By Scott Carlson
Voters in St. Paul’s Ward 4, which includes the St. Anthony Park neighborhood, will go to the polls on Aug. 12 to elect a new city council member.
Candidates seeking to replace Mitra Jalali, who resigned in March due to health concerns, are Chauntyll Allen, Molly Coleman, Cole Hanson and Carolyn Will. (The council appointed Matt Privratsky in April to serve as interim member until the special election.)
Ward 4 also includes Hamline-Midway, Merriam Park and parts of the Como and Macalester-Groveland neighborhood.
The following is a summary of each candidate and a brief look at why they are seeking election to Ward 4 council seat:
Chauntyll Allen
Allen has lived in Ward 4 for 23 years and, on her election website, said, “I have personally experienced many of the most pressing issues our city is facing.
“From my family’s displacement from Rondo to seeing my former students on the streets to difficulty finding affordable housing for me and my wife, I know what fellow residents are facing because I live it every day,” she said.
Discussing her background, Allen said, “I’ve been in classrooms as an educator and on the streets as an organizer and have deep trust and broad connections to the communities who have been disconnected from political power and local politics. I recognize how these community members are not problems to be solved but people with the knowledge to effectively solve the challenges we face collectively.”
Allen said her experiences and community connections enable her to see the system-level solutions needed to address key issues, and “I have the diverse relationships and proven leadership to work across sectors and jurisdictions to get the results that Ward 4 — and all Saint Paul — residents need.”
Allen said her top priorities include promoting community safety, addressing the city’s housing crisis with new ideas for more community-led and collective solutions and identifying new revenue streams “that can take the (property tax) burden off our low-income families and homeowners — and support the small businesses that make the Midway a culturally unique and vibrant place to live and visit.”
She noted, “St. Paul is facing significant financial challenges and leaning too heavily on property taxes to generate the revenue we need for basic services and important programs. I believe that strategic investments and thoughtful policies can prevent displacement and promote development.”
Another top priority for Allen is workforce and youth development.
“We can’t build a united city while so many of our neighbors are living in poverty,” she said. “We have to address the racial wealth gap in St. Paul and create pathways to living wage jobs for our youth. From Hennepin County Child Protection to the St. Paul School Board, I’ve been working for years to end the school to prison pipeline and instead create self-determined pathways to success for young people and their families.
“I’ll work to advance policies that address the racial wealth and opportunity gap in St. Paul.”
Cole Hanson
Hanson is a public health educator and dietitian at the University of Minnesota St. Paul campus and a long-time neighbor in Hamline-Midway, living there with his six-year-old daughter.
A labor and neighbor-endorsed candidate, Hanson is currently chairman of the Civil Service Senate at the university, where he currently represents more than 5,000 employees across the state.
Hanson is seeking election because he believes the council needs “bold leadership rooted in the daily realities of our neighbors. As a renter, a former homeowner, a parent, and a public health educator, I know how hard it’s become for working families to get what they need from City Hall — whether that’s safe streets, affordable groceries, or accountability from developers.
“I’ve spent the last 15 years organizing alongside community members to win changes that matter — from tenant protections and clean energy policy to better wages and food access,” Hanson said. “I’ve seen what we can accomplish when we listen to our neighbors, not just consultants. Whether we’re talking Luther Seminary or downtown St. Paul, I’m running to be a strong, present, and pragmatic advocate for our whole city.”
Hanson said a big issue facing St. Paul is “a crisis of affordability and trust. Property taxes keep rising while services lag behind. At the same time, a lack of bold action on public safety, housing, and transit means more and more neighbors feel like the city isn’t working for them.”
His platform includes proposing a Co-PILOT program that asks private colleges to pay their share for city services and supporting municipally-run services like social housing and public grocery stores. He also wants to bring more city services under democratic control — through, among other things, in-sourcing contracts and properly staffing resident-facing teams.
Hanson vowed to be “your lunch-pail council member” for better handling such issues as road repairs and snow removal.
