Deadlock and disappointment as St. Paul fails to pick an interim City Council member

St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter will appoint a new member to replace former City Council President Mitra Jalali after the council failed to agree on an interim member to serve her ward.

On Wednesday, council members split 3-3 for two interim candidates to replace Jalali, who abruptly resigned from her Ward 4 seat in January. With the tie vote for each candidate, neither will be appointed.

Council President Rebecca Noecker said she was disappointed the council could not reach an agreement. And some council members during the meeting complained the process became dysfunctional and opaque.

“I think that there’s a higher standard that we can hold ourselves to,” Noecker said.

The seat will be filled with an August special election, but the council was trying to appoint an interim member until then to serve Ward 4, which encompasses several neighborhoods including Hamline-Midway, Merriam Park, Saint Anthony Park, and parts of Macalester-Groveland and Como.

Four finalists were announced in March, but council members coalesced around Lisa Nelson, a member of the Union Park District Council, and Matt Privratsky, a clean-energy lobbyist and former aide to Jalali.

But the process grew acrimonious last week.

On March 26, Ward 3 Council Member Saura Jost moved to name Privratsky to the interim seat while Noecker was absent. She drew rebukes from Council Vice President HwaJeong Kim and Ward 6 Council Member Nelsie Yang.

“I’m very taken aback by your resolution,” Yang said during the meeting.

Then on Friday, Noecker ended a special meeting called to formalize the vote after just three minutes, saying she was disappointed in the lack of consensus.

This week, Noecker said she had commitments from four council members to support Nelson, though she refused to say who had planned to vote with her, Kim and Yang. But a motion to consider her nomination failed.

The council then took an unusual and sudden recess with members darting into their offices.

Ward 7 Council Member Cheniqua Johnson said she was deeply disappointed with the idea of negotiations taking place behind closed doors.

“When we left this room before the recess, we didn’t have a consensus,” Johnson said. “That discussion that happened after the recess was not transparent.”

Johnson said Privratsky had always been her choice.

Noecker said she spoke with Ward 1 Council Member Anika Bowie about parliamentary procedures and the candidates’ qualifications.

Bowie ultimately voted not to consider Nelson’s nomination, saying she thought it was frivolous to be “playing games of chess for a person who’s going to be here for four months.”

She declined to comment after the meeting.