Mayor Chris Coleman’s office and St. Paul’s Department of Safety and Inspections are showing little enthusiasm for spending another year encouraging store owners to voluntarily switch toward recyclable and compostable to-go food containers.

The city council voted 5-2 on Oct. 11 against requiring restaurants, convenience stores and other eateries to make the switch outright. Instead, council members opted to give city staff another year to help connect them to environmentally friendly container vendors.

The council expected city staff to pursue a grant from Ramsey County to pay for an additional 12 months of business outreach and education.

But on Wednesday, DSI staff and the mayor’s office informed council members by email that after roughly a year of outreach, they would not devote another year of staff time to the effort without a guarantee that the new rules will be adopted.

“We got a (message) from the Department of Safety and Inspections saying they’re not going to do these resource fairs,” said city council member Chris Tolbert, noting that even if the new rules had been approved, the city would have spent 12 months helping with implementation anyway. “I don’t understand. There’s no resource difference.”

Tolbert added, “It seems like the (attitude) was … we’re taking our ball and going home.”

Council President Russ Stark said cooperation from the mayor’s office was vital.

“If we don’t get the county grant, how are we paying for some outreach effort that we thought we had the funding for?” he asked.

Ben Petok, a spokesman for the mayor’s office, said the council was putting on a show “for political cover.”

“DSI has spent the last 18 months educating St. Paul businesses about the benefits of … ‘Green To Go’,” he said.

“In the city of St. Paul, where we have a strong mayor system, the city council does not direct DSI what to do,” Petok added. “The mayor does. The opportunity for the council to act on this was a week ago. They whiffed on that. Today’s vote was only about political cover.”

On Wednesday, the council voted 6-0 to pass a resolution formally asking city staff to seek funding from the Ramsey County Solid Waste Services Public Entity Innovation Grant Program so DSI and Eureka Recycling can “further engage food service retail and institutional establishments in an outreach and educational effort.”

Council member Dai Thao, who sponsored the resolution, was absent.