Candidate Q&A: Ward 11 candidate Miriam DeMello believes in public service

You’ve spent much of your career in public service in Minneapolis and St Paul. Can you talk a little bit about that experience and what you think that would allow you to bring to the

I was first exposed to working in public service after R.T. Rybak* came to visit Southwest High School and did his annual speech and got me really pumped about working for the city. It led me to ask what the career path looks like for public servants and public service. He talked about the Step Up Program, and that's what started my career in public service through my first internship, a Step Up internship at Regulatory Services for the summer.

I was in 10th grade at the time, and then worked for the city the following year through a Step Up internship, and it just really sparked my interest in continuing to serve our community, to serve our city, and to dedicate my life to public service.

After working in the Mayor’s office, I got an Urban Scholar internship with the city attorney's office in Minneapolis, and they liked me so much, they kept me on. From there, I was an intern, then a paralegal. I got my paralegal degree while I was in college, so the credits lined up where I became a paralegal for the city, then I started law school, and then I was a law clerk for the city attorney's office in their civil division.

From there, I wanted to try something new. After the city attorney's office in Minneapolis, I went to the Ramsey County Attorney's Office, clerked there for a few years, then during law school, and after law school, clerked for a judge and explored my career opportunities.

Mayor Carter's office had a job opening, and someone reached out to me to tell me to apply. I've been there ever since 2018 and, regardless of how this council race turns out, I plan to serve in the public sector for the rest of my life, because that exposure from a young age just really made me feel like I could do so much for my community. That's why I've dedicated my life to working in the public sector and volunteering as much as I can. I'm actually on the Minneapolis Charter Commission, too. I really enjoyed serving Minneapolis in that capacity as well.

You've spent a large portion of your career in and around the criminal justice system. How does that experience inform how you would approach the issue of public safety in this job?

Clerking for the Ramsey County Attorney's Office and for a judge who is on a criminal rotation, you kind of see just the inner workings of what the criminal justice system looks like. You realize that obviously there are different levels of crimes and they need to be addressed differently. You know, it's a lot of moving parts, and you realize it's not just a county problem, it's not just a city problem, it's not just a state problem. You realize that we need to all work together in some capacity to figure out how to address our public safety concerns in the Twin Cities.

What do you think are the biggest priorities for ward 11 right now?

So aside from public safety, the rising costs of living. Not just groceries, not just bills, but property taxes too. I know a lot of residents are aging in Ward 11, and I'm a big fan and advocate of being able to age in your home.

My parents have lived in their home for over 40 years. I think they bought it in the 70s, and they want to age in their homes. And aside from health concerns, I think the biggest concern is being able to afford to live in your home when your property taxes are rising, and you're on a fixed income, and you worked so hard over decades to pay off your mortgage, and all of a sudden it's like you have this added expense. It feels that you're being pushed out of the community you invested in.

That's a really big challenge for people, not just in Ward 11, but across the city, and we shouldn't punish people that have invested in the city for so long by having their property taxes increased significantly over a duration of a few years. I'm not saying taxes are bad. Taxes pay for streets, to keep the lights on, and to allow us to employ really talented city workers.

My biggest concern over the years is just seeing how Minneapolis is spending our taxpayer dollars. And when I look around and I see, oh, there are all these potholes that are not fixed. There will be all these street lights that are not working because the wires have been pulled and we haven't figured out how to address copper wire theft. We have to find a permanent solution to addressing copper wire theft. There are rats all over the city at night. I'm a night owl, and I see things at night crawling around that I wish I didn't see. I haven't seen things like that before. I mean, if you asked me five years ago, have you seen a rat in Minneapolis, I would say no. Now they're lurking around.

But my point being is there's something wrong with our infrastructure that are not being addressed. So I really want to make sure that we are using our taxpayer dollars judiciously, that we're not needing to increase them to fill a gap that maybe shouldn't be there. There's been a lot of stories about the city mismanaging funds in the last few months, and that really makes me sad, because if we are really looking at how we're spending our taxpayer dollars in the city, maybe we don't need to increase property taxes so significantly and more of our residents can stay in their homes.

What do you think the city council could do to be more supportive of our small businesses?

