St. Paul residents voted in favor of a 1 percent sales tax referendum on Tuesday.
The sales tax increase passed with 60.19% of votes in favor of the sales tax that supporters, including St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter, say will generate close to $1 billion to repair roads and parks.
"There's an enormous number of business leaders that understand the need for this and understand how it makes good sense for us," Carter told Vineeta Sawkar on the WCCO Morning News Wednesday. "Our sales would still be lower, for example, than if you went out for a night on the town in Downtown Minneapolis, and people still seem to do that."
Carter says the money brought in over the next 20 years will help totally reconstruct some of St. Paul's most traveled, and pothole filled roads.
"Well, I think people really understand that if Summit Avenue, and Grand, and University Avenue are full of potholes, well that's why our crews can never get to Charles or Aurora, or some of those smaller streets in our community," explained Carter.
In WCCO Radio's "Behind The Ballot" series, Carter spoke candidly about the measure aimed at generating $738,000,000 to repair and improve streets and bridges, $246,000,000 to improve parks and recreation facilities.
"A lot of conversations I've had with people are them talking about the potholes they've battled through the years, about growing up in St. Paul, and about the lifelong legacy as a community is the complaints about our streets," said St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter. "I remind them that never have we as a community done the exercise to see what it would take to fundamentally improve the quality of the streets."
Carter explained why a sales tax was ultimately the right course of action for the city.
"So if we did this through our property tax, only the folks that live inside the city would have the opportunity to chip-in and be a part of the solution," Carter said. "When we say we're going to do it through a sales tax, it broadens the scope of people to the full scope of people who are using our streets and parks. I think that's a fairer approach."
As reported, all seven seats on the St. Paul City Council were up for grabs on Tuesday with four members opting not to run for reelection.
Incumbents Rebecca Noecker (Ward 2), Mitra Jalali (Ward 4), and Nelsie Yang (Ward 6) all won reelection. Hwa Jeong Kim won Ward 5 with 51.95% of the vote.
Anika Bowie led in Ward 1 with 39.71% of the vote and Cheniqua Johnson led Ward 7 with 41.15% of the vote.
Saura Jost won in Ward 3 with 48.48% after Isaac Russel conceded.
A winner in races where no candidate received 50% of the vote will be decided through ranked-choice tabulation.