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Greetings! This year was not what I expected or hoped for it to be. As we look to 2022, I continue to hope for new opportunities, growth, and to collectively overcome the many challenges the last two years have presented. However, like many of you, I find my optimism much more tenuous than I did at the end of 2020. As many of us celebrate holidays that recognize the triumph of light over darkness, I ask for us to join together in this time of reflection and support our friends, neighbors, and community by sharing our hope, faith, and love. Best wishes to you and yours,
Nicole Frethem
 Commissioner Frethem and her daughters Margit and Signe in front of their Christmas tree.
 Full information about the 2022-2023 budget approved by the Ramsey County Board on December 21, 2021 can be found on the Ramsey County website.
For the 2021 budget, Ramsey County worked hard to keep the property tax levy amount flat, despite a planned 4.5% increase. This year the levy only increased 1.5% while overall reliance on levy funds in the county budget was reduced.
This budget is not about tightening our belts, we're getting redressed in something that fits better. The work we do as a county, in health, social and human services, in public safety, in community and economic development, in protecting our natural resources and built infrastructure is critical even as each of those systems crack under the pressure of decades of disinvestment and the pandemic.
Our residents, employees, and agency continue to be asked to do more with less, causing us to shift burdens back and forth without addressing why we keep finding ourselves in this position. Now is the time to dig deep and repair the structural and foundational issues so we can build on something stronger. This budget and our strategic use of ARPA funds invest deeply in affordable housing, violence prevention, and challenges our leadership to innovate new ways of bringing in revenue that reduces the on-going cost burdens from property owners.
Our strength at Ramsey County is good governance and prudent fiscal management. This budget builds on that strength and puts trust in our leaders to manage their budgets responsibly. This shift may be burdensome and challenging, however, it is necessary and I believe in our people and our employees and their capacity to manage nimbly and responsively.
Many of our employees are struggling right now. They have been on the front lines of the pandemic, putting themselves in harm's way to help our residents. They have been reassigned, moved around, worked overtime, worked while caring for and teaching their children at home, forgone vacations, sacrificed their own financial well-being to ensure that we could propose a 0% levy increase last year. We see you and we appreciate you. Contract negotiations are happening right now and that process can feel ugly, demoralizing, and polarized. But I also believe that the work we're doing to repair structures and foundations in our services, also needs to be part of how we support our employees. We cannot be shortsighted in how we move forward now to get a quick win because that inevitably shifts the burden of unmanageable costs onto residents and future leaders with unknown risks.
I am proud of Ramsey County and believe that the work that has been done long before I joined the board, to establish a reputation of excellent financial management, to lay a foundation of continuous quality improvement, and to dig into some of the biggest issues facing our residents and identify solutions to those issues (such as our work in economic inclusion, juvenile detention alternatives initiative, and transforming systems together) have positioned us well to seize the once-in-a-generation investment that federal ARPA funds present and invest in positive, transformational, and sustainable change in Ramsey County.
 Artist rendering of Rice Creek Commons city center
In the late summer of 2021, I had the opportunity to engage with residents around the proposed development in Arden Hills, known as Rice Creek Commons (or TCAAP or the Arsenal Site).
These dialogue circles were an opportunity to have a conversation about the future of our community, our hopes and our fears. I greatly appreciate the dozens of community members who gave time to join us in circle and share their thoughts, questions, and ideas.
A dialogue circle does not seek to solve a problem, but to hold space for all participants to engage on a topic or issue. In these circles, we talked about our connections to Arden Hills and the development, the community values and goals that spoke to us, and how to tackle difficult problems in a respectful way.
From these conversations, I took away several important thoughts and ideas including:
- We must clarify the shared vision for Rice Creek Commons and what it means in terms of development specifics;
- We must acknowledge the challenges of finding consensus among many disparate ideas and determine what role leaders should play in making decisions based on agreed upon values and goals;
- We must be more transparent in providing information to the community.
Many continue to be unclear about where exactly the Rice Creek Commons development will be (some fearing that it will replace the Rice Creek Park or AHATS observation area). Others are still unsure what city and county authorities were delegated to the JDA and how the JDA model for development differs from traditional property owner/city development interactions. Though most were aware that there was litigation between the city and county, very few understood the basis of the litigation, the outcome, and what that means going forward. Over the next year, I will continue to push Ramsey County leadership to address these on-going concerns and hope for fresh energy and commitment from all parties on this development.
 A word cloud of values and goals that residents shared during dialogue circles
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