to my village and just open our meeting you see them denny and run mention my name is use up i'm jenny you and i are both members of the steering committee of st paul strong and can i get the other steering committee members to raise their hand for the folks in the audience ok so that you know who we are if you have any questions or if you want to pop somebody before you leave and i'd also like to welcome our downtown person works for the council members just joining us we invited all of the city council members four of them accepted three of them will be present with us this evening roy will speak to that in a moment at the formal beginning of our program how many of you are promoting with the work of simple strong and firm number how many of you this is your first introduction or opportunity there are you them perhaps it might be appropriate for me to most importantly tell you what we are no we are not partisan group we are man parties and nonprofit we're a community based coalitions of individuals well we did not indorse any political candidates we asked the candidates to endorse the six principles of st paul strong which were on the registration table that everyone have a couple too many to get one if not if you raise your hands we be happy to as individuals we have no special interests but we are concerned about for him sperm city and openness in city government by elected bulk of the city council candidates and door star six principals as did many of the school board candidates and of strong is of course an acronym for those six principles that are spelled the someone who is firm in their beliefs and convictions so if the shoe fits i guess we have to wear the newspapers never referred to us as activists we don't think of ourselves that way we're very active we are diverse group geographically in terms of our interests and about a year ago a small group of people began leaving and coffee shops around the city that were concerned about perceived lack of public input into the public dialogue in the public policy process and gradually as as word spread those ideas spread of the group coal around the notion the biggest room in the world has room for improvement and we use simply want to see if not facilitate greater transparency and openness in government ok the best public policies are the most well informed and we've seen examples of the way very clearly of what kind of difference public input can make the notion of parking meters on main thoroughfares throughout the city of received a lot of public dialogue some of that after the fact other than a lot of public dialogue around tax exemptions or these soccer stadium we saw public dialogue this week for around the preservation of people have the opportunity or good dialogue good communication good inputs that we wind up with when when public policies that are mutually beneficial for all of us we realize that downtime is everybody's never wrote sometime but there are seventeen different planning districts many smaller self to find never hoods and collections of residents and business associations throughout the city and we believe that it is important with the changing where we're not interested we have not taken a position on bike lanes or any of the many other issues that they use our city on our elected officials we are interested in process so as we pursue this dialogue this evening you will have and have an opportunity to participate in the process by submitting process oriented questions and to further define and explain that process let me turn the microphone back over to romans i don't know about succeed but a couple of things we are for i think the first time perhaps in the history of the asleep operating under and in force mint of the closed meeting was sliced open meeting law where city council is not supposed to have any meetings that has a public ten to it if there are more than three members and as i was trying to figure out how the spirit of the law fit having a meeting there was a wonderful comment that we are having a public meeting that was publicly advertised in the newspaper and in a bunch of places and were actually meeting in a public house and some people are having adult beverages so you can't get much more public than that i'm not going to make an editorial comment about why in the first time in the hundred and fifty plus years of the city of st paul we have decided that not being able to attend was for council members is tonight but it is and newly elected or to council member back in a group as a statement that he wants to read because he found to to be the odd person out and she wants everyone to know how sorry she is the two can join us if you so aligned with their mission open transparent public process she sees as an example of what same post growing is working on will be following up with that's where we're sitting and now our process for tonight i have a bit of a discussion and why i have council members take the mike will have some of our same posture on people talk and then as you said we're going to be passing out some cards and that's where we're going to be looking at so right the get go here will just throw a question to the council members in the idea of opening transparency what is your position on the process of the city hall and deleting of emails after six m  i'm i'm an attorney i became an attorney in at age fifty so i haven't been an attorney for really one time but i am a great believer in public access to information and doing the underling is in the room he wrote the state where the practices act and i really believe that eliminating e mails after six months is is removing a portion of the public record that is not only important for citizens to have access to but there are bound to be times when a city staff person or elected official has something in the public record that's more than six months old that would be something that that person would want to demonstrate that they had fulfilled something or they had made a statement or they had tried to correct a misconception that no longer will exist for them to be able to prove that that being said and for those of you in st paul stronghold who know how strongly i feel about this i don't want to sound as though i'm making excuses i did talk today with the city clerk and the city i guess is actually being quite inundated with the other practices requests that have made them feel that they need to alter the way they handle this kind of thing so they have something that i will be looking at as i continue to serve in this business like interject for a second there no reason that everybody has to comment on everything so if you say i think it's cover we don't have to run