In St. Paul’s North End, neighborhood advocates are looking for advice and guidance from an unlikely source: students and teens.

After being elected chair of the District 6 Planning Council in April, Rich Holst and his fellow board members decided to move in new directions.

Through a series of bylaw changes, they’ve lowered the voting age from 18 to 16, and they’ve reserved two seats on the 21-member board for high school or college students.

The challenge now is filling the openings with civic-minded young people.

Demographically, “25 percent of our city is 17 years old or younger,” Holst said. “When you look at Highland Park, it’s 17 percent. When you look at the North End, it’s 33 percent. It’s a big, big difference.”

In short, the district council — newly dubbed the North End Neighborhood Organization — is looking for high school and college students to help organize, improve and promote one of the poorest, most diverse and most optimistic corners of the city.

Board members point out that the North End, which is 70 percent racial minorities, has always drawn immigrant families poised to start new lives.

YOUTH CELEBRATION

From 6 to 7 p.m. Thursday, NENO members will join St. Paul Mayor-Elect Melvin Carter, City Council Member Amy Brendmoen and representatives of city, county, school district, nonprofit and foundation offices for a youth recruitment drive of sorts at the McDonough Recreation Center, which sits by the McDonough Homes at 1544 Timberlake Road.

The North End youth celebration, which is open to anyone from the North End ages 14 to 22, will feature free pizza and door prizes, including a Roku TV device, iTunes gift cards, bus passes and soccer balls. Parents and guardians also are encouraged to attend.

The event will include representatives from Ramsey County, Nexus Community Partners, the Wilder Community Equity Pipeline, the St. Paul Youth Commission, St. Paul Music Academy, Washington Technology Magnet School, Mount Airy Homes, the McDonough homes and rec center, the Rice Recreation Center and the Rice Street Library.

The goal, Holst said, is to showcase how young people can get involved in their community, which takes on special importance in high-poverty, high-minority neighborhoods with a growing refugee population.

When needs are great, cultivating future community leaders becomes essential.

“Let’s start hearing from our youth,” Holst said. “We’re doing it at McDonough on purpose. This is a large section of housing in the North End that quite frankly I don’t know has been really been involved with council stuff and been heard as much as they should have.”

Another aim, said event organizer Shannon Eckman, is to inspire more neighborhood pride and cohesiveness.

BIG CHANGES AHEAD

Opening the neighborhood council to young people isn’t the only change underway for the planning group. Six board members resigned after a contentious board election in April, and the shake-up in membership has inspired some new directions for the group.

“We’ve got four people of color on the board right now, which still doesn’t represent our neighborhood demographically, but we’re moving in the right direction,” said Holst. “We just were awarded a $10,000 grant from the St. Paul Foundation for strategic planning, with an emphasis on equity and inclusivity.”

NENO will work with Summit Avenue-based GrayHall Consulting to put together its strategic plan through a formal planning process that some board members say is long overdue.

“What does our community want, need and what are they looking for? It will help us identify partner organizations … and potentially grow our organization,” Holst said. “We’d like to expand our organizational capacity.”

NENO board member Noel Nix, a legislative aide for Ramsey County Commissioner Toni Carter, said the organization formed a housing task force last summer to identify areas where targeting increased housing investments can help improve the neighborhood. They’ve been working closely with the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs at the University of Minnesota to hire interns to study demographic changes, ownership patterns and housing quality.

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Staffers at MPR’s music stations The Current and Classical MPR vote to unionize They also conducted an online survey to help gauge residents’ housing satisfaction.

NENO this month reorganized its 21-member board to put a greater emphasis on geographic representation, with 16 seats instead of 8 seats now representing the four quadrants of the North End.

One seat is still elected districtwide, instead of 7 seats. Two seats represent business owners. Openings will be filled by quarterly special election. “Before, if you showed up for a few meetings, the board just appointed you,” Holst said.