St. Paul’s Office of Neighborhood Safety has been adding staff since it started in 2022, and some city council members asked Wednesday about continuing to pay for them when grant funding ends.

The office has five life coaches with the goal of interrupting gun violence by connecting “high-risk individuals to resources,” Director Brooke Blakey told the city council at a budget presentation. They’re doing one-on-one work, “not just handing them pamphlets … and saying, ‘Make a phone call.’”

Blakey started as the office’s only employee. There is funding this year for 12 workers and Blakey hopes to hire an additional nine employees, though Mayor Melvin Carter’s proposed budget for next year only allows for an additional two workers.

Brooke Blakey, St. Paul Office of Neighborhood Safety director, speaks to the St. Paul City Council on Sept. 11, 2024. (Screenshot from video of meeting)

ONS’ total proposed budget for next year is just under $4 million, with $2.9 million from the city’s general fund and the remaining from grant funds, which is $246,000 more than the current budget. Carter’s proposed 2025 budget for the whole city would grow to $854.9 million, a $25 million increase over the present year, if the council approves it without major changes.

City council member Nelsie Yang asked at Wednesday’s meeting if Blakey would be coming to the council in the future to ask for funding for employees when grant funding ends next year. Blakey said she plans to make that request next year for the 2026 budget. She also said ONS will continue applying for grants.

During Yang’s time on the council, she said there’s been a lot of “one-time money coming in” through grants for various city departments.

“What are we going to do to keep these positions going?” she said. “… The work is really important, and I feel what is really tough for me … (is) I want to see continued funding for it, but we’re also in a position where we don’t have that money freed up, and typically it would mean we have to raise property taxes for it.”

Council President Mitra Jalali said ONS is “unique as compared to other departments, in that so much of the growth and the ability to do the work in the department has been through one-time funding sources — it’s federal funds, it’s state public safety aid, it’s things that we’ve eagerly seized upon.”

“If we want to invest in the department in an ongoing way, we do have to get clear on transferring from those one-time funds into uses that we can explain to our constituents and that meet those frontline needs,” she said.

Carter’s budget proposal for next year includes a 7.9% increase to the city’s tax levy — or $16.5 million — the sum total of all property taxes collected in the city limits from all property types. For a median-value, single-family home in St. Paul, there would be a $200 property tax increase next year, based on combined city, county and school district property tax levies. At least another $100 would be for higher trash, water, sewer and recycling fees.

Gun violence down this year

Yang also said at Wednesday’s meeting that she wants ONS to be successful, but she said, “I’m questioning whether the investments that we’re making is really producing the type of outcome and the type of community safety that I personally would like to see for my ward and and also citywide, too.”

She said she’d also like to see improved communication, “really laying out that long-term plan for the department.”

Blakey responded that she’s made multiple presentations that lay out ONS’ strategic plan and said she’d like to meet with Yang to answer more of her questions.

Council member Rebecca Noecker said she agrees that Blakey has been willing to present to the city council, but she said she’d like to be included in more conversations. For example, Blakey’s presentation included a proposed one-time $200,000 investment next year to enhance the city’s camera infrastructure in the downtown area. Noecker, who represents downtown, said she first heard about that in Carter’s budget address last month.

The Office of Neighborhood Safety describes itself overall as aiming to make St. Paul safer by addressing root causes, implementing preventive measures, and responding to shootings and homicides and “providing immediate and long-term support to individuals and families and communities,” Blakey said.

Gun violence is down in St. Paul year-over-year. Homicides have deceased, as have non-fatal shootings and reports of shots fired without injury, according to the police department.

St. Paul announced Project PEACE in July 2022, which is ongoing. There have been 203 referrals to Project PEACE this year. The aim has been to reduce retaliation for street crime by connecting individuals and families impacted by gun violence with mental health support and other holistic intervention services. Part of the effort is the police department’s Operation ASPIRE, which has officers working on prevention, intervention and enforcement involving gun violence.

ONS has been “dedicated” to finding employees who “have the lived experience to be able to have the empathy and exchange with individuals who are experiencing probably the worst time in their lives, and then how to transition out of that space,” Blakey said.

Frederick Melo contributed to this report.

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