“I want to make St. Paul a leader in renter and homeowner protections,” Hanson added. “That means passing a true Renter Bill of Rights, holding the city accountable for its delays or inconsistent application of city ordinances and protecting seniors and families on fixed incomes from eviction and displacement.”
Molly Coleman
Born and raised in St. Paul, Coleman currently lives in the city’s Hamline-Midway neighborhood.
For the past seven years, she has been running the People’s Parity Project, a national legal advocacy organization that she co-founded in 2018 that aims to build a legal system that works for working people.
Coleman said city government needs to focus on how to help make citizens’ lives better. “That starts by doing the basics really well: focusing on delivering high-quality public services, building truly affordable housing, and growing an economy that works for working people,” she said.
The city’s biggest challenge is overcoming its small and shrinking tax base. “Due to our large number of government buildings, churches, and universities, we have a city in which approximately one-fifth of the total value of properties are tax-exempt,” Coleman said.
Because property values of buildings in downtown St. Paul have collapsed, the property tax revenue collected from the economic center of our city has plummeted, Coleman maintained. “To compensate for this loss, taxes have risen at unsustainably high levels in our neighborhoods.
“We need to raise more revenue to provide for the needs of our community, but we must do that by encouraging responsible investment and development in our city, not continuously asking our homeowners and renters to shoulder more than their fair share of the cost of making our city run.”
The dearth of city revenue, in turn, increases taxes for residents and hinders the municipality’s ability to invest in, among other things, affordable housing and various essential community services.
Asked what she hopes to accomplish on the council if elected, Coleman said, “I intend to use my tenure on the Council to build a fundamentally more economically just city. This means continuing to raise the floor for all working people, enforcing our workplace standards, and using every tool at the city’s disposal to fight for the rights of workers.
“I recognize that it is going to be of the utmost importance that we prioritize responding to the immediate needs of our community: balancing our budget in a way that meets our city’s needs and building a social safety net that allows us to care for our most vulnerable community members and those currently under attack by the federal government.”
Coleman said she hopes to see the city bring down housing costs, help weatherize homes to cut down on emissions and reduce utility bills, and invest in public transportation and safe, accessible bike and pedestrian routes so citizens can get where they need to go in affordable, climate-friendly ways.
Carolyn Will
A former broadcast journalist and now the owner of CW Marketing & Communications, Will has lived in St. Paul for the past 33 years including currently Merriam Park. She has an undergraduate degree from the College of St. Benedict and a master’s from the University of St. Thomas.
“I have a passion for our capital city, and I believe my background in forming strategic partnerships and building community engagement will be two strong attributes I can bring to the city council,” Will said. “I want to bring balanced leadership and pragmatic problem-solving to the challenges facing our city. As a moderate voice with a track record of results, I offer a grounded, inclusive, and forward-looking vision for Ward 4 and the city.”
Regarding some of the biggest issues facing St. Paul, Will identified fiscal responsibility and public safety and crime.
“Ninety-nine percent of the people I am talking to in all the neighborhoods, people want to know how much higher property taxes can go,” Will said. “That’s a big issue.”
As for crime, Will said, “We know that homelessness, drug addictions, mental health issues are all factoring into the threats to public safety. What are we going to do about it?
“We need to start small, try an approach, get input from all involved including the homeless, caseworkers, law enforcement and residents and let’s start strategizing, implement, evaluate, revise as needed and continue until we have a methodology that’s working.”
If elected to the city council, Will said she wants to be strong advocate for constituent services.
“I want Ward 4 residents to feel confident that they can call the Ward 4 council office and they will have a representative that is listening to them, engaging and acting on their needs.”
Will said another of her priorities would be to help Public Works department modernize the city’s road construction techniques “so that our urban tree canopy is not falling victim so often to public projects that involve fixing sidewalks and updating roadways.
“Our tree canopy is extremely valuable — economically (storm water filtration!), environmentally (carbon storage, oxygen emitting, cooling), and emotionally (trees calm us).,” she said. “We need to bring our best effort to this issue and pass a strong tree preservation policy for St. Paul.”
Scott Carlson is managing editor of the Park Bugle.
Images: Headshots and a Map of St. Paul’s Ward 4.