Meet Councilmember Robin Schroeder
Focusing on the basics to make Roseville strong
City councilmember Robin Schroeder’s roots are deep here in Roseville. Her family lived on Rice Street, on the Roseville side, before moving closer to Lake McCarrons. Her dad was a volunteer fire fighter and even her grandfather went to Lake McCarrons School. She and her husband (also a Roseville native) raised two daughters in Roseville.
“I’ve been attached to this community one way or another my whole life. I have quite a lot of history with it and I feel like I need to be part of the stewardship of it,” Schroeder said.
Her family owned Schroeder Milk Company for 125 years, before selling it in 2008 to Agropur, a large Canadian dairy cooperative. Schroeder Milk was one of the biggest buyers of Roseville water, even though it was located in Maplewood, she said. The last position Schroeder held at Schroeder Milk was Chief Financial Officer.
After the family business was sold, Schroeder became a consultant. She worked with corporate clients and nonprofits, family-owned businesses, co-ops, and dairy industry businesses. Schroeder used her background in finance to help with financial analysis, strategic planning, and succession planning.
She also served on the board as treasurer for the McCarrons Lakefront Alliance and on the board of Way to Grow in Minneapolis as the finance chair. Way to Grow is an early childhood nonprofit that supports families to support their children’s learning, with a special focus on serving families whose first language is not English.
When Roseville City Council decided to establish a finance commission, Robin was among the first to serve.
“They elected me chair every year for 5 years in a row. That was really good, I got to understand the city better,” Schroeder said.
Eventually, she needed to step down to take care of her elderly parents and they became her highest priority. After they passed and she settled their affairs, her capacity opened up again. She began to seriously consider running for city council.
“If I’m going to do it, I’m going to do it right,” Schroeder said. She learned a lot while on the finance commission, but says she still had a lot to learn about how the city works.
While running, Schroeder knocked on thousands of doors and talked to residents all across Roseville.
“That was really educational for me. I felt really good about knowing what people were concerned about,” Schroeder said.
She also sat down with all the city department heads to ask questions and find out what was going on in each area.
Elected in 2022, Schroeder has a year and a half left on her first term before she’ll need to run again in fall of 2026. In her time in office, she’s proud that she’s been able to help educate other residents about how the city works and point them to resources and answers that they’re seeking out. She says people call, email, and approach her at events with questions about various city matters.
She’s learned just how much work and time it takes to serve on city council. City council meets at least three Mondays out of every month and members receive the meeting agenda and packet the Thursday prior. She wants to be prepared for every meeting and reads all of the information provided ahead of time, but there’s no way to know how the other councilmembers will react or vote. Due to Minnesota’s Open Meeting Law, city councilmembers can’t meet to discuss city council matters outside of official meetings.
So she doesn't always know how other councilmembers are thinking about a particular issue, she said. Sometimes you think a decision is going to go one way, and then it goes another. Or a decision gets pushed down the road, such as the case with the Aldine right-of-way vacation discussion.
Learn more about Minnesota’s Open Meeting Law:
Jessica Lee
Keeping an Eye on the Budget
With her professional background in finance and many years of experience on the Finance Commission, Schroeder is constantly thinking about how decisions and discussions at city council will impact the current and future budget.
She’s keeping an open mind when it comes to what to do about the city-owned License and Passport Center and the Dance Studio and is very aware that funding those projects with the new local sales tax was voted down last year.
“I think we need to look at it. I think we need to look at all the options . . . Hopefully we can figure out how to do that without being too taxing on the residents,” Schroeder said.
She knows residents are concerned about rising property taxes and she wants people to understand that property tax rates aren’t just decided by the city budget. It’s a combination between property values, city taxes, county taxes, and school levies.
As they look at the budget for next year, she knows there will be a lot of requests coming from police, fire, parks, and public works.
“It’s just like your own budget. There are lots of things you’d love to do that you can’t afford,” Schroeder said. “I think this year will be interesting because there are so many more variables in this budget. We might have to have more of a conversation about prioritizing.”
Learn more about city department needs:
Contributing Writer
Naomi Krueger
Contributing Writer
Focusing on the Basics to Make Roseville Strong
Schroeder tries to keep her focus on the building blocks of what makes a city function and run well.
“This may sound boring to some people . . . It’s really important that we have fresh water, good streets, public safety, wonderful parks. Making this a good community for everybody. Those basic things,” Schroeder said. “And not getting distracted by things that are political or shiny.”
That’s why she’s grateful for the city’s strategic planning process—it keeps the council united and focused in the same direction.
Investing in the city’s infrastructure—roads, public works, quality city staff, public safety, etc.—is her main focus.
“People in Roseville, when you look at the surveys, really appreciate the police and the fire. I really think it’s important to prioritize those kinds of things. I know there are all these exciting things you hear in the news and people are passionate about. That’s okay, people need to have passion,” Schroeder said. “And then realizing what is it as a city we need to do, can do, and should do, and do we have the funding for it?”
For example, rather than focusing on larger state or national political issues, she thinks the city should focus on the things the city actually has control over.
It’s important to her that the city council remain nonpartisan. Some councilmembers or city council candidates run with political party endorsements, but she’d rather people focus on Roseville.
“I know a number of people on the council who ran nonpartisan even though they have their own strong political feelings, but I’ve been impressed that they’ve been able to just concentrate on Roseville,” Schroeder said. “That’s a beautiful, powerful thing when people can do that and work together on these things. I feel very fortunate that we’ve been able to get things done.”
She’s proud to say that Roseville is fiscally sound and she’s very impressed with how the city is run. She knows other cities in the area that are struggling.
“People don’t like to talk about the boring stuff, but that’s what people want,” she said.
For example, keeping parks beautiful and fire and police services reliable have always been important to Roseville and so they are important to Schroeder too. She’s also excited about new initiatives, such as the new electric fire truck that’s coming, the Green to Go Ordinance—transitioning restaurant carry-out containers to sustainable materials—and other ways to make Roseville more environmentally sustainable.
“I feel responsibility to do my part to keep what people love about Roseville, and bring us into the future at the same time,” Schroeder said.
This is part of a series of profiles of Roseville city councilmembers. Stay tuned for more in this series in the coming months. In case you missed the first two:
Naomi Krueger
Naomi Krueger
