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Hennepin County commissioner updates Richfield on housing, mental health, trees and infrastructure
Summary
Hennepin County Commissioner Debbie Goettel briefed the Richfield City Council on county programs and grants including affordable-housing funding, mental-health partnerships with police, a new YouTube livestreaming and captioning rollout, and infrastructure and tree-planting initiatives.
Hennepin County Commissioner Debbie Goettel told the Richfield City Council on June 24 that the county is continuing investments in affordable housing, mental-health supports and tree canopy programs and has added YouTube live streaming with closed captioning to increase public access.
Goettel said the county awarded $19.5 million in capital funding to create and preserve affordable housing and funded 23 projects through county programs. She also said the county awarded about $17.3 million in grants through a local affordable-housing program to boost nonprofit capacity. The county’s board oversees an approximately $3.1 billion annual budget, Goettel said.
Goettel highlighted Elevate Hennepin, a county program that connects entrepreneurs to no-cost advising and said thousands of entrepreneurs have used the service. She told the council that the county’s embedded social-worker program – a partnership that places social workers with police – has become a regular referral route for social services in Richfield, and that in a recent year the Richfield Police made 124 referrals to embedded social workers, many of which led to county social-service referrals.
The commissioner confirmed Hennepin County is rolling out live-streaming of county meetings on YouTube with closed captioning to improve accessibility. She said the county is pursuing a target of planting a million trees by 2030 and that cities, school districts, nonprofits and affordable-housing providers can apply for tree-canopy grants with awards up to $50,000 for eligible projects.
Goettel told council members that Penn Avenue infrastructure work has moved up on the county’s project list and that this change could help enable denser redevelopment once underground water and sewer lines are replaced. Council members expressed appreciation for the county’s collaboration on Penn Avenue and asked whether the public could still participate in future outreach; Goettel said public outreach will accompany the project as it moves forward.
Goettel closed by thanking Richfield staff and residents; the council thanked her for the briefing and for Hennepin County’s ongoing partnership on housing, recreation, mental-health support and local grants that fund community projects.
