Oh, how's the redevelopment authority to order? Roll call, please. Buoy. Here. Johnson. Here. Jost. Here. Kim. Here. Naker. Here. Yang. Here. Six present. Commissioner Jolali is excused. Alrighty. So we actually have to take a motion to bring a few different items under suspension. So I'm going to, take a motion from Councilmember Yang to bring items under suspension today for the agenda. So you see suspension item number, the first suspension item, I think we have to take them individually. Is that correct, Sam? Correct, I think. Just the first item is the only item that needs to come under suspension. Item is the only item that needs to come under suspension.
Okay. So I've seen a motion from Councillor Rieing. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. All opposed? Resolution 20 five-three 10, authorization to designate F and C Development Inc. And Indiana Corporation, Flaherty and Collins, as tentative developer of Central Station Block, Saint Paul, Minnesota, District 17, Ward 2. Alrighty. So, direct director Newton, thank you so much for being able to come in today to talk about this. I'll hand it over to you. Thank you, Chair Johnson, commissioners. This item is actually an item you received a presentation on last week,
and it's just back for your action today. So it's just naming, Flaherty and Collins as tentative developer at the Central Block, and staff recommends approval of the item. Any further questions on the item from council members? We did get a pretty robust update, from staff. And actually, I've missed the opportunity to to talk about the staff members who was their first time in front of the HRA. Today, but genuinely just appreciative of staff who were coming up, in front of us, I think, from this body for the first time. Council member Jonathan is actually here too. Oh, she is. Jonathan. Yep. Wonderful. So He brought the item last week. Okay. So seeing no other further questions,
a motion from council from commissioner Kim. Yes. Go ahead. Commissioner Kim. No questions, but I did just wanna, say I spoke exuberantly about this project last week. I won't do that again. But in the course of doing that, I completely forgot to recognize our stalwart partners at the Metropolitan Council. Michael Krantz is here, and maybe someone else from my council. Jason Schmidt. And Jason Schmidt, who I did not wanna forget a second time because we did see this again. So thank you to both of you. I we have had, six and a half years' worth of every other weekly meetings in which, at least Michael,
I'm sure, probably had his fill of me at times. But, we've gotten to this point and I'm really, really grateful for your partnership. And I know the partnership is just continuing after this point. So I'm excited to move approval of this item. Okay. So Commissioner Naker moves approval of the item. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Six in favor, none opposed. The resolution is adopted. Resolution 25 dash three zero nine, authorizing the city to enter into and execute a cooperative funding agreement for Rice Street and Larpenter Avenue Gateway Alliance Consulting Services with the City of Roseville and the City
of Maplewood in accordance with the Rice Larpenter Vision Plan. This item has been withdrawn. Chair Johnson, I'll just add that this was just it's supposed to be a city council item and not an HRA item. So it'll just come to your other body. Those were my exact words. So thank you, Catherine, for that clarification. It's only being withdrawn because we'll hear it at the council. The next item that we have right now is just highlights from the twenty twenty five National Community Development Association. Staff report, SR '25 dash '28. Highlights from the twenty twenty five National Community Development Association Conference.
Thank you, Chair Johnson. Go ahead. Yeah. Happy to give some feedback here just from this item with staff, that are coming through. We had a chance, myself and, Deputy Director Green Green had a chance to just hear a little bit from their experience in their space, so I'm excited to see them come in. And speaking of staff members who have, had a chance to present in front of this body, this is deputy director Green's first time doing so. So, I'll hand it over to director Newman. Thank you, chair Johnson. Commissioners, again, deputy director and CFO Nicole Green's here, with additional staff today to bring some highlights. They just came back from the NCDA conference,
which is something that that we're a member of, and they can tell you more about how that membership, benefits us and what they've learned and some some information they came brought back around our federal funding, opportunities with through the conference. So I'll turn it over to deputy Green. Thank you, director Newton, chair Johnson, Commissioners. It's a pleasure to join you today, with staff with me. Our grants, manager, Beth Ulrich and Jessica Deegan. We are, fresh freshly returned from my hometown of Washington DC and the National Community Development Association
Conference. I'm gonna turn it over to Beth and have her get started. It was a, a good conference, I believe. I don't have anything else to compare it to because it's my first one. And but, but there there definitely is a little bit of angst in the air. And so we'll just go ahead and get started with our report. Thank you. Good afternoon, Commissioner Johnson or Chair Johnson, Commissioners. My name is Beth Ulrich. I'm the grants program administrator, with the Planning and Economic Development. We in PED have been a member of the National Community Development Association for probably since about 2017,
give or take a year or two. It's an organization that, is a membership organization for cities and counties across the country that receive, federal funds through the, HUD programs, the entitlement programs of CDBG, Community Development Block Grant, the Home Investment Partnerships, which you usually see on your projects as listed as HOME, and Emergency Solutions Grant, which we currently have a JPA with the County for, that's our Homeless Assistance Grant. This organization, has become a real vital instrument, with PED in managing our Federal funds.
