welcome to the stillwater because that sponsored form for lake elmo mayor my name is marguerite ryan berger the three candidates running for office are in alphabetical order nick duffy dean johnston and mike pierson each candidate will be allo one half minute opening and a two minute closing and you'll also be allowed two minutes to address questions beth johnson the form organizer right here will be the time keeper she'll hold up forty five second card fifty fifteen second card and stop when you see stop please just complete the sentence that has provided the questions that will be asked however and this is unique i believe for for city air city of the candidates were also asked no i may be allies and i think i did it two years ago to a so you may some of you may be familiar with this the candidates are also asked to submit questions they would like me to ask of their opponents which all of them get to that and i'm going to allow rebuttal time if there is something that has been said that you want to clarified and also if you know to find me that you would like the rebuttal time the rebuttal time will be one minute to make you aware that ok one more thing please save your disapproval or approval of candidates befor after the forum and appreciate that and we'll get going ok nic start with your introduction good evening my name is nicholas duffy and i'm honored to be a candidate for the mayor of local when everyday guy who loves to fish geocache and enjoy the lovely lake como area with my family i live here with my girlfriend mary and five year old daughter mckayla we love the city for the parks and small town feel barry and i both grew up in small towns and love the idea mckayla can have some great except experiences that we had i'm sure that many of you hope for the same for your children i've worked as a corrections officer for the state of minnesota as a corrections officer i've had to make tough decisions that affect people's lives i could be that same person for legal more not a politician i am your neighbor i'm hardworking and passionate and strive to make a difference i'm willing to ask the questions find the answers and communicate in a way that everyone can understand like elmo is at a pivotal point there will be many changes in the upcoming years and i know that this communicate community can benefit from the leadership that i can provide is my goal as mayor to ask the questions that need to be asked and ensure that decisions are being made with the concerns and needs of the citizens in mind lake elmo is a hidden gem which i love to call home thank you thank you steve thank you to the stillwater is that into marvel ranneberger for making this candidate forum possible and informed alike electorate i believe is a foundation of a successful democracy so thank you all for being here my background includes twenty nine and a half years as a resi i have four adult children eight grandchildren and i experience includes eight years as mayor and two as a council member my education includes bass bachelor's and master's degrees in mechanical  engineering and a graduate degree in business management i bring over forty years of management experience in a variety of environments i've worked twenty years for three m i had my own business for years for twenty years and i have been on business management i miss our municipal government management for eight years i have consistently demonstrated the ability to solve problems for the benefit of like elmo residents of the lake elmo elementary safety project i bought but people from the state or county the school the city and a p t a together to solve a decades old safety problem with washing county landfill i testified before the state legislature and helped bring eight hundred million dollars to clean up the landfill and more most recently  listen to the needs of the residents about traffic safety and speed and and we've already implemented a proposal to to correct that is my ability to bring people together to solve problems for the good of the community that's a key to the future success of  i've been in the planning commission previously and i've served two years on the council basically look at this is a job interview so i'll speak to what dean just said what we've been doing the past two years i think any witness of the council actions over the past two years or knowledge of it leadership in value to the big issues it's come before the council review sites on my specific examples and as our discussions evolves hopefully we can kind of delve into the transportation concerns that lake elmo has the fire department equipment their inefficiencies i guess with that some growth pressures in the met council agreement how we've gotten the ball a little bit further down the road see development proposal that came to the the town last year and of course the here in the viewers feel and thanks again thank you the first question with nick what would you like to see long term for your city library for example do you want the city to reestablish a relationship with the washing county library system similar to what the county doesn't he'll go right on the same cry no part with kiosk you mention what the city library offers i would love to see the the city library re affiliated back with the county as far as an interlibrary loan type system i was a little disappointed when that went away here last year and felt it pulled away from the city and i believe that a library for the city is it's important and not everybody uses it but those who do love to go there quite often thank you dean i believe that the library is the heart of our downtown and i that's a almost a quote from people in stillwater and in bayport both of those cities have independent libraries they're affiliated with washington county system i think that is the proper solution for lake alamo as well we are fortunate to be one of the two cities that has a sufficient tax base to be able to support our own independent library the other one is hugo and they are not going to break from the system because they are slated to get the next