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City Attorney seeks permanent funding for victim-witness staff and ongoing support for Ethos diversion work

Saint Paul City Council · November 6, 2024
AI-Generated Content: All content on this page was generated by AI to highlight key points from the meeting. For complete details and context, we recommend watching the full video. so we can fix them.

Summary

City Attorney Lindsay Olsen asked the council to convert a grant-funded victim-witness position to the general fund to avoid losing services when grants expire, and requested an ongoing $70,000 line for Ethos restorative-justice programming (plus $30,000 one-time) to sustain diversion and gun-intervention work.

City Attorney Lindsay Olsen presented the City Attorney’s Office budget at a council work session, asking the council to stabilize victim services staffing and create a recurring budget line for Ethos, a restorative-justice diversion program.

Olsen said the office currently relies on a mix of funding sources — general fund positions, an expiring VOCA federal grant, and ARP-funded positions — and warned that grant timing and partial coverage put victim-witness support at risk. She asked the council to convert one grant-funded victim-witness staff position to a general-fund FTE this budget year to preserve continuity, and to consider a follow-up request next year…

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