever, but to do things quickly in a, you know, a safer fashion than what's out there today. And it was really cool to see staff do this. It was an exciting day, I think, for staff to to be engaged and, you know, do do some teamwork and actually save a lot of money at the same time. And then Cleveland Railroad Crossing. So every now and then, we get questions about CIB, the capital improvement bonds, the generic funding programs that we have.

And this is an example of one of those, the railroad crossing line item that it's kind of seeded every so many years. There was a little bit of money that went in there. And this project costs over $350,000 just to do two rail crossings, put in ramps and replace the crossing and partner with the railroad. A lot of effort, but it took a lot of time to get there. So I just this is a really good example of this is what about ten years, I think, of funding gets us with the railroad crossing line item, just as an example.

But excited that this finally got done because it was so bad for so long. Then our 2026 projects, we've got some pretty big projects lined up for 2026. The first three here, University, Earl, and Pelham, are common sense projects. We're still in the process of trying to get ahead of every project, and the common sense projects, that's no different. So trying to get them all started as as early as possible.

And and really this year, you're gonna start seeing that there's what we've identified as precon money. So that's that's meant to help with project development early early on before construction comes. So university is a project that's pretty far through that process and and ready for construction. Earl, those conversations are are maybe newer, fresher for Earl, and Pelham is is poised for for construction next year. So those are the three new big reconstruction projects for for next year.

Wheelock Vrado will be the second phase of an existing project in the area just east of Como Park. There will be pain pedestrian improvements along Pain. It'll be 11 intersections that get bump outs, medians, that kind of a thing to try and tighten up that corridor, high volume corridor. And then there's a safe routes to school initiative here along Hamlin, up to Hoyte, a little bit along Hoyte just to facilitate safe routes to school.

Awesome. Question from the council president. Thanks, Chair. Mr.

Peterson, I was just wondering if you could say a little bit more about the pre construction dollars. It's the first time I'm seeing that show up on the five year plan, and I know that there is work that has to happen before construction. But what is that work? And why are we only budgeting for it with common sense? And is it usually two years before the project begins? Or what's the sort of in advance time frame when we would be doing preconstruction?

Council Vice President, Council President. It's a funny order to respond, actually. The I call them development costs. So every project has development costs, and they are specific to that project. And just a general rule of thumb is roughly 25% of the value of a capital construction project is the soft development costs to support and develop that project.

So that would include surveying, public engagement, preliminary design, final design, you know, the big role exhibits that you might see at at public meetings, the nerdy black and white plan sheets that we would put together. Everything that it takes to deliver a project is is in that. We wanna make that that advanced planning for projects just happen so much sooner. We're trying to move every project up. I know in the last decade alone, things have been progressed a lot, but ideally, we'd find ourselves in a two to three year window for projects in advance.

The more complex they are, the earlier we want it to be. But yeah, it's really everything that's project development related. And it's always, you know, whatever that project is, those costs are always funded by that project rather than general staff. And one of the peculiarities in public works is actually that a lot of our staff are funded by projects. So we operate much, much like a business. So we have to have those projects to fund staff. And we actually have very few staff that are general fund funded in terms of the capital delivery end of things.

Just thanks, Madam Chair. I'm just curious, it looks like that all makes sense to me, but it looks like I'm only seeing the preconstruction again on the common sense projects as opposed to like the St. Paul Streets projects where again I assume those also need preconstruction. So does that just come from a different source?

Council president, the common sense has a new planning process that came with it. And so just because there are a lot of questions that are coming out of it and making sure that we're being planful for this enormous program that has to last for twenty years, We're identifying that stuff earlier to make sure, a, that we've got the money available. For that type of those are all big projects and they require consultants. And we need to have money identified for those projects where we're gonna have consultants because I I can't legally engage a contractor without having the the money set aside for that. On the other projects like state aid, we actually have a pot.

There there actually is an account that already has money in there, and we're always already cash flowing that. But the common sense is just it's different because those are the projects where with you know, every one of those projects, we're gonna end up engaging consultants, and we need to have that money identified earlier. And I know there will be a lot of eyes on common sense, and we're trying to be real clear on what that's for.

So just to like maybe go one step more on that. So it's about flavor of dollars, but also because it's coming from a if state aid is coming from a pot of money, you can project out what your soft costs could look like in terms of it being included in said pot of money? Or like I think the because the question is like why aren't we identifying sort of what the pre cost or soft costs of our other projects? But it sounds like that we maybe we are and they're just included in sort of the projected project costs in terms of like what we would need to draw down from said pot of money for state money.

