Ward 3 Candidate Questionnaire Responses
Saura Jost
Housing
1. Saint Paul is currently completing a 1-4 Unit Housing Study that would broadly allow 4 housing units per lot across the city and relieve other zoning requirements that constrain our city’s housing options. Do you support this and other regulatory changes that allow for more housing in St. Paul?
Response: Yes, I support greater density. Increased density can help create more affordable and plentiful housing. Mixed-use zoning would make St. Paul more livable and walkable, and we see so many iconic businesses and neighborhood staples in our current multi-zoned areas of Ward 3. I’m excited to create more of that in Saint Paul as a whole.
2. Saint Paul’s SAFE Tenant protections, which included just cause eviction protections and rules around security deposits and tenant screening, were repealed in 2022. How would you work to sustainably instate tenant protections in Saint Paul?
Response: The Council should revisit SAFE Tenant protections. They provided increased protections for our renters and underwent significant community input. Providing rules around security deposits, screenings, and just cause eviction protections is important for provide safe and stable housing for our renters. I look forward to working with our community, our property managers and landlords, and city attorney’s office to develop tenant protections that will meet this goal.
3. It can be difficult for cities such as Saint Paul to secure enough public funding for building affordable housing. Given this challenge, what do you see as the most promising strategies for increasing the supply of affordable homes in Saint Paul?
Response: I think there are several strategies to take. The first is to form stronger partnerships with our state and county partners. I’m proud of the relationships and endorsements I’ve received with from State and County partners to be able to lobby for more housing bonding dollars at the state level and increased LGA. We’re all on the same page that we need to increase housing dollars. Second, I think we can work with non-profit groups to explore greater community development, such as community land trusts, as we’ve seen success with the Rondo Community Land Trust. Finally, I think the city can take steps to work with developers to make building easier, like preapproved plans that builders can use to reliably develop housing that is affordable, sustainable, and meets the needs of various community members.
Transportation
4. The quality of the transit network in Saint Paul is improving, and we hope to see this continue. How would you work with local constituents along existing and planned transit routes to build support for further improvements of our bus and light rail network?
Response: Organizing around our transit is incredibly important to me. Folks should have safe, reliable options whether they walk, bike, bus, drive, or however else they get around. The important piece on this is input, engagement, and the creation of solutions that work for all of us. The new metro sales tax for transit funding and potential sales tax on the ballot this year creates an opportunity to redesign and reimagine many of our streets. There could be opportunities to create dedicated bus lanes and light rail– all in coordination with the build out of transit service along critical corridors and with dedicated funding for the projects already secured. I think we could also pair this with reducing or eliminating transit fares as well as signal prioritization, expanding on the pilots we have for routes in St. Paul. In Ward 3, we have a few opportunities such as along West 7th street (Riverview Corridor and/or Bus Rapid Transit) and Cretin Avenue (potential for Bus Rapid Transit), for example, to provide connections to our light rail and expand our local network in Ward 3.
5. The future of the I-94 corridor, which runs through the heart of Saint Paul, is currently being considered by MnDOT through the Rethinking I-94 project. Sustain Saint Paul believes that the city deserves a future corridor that addresses historical harms to nearby neighborhoods, improves city connectivity across the highway, and reduces Vehicle Miles Traveled and associated vehicle pollution. What elements of a future corridor do you support? Some examples include an at-grade boulevard, a land bridge, a transit-only lane, reducing the number of vehicle lanes or street width; please be specific.
Response: I think the focus of the rethinking of I-94 should remain open to community input. As this question mentions, part of this re-thinking is to attempt to redress some of the historical harm caused by the demolition of Rondo for the construction of I-94. This means that we should not foreclose any option currently on the table to allow the voices of those communities to remain at the center. We, of course, can talk about priorities, but I’d like to keep things open as much as possible for what we can possibly imagine. Environmental justice also points us to making sure that we are addressing the environmental and transit equity issues that would come from a redesign, so I think the ideas concerning transit only lanes, a raised boulevard or even a land bridge may serve those needs. One thing from the data so far, however, is clear, that an expansion of 94 in the form of simply adding more lanes will likely do very little to ease congestion and will have a significant carbon impact and reduction in air quality for our neighbors that live near the freeway.
