St. Paul interim finance director proposes $5.1M general-fund budget; highlights grants team, electronic payments gains

At a meeting of the St. Paul City Council Finance and Budget Committee, Interim Director Laura Logsdon presented the Office of Financial Services' (OFS) proposed 2026 general-fund budget of $5.1 million, a net increase of about $34,000 from the current year.

Logsdon said OFS’s work is “foundational” for the city and outlined priorities for 2026 including staff development, succession planning and a shift to priority-based budgeting. She said the proposed general-fund change is small overall but hides several internal shifts: a reduction of the department’s attrition budget, a move of 1.5 full-time-equivalent positions out of the general fund into special funds and a small increase to cover state paid-leave costs.

Why it matters: OFS manages the city’s accounting, investments, debt and grant compliance—functions that affect departmental spending across St. Paul. Changes in OFS staffing and systems affect how the city applies for, manages and spends federal, state and local funds.

Key figures and near-term proposals

- Logsdon gave the 2026 proposed OFS general-fund total as $5,100,000 and said the net change from 2025 is approximately +$34,000. She described the proposed 2026 attrition budget as reduced from a 2025 level of a little over $300,000 down to about $200,000.

- OFS reported more than 90 total FTEs citywide in the department, with roughly 30 of those funded from the general fund. Logsdon noted that to meet a $300,000 attrition target the department would have had to leave about three of those 30 general-fund positions vacant for a full year.

- The city has invested in a new centralized grants team. Logsdon said the team added four FTEs in 2024–25 and supported roughly $27.5 million in department-led grant submissions and “over $73,000,000 in federal earmark submissions.” She cited two concrete items: a federal grant the team helped advance that was worth more than $800,000 and coordinating an effort that delivered about $1,100,000 in general-fund relief by ensuring grant funds were spent instead of returned.

- Treasury and accounting staff implemented PaymentWorks for vendor onboarding. Logsdon said the city has onboarded more than 1,700 vendors to the system and that about 80 percent of those vendors are now receiving electronic payments. She noted paper checks remain the majority of vendor payments and carry higher fraud risk.

- OFS proposed an ongoing investment in an enterprise grants-management system and two one-time central-service requests of $100,000 each: a consultant to support a shift to priority-based budgeting and a facilities-management study to inform capital planning.

Questions from council members

Council President Nieker and Council Member Johnson pressed for more detail on whether the grants team “pays for itself.” Logsdon said she would follow up with year‑over‑year comparisons because the city lacks a single historical grants database and some prior-year data are stored across departments.

On the budget-to-actuals variance in OFS this year (about $1.5 million underspent as of the meeting), Logsdon described several causes: an immediate pause on discretionary spending following the July cyber incident, long-term vacancies left intentionally vacant because positions were proposed for reduction in the mayor’s budget, and materials-and-services contracts that were not executed. She said the department held several vacancies on purpose and expects to fill the interim OFS director post and the deputy director role in 2026.

ARPA, projects and special funds

Logsdon reviewed ARPA-funded and other special projects overseen by OFS, including ongoing work on electronic payments, PCI security assessments, and a city payroll project. She reported remaining ARPA allocations are directed at grant administration, payroll and annual financial reporting staff needs and said she expects the ARPA-funded projects to be fully spent down.

What was not decided

The presentation described proposed budget shifts and investment requests but did not record any formal committee votes during the meeting. Several items described—such as the grants-management software purchase and one-time consulting requests—were presented as proposals for the council’s consideration.

Ending: Logsdon said there are additional appendix slides available for committee review and invited follow-up questions and additional detail on items such as year-over-year grant application tracking and proposed grants-platform functionality.