So council

Or vice

are they just like two or are we comparing apples to oranges? Because I think even the line thread that I'm pulling on then is even around the cost, like the true cost of doing business then is some staff are getting paid through the general fund and some are project based, but we're not drawing down those funds from sort of the state aid part of money. But so the question is, do we have projected costs for projects? Like if 25% of the capital construction cost is going towards soft costs, is that included in the pot of money that we're drying down or is that not included in our project costs when we go for those asks?

Council Vice President, we do anticipate those soft costs on other flavors of money. However, whether it is something that's going to require a million plus dollar contract with a consultant is an important matter. Just the magnitude of those projects, the common sense projects tend to be very large. They're corridors. So the dollar, just the sheer magnitude of that needs to be accounted for in a different fashion.

We are we do anticipate the soft cost for the other flavors of money where needed, but the magnitude and the way that those projects are delivered generally with internal sources makes it so that it's not showing up on the five year plan per se. There are some instances where it does, but generally speaking, it's already accounted for in our program that we have for state aid.

Okay. Yes. I appreciate that. That offers greater clarity. Thank you.

And then for 2026 here, we've got St. Anthony, know, around on the North, Snelling to Marion as a mill and overlay project, another Ivy Birmingham, another residential mill and overlay project. The one I'm really excited about here, and this is where I talked about Metro Transit being a partner, is Metro Transit will be doing some mill and overlay work on Selby between Snelling and Summit, and they're gonna do that because they have a special source of funding that makes it because it it lines up. It's in parallel with one of their transit routes. And so they're actually going to do that.

We're going to do concrete work. We didn't want to we didn't want them to walk away because they have they have money that has a deadline that has to be spent next year. And what what this means is the bituminous work will happen next year, and the concrete work is gonna have to happen in twenty seventh. Ideally, we wouldn't do that, but in order to meet Metro Transit's time line and make sure that money doesn't walk out of St. Paul, that was the best we could come up with.

So very excited to be able to partner with Metro Transit on that, though. So at this stage, unless there are other big questions, I was going to turn it over to Ruben to real quickly walk through common sense, and we should do a time check-in my end because I feel like I'm talking a lot more than I anticipated.

No worries. 10:37 right

now. Ruben Collins.

Hello, Ruben Collins. Welcome.

Thank you. So 10:37 now, we have until 10:45. Is that correct?

11:30. Yeah. We have until we have until 11:30. I think a lot of my colleagues would appreciate some time back today. So please take your time, go through the presentation and the timeline that you were Okay.

So I have some information to share about the common cent program. As this group are, you know, knows very well, the common cent funding of the local sales tax was approved by Saint Paul voters in the 2023. And we have been, you know, I'd say busy working between then and now trying to determine exactly what that program looks like, Exactly what are the projects, what order will we be delivering them, on what timeline, and how do we, you know, how do we start to turn this into a full program. So we've been doing a lot of work like reviewing the cost estimates that we prepared before we ever presented the idea to Saint Paul voters. You know, forecasting the sales tax revenue, making sure that we, you know, think we're going to collect all the money that we that we thought we would.

Going through a technical scoring of each of the projects, and doing some other just general program work associated with the common sense funds. We know that it is a twenty year program, is the idea. And before the vote in 2023, this map or a map very similar to this was presented to the public. And the message to the public was if this is approved by voters, these are the streets where we will spend those funds. So that's our intent is to turn this map into projects that we can deliver in a timely manner.

That means many of the lines on this map are kind of broken up into individual projects. For example, the line at the very top, it's labeled number five on this this map. That's Arlington. That line is about three miles long. Generally speaking, we think we can deliver projects up to one mile in length in a given construction season, and that is even that is definitely kind of pushing the upper limit of what we can accomplish in a single construction year.

So that's an example where this line number five would split into three different projects, probably delivered over three years. And generally speaking, we think we can deliver about three separate projects each calendar year through the common cent program. The primary limiting factor in our ability to deliver projects is our own internal staff capacity. And that's true even even leaning on consultants to help us with that work. We think that's the we think that's a that's a fairly aggressive pace for us to move at here. So this is this is all of the corridors. The numbers on on this map are just identifying numbers. Those are not signifying any sort of priority order or anything.