all through and one of the board members wants to make go ahead to council members who represent the vast diversity of st paul residents businesses and property owners what are some tools you can use to ensure open and transparent public process in decision making at city hall and so i deal with data all the time and it's quite expensive and we're talking about every day i get about over one hundred e mails and some of them are employers some of them are not some of them are spam some  so so i thought that you know it was a good process too there were places that need to be to be cut so that we can have more resources do things and that was my logic with the i t background and the the deal that you made with us as we liked it is that you put your trust in us to to do our work the best of our ability to in the best of your interest but we are and the way i been my experience is that it's like you all my family members and yet you all have different interests and i'm supposed to make everybody happy and it's very difficult and that's something that you you don't learn  you just you you go through that you experience that but it's this pair of transparency and accountability and openness i like i want to work with st paul strong and i think we employment accountability openness it has to be across all the departments it can't just be for example or the council office or the mayor's office it has to be in a fire the police d s i public work has to because all those all of us supposed to be working for you we can't pick and choose where we want to count ability and right now in our during this time in our our community and our society believes accountability transparency is extremely important and i hope that as we put for can continue to work together to find what agree upon what is transparency what's openness across audi partment for active participation and full access to or city government is are a mechanism for constituents to address the council when their word council representatives says no in the past the council seems to follow the protocol of respecting the wishes of the council person who has said no i'll take a shot at it i'm there's it's the good news in the bad news when it comes to that particular deal of the of support the consul member from the border you try to take a city wide view and i think you have to train dubourg if you was a consul member do not aggressively support your ward i will guarantee you nobody else will so you have to you have to be out there and actively and aggressively doing what you think is the right thing to get done in your particular board i look back you know i go back in this area a long long time i remember when i used to work up on selby avenue with dale and selby at an office at six thirty to selby was a police community relations office so the avenue have really started to decline and by the mid seventy's it was in serious serious trouble and by the early eighty's it was really really tough and things didn't really start to change around there until bill wilson  member of that ward really put his shoulder to the wheel and when you see what has happened selby admitting it didn't happen overnight but he worked hard day and night on that particular area and  got his consul colleagues to support him on that and ultimately we've got a beautiful street selby avenue over there but it's those kinds of things somebody has to pay attention back in the the days when the consul was elected at large i think you could put a you could put your finger down at about lexington and in grand for example and draw a circle out about a mile circumference around that and probably most of the consul members would have lived right in that circle there were a couple of exceptions that did as school was over on the side but other than that it was really everything was pretty much located in the general where and that's where the mayors all came from two of so you know it is really spread around the city but it's important for consul members to understand that there are other neighborhoods that need help too and so you try to work with one another to get some of these important projects done and it becomes a whole concept of relationships and of dealing with your consul colleagues and the ability to trust them if they tell you they're going to support something they will support you when the chips are down and you will support them if you told them they were going to do that when the chips are down sometimes sometimes you have to tough decisions and you have to be able to count the poor if you're going to get anything done i remember there used to be a council member many many many years ago who would say well if you can if you can get to four i'll be your but it but it is relationships and understanding and having of the you of the entire city or a lot of city things going on in downtown gets an awful lot of attention but you know you take it to mean the important streets of ben and i'll start with my new site over there with white white bear avenue with paine avenue arcade street you seventh street and then you've got ray street and dale street and you've got the seventh street and you've got west seventh street you've got the avenue you get these commercial streets that if they don't look good that hurts the rest of the neighborhood because those are the gateways and  believer in that those neighborhood community thoroughfares have to look good and that's where the resources really have to start so when people visit those neighborhoods they say you know if this looks pretty nice i'd like to live there i'd like to do business here or if it looks if it's really tough shape you don't drag right on through i'll quit in just a second but i have to give you one example it was a fellow that approached me a few years ago and he had been looking for in minneapolis and highland park and all the houses that he saw in your life they were in the four hundred fifty five hundred thousand dollars range and after looking at a bunch of them anything i can afford that cold is religious or to forget about it about two weeks or about two hundred twenty five thousand dollars half of what the highland house was going for and he said it's exactly the same house after looking at it three or four times they decided to buy it and after they moved in and it was a few weeks later he decided you know there's got to be a better way to get here from my job out there and midway the real it or at taken him out thirty five they got off wheelock parkway grove we lived parkway went up then around us through the water those of you that are familiar with the neighborhood know what i'm going about and he found a new thought i was on to