bricks and mortar library in the washing county system so i've been working on this problem for ten years they've closed our library twice we've i think learned the hard way that the only way that we can control our library and our library services is to be an independent library that is affiliated and i'm in complete support of of affiliation and we have a plan the library board has a plan for achieving that so i think we'll have the best of both worlds a library that we can control and affiliation thank you mike because you you like to see long term for your city library for example do you want the city to reestablish a relationship with the washing county library system similar to what the county does and hugo marine on the st croix in newport with key us the city library what the city library offers yes i would like to see is fill it with the county library systems quickly as possible i just just briefly on the whole library i think i was a skeptic at first i haven't looked listened to the arguments and looked into the issues i came to believe there is merit and what we did ok so i was put on the library board to kind of keep an eye on things and i think through my leadership frankly we've got the best of both worlds i said i was given the task of securing a lease with a facility and town i got the lease i got a got a plan for that but as i suggested we should purchase the building and we purchased the building we control the destiny and that was brought it to the library board and it was a to how we're going to pay for it i was adamant that we pay it off in two years next year the bill and we've paid off that's important because now we can negotiate back with the county ok we were debt free space we have tenants in there you can pay for some staffing that's how i think it's a reasonable  proposition for what we're facing we talk about affiliation with stillwater bayport you know there's negotiations that have to come with this but i frankly think we're in a different position than them and i'm not quite as bullish on our chance of achieving that i think we've got to  you know you sports analogy kind of get a couple of first downs here not throw a hail mary pass i think we're positioned properly to make this thing a success with the presence of a downtown library but not not pushing it too hard thank you i'll begin the next question with dean how do you feel about the city purchasing the cimarron mobile home park i think that that that that they this cimarron manufactured home park right now is a private business it's a successful business i don't think that that it would be appropriate h r a purchased the land fall manufactured home park and they're there rant is probably two thirds of what it is in cimarron i don't think that that are having a manufactured home park as part of an h r a or an economic development authority is is something that makes sense roy thank you mike absolutely not clear you know you hear things on the campaign trail and different things  propose in different neighborhoods and this is something that was brought up and frankly kind of surprised at it but you know just to be clear no that's no business of the city you talk to him alone park that probably park go for about twenty million bucks on imagine it's clearly not our space i don't think anyone can look at landfall and think it's excess so i am glad to hear that the mayor would be opposed that if i'm understand you correctly that's should be a dead issue then thank you nic i have to agree with these two gentlemen next  the city has no right to be involved with a mobile home park it's a private industry and the the city just doesn't need to be involved with that sort of thing thank you i'll begin the next question with mike what is your reasons it was brought up again initially this thing was brought up in two thousand and nine and i was brought up in two thousand and ten and then it sat for a while and there was a suggestion that we're going to vote for it after the election i encouraged us to bring it up before that i think that there is here's a thing i think there's merit  discussion it's worth talking about i wouldn't be for it for a couple of reasons one we're city of homeowners association we can all do it ourselves i mean one i propose that our homeowners homeowners so she can sound good at first but we all declined and i think we can do the same here we don't need the big hand of government to come in and tell us what to do with this i think all the studies you see suggest a certain thing in there and to me they're clearly biased but the biggest reasons that we shouldn't do this is we gots as you've heard from the city council or the council members some real big issues ahead of us this would be another divisive issue a real problem for staff staff basically not so much bag but almost not to bring this up so we asked for it to be pushed off twenty fourteen it's a huge issue the merits of  are at least debatable if we're sitting on or watching the corn grow we talk about it but we've got some real big issues ahead of us and i don't think this is smart or prudent i don't believe the city should have a single garbage hauler  for wanted takes away one of the simple freedoms that we have in this country is being able to choose what you want to do it just it doesn't make sense and mr pearson brought it up if it's something that your homeowners association or your neighbors want to do and maybe you can negotiate a better price with your mother than that it might be some to talk about with those people but having the city mandated single garbage dollars i don't think the city needs to be into that thank four hundred thousand dollars a year in road maintenance costs there is there is information that seems to suggest that we could cut garbage hauling costs in half and that really isn't my decision to make i think that's a decision that we need to study so that we can present the information to the public are in your budget is three and a half million dollars if we could save four hundred thousand dollars a year on road maintenance cost that's