The St. Paul City Council approved the creation on Wednesday of a new committee, internal to the council, that will meet regularly to discuss financial matters related to police, fire, code enforcement and other public safety spending.

The effort to create a new regularly standing committee within the council was approved 5-2 and led by Council Member Anika Bowie, who said greater oversight will allow elected officials and the general public a forum to better understand how tax dollars are spent.

St. Paul City Council member Anika Bowie. (Courtesy of the City of St. Paul)

Bowie said council committees already meet monthly to discuss the city’s libraries, water department or general budget. Following the approval of the city charter in 1970, the city council maintained a public safety committee as part of its early subcommittee structure from 1972 to 1978, though it was later merged with a licensing committee and then repealed entirely.

“I think public safety deserves that same attention,” said Bowie, who was announced in January as the future committee chair. “Public safety is no less important. … This vote is about managing our council business better … (and) making sure we have adequate time to hear from our department heads. … It’s about giving our public a transparent space to understand and engage.”

Following extensive back-and-forth with the mayor’s office last year over heavy police overtime spending, Council Member Nelsie Yang was announced in January as the future vice-chair of the committee under Bowie. On Wednesday, Yang said she had withdrawn her support for the effort she once planned to help lead.

Council Member Matt Privratsky joined Yang in casting the sole “no” votes, with Yang expressing concern the committee would be duplicative to the work of the council’s existing budget committee, among other efforts. The city, for instance, already has a 15-member Neighborhood Safety Community Council, which works the city’s Office of Neighborhood Safety to evaluate public safety outreach grants and develop annual priorities for the department.

St. Paul City Council member Matt Privratsky. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

“There’s already questions being referred over to me about whether something that is going to be referred over to the council is going to be in the budget and finance committee, or the public safety committee,” Yang said.

Bowie was supported in her vote by Council Member Cheniqua Johnson, who had voiced some skepticism last month based on a lack of outreach at the time to the Office of Neighborhood Safety, as well as police and fire officials. Johnson on Wednesday said Bowie took that feedback to heart and done her due diligence, and the latest version of the resolution was worded in a manner that had swayed her vote.

“I think it’s important that if we’re establishing any committee, that we’re doing so in partnership with the same departments,” Johnson said. “You did take a lot of the feedback into consideration. … The things that are listed here are within the scope of the council and what the council is (assigned) to do.”

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The chief executive officer of the Minnesota Wild weighed in on St. Paul’s rent control ordinance Wednesday, as did a community impact director with the St. Paul and Minnesota Foundation and a real estate broker with a background in affordable housing.

With St. Paul’s housing construction numbers dragging lower last year than at any time since 2013, the three letter writers joined a cadre of others who say it’s time to end rent control for new housing construction, as well as buildings that received their certificate of occupancy after 2004, as the mayor and three council members have proposed.

“Prominent buildings at the core of our city are being vacated, abandoned and boarded up,” said Matt Majka, CEO of the Minnesota Wild, in a letter to the St. Paul City Council bemoaning the state of downtown. “We must do everything we can to reinvest in these properties and reposition them as housing.”

But Deborah Schlick, a resident of the city’s West Side, took the opposite tack, arguing that the city already watered down the 2021 voter-approved rent stabilization ordinance with a number of amendments and was poised to shred it to “Swiss cheese” with yet another, an affront to renters that now comprise nearly half the city.

“In this economy, there is time to do this right,” wrote Schlick, in her own letter to the city council. “Put a hold on any decision. Between interest rates and tariffs, no one is rushing to build anywhere. Build a thoughtful, effective strategy to ensure low wage workers and people unable to work can afford to find a home in St. Paul.”

The city council held public hearings Wednesday on two hot-button questions likely up for votes in early May. At the urging of St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter, housing developers and certain affordable housing advocates who have called rent control a well-intentioned but failed effort, the council is contemplating exempting any construction that received its certificate of occupancy after 2004.

North End homeowner Adam Dullinger, left, speaks against a proposed amendments to the St. Paul rent control ordnance during a public hearing before the St. Paul City Council in council chambers at St. Paul City Hall on Wednesday, April 9, 2025. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Scapegoating rent control for the housing slowdown?

Carter and several council members have said those changes should move forward hand-in-hand with a raft of proposed tenant protections also vetted through a public hearing on Wednesday.

City officials have expressed alarm that only 293 housing units were constructed in St. Paul last year, down from more than 1,400 in 2019, and only a few dozen of last year’s new units were non-subsidized, market-rate housing. They’ve pointed out that multiple rent-controlled cities offer exemptions for new construction, including Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.

Matthew McMillan, a renter, noted that while St. Paul has struggled to draw interest from the development community, housing construction also plunged in cities that do not have rent control. Given high interest rates and other economic challenges, an attorney with the Housing Justice Center, based in St. Paul, told the council the city is “scapegoating” rent control for construction slowdowns increasingly evident throughout the Twin Cities.

On the city’s East Side, “one in three Ward 7 renters pay over half their income to rent,” said another speaker, who identified himself as a graduate student who studies the housing industry. “This is absolutely a supply issue. … It’s a downtown issue. But rent control is not the cause of those problems.”

