welcome to the stillwater because that sponsored lake on most city council form my name is marguerite ryan berger there are four candidates vying for two positions the candidates for the office are an alphabetical order just  and greg hall and smith greg hall regretfully will not be able to attend due to a medical emergency each candidate will be allowed up to one half minutes for opening one and a half minutes for closing and up to two minutes to answer the questions beth johnson the former organizer will be the time keeper she'll hold up forty five second card fifteen second card and stop when you see stop please just finish that sentence the that is provided the questions that will be asked no questions taken from the audience in order to avoid any bias for or against a candidate but if you do have questions that i don't ask absolutely contact the candidates or get walk right over to the master and get that question answered i mean also one thing please save your applause until the end so we can get more questions then let's begin with opening statements for one half minutes please introduce yourself  family moved from the east side to the tri lake syrian one thousand nine hundred three attended like i'm a lemon tree oakland unified stillwater high school after college when my wife dan and i were looking for a place to raise children we decided to move back to lake for the open spaces parks and lakes like it was at the crossroads of its existence on one side we can continue to be indecisive and choose only to focus on petty issues in our community frustrating our staff and citizens and running from our mandated obligations we need  who are ready to take on the challenges we face ahead on solving problems in our community i feel i'm uniquely qualified to be part of the solution to the problems as a small business owner taxpayer i feel the pain in the bottom line and in our checkbook every time a federal state local government waste our money and for glisten doubters i will be a representative for the citizens of like animals bottom line in every decision that i make take for example the cost involved in our chronic staff turnover in the past eight years the city has gone through five city administrators we now have a very competent and experience administrator who will help the elected officials move like i want to its next next chapter when i go to work my job is not to fly into a flying airplane but to manage people in logistics we have a number of different people that have to be dealt with and we have to get along and we can't let our petty and differences get the best of us and we need to do that here at the city level to work to better our community for our citizens thank you and my name is a and smith and i'm running for city council for my third term i believe i'm uniquely qualified for this position because i have a complete understanding of like i was two thousand and ten comprehensive plan which i helped co write in two thousand and five two key components of the twenty thirty comprehensive plan are design and development of the i ninety four corridor and development of the new old village currently i am part of the team involved in completing blueprints for a vibrant and walkable downtown that will allow for new businesses jobs and housing for residents of all ages like elmo is positioned strategically to design  downtown that is unique in character while offering a significant number of amenities to encourage public use these include a new city hall a community center a village green with water features new ball field new parks walking trails and an over underpass for conic to vittie across highway five i intend to be fiscally responsible while delivering the highest quality of services to all residents large spending decisions will include a financial plan with solid data showing how we intend to pay for these services thanks to both of the gentleman sitting on each side of me for joining tonight in this forum  you bret thank you very much my name's bret edmunds running for city council completed my first term so this was running for my second term i think the folks for organizing the debate it's good to have a chance to communicate to people because it's not always easy in a small community like ours so any chance we have is appreciated my profession is as an engineer started a business almost fifteen sixteen years ago so you know what it's like to kind of run an organization both all the personnel the financial  situations and my job my day job if you will is dealing with development issues and understanding how to do things responsibly how to look at the cost of infrastructure to support a community so i do feel like a lot of those skills  i've been able to transfer over in terms of the city work that i do of course i've also learned a lot of things through my first year other things that i didn't know coming in if i do feel like that's something that's important to me is leveraging those skills to look at our future and i agree with what some of the other candidates a varity mentioned that we do have a lot of challenges in front of us you know i've fallen in love with this community i had i think open space character in our unique feel something you don't find everywhere is very special and i want to see us be very careful about that and so i think a lot of us talk about you know wanting to manage growth wisely and i feel like i've really put that kind of commitment forward by if you look at my votes in terms of being very cautious with our infrastructure i want to make sure we don't overspend and i want us to control our own future i don't want to i don't want to get to the point where financially we're overextended and and development starts to define our future so those are some of the key issues for me running for election thank you i'll begin my first question with justin the city recently established its own library do you think this was a good idea from a community and fiscal standpoint and why no i do not think it was a good idea from a community or fiscal standpoint it was the decision that was not put forth to the community wise it's a decision that was not put forth to the citizens for discussion if we go back to the time that the library was discussed last year to two thousand and eleven we spent four meetings talking about wake rules and each one of those meetings gave a code red we had public hearings we had no court who had not one public hearing for the library it was something that was just whispered along and and eventually passed we have residents out there who are complaining that albeit the city reimbursed for one library card it's in and it's an inconvenience for them to have to go pay for it come back to be reimbursed then we were promised that we would with the library we would give it a chance and see how it worked we wouldn't jump in feet first which we ended up spending two hundred forty some odd thousand dollars i believe on a building and there's another fiscal question i have in this market an economy the worst housing market we've seen in generations we've decided to pay full asking price for it building unlike what it's been vacant for months and months and years i would imagine i can't remember what the dates are i didn't look that up but i believe that was a poor fiscal decision it just shows that we have we have to be a little bit more careful with the tax payers money thank you and ok i was the dissenting vote on the decision to leave the washington county library system i'm not against having a library but i felt like alamo needed time to put a business plan together to make certain that both we could afford to run our own library and to maintain affiliation with washington county or excuse me with mel saw me also is the metropolitan library service agency and it allows for access to materials from all the affiliated libraries in minnesota that the across the state it also allows us to use their technology libraries are changing in a conversation with the state librarian last it would be a year and a half ago and also with the head of libraries are changing and i don't even think that they know where it's going because technology is changing our  future i'm happy of the work that the the residents have put into this small library they've done a great job i was never against the idea of having a library i was against the idea or the process and as i'm out campaigning i usually use the example of the game and if you've ever played jenga it's a square wooden game where you pull one piece out of that game and then the next person pulls and polls well where that first person that pulled or that first city to pull a piece of that game out and if the other communities around us do the same thing washington county system will fail and i think that's a detriment to to all of us it frustrates a lot of the residents that the hours have been cut there's a lot of reasons i think that people are upset because they most of the residents in lake elmo use the other libraries that we had so thank you very much thank you brian library is an interesting as many of us know in no small issue goes without some controversy in our community the library thing being one of those  i think it is something that we struggle with for a long time i think you know many of us think there's a range of opinions on the council of questioning this and i think at the end of the day we do have to keep in mind the context the county of pