Meet the Candidates for Northfield City Council – Ward 2

Please list any current political offices you hold. (if any)
n/a

Please list any previous political office you’ve held. (if any)
n/a

Please list any civic, community, or professional organizations/clubs your a part of. (if any)
VP Northfield Swim Club (Past)

What qualifies for the office you’re running for?
I feel my construction experience and background will help me ask the right questions about the projects the city is looking to do. I also feel my Military background will also help me be a more effective leader.

What inspired you to run for office? If you are running for reelection why do you want to stay in office?
I am a Northfielder born and raised. Other than the 4 years I spent on active duty with the Marines I have never lived anywhere else. The tax increases over the last several years have caused my wife and I to think about the possibility of moving, neither of us wishes to do this but know if it were to continue we may need to. I decided to try and do something about it which is why I decided to run for city council.

What is something that you would like to accomplish while in office?
I know we need to maintain our city services, we need to maintain our streets and infrastructure as well. We need to start focusing more on what we need and less on what we want. We need more affordable housing for people to live, we need more industry to help ease the tax burden. We need shovel ready ground for this industry so they can get going without waiting for the site to be developed. I believe my connections in the construction industry can help us gain the affordable housing and if we can accomplish getting more of it we will be a more attractive city for industrial businesses.

What does being a leader mean to you?
A good leader will listen and hear what people have to say and then act on the information they have been given. As a council member you should be listening to your constituents and acting accordingly. There may be instances where you will not always make everyone happy but you have to take into account what they are saying when you make decisions.

Frequently voters in Northfield have expressed concerns about the high property taxes. Are you willing to vote for a tax increase? If so what are the criteria you use to justify that increase? 
I understand that there are things that we need to do on a year-to-year basis. Maintaining our city services and our infrastructure is key to keeping our city attractive and functioning properly. We also need to know if the project makes sense financially, is there a good ROI? Can the project support itself? These are the criteria I will use to justify a potential increase.

There are several projects facing Northfield (Ice Area, Water Treatment Plant, etc.), how would you prioritize which projects get funding and support?
The ice arena has already been passed by the current council, I will continue to support it and work to ensure that we keep it on track and on budget in order to minimize the costs to the taxpayer. As for the water treatment plant, I need to have some questions answered before I could fully support it. Why can’t it be treated at each well? What are other options other than pumping all the city’s water to one location to treat it? Are there options to treat it at each home in town that the city could assist with? These are all questions that I have not seen asked by anyone on the current council.
 

How would you work to make sure that residents concerns are heard and addressed? 
We need to listen better! When you have over 1000 residents sign a petition in regard to a project you need to take a step back and take another look at it regardless of some legal loophole with the petition. I will always try to make myself available to the people I represent either via email, phone or some sort of meeting. I would like to try and have meetings where the people can come and voice their concerns and hear about the projects that are being proposed. This will allow me to take notes and take the notes back to the rest of the council so they are also aware of what people are saying.

Campaign Website & Social Media:
Campaign Facebook

Please list any current political offices you hold. (if any)
n/a

Please list any previous political office you’ve held. (if any)
Northfield City Charter Commission, 2017-2018

Please list any civic, community, or professional organizations/clubs your a part of. (if any)
n/a

What qualifies for the office you’re running for?

My background has prepared me very well for serving on Northfield’s City Council. I have always cared deeply about public service and civic engagement; even as a teenager I served on the Duluth Youth Advisory Board to help ensure youth were represented in my hometown’s public policy decisions. My professional roles have given me depth and skill at building trust, discovering shared goals, and paving paths to successful compromise. I have also developed an aptitude for creative, thorough communication, ensuring that people who rely on me to make decisions understand what is unfolding and why decisions are being made in one direction or the other.

I have spent my career in Higher Education, with the majority of my time and roles focused on leading from the middle – being both a leader and a team member, which often positions you best for being a powerful agent of transformational change. It is and has been my job to listen to the needs and wants of my colleagues as well as the will and constraints of leadership and find a way to make improvements that move us forward and meet the broader community’s requirements. In my current role, I am charged with stewarding my organization’s resources around our Enterprise system, Workday. This involves careful listening, resource planning, nuanced evaluation, making difficult decisions about which projects to support when, and communicating with users with a wide variety of technical experience and understanding. It is my job to carefully manage our resources while still moving us forward.

