No, St. Paul’s drive-through eateries and pharmacies aren’t going away anytime soon, but a compromise proposal before the St. Paul City Council this month would further regulate them. The compromise comes more than a year after a proposed ban on new drive-throughs was put on hold.

The Capital City’s many drive-throughs have been the subject of discussion and consternation for years, with the issue coming to a head between about 2017 and 2022 when a notorious Starbucks drive-through off Snelling Avenue was blamed for heavy traffic backups into Marshall Avenue’s driving and bicycle lanes alike.

Former Minnesota Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch was hit by a vehicle in 2019 as she walked past the Starbucks drive-through exit lane, fracturing her left wrist in the incident.

“Snarshall,” as the intersection became known by some, resulted in Starbucks eliminating the drive-through entirely following years of failed traffic management efforts and heavy pressure from the city. A Taco Bell north of Snelling and University avenues has drawn its share of issues over litter, traffic and late-night noise.

Zoning study

The St. Paul Planning Commission initiated a zoning study around drive-throughs in March 2024, and after more than a year of hearings and staff review, a proposal that would have banned future drive-throughs was put on hold by the city council in November 2024.

Among other demands, pedestrian advocates had called for the city to require drive-through eateries to open their doors to sit-down customers, instead of reverting to a drive-through-only business model, as some do at night.

Business advocates had argued at the time that given the city’s difficulties in bouncing back from the pandemic, limiting business opportunities was the wrong strategy toward improving St. Paul’s tax base. Several restaurateurs told the city that during pandemic lockdowns, drive-through business was the only thing that kept them afloat.

The public council hearing, which was left open in November 2024, will effectively resume on Wednesday.

“A drive-through ban is off the table,” said City Council Member Saura Jost, in a written statement on Monday. “We’re raising the bar to improve quality of life with a focus on pedestrian safety. We aim to attract the development that we want to see and to avoid another Snarshall Starbucks.”

Given substantial changes to the drive-through proposal, the hearing likely will continue on Feb. 25, and a final council vote is possible that week or thereafter.

New rules around stacking, walk-up windows

Instead of banning drive-throughs, the ordinance amendment to be considered by the council this month spells out the required number of off-street “stacking” spaces in queuing lanes (six for banks and pharmacies, 12 for fast-food, 14 for coffee shops) and emphasizes that “in no event are vehicles permitted to stack into public sidewalks, trails, bicycle lanes, alleys or streets.”

All stacked and waiting cars would have to be contained on the property, and additional stacking beyond the minimums could be required by a zoning administrator following site plan review by city staff.

Discussions over the past two years or more have roped in members of the advocacy group Sustain St. Paul, which favors greater real estate density, sustainable land-use and pedestrian improvements, the city’s Business Review Council, the St. Paul Area Chamber and individual restaurateurs.

“This has been quite a dizzying and convoluted journey that’s been punted a couple of times, but I think it’s going to land in a pretty good place,” said Luke Hanson, co-chair of Sustain St. Paul, on Monday. “There’s a lot of competing interests that the city is trying to balance here.”

Some business advocates are still not fully on board. Compared to the 2024 proposal, “it’s more workable, but we still have concerns about it,” said John Perlich, a vice president of government affairs with the St. Paul Area Chamber, in an interview Monday.

“At a time when we need to strengthen our local economy, policy decisions should make it easier, not harder, for a business to invest and grow,” Perlich said. “The city should be doing everything that is possible to encourage business development and expansion, and this proposal still moves us away from that goal.”

A 2024 count found 77 drive-throughs in operation throughout St. Paul, and the rule changes proposed at the time would convert 17 of them into “non-conforming uses.” While they’d be allowed to remain in operation under grandfathering rights, business owners noted that non-conforming properties have a tougher time finding financing for improvements.

Critics have argued that drive-throughs are an impediment to disabled pedestrians and parents with children, who are forced to navigate between cars when drive-through traffic blocks pedestrian access. On the other hand, advocates on both sides of the issue have said individuals with mobility challenges are the very customers who would have the most trouble accessing food in a hurry if a drive-through went away.

“One of the perspectives we bring to this is the amount of tax revenues per acre that drive-throughs generate compared to other, more intense land-uses (such as apartment buildings), especially in a moment where everyone is feeling the pain of property taxes in St. Paul,” said Hanson, who acknowledged the city was working hard to promote public safety, support small businesses and improve pedestrian access. “I think drive-throughs are bad land use, they’re not great for access and walkability, but people with mobility issues really rely on them.”