over ten percent of our budget i think that we need to look at this simply because it is a potentially significant impact on our taxes i don't know if we should do and i'm not supporting it i am but i do believe that we are being negligent if we don't johnston to address the following question you have been on the human resources committee for eight years how do you explain the revolving door of administrators for in eight years over to say that we have had conflicts between council members and city administrators but i wouldn't go any farther than that would you like to go further please yes i mean any business organization if i had a general manager i had turnover of four and eight years home i can bettors be seen what's going on with pearson i mean that's just the fact i mean to say this council dynamics yes we have to wonder cultural dynamics what's administration takes the brunt of it maybe i can expand on that leaders i kind my pearson to address the following question your brochure states quote successfully push no to a three hundred ninety thousand dollars giveaway for government entity development proposal and quote this appears to be the stillwater school district early childhood family center which was recently completed in stillwater on feb fifteenth and seventeenth two thousand and eleven you voted for a purchase option in which lake elmo would purchase the land  to the school district for one dollar per year on march eighth you voted to sweeten the deal by requiring the school district to buy the land and have lake elmo reimburse them for the cost of the meeting minutes on the city website indicate that you voted yes three times in three votes and you never spoke in opposition the facts do not match your brochure please explain could explain it quickly with a question do you think dean do you think that my vote and my debate on the last vote  it maybe well you didn't really answer the question but clearly anybody witness the last the last meeting saw me give a somewhat torture us argument against why we shouldn't do this and mr quinn it was sitting right there and i asked them why don't you want to own the land why do you want us just to lease it to you for year and clearly it's maintenance cost clear there's stop late as you clearly are there's expenses as we go on a thing whether that what the minutes say and what my boats did yeah tribute to counseling experience frankly i mean i'm on the think three months and i'm excited about some change in like elmo i'll grant you that i was for it i was excited about it but when the thing became when i became familiar with what was going to go on i was very uncomfortable with the risk the financial boondoggle it would have cause us we would have had to have brought it so if we can just agree that i opposed this thing and clearly the record shows that i think two other council members would agree to this if i go into the merits about why i opposed it but  doesn't seem to be your question if you're still an open and honest government i think it's clear that i might debate my vote precluded the c f c from coming to town was there an initial reaction to it yes we sat in a retreat and talked about how great it was going to be but as this thing went through it became clear that it was a problem for lake elmo would have been torture is for us to do this all the planning that we've been doing with them relating to the tenth street corridor or relating to our old village plan that still hasn't done it's still not done we would have pushed this sort to the north end of our their records pretty clear on that if you want to respond with i the the what is clear is when when they person takes the brochure and they read very awkwardly mournin statement i don't know anyone that understood what that statement matt and it clearly implied that he opposed something that he voted for that's all well i mean we can all decide merit of that statement ok i'm going back to the questions sorry nec to exclude the the extreme past i would say that one of the biggest mistakes i did see recently would probably the the whole library thing you know the the county allowing the county to close it and then opening a city library how much money had that cost things like that and then just not being able to move forward with the i ninety four corridor plan and things like that it seems like people are dragging their feet when they've known since two thousand and four that this has to be done it's been eight years there's only seventeen left before this needs to be completed and there hasn't been much progress to date your repeated question what mistakes if any do you believe the city council has made over the past four years you know i think the city has been well managed we had and we had an opportunity to put in the sewer pipe  and we chose not to because we didn't have anyone to pay for it our policy is is to protect the taxpayers and to not spend money that isn't going to be paid for by the users we want a library building for thirty four thirty four dollars a square foot that's depending on on you know how you look at it that's twenty five to thirty cents on the dollar for commercial office space i think we made a very good decision on some of the things that have been been castigated is being ported stations i don't think there are i don't think that there are any major bad decisions i think i think we've been very responsive to the taxpayers and we've been very cautious thank you mi think i don't see there's a glaring example of mistakes that we've made but i guess i would say the overriding error is a lack of focus and a lack of putting emphasis on what the big issues is before us we get four years on a chair the pumpkin battle the christmas tree wars we fought this library thing is taking a lot of a lot of strength out of us when we've got really some big and pending issues before us two thousand and five we signed him at council agreement we're all on that we're all on that obligation ok almost eight years have passed spent a million two dollars on it but it's off to decide it's because we're fighting all these other ancillary issues and you know so what's been our mistaken we've been pretty good i think we've been you know we've had some productive meetings but our big issue is setting the agenda not putting that the big issues in front of us not dealing with the reality that we're in thank you dean from your own perspective as a resident what more if anything at the city level could be done to better serve the other residen well you know i think i think that what we need to do is to create a downtown that is a destination i think the library is a big step toward creating a destination downtown the lake  winds or even hagberg are all destinations are our downtown is becoming a destination it's going to be a downtown that we can all be proud of and it's something that we can all use and all benefit from so i i think that i think that we're on the right track it's you know unfortunately the economy has slowed us down but i think we've remained focused or even remain focus for an ice cream shop or sandwich shop downtown or pizza shop with three to beer and all that you know and i would be great you know well then you know open up the checkbook and fire it up you know i mean that's it's not our place to do those things we need to create we need to set the table for those and how do you do that with proper planning calendar developer potentially on the corridor or downtown what we want what will allow for ok so they can come on in here with confidence and offer going to spin their wheels are not the what the market is you know what the rooftops are now they just need to know what we want ok what we desire you know one of the things the city talks about a lot of senior living we all almost to a person want it other cities have done it lakeville burnsville i don't want to park heights of the day other cities have done it they provided it i'm not sure why we can't we prime opportunity on the court or ok this stuff could have happened but it's where you spend your focus that's what preclude a sore left arguing about this thing on five because not in a great spots got a great thing maybe we can make it work out but that's what we're left argu about that because everybody wants senior living but we have to think about it smarter or think about what you know it's again single all the garbage going back that it's to say that it's going to be discussed come on if it's going to be on the table for the one we're pretty much to do it and in the meantime i would just suggest to all of us if we think it's important then ask your neighbors mr merry live on a cul de sac with four people if you can't convince three your neighbors to go with one hall or then i don't know that we should mandated citywide so one example what we have to do prepare and user time wisely thank you yes i would see into implementing the plans that have been formulated in actually to pull the trigger and to do these things that everybody's talked about for the years and  actually start making some progress towards these goals i don't see it as a resident for the last few years that much of anything has been don and just to move forward and get these things done is the way i feel the city needs to move thank you begin the next question with mike because of the recession many cities across the country are looking into shared services with public or private entities please provide ideas on how your city and its taxpayers could benefit if at all by doing this well that's a heck of a question for me thank you shared services i you know talk about get involved it was suggested to me that the fire department has some inadequate vehicles frankly i've been a little  skeptical and ice was so i was asked again i work up to new fire department which i did and i met we met six eight times we went to other fire departments oakville stillwater and are oakdale bayport brought the big talk down here anyway none of it is i said yes these this stuff is tired i get it ok we could maybe use some upgrades it's been like that for ten years but the reality is real tired but i said all upfront candor i'll vote for it if the other cities can agree on some form of shared services so we went i went to jail i met with couple of city council members from stillwater yawning ok i went to woodbury and we had fantastic meetings in essence and we're kind of it's almost a sea change and pretty excited about it would be very sept of of it basically my argument  offer three grand used big supporter you know each time it fires couple a couple times two or three times a year works great for you works great for us came out of the meeting and they said you know save the three grand really want is shared training get our guys together get them on the same page you know what do you have that we could use well we i said we have we have tenders you know tankers you've got some non hydrated areas we're all night mostly night and so we can share these things and be smarter about it and it's not finalized and there are some hick ups i've  got to go back to work truck work group committee on wednesday but that's a big deal you're talking a million dollar fire truck there as possible for two so call it one point three quarters that's a heck of a deal for lake elmo that's one hundred seventy five thousand dollars bond payment a year if we can do with other s now we're not going to be able to get away from everything but hopefully a good example of what i think is shared services thank you i think it's also a good idea if we can combine our resources of all the cities around us and maybe only have to purchase one or two pieces of equipment for fire police paramedic whatever it may be and share those with the city that has something that we could use were close proximity to a lot of cities that we could go back and forth relatively easy with highway five through town and highway thirty six just up the road in ninety four just at the south and these things could be implemented within cities   large areas that would speed up time in i don't think would cost too much time to have shared services i think it's a good idea