State Of The City: A Response
By Mitch Berg
It’s customary after the State of the Union address for a member of the legislative opposition to the President to give a response.
But Saint Paul is a one-party city. There is, currently, not a single elected Republican in any office anywhere in the city. Indeed, there is only one relatively conservative Democrat – Janice Rettman, on the County Commission – anywhere in Ramsey County.
Yep, this is the Saint Paul my heart still sees. From atop the High Bridge, on a beautiful day.
So it falls to me to give the conservative response to Mayor Coleman’s State of the City address.
I fell in love with Saint Paul when I first really encountered it, 25 years ago. I’d moved to Minneapolis, it’s true – and had little real clue what Saint Paul was. Over the next year or so, I set myself straight; as I biked and drove around the city, I came to love the city’s distinct neighborhoods, each of which reminded me of a different place, built by a different group of newcomers.
The Cathedral looks out over an increasingly empty downtown.
And so I moved here in 1987, and I’ve lived here (with two years worth of temporary exceptions) ever since.
I stayed here because it was easy to get a nice house on a budget, because the neighborhoods were such nice places – someone once called the city “fifteen small towns with one mayor” -because you could live here much less expensively, because the crime rate was lower, and because the schools were, so we were told, better than in Minneapolis.
Yep. I fell in love with the place. A lot of us did.
And the relationship has become a classic case of Battered Spouse Syndrome.
You pass laws that catastrophically devalue our property, and then you jack up property taxes.
Was it the smoking ban? Was it the decline of the neighborhood? Was it too many fights, too fast, that ran it afoul of the cops? Who cares? It's gone! And it ain't coming back! And if you say "oh, it's just a seedy little corner bar?" Then you don't get it. Little corner bars and other little downmarket neighborhood quirks ARE Saint Paul. And they're disappearing!
You acquiesce in the use of the city as a warehouse for the poor – and pour on the spending, heaping the burden onto those of us who actually pay taxes.
And the schools? I’m disgusted by what the Saint Paul Public Schools have become. I use “disgusted” because I don’t want to use a more colorful term. What a bottomless waste. And our kids are ones being robbed – or at least, the kids whose parents are misinformed enough to trust them to the district. And I know – that’s not the mayor’s job. But it’s a function of the one-party dystopia that this city has become.
It's the Endicott Building. Historic? Impressive? Beautiful? Yes. And utterly empty, since maybe 2004. On a good day, the skyway lobby doesn't smell like bum urine.
Saint Paul has become dull. Hopeless. Depressed. After decades of cheerleading, downtown is sleepier than ever, but for the odd flashes of overcrowding during Wild games, concerts, Ordway shows or the Lowertown Art Crawl. The office vacancy rate is kept out of the three digit range only by the few remaining major employers – Hartford, Ecolab, Securian, USBank – and, of course, all. Those. Government. Offices. And. Workers.
The once-vibrant neighborhoods, outside the gentrified whir of Grand Avenue and the downmarket, multi-culti scrabble on Payne, are wondering where the next hit’s gonna come from.
The Train to Nowhere.
Some may call this sour grapes from someone whose party is far out of power. OK – so what does the Coleman Administration have to brag about after seven miserable years in office? Cheerleading about community outreach education. A train that will do nothing useful for this city or the metro area – at best, gentrifying a few tiny islands while accelerating the rot in between. And maybe, just maybe, an expensive downtown stadium we can’t afford (which will be built by Mayor Coleman’s union underwriters, using labor that largely drives in from Inver Grove Heights and Elko). And spending. Always, always, more spending.
The buck - really, every buck they can find - stops here.
The state of the City of Saint Paul is atrocious. Deadening. Depressing. Dismal. Dingy. Bordering on Dire.
And there is no hope – none – on the horizon, because this is a one-party city, and the party in power, and that it appears will be in power for my kids’ lifetimes, is committed to fighting rot and blight with more rot and blight.
That’s the real state of Saint Paul. You’re welcome to it.
I still love my adopted city. But I doubt more than ever that it can survive its government.
March 27th, 2012 at 10:19 am
So, Mitch, you can’t be the only one that sees this and is ticked off by it. When does the revolution start?!
March 27th, 2012 at 10:39 am
One party rule. Reagan defeated it across the pond. Too bad he couldn’t do anything about our urban centers. My mother still lives there. I’ve told her to escape, but she’s captive to their swirling vortex of collectivism.
