Council accepts Wilder Research assessment of capital improvement community project process; recommends follow-up work

The St. Paul City Council voted to accept a Wilder Research assessment of the city's capital improvement community-project process and asked departments and the audit committee to consider follow-up steps to implement key recommendations.

Heather Britt of Wilder Research presented the assessment and a GIS-based "story map" that shows applications and funded projects by neighborhood, concentration of poverty and other equity-related indicators. "Goals of this really to think about effectiveness of the current community project CIB process and improvement opportunities," Britt told the council, noting the team interviewed applicants, committee members and staff and produced a dashboard intended to be hostable on the city's website.

Britt summarized the audit's findings: strong interest in improving the process for equity, transparency and accessibility; the application process can feel overly complex and favors repeat applicants with grant-writing experience; unclear ownership of public outreach; and uneven use of the CIB committee and district councils for engagement. "There's still a sense that the application process favors folks who are in the know, insider knowledge, and have some grant writing skills," Britt said.

Key recommendations presented included clarifying roles and responsibilities among city offices and committee members; documenting and simplifying the application process; creating a short pre-application phase with technical assistance for feasible proposals; making objective data more accessible to applicants (the presentation included an ArcGIS story map the Wilder team offered to hand over to the city); and considering longer planning cycles or narrowing eligible project types to better match implementation capacity.

Council members praised the report and the GIS work. Vice President Kim called the GIS overlays "incredibly telling" and urged expanding the approach to other city funding sources to understand equity across investments; Council Member Yang asked that the council prioritize not just studies but implementation of audit recommendations. Council Member Jost moved to accept the audit committee's report; the council adopted the resolution 7–0.

The resolution authorizes formal acceptance of the Wilder Research assessment; it did not itself appropriate funds for programmatic changes. Council and staff discussed possible next steps, including asking Wilder to undertake a focused "phase 2" to design a simplified pre-application and technical-assistance model, and presenting the results to the CIB committee and district councils to guide implementation.