thank you shared services is a concept that's been around for literally decades and we have mutual aid agreements with our surrounding fire departments we have we have talked about just about every option four for i mean every  option come along has been has been discussed with our neighboring party apartments i think that the city of like almost now adopting something i worked with for years and that's the process called continuous improvement i don't think we can ever be satisfied with the status quo we always have to challenge what we're doing and we have to look at moving ahead with with different concepts and and and i think one of the items that we're talking about now is the possibility of ferry the purchase cost of equipment i think those are all fantastic ideas and i would turn to be supportive of any of them they're they're not new but every once in a while there's a new twist and and  we certainly need to do that in order to keep our tax rate where it has been not only the last eight years while i've been mayor but well before that so yes it's a good idea thank you i'm going back to opponents medic questions mike pearson would like dean johnston to address this question in two thousand and five you pushed to sign the met council agreement committee lake and want to significant growth or face significant penalties it's been seven years and nothing has happened why  there are there are a lot of answers to that sound of the the the overriding one is that the economy has been down we've actually had extensions or waivers of our our growth requirements from the met council for five years what we what we have done as a council has has been to look out for the world that are for the best interest of the taxpayers the sewer pipe from ninety four up to thirt is a six million dollars project if we don't have a builder who is willing to sign on the dotted line in agree to pay the cost of putting in that pipe i'm not going to support putting it in we can we can talk about a to the tax payers and we have i think we manage the city wisely thank you and dean johnson would like mike pearson to address the following question you requested an appointment to the lake animal library board and were appointed a year ago on your brochure you don't mention your library board membership nor do you state your position on the library issue instead you characterize the library under chronic problems as a quote fractured library situation why do you characterize the library this way when you were you are the council member who volunteered to be responsible for a library affairs well i think it's a candid response to the reality that we're in i mean as we sit in our library and board meetings first off i think you suggested i'd be appointed to the library board and yes i accepted my role as i said before it wasn't so much that it was you know i was terribly excited about the library it was that i i was a skeptic and when you're skeptic you have concerns and if you're doing your job a peer you get involved you know also why do you characterize that because it's clearly fractured it's not an optimal situation our residents go use other and they do use other libraries and you know are  we that blind to suggest that people are particularly thrilled with it i mean yeah there are some good things that come about it yeah the library board members and the volunteers and the friends have done fantastic work and we should all be proud of that and i am and i have stated repeatedly and i say that at  the door but overall from a ten thousand foot level if we look at this is saying everybody is thrilled with an pearson why are you going off on it just but defies logic i mean yeah i think that we want to get back in the county system what does that mean i mean you've got mean you've got something on your on your brochure that says you two year will be back in the affiliate philia within two years i was in labor board meeting and we voted who thinks we're going to get in a library board erhu things are going to affiliate next year raise your hand nobody i asked  again nobody for two years ok now that's that's a fact now i i know if so for you i guess i'd ask you what is your exact plan because the library board i don't think would commit to that unless it's a realistic picture of what was he asked to be on we had a library committee mike and i were in the library committee we both wanted to be on it and we decided to the side of the mike would be the person there have been a lot of issues about the long range planning of the library that have not been addressed and they finally are have started being addressed in the last couple months how do we how do we become affiliated there's a time for that thank you seven thousand six hundred seventy five is that right per year that includes hundreds of dollars every year to replace furnace filters when there is a maintenance staff employed through the city that could do this and i'll begin  concerns i guess i have the trust of staff i mean i'm not an expert at that particular thing and you know you can only do so much time i'd be willing you have insight into that and i'm not taking that away but i'd be willing to bet that there's a pretty good argument about why we did it i just don't know it right now but i'm i'm just thrilled and confident in our staff so that's why i'm just curious as to why when somebody is presented with a job and most people and i've seen it in life are presented with i can do the job or somebody else can do the job and i don't have to worry about it why would they most people not step up to do that job they did it feels to me of like they're trying to skirt that responsibility to somebody else and so they don't have to hope to see the additions and growth go well for the city i hope to keep the large lot areas intact the parks and those things f to see maybe the median age drop a little bit because as a community it is getting older and we need to address attract some younger blood i do hope to see it's growing and thriving and more small businesses in the area rather than larger corporations