My family and I have made a deliberate choice to live in Northfield because of all it offers us and the broader community. I want to use the skills I have honed throughout my career and put them to work for Northfield to ensure that we remain the livable, forward-thinking, gem of a city that attracts residents and businesses to think of Northfield as home.

What inspired you to run for office? If you are running for reelection why do you want to stay in office?
I am running for City Council because I believe I am an excellent choice for this moment. We have citizens who are happy with the choices the city has made, and we have citizens who are frustrated with those same choices. I want to run because I think that I have a unique background that can serve our city and our citizens well. I know how to listen, I know how to learn. I consider issues from multiple sides and appreciate hearing all the nuanced viewpoints that help leaders make strong, well-thought out decisions. I know how to articulate the positions that made me reach a particular decision in a way that helps other people understand those decisions, too. I think I am a candidate whose thoughtful and careful approach can be a benefit to both happy and frustrated residents. I want to do all the good that I can.

What is something that you would like to accomplish while in office?
As simple as it sounds, one thing I would like to accomplish while in office is to help the Council establish norms around project and communication management. I would hope we could set new standards for how we assist our residents in understanding the choices the city is facing, the rationale for why the Council has made one particular decision or another, and dependable, accessible ways to remain updated on those initiatives. I think there is a trust gap between the City Council and some residents at the moment, and I want to help rebuild that trust by helping re-define what communication and education look and feel like between the Council and the town. There are, of course, many specific projects the city has underway that could also be named as goals, but my hope is that by establishing these norms, no matter which projects or policies the city may consider down the road, the citizens of Northfield have predictable, reliable ways to receive information, provide input, and remain connected to the process.

What does being a leader mean to you?
Being a leader, to me, means being someone who makes it possible for others to succeed. Leadership is not about what you can gain from a situation but rather what your work can do to uplift others. It’s about believing that success is not a finite resource, and that we all do better when we all do better.
A leader is someone who is willing to understand things from someone else’s perspective, and open-minded enough to have their mind changed by new information. They must be collaborative yet influential, diplomatic yet authoritative. Leaders must have the strength and courage to make decisions and be willing to be held accountable for those decisions.

Frequently voters in Northfield have expressed concerns about the high property taxes. Are you willing to vote for a tax increase? If so what are the criteria you use to justify that increase? 
It would admittedly be difficult to vote for a tax increase in this moment, and doing so would require a very compelling rationale with a clearly demonstrated need and a lack of viable or practical alternatives.

There are several projects facing Northfield (Ice Area, Water Treatment Plant, etc.), how would you prioritize which projects get funding and support? 

As a part of my day job, I am responsible for prioritizing which projects are recommended for funding and support and which need to stay on the shelf a while longer. First, I prioritize items that are required by law or for compliance purposes. Next come items that are crucial for maintaining operations, appropriate security, or required standard services. After core needs are met, there is a balancing act between items that have the greatest impact to the widest population and those items that can be done with little effort but can be important signs of progress and meeting the wants of your community. If there are resources – whether money, time, or people – left, you can start to look at some of the items that are nice to have or that impact smaller groups. Every choice comes with pros and cons, and not all pros and cons can be measured in dollars. Often understanding those pros and cons requires a very nuanced approach with open-minded, careful study evaluation – the ice arena and water treatment plant are great examples of projects that are nuanced and where the pros and cons are not only actualized in dollars. In truth, it is important to tend to both the wants and the needs of a community, because it demonstrates your care for the whole selves of the people who live there, not just what they need to function on a basic level.

How would you work to make sure that residents concerns are heard and addressed? 

The best way to hear from residents is talking to residents. Whether it’s targeted door knocking, holding open forums or open houses in ward neighborhoods, social media campaigns, newspaper advertisements soliciting feedback, websites – the intent is to hear from as many people in as many walks of life and areas of the ward as possible. This helps ensure that the Council is really hearing a broad spectrum of thoughts and opinions. From there, my role on the Council would be to ensure that those viewpoints are considered in decision-making processes and when communicating back out to my ward.
I think it’s also important that the Council considers moving to holding education and feedback sessions earlier in processes, whenever feasible. Often residents feel that they find out about initiatives after they have been approved and work has begun, but they would have appreciated the opportunity to learn about the project and give feedback earlier on. This leads to residents feeling that their voices are not heard.

Campaign Website & Social Media

Campaign Website