Advocates turned out Wednesday evening to tell St. Paul City Council members that added investment in affordable housing through the 2020 city budget is the right thing to do, as is a “Community First” public safety budget that prioritizes youth spending over new policing.

“Currently police are one-third of our budget, and this is only feeding cycles of violence. We cannot police our way out of the problem,” said Carrie Pomeroy of the coalition Root and Restore St. Paul, which arrived carrying signs marked #FundTheVillage.

Those comments were echoed by members of the interfaith coalition ISAIAH, the Metropolitan Interfaith Council on Affordable Housing, the St. Paul Youth Commission and others with ties to youth, immigration and housing issues.

“We want the whole community to support our kids,” said Stephanie Stoessel, chair of the St. Paul chapter of ISAIAH.

Lowertown resident with ISAIAH says mayor is right to move away from “the over-policing of black and brown” people. Treating “violence as an epidemic disease” instead of something to arrest your way out of yields best results, she says. pic.twitter.com/r4qcccLmUB — Frederick Melo, Reporter (@FrederickMelo) December 5, 2019

With a week to go before finalizing the $621.9 million city budget and $166 million tax levy, the council held a Truth in Taxation hearing at St. Paul City Hall that drew social justice advocates by the dozens, outnumbering the handful of residents who arrived to ask for tax relief or added policing.

Some residents asked for stepped-up climate action and higher density housing to ease rent increases that are outpacing inflation.

Others praised the city for establishing a $10 million affordable housing trust fund that will seed a variety of initiatives for first-time home buyers and low-income renters alike, including a rent subsidy program for families in a handful of St. Paul Public Schools.

In August, Mayor Melvin Carter called for a 4.85 percent increase to the 2020 city tax levy.

In response to a record number of gun-related homicides, the mayor more recently unveiled a $3 million supplemental public safety budget, half of which would be funded by boosting the tax levy increase $1.5 million — a percentage point — to 5.85 percent.

Among a variety of efforts, the added funding will expand the Right Track youth jobs program, eliminate a proposed $5 fee for “Rec Check” after-school programming at city recreation centers, expand a Gun Crime Intelligence Center, expedite police DNA testing in criminal cases and hire 14 new Community Ambassadors to talk to young people on the street.

The new public safety budget will not bring sworn police staffing to 635 officers, as some had hoped, or fund Shotspotter gunshot-detection technology. Instead, five vacant positions will remain unfilled.

John Slade of MICAH (interfaith housing) says he’s excited for fair housing and renter protections: “We are super glad that you are looking to pass a renter screening law that will take some of the onus off of having a criminal record.” pic.twitter.com/RjLSXyEftu — Frederick Melo, Reporter (@FrederickMelo) December 5, 2019

The impact of rising St. Paul, Ramsey County and St. Paul Public School property taxes will vary widely by neighborhood and property value.

But some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods are expected to see the greatest tax increases, in part because properties in low-income areas are finally rebounding after years below pre-recession peak values from 2005. Some properties in Frogtown, Dayton’s Bluff and elsewhere are seeing value increases of 15 percent or more.

That trend has some property owners in modest, mixed-income neighborhoods especially worried.

Michaelene Colestock, owner of Spence Specialties LLC, said the series of transitional homes she owns on the city’s East Side house 32 women and 20 children.

Property taxes that have grown each year have her worried.

“If I have to leave and close my program, where will these women and their children go?” Colestock said.