By Logan Wells, News Director | Logan@kymnradio.net
In mid-September, at the Viking Theatre of St. Olaf College, The League of Women Voters hosted a forum to hear from the local candidates. This will be part 2 of a series highlighting some of the forum’s significant moments, you can find part 1 of the series about the candidates for Mayor and City Council At Large in the KYMN 2024 Election Guide. Today, we are focusing on the candidates for Northfield City Council Ward 2, Chad Beumer and Emy Farley, both newcomers to politics.
In her opening statement, Farley stated that she enjoys taking the time to learn about issues in depth:
“I want to serve on the City Council because this is the type of job that I love to do. Deep analysis of issues, not with an answer in mind, but with the objective of finding an answer or drawing a conclusion based on the facts available.”
In his opening statement, Beumer called for more “common sense” in the city council and focused on spending.
“I would like to see more fiscally responsible spending, focus more on the needed and and a little bit less on the wanted. And I think we need to work on our shovel Ready industrial park and some more affordable housing here in town.”
When asked how they would work to include citizen’s feedback, Farley focused on improving the cities website:
“I would hope to see for all of the projects that we have going on that we would have individual pages on the website for each of those projects so that citizens could go anytime and find out what’s the timeline, where are we, what are the relevant documents, how do I link to those from the City Council?“
Beumer, on the other hand, argued the issue is how the city goes about its projects
“Part of the problem that I have been seeing is that a lot of times we’re being presented what they’re doing after they’ve already decided to do it.“
Beumer stated that he would like to have several meetings with Ward 2 each year to receive public feedback and communicate about projects with the public.
When asked about housing, Beumer argued that the city needs to encourage national builders to come to Northfield since they can provide more affordable options
“I know a lot of people kind of cringe when they hear national builder, but they are legitimately the ones who have the buying power to make it happen. And I think we need to be open to that.”
Farley stated the city should work to “incentivize” builders and provide ready spaces for them.
“To town and so it’s up to us to figure out ways that we can try to incentivize these developers ways that we can make sure that we are looking at linking transportation and services like sewer and other other services as well to the areas where we are thinking about developing housing.”
You can learn more about the candidates at the KYMN Radio 2024 Election, and we will have posted links to watch the full League of Women Voters Forum there as well later this week. The Northfield Mayor and City Council candidates will meet again for a second forum hosted by the Northfield Chamber of Commerce on Thursday at Arcadia Charter School. KYMN’s Logan Wells will serve as a moderate of the debate along side Chair of the Chamber Laura Stelter. The forum starts with the Mayoral candidates at 5:30pm and city council candidates at 6:30pm.
