Aisha Chughtai

The council's budget committee wanted to ask MPD staff about the department's past overspending before the committee files a memo about it.

Here's committee chair, Aisha Chughtai, as the police budget came up for discussion.

"I mean, I don't see them, but is there staff here to present on this item? Well, I feel like that was pretty expected."

Recently, Frey told city staff to only attend meetings when they are directly presenting.

I mean, we said that, I said that, but, like, I think we could have really, like, gone out harder from the beginning in saying, "The mayor is resting his budget on cutting $3 million from the parks," and he thinks, like, that's fiscal responsibility, and he's not looking in his own backyard.

Uh, towards the end of the meeting, a little game, a little back and forth between you and the mayor and also Chughtai about who was actually raising our taxes.

Yeah.

Who, who was actually, uh, bankrupting the average property taxpayer in Minneapolis.

I mean, 'cause I came in, like, my whole campaign was it, you know, was like, we shouldn't pay less in taxes, we should get more in services.

And, you know, the l- like, the practical, like, uh, living out or like, uh, embodiment of that goal would be I'm not gonna fucking raise property taxes 11 or 12% if we don't know, like, that it's gonna g- g- get our budget in better shape, if we don't know that the dollars at MPD are gonna be accountable.

And, you know, I, I didn't, I decided not to draw a hard line frankly because Elliott and Aisha, Elliott Payne and Aisha Chughtai, were like, the problem with holding the levy inc- max levy down is it won't come out of police, it'll come out of food programs, it'll come out of emergency housing vouchers, it'll come out of et cetera.

And, you know, I felt like in my first year I'm gonna defer to, to their judgment.