During a recent city council meeting, Mendota Heights Mayor Stephanie Levine recalled her first day after winning election in 2020, when she received an invite to tour the city’s police station. Because it was during COVID, she had been unable to do so until then.

“I went down the day after I was elected and toured the police station, and then immediately had regrets for running for office,” said Levine at an Aug. 5 meeting, half-joking. “If I knew I was going to have to deal with the condition of this police station, I might have had second thoughts.”

Six years later, what Mendota Heights should do with city hall has become the defining issue of the town’s upcoming mayoral and city council races.

Levine, seeking re-election to her fourth two-year term, faces off against current council member John Maczko, a rematch from 2022 when Levine defeated Maczko, 59% to 41%. At the city council level, incumbent Sally Lorberbaum and five other candidates — Neil Garlock, John Larrive, Jerome Mulvihill, Michael Oxley and Will Stein — have filed for two seats.

Council member John Mazzitello did not file for re-election.

Planning for the new city-police municipal campus has emerged as the most visible issue in this town of about 11,500. The estimated $30 million to $33 million price tag has rankled many community members, who have packed city council meetings this summer, causing at least two current city council members to desire restarting the planning process.

The Pioneer Press interviewed all candidates to ask their view on how Mendota Heights should best proceed.

Old facility, new needs

The current city hall was built in 1987, a 20,000-square-foot building located at 1101 Victoria Curve in Mendota Heights, and has since served as the home for both Mendota Heights’ city governmental and law enforcement needs. But the building has been a point of discussion going back nearly eight years, as issues with water intrusion, changing law enforcement requirements, Americans with Disabilities Act standards and evolving local government needs have earmarked the building for some kind of update.

On Sept. 17, Mendota Heights was forced to vacate an area of the police department as recent tests showed the presence of a type of mold known as Chaetomium, sometimes referred to as “the other black mold.”

The mold was discovered in the police department’s multipurpose squad room, which was previously highlighted in a social media video where officers are forced to share one space to eat lunch, clean weapons and process reports. The room has been closed while remediation work was performed, and will remain off-limits until clearance testing shows a return to safe levels. In the meantime, police officers are using Police Chief Kelly McCarthy’s office as a temporary squad room.

City staff reported that the source of the water intrusion has yet to be discovered, and staff will continue investigating the origin.

Interviews of candidates were completed before this recent mold update became public, but issues with water intrusion in the building have arisen before. In 2016, the city hired an outside company to perform remediation efforts along the south side of the facility.

The city council began discussing a future city hall in 2020, with council presentations at various points throughout the following years. In August 2025, ICS Consulting presented Mendota Heights with a high-level facility assessment of the current city hall, finding many mechanical systems were original to the building, and would need replacement.

In November of that year, ICS returned with a presentation of potential options, including renovation of the current site, or new construction on the southwest edge of the property, currently where Mertensotto Field at Civic Center Park sits.

By December 2025, the council unanimously chose to pursue planning for construction of a new city hall and police department facility, with members at the time citing the estimated high costs of renovating the current building at about 77% of building a new facility.

But over the summer, as schematic design plans for a 50,000-square-foot municipal campus came back to the council, the early new construction estimate of $33 million became a major sticking point. Critics of the new plans have also reasoned that since the population of Mendota Heights is stable, the new facility should remain the same size; while city staff has reported that the current facility is two to three times undersized for current governmental needs.

In the meantime, a group of citizens in September petitioned Mendota Heights to complete an environmental assessment worksheet related to the project, an estimated six-month process that will freeze design work as it proceeds.

The proposed new city hall construction would cost an estimated annual property tax increase of $350 to $450 on the median Mendota Heights home of $551,000. In speaking about the new city hall, each of the candidates brought up proposed property tax increases in Dakota County, as well as an upcoming levy referendum this November from the Mendota Heights-West St. Paul-Eagan area school district that could also impact residents’ tax bills.

Mold, water, frogs, snakes

Levine said she doesn’t take the cost lightly but the project is long overdue and will only become more expensive if the council continues to hold off addressing it. The issues regarding the lack of proper space for the police department, along with safety and security issues in the city hall building, must be addressed, she said.

“There is mold and water and frogs and snakes in that building. We can do better in Mendota Heights. The space issues must be addressed, and people should not be working in those conditions,” Levine said. “We are not over-building or under-building, we are ‘appropriate building.’ I would challenge people to look at the schematic design, and say, ‘What room should be taken out?’ It’s great to say that we can spend less, but I want to hear, ‘What should we do without?’”

As mayor, she has most enjoyed interacting with residents, and said she is running for re-election to continue the progress the city has made during her time.

“I do this because I love our city,” she said. “We are really privileged to live in such a warm and welcoming community.”

Maczko said he thinks the council should pause and form a resident-led steering committee to restart and review all potential options. When he voted to move the city hall project into schematic design, he said, he thought several options would be provided to the council.

“I supported moving a project forward to schematic design, but I did not support moving that particular solution forward,” Maczko said. “There is still information that I didn’t have then, but what I was confronted with is, ‘Do I support doing something or doing nothing?’”

