Before she takes power, St. Paul Mayor-elect Kaohly Her is taking notes

With a notepad and questions, St. Paul Mayor-elect Kaohly Her is making her way around the city ahead of her inauguration Jan. 5.

After beating two-term Mayor Melvin Carter in November, Her is beginning her transition into the city’s highest office by touring all seven of St. Paul’s wards with members of the City Council.

Her pledged during the campaign to show up, be responsive and take a more collaborative approach to governing than Carter. “We are a large city but a small community,” Her said on election night. “Being involved matters.”

Now, Her is working to show St. Paul what that means.

This month, she is touring St. Paul intending to learn what the public needs from the next mayor.

At local businesses, libraries and community centers, she is meeting with leaders of city departments, business groups and nonprofit organizations she’ll work with come January.

Though Her, 52, has lived in the city for years and served as Carter’s policy director before she was elected to the Legislature in 2018, she is eager to get up to speed on neighborhood issues across the city.

Her was delighted to see books and movies in Hmong on the shelves. “We didn’t have this when I was growing up!”

She smiled as the librarians spoke about the ways they had tried to make the library more useful to the neighborhood beyond stocking books in different languages — such as scheduling story time in the evening, so parents who work during the day can bring their children.

Hartman pointed at a shelf of children’s books with covers “at kid height.”

“Or Kaohly height!” Her joked.

She was surprised to learn the library still had a fax machine for patrons, but Hartman explained Ramsey County still requires benefits recipients to fax in documents.

At the Battle Creek Rec Center, Her admired a mural and a selection of cross-country skis available to rent. She asked how many people use city parks and recreation facilities.

Parks Director Andy Rodriguez, another Carter appointee, filled her in on the ways staff can count users but said the city does not have the ability to count how many people play on playgrounds or stop in to use restrooms at the rec centers.

Her suggested reaching out to a group working with the state to use cellphone geolocation data to track park use, before asking how many children and teens play in youth volleyball and basketball leagues, and about hours for drop-in adult volleyball. Maybe she’ll drop in sometime, Her said. She loves volleyball, she said, but “I haven’t played in years.”

She lit up at the sight of a pingpong table in a side room. Her often played at a table outside her legislative office, and she asked the tour group if anyone played.

“Don’t let her in there!” said transition adviser Erica Schumacher as she attempted to keep Her on schedule. (After a recent visit with the Minnesota Star Tribune’s editorial board, Her was spotted playing table tennis against Publisher Steve Grove at a table in the offices.)

Her’s team then moved to the Indigenous Roots coffee shop on E. 7th Street, where representatives from several neighborhood nonprofits told her about their projects.

St. Paul Urban Tennis is working on a partnership with the city parks department, and Her asked if they had any pickleball initiatives in the works.

Staff from the Trust for Public Land spoke about their work at Wakan Tipi. CLUES, a Latino-focused social service nonprofit, explained a pilot program for a new child care model.

Her sat at a corner of the table, listened and took notes with a ballpoint pen on a pad of lined white paper, asking about their funding needs.

She kept listening and nodding at the next meeting, where a group of East Side businesses and business development groups grilled MnDOT staff about plans to reconstruct E. 7th Street in 2026. Local businesses were blindsided by a decision to fully close nearby Arcade Street in 2025 during reconstruction and wanted to make sure they were ready for the next round of construction disruption.

Her’s team is still forming the administration’s priorities, especially around the bonding requests St. Paul will submit to the Legislature in early 2026.