I had a question about staff capacity. So if, we have projected dollars out for the next two decades, I'm just sort of wondering around and maybe it's a bit rhetorical, but shouldn't we staff differently then and not rely so much on consultants? Like wouldn't it be better if we hired those folks in house?

Council Vice President, so we're doing both. We have used the common sense funding to hire a few additional staff internally to help with this. And we are also using consultants. Generally speaking, using consultants will increase our capacity to deliver projects. It changes how we deliver those projects, but it increases the speed at which we will be able to deliver projects.

And what sort of amount yep. And I see your hand. Thank you. And I I think maybe I heard incorrectly, but it sounded like there was about a million dollars for consultants. And if that dollar amount isn't correct, I just would be interested per project how much we're spending on consultants.

I just kind of wonder the question, like I get the sort of efficiency sake, but also if you're running a pretty lean team to bringing in more people into the city to create a similar knowledge set and across staff to build the capacity of our staff as well but internally and have that knowledge in house then if we're just projecting out looking at decades of projects. I just sort of wonder if isn't that more of a preference because consultants have, know, their hourly rate is based on other things that they're charging for, that maybe is cheaper or better done to the city, right? So I just sort of wonder wouldn't it be better for us to take in more of those costs in house and hire staff for us to do that? And then heaven forbid we help build out the knowledge of the ecosystem of folks that do very specific jobs to help with other areas that are looking at larger based projects. So hearing kind of connecting like Nick's conversation around there aren't that many contractors they even know to how to do this type of work.

And then if we're looking at these major projects for common sense, thinking about how we're building staff knowledge here at the city.

Council Vice President, Sean Kirshaw, the Public Works Director. I'm not sure if I'm going to if I heard correctly the last part of your questions. What I heard in the first part was, why are we hiring outside consultants to do it versus staffing up to do it? Is that correct? Yeah. Council vice president and members, there are benefits to both, and as Ruben Collins said, we are doing both. We've hired additional staff and we're using consultants. There's an there's engineering costs in all projects that are more or less the same percentage of a project cost, no matter what. So you we estimate that, you know, it could be, let's just say 30%. That 30% could be spent on a consultant or an internal staff.

There's not really a cost difference. On a per hour basis, there is. Right. So, what we look at is when we if we have a $10,000,000 construction project, consulting engineering will be about $3,000,000 on that. And again, that could be spent on staff or that could be spent on outside consultants. So, the total cost will be $13,000,000 either way. In the short term, there are big advantages of using consultants to be ready for these projects. Because we're delivering projects that are big in scope, big in complexity, big in terms of the public income, public impact on a very short timeline. And so internally, we like to spend two or three years on a full reconstruction. Some of these were more or less delivering in two years.

And so hiring outside consultants helps to deliver us, helps us to deliver that project more completely on this timeline. So, it's both. Does that answer your question? Does. Yeah.

It does. I think just there's a really strong case for us hiring people as well in addition to then recognizing the short timeline and the sort of sprint that we have before us but recognizing there are more projects in the pipeline. So how are we building staff capacity? Dare I say sort of like learning and swapping skills from the folks that can walk in ready to do these projects but then how are we building our own staff capacity and expertise then to have more of this to start weighing less on the consultants and more internal staff but then heaven forbid we're building like a really, really strong team that stays at the city to help us take in more of these larger projects. So just kind of thinking through that.

But I hear sort of like the sprint section requires us to stand up things really quickly but then recognizing that we have so many projects. How are then we thinking about ways that as we build up our own staff with that knowledge set, the less reliant we can become on external consultants. I think that would personally be great. And I think there's a strong case for kind of more efficiency and staff learning, lateral learning from each other that I think we would be really interested in supporting.

Council Vice President, two things if that's okay. Please. One is, yes, we agree. And we're in the sprint phase right now. So, we're absolutely in the sprint phase right now. Over time, I would agree with you that that's what we need. This is a twenty year program, especially we've learned in the last year and a half what additional capabilities we will need. You know, we're learning that as we go. Each project may need additional resources in areas that we can't fully staff up for. So Pleasant Avenue had a lot of groundwater issues related to that.

We may or may not have that. In that case, we well might have them. So, each project will flex a little bit. In the short term, we're in the sprint. In the long term, I agree with you.

Yeah, that sounds great. I really appreciate that explanation. We've got a question from Councilmember Jost.

Thanks, Sheri. It's a question and sort of a comment. I'll say, so we just opened the Grand Avenue project. For example, we used outside consultants on the Grand Avenue project. As someone who is an outside design consultant themselves, it's very typical for municipalities to hire design consultants for the reasons that director Kirshan Rubin described.

