After years of debating how to support street festivals and community-driven events struggling to keep pace with mounting police, road block and public safety costs, the St. Paul City Council seemed poised Wednesday to allocate $155,000 in event subsidies to be administered by the St. Paul Police Department’s special operations unit.
Instead of swift passage on Wednesday, the proposal has become a new flashpoint in a sensitive discussion over police-community relations, with some event organizers questioning why community groups who feel overcharged by the police should have to appeal to the same department for subsidies.
The original proposal’s goal, according to resolution author and Council President Rebecca Noecker, would be to have police distribute up to $7,000 in subsidies to up to 22 event organizers, a relatively small reduction off police overtime and road closure costs that have climbed nearly as high as $75,000 for the West Side’s Cinco de Mayo festival and $100,000 for Grand Old Day.
To qualify for the funds, Noecker said organizations would have to show their festival or event meets six criteria, including being based in St. Paul, hosting the activity in St. Paul and not charging an entry fee. The event would have to have been held for at least five years in the city, or it must take place in an area of concentrated poverty. Political campaign events would not qualify.
The “$155,000 isn’t much, but it will go some part of the way toward helping relieve that burden,” said Noecker to the council, noting the money was voted on as an annual, standing appropriation in 2024 but never dedicated last year.
“It has taken quite a while to get to the point of actually being able to roll this out,” said Noecker, who explained that no city department but the police appeared to have the staff capacity to administer the funds. “We went through a whole year last year where this did not get done.”
Alternative measure
Objecting to the prospect of giving St. Paul Police more influence over community events, Council Member Anika Bowie presented a separate resolution that would dedicate the $155,000 directly to 20 named community groups.
“Our community is under distress,” Bowie said. “They shouldn’t have to be worrying about raising funds to hire police officers while they’re under federal occupation and they’re not feeling supported by police officers. … I stand firmly opposed to divesting from community funds and investing in police.”
Bowie’s alternative resolution was not entered into the city’s Legistar software prior to the council meeting and not available online for public review, but the printed version made available during the meeting drew some pushback from council members around the prospect of picking favorites.
“I’m concerned about the specific events and event organizers being listed here,” said Council Member Saura Jost. “That’s bypassing our typical process by naming them.”
Noecker agreed. Under her original resolution, “there would be no picking winners or losers from any of us,” she said. “To me, the value of having the objective criteria … I’m thinking about if a new organization comes to St. Paul and wants to have a festival that we don’t know about yet.”
“It matters to me not at all where it’s housed and who runs it … but we need to have a staff person to do it, and we currently don’t have that staff person,” Noecker added. “This would be ready to go as of tomorrow. … The dollars can go out the door.”
Bowie and other council members asked for clarification from city staff around why the unspent funds from 2025 did not roll over from year to year and effectively double.
“This sounds like a technical error,” she said. “The funds that we have right now are not the funds we were expecting.”
The council president said she had raised similar questions with city staff, who explained Wednesday that unspent funds from annual appropriations are returned to the city’s general fund at year’s end.
“It was actually my leadership that got the questions asked to (the Office of Financial Services) and got us to this place,” Noecker said.
Public hearing
A public hearing after the discussion drew a handful of speakers expressing alarm and frustration over rising costs, which they said had grown 30% or more since 2023. Bob Cruz, executive director of the West Side Boosters and co-chair of the Cinco de Mayo festival and the Mexican Independence Day festival, said he felt “misled and deeply let down” by the process to date.
Cruz, who was skeptical of having the subsidy administered by police, said neither Noecker nor Bowie alerted him about Wednesday’s public hearing despite his outreach to both members. The Cinco de Mayo festival alone brought in 30,000 people last year from across the Upper Midwest, which he noted has a strong economic impact for the city.
“Last year, our single largest expense was the required contract with the St. Paul Police Department — $74,000,” Cruz said. “We have repeatedly raised concerns with St. Paul Police about the high cost of required presence. Their response is consistent: talk to the city council.”
The Grand Avenue Business Association submitted a letter to the city council supporting Noecker’s proposal.
“Our most significant cost driver is infrastructure, many parts of which are city operated,” reads the letter, signed by executive director Kim O’Brien and board chair Holly Weinkauf. “In 2025, our police costs exceeded $95,000, which was 34% higher than it was in 2023 despite a shorter footprint and no major incidents.”
Other speakers questioned why the police would charge community-driven events any money at all to protect the public, which is core to their taxpayer-funded mission.
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