that may build a building and just leave thank you bill i know i'm excited about the future of downtown are of all a calm quite frankly  think that with the plan that we have right now three quarters of the city is going to average over two acres per house seventy five percent of the city i think walls will very much retain the rural character see some day to be looking for senior housing maybe not as soon as some people think i should but i think that then we will have a downtown with very very attracting living quarters for new college graduates for family members with disabilities or people firefighters teachers i think we're going to have a wonderful downtown i think like hellmuth be a place where you can both live and work from an environmental standpoint there's nothing more inventive and environmentally sound than not having to put gasoline into a vehicle and drive across town for work so when i say i have i think it will finally have an interconnected trail plan  i was just appointed to the metropolitan parks and trails commission they spent twenty million dollars a year on on land acquisition for parks and trails and part of their objective is interconnecting  regional park system we think we should be able to work with the county and get get money from the outside to help supplement our trails plan we've got just a fabulous future thank you mike specifically trails i think we have our own trails plant plant it was enacted in two thousand and six if i'm not mistaken i believe we spent twenty grand on that but very little progress made on it so in the county comes up with their plan maybe we can marry the two what do i think what will a camel look like i think hoping that we have a thriving business park ninety four there will be some residential there that we some retail will be some commercial tax base and if done right it'll be ok it'll be good for our city downtown certainly it's fun to think about you know kind of a grand avenue feel a niche kind of shops and retail and whatnot and and within that don't it so to speak and you know kept within the confines so i'm still still looking at a rural area still looking at are open space still unique and and wonderful place begin the next question would be how do you think the mayor should stay in contact with the residents so how should what how do you think the mayor should stay in contact with the residents meetings a week or three meetings pardon me a month we have the most liberal communication policy with a public of any city that i'm familiar with every resident can come in and speak on every issue on the agenda for three minutes and they can also speak for three minutes on any issue not on the agenda so we we welcome people at council meetings and i think we're very responsive to people i have  think we've made a lot of progress with our online newsletter and we have a quarter and it's just an outstanding quarterly newsletter it's a two way street thank you mike i agree with that that it is a two way street interesting you know so it is a two way street and i guess you know how do you how does the mayor get together i'll cite one example back to the library issue there was a lot of people upset about it and i have orders as a voted and i you know but there was about fifty person e mail chain and i said hey leave the pitchforks at home come and meet me it's a city hall on a saturday and there is a snowstorm that day and i said well you may have missed it come the next week and the gate people are ten people showed up but i guess it's easy to engage them on the things that they love but you got to be there when the things they don't love occurs so i don't one thing i was thinking i've seen other cities if if in the event the mayor that i'd like to do is maybe every third week or something have a coffee at gorman's or a restaurant people come in if they want and go and capture them but if they wanted to come and talk to me i would be great or whomever is the mayor sorry sorry my thank you i think getting the information out is it's important and it is a two way street but as a city you have to be proactive in giving the information there so you can get feedback from the citizens one way for instance my daughter's school has a lips or thing where you go on you sign up you put your e mail and and i get a weekly update from but for different people within the school district this may be something that's an option for the city i don't know the cost to implement this but i can't imagine it's too much other options are the text messaging nowadays and technology of evolves so much we're setting up a mass text message could be that easy i i don't know many people without a cell phone these days or text messaging or for that matter an email i personally have two of them i just think give me information out is important the social media facebook twitter things like that that could be could be done thank you and i will begin the next question with mike under what conditions do you feel you could justify increasing taxes while the cities and the city needs roughly three million bucks to run annually and if property taxes your property values drop down which they did my first year which their project that got them eleven points luckily for us i think it they dropped on a point half so that was good news for lake emma but  certainly we look to cut some costs and we did because we're looking at kind of a tough spot so answer a question the city's got to run at some point and we need that we need a basic amount to provide the services the safety in the streets and all that stuff so you get the property values drop significantly we'd have to raise the taxes to provide those basic services other than that it's keeping a big picture in all of the kind of the what are we here for you know kind of thing where we're not here to create incentivize we're just here to set the table so that others may do so thank you raising taxes is tough i would first look at maybe cutting some of the wasteful spending within the budget there's always something those little things can add up to be a huge