something but boy that was something that really drove it home and those those neighborhood commercial streets have to look good and that's been something that i've been struggling with for a long time and we're making some progress over there to excess so you know they could build a condo there on grand avenue and then another one just to use you as an example because i know you can you're forgive me just recently like people's anchor when they wanted to have the facilities white bear and i know it was a very tough decision for council member bostrom and we were advocated really hard by the the neighborhood but eventually we voted in favor of having a mental health facility on y p avenue and so i mean these are just some example of us voting our conscious and what we believe is best for the city especially those that i like i said lease among us and so i'd be i agree that there's there's there's certain both that you especially the legislative stuff you know usually you you have to if it impacts that wars usually you follow the leadership of the council member but if it's going to impact the entire city of quality of life see openness effective government and not necessarily a specific issue and we are we are i promised all of the council members i thought through that our goal tonight was to be a gathering of friends not to play gotcha so that's with ease and then when you have a question will be gathering them while we're doing that i'll move to the next question say progs economy is driven by local independent businesses that provide goods and services and create jobs for residents small business owners and entrepreneurs face daunting hurdles in order to understand and meet compliance standards for city what can be done to make the process of starting and or maintaining a local indy business more open more transparent and more accessible i can speak to that i think i am one for a number of years i've been on the board metro independent business one which is made up of about three hundred and some locally owned independent businesses in the twin cities and we have been looking at what some of those hurdles are for our for our members linda windsor and i are around the public policy committee of that group one thing that you just saw over i can give an example in minneapolis is that minneapolis was just putting forward a working family agenda that would have required twenty eight day scheduling for businesses that would have required five days of sick and safe leave and it was moving toward fifteen dollar an hour minimum wage i feel very strongly i'm really supportive of those and this it is and i believe that there are some ways in which we can look at those things at the city  level and in more appropriately even at the state level i would love to have st paul explore those issues but what many amp was discovered in in a mistake that i don't think will make in st paul is that they moved forward and set a date for passing those ordinances by the end of the year they had virtually no public process for businesses of any size whether it was the chamber whether it was metro independent business alliance whether it was just reaching out to a small group of businesses to say where are you thinking about this and just like grand avenue parking meters when you tell businesses what's going to be good for them instead of engaging them in how could this be done to work for you what are your ideas about it include i mean one thing that we know about those ordinances they have been done in other cities but they've applied to businesses over a certain size in any case i could kind of go on and on about that i think what we've learned is that well the way on the independent businesses are are they really know what they're about they're independent people who are very large printers feel they have a lot of ideas and they need to be part of processes that it that affect them so i think that i think we just have to do a better job of working with business to determine what they need the city has the business review council it's aimed at trying to cut some red tape i'm not sure that it that it's working really well we do know that there continue to be a lot of issues for businesses and and i know that both die and then share my concern about that we do need to find a way to make it easier to do business in st paul so but i think the first way is we have to really listen to our business community about their needs what kind of red tape they need are going to be good for grand avenue maybe we need to talk to grand avenue about where those packing meters should be how they should work and how they would work for those businesses so i'll let it go tala feel like i say a lot but i have a lot of what i've been wanting to say in my experience i think that as far as small businesses local businesses in terms of p d and d s i i really that set of coming to meet with me and i'm not saying that all inspector like this but to come in have a conversation with me and help me how i could fix it not here to come dammy a punish me but here to help guide me and say this is the next step this is what you need to do this is at this this is the department that after you're done here this is who you talk to they have a real conversation of customer service and investing in our business small business i think that needs to happen i also think that we need to have regular courses whether it's online or out in the community in the library on the steps on the chart the flow chart that is this your first and i action this this is you go here if yes go here no go here these are the people that you need to talk to and with that said my office is open whether you have my work or you're not in my ward if you know anybody or you're so i want to start a business call my office i'll me which you i'll listen to your plan i'll help you figure out a strategy connect me with a person a you connect with so th you can have a same access to the grant along to help you build your business with that said i think the city also the ministration need to put more money back into the neighborhood program neighborhood star these are some of the local the u s dollar that u it invested back into the neighborhood a lot of the money has been taken away that have not been replenished and i think when you do that i think we also need to do a better job of looking back and auditing our zoning and  just do the book if if a certain code doesn't work anymore doesn't apply we need a change that even even to a child a child knows how to crawl they know how to walk and they become an adult society is the same city is the same we have to change and adapt to the current needs and we have to be