In St. Paul, property owners are about to feel the combined effects of sluggish downtown property values, limited economic development growth and cuts in federal funding.

Calling his new budget proposal the hardest he’s had to prepare in his eight years in office, Mayor Melvin Carter unveiled a no-frills budget plan for 2026 that expands investment in housing programs such as office-to-housing conversions and downpayment assistance while avoiding layoffs of city employees.

To accomplish those goals, the mayor’s proposal freezes hiring for dozens of open positions, shifting funding from vacancies to sustain existing city workers. The $887 million budget plan for the coming year would rely on a 5.3% property tax levy increase, roughly comparable to this year’s tax levy increase of 5.9% and about average for the past decade. The total levy would be $232.5 million, supporting a general fund budget of $404.9 million.

That increase comes on the heels of some difficult news for taxpayers. The Ramsey County Board of Commissioners unveiled a tax levy increase request this week of 9.75%, and the St. Paul Public Schools are asking voters to approve a 10-year, $37.2-million-per-year levy referendum that would raise property taxes by another $309 for a median-value home in St. Paul.

Taken together, many property owners could be in for some sticker shock, and city department leaders are likely to raise objections to the city council over important positions that will go unfilled, the mayor acknowledged. “This isn’t a year for us to pursue fun stuff or pet projects,” Carter said in an interview this week. “We’re going to really focus on public safety, housing and downtown.”

Carter, who was scheduled to give his budget presentation at Allianz Field on Thursday morning, said the city is navigating an array of pressures, from uncertainty at the federal level to the ongoing work of recovering from a cyber attack likely to cost the city well over $1 million in overtime and consultant fees, as well as fiscal challenges buffeting urban areas nationwide, ranging from the impacts of inflation to remote work.

Housing programs

The mayor’s budget proposal calls for sustaining key investments in housing programs that have rolled out over the past few years, and in some cases, expanding them.

With the goal of encouraging affordable housing, the city has long allowed residents to convert garages and other modest spaces into small housing units known as accessory dwelling units, but takers have been few. “We allow them, but we haven’t seen the growth in them we’d like,” Carter said.

To streamline “ADU” development, the city’s planning department will create a menu of pre-approved design plans that homeowners can choose from.

The Department of Safety and Inspections plans to sunset outdated, paper-heavy information platforms such as Amanda, STAMP and Eclipse and replace them with PAULIE, which will offer residents opportunity to submit permit applications and permit fees online, as well as look up records from home at all hours.

“You can’t apply for a single business license online right now,” said DSI director Angie Wiese, in an interview.

PAULIE, which is backed by $600,000 in the mayor’s budget proposal, is expected to jumpstart a related initiative — remote virtual inspections — aimed at allowing property inspections through a property owner’s smartphone. Both efforts are aimed at streamlining processes that can slow down housing development.

Other housing investments include:

• $5 million to fund the city’s office-to-housing conversion program, which seeks to incentivize the conversion of outdated office businesses into new residences. The program would support gap financing and permit fee waivers.

• A housing down payment assistance program would double in size, growing from $1 million to $2 million in annual city funding.

• Another $1 million would fund the city’s Inheritance Fund, which aims to support homebuying for direct descendants of residents displaced by the construction of Interstate 94 through the Rondo neighborhood and residents displaced from the West Side Flats.

• $1 million will continue the work of the city’s emergency rental assistance program.

Despite a difficult era for downtown, where several buildings have fallen into foreclosure or been put up for sale for as little as $1, St. Paul is on the cusp of a wave of new housing at Highland Bridge, The Heights and elsewhere throughout the city, Carter noted, pointing to the example of a Chicago firm that has purchased four residential buildings downtown.

Safety and community well-being

Using public safety aid from the state, the mayor said the city will continue to promote initiatives that address gun violence, add EMS staff to the St. Paul Fire Department and expand community outreach through the city’s Office of Neighborhood Safety. Also underway is a gun diversion program through the city attorney’s office.

The mayor’s budget includes $1 million as a one-time investment to expand citywide prevention, treatment and response to the opioid and fentanyl crisis.

Carter said the work of two ambulance units — providing Advanced Life Support and Basic Life Support — has helped shave response times in the city by a minute, which can be critical. Still, the BLS unit, which responds to minor medical calls such as sprained ankles, isn’t in much use overnight, said the mayor, who is looking to end its overnight services and while keeping it active during the day.

Another $175,000 will be cut from the city’s EMS Academy, a training program that will have to look to other resources, including outside funding such as foundation grants. The city’s two-person CARES unit, composed of two EMS workers from the St. Paul Fire Department who respond to mental health crises, would be folded into the existing BLS unit. “It won’t exist anymore as a stand-alone team,” the mayor said.