We have twenty year projects coming, and some are going to be big, some are going to be small. So it's hiring those outside consultants that help you to be able to manage that work. And the city of Saint Paul Public Works provides a lot of services to our city, but I don't really see them as being a we're not providing design we're not designers that provide design services in the same way we can, but we're not really built for that in the same way that a private company is to be to be able able to fulfill those services in the same way. We're more so providing the continuity for these projects and hiring people as needed. That's just not really necessarily way that our department is built.

And so I think that really helps us be able to complete these projects as efficiently as possible.

Yeah, I think that makes sense. I think for me I have a very strong interest in how we reduce outsourcing and privatizing things that we should be doing on staff. So, Choe Yang, I

saw your hand. Thanks, Choe Kim. I do have a question related to funding. It's not about the comments sent though for let me see here. Nick, it was for a slide that you presented on. Okay, the metro delivery fee, would you all be able to share in terms of like the projection for that for this year, what does that look like? Is it meeting your expectations at all or not?

Could you repeat the question?

Sorry. The

metro delivery fee, like in terms of the projection we're hoping to get this year, where are we at with that? Has it met our expectations at all?

Yeah. Council member, I'm going to look to Ann Weber to correct me here if I'm off, but it is not meeting our expectations. The TAA funding program is, I want to say that we anticipated about $740,000 this year, and it's looking like that's going to be in the neighborhood of $400,000 is my recollection. So it's actually that's concerning. We thought it was going to increase. I mean, everybody thought it was going to increase, not just St. Paul, but everybody that benefits from that was hopeful that it would provide a lot more money and continue increasing into the future.

Okay. Thank you. Just a question for OFS. Is that reflected in our in the budget proposal too?

Councilmember, so we do have a line on our five year plan that anticipates what is planned for the TAA funding source. So it does show up in there.

Okay, great. Thank you. And then I have a this is a different topic here, but I'm wondering if you all can share about when it comes to the projects that you're sharing to us here, what does the collaboration look like with PED? And I'm bringing that up. Now this is not a city project, but you all have been hearing me talk a lot about the Arcade Street construction happening in my ward and there's many more phases of that to happen like going into Ward 7 too pretty soon here.

There we've Councilor Johnson and I we've heard a lot from businesses that are impacted by this. I think some of you have too. We even received a letter from the Black Business Network of Minnesota about some businesses being on the verge of eviction. We've been hearing all about this from ESABA, D5, many other organizations all year round. And it was really a miracle what happened at the legislation where they approved 200 ks for mitigation funds.

And that's just something we don't see a lot of. But I'm wondering when we are doing these sort of projects, are you hearing that sort of, I would say, concern from our business communities especially about the impact to their business? Like what if I'm not sure what sort of collaboration happens deeply within PD or Public Works around this. But if you can talk a bit about that, that'd be helpful because I just don't want us to get into a situation like this again where we have businesses that are going to have to close their doors down because of construction. And the other thing I want to say too is that when I recently we had a presentation from Ramsey County just telling us about the property tax trends and the outlook of that And we're even seeing a decrease in tax revenue coming from our commercial base, which is concerning.

And so I feel like we it's our role and all of us here at the table here to try and keep our businesses doors open for as long as possible and make sure that they're successful.

Council Vice President and Council Member, I will start, and I'm sure Director Kershaw will have his own comments here, then I welcome him to interject. On our projects, first and foremost, the things that we, as public works project delivery, you know, agents have control over is how projects are planned. So we try to be mindful that whether it's a city project, a county project, a state project, that we we try to have influence over those projects to make sure that the duration is as short as it can be, that it's broken up into logical pieces rather than having an entire corridor that's closed at one time. You know, making sure that if a road is closed, it's closed for a reason. So, you know, kind of first and foremost there, there's also the paradigm shift where we're trying to get all of our own projects and our partner projects that might have those types of business impacts to really bring business owners into projects and have conversations with them about, you know, what what can we do in planning or delivering this project, particularly just during construction to help ease some of those some of those pain points that are there and a workshop.

So like on Robert Street, one of the things that we wanna do when MnDOT does their work here just on the other side of the river across from us is to make sure that there's a staging workshop, to make sure that the project is trying to have those conversations. When are your deliveries coming, and what are your big events, and what concerns do you have about this? So that is really, really important. Very generally speaking then, in terms of how we partner with PED, we enjoy a good partnership with PED and try to work with PED to understand what those sensitivities might be, how we might be able to promote things along the corridor during construction. I know Grand Avenue is really, for us, a good example of trying to develop a business toolkit for our projects that we hope to implement on all of our business type corridors.