Some critics expressed fear that creating a two-tier system will offer extra incentive to developers to tear down older, naturally affordable properties and replace them with pricey new units exempt from rent control.

“Trickle-down affordability is both grossly insufficient and … unjust,” said another renter, pointing to limited recent construction and high rents in Minneapolis, Indianapolis, Denver and other cities without rent control.

Opponents say goals not met

Rent control’s opponents have argued that the blanket policy has done more to protect wealthy renters from large hikes than to protect the poor, given that many owners of older properties have been granted exemptions to the rent caps because of high maintenance costs, inflation and property tax increases.

In a letter to the council, real estate broker Renee Spillum, a former director of real estate with the University of Minnesota Foundation’s Real Estate Advisors, said she once spent seven years struggling to find financing to build new apartments in a low-income Minneapolis neighborhood. St. Paul’s rent control ordinance has made a difficult slog even harder, she said.

“I want more competition in St. Paul between landlords, not less,” Spillum wrote. “The only way that happens is adding more units. And the only way we add more units in our city is not to make it impossible for developers to raise equity capital to build here.”

Scott Cordes, chief operating officer of affordable housing developer Project for Pride in Living, told the council Wednesday that rent control has had too many “unintended consequences,” such as limiting affordable housing production at the Highland Bridge development, where affordable units have only moved forward at three of 10 parcels.

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By MATTHEW DALY

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has long complained about modern rules that limit water flow for showerheads, making it harder for him to wash his “beautiful hair.”

In his first term, Trump directed that restrictions on showerheads be loosened, an action that former President Joe Biden reversed.

Now Trump is going to let the water flow — again.

An executive order he signed Wednesday calls for an immediate end to water conservation standards that restrict the number of gallons per minute that flow through showerheads and other appliances such as dishwashers, washing machines and toilets.

“I like to take a nice shower, take care of my beautiful hair,” Trump said Wednesday as he signed an executive order at the White House. “I have to stand in the shower for 15 minutes until it gets wet. Comes out drip, drip, drip. It’s ridiculous.”

“What you do is you end up washing your hands five times longer, so it’s the same water,” he added. “And we’re going to open it up so that people can live.”

The order directs Energy Secretary Chris Wright to immediately rescind what Trump called the “overly complicated federal rule” that redefined the word showerhead under the last two Democratic presidents.

Biden and former President Barack Obama both imposed restrictions on water flow from showerheads and other appliances. The standards were intended to make dishwashers, showerheads, refrigerators, laundry machines and toilets use less energy and water.

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But the regulations “turned a basic household item into a bureaucratic nightmare,” the White House said in a fact sheet. “No longer will showerheads be weak and worthless.”

The Appliance Standards Awareness Project, which advocates for energy efficiency, said the Biden-era standards cut utility bills and protect the environment.

Showers account for about 20% of the average American family’s daily indoor water use, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Water-saving showerheads also save energy, since heating water accounts for about a fifth of the average home’s energy use.

Andrew deLaski, executive director of ASAP, said consumer reviews consistently show that most showerheads currently sold “provide a great drenching. So there isn’t a problem to be solved here with the showerheads available today.”

He called Trump’s order a gimmick designed to get around a 1992 energy efficiency law, and he predicted a similar result to Trump’s actions during his first term, when no major showerhead manufacturer made significant changes to their products.

Tamara Kangas Erickson is the new president and artistic director of Chanhassen Dinner Theatres, the company’s board of directors announced Wednesday.

She steps into the role left by Michael Brindisi, who died unexpectedly on Feb. 5, just days before CDT’s production of “Grease” opened.

Tamara Kangas Erickson has been named president and artistic director of Chanhassen Dinner Theatres. (Courtesy of Chanhassen Dinner Theatres)

“Tamara’s extensive experience, skills and vision are invaluable assets for Chanhassen Dinner Theatres, which will bring both continuity and innovative change to our amazing theater,” said Jim Jensen, CDT co-owner and board member, in a news release. “Her deep appreciation for the arts, coupled with her unwavering dedication to our staff, artists, employees and audiences, make her the perfect leader to continue and build upon the remarkable legacy established by Michael Brindisi.”

Erickson, who has served as CDT’s vice president for the past 15 years, began working with Brindisi in 2004, first serving as resident choreographer. The pair collaborated on more than 50 musicals at CDT as well as productions at the Pantages Theatre in Minneapolis and the national tour of “Sesame Street Live: Can’t Stop Singing.”

In March 2010, Brindisi, Erickson and Steven Peters formed a new ownership group alongside Doug Lennick, Jensen and other key players in the purchase of Chanhassen Dinner Theatres from its previous owner, Thomas K. Scallen. Since then, the dinner theater has employed more than 300 professional actors, musicians and staff.

CDT’s current production of “Grease” runs through Oct. 4. For the holiday season, the company will bring back last year’s hit “Irving Berlin’s White Christmas” for a run from Oct. 10 through Feb. 7. Erickson will direct the 2026 spring production of “Guys and Dolls,” which runs Feb. 13 through Sept. 26.

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