While Maczko has two years remaining on his city council term, he filed for the mayoral election on the last day of the filing period after noticing that no one else had done so. Even though the election is a rematch with a fellow member of the council, and the city hall issue has become highly debated, he said the council is not contentious.

“The current mayor is good at certain things, and I am good at other things,” Maczko said. “We succeed as a group, and as a team.”

‘One issue stands out’

City Council member Sally Lorberbaum, who was first elected to the council in 2022, also voted in December 2025 to move the project forward to the schematic design phase.

She has also served on the city planning commission, as well as the Mendota Heights Airport Relations Commission, the Mendota Heights Community Foundation and other local boards.

This summer when cost estimates came back in the $30 million range, Lorberbaum proposed a Plan B — looking into a smaller design that left the baseball field intact. But an estimate to create those designs came back at just short of $400,000. She said that also seemed cost prohibitive, and ended up voting against her own resolution.

Lorberbaum said she would prefer to continue reviewing the possibility of new construction, but with a smaller footprint.

In the meantime, she is most interested in results of soil borings, allowing the city to understand the condition of soil at potential site locations, in addition to the extent of potential mold behind the walls in the current city hall building.

“I want to have a quality building that we can use for many, many years to come,” she said. “But at the same time, we need to respect the financial limitations of our residents.”

Most of the challengers favor a pause, and another review of potential options, but all candidates have opinions of what should be done next.

“In some elections, one issue will stand out, and this is definitely one,” said candidate Neil Garlock. He previously served two terms as Mendota Heights mayor, from 2017 to 2020, and is also a retired Mendota Heights police officer.

Garlock said that over the past few months, neighbors have been asking him to get back involved with the local government, and the municipal campus process was the deciding factor for him.

He is not in favor of the new construction as proposed, but instead would be interested in first expanding the police department space, and then going back through the current city hall space and renovating that area.

“I think communication could have been a lot better, and I know it’s late in the ballgame, but people have kind of woken up, and are starting to be more engaged,” Garlock said. “I don’t think it hurts to go back, revisit things and look at every possible option.”

In knocking doors and talking to residents, Garlock said he has been hearing concerns that the design is too costly and the facility probably too large.

‘No one wants ... poor working conditions’

Candidate John Larrive, who retired from the Mendota Heights police department in 2024, said that while the police department has definitely outgrown the space, he favors additional study of the property in seeking a less expensive option.

“I’m not denying that something needs to be done with the city hall/police department, I worked in that building for 28 years,” Larrive said. “But when I start talking to my neighbors and friends in town, and they look at $33 million, it’s just a lot of money to throw at a building where the staff is not going to get any bigger.

“No one wants the police department to have poor working conditions. No one wants city hall to have poor working conditions. But at the same time, how much does a taxpayer have to give up?” Larrive said.

The future of city hall is the main issue why he decided to run for office.

Newcomer Michael Oxley also favors re-exploring the options that were floated back in November 2025, and taking an in-depth look to see if less costly, potentially pared down city hall options could be explored.

Oxley — an assistant vice-president at U.S. Bank who has been involved locally with the Two Rivers Athletic Association — said he was encouraged to run for office by outgoing city council member Mazzitello, even knowing that the two disagree on the city hall project. Oxley had been considering a run before the city hall project came into prominence, he said.

“I’m really involved with helping out and volunteering around the community, and having talked with a lot of people, I’ve found that there was an appetite for change,” said Oxley, who also mentioned seeing so many residents at council meetings as influencing his run. “The reason why people were there is because they wanted to be heard, and I feel like the city hasn’t done a good job of doing that. That’s primarily why I eventually decided to run.”

‘Stop and slow down’

Many of the candidates who are desiring a pause also mentioned a concern about building a new facility in the wetland area, a main focus for candidate Jerome Mulvihill.

Mulvihill, who has worked as a municipal engineer, said he feels the city needs to better understand the technical variables involved in the proposed site. He would want to call for hydrology and geotechnical reports. He supports a deeper review of the idea to remodel and expand the existing city hall, to better compare that once again against the newer municipal campus concept.

“My path would be to stop and slow down,” Mulvihill said. “We need to invest in an in-depth investigation of the existing building. We need to monitor pond levels. We need to do a thorough investigation on a complicated site in a wetland like this.”

Not all of the candidates, however, favor going back to the drawing board.

Will Stein had already planned to run for city council before the new city hall project debate emerged this summer, based mostly on his experience serving on the city’s natural resources commission since 2022.

While the municipal campus was not the impetus for his run, he sees a priority in moving forward with new construction, citing the high costs to renovate the old structure. He has become a bit frustrated with what he called ambiguity of those saying the city should pause the project.

The city council already reviewed potential options, Stein said, reasoning that delaying the process, or trying to renovate an older building could easily lead to more cost overruns, compared to building a new facility.

“I have been completely clear, and completely straight forward in my position,” he said. “I believe the best path forward is new construction.”

Stein has worked as an engineer for a private firm, as well as the U.S. Department of Transportation and two state departments of transportation. Stein said he doesn’t take the sticker price lightly, but that new construction could focus on discovering ways to include future energy savings and operational efficiencies. Those options would be much more difficult to employ in renovating the current structure.

Aside from the municipal campus, he is most concerned at how future councils can try to address affordability for residents, particularly for young people and young families.