So my voice is starting to fail me. The other aspect, I mean so the legislature approved some funding for businesses, but at the end of the day, I wonder what the effectiveness is of that funding amount because I once it gets distributed, if it's a few thousand dollars to each business, I'm not sure whether that fixes things or if it creates other problems. Just one of those kind of high level concerns that I have related to how that money is dispersed and just, is it enough and, you know, what expectations go with it. But I want to make sure Director Hirshaw has a chance if he wants to add anything.

The two it's a really important question. And I think this year, we arguably have seen two of the toughest corridors for commercial or most impactful. Three, if you include Robert. Rice Street that the county did. We did a segment of Grand Avenue with a lot of businesses on it, and then Robert. The the two most important things are not financial assistance to the business. It's coordination among the agencies. So when we do traffic plans, we're not stepping on each other, and we're trying to minimize conflicts between the work of different projects. That's number one. Number two, or what should be first, is long term planning.

As a business, you want to be able to know a few years ahead if you're a property owner. What will my rents need to be? How do I anticipate? How do I coordinate that? And what you saw in Grand Avenue was at least three years worth of planning for that. So we knew the businesses individually. They knew the segment just like Nick said. They knew when things would happen. We were able to coordinate with them. And most importantly, if you were there, and I was there the day of the opening and walked the businesses with Steve Dodge, our construction engineer.

The thing that was most impactful to them was that there was somebody whose job it was as a consultant to be there daily to coordinate between the contractor and the businesses. It's a ton of time. We can't staff up for this. And that person's sole job was on Grand Avenue, be the representative between Forest Lake Forest Construction, which did a great job, and the individual businesses. That, at the end of the project, I think was most helpful.

There is a construction project is always disruptful, but the more planning and the more coordination. I mentioned Rice Street because we think the county did a good job there. There were some really tough situations like in front of the flooring store. But, I really think our county partners did a good job communicating with the businesses there in a tough situation.

Thank you all. Just a follow-up comment. I really appreciate the response and just how you've really laid out the different things that you are considering when it comes to the projects here. I am very supportive of that and just want to share my support that whatever is needed to be able to make that happen in terms of like the conversations, the coordination, the collaboration and how we can make the projects happen as soon as possible and under a really short timeframe so that we can complete it quicker. Like I think that that is a huge win for all of us, especially the businesses that get hurt the most.

And I do want to share that when I have had conversations with MnDOT before, especially about the arcade project in my ward, They've often shared with me, we wish we could do what the city of St. Paul did, what public works does around having a deeper communication with the community, being very engaged, and also even having flexibility around signage. So it seems like there's a lot of different departments out there in other state other government entities doing work. And they're really admiring what is happening here at our city level. And so I just wanted to share that because I really appreciate the work that you all have done, especially in just trying to intervene whenever it is a project that is outside of like this plan you are sharing us here.

Like you all are very engaged in that. And I want to encourage you to continue doing that. And like overall, this you know, what I'm sharing here is really just an effort for us to continue making sure that like PED and Public Works, that we continue that collaboration and also deepen it too. Because I know there's a lot of movement right now at the legislature to try and mitigate the impacts for businesses. I just even got out of a meeting with our staff from the ITR office and they shared a bit with me about that. And I think it's helpful for us to be able

to

capture what sort of impact there is to businesses especially so that if we push something like this at the state level, there's just even more justification to why they need to be supporting our county and our cities even more with funding.

I'd be happy to spend more time on this at another time, but we can follow-up with you in writing on the things that we go through in terms of communication, the structure of that, and the efforts that we're taking with our other transportation partners to do this work better together.

Thank you all. That's great. We got a question from Councilmember Johnson.

Thank you. Excuse me. When Councilmember Bing actually asked about the delivery fee question and we moved forward, but it did actually spark a little bit because I think the question was surrounding the actuals. I know we planned for the budget amount for these projects, but I curious about how up to date our actuals are just because with the example of the metro delivery fee, that $300,000 gap that is there from what we maybe thought we would get versus what we actually got sparked to kinda follow-up from from my end of just with the capital funding sources that we have in place for these projects, both from the lens of the capital plan projects and then also from the common cent projects, I am curious as to where we're landing on budget to actuals for these projects as it sits and how we track those annually. Then just what those numbers look like from like, are we on track for the first year of these projects and as we're heading into the common sense timelines, just knowing that over the next twenty years, right, there'll be a lot of things surrounding inflation, surrounding changes, projected costs to projects that, you know, unforeseen costs, difficulties, challenges, things that we start to dig into and it's like the gift that keeps giving.

