When the Ramsey County Board approved a $1 million makeover of the county’s downtown St. Paul administrative offices last March, Janice Rettman cast the sole dissenting vote.

The six other board members were not surprised.

After more than 30 years in public office, Rettman, who is famously frugal, still carries a beeper and asks the public to page her rather than call her cellphone, which helps her conserve mobile minutes.

“We’ve got a lot of other items that could use $1 million, including the taxpayers in their wallet,” said Rettman, who pulled over into a parking lot after the vote last March to return a reporter’s page in her signature Texas drawl.

The longtime resident of St. Paul’s Como neighborhood — a frequent “no” vote on the seven-member county board — has voiced objection on any number of county projects, from the county’s role in the redevelopment of the Twin Cities Army Ammunition Plant site in Arden Hills into Rice Creek Commons to “traffic calming” efforts, such as proposed lane reductions on Maryland, Rice and Dale streets.

Ramsey County Commisisoner Janice Rettman says Arden Hills Rice Creek Commons project lacks affordable housing. pic.twitter.com/3qXmMg35BC — FredMelo, Reporter (@FrederickMelo) September 20, 2018

Her supporters call her personable, folksy, unflappable and a die-hard neighborhood advocate. Her critics, however, have called the longtime county commissioner out-of-step with the times.

Rettman’s DFL-endorsed challenger, Trista MatasCastillo, believes it’s time to say yes to a few more ideas. Even if it means contemplating adding bike lanes or removing traffic lanes in major thoroughfares.

In a recent interview, the three-branch military veteran pointed to the stretch of Maryland Avenue between Payne Avenue and Johnson Parkway in her Payne-Phalen neighborhood, which the county reduced from four lanes to three lanes last year on a trial basis.

“We need to have a community conversation and process to determine exactly what’s needed on these streets,” said MatasCastillo, the mother of five boys, including a severely disabled teen who frequently relies on county services. “But they need to be streets designed for the neighborhoods, not just through traffic. I’m a big fan of the three-lane (conversion) on Maryland.”

Rettman, who isn’t impressed with the proposed lane reductions, has said that added police response — more city traffic enforcement — will force drivers to stick to posted speed limits.

“Janice is fighting for what the businesses want for the reconstruction of Rice Street, whether it stays two lanes or it goes down to one lane,” said Gidget Bailey, a co-owner of Tin Cup’s restaurant on Rice Street. “Janice is for the people. She’s a very selfless person.”

OLD ST. PAUL VS. NEW URBANISM

Some political observers are calling the county board race a clash between “old St. Paul” and an emerging “new urbanism” — a younger type of leader open to new things, even if that means throwing out some long-assumed and widely held beliefs about development.

MatasCastillo, a former aide to County Commissioner Blake Huffman, has promoted herself as more in tune with the evolving needs of the city’s low-income neighborhoods, from traffic calming to potentially re-purposing underused golf courses for urban agriculture.

Trista MatasCastillo on economic development pic.twitter.com/4Zf7QP5TJU — FredMelo, Reporter (@FrederickMelo) September 25, 2018

Rettman, who spent nearly 11 years as a St. Paul City Council member, has served on Ramsey County’s Board of Commissioners since April 1997, but the political challenge before her this year may be her toughest.

Once considered a reformer in the male-dominated political circles of the late 1970s and 1980s, Rettman has seen the political tides shift around her. Related Articles ‘It’s devastating’: Harassment of COVID public health workers is widespread and ‘unprecedented,’ officials say.

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Demographic changes have brought more immigrants, renters, young people and people of color to the Frogtown, North End, East Side and surrounding neighborhoods of her district, even as the so-called “Blue Wave” has moved the national conversation leftward among Democrats.

During the August political primary, Rettman came in a distant second to MatasCastillo, who earned 43 percent of the vote after campaigning as the more progressive choice for what’s officially a nonpartisan seat.

The two will appear on the November ballot.

A third candidate, Jennifer Nguyen Moore, received 27 percent of the vote, coming within two percentage points of overtaking Rettman, who garnered 29 percent.

Rettman has been endorsed by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME).

MatasCastillo has picked up endorsements from at least a dozen unions and political action committees, including the influential St. Paul Federation of Teachers, six members of the St. Paul School Board and Our Revolution Minnesota, which formed following U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign.

She’s also drawn the support of Gov. Mark Dayton; state Rep. Erin Murphy, DFL-St. Paul; Ramsey County Commissioners Jim McDonough and Toni Carter; St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter; and city council members Amy Brendmoen, Dai Thao and Mitra Nelson.

And when it comes to infrastructure, Rettman’s critics include an elected official who has for years sparred with her behind closed doors — Brendmoen, who is also the St. Paul City Council president.

