St. Paul councilors at loggerheads with Mayor Carter over city budget
Back in May, I wrote an article titled “Property tax battles could be coming to St. Paul.” Simply put, tanking commercial property values have lowered commercial property tax payments and reduced city revenues. Unless this is offset with spending cuts, it means hikes in residential property taxes, always a contentious play.
This battle is now being fought. The Pioneer Press reports:
Members of the St. Paul City Council have officially asked the mayor to cut up to $6 million in spending from the budget proposal he unveiled in August, with the goal of limiting the city’s 2025 property tax levy increase to no more than 5%.
St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter’s $855 million budget proposal currently calls for a 7.9% levy increase, raising alarm with fiscal watchdogs and some everyday residents and council members.
“We are hearing really clearly from our constituents that tax increases are a burden, and we’re trying to respond to what we’re hearing in a way that’s really responsible and doesn’t cut out needed services,” said Council Member Rebecca Noecker, in an interview Friday. “We’re pushing back pretty heavily on the mayor’s budget proposal.”
Council Member Cheniqua Johnson said there’s been no formal vote among the seven members, but “I’m also supportive of no more than a 5% tax levy increase at this time,” she said. “That would send a strong message, showing that we’re hearing our neighbors. … Throughout public testimony, we’ve heard a lot of concerns about growing taxes, the cost of inflation. I’ve definitely been hearing it all year.”
Council President Mitra Jalali said not all council members were on board with the request to rein in spending, and the exact amount of a requested reduction is still up in the air.
“Every year we do budget negotiations. Members significantly want to reduce the levy. Not every member agrees with that,” said Jalali on Friday. “I think the final amount of reductions is still in play. There’s a lot of appetite to respond to property tax stress, but there’s (also appetite for) funding important investments.”
Councilor Jalali is, of course, pulling the old political trick of labeling all spending “investment.” The Pioneer Press reports:
Carter has sought to fund a variety of social and environmental initiatives, such as free swim classes for kids, library-based social workers and homebuyer assistance, and to hire a coordinator for climate change-related programs, a position that has previously been funded through grants…
In August, we offered some suggestions: Carter’s $7.4 million package of spending on “affordable housing;” expanding St. Paul’s Inheritance Fund, which provides forgivable loans from that pool to descendants of Rondo neighborhood residents, to families displaced by the demolition of the West Side Flats in the 1960s; $1 million for the city’s homeowner rehab loan program; $1 million to waive fees for a pair of office-to-residential conversions; and $1.4 million to address the impacts of climate change. These should all go.
From 2019 to 2023, St. Paul’s city budget grew by 30.1% while the Consumer Price Index increased by 19.2%. While St. Paulites might be struggling with inflation, their government isn’t.