It gives us crucial legislative updates and action alerts. Shortly before, the conference, we actually had one congressperson call one of the members who happened to be our, the NCDA president. There was a tacked onto a bill that, would have changed, reporting under our consolidated plan, which would have increased, regulatory compliance and our, hours of reporting significantly. And that congressperson just happened to call that NCDA member and say, hey. How does this affect you? They immediately got information out to all of the members who could then respond to
their, congress folks to say this is how this affects us and that, tacked on was actually removed. So, it's a very effective organization. In addition to these updates and action alerts, they provide technical assistance. They will go through the proposed rules, break them down for us into the items that actually affect, you know, us as groups or cities, so that we can, figure out how to, work our compliance regulations and policies around these new rules. They provide discounted training opportunities for us.
CDBG, these Federal grants, CDBG especially, are, have heavy regulations that surround them. And they take quite intensive training, not just in managing them but, with our project managers who use them as financing tools. There's definite, outcomes that we have to achieve, national objectives. So most of the funds need to reach low and moderate income folks. And so depending upon how we use the funds, we either have to use them in, you know, particular areas or have actual households. And it they these regulations tell us specifically how we document,
these types of outcomes. So it's very hefty regulatory. So having these discounted training opportunities is fabulous. We recently brought in a trainer to, the city for an advanced home class. And 15 of our own folks plus jurisdictions, our neighboring jurisdictions, set folks to get get trained as well. So, it's a great resource. When we're out, at these conferences, there's one in January every year in Washington and then there's also a summer conference that, travels around. We actually hosted it in 2022.
I don't know if anybody here was around for that now. Yep. Director Goodman or Director Newton was. She was Goodman at that time. I was. But, so, the winter conference, allows us to kind of get a feel for what's coming coming through the administration. I will say this year was a little not the usual, conference that we had. Usually, we have HUD staff that attend with us, so we get the directions straight from the source. Right? This year, they pulled out last minute. So the organization had to pivot.
They still provided some great, great content and still on regulations, but it was just, more peer to peer than it was from HUD themselves. We did get a couple of, folks from, like, the Appropriations Committee out of the, congressmen's offices, to come talk to us and give us the feeling around the budget and that kind of stuff too. Not the happiest of times right now up there. So, it was it was a little stressful, but it was nice to commiserate with folks that have the the same you know, we're dealing with the same issues that we are. So it was it was a good conference.
And then, this last year, I was, selected, to be serve on their Board of Directors. So we now, actually hold a seat on this national committee. So, anybody have any questions on the organization itself? Alright. Not yet. Okay. I will turn it over. Right. So we are still working, currently on, continuing resolution. So, that is, for the next, I think, two weeks, on the budget. And we'll be waiting to hear from the Feds, federal agency as to what decisions beyond that will be made.
We have, are working with OFS and Lindsay Bacher and Carolyn Swinful to continue to strategize what can we do, in the meantime, and what how how we could, select, areas to pivot, additional funding that we may need to, plan for, should our federal grants, be significantly reduced or eliminated. Some of those jurisdictions including Ramsey County, they had already publicly announced that they are suspending future spending and contracting until this
full budget or an additional decision is made. So that's where we are at the moment. We have not made that announcement and have not made that decision yet. I think Jessica will speak a little bit more to some of the things that we can do. But as of now, all of our spending and all of our projects are either still in motion or they haven't started yet. So Thank you, Deputy Director Green. I saw a question from Commissioner Nager. Thanks, Chair Johnson. So just to be clear, Ms. Green, the fact that the fiscal year twenty five budget is still this is the federal
budget is still subject to a continuing resolution through March. What does that mean in terms of our annual allocation, say, our $4,000,000 of CDBG in 2025? Is that allotted to us? Or is it allotted to us pending some different decision in March? Or what is Chair Johnson, members. So the 2025 funding, as, Nicole mentioned, isn't continuing resolution until that time. The budgets that had been in place both in the house and the senate were pretty much flat spending with prior years to our '24 budgets.
