The St. Paul City Council met on Wednesday, August 5, 2026, at 3:31 PM in Council Chambers. Council President Rebecca Noecker presided with six members present (Councilmember Anika Bowie absent initially but arrived later for the discussion item). The meeting adjourned at 4:06 PM. The council considered a consent agenda, a contested ballot question on tenant right to repair, final adoption of two ordinances, multiple public hearings, and legislative hearing appeals.
Call the meeting of the St. Paul City Council to order. Roll call, please. Bowie. Coleman. Here. Johnson. Here. Joast. Here. Kim. Here. Yang. Here. Council President Naker. Here. Six present, one absent who is expected shortly. Thanks to everyone for joining us for our city council meeting today. We invite everyone to join us in standing for the Pledge of Allegiance. Pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States America and to the Republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Consent items seven through thirty are before you for your consideration. I know we are pulling item 30 for separate consideration. Is there anything else to come off of consent? Seeing none, I'll take a motion from Vice President Yang for the balance of the consent agenda. All in favor say aye. Aye. All opposed? Six in favor, none opposed. The consent agenda is adopted as amended. Thirty item thirty res resolution twenty-six dash one-two five three directing the city clerk to notify the county auditor to place a ballot question on the November third, twenty twenty-six ballot regarding allowing tenants to make repairs to their building and approving the title and language for that ballot question. And this is an item on which we recently received some advice from the city attorney's office regarding conflicts between the language of the ordinance and state law that could create some risk to the city. Um so I think it's important for us to have conversation about this item. Um I guess looking to you, Mr. Staley, if there's anything that you can add or or confirm about it. Um the city attorney's memo um also opined that if there's a case where there's that conflict that the council does not is not required to put the item on the ballot and um has the option to have discussion about that. Um so I wanted to open this up for conversation to my colleagues and also see if there's a motion. Thanks, Council President. I um just want to say overall, um I'm at the end of my comments here. I'm gonna move um for an approval of the resolution here. I do want to first say thank you to our city attorneys for the work that you did in providing a memo to us to me it being elect an elected official, it's really important for me to be making informed decisions. Um that's inclusive of what I hear from you all, also from community members and advocates who are you know putting these sort of items in front of us um for discussion and for a vote to and you know, the the list goes on and on about who gets involved um as part of that equation there. Um I do want to say overall I'm very supportive of of um this resolution here and um wanted to just share that you know, as I think about the past few years on the council here, we've had ballot initiatives come up in our city and overall for me, like no matter what the topic is, it's always been very exciting to see uh that level of of engagement and like the organization, the connection in our communities and and most importantly, like the organic conversations that happen um as part of our democracy, you know, for a city that does have a ballot, this sort of system where folks can um petition and and put an item on the ballot. And uh you know, I think a lot about family members, friends that I have who live in third world countries where they don't have this sort of option in front of them, and actually if they were to voice their opinion at all about anything political, they are their lives could be put at risk. And so it's very grounding to me, you know, as I um any time I take up um a vote like this and um just have a lot of deep gratitude for all of the folks involved in even putting this in front of the council here, and so I do want to give credit to Safe Home St. Paul for the work that they have done, the incredible work they've done to really engage with community members to make sure that they are getting ha having a sufficient number of petition signatures to even um get this in front of us, and um, you know, just the ways in which they've really connected with tenants, especially in our city, knowing that we are a city of more than half where more than half of our residents are our renters. And so um I uh wanted to share overall that like you know, in addition to the comments I made that this is while I understand that our city attorneys they do have concerns. I also want to point out that in Duluth this is the exact same language that was passed in their city, and uh Duluth Tenants Union was the group that had organized for um the initiative in their city, they were successful. Um I also learned in conversations I've had with uh members and leaders of Safe Home St. Paul that um Duluth tenants have been very content and pleased with their uh with their ordinance, and I want to take a very wild guess that it's probably because the ordinance is working the way that it was meant to.