Mayor: St. Paul’s 2021 budget plan faces $19.5 million challenge

Helen Do

[KSTP-TV]

St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter announced his plans for the 2021 budget for the city on Thursday. In the announcement, Carter discusses how there will be significant "pain points" for the community.

"If our budget doesn’t reflect our values, then they’re not our values. While our margins this year and numbers are tighter than ever before, that fundamental truth still remains. So we started with two core values that shaped every decision in this budget," said Carter.

The first core value is valuing the community and the second is valuing public services workers such as police officers, firefighters, paramedics, recreation leaders and more.

According to Carter, to avoid any financial pressure, the city of St. Paul will have a zero increase in the city’s property tax levy to help residents and businesses who are already struggling. The budget proposal will also protect first-rate public services. The proposal would intentionally avoid laying off any city staff and it will not tap the city’s fund balance reserves "to maximize our readiness to face the remaining uncertainties," according to the mayor.

Carter continues to state that every year, St. Paul starts its budget process with a $15 to $17 million budget challenge. But for this year, the budget challenge is significantly higher at around $19.5 million.

"Between upward pressures on our spending that start with our COVID-19 response of which we are over $16 million into and still going, to our civil unrest response, which cost nearly $4 million to the city; these have had an impact of widening that gap," said Carter. "Developing a budget that neither raises property taxes nor lays off city staff put a lot of pressure on every other budget item."

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The statement continues to go more in-depth on the specifics of what the budget plan may result in. Some of that includes city employees who may be facing reduced hours and reduced titles. Then managing the vacancies and attrition will likely lead to staffing challenges across city departments.

Carter said to lead the way of the challenges, the senior leadership team with Carter has already enacted a voluntary 10% pay reduction for every member.

The city of St. Paul will be increasing its investment in the Office of Technology and Communication because of the pandemic. The investment will help people continue to stay socially distant and be able to have better access when working remotely.

The city has also suspended water shutoff for every family and through the Bridge Fund, $4 million was made available for struggling small business and low-income families.

Carter also emphasizes that from the 911 call data the work officers do is readily apparent.

"Officers have told us for quite some time, that they end up serving as more than just police officers in our community. They end up serving as social workers, as mental and chemical health therapists, as housing counselors and in a number of other capacities," said Carter.

Therefore, in the proposal, Carter stated that St. Paul’s goal is to move forward with identifying other resources to serve and step in when responding to those 911 calls so that an armed officer is not necessarily needed. It would also help lighten the load for officers so they can spend their time focused on preventing and responding to violent crime and engaging in proactive community outreach.

St. Paul Police Chief Todd Axtell said in an email to officers, "the proposed budget will officially reduce our authorized strength by 10 sworn positions and seven civilian positions. In addition, we will need to keep open the equivalent of 31 police officer salaries. But, considering the unprecedented budget challenges cities across the country are facing, it could have been much worse."

To read the full statement provided by Mayor Carter on the 2021 St. Paul budget plan, click here.