elevated and flexible and respond to the needs of the market want to drive just like our you know our our sister city of minneapolis and you know to really look at our ours city as a region because we're will be competing against like chicago milwaukee denver all the sources and so i think it's small business is as important as the some of things i think that can be done and i website and give council members a chance to put in answers there because what we're trying to do is make a different channel of communication we're going to be a little bit this is home for us as the new community of the new immigrant community to the city itself and to the to the state there's been a lot of issues with people who have lived here for the last twenty years to save up money to buy businesses to start up businesses and they don't know the process i'm going to use one example of a person who i bought a building a block from here she wanted to start up her own candle company  and she bought the building the city asked her to change the roof she changed the roof and the building was condemned after she did that her building was was demolished and she has to pay for the demolish demolishing of her building so if she knew the process and how it worked all of this would have wouldn't have happened and i'm glad that i called brought this up to to  address these things into the into the council and also to the city and across the board every department like you said to get more more reasonable ways to get the new immigrant families and people who've been here for twenty years who want to start a business want to buy houses and then they see their dreams shattered in front of them position until i was elected the school board nineteen eighty if so i had a rich history of working with the rate from the time that those things were originally created and a lot of them had some bumpy roads of along  way and some paul starts and some of them had several false starts but i think this is really who are now recently and i find the district councils at least the ones that i deal with that the stream leave respons that take a hard look at these the zoning issues lace unseen issues and make some very good recommendations as to what they would like to see happen in that neighborhood and also have plans and ideas about libraries and park and and playgrounds and schools and so there's any number of issues that they have dealt with and i have had just an excellent reason relationship with them and i respect them and i think there's a mutual respect because they know i listen to them and they again like a lot of other things they don't always get everything they want but they know that they've had a fair hearing i just also like to just take a moment if i may and recognize my county commissioner  mcdonough who's out there who this is another this is another part of being in this business we're given you've got to have partners that you can work way into mcdonough is just a great one for us i saw sheldon johnson around here somewhere tim mahoney was here too i don't know just all of the rest of the folks ruby who have spent time in in these fields and it's a big it's a big job and it's important in the experience sometimes thinks you're wild again and you can learn from most people that are around the community consuls and occasionally get somebody on there that's a little anxious to get started and sometimes of concept of settling down a little bit and so you know you aren't going to do this overnight but if we are responsible and we've got a good steady track record the so the consul will listen to and it's that responsibility that's so important and so we've been pretty effective in getting our word out through the media we've only been actively doing this now for what three months maybe and have had an impact so we want to continue to do that and on our website if people have questions to ask it right on the website and we'll answer it and we will we will get the word out to the media and show any answers from the city council as well so i i hope that the city council embraces us as a way to communicate to the public and so that's where our function is we're not here to i'm disappointed that three of our council people decided not to come but in spite of that we're not out to get any of one we're trying to make our government run smoother so that's what thank you john you know  when i don't have a lot of experience yet as an elected official but i did work for ten years for j bannon when he was the fourth ward council person and jay's style vibrating which i hope to emulate was that when an issue was coming forward in his ward in a particular neighborhood whether it was a development project the expansion of the university or any number of things of that of that  type his first call was to the district council to say i just learned about this this is coming on line think about a private think about you know what kind of meetings he want to have secondly when developers came in to meet with j the first thing he said to them was the worst thing you can do is surprise the community surprise the neighbors where you're planning to build this thing so i recommend that you get out to the district council that will involve them as early as you can so that the ultimate project that you develop reflects at least neighbors that they had a chance to give you their input you have an opportunity to figure out how much opposition you're going to get from the community and whether you can work some of those details out as you're developing the project about my district councils i i can take no credit for this but i really  to brag about district court or right now there are always issues and district councils but we had our election in december for the district council bo and there were contested races in each and every subdistrict any of you who know about district councils know that it comes down to often begging people to serve on the council to put their name in for an it is in the back of the room he was elected and put you i'm not sure if any of our other members but i have a i have great confidence in the work that citizens can do when they get together i could really go on and on on this topic but i also want to say that district one which is the battle creek high wooden used to neighborhoods and district  those two neighborhood groups have really focused on equity on involving our our diverse communities and trying to draw both renters as well as homeowners into the process and something that district one did and many of you may have participated in it was they put together a community dialogues that were held during our torpor in november and  police are