St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter reflects on his time in office

Minnesota’s capital city welcomes a new mayor on Friday. Kaohly Her, the city’s first woman and Hmong mayor-elect, will replace St. Paul’s first African American mayor, Melvin Carter.

When Carter won his election in 2017, he did so with nearly 50 percent of the vote. In November of this year, in the second round of ranked-choice votes, Carter garnered 45 percent, while Her snagged 48.

As he packed up his office, he spoke with MPR News Host Cathy Wurzer about what he looks forward to, and what he’s leaving behind.

Below is a transcript lightly edited for clarity. Listen to the full conversation by clicking the player above.

You wanted to do, “government that impacts people's lives.” How close did you come to achieving that goal?

I don't think we came close; I think we modeled it.

I know that we set a case study that other cities follow. You know, between things like college savings accounts and piloting guaranteed income, to just kind of super basic things like fine-free libraries and free youth sports.

We're really proud of the way that we sort of re-engineered some of the aspects that we’re used to, of how a city government operates.

What didn't get done that's a chief disappointment for you?

The renovation of the Grand Casino Arena. That's something that's going to be really important.

You know, we came in on day one saying we've got to rethink our downtown. That's absolutely critical for us. We were the largest city in America to not have a downtown kind of independent nonprofit, which is why my first year as mayor, we started the Downtown Alliance.

And we've got a really solid plan in place. We've got incredible partners around the table, so I imagine the incoming mayor will be set up for success where that's concerned.

But I'm really looking forward to seeing the Grand Casino Arena be redone. That's going to be a strong centerpiece for our reimagined downtown.

How many years do you think it will take for a reimagined downtown to come to full flower?

We're poised really well between our downtown investment strategy and some of the things that come out of that, whether that's the Downtown Alliance or the Downtown Development Corporation or the Downtown Improvement District.

I think we're going to see ourselves — our city — on offense where downtown is concerned, in the next couple of months, not necessarily years. But it's going to be a long-term trajectory. I think of building additional housing downtown — that's going to be absolutely critical to being able to realize downtown as a neighborhood, not just a business district.

What's the one thing you were not prepared for as a new mayor, that you think Mayor-elect Her should expect to confront?

Well, hopefully she won't expect to confront any of the biggest surprises that we had.

We weren't prepared for COVID or the murder of George Floyd, or a major cyberattack, or all the kind of crazy crises that we ended up having to lead through. And the truth is, I was surprised by how much we found possible, even in the context of those crises.

I think one of the things that has become clear to me over the last eight years has been some of the paradoxes of city leadership and the paradoxes of who we strive to be as a city.

And I share with folks that we, for example, want as much to be as vibrant and thriving a city as possible without anybody parking on the curb in front of our house. A gentleman was talking to me the other day, asking me about what I was going to do about the parking problem downtown.

I said, ‘What's the parking problem downtown?’ He said, ‘There's not enough parking downtown.’

And I challenged him to think of an amazing downtown, a place that is good enough for you to want to get an airplane and go to, and asked him: ‘Whatever downtown you're thinking of, are there enough parking places for all of the cars, all of the people who are in those tall buildings?’ And he said, ‘Of course not.’

And so I think about thinking differently. You and I have talked about the need for more street level vitality downtown, and that means we have to have a conversation about our beloved Skyway system, which means nobody ever has to go outside when they're downtown.

So I think one of the things that that I'd encourage Her to think about is some of those paradoxes and trusting the people in the city enough to have tough conversations.

You've spent significant parts of your life in public service. What might your next adventure be?

Well, that's the right word: adventure. It's not really a hard thing. It's kind of pretty exciting. It sort of feels like we just graduated from college and can do whatever we decide to.

So my very next adventure is going to be volunteering in my kindergartener’s school and trying to find some field trips to chaperone and things like that. And so, we'll figure out kind of where to go after that.

But first thing’s first, we're going to kind of slow down for a little bit and enjoy kind of stepping out of the space that we've been in for the last eight years.

I think my first adventure is going to be to turn off the notifications on my cell phone.

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