So we would have made and we are making some statements in our we're working on our consolidated plan right now, as you all had a presentation not so long ago, which is a '25 to 29 plan. What we're putting in the '29 plan is, here's our funding from last year. This may change, but that's kind of where the House and Senate bills were. Of course, everything is up in the air, and we'll know more after continuing resolution ends in March. But we would normally be submitting our con plan in April. We'll have it out for public comment here, soon.
And once that's up to public comment and comes back, if we still don't have a budget in place, we are not allowed to submit that plan to HUD until we have the final numbers. Last year, it was late as well, and we didn't get our allocation until August. So we could guess we're gonna see a pretty late allocation again and a late number, and we don't know. We don't know what will happen when they when they start working on that continuing resolution again, but we're looking at It would be funding we would see in the summer again if things do move on. I see, Commissioner Maker has a follow-up.
Thanks, Chair Johnson. So just to follow-up and be super crystal clear. So I know nothing is clear right now. But to the extent that we know it, do we do we know that we have any CDBG, ESG, or or home money in 2025? And if so, how much do we have? And if not Right. Are you saying we don't know any amount of that and we won't know that as well? We do not know the amount of funds we would receive in 2025 until that budget passes. So what will happen is once the top line passes that HUD gets, then they have I can't remember if it's thirty or sixty days sixty days,
thank you to do that allocation and give us a number. So sort of at a minimum, say a budget passes March 15, we're looking sixty days after that before we would even have an actual number. And of course, that's all up in there. So we won't know. Unfortunately, there is no crystal ball. Yes. Commissioner Eidecker? Thanks, Chair Johnson, for your patience with me. No. You're fine. My three zero one question. So I noticed you talk about some jurisdictions like Ramsey County are pausing funding until the budget passes. Are we are you recommending that we do the same? Can can I get the Yeah.
Do you wanna talk about CIB? So, Can't sit up. So I'm sorry. The so Ramsey County has not put out a solicitation for their 2025 funds yet. We put our CDBG money through the CIB process. So our '25 and '26 or '24 and '25 funds were already allocated as part of that CIB budget. So we we can't pause it because we already did it. The only thing is we aren't contracting with anybody. It is you know, they are those funds are part of our adopted capital budget. But if we don't get the funds,
obviously, we won't be able to fund the subrecipients and whatnot that they were allocated to. Thanks. And then as a follow-up just from, that piece, would you be able to share a little bit about what that actually translates to? So if that decision is being made, and we do, whether we have funding, I'm assuming if we get the funding that we need, then this is not an issue. However, are there certain things that, that we, should be considering when it comes to what happens or what is being discussed what is being discussed now about what happens if we are able or we aren't able to get the funding? Okay. So,
we get roughly $6,500,000 in CDBG, roughly about 1.8 in home funds and another 570,000 in ESG funds. We would we would not be able to run, you know, provide the money to Ramsey County to run those homeless assistance programs. Dollars 1,900,000.0 of dollars of housing production would not be available, under our home. And then the $66,700,000.0 that we get in CDBG, roughly about $2,000,000 of it goes to our subrecipient partners. The other,
dollars 4,700,000.0 is used by the City in various aspects. 1,400,000.0 of it comes into PED to pay for, grant management. As you can imagine, with the significant regulatory policies around this money, it's it's there's some significant administration to it. So that, you know, that equates to roughly, you know, six FTEs in PED that get paid for annually by it. It also is, pays for half a million dollars of RightTrack. So it's our, you know, youth programming out of our parks department.
