St. Paul’s new City Council president wants to see council flex its muscle

St. Paul City Council Member Rebecca Noecker is expected to become council president this month, following Ward 4 Council Member Mitra Jalali’s resignation. Noecker is the longest-serving current council member, and represents Ward 2, which includes downtown St. Paul and the West Side.

The Star Tribune interviewed Noecker at Wabasha Brewing on the West Side as she prepares to assume the new role.

What is the council president’s job in St. Paul?

Officially, it’s the facilitator of our council meetings.

Some council presidents are more or less involved in the interactions among council members — I will keep it to the role as outlined.

I want to be very supportive. I want to share my experience and be a mentor — as I can — to my colleagues, but I want to give people the freedom to listen to their constituents, and advance the policies they think are important.

I think it builds trust to have disagreements in public. We may take some time to get full consensus. And that’s fine.

Tell me about the relationship between the mayor and the council. From what I’ve seen, things have seemed kind of tense.

The relationship has been strained at times. I think that’s OK. The council and mayor are two co-equal branches of government. In a strong mayor system, that can be easy to forget.

I was so happy with the way my colleagues came in last year ready to ask questions and not take anything for granted. We did a really great job with that this year. We came in and we asked department heads questions about police overtime, about snow plowing.

I do intend to uplift the council this year and make sure we’re empowered and using our authority. There are seven of us in our wards. The council is in tune with what our constituents are saying, and we need to be able to voice that.

We may disagree about the budget again this year, but we’re going to be more strategic as a council in how we do that. We are creating a budget committee that will not just meet when the mayor proposes his budget, but will be meeting all year. We are creating a public safety committee that’s going to provide oversight over police overtime and other police activity.

I hope we can get more policymaking done and move things more quickly this year.

Like what?

If it’s originating from the council, there’s a lot of scrutiny on [the mayoral] administration side that prevents small things form happening.

For example, and it’s a very small example of this, I’ve been working on an ordinance to preserve trees on the public right of way in construction projects. That’s taken about two years of legal reviews.

We’ve been working on tenant protections 2.0 for far too long (The council repealed a tenant protection ordinance in 2021 after landlords sued to stop it.), and from my understanding, that’s also been held up by attorneys and legal reviews.

If it’s not something the mayor agrees with, it still needs to be advanced, be debated in public, rather than have that legislation be stymied on the front end.

You were a leader in the push for a city subsidy for child care, which voters rejected in November. How does that experience shape your approach?

That showed me how important it is to get the basics right. To show people the city is focusing on core services, before you can get to bigger bolder ideas.

It made me realize how important it is to build the trust, by showing we’re doing the basic things right. I think we put that trust to the test a lot and we need to show we’re using dollars responsibly, we’re providing services people rely on.

Finally, your ward includes downtown. How do you make the case for downtown St. Paul, to people, to businesses?

I’m really optimistic that we’re going to see some significant progress this year. We are going to be approving a development for Central Station in February. Pedro Park is coming online this spring. Landmark Towers is done ahead of schedule. There are about 600 new units of housing that are coming online this year.

You never want to hear about a business closing, and that bad news definitely travels fast, but there are great businesses opening and staying.

We’re turning a corner.