in parks and i think the other the other one was neighborhood so i think but in any case they involved city staff neighbors city wide neighbors i mean every people came from all over but they were put together by district one and have really reveal some great material on the guys the city as we go forward in those areas and so that we don't have the  leadership from the district different district council so last year what we did would do these process where identified that trash was one of the big issues that everybody wants work on it so i find money and resources or they can work on that one of the things that we did was out of that whole process we also found that the district council from across the city wanted to have a central database so that they can track the constituents complain or members or issues so that we can have these highlight district council is going to be different than the quad town district council seven and so we still need to work harder to diversify and i clap because i think that i first of the on the district council board is extremely important because they represent and district council for years and i've follow it and i'm a subcommittee now for process it's great to have this for councils and have all these things that have been talked about but for example when you go and you make a recommendation to the appeal and they voted down continually what the district council has come forward for the only way to go forward in this process of the city is for this council to cough up four hundred dollars for an appeal to go before the city council to me i think it would be something to look at that why are the district councils going through the work of making a recommendation you can't always get what you want but if you look at the pattern there are a lot of times when their recommendations turn down where's the accountability on that and then why are why are the neighborhoods being charged to come before the city council and it gets back to the first one of the first questions that was red when if if if i have an issue in my neighborhood and my council member says i can't address the city council and i represent probably a bunch of neighbors that can stop the public process for us to be able to raise issues at the city council level so i think that's what we're trying to get at with these questions and with this forum is how can we open up this process and make it easier for the community to be involved in what's going on at  that i also wanted to include and let everybody know is that with this new discount so i'm very happy that fifty percent of the district council is of people of color are represented the community when we come together as a community we are actually stronger very ok and i was i was also involved in getting a new charter for st paul which went into effect in one thousand nine hundred seventy two in the old charter there was a provision that at the end of any every city council meeting the public was invited to come up and speak to the city council and when the new charter was adopted i can't remember exactly what happened to that provision but gradually over the years the opportunity to appear personally at the city council meeting sort of faded into the background i remember at one time when the  woman from frogtown who was an activist in that neighborhood she came to the city council meetings on a fairly regular basis and had something to say about frogtown and she always got attention because she had a hat made in the form of so i think that that kind of a personal relationship that people were able to establish was very  citizens would like to have an opportunity where they could have a personal appearance before the city council am i have been a involved and i have joined save our st paul neighborhood so i probably want to hear more from my colleagues but one thing turned the city down on their demolition permits and the city was appeal that a t c turned it down on the basis that they felt that there were some additional options that could be considered to preserve the homes and the city appealed that decision to the city council and and again i think there was a very strong feeling on the part of the dayton block district council and members of the historic district group who felt that there has been virtually no discussion with the community about those houses and if you take four houses down in a small area of a historic district you're definitely changing the character of the community so what i did and i think i think any of us would have done the same thing is  i asked the the city and in the in the heat the department for the department head and and staff who are involved in this and the neighbors i ask city attorney if i could get everybody together to work to see if there was an opportunity for a compromise and for reasons having to do with it being an appeal i myself could not take a position on the appeal so i saw the city attorney gave me the go ahead and and we all met on tuesday and the most amazing thing happened which was i simply said you're all here could you talk about this and see if there's any where to get i can't take a position i can't tell you what to decide i can only kind of facilitate the discussion and it was really wondrous to see that in about a little over an hour everyone had decided to take six additional months do another request for proposals get the neighborhood and brought them developing a process about what they'd like to see happen and and it was agreed upon and we were able to continue with knight's appeal on public hearing for six months and whether my colleague who was not wild about this stuart preservation have voted one way or the other i know he appreciated that about two hours of public hearings were taken off last night's agenda so i think that it's a it's an example that you know we can all think about things like that when there is a neighborhood conflict is there is the opportunity to bring people together from the with the with the specter of going before the council we have the council pick a winner in a loser and say you know why risk you know that this is this is a ok see balance and i don't necessarily want to get into all the fine points on that tonight but i've looked at this and i've had discussions with my council members and one some of lose lose some over the years  thousand bucks to put into that house we could we could make a major impact on a dozen houses so it's trying to figure out that balance i know it's important to save one or two houses when you start value but on the other hand money is finite we just don't have an unlimited pot that we can go to to do this kind of stuff so we're doing it one