I am wondering how that relates to like projected funding that we may think we're getting from the state, we may be getting from the city or some of our local partners' investments and how that tracks over time. And I'm just wondering, like, what ways do we, as council members, should we be expecting to get that, like, actual update over time? So, like, if the metro delivery fee consistently comes in under what is projected or if the appropriations are not where would they need to be. What does that look like from a you know, numbers standpoint? Like I appreciate going through the capital funding sources, but there are no numbers attached and long to the presentation. And so just wondering.

I think let me know if I'm hearing you right, council member or council vice president. How do we adjust between what we want to have happen or think will happen

Mhmm.

And then what actually comes in? Yes. Part of the reason for having a five year plan, this is a high level answer, hopefully it helps, is to allow us to look out at a broader window even beyond an individual project planning. That allows us to track, and Ann Weber does phenomenal work, what are the actual amounts coming in. We're doing that with common sense as well.

There's a really important spreadsheet that plans what we think the projects will cost versus the revenue that's coming in versus the state statute language. Inflation numbers alone are wildly variable in that. So we can just track it as best we can. And then what always happens within the context of the five year plan is we adjust it on a year by year basis when we know more about what has come in and what's available. So we won't program a project unless we know we have the money to deliver that project. So maybe on the TAA fund, we anticipated 700,000.

Don't mind taking this. Sorry, Sean. Council vice president, council member. In the case of TAA, we were really careful actually to not over program. So we were trying to be very conservative, acknowledging all along that this might So it actually isn't it's very disappointing because we had big desires to be able to fund other things that would help with EV charging and a whole bunch of other federal grant opportunities.

But in the here and now, isn't as bad as what it sounded like when I said that, look, we're getting almost half of what we had hoped for. So we're just trying to be more planful as we go forward. We actually had this conversation, let's here's what the I get a forecast every not only every six months from the state. And that's a forecast on what we get for state aid. It's a forecast on what we get for the metro delivery fee here, the TAA.

And I look at that and I think, let's be conservative. So not that the numbers aren't great, they do a ton of work that I can't even get my arms around, but just knowing that this could happen. So, you know, the short answer is we're, at least in the first couple of years here until we really get our feet under us, we're trying to be conservative.

Thank you. I appreciate that additional clarity. That's really helpful. Consent President. Thanks, Chair.

Once you said you thought you were gone at 10:45, we decided like that's just not going happen. I'm curious, this is an adjacent but slightly different question. So going back to the five year plan and thinking about funding that we receive or don't receive, I'm also thinking about funds that we anticipate spending and don't spend. So we have these annual programs that were mentioned earlier, for example, lighting improvements $500,000 or railroad crossing safety improvements 40,000 Those are just consistent amounts year over year in the five year plan. My guess is that we're not spending exactly $500,000 or exactly $40,000 every single year and those dollars then go to zero. So my question is if we don't, do those dollars just roll over into the next year? And if so, can we get an accounting of how much is actually in those funds right now?

So, Council President, those funding lines, so there are some nuances as it relates to the CIB. I know that the I think it's the railroad crossing and the stairway category just as to there have been a lot of conversations related to how can we be as responsible with that money as possible. And there's been a shift, at least for some of those, to have it just be a bigger dollar amount in one year or in targeted years rather than the seeding approach of small dollar amounts year over year. But I know I'm getting looked at by

Vice President and Council President. Capital projects are multi year projects so that money does roll forward. We do have a status report that we are preparing to send to share with you that will have like the balances for all of those projects.

Thank you. And we'll have that soon. Soon. Okay.

They're all just like backing away slowly. Okay. Us us about our jobs.

Yeah. I think that that will be I I said this a few different times, but just as a comment, some of that information especially over, you know, when it comes to this capital plan, I think when we get into conversations around whatever will come of some of our bike lane conversations too. Because these projects are multiyear, I do think that having those that consistent status report and those updates, especially on actuals, will just become more pertinent. And so I'm really huge on that, and I definitely think that as we're heading into budget cycles in future years citywide, that's gonna have to be a continued conversation. But for sure, when it comes to just ways that we can, you know, plan for the pivot if needed, I think to some of the experiences we've had on the East Side, Goldbite in my ward with Arcade, we've seen not necessarily city projects, both state projects done differently, but took longer than anticipated or started earlier than anticipated and in so many different ways really disrupted entire communities.