I know there are existing measures to help small businesses and I think we need to boost those. I also think there needs to be more of a direct liaison, more one-on-one, with people who want to start small businesses and who want to just keep their businesses open. A lot of people don't realize this, but running a campaign is like running a small business, and I have had to be very resourceful to figure out what I needed to do to be able to make sure all my T's are crossed and I's are dotted to start my campaign.

I use that example for small businesses. There are so many hoops that businesses need to jump through to open up shop. I'm not saying we need to scale back on regulations. Regulations make sure we're all safe and make sure we're compliant. They help enforce city laws that were created for a reason.

But I feel like the city needs to have more pathways and programs to help small businesses stay open and find the resources they need to be paired up with, like grants. We should have some type of hub or business owners can come and say hey, I need help with X, Y, and Z.

How would you approach the issue of homelessness on the Council?

I am not a fan of the Safe Outdoor Spaces ordinance. I don't want to criminalize being homeless, which some other jurisdictions around the country have done. I don't ever want to see that in Minnesota.

However, I feel like we need to incentivize and help people find more permanent and stable housing. So I don't like that [ordinance]. We had encampments in the city. I don't like that. They've gotten so big in the past. I know Mayor Frey's office, the Minneapolis Police Department and public works, have invested a lot of money in making sure encampments are taken down. And that also makes me sad.

I feel like the city, last year, spent over $300,000 in the last half of 2024 taking down encampments. That money could have been used for something else. But at the same time, I recognize that there's a reason why people are living in encampments, and I feel that if we take down encampments, what do we do with the individuals there? We need to find them some type of dignified housing, and that means we need to make more affordable housing units in places that make sense, like near bus lines on busy corridors.

I don't think we should take single family lots and develop them into multi-unit housing. I'm not a fan of that, and I’m all about zoning where it makes sense. I'm tired of seeing luxury condos go up. That's not what the city needs. We need more affordable housing that's a long term solution, but in the here and now, we need more low-barrier shelters opening up. We need places where people who are struggling with addiction can just go and just get over what they're going through at the moment and then find resources to get help.

I don't like to talk about this, but before the pandemic, I did some volunteering for Catholic Charities at the Dorothy Day center in downtown St. Paul. And they would turn people away. They would breathalyze people, and if they were high or under the influence or intoxicated, they would turn people away. I'm like, it's cold outside, you can't do this. It's raining outside, you can't do this. And they're like, well, it's a liability for us. But I thought, you're turning someone away that needs housing and you don't know what's going to happen to them. So that just didn't feel right to me. Again, we just need to figure out how to get more low barrier housing or shelters and housing in the city.

What are some other issues that we haven't talked about that you really want to work on?

Aging infrastructure is a big thing that's correlated with the higher property taxes and making sure that our dollars are being invested in appropriate ways. I think that’s one thing that we haven't really touched on.

We talked about public safety. I think this dysfunctional dynamic we've been seeing with the mayor and council members is very concerning, and part of the reason why I decided to run. I'm really sad to see that our council and mayor's office are not working together on issues that we're dealing with in the city.

I just wish there was more trust with the mayor's office and the council members, and again, being on the Charter Commission, we've had to make so many pauses because, oh, this council member asked us to stop and reconsider, or the mayor's office asked us to stop and reconsider what we were doing because of weird dynamics between the two bodies. So we just need to work together. We're not doing anybody any favors by getting into arguments on the public on public record. We're just wasting people's time. And I don't like that.

Another thing people have been asking me about is endorsements and fundraising, and also what the actual job of a city council person looks like. You know, I understand the value of endorsements, but I have not been super intentional about seeking them out from organizations. Obviously, I've been filling out questionnaires, and I love filling those out as much as I can, because I want to be transparent about what my vision is for the city. However, I just realized sometimes endorsements come with catches, depending on what organization is seeking to endorse you.

My biggest endorsements are going to be the people in Ward 11. That's who I'm going to serve on the council. And back to what it actually means to be a city council member – 80% of the job is responding to constituents, taking phone calls, emails, and people don't talk about that.

I've worked for Mayor Carter for a number of years now, and part of my job is I get on the phones when we're short staffed, and I take people's calls.I listen to people and I try to figure out how to address their problems. It's not the most glamorous job, but being a council member, being a public worker, is not supposed to be glamorous, right?

We are there to help people solve their problems and end with a positive result. So that’s something I wish that we would talk about more. It's like, hey, your job as a council member is that once you're at City Hall, put your head down and work for the residents.

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