Meet the candidates for St. Louis Park mayor

Yvette Baudelaire

Why did you decide to run?

As a resident of (St. Louis Park), I started to question myself about how the city functions and who is who when it comes to making major decisions that affect everybody. Public officials work for the community, not the other way around. I realized that many of the residents of St. Louis Park weren’t happy with the service they were receiving and when the opportunity showed up, I decided to run, precisely because I didn’t like that the mayor was going to run unopposed. That’s not healthy for a democratic city, so that’s why I decided to (run). 

What do you believe is the biggest issue in the city right now that you would like to address?

(We) need to have strategic planning on the functioning of the city (and on) the distribution of taxes, the distribution of money (and) the allocation of taxes. One of my main points on money is ‘how do we use our money? Our tax contribution? Is it being used for what we really need?’ It’s understanding who we are as a city and what our real needs are.

What changes would you make to address this issue?

I would do a revision of (the 2040 plan) to see if the ultimate plan to take it to 2040 is really necessary. I’m very frugal in my tax opinion, I believe it is a (form) of respect for people when we use their money as public officials. 

What other issues are you passionate about?

We need to encourage and establish better communication for the city and for the residents so we are active and participate not only on things that are fun, but on things that are difficult and good to carry out that will benefit the city as a whole.

What skills do you believe you will bring to the mayor’s office?

I was born in Mexico City and I lived in France and Spain before I arrived to the United States in 2003. I received training at Hamline University Law School to become a family and civil law mediator and arbitrator. I also worked as an interpreter for 15 years. An interpreter has to have the ability to listen, otherwise they will not deliver the message, and the mediator has the ability to see the alternative solution when there is a conflict. Any city faces challenges, the ability that I have is to listen and to see an alternative solution when there is a high conflict or dispute.

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Jake Spano

Why did you decide to run?

I enjoy the service aspect, I enjoy serving my neighbors. We’ve done a lot of great things around affordable housing and climate and working to empower young people in our community. I think there’s a lot more to do. We need to dig in a lot harder on our race equity work and dig in much more deeply in our climate change work.

What do you believe is the biggest issue in the city right now that you would like to address?

One of the challenges I’m hearing is that people aren’t able to find enough places to live that are affordable. In 2015, we passed an affordable housing policy, we’ve been creating more affordable units in St. Louis Park. So maintaining the affordable housing stock and creating more while maintaining our tax base has been one of our biggest issues that we’ve been dealing with.

What changes would you like to make to address the issue?

Passing policies is great, you need to do that, but one of the things I think our city and our council needs to do is dig in to the policies that we’ve already passed and make them work better.

What other issues are you passionate about?

I am the chair of the city’s race equity and leadership coalition. It’s been an eye opening experience for me to really be digging into the inequities in our communities and the role our government has played in creating those inequities.

What was your background before you decided to run?

Mayor is a part time job so, in addition to that, my day job is the Deputy Secretary of State, so we oversee elections and business services. I also worked for the mayor of St. Paul, Minnesota as a marketing director. (In addition), I worked for a number of years for Senator Amy Klobuchar. 

What skills do you believe you will bring to the mayor’s office?

You don’t always get what you want. You have to compromise with your colleagues and your community, and I think I have the capacity to manage that to the council.