March 27th, 2012 at 10:57 am
But Mitch…we’re going to have shiny new trains, bike paths, bikeways, medians and traffic circles…we’re going to get a shiny new Lowertown ballpark…look what those property taxes (which have more than DOUBLED in the 8 years I’ve lived in my present Highland home) have given you. Yet these idiots have done everything they can to drive the business tax base out of the city! The productive class are being taxed out of their homes.
March 27th, 2012 at 11:25 am
I see that lovely view from the high bridge every morning; you can’t see the tumbleweeds from there so it’s quite inspiring…yet I aver it looks better coming out of St. Paul than going into it.
As I turn onto W7th, I notice the air becomes heavier. The backpack and shopping cart people on their way to Dorothy Day for breakfast are the only foot traffic, everyone in vehicles turning on to 94 and on to where their jobs are…now.
I don’t even buy a pack of gum in SP any more.
March 27th, 2012 at 12:41 pm
I’m one of those government employees who occupy one of the spaces on the outskirts of downtown. Despite popular believe, I actually work hard at my job. I love my job, except of course for a few dozen people that make my life miserable.
However, I am not a passionate Union member. If there was any way to disconnect from that organization, I would in a heartbeat. I am all for the current bill going through the channels that would get rid of this hindrance. Right to Work I think it’s called? I’m sorry, I don’t keep up too much on these things, but this one caught my attention.
Anyway, I have lived in St. Paul my entire life, and I would have to agree. We are doomed. I didn’t vote for the current mayor. Hell, I didn’t vote for anyone in office except for one person, who has completely disappointed me. Goes to show you about listening and believing a person in politics.
The Train to Nowhere totally messes up my commute. I hate it. I figure the only thing that sucker is going to bring in is the thugs from Murderapolis. Won’t that be fun?
The school system is a joke. I have two kids in it currently. One graduates next year, the other has three more years. We are already looking at charter schools for the youngest. I’m thankful I raised the two of them so that they do have common sense. The stuff they come home with, and what their teacher said. Well, let’s just say it’s mind boggling.
Mayor Coleman is a joke. The City Council is a joke. I feel sorry for all the home owners because the property taxes are going to be through the roof. I can’t afford my own home, so I rent. I’m sure I will be paying more in rent as the property taxes go through the roof. That’s just how the ball bounces.
There just seems to be no way to change this one party system in St. Paul. And it’s sad. It’s a very nice place to live. East side is the Best side! But still. If I can manage to hold on, I’ll stick around for another three years. Just to make sure both my kids graduate.
After that, I am gone. I’ll get myself a nice apartment in one of the close by burbs. Commute may be a little longer, but that’s ok.
Better than living in this soon to be taxed to the max city.
March 27th, 2012 at 12:50 pm
Captain,
While I indulge in the odd flippancy, I know that plenty of government workers do work plenty hard.
And thanks for stopping by.
March 27th, 2012 at 1:10 pm
Mitch,
those five new roundabouts on Jefferrson that the neighbors don’t want will turn this city around.
Kinda looking like the Jim Schiebel days of 20 years ago.
March 27th, 2012 at 9:50 pm
Having finished Minneapolis last year, I’ll be walking all of St. Paul starting around June I think. Throughout Mpls I saw all kinds of wonderful people, homes, neighborhoods, parks, lakes, shops, and yes downtown. What a shame it reaches only half its potential with such awful schools and government at every level, including a mayor even Ron Rosenbaum can’t stand. I imagine I’ll see the same in St. Paul, the best parts those that have the least to do with government.
March 28th, 2012 at 8:01 am
Give credit where due:
I moved to St. Paul in 1982 to attend night school and lived three blocks South of Selby and Dale in the days when everything from there to University was shoulder-holster territory (remember The Faust and The People’s Choice?) but carry permits were impossible to get so ordinary citizens avoided a large chunk of the city. That area has actually gotten better and at least part of it was City efforts to push the bad element out.
Plus, in two generations, the Boat People have completely transformed the East End of University from a wasteland of empty storefronts, hookers and drug dealers to the vibrant, small-business Little Mekong neighborhood. City Hall gets no credit for that but the State of the City is better for the residents who do deserve the credit.
March 28th, 2012 at 9:37 am
“City Hall gets no credit for that but” the state and fed do. Most of those businesses were financed by low, or no interest loans from the fed.
Don’t get me wrong.
Of all the immigrants that have poured into the US in the past 20 years, I am happiest to see the Hmong, who earned their status with their own blood (as opposed to the Somali’s who got here by riding on Clinton’s leftist guilt after they spilled the blood of US soldiers that went to their stinking, filthy little hellhole of a country to help feed them…but I digress).
Given their sacrifice, I still do not think it’s right to hand over wads of taxpayer cash to any private citizen.