And so just thinking about how as a city that we can prepare for some of those incidentals or adjust or move funding where needed if we find something that needs to be handled more quick quickly. I just have an appetite for that over the next few years as we're heading into this capital plan plan project. And I think we can do that if we're aware of it before the end of the year. So just being able to have some of those ongoing conversations, and I know I'm I'm excited about the Earl project next year because we are involved in community. We do have the privilege of being able to talk to folks, but overall, just like there's that flexibility flexibility in reality too that is we recognize sometimes winters can last longer, they can last shorter than we think they could, things could change in timelines and contractors availability.

We could dig into something and not really realize that that's the again, it's the gift that keeps giving type of situation. And so just identifying those as we head into some of these projects for me makes it more pertinent that we also understand what the numbers are doing simultaneously.

Thank you. We'll keep it rolling.

Thank you, Kathleen, Vice President. An important part of the program for each of the each of the projects that were on that map, we went through a process internally to create what we call a technical score for each one of those projects. And this graphic is showing kind of what some of the criteria was that went into that technical score. For example, this is showing that pavement condition accounts for 35% of that technical score. There's a variety of other criteria here that we went through to try and maybe take a first stab at how would we look to prioritize some of these projects, what are our highest needs around the city.

It's important to know and understand that the technical scores that came out of this process are just a starting point. There's a lot that goes into determining when projects move forward and what in what order. A lot of a lot of considerations beyond the beyond the technical scores here, but we did go through that process. A big part of trying to determine what order the projects are delivered in has to do with what our partners are doing. Mendota, Ramsey County, Metro Transit, Saint Paul Regional Water, private utilities are all also doing work in the public right of way, and and our projects need to be coordinated with their projects.

And there are some instances where we want to create distance between their projects and our projects so that our our two projects aren't right on top of each other trying to work. There are other instances primarily with metro transit where we are trying to schedule our projects at the same time as their arterial bus rapid transit projects that may be coming in the city. And all of this is kind of an effort to make sure that we aren't overburdening any particular neighborhood at one time to make sure that our our projects are taking into account detour routes that projects will need to use. We know it's always a problem when two parallel routes are under construction at the same time. That's really frustrating and we try to avoid that as much as possible.

And so this is this is a all of this goes into how when we after we have provided a technical score on each one of the projects, all of these considerations about what our partners are doing and their ability to bring funding to the city of Saint Paul are all reasons why we might deliver projects kind of out of sequence of what the technical score might suggest our priority order to be. In the common year program, the way we're presenting this in in a in the what we call the programming plan, which is a a kind of lengthy document that we are preparing to release to the public soon and do quite a bit of work around community engagement on that. The way it's presented in that document is that the program is presented in stages, which just kind of a fancy way of saying a five year period of time as each stage. Stage one, 2024 to 2029, that's everything that's already on our adopted five year plan. And for the most part, the projects in stage one are projects that were sort of low hanging fruit for a variety of reasons.

Some of them were already on our five year plan before common sense was ever approved by voters. Some of them are streets where we have already put a lot of effort into planning and design and engagement before common sense was ever created. And so stage one is kind of, you know, again, we think are kind of those lower hanging fruit that we are able to mobilize fairly quickly at a staff level. And then stages two, three, and four, that's where we kind of get more into the kind of the technical scores kind of driving the order of the projects, again, to what I mentioned earlier about coordination with our partners. So stage one of the projects, and again, this is everything that's kind of already shown on our adopted five year plan.

This is a map. I won't go through these individually, but this is this is this is what we would anticipate through the Common Sense program in the next five years. And, you know, one of the things that we have kind of set as a priority for the program is we this is this map does a good job of illustrating how we try to kind of spread the projects out as opposed to concentrating all of the projects in the same neighborhood at the same time. This is what stage two looks like, And I wanna talk in particular about two of the lines on here. You know, you're you're seeing segments of Summit and segments of Grand, and that's a a great example, and frankly, one of the more challenging coordination pieces with the Common Sense program because those two streets are parallel to each other and one block apart.