What the new measure calls for

In addition to new rules around stacking, drive-throughs would be required to offer some level of pedestrian access, but not at all hours. In other words, drive-throughs could continue to operate into the night, long after their on-site dining areas close to the public. The thinking there is that requiring lightly-staffed eateries to keep doors open toward bar close could expose fast food workers to public safety concerns, and rather than take on that liability, many chains would simply prefer to shutter the location entirely or relocate outside the city.

Under the new changes, walk-up windows would not be required, but they are further defined in the proposal, which says walk-ups may not be situated in a way that interrupts pedestrian flow on sidewalks. A drive-through window would not be allowed to double as a walk-up.

For bank, pharmacy and credit unions, drive-through lanes and service windows would have to be located to the side or rear of buildings and at least 60 feet from a residentially-zoned property, unless that property sits across a major arterial street, or it’s somehow buffered by the building the drive-through is attached to. An exception would be if the residential units are situated in the same building.

If the drive-through is for food and beverages, the distance requirement increases to 120 feet.

Drive-through lanes would not be allowed within 300 feet of a light rail, streetcar or bus rapid transit station, or a planned station associated with a fully funded or federally-approved transit project.

In T3-T4 “traditional neighborhood” districts that blend retail and housing, the drive-through service windows must be part of a building that is at least four stories in height and 40,000 square feet in floor area.

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Mehmet Oz is not an economist, but he occasionally plays one on TV. Speaking recently at a televised forum on mental health, the medical doctor and administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services proposed an idea for how to boost the U.S. economy: Americans should just work longer. Adding a year of work would generate $3 trillion, he said, enough to “remove the (national) debt.”

Oz was careful not to suggest raising Social Security’s full retirement age, a longtime Republican policy now verboten in the populist era of the party. Mitt Romney favored raising it to 68 in his 2012 campaign for president, but by the 2024 campaign, Nikki Haley was excoriated for suggesting any increase at all. Oz simply encouraged Americans to work longer, instead of declaring that they must, and noted the health, tax and economic benefits for the country.

To the extent that this softer touch signifies the end of the retirement-age debate, it’s welcome. Social Security could be updated to reflect both the changes in life expectancy and the benefits of working longer, but raising the full retirement age — which is currently between 66 and 67 for most Americans currently working —  is a poor way to do it.

To state the obvious, it’s a good thing that Americans are living longer. Over its 90-year history, the Social Security program has transformed retirement so that every American can look forward to a period of independent living after working. That period is longer with each generation.

Before Social Security, more than three-quarters of men over age 65 were working, in large part because just 5% of workers had a pension, despite life expectancy being just 61 years. Translation: Many Americans worked until they died. Now we not only live longer, but many of us can stop working in our older years. This is the luxury that Social Security purchased for all of us.

Yet this success has long been greeted with the tsking of fiscal conservatives, who have argued that an increase in life expectancy should be accompanied by an increase in the retirement age. It’s only fair, they say, and it’ll keep the system solvent.

It’s an argument with only selective empirical support. Social Security’s actuarial tables have shown for a century, for example, that women will live four years longer than men. Yet no one would suggest that women’s retirement age should be four years higher, or that a gap between white and Black Americans’ life expectancy should result in separate retirement ages by race. Or, when life expectancy fell in the pandemic, there were no calls from the “only fair” camp to lower the retirement age in response.

This gives the game away: Calls to increase the Social Security retirement age are driven less by logic than by a desire to cut benefits.

And it would most certainly be a benefit cut. Social Security can be claimed between the ages of 62 and 70. Claiming before age 67 results in a permanent penalty — a smaller monthly benefit for that person’s lifetime. Claiming after age 67 brings a similarly structured permanent bonus. Move 67 up to 68, or even 70, and there will be more penalties and fewer bonuses.

The debate over the retirement age also ignores the issue of fairness, which has less to do with life expectancy and more to do with work history. Consider two 18-year-olds, one who starts working immediately after high school and one who does not enter the workforce for 10 more years, after college and a graduate degree. From this perspective, the penalty/bonus system is particularly egregious. If the high-school graduate stops working at 62, they will be penalized after having worked 44 years; if the more educated one stops working at 67, they will be rewarded after having worked only 39 years.

