After Mayor Jacob Frey vetoed the Minneapolis City Council's budget on Wednesday, could there be a budget veto on the way in St. Paul as well?
Wednesday night, the St. Paul City Council passed a budget that includes a 5.9 percent property tax increase instead of Mayor Melvin Carter's proposed 7.9 percent hike. Carter says the increase is necessary to maintain critical city services including police and fire.
Councilmember Rebecca Noecker disagreed.
"We're living in a time when every dollar matters, when a lot of our residents are increasingly on constrained budgets," said Noecker. "We cannot control most of those cost increases. But what we can do is be responsible stewards of our taxpayer dollars and I think we owe it to our residents to make sure that every dollar is being spent wisely."
Noecker also says many of the budget cuts will come from unfilled positions or from money that had been budgeted for - but not - spent in previous years.
Carters' office says they're weighing their options when it comes to a veto. The budget passed on a 5 to 1 vote.
That one vote against the budget came from City Council President Mitra Jalali who agreed with Carter, saying that a higher tax increase is critical to maintaining basic city services.
"There has to be a balance, for me, between funding important services and having capacity to respond to unknowns and bringing the property tax down," Jalali explained. "And there are decisions made in this proposal that I have concerns about, in the name of bringing the levy down. And I just worry that the tradeoffs aren't worth it."
Mayor Carter said publicly Wednesday that he has already made a compromise on the tax levy which now could lead to a veto.
"Tonight's council action saves median homeowners $19 per year by cutting millions in police staffing and other city services without a plan, reducing funding for streets and sidewalks, and eliminating two total positions - director of Human Rights and police property room clerk - while adding two new titles to the City Council's staff," Carter said in a statement. "We are reviewing this document, which the city's Office of Financial Services received late last night and have yet to perform our standard due diligence on, and will determine next steps in the coming days."