In the areas of community and economic development, the mayor’s budget proposal includes $1 million as a one-time investment in a Commercial Corridors Fund to support the city’s business districts, and $200,000 as a one-time funding increase to support the city’s District Councils.

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By LINDSAY WHITEHURST and MARK SHERMAN, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is seeking a swift and definitive decision on tariffs from the Supreme Court that he helped shape, saying the country would be on “the brink of economic catastrophe” without the import taxes he has imposed on U.S. rivals and allies alike.

The administration used near-apocalyptic terms that are highly unusual in Supreme Court filings as it asked the justices late Wednesday to intervene and reverse an appeals court ruling that found most of Trump’s tariffs are an illegal use of an emergency powers law. The tariffs remain in place, for now.

The tariffs and their erratic rollout have shaken global markets, alienated U.S. trading partners and allies, and raised fears of higher prices and slower economic growth.

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But the Republican president has also used the trade penalties to pressure the European Union, Japan and others into accepting new deals. Revenue from tariffs totaled $159 billion by late August, more than double what it was at the same point a year earlier.

Raising the stakes even higher, Solicitor General D. John Sauer urged the Supreme Court to decide in a week’s time whether to hear the case and hold arguments the first week of November. That is far faster than the pace of the typical Supreme Court case.

“The President and his Cabinet officials have determined that the tariffs are promoting peace and unprecedented economic prosperity, and that the denial of tariff authority would expose our nation to trade retaliation without effective defenses and thrust America back to the brink of economic catastrophe,” Sauer wrote.

He wrote that it is not just trade that is at issue, but also the nation’s ability to reduce the flow of fentanyl and efforts to end Russia’s war against Ukraine.

The tariffs will almost certainly remain in effect until a final ruling from the Supreme Court. But the Republican administration nevertheless called on the high court to intervene quickly.

“That decision casts a pall of uncertainty upon ongoing foreign negotiations that the President has been pursuing through tariffs over the past five months, jeopardizing both already negotiated framework deals and ongoing negotiations,” Sauer wrote. “The stakes in this case could not be higher.”

The filing cites not only Trump but also the secretaries of the departments of Treasury, Commerce and State in support of the urgent need for the justices to step in.

The stakes are also high for small businesses battered by tariffs and uncertainty, said Jeffrey Schwab, senior counsel and director of litigation at the Liberty Justice Center.

“These unlawful tariffs are inflicting serious harm on small businesses and jeopardizing their survival. We hope for a prompt resolution of this case for our clients,” he said.

The businesses have twice prevailed, once at a federal court focused on trade and again with the appeals court’s 7-4 ruling. Their lawsuit is one of several challenging the tariffs.

Most judges on the Federal Circuit found that the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA, does not allow Trump to usurp congressional power to set tariffs. The dissenters, though, said the gives the president the power to regulate importation during emergencies without explicit limitations.

The ruling involves two sets of import taxes, both of which Trump justified by declaring a national emergency: the tariffs first announced in April and the ones from February on imports from Canada, China and Mexico.

The Constitution gives Congress the power to impose taxes, including tariffs. But over the decades, lawmakers have ceded authority to the president, and Trump has made the most of the power vacuum.

Some Trump tariffs, including levies on foreign steel, aluminum and autos, were not covered by the appeals court ruling. It also does not include tariffs Trump imposed on China in his first term that were kept by Democratic President Joe Biden.

Trump can impose tariffs under other laws, but those have more limitations on the speed and severity with which he could act.

The government has argued that if the tariffs are struck down, it might have to refund some of the import taxes that it’s collected, delivering a financial blow to the U.S. Treasury.

By AYA DIAB

The lights are off, the house is quiet and nothing seems to be running. But electricity is silently flowing through the plugs in your home. This hidden drain is known as phantom energy.

Also called vampire energy, the wasted electricity comes from leaving devices plugged in when they’re not in use. That could range from household items such as phone chargers and microwaves to TVs and gaming consoles.

This wasted electricity accounts for about 5% to 10% of home energy use, depending on factors like the age of the equipment, according to Alexis Abramson, dean of the Columbia Climate School.

“Phantom energy depends on … what kind of systems you have and how much they’ve improved over time,” said Abramson.

For example, televisions that are connected to the internet and have smart wake features that allow them to interact with phones and other devices can consume up to 40 watts of energy during the hours of the day that the TV would normally be off, according to Matt Malinowski, director of the buildings program at the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy. That’s almost 40 times as much as a regular television.

“The good news is there have been new, renewed efforts to tackle this,” said Malinowski.

He said advocates and manufacturers have come up with a voluntary agreement seeking to reduce the amount of energy smart televisions use when they’re in standby mode.

Phantom energy contributes to climate change because power drawn by unused devices can increase demand for electricity from sources that release planet-warming emissions. Aidan Charron, associate director of Global Earth Day, said that while the amount may seem small when a person looks at their individual utility bill, the environmental toll of phantom energy is significant when multiplied over homes across the country.