There is a fix: Move to a flexible retirement age based on length of work history. This would result in higher benefits for the working class, who would no longer be penalized for claiming Social Security in their early 60s, and smaller bonuses for the educated elite, who would be expected not to claim benefits until their late 60s and early 70s, rather than be rewarded for it. Given that these two groups have as much as a four-year gap in life expectancy — and an even larger gap in retirement savings — it’s fair on that front, too.

A move to a flexible system has challenges: how should someone’s “work history” incorporate periods of unemployment, time spent caregiving, working during school, or midlife education, to name a few. But is it better to have a simple design with unfair implications, or a more complex system that improves fairness? Changing the unfair part requires also changing the simple part.

The debate over Social Security is dominated by its shrinking trust fund, which is expected to be depleted in seven years. No question, that problem needs to be addressed, though it may be less difficult than most politicians think. Whatever the solution, we should not lose sight of the larger purpose of the program: In the US, work earns the promise of lifetime economic security. Congress needs to do more than just keep Social Security solvent. It needs make sure the program keeps its promise to all working Americans.

Kathryn Anne Edwards is a labor economist, independent policy consultant and co-host of the Optimist Economy podcast.

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By SOPHIA TAREEN

CHICAGO (AP) — The Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, a protege of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and two-time presidential candidate who led the Civil Rights Movement for decades after the revered leader’s assassination, has died. He was 84.

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Jackson died Tuesday surrounded by family, according to a statement posted online from the family.

As a young organizer in Chicago, Jackson was called to meet with King at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis shortly before King was killed and he publicly positioned himself thereafter as King’s successor.

Jackson led a lifetime of crusades in the United States and abroad, advocating for the poor and underrepresented on issues from voting rights and job opportunities to education and health care. He scored diplomatic victories with world leaders, and through his Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, he channeled cries for Black pride and self-determination into corporate boardrooms, pressuring executives to make America a more open and equitable society.

And when he declared, “I am Somebody,” in a poem he often repeated, he sought to reach people of all colors. “I may be poor, but I am Somebody; I may be young; but I am Somebody; I may be on welfare, but I am Somebody,” Jackson intoned.

This is a breaking news report. More information will be added as it comes in.

Former Associated Press writer Karen Hawkins, who left The Associated Press in 2012, contributed to this report.

Today is Tuesday, Feb. 17, the 48th day of 2026. There are 317 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Feb. 17, 2013, Danica Patrick won the Daytona 500 pole, becoming the first woman to secure the top spot for any Sprint Cup race.

Also on this date:

In 1801, the U.S. House of Representatives broke an electoral tie between Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, electing Jefferson president; Burr became vice president.

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In 1863, five appointees of the Public Welfare Society of Geneva announced the formation of an “International Committee for the Relief of Wounded Combatants,” which would later be renamed the International Committee of the Red Cross.

In 1864, during the Civil War, the Union ship USS Housatonic was rammed and sank in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, by the Confederate hand-cranked submarine HL Hunley, in the first naval attack of its kind; the Hunley also sank.

In 1897, the National Congress of Mothers, the forerunner of the National Parent Teacher Association, convened its first meeting in Washington with over 2,000 attendees.

In 1964, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Wesberry v. Sanders, ruled that congressional districts within each state must be roughly equal in population.

In 1992, serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer was sentenced to life imprisonment after being found guilty of 15 counts of first-degree murder.

In 1995, Colin Ferguson was convicted of six counts of murder in the December 1993 Long Island Rail Road shootings; he was later sentenced to 315 years in prison.

In 2008, Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia.

In 2014, Jimmy Fallon made his debut as host of NBC’s “Tonight Show,” taking over from Jay Leno.

Today’s Birthdays:

Actor Brenda Fricker is 81.
Actor Rene Russo is 72.
Actor Richard Karn is 70.
Olympic swimming gold medalist and television commentator Rowdy Gaines is 67.
Actor Lou Diamond Phillips is 64.
Basketball Hall of Famer Michael Jordan is 63.
Film director Michael Bay is 61.
Hockey Hall of Famer Luc Robitaille is 60.
Olympic skiing gold medalist Tommy Moe is 56.
Actor Denise Richards is 55.
Musician Billie Joe Armstrong (Green Day) is 54.
Actor Jerry O’Connell is 52.
Actor Jason Ritter is 46.
Media personality Paris Hilton is 45.
Actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt is 45.
Singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran is 35.
Actor Jeremy Allen White is 35.
Tennis player Madison Keys is 31.
Actor Sasha Pieterse is 30.