Meet St. Paul’s new city council member, Molly Coleman

NINA MOINI: In other news, the city of St. Paul has a new council member. Molly Coleman will represent Ward 4, which includes all or parts of five neighborhoods in the northwest part of the city. She's filling the vacancy created by former St. Paul City Council President Mitra Jalali's resignation back in January.

Coleman is the founder of an advocacy group, a graduate of Harvard Law School, and just the latest in her family to secure an elected position. She joins me now. Council Member-elect Coleman, thank you very much for joining Minnesota Now.

MOLLY COLEMAN: Thank you so much for having me. I'm delighted to be here.

NINA MOINI: How are you feeling? You had a pretty sizable win yesterday.

MOLLY COLEMAN: Yeah, feeling really good, feeling really so proud of the coalition that we were able to build over the course of the last few months that got us across the finish line last night, and really feeling so excited and optimistic about what's ahead for Ward 4 and all of St. Paul.

NINA MOINI: Yeah, I alluded to this in the introduction, folks who are in the St. Paul area may find your name familiar. Your father, Chris Coleman, is a former mayor of St. Paul. Your grandfather, Nick Coleman, was a Democratic leader of the State Senate. Have you always wanted to work in politics, as well, or when you were younger? Or is that something you've just come into because you saw a need?

MOLLY COLEMAN: Yeah, I feel so lucky to have grown up in my family, where I had both folks who had done community organizing work, folks who had contributed to their community without going into politics, and also seeing firsthand the impact you can have through service in local government. And so I think that there are so many incredible ways to make a difference in your community. And I feel very lucky to have been able to do the work that I've been doing for many years now, doing advocacy and organizing around legal reform.

But I do think that there is, when you are at the table making the hard decisions and having to figure out how do we actually govern, how do we actually move our city forward in challenging moments, it's an important way to give back to your community, an important way to help build this city that we love. So certainly got to see that firsthand and feel very excited to be able to contribute in this way.

NINA MOINI: And you're coming into the city at kind of a difficult time, where the city of St. Paul recently experienced this ransomware attack. They're trying to clean it up. It seems like all hands on deck. How are you processing all of this, and how do you think it may impact your onboarding process?

MOLLY COLEMAN: Oh. I certainly have no idea yet how it will impact the onboarding process, although I imagine it will-- maybe more paper forms than digital forms. But I really-- seeing the leadership in our city throughout this incredibly challenging moment with the cyber attack, seeing how the city has stepped up, how they've made sure that people have continued to get paid, how we have-- it looks like things are going in a really positive direction, something that we certainly-- I don't think many folks expected when the news of the cyber attack first hit. It makes me very proud and of our city and feel very excited to be going into City Hall, where there is that type of leadership and competence displayed, even in really challenging moments.

NINA MOINI: And these types of issues may linger for a while, but they may come and go. There are obviously ongoing issues, as well, that people and yourself have been working on. Affordable housing is one of those. St. Paul is facing an affordable housing crisis, like many cities. And the Council recently made some changes to a rent policy that voters passed in 2021 after a lot of developers said it was the main reason they didn't want to develop here. It wasn't very popular with a lot of landlords. What is your vision for making housing in the city both more affordable and also creating more units of housing?

MOLLY COLEMAN: Yeah, it is so essential. And it is one of, if not the, top issue that I heard about, regardless of neighborhood that I was in, over the course of this campaign. We have such a deep shortage of affordable housing. Even for folks who are in what was once affordable housing, people are very concerned about their ability, especially for folks on a fixed income, to remain in that stable housing.

So this has to be an all-hands-on-deck approach. We know that the best thing that we can do to make housing affordable is to have more housing. We need more units at all price points in all neighborhoods in our city. And what I heard from folks throughout Ward 4 is that they are excited to build a more dense city. They are excited to welcome more neighbors, that they want the city to get creative about how we meet the needs of all of the folks who want to live in our city.

That means, yes, we need single-family homes that people can rent or purchase in an affordable way. But we also need it to-- and with that, we have to build the paths to homeownership for communities of color and people who have been traditionally shut out of the ability to buy a home in St. Paul. But we also know that we need more rentals. We need more multi-unit housing. We need housing at all sizes and in all scales.

We need more accessory dwelling units. It's going to be-- we're going to have to think very comprehensively. We have some real financial challenges in the city, as well, and that makes it difficult to really provide that affordable housing and finance the housing that we want to see in the city. But it is clear to me that this is a top priority and has to be a top priority for folks in City Hall.

NINA MOINI: Yeah, so talking about development of housing, but also, there's other types of development. And we had your, I guess, predecessor, Matt Privratsky, on, who was interim in the role before this election, not too long ago, when the Midway Cub Foods closed, that area near Allianz Field. There's been a lot talk about how to invest in the neighborhood and the surrounding area. And there's a critical transit hub there. How are you wanting to approach revitalization in some of these important corridors?

MOLLY COLEMAN: Yeah, so this is my neighborhood. I live in Midway, and the folks who make up our community deserve so much more than we are getting currently. We have had a series of hard years here in Midway. And again, I said this with housing, but it really is going to take an all-hands-on-deck approach.

We're going to need to work with the County to make sure that we have the ability to meet the public health needs of folks in our community. We're going to have to leverage tools at the city's disposal, including administrative citations, to make sure that we're holding accountable vacant absentee landlords. We have a huge problem with vacant buildings here in Midway.

The CVS on Snelling and University is probably the most discussed building in the city because it's unacceptable to have a vacant building at the most important intersection in our city and to have had that be vacant for three years. I mean, it just-- so we have to think creatively about what are the tools that we have and how do we invest in what is working in Midway.

We have so many small businesses that have opened in recent months, recent years, who are committed to this neighborhood. We have immigrant-owned businesses. We have folks who have been in this community for decades because they love it here.

We have people who just moved here because of our proximity to transit, because they're excited to support Minnesota United. They're season ticket holders, and they want to be able to walk to games. There really is-- we have all of the pieces in our community. We just need to make sure that we now accompany that with the development and investment that we deserve.

NINA MOINI: And before I let you go, are there a few other top priorities that you are looking forward to? Because your term, you've got a few years here, right? It ends in 2028. What are you excited about?

MOLLY COLEMAN: Yeah, there's so much that I'm excited about. I think housing is a top priority, really investing in our multimodal transit options. I came into this race focused on economic justice and thinking about how do we make this city affordable for everybody. Housing is a huge piece of that. But we also need to make sure that people can get where they need to go in affordable, reliable ways. And that means investing in comprehensive infrastructure for transit.

I'm really excited about working to bring in high-quality jobs to our city so that people can live and work and play all in our communities here. We also know-- and maybe-- the last thing that I am excited about is that we have, I think, some big opportunities in Ward 4 that come from some recent challenges. So we had the WestRock site closed down. What comes next for that location is going to be an opportunity that we have to take advantage of?

We have Luther Seminary selling their campus, so working with community members in St. Anthony Park to figure out what comes next for that site. What do we want our Ward and our city to look like five, 10 years from now is, I think, a really exciting opportunity ahead of us.

NINA MOINI: Yeah, and as we and as you all determine what comes next with your constituents, I wish you well. And I thank you for your time, Council Member-elect, Coleman.

MOLLY COLEMAN: Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

NINA MOINI: Thank you, look forward to talking again. That was Molly Coleman, the newest St. Paul City Council member, representing Ward 4.