thing and that may cost us before having done raise those taxes if we did have to do those i would suppose the only things i would raise him for would be police fire infrastructure or i'm sorry infrastructure  schools the growth for the planned i ninety four corridor it's going to take a lot of resources and may need some money for that  i've been on the council for ten years and i've raised taxes and i cut taxes and cutting taxes is better this afternoon i went to the citizens leave dot org website managing our taxes we can we have to increase taxes in some cases for health and safety issues and we just discussed an issue like that in a very simple example if we raise see if we have to increased spending by sixty thousand dollars we have three thousand houses that's twenty dollars a house ok what we need to do is to is to look at you know is inappropriate expenditure and how could we eliminate the expenditure for example we used to get on one hundred forty dollars speeding ticket we used to get seventy dollars in there in their budgeting budget balancing game that the state legislature played you know cut funding to the the  judicial system and we only get twenty dollars now so if we're going to do additional speed enforcement for example we have to pay property tax and we have to add money to the property tax rolls in order to do that because it doesn't come from the revenue that we used to get we've had all sorts of examples where the state legislature has increased our fees and we need to be going back and making making the residents aware so they can talk to their  senators and their representatives about making sure that that we don't get additional burdens on our taxes so health and safety is the only issue and we need to take it beyond simply saying is that health and safety issue w look at the underlying cause thank you ok dean another question the final one from my peers that you have proposed that the city underwrite loans for new home construction so that new homeowners may provide for higher energy efficiencies for their dwelling can you give us the details of your plan parents home when my parents built a home on south dakota and in one nine hundred eighty they built it with twelve inch walls and they have a one hundred twenty dollar annual heating bill with the electrical resistance baseboard heat we know how to make homes cost efficient all right all right so i came back after after seeing that amazing performance on energy efficiency and i talked to several builders i said why don't you do that and they said their answer was simply if you give a home buyer a choice between a family room or an energy efficient construction they'll choose the family room every time ok so what that tells me is that if we're going to have energy efficient construction and it needs and it's going to be become an attractive selling point of the of the community then we need to find a way to to provide an incentive for people to come here i don't know i don't recall that i was advocating that we provide these incentives but certainly that we study the issue and studying the issue if it pays for itself and there are rightly ways that it could it's in a sense it's a little bit like organize collection you need to do the analysis and then if in the analysis make sense then you make a decision based on the information i don't remember advocating for for any kind of council and the bigger issue here is kind of you know do i think this is a good idea to underwrite loans you know you provide incentives or whatever you're going have to i mean in essence that's what it would be i think it's another one of those examples that we have elmo where you know it's and we throw the idea at there and then and there it's may have another workshop about it but there it sets you know your parents were  would like mike pearson to address the following question your brochure contains no specific proposals for the future no accomplishments from your time on the council what policy changes are you proposing for that are different from what was being done before you were elected the question i guess again and specifically you know you talk about decisions that were made on e c f c were sometimes voting no to something is a wonderful thing you know relating to libraries of express that i've had discussions that brochure is stimulating conversations that the door people get a feeling for what i want but what do i really want to do if i'm the mayor the mayor of the big deal with me in the manner the benefit of the mayor is that you get set the agenda right and what  what i do as mayor what my what my idea be it would be to focus it would be to stop the seemingly endless issues that we get into while some of them have merit we need to be deliberate upon what we discuss up here and spend our energies on because we've got real big issues in front of us we talk about senior living as example i really wants it you dean you mention a six and half million dollar pipe it's got that that kind of a way to suggest that that's all we need we could do on the court or we don't necessarily need to have them downtown other cities have done these things so again if we had a senior center out there want it would satisfy some needs force might be some tax base might get us off the mat council dime do a lot to get the ball down the field so my plan if you don't see in the brochure and hear me door to door knocking is one of focus and not spending our efforts in an unproductive manner  think we're focused i think we've been focused on keeping taxes low and providing goods services at the same time i think that that focus has has has kept us from making some of these development decisions  that the economy simply isn't ready for i think i think council member smith made the point very well that we can't put all that to the development on the i ninety four corridor and preserve any kind of well any kind of balance  mike and feel free to mention any other important views that you would like the residents here in at home to know about ok just just briefly on that you know the everything