“Just take a little step of unplugging the things that you’re not using,” said Charron. “It will save you money and it’ll save emissions in the long run.”

What you can do

Some of the main culprits when it comes to draining energy are appliances that are constantly connected to electricity, such as those with a clock.

“Do you really need your microwave to tell you the time, or can you unplug your microwave when you’re not using it?” said Charron.

While unplugging devices may seem burdensome, it significantly contributes to reducing emissions.

Charron recommends starting with small steps like unplugging chargers for phones and other devices once the battery is fully charged. The next step is moving to other appliances such as unplugging an unused lamp.

If unplugging sounds too hard, regularly checking your settings and disabling any extra feature you’re not using that could be draining energy help, too. For example, smart televisions often have optional features that can be turned off so the television isn’t listening for signals from other devices while in standby mode.

“If you’re not using it, then you’re getting no benefit, yet you’re paying the price and increased the energy use,” said Malinowski.

How individual actions can make a difference

Individuals also tend to take more sustainable actions, such as unplugging devices, once they learn what they can do to decrease their household emissions efficiently. Those actions could contribute to reducing U.S. emissions by about 20% per year, which equals about 450 tons of carbon dioxide, according to Jonathan Gilligan, a professor of earth and environmental science at Vanderbilt University.

The choices individuals take in their daily lives all add up, Gilligan said, mainly because of how much the U.S. population contributes to direct greenhouse gas emissions.

“The question becomes, what can we do to try to address this?” said Gilligan. “Phantom power is one part of this.”

The more individuals decrease their footprint, the more likely it is that others will follow, too, and eventually, those actions may turn to societal norms, according to Gilligan, because individuals don’t want to feel like they’re being irresponsible.

“This is a place where psychologists find that this effect is real. If people see that other people are doing actions to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, they want to do that” said Giligan.

When it comes to daily choices, individuals may think what they’re doing isn’t really making a big difference. But what they tend to overlook is how they influence others around them by choosing to live a more sustainable life.

The impact may be much stronger than a lot of people realize, Gilligan said.

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

By STAN CHOE, Associated Press Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street is holding steady on Thursday as the countdown ticks to an update on the U.S. job market coming Friday that could clear the way for the cuts to interest rates that investors love.

The S&P 500 rose 0.2% in early trading. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 45 points, or 0.1%, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.4% higher.

Treasury yields were also easing in the bond market following the latest discouraging signals on the job market. One report suggested U.S. employers, excluding the government, nearly halved their hiring last month. Another said that more U.S. workers applied for unemployment benefits last week, an indication of rising layoffs.

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Neither number is flashing a recession, but a slowdown in the job market could push the Federal Reserve to consider cutting its main interest rate for the first time this year at its next meeting in a couple weeks. So far this year, the Fed has been keeping rates on hold because it’s been more worried about inflation potentially worsening than about the job market.

Cuts to interest rates can give the economy and job market a kickstart, but they can also push inflation higher.

“The year started with strong job growth, but that momentum has been whipsawed by uncertainty,” according to Nela Richardson, chief economist at ADP. She said several things could be behind the slowdown, including ”labor shortages, skittish consumers, and AI disruptions.”

A much more comprehensive report on the job market from the U.S. Labor Department will arrive on Friday, and it will likely carry much weight with the Fed. Ahead of it, the yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.19% from 4.22% late Wednesday.

Last month’s grim July jobs report, which included massive downward revisions for June and May, sent financial markets spiraling and prompted President Donald Trump to fire the head of the agency that compiles the monthly data.

On Wall Street, Salesforce was one of the market’s heaviest weights, even though it reported a better profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Analysts called the performance solid but suggested some of it may have come from one-time factors. Salesforce, which helps businesses manage their customers, fell 7.4%.

C3.ai tumbled 9% after reporting a larger loss for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Chairman Thomas Siebel called the results “completely unacceptable,” while announcing a new chief executive for the company, Stephen Ehikian. He was most recently acting administrator of the U.S. General Services Administration

On the winning side of the market was American Eagle Outfitters, which jumped 31.5% after the teen fashion retailer reported more than double the profit that analysts had expected. It benefited from a frenzy of media attention in late July over its intentionally provocative advertising campaign featuring 27-year-old actor Sydney Sweeney.

The ads — which featured the tagline “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans” — sparked a debate about race, Western beauty standards, and the backlash to “woke” American politics and culture.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise added 1% following its own better-than-expected profit report.

In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed across Europe and Asia.

Indexes dropped 1.3% in Shanghai and Hong Kong but jumped 1.5% in Tokyo.

AP Writers Teresa Cerojano and Matt Ott contributed.