This will be a very large project that will be transformational to the Twin Cities, and I look forward to bringing my civil engineering expertise to help include, communicate, and navigate the decision-making process with our neighbors. As long as we stay open and do an honest assessment of what will promote environmental and racial justice, climate resiliency, and meets our transit needs, we can come together to find a solution that works for all of us.
6. The City of Saint Paul is currently preparing an update to the Saint Paul bicycle plan, with a focus on grade-separated bikeways and a more seamlessly connected network. Do you support this effort, and will you commit to ensuring its success if elected?
Response: Yes, I’m in favor of the St. Paul bicycle plan to help increase access and safety for our cyclists. As someone who used to commute to work via bicycle before the pandemic, I see a lot of opportunities to encourage cycling in our city and reduce car vehicle miles traveled. I’ve also seen a lot more neighbors, especially those with young kids like me, utilize e-bikes on several occasions to take kids to school or on errands instead of via car. Supporting transportation infrastructure that can provide these opportunities for frequent trips are key to meeting our essential climate change goals. In particular, expanding and connecting our system of trails will make cycling a safer, more convenient way to get around for current cyclists, and may encourage others to replace car trips with cycling and transit. Separated bikeways will also be easier to clear in the winter to encourage year-round use.
Quality Urbanism
7. One of Sustain Saint Paul’s top policy priorities is “mixed-use zoning.” Our current zoning policies prohibit retail stores, coffeeshops, restaurants, and other neighborhood businesses in residential areas, and we think our city would be more vibrant and resilient if we allowed such neighborhood areas throughout the city. Do you support zoning changes to allow this?
Response:Yes, as I noted before, mixed use zoning is great for our neighborhoods. Some of our most iconic neighborhood institutions are in mixed zone areas and allowing more neighbors to do more of their shopping, dining, and entertainment near where they live add economic vitality and cultural vibrance to our neighborhoods. This also improves the walkability of our city and ease of travel to the needs of our residents, which promotes more climate resilient urban design.
8. Sustain St. Paul believes that whenever the city rebuilds or repairs a street, it should redesign the street to reduce traffic speeds for the safety of pedestrians, cyclists, and drivers alike. Would you champion policies to encourage this?
Response: Yes, taking steps to reduce speed improves the life of our roads and makes our communities safer for our non-driving commuters and our youngest residents enjoying time outside. Providing safe options for everyone is also important to meet our transportation benchmarks for climate change. There are lots of options for us to reduce speed, and I’m looking forward to making sure that we’re finding the best ones for our individual neighborhoods while envisioning changes with street redesign. When I served on the Macalester Groveland Community Council, we worked on promoting reduced speed limits in our city to 20 mph on residential streets. Anytime that we can reconstruct a street, it is important to use this opportunity to build safer and climate resilient infrastructure so that we are most efficient with our funds and limit disruption to residents.
9. What other urbanism-focused ideas do you have for making Saint Paul a more pleasant, safe, and vibrant place to live, work, and play?
Response: As mentioned above, meeting this goal means providing safe, efficient transportation options and making the sustainable choice when deciding how to get around the city to promote a more efficient transportation network overall. It also means increasing density through zoning changes to provide more walkable communities all around the city so that schools, parks, community centers, jobs, healthcare, and food, are all nearby. I think that our urbanism-focused ideas for the future must be centered in meeting our communities needs, addressing equity, and especially combatting the threat of climate change, to provide a livable city for the future.
We are facing challenges with conservation and quality of water, energy, and air, amongst a rising global population. These solutions start at the local level right here in St. Paul. I support opportunities to combine climate resilient infrastructure in our urban design. For example, at the Highland Bridge development, a stormwater management system was used as a primary water feature to create a beautiful walkable, bikeable urban landscape while providing a much-needed design for treating and routing stormwater. This can also mean adaptive re-use of existing buildings for housing, and when building new buildings, being committed to net-zero developments which the design industry is currently working towards. This also means working with our forestry department to take care of our aging trees as well as plant new trees that will last in our current climate. To make this happen, as a city, we need to leverage funding from the state (100% Clean Energy) and federal government (IRA) for climate resilient infrastructure projects. As a civil engineer, who has worked on many projects like these, I look forward to bringing my expertise to build an even better St. Paul for everyone to live, work, and play.
Isaac Russell
Housing
1. Saint Paul is currently completing a 1-4 Unit Housing Study that would broadly allow 4 housing units per lot across the city, and relieve other zoning requirements that constrain our city’s housing options. Do you support this and other regulatory changes that allow for more housing in St. Paul?
Response: Our city faces crises in building multi-unit homes and single-family homes. We need to seriously evaluate all solutions on the table, and zoning is one of them. We are a city struggling to build homes because of rent control and the difficulty of our permitting processes. This places the increasing cost of government on property-tax payers, which includes renters. I support allowing for the construction of multiple, right-sized housing units on lots provided they meet requirements for multiple units on lots.
2. Saint Paul’s SAFE Tenant protections, which included just cause eviction protections and rules around security deposits and tenant screening, were repealed in 2022. How would you work to sustainably instate tenant protections in Saint Paul?
Response: My father has been a Section 8 renter on West Seventh in Highland Park for 13 years. I was a renter for over 30 years of my life, so I understand how some bad landlords can take advantage of renters. If the city is to enact tenant protections, we will first have to see what protections the city would have to enact. The state has recently passed no forced early lease renewals, easier eviction expungement, 14-day notice to tenants before eviction for nonpayment and requesting move-in/move-out inspections amongst others. And we must consider if protections will be able to survive a challenge in court, which is the reason previous protections were rescinded.
3. It can be difficult for cities such as Saint Paul to secure enough public funding for building affordable housing. Given this challenge, what do you see as the most promising strategies for increasing the supply of affordable homes in Saint Paul?
Response: I believe the best way forward to add affordable housing is to combine several policy solutions to move forward. Increasing housing opportunities through zoning changes, maintaining common-sense exemptions to rent control, responsible use of tax increment financing, and renovation of former commercial property into residential units are some of the promising practices.
The scale of our challenge is immense. St. Paul is approximately 11,000 units of affordable housing short. To construct and subsidize just one unit of housing can range between $280,000-$350,000. This immense cost prevents any one solution from being enough. We need pragmatic solutions to build more homes.
Transportation
4. The quality of the transit network in Saint Paul is improving, and we hope to see this continue. How would you work with local constituents along existing and planned transit routes to build support for further improvements of our bus and light rail network?
Response: First and foremost, I believe constituent engagement is an essential component to getting substantive community buy-in for multi-modal transit. Many of the areas of planned or proposed transit expansion can have potential effects on residents and businesses.
The first step to any substantive engagement is to let people know of potential plans and have open conversations about their benefits and impacts. For instance, there has been long discussion about transit options on West Seventh, which options include bus rapid transit, bike/ped, or light rail. We know there are many constituents that need rapid transit to work at the airport, and others are looking for transit to bring people into downtown St. Paul. We also need to engage with businesses that would need possible support through the state to mitigate any unintended impacts.
5. The future of the I-94 corridor, which runs through the heart of Saint Paul, is currently being considered by MnDOT through the Rethinking I-94 project. Sustain Saint Paul believes that the city deserves a future corridor that addresses historical harms to nearby neighborhoods, improves city connectivity across the highway, and reduces Vehicle Miles Traveled and associated vehicle pollution. What elements of a future corridor do you support? Some examples include an at-grade boulevard, a land bridge, a transit-only lane, reducing the number of vehicle lanes or street width; please be specific.
Response: I believe the most viable option given the immense importance to the local and regional economy is to include a dedicated lane for BRT. This is an option that allows us to reduce Vehicle Miles Traveled through less vehicle trips between cities.
To repair historical harms, I want to encourage greater business, housing, and educational investments into surrounding communities. The land bridge option is projected to possibly cost more than $450 million from public and private funds and would generate 500 units of housing, 1,000 residents, 1,500 jobs, and $4 million a year in additional revenue to the city. I am concerned because this does not even account for the 700 homes lost in the 1950s and 60s. More targeted investments that can generate more homes, jobs, businesses, and revenue should be evaluated.
6. The City of Saint Paul is currently preparing an update to the Saint Paul bicycle plan, with a focus on grade-separated bikeways and a more seamlessly connected network. Do you support this effort, and will you commit to ensuring its success if elected?
Response: I support biking in St. Paul and believe it should be incorporated as seamlessly as possible into our existing transportation infrastructure. This means making sure residents are engaged early and often with sufficient public notice of hearing so people can have all information shared with them and understand potential impacts of construction. The updated plan must account for ensuring our bike network is properly maintained, aligned with city policies and community needs, addresses concerns, and increases safety. I am especially excited about the possibility of incorporating our Highland Bridge development into this plan, I believe the CP Railway Spur is a fantastic opportunity to safely expand bike/ped infrastructure. I commit to making sure we implement our bike plan and thoroughly engage our community.
Quality urbanism
7. One of Sustain Saint Paul’s top policy priorities is “mixed-use zoning.” Our current zoning policies prohibit retail stores, coffeeshops, restaurants, and other neighborhood businesses in residential areas, and we think our city would be more vibrant and resilient if we allowed such neighborhood areas throughout the city. Do you support zoning changes to allow this?
Response: I have not seen a plan that lays out in detail what our mixed-use zoning policies would be, but I do think we should allow for the establishment of small retail in neighborhoods to encourage more walkable areas. I believe this policy should be considerate of potential impacts on traffic flows and parking capacity within neighborhoods, but I do think smart policy can account for this. There are several different mixed-use zoning models that we would need to look at, such as main street residential/commercial, commercial zoning, or live/work scenarios, would need to be evaluated. We also need to look at what scale we allow mixed-use projects within residential spaces since not all lots/streets have capacity for significant expansion. But mixed-use can offer an efficient use of land that encourages St. Paul vibrancy.
8. Sustain St. Paul believes that whenever the city rebuilds or repairs a street, it should redesign the street to reduce traffic speeds for the safety of pedestrians, cyclists, and drivers alike. Would you champion policies to encourage this?
Response: I support pedestrian, cyclists, and drivers’ safety across the city. My question to you is this is necessary on every residential street. St. Paul has over 860 miles of roadway, and many of these roads are small residential streets that may not lend themselves to certain types of traffic calming efforts due to the nature of their current design. Furthermore, street reconstruction is a very expensive construction project, and I do not think we will have the financial resources to commit to all these projects. Lastly, traffic calming measures should be evaluated on where they can have the biggest impact and major thoroughfares across Ward 3 and St. Paul.
9. What other urbanism-focused ideas do you have for making Saint Paul a more pleasant, safe, and vibrant place to live, work, and play?
Response: For Ward 3 specifically, I would love to see pedestrians’ bike/ped on the Canadian Pacific Railway Spur as part of our Highland Bridge development. I think this would encourage nonvehicle trips for people and create an enjoyable route for residents to explore that would follow along Sheppard Road. This would also create opportunities for trailheads, art, and public spaces that would help improve areas that are currently blighted with derelict rail tracks. This can also encourage residents to visit and increase the viability of West Seventh businesses. Of course, we need the Highland Bridge Development to move forward.