placed somewhere else is going to feel the pain of that so i like to spread it out and the more i can do to  get good housing for our or citizens in our town you know another thing we used to have years ago is when we got a big investment in some of these buildings the restoration they could by just use an example bought a house for one hundred thousand dollars that the city had two hundred twenty five thousand dollars and and they went out and sold that house him and got three hundred thousand dollars when the market was sky high the city didn't receive one dime back of their subsidy that they put into that and in addition to that we lost an affordable house and i'm thinking how in the world is this work and i was this is there to all the people that put put  weekend or came before the council and they voted it down so the fear of equity went out of it the city didn't get any money back and the woman's argument was well listen i want to buy we've got a deal on a house in woodbury and i want to be able to buy that house and not have any more she's talking about taking the money that she got in the spread from what you prepared that thing and what you got hoard and buy a house in woodbury and i'm supposed to feel sorry for i'm sorry it doesn't work but those are the kinds of things that we're up against from time to time and you know in the in sometimes i may not come off quite a smooth as i put on that but i do feel that we have a responsibility to the taxpayers who put up the money in the first place and if we're going to build and create a portable housing keep it affordable i love doing business with habitat for humanity because they manage their properties well and they stayed affordable they had the request that if you're going to use acronyms please identify the acronym so that everybody that isn't up on the the end we have some closing statements time so and i ask everybody to try and be a little paid if you can on the questions and i know all the answers are great so i'm just going to be quite with all the focus on attracting and retaining business st paul conflicts between businesses and neighboring residents get ignored for current nuisance business ordinances not more strictly enforced to make st paul increasingly d and compact and truly livable that's maybe a little bit more issue than process but i think it's a good question specific and i can only speak from my experience that i think that we have been pretty intolerant of news and businesses especially you know working with the neighborhood those lot of conflict of interest there you have business who want so also will be there and then there's some that don't want and what what i did was i got together with the community to create a parking taskforce and then now we are working to secure for money from p t and a parking lot on so that we can do an actual parking study and traffic study to make sure that the decision just not based on  business owner because he or she has more influence than the smaller businesses and i think that we do pay attention to that in terms of density our city is changing we are growing more and more folks want to move into our city we need to ensure that we have proper and density and also for working with the surrounding neighborhood especially along the light rail if we put up tents density or two or three or four story building thing that's important to us is senior housing i want to make sure that we don't that in my words specially with a lot of elders who may not have the capacity to maintain their home maybe they want to turn that into a rental property and then move to a senior housing  where they can have access and resources and they can be around people that understand their we are and so that they can get a little bit and come renting their homes or trying to create those sort of models making sure that  developer they come in they don't need your tax dollars they don't need the subsidy they're going to build it the way they are they want but in my experience every development that you subsidy from the city my fellow council member and i we  most all of those were owner occupied homes and what happened when the market started changing here twenty twenty five years ago a lot of those folks were moving on somewhere else and they're the kids that the younger people coming up it wasn't cool to have a duplex anymore the duplex lived in them for years and years and years and they wanted it it's the most inexpensive housing you can possibly get because you got a tenant upstairs if you rent the place of going to tear it up and it's a it's a good way to make the house payments but nobody wanted to wanted to really get involved in that so as a result the coax moved out and the properties became a rental and to take a look when we get appeals on these things that they were the ownership is coming from very little but the ownership is coming from the city of st paul these people are all over the place and some of them even out of state and that in my opinion is something that's that's really hurt one of the greatest things we could do in this town is figure out a way to get ownership back in the homes duplexes and to get owners to occupy those things and for young people to recognize that that is the most affordable housing you're ever going to be able to find and it just to reestablish those neighborhoods and i think a lot of you that have been around for a while know the streets that i'm talking about with the duplexes were on them you could never tell that it was a rental poverty in the metropolitan area one out of every four houses in this racially concentrated area of poverty is subsidized you know what the racial years for the city of st paul it's one out of fifty and people in low income neighborhoods ought not only find out about mu concentrations of lower income people being stacked on top of other low income existing residents in the newspaper or on the news there needs to be more discussion and more opportunity for input input equity you know and i want to tell you why i can take a second i want to advocate for white people in the suburbs when grandpa johnson dies and leaves grandma johnson on the homestead or the farms that are when grandma johnson's daughter's husband runs off with a waitress from the country western restaurant and leaves her with three kids and hockey practice and you know medical insurance and everything else why should they have to come to some a university to thomas dale to the lower east side or the north and in order to find save energy  ficient affordable housing we need light cycle housing that's four million words for single moms with dependent children who need motor that room facilities