can't be incumbent upon the village and the economy hasn't been in the tank for almost eight years it's been tough for a few there's no doubt but again other cities been able to accomplish things if we're also waiting for an optimum time do the things in the village and we wait a long time closing statement if i haven't yet convinced you the case for pierce al we need to look at the realities as they once were and as they are now so with that as they were if we were a look at mayors campaign brochures of four to six and even eight years ago we'd see topics like met counsel agreements libraries art centers business parks and senior living centers today's realities with the exception of a tenuous library of questionable expensive art center purchase all the other items i cited have not been fulfilled we don't have the jobs of a business park would offer and we have not added one wreck unit the laws us relief from that council agreement it's been almost eight years since the the agreement was panned and we've borrowed over one point two million dollars in planning during this time against pacific example why have we put a senior citizen center and other cities down and an entity like this could have popped on the quarter in the last seven years why hasn't the reality is it's own residential still came to our town they had two hundred jobs twenty dollars an hour they had enough interest to come talk to us i'm sure they looked at the zoning on the corridor and that's why they went to river falls or maybe one of the reasons not you know the only one of the reason they want to or falls  and took the jobs with them they're almost done build their facility clearly or passengers have not been focused their wasted on and slurry issues focus is high grade a leader on the big issues as defined by him it's  done some things that prove our situation relates to growth is we going to move forward and do remember that these rushed changes will be a big deal for lake element we need to concentrate we have never done these things before so how do you predict the future by looking at the past where you see the mayor's focus up to this point certainly it's been on ok during this campaign has been a lot of talk about planning and growth these are important issues because all we all want lake elmo to continue to be the city that we we love to call home however there are a lot of other important issues that impact our lives on a daily basis under my leadership these issues have not been forgotten health and safety is always been my first priority a prime example is a speeding in traffic control traffic safety problems for our city but particularly along highway five like on the avenue and highway thirty six as you know i proposed an obtained approval for increased enforcement for traffic laws and a zero tolerance policy with respect to speeders i've learned years as mayor and four years on the board of directors of metro cities i've learned how to get projects through the state legislature projects like the clean up of the washing county landfill as vice chair of the i ninety four corridor commission i learned how to present transportation projects projects at the federal level this experience will be back valuable in getting funding for the highway thirty six quarter we have to have safe access to highway thirty six without the city becoming a shortcut for commuter traffic at the regional council of mayors i learned how to a city can participate in restoring property values by bringing jobs to our region these outside activities are very time consuming how are they have brought benefits to lake  i will bring all of the resources available to benefit the city of lake and city in the residents of like elmo my record is one of accomplishment they complement may not be to volman i'm the only man i am i'm the only merrill candidate who has presented such a record lake elmo needs to stake with a proven leader who has shown he knows how to get results for you i appreciate your support and i ask for your vote on november sixth thank you thank you and i began with you nec and i will and thank you the elected i intend to perspective to make changes the traditional way of politics has gotten this country into trouble it's time to go with less traditional approach it's time to grow and evolve as a nation and a community not tied down by any party or distracted by political noise on not only actively listen to the people but i will act for them the city is facing many new changes in two thousand and four the metropolitan council ordered lake elmo to add seventeen thousand residents by twenty thirty ought to be paying customers of the sewer lines this change is inevitable to date no new connections to these lines have been made plans have been formulated but we have a lot of work to do with the right leadership this could be accomplished without substantially changing the feel and charm of this great city with any government there is wasteful spending as mayor i would do my best to find any lemonade this wasteful spending while some changes be maybe small we all  make a big difference as a state employee i see this wastefulness on a daily basis and i look forward to be able being able to make a difference as merrill do my best to bridge the gap between the officials and the people who elected them the mayor of this town should be accessible to the people and be able to understand the community's concerns the mayor should be willing to question the issues being discussed and the decisions being made not a politician i'm your neighbor i plan to view all issues from that perspective lake elmo has a great team of knowledgeable and passionate people here at city hall i plan to work with this team and take action towards our community as a resident of lake elmo it's your right to vote for the person who you feel can best hold this position and hold this office and represent you i am that person i work hard to support my family and i will bring those values with me if i'm elected with your help we can make a difference thank you thank all three of you for participating