Brendmoen, who represents the same North End and Como neighborhoods as Rettman, is now making her opposition public.

She recently hired MatasCastillo’s former campaign manager as her legislative aide, or key adviser.

“Dale (Street) is a four-lane county road with speeding cars and unsafe pedestrian crossings near playgrounds, a rec center, schools,” Brendmoen said. “Trista is an advocate for traffic calming measures, and I believe she will partner with the city to help make Dale safer.”

AN ASSAULT LED HER TO COUNTY SERVICES

MatasCastillo lives with her husband, who emigrated from Central America at a young age and obtained his citizenship while in the U.S. Army.

For MatasCastillo, the path to public service also made her a client of county services.

The daughter of a military veteran, she enlisted at the age of 17 in the U.S. Navy, trained to become an officer through the Marine Corps and became a commissioned officer in the Army National Guard.

A sexual assault in the military left her pregnant, and the assailant was never brought to trial. Her child, who is autistic and developmentally delayed, is now 19 years old and still needs constant help with basic services.

“He’s severely disabled,” said MatasCastillo, who said navigating the county’s social services bureaucracy has been both frustrating and frightening. It’s opened her eyes to how much more difficult the process must be for residents who don’t speak English or lack the skills to advocate for themselves.

Payne-Phalen resident Trista MatasCastillo is running for Ramsey County Commissioner representing the East Side, North End, Frogtown, Hamline-Midway, Como and Falcon Heights, areas currently held by Janice Rettman pic.twitter.com/5I4R9sBNsH — FredMelo, Reporter (@FrederickMelo) September 25, 2018

On her website, she recounts buying her current home near Maryland Avenue and Arkwright Street in 2005, shortly before the recession hit.

“A few short years later, I watched as the housing bubble burst and my neighbors’ homes became vacant and boarded. Crime rose all around us, and the community programs we relied on began, one by one, to disappear.”

With an eye to the district’s immigrant communities, she’d like Ramsey County to convert one of its five golf courses into an urban farm “that creates jobs and allows us to grow fresh produce to supply St. Paul public schools, shelters, senior centers,” she said. “We have five, and many of them are in very little use. I don’t care which one.”

MatasCastillo wants the county to continue to work with the cities of Maplewood and St. Paul on an economic-development vision for the weathered intersection of Larpenteur Avenue and Rice Street, a gateway to the city that hasn’t lived up to its title.

She also has her eye on the Kmart on Maryland Avenue near Interstate 35E.

“Only half the building is being used currently, and there’s a large parking lot,” MatasCastillo said. “It is significantly underdeveloped and underutilized.”

TRAINED BY POVERTY

As a little girl growing up in southern Texas, Rettman didn’t always have enough money to pay for school lunch. Students teased her about her clothes, and the teasing only intensified when a lunch monitor took pity on her and allowed her to perform menial tasks around the cafeteria to earn her meals. While other kids ate, she worked. With 10 minutes to spare at the end of her shift, she gobbled down her food.

These days, the term “progressive” is one that both amuses and rankles Rettman, who describes herself as a veteran of social justice and environmental battles long before they had widespread support.

When Ramsey County considered merging its court-ordered juvenile facility (Boys Totem Town) with Hennepin County, Ramsey County Commissioner Janice Rettman was the first to object. Keeping kids close to home was her priority. pic.twitter.com/rkPCj2tCN9 — FredMelo, Reporter (@FrederickMelo) September 20, 2018

It was Rettman who ran the city of St. Paul’s former housing information office in the late 1970s, through which she advocated for affordable housing.

She still advocates for affordable housing, specifically at the county’s Rice Creek Commons project in Arden Hills, where she says affordability is sorely lacking from the county’s short-term and long-term development plans.

And it was Rettman who worked closely from the outset with what is now the Capitol Region Watershed District, which recently celebrated its 20th anniversary.

“It’s very ‘progressive’ now,” said Rettman, with more than a bit of irony.

As a St. Paul City Council member in the late 1980s, it was Rettman who embraced a controversial “Public Accommodations” ordinance that barred housing discrimination based on race or gender.

“The thing of it is, housing is a right, period,” Rettman said. “I knew whichever way I voted, there was going to be some people who were hell-bent on voting me out.”

Instead, her political career evolved and expanded.

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New Brighton Mayor Valerie Johnson suspends bid for re-election Bailey, the owner of Tin Cup’s, recalled looking up to Rettman as a girl when the council member found funding to keep a series of seemingly doomed playgrounds open.

More recently, Bailey noted how Rettman votes against her own pay raises, and how she supported a group of neighbors who took up a collection to keep 37 alley lights on for a year throughout the North End.

“She donated money out of her own pocket,” Bailey said. “She’s a very selfless person. She’s the only elected official right now who has shown up for 90 percent of the fundraisers that I have done for the community.”