for non elderly childless adults we need homeownership affordable housing doesn't have to mean just low income very low income rental subsidized housing and we do need the largest welfare program in the country home mortgage times deduction we need programs that promote them support homeownership homeownership training programs and we need them throughout the community because it is an indictment against the future of any community if they were eighty five percent of the portable while income rental housing in the city is located and i think that has an impact on the quality of life for the top cities so hopefully we can encourage them spur discussions about citing and location and options and alternatives throughout the city of st paul and not just in the neighborhoods because some are good housing leads to segregated schools which leads to the school to prison pipeline to the largest achievement gap in the country and there needs to be more communication between the city the school district hugged each other and all of the other players so that we have clearly a level playing field in terms of access options  that we don't have a process of public information about a demo request so until the demo has permit has been issued and that's a that's a process issue in part because if you want to look at maintaining the housing stock that we have and or prove improving it it's it's a problem when you have i want to say a lot of out of the city developers coming in and tearing down the homes and building some people call the mcmansion as i call them big shoe boxes that will not stand the time of quality work and have many problems and also change the character of the neighborhoods and for seniors and young families and other other people who need those smaller homes things are being changed and we don't really have any input into it and it's all about money right now at the city and i really i would really like city council members to  that because we are a city wide organization raising these issues and it's really important that we have some public input before things are destroyed in a neighborhood time a tip project is developed it's taken off the tax rolls so here we are where is about thirty three percent of our city that don't  doesn't pay taxes because they're non profits schools government and on top of that we are now taking a large portion of our most developed a b properties and taken them off the tax rolls and so when we we try to put parking meters on grand avenue to raise four hundred thousand dollars or giving twenty six million dollars away every year to developers that's why we're in this hole were in awe and now we find that people feel that we have to continue to give to for we'll never have a developer the same paul minneapolis learned that lesson a number of years ago has had ten times as much development the last five years the same paul has the same paul has given out a hundred and fourteen million in t minneapolis twenty four million so that so what we've done is taken the easy route and that look in the long run so that's what i can tell you about to i could take another two hours worth but because a couple of points well we're figuring out where we're going to go next and we can come back to to but one of the questions from the audience and then i've been reminded that it is also ok for the city council to ask  steering committee questions as to what you think we are may be good bad or indifferent but if you come here and we should be willing to answer questions in this is in that line and anybody can answer where was or where is the disconnect in the process is in the same post city government that led to people feeling like there was a need for s things that were happening at the city council in the mayor's office that we had no when we met we had no input the there were i think there's a list of twenty six what we call grievances on our website all those issues now by the way again simple strong is not only the steering committee has more people but we are on all sides of the issues and one thing that we all agree on is that there hasn't been a fair public process there's nothing on call consent agenda  a ten year contract went through without any public input and there's been a lot of unhappiness about it and we wonder why isn't there that opportunity to go to the city and talk about it and see you know it's not that we would change decisions at the city council but we just feel that if the public had a chance to have input we could improve that decision there's a lot of opportunities to make things better we don't have to  throw something away or ideas the way just just there's a whole lot of people in the city who have a lot of experience by are frozen out of the system and that's the reason that we are here so i hope you can do that and getting the feedback and all of that well one of the things that happens that process at the city is when a major decision has been made primarily behind closed doors and gets approved and then the public hears about it and then they set up a community our citizens advisory committee but you have to apply for that committee and be appointed by the mayor so for example the stadium issue that was decided i mean pretty much without a lot of public input for my question whether or not you agree with that or not it did there was not information and chances to do it so now if you want to help with some of the things that relate to development on there with that area you can well they've already chosen community advisory committees but they all had to be appointed by the mayor so what does that say about and probably there are there's a diversity of opinion there but it seems like that process should be changed and maybe it could be brought back towards council members how thing put people on those committees so that it's more in the hundreds and there are more in touch with their neighbors and people who might bring the expertise and the representation prong came out of the prostration of a number of things and this may get into a little bit of an issue but the the converting of so many public of our public lands through to private contractor sanford sides and i don't know about this by the public got stuff like i want more public sort of things that we can all get into and no the money is not going to united he to create three additional stops in low income neighborhoods between western and hamilton and victoria and there there are clearly out of the opportunities up front for greater public input in the discussion especially when tax dollars are being spent for the benefit of the community so again if people only find out about something when it persecutes