So they are the natural detour route for each other while they're under construction. And I I wanna be, you know, be clear that we know when we look at a map like this that suggests there's construction happening on Grand And Summit, we you know, it's very top of mind for us to know that we cannot have two projects on both streets at the same time. One thing I didn't mention earlier that I should probably mention is there are two bridge projects included in the common sense program. One of those is Grand Avenue over Eyde Mill. One of those is Vandalia over the railroad tracks, of just north of I 94.

And both of those projects are happening in the stage two time frame. Again, this is stage three. I won't go through this in in detail. And then stage four, The purpose of the stages and presenting the projects in stages like this as opposed to saying as opposed to providing a specific construction year for each of these projects is just to give us flexibility to to make adjustments twenty years in the future. We know that a lot can and will change throughout the twenty year lifetime of the common cent program.

Things will change on our end. Things will change from Mendota and Ramsey County. Neither of those partners in particular are projecting their capital programs out twenty years. So this is a fairly unusual task that we're doing here to create a twenty year capital program. And so by providing by providing the projects, identifying them by stages, that gives us the ability to have conversations with communities, businesses about approximately when a project will happen in their neighborhood to give them some, you know, some advanced notice of when that will be taking place without kind of locking us or them or anyone into a specific construction year.

Stage one, again, is detailed out year by year on our adopted five year plan. So neighborhoods and businesses will always have, you know, at least that kind of five year look ahead where we are communicating a very specific construction year. This is the full program map. And as I mentioned before, there is a a document that is we're kinda putting the final touches on it now, and we will be kinda publicizing this very soon. And then we are gonna spend as a department for the next several months kinda, you know, getting out to as many community partners as possible, kinda focusing heavily on district councils at first to present the plan and and some of these staging recommendations to our partners.

I think that's the end of our slides today.

I have a question from the Council President.

Thanks, Madam Chair. Super helpful. One of the questions I always have when I look at the five year and this is not specific to Common Sense, but I appreciate the overlap between some of what you've talked about with common sense and all of our street projects. And especially the consideration of the other construction that's happening at the same time, I think that that's something we get asked about a lot is whether or we're paying attention to that and it's good to be able hear on the record that we do and in fact we actually reorganize projects so as to minimize those impacts. And sometimes that means reorganizing them so they happen at the same time so that the construction isn't happening in an area forever.

I'm curious going back to the five year street plan and I'm not sure who can best respond to this, but I'm curious what changes have been made to this since the last time we saw it. Because we just see sort of the next five years and we don't see what we were planning to have happen in these five years last year and how that might have changed. So is there someone who can because I think that's of interest.

Yeah, that's a really great question, Council President. Thanks for the question. So of course, the big change that is new on this compared to previous versions is we've added 2030. So everything in the 2030 column is is new in this version. The changes that have happened in '26 to 2029, there have not there have not been huge changes since the previous one.

What has happened is some of the dollar amounts have been adjusted as we've done a little bit more estimating work. Some projects have shifted a year, you know, generally generally backwards. A couple of the county and Mendota projects have shifted years, in particular, I think Mendota's West 7th project is a good example of that. Just kind of shifted their two projects and they each shifted back a year. So there have been kind of minor changes like that.

You had the question earlier about kind of design funds that are showing up here. We're trying to be more mindful about scheduling those design funds in earlier in advance, so we're seeing a little bit more of that on this project. But I'm kind of looking at Anne. Are there other significant changes that are notable on this draft? Okay.

So just a couple of projects moving farther back, but we shouldn't be seeing anything moving further up or anything new that we didn't see last year on the five year plan except for 2030?

No, I don't think so.

Thank you. Councilmember Johnson.

And I guess I'm just just as a follow-up, I think if there was something new being added that was not originally on it, we'd have to vote on that. Is that correct? So I feel like we approved this.

So this the

projects. So if there were changes I'm just verifying because

I I think we would. What's the process to to change your amend?

Correct?

Yeah. So council member, yes. This document that is on screen now, this is approved by city council annually.

Right. So if there was any changes or anything of that nature, it would have to come across the councils again.

I think to that question, I think that's why I'm asking because what normally would happen is we would adopt the next five year plan and we don't necessarily see what had changed from the previous five year plan. Okay. So I do think that's why it's really important to be specific about what's different from last time we adopted this because we are really adopting it all at one time, including anything that changed from last year.

Okay. Okay. So that's helpful because I was like, oh, they can do. Okay. Thank you. Great.

Any other questions or comments from my colleagues? Wonderful. There's nothing else before us. Thank you for your time today in the presentation. With that, we are adjourned.