Welcome to St. Paul Spotlight! This is a place for St. Paul residents to find out what is going on in their city, including information about how our local government works.
Our current focus is St. Paul's District Council system of 17 individual neighborhood districts.
Our District Council system was created in 1975 in response to citizen complaints that by the time residents learned about changes affecting their neighborhoods, it was too late for them to have any meaningful input.
Our district councils are intended to function as "citizen participation planning districts." Their main purposes are to:
- Get more information out sooner to the communities;
- Provide an effective process in each community for the gathering and dissemination of information; and
- Create a broad-based community forum in which community issues can be fully discussed.
These local neighborhood committees make decisions that affect your housing, transportation, commercial development, parks and recreation, etc.
Each of these planning councils hold annual elections where their residents choose neighbors to represent their district.
If you do not know which district governs your neighborhood, visit the St. Paul city website. (You'll need to click the blue "District Council and Ward Lookup" button; then type your address into the the upper left corner search box. The response identifies both your district council and your city ward.)
Visit this site's District Councils, for more information about St. Paul's District Council system.
St. Paul Spotlight encourages our residents to share their ideas so that our community can benefit from a broader understanding of St. Paul’s issues. We hope this website provides a forum to explore various points of view in a “Point-Counterpoint” style of thoughtful, respectful articles.
Future St. Paul Spotlight topics will include:
- Ford Site
- Amendments for Organized Trash Collection
- Ayd Mill Road
- Public Safety
- City governance
Do you have an idea for a topic you would like to hear about? Do you have an article or letter to the editor that you would like to submit?
Please email us at: info@stpaulspotlight.com , or use the Contact link above.
We would love to hear from you!