into their community or they accidentally heard in the matter from a neighbor or read about it in the paper and the deal has already been done that it doesn't make people feel very engaged in the public dialogue or the public policy process and i said at the very beginning the biggest room in the world is room for improvement we simply want to implore our elected officials to improve the mechanisms of the process the communication the timing and the opportunity so paul strong has never requested exclusive access or so important we just want the process opened up so that whoever is so inclined has the opportunity to protect his terms and to make suggestions to offer constructive criticisms and we have simple strong believe the constructive criticisms that we've raised have three components first you have to specifically state what's wrong and why it's likely to you have to provide options and alternatives you can't just say it's wrong don't do it ok three you have to say what you're willing to do to help and that's one of the reasons why we're holding the forum the seam is because we said it's not simply about us meeting in a coffee shop and crying in the in the latte but we really thought of you know broaden this discussion and abide other members of the public so that when they feel elected decisions are in the process of being made that they make sure to raise their voice so that it is a part of the process because it can only result in a other you know product for everybody to product is what we're interested in not taking the credit or getting our pictures in the paper or having somebody slap us on the back but other than a better democratic process education for what many people believe is that exact reason that they were not in touch with parents and families and so on students i think that there's a you know i watch just forgive me personal issue this clown car a circus sad when people look at congress and elected officials and you know they're they're single digit in terms of public approval ratings and i just think we we have a responsibility to watch the system and i y do whatever possible to raise that so that it is more reflective of power of a participatory democracy so tom question for the simplest wrong you know what are your where is your position on racial equity in the city of st paul for example what i in my experience there i see that the city of st paul is about forty percent people of color but the workforce is about eighty percent white i'm not sad i'm a white he would have jobs i do but if we're truly we to believe we truly believe in the core value of our we have practices of behavior that does not reflect the outcome that we want we'll never see change and so i want to i want to hear what i was saying paul strong feeling about that is that something they want to work on if we can take care of the racial equity issue we're going to solve a bunch of that our police officer i know all of those are not all of them are are bad right and so we have a really good cars but you know we all people as a pawn need to be treated with dignity and due process by our law enforcement where  the public policy decisions that are being made so if it's an issue that affects senior citizens we believe strongly that they ought to be at the table if it's an issue that backs women if it affects people of color if it affects renters at the parks the residents of  public housing projects then if they are the intended beneficiaries then we're not going to produce or contributes to very effective policies in their absence so if you read  principles you'll notice that inclusion is deeply embedded in them ok but the people who are affected by the policies that we saw that this week in terms of the preservation issues in the day the people in dayton both need to be at the table and have some input into what the ultimate outcome is for those houses that were purchased ten twelve years ago and a considerable taxpayer expense and  allowed to be run down to the point where now the recommendation is that they be completely destroyed so we are for inclusion whether that is in the work force in the public policy process in the housing market and public safety or in education and we think that that's you know but the i travel a lot the challenges and opportunities that we face st paul are so much more manageable than they are in chicago or detroit or single was or many of the other comparable areas around the country so when people ask me where i'm from i don't want to have to say i'm from the midwest ok i know jesse ventura is no longer the governor but then there's a whole really well firming up there civically where you're from i don't want to have to say the upper midwest i want to be able to on from the capital city of the great state of minnesota st paul and tell them why i'm proud to be here why i'm active here why i'm civically engaged here i don't want to have to tell them that we have the highest achievement gap in the united states i don't want to have to tell them that the homeownership rates for african americans are lower in minnesota today than they were in mississippi in the one nine hundred forty s i don't want to have to tell them that one point when black males here earn the highest percentage of their white male counterparts in the workforce in the united states and now we're down the number thirty in terms of where we're at across the country i mean when you look at all the negative social indicators why do we have to be at the head of the line for the entire country sending more young black and white and brown red and yellow women and men to the correctional system than the higher education you know i mean it's crazy that's really crazy and i think was forming in one of the core principles die and this is for your question is your question was that what the folks that i was meeting with one of the things that i consistently said was this we won't have a strong group of people here that can address issues for st paul to st paul and less reflects the diversity of our great city and at the table we need to have our immigrant communities we need to have american in america need to have long used me as the pentateuch in the hispanic latino we need to have everyone represented in so we worked hard from the very beginning to bring that group of people if you look around here tonight you'll see that you know of the ten or eleven people that we have on the executive committee five of us are folks of of color minority communities and it's our intent and we agree with you that the color you know the city of st paul should reflect that throughout the administration throughout the workforce and throughout the businesses