In an effort to fast-track a proposed five-mile bike trail along Summit Avenue, St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter’s office allegedly altered the scoring criteria considered by St. Paul Public Works, which helped get the avenue’s $100 million rebuild added to the department’s five-year plan and the city’s short-list of construction priorities for 2028.
That’s the primary accusation fueling the latest legal filing from SOS, or Save Our Street, a coalition of homeowners and other interested parties worried that a sidewalk-level bike trail would hurt aesthetics, trees and parking.
The 21-page civil complaint filed Monday in Ramsey County District Court includes a preliminary injunctive demand for data.
The city has yet to file an official legal response, but a spokesperson for the mayor said Monday she would look into the matter, which has at times overshadowed other issues in this year’s five-way mayoral race.
Calling themselves “Historic Summit Avenue,” the SOS plaintiffs allege that the mayor’s office has repeatedly violated the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act by failing to provide certain documents requested between September 2024 and June.
Those requests seek among other things, “all data, including analysis, communications (including text messages) regarding any evaluation or assessment of determining which portions (of the Summit Avenue regional trail) will be prioritized for construction.”
Later requests specified “all data, including studies, analysis, computations, scoring, and communications relating to, recommending, or discussing” the city’s proposal to put $3.57 million toward Summit Avenue trail planning in the 2026 budget. The money is part of the city’s five-year budget to plan for major capital projects and road construction.
That request specified communications from the city’s Capital Improvement Budget committee and its staff, including a senior budget analyst for the city and a working group composed of representatives of different city departments and the CIB committee.
Public Works officials have maintained that Summit Avenue needs to be rebuilt regardless of whether a bike trail is part of the package, given the condition of the road surface and the water mains beneath it.
Carter often says that Summit Avenue is overdue because it last was fully reconstructed when William Howard Taft was president (1909-1913).
However, a Public Works map of Summit Avenue road work obtained by SOS indicates much of the avenue’s western edge near the University of St. Thomas was reconstructed in 1979 and 1989.
Project moves up
The lawsuit alleges Carter had long maintained that the city would institute a new 1% sales tax to pay for road and parks projects based on “objective scoring criteria,” but the administration instead “improperly manipulated the scoring to fast-track projects that it believed were politically beneficial to the mayor and some of his supporters.”
The alleged manipulation began Aug. 14, 2024, according to the legal filing, when St. Paul Public Works Director Sean Kershaw “expressed the ‘need to prioritize’ the reconstruction of Summit Avenue to avoid ‘get(ting) real pushback.’”
Thirteen days later, the scoring criteria for the reconstruction of the western portion of Summit Avenue was “enhanced” so that Summit “can move up the list,” according to the legal filing. And on Sept. 16, 2024, staff reported to Kershaw and Chief Resilience Officer Russ Stark that the reconstruction of Summit had been “moved up to 2029.”
The city’s latest five-year construction plan lists Summit Avenue reconstruction starting even earlier, in 2028.
The lawsuit alleges that the mayor’s office indicated last month that it had satisfied all requests for information. But SOS attorney and Summit Avenue resident Robert Cattanach provided evidence from June and July showing the existence of meeting notes and other data the city had not released.
Citing the state’s Government Data Practices Act, the lawsuit requests the city safeguard the requested data from deletion and produce the documents without redaction. A second count asks the court to impose damages of between $1,000 and $15,000 per day until that happens.
Cattanach’s previous efforts to gather copious information about the proposed sidewalk-level bicycle trail earned him a court-ordered financial award from the city a year ago. Ramsey County District Judge Patrick Diamond found the city liable for 14 violations of the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act and ordered the city to pay $30,000 in damages.
A spokesperson for SOS said that money has not been paid and they expect the city to appeal the order.
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