We usually do two to three parks projects a year. And DSI uses the funds for its vacant housing. So if we don't get those funds, we can't run those programs unless we found other sources. Alright. Thank you. And we are working with, OFS's, central grants. And we're talking about that now. So we haven't we're in discussions. We haven't made any, you know, great headway. We have another meeting, I think, tomorrow on on that. Okay. And just for clarity, it sounds like then we aren't currently pausing those programs that we're doing that are funded through,
CDBG or through ESG or home. We're not putting a pause right now operationally, at the city on any of these programs until we hear back. So anything that was funded with so some of the stuff was funded with 2024 funds because we run you know, our grant year is June 1 through May 31, while our budget year is, you know, January 1 through December 31. So we're a little kittywampus. So everything in the first half of the year is still being run off the 2024 grants that we have and got late, in 2024. So we won't start anything in 2025 that we can't that we haven't received the
money for yet, but that's typical. Like, we didn't sign any of our subrecipient agreements in 2024 until, like, September because we didn't get our funding until August. So, it's everything will be pushed back, but it's it's typical. The only thing that wouldn't be typical is us not getting the funds. Okay. Thank you. Who's next? I'm hoping some of your slides have some good news coming out. But appreciate it. Well, I think, like I said, overall, the the conference itself was positive. It was good, from my perspective, to have some time to immerse myself,
right, in the learning of the National Community Development Association, spending the first couple of days, here with my leadership team immersed in training. And so, hearing from the leaders across the nation and that, that sense of that networking. And, Beth talked a lot about that in her presentation. Right? And hearing the the tips and hearing the information and what what is happening. A lot of work in emergency management and a lot of work, in emergency housing and and rural support across the nation. So that information,
I think, was very helpful for me to, kinda open my, open my awareness around what's happening here in Saint Paul and, having to you know, getting to spend some some close time, with my colleagues here, which we don't always get to do. So, and then the regulatory updates, the detail about the regulatory updates, I'll have Jessica come forward and talk a little bit about more about that. Sure. Thanks, everyone. So we've talked about the other pieces we've done at the conference, sort of the big elephant in the room of what's happening with the budget and the Leadership Institute. But a lot of the reasons we go to these conferences are for the training
aspects as well because things are always changing even in normal operations in the regulatory world of these programs. And staying on top of it and understanding those rules is really important for us. But there were three things swirling in the regulatory world for these grants as we were going to this conference and there is a new rule. So the new final rule for the Home Investment Partnerships Program was issued and it was to be go into effect on February 2. We all learned at the time when we were at the conference that that got
delayed a while. Every regulatory piece that happened in the sixty days prior to the administration came in got pulled back for that review. So our team and what we do with this type of work when we know what's going on with rules, of course we review them. DAO reviews them, in a lot of detail and we learn from our peers and we learn directly from HUD often what the intent behind these regulations are. So that particular rule isn't particularly earth shattering.
I won't get into all the details of all the technical changes and streamlining efforts that went into our HOME program but that's kind of a beast of a housing development program. It's hard money to use so we've been tracking that rule. But that rule got delayed. We're still we'll work with folks so we change all our regulatory agreements and we change our programs and policies as a result of that. So we're tracking that. We were the community development block grant program had some preliminary proposed rules rulemaking last year so we were anticipating a final rule.
They didn't make it to the finish line of that final rule prior to the new administration and so any further streamlining of the CDBG program rules is sort of off the table for the time being. So we are disappointed in that because if there's a program that could use some streamlining, it's the community development block grant program. Complicated to use and of course we'll follow the rules, but we like it when the rules get a little easier for all parties involved. So our team will continue to track any further rulemaking on CDBG and implement that as necessary. We are in the process of implementing a new rule.
Right now we're a final rule. The two CFR, the code of federal regulations part 200 is our over OMB grants management. They used to call it uniform grants guidance. Had various other names. That rule came out last year and was in effect in October. So our team, including CAO and accounting, have been working really hard on what are all the changes we need in all our regulatory agreements, all our policies and procedures and so on of all of these rules. So those, all of those rule pieces are part of these conferences.
It's maybe not the most exciting facet of it but in some respects from a compliance perspective it's the most important. We also spend a lot of time at these conferences just peer to peer learning and what other folks in different jurisdictions are doing. We, we, you know, I happen to sit in a lot of homeless assistance type of sessions. Beth, we did roundtables about it and and talked with folks across the country about what they're seeing and what they're doing. We talked with folks across the country about things like gender protections and rent control and I will say I just wanna give a shout out because we got a
shout out while we were at the conference that St. Paul, does things right in a lot of these ways or differently than those communities. So people tend to look at St. Paul as you guys are doing things really well. So kudos back to this team. We also learned a lot about disaster response from our peers. Now of course we don't have a lot of natural disasters that occur in Minnesota but we learned from folks in California and we talked to people in North Carolina when there are those disasters how these federal funds can pivot pretty quickly. We also spend a lot of time talking about technology
and the need for grants management software in issues like disaster response but also in a situation like we are experiencing with our the threat to the federal pause on grants a couple weeks ago, we don't have a centralized grant system in our city to allow us to quickly pull together the data that we need to make decisions. So that's something that kind of came up in the conference and we continue to think about. So those are some of the trends we learned about and some of the work
we did while we were out there and we're we're happy to take other questions. Commissioner Bowie. Thank you, chair Johnson. Thank you so much for the presentation. I'm happy to hear about the the conference going well. I have a question. Seemed like, the overall conversation was really top heavy around, HUD and public sector, which is really important because a lot of our funding comes from there. I'm out of curiosity, when I think about, like, community development, you know, often I think about, like, banks that operate within the community development space. Is there any, partnerships or, you know, in this place of uncertainty,
have we ever explored what it looks like with a public, a private public sector relationship look like? And are there like, was that something that came up during the conference of, different, you know, national loan agencies, that fund, you know, different type of community development projects? I'm not sure. Do you understand the question? I wanna make sure that we're Yeah. I think some of some of the presentations that were made, they those communities explored creative ways to to partner with, you know, private agencies.
So, yes, you know, there there are examples of that. I don't can I pull any off the top of my head? But, again, the the importance of the the conference was to be able to network with those folks. I'm sure we can reach out to them and identify specifically what they did. I there were at least three presentations that come to mind, where I know that they they moved creatively, to be able to increase either the volume of recovery that they were able to do and the time or the amount of support that they were able to give to the community. At least three of them are coming to buy. I just don't know the specifics.
And this might be just more just, like, innovative, like, you know, we might not be there or we might have done it before. I'm just just trying to see just where particularly where the cities, row because, you know, we're in, the Twin Cities of the Fortune of 500 companies. And there's a lot of resources and a lot of, businesses that, you know, have shared shared visions and shared goals. And I'm just wondering if we ever, as a as a or as a city council, like, we've subsidized housing, but we have let other private sectors subsidized housing. I'm just wondering if there's ever been any exploration around,
like, partnership or in the in the case that we may not have the funding from the federal government. So Yeah. I think that is definitely an interesting, direction to go. I'm sure that there were at least three organizations, three areas that they probably spoke to that, and we can just revisit that, with the NCDA board and bring that information back to you, those details back to you, those presentations. Thank you. Yes. Commissioner Naker. Thanks, sir Johnson. I just want to thank you for putting this in the agenda, and thanks so much to the staff for taking time to let us know.
I think we often have staff go out all over the country. We're often approving travel, for different city staff, and we almost never hear what was learned there. So it really, means a lot and I think is really good practice to have, that feedback loop. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. I appreciate, deputy director Green even asking or posing the question if we wanted to hear about it. Because I think one of the things that's really relevant in this topic is there are active updates, as we've heard, that just kind of especially in this area. And if you're just looking I know they briefly talked about the the conference slides.
But in our presentation, doc, we do have, like, what HUD funding is for and the breakdowns. You know? And we're talking about millions of resources that we rely on here at our, in our local world to fund our housing and economic development investments here in our city. And so I am I'm going to be curious, and I think I would really love to continue to hear, from a city level how we're responding even from a lens of just knowing locally too. You know, there's a nationwide discussion, but also, what we're hearing locally if there are efforts to continue to just support on our
end too. That is something that I would really be interested in knowing. I know there's at the federal government, there's a lot of things that are maybe uncertain. And, if there are collective efforts that are happening locally too from the state, with other cities and other places that also are probably looking at their resources and realizing they also have multiple million dollar things that they're, like, having a question mark over CDBG dollars, over home dollars is a really big deal. And so just as we continue to have that loop, I'm looking forward to,
you know, Beth and your leadership on the board of directors and just hearing back from what we are hearing around the pulse of this just because there are things that seem to be changing rather quickly. And so just hearing from you all that that's not, that's not a facade. That's reality. Like, it does change, and it's going through these spaces where you're going to conferences and hearing about those updates real time. While not reassuring, definitely, affirming in nature of just the times that we have right now and what we're living in. So director Newton. Chair Johnson, I just wanna add that we, we you can sign up for their email, sort of email updates so we can get you the information about that.
And often we are members, so there there are sometimes like online training that are very inexpensive or free that you might you or your legislative aides or others might wanna participate in. I it's it's a benefit. It's a resource for us, so we would love we would love for you to take advantage of that as much as you would like. So we'll share that information with you as well. And as Beth mentioned, I think if if we need to and if you're interested and we wanna bring national leadership, you know, virtually to, address any issues or questions or do a session, I think we want to take advantage of that's position
and get that on our schedule as well. Thank you. Any other questions before we let them go? That's it. Alrighty. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. I think that is the last item that we have on the agenda. That's it. So I am happy to give us some time back before our council meeting. We are adjourned.