Mayoral candidates outline competing visions for St. Paul in MPR News/Pioneer Press debate
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Three candidates for mayor of St. Paul sparred over key issues the city is facing in an MPR News/Pioneer Press-hosted debate Tuesday.
Incumbent Mayor Melvin Carter defended his leadership as Rep. Kaohly Her, DFL-St. Paul, and scientist and business owner Yan Chen took swings at Carter’s record, while laying out their stances on several issues the city is facing.
Cutting costs
Asked about how they would address the rising costs for the city and inherent increases in property taxes that come with that, Chen said the city needs to look closely at each department.
She said she would like to look closely at the city’s public works department, which has a proposed general budget fund of nearly $45 million and a special fund budget of $177 million for 2025.
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“Yet when I compare it to a compatible city like Madison, Wis., their performance is far better than our city,” Chen said. “They have similar demographics, similar, actually bigger in area, and in addition, their budget is a lot smaller. So that’s the kind of program we need to look into the individual details.”
Rep. Her said the city needs to diversify its revenue streams. She said she’d look at ways to streamline services, such as looking at places where parks and library systems might overlap.
“We should really look deeply at the levels of government and who is doing which work and where, we can then redeploy those resources,” Her said.
She also says the city can bring in more money by increasing reimbursement rates for EMS services.
Carter said the city is already in discussions about increasing those rates. He said the city has also found ways to respond to lower-acuity medical events without tying up their EMS workers.
He said the city has also changed the way it staffs emergency services.
“We know that it's more likely that we're going to get 911 calls at 8 p.m. than at 3 a.m.,” he said, saying historically firefighters have been staffed on 24-hour shifts. “But we've created peak staffing models to be able to build some of that more effectively. “
Supporting the St. Paul schools levy
Both Carter and Her said they will support the requested levy from the St. Paul School District asking for around $37 million per year.
Chen said there needs to be a deeper look at whether the school system is working the way it should.
“As mayor, I will help the school grow by employing a single individual as a school coordinator, and this coordinator would recruit community members and look into what our school performance is compared with other school systems. We should deliver the result what we expect for our taxpayers.”
Reducing crime
Carter said his administration has found ways to reduce crime in the city. He pointed to the city’s dramatically falling homicide rate this year, which is on track to be down 70 percent from last year.
“We're not done yet,” he said. “We have just proposed a million-dollar intervention in the same way to focus on fentanyl and quality of life issues that surround that fentanyl crisis.”
Her said overall crime numbers might be down, but different neighborhoods around the city might have different perceptions of whether crime is down. She said she has a lot of concerns about drug use, especially fentanyl.
“There's a lot of work that we have to do around that,” she said. “I would work with law enforcement. I would work with our nonprofit partners, who I've already had preliminary conversations with about their capacity in order to take people who have addiction issues.”
Chen said the ebbs and flows of crime statistics won’t be solved without a larger look at changing the lives of people who might commit crime.
“If we don't know how to learn how to rehabilitate people, we will never solve the crime issue,” Chen said. “The good news is this is not our city's money we need to use to solve that problem. That's a county issue, that's a state issue, but as mayor, I will work closely with them and work with our police department together, we can solve this problem.”
Gun violence in the city
Carter has proposed that the city adopt laws that would ban assault rifles and large-capacity magazines in St. Paul. It’s something he knows will end up in the courts, but he hopes the move will put pressure on the state or federal governments to act.
“We've been working very closely with our city attorney and with the Gun Violence Reduction Center at the University of Minnesota to make sure that those laws are written precisely in ways that we can defend in court,” he said. “And you know what? We have to do something different. The one thing we cannot do is more of the same.”
Both Her and Chen criticized the approach.
“One thing I want to do is never promise somebody that I can deliver something and, yet, cannot fulfill my promises,” Chen said, adding that if President Barack Obama could not get it passed, a mayor has very little chance of getting it passed. She said a mayor should work with the legislature to get those things passed.
Her said the move would be a waste of taxpayer money and that the state has much more power on this issue.
“To pass ordinances that you know will be legally challenged, which means that you are using tax dollars to fight something just so that you can make a stand to say that you've done something that's super performative, that does not actually move the needle,” she said.
Her said the legislature is working hard to make progress on gun control issues, and the city should focus on working to push those bills forward.
The candidates were invited based on funding raised and other outreach activity. Adam Dullinger and Mike Hilborn, who are also running for the seat, were not part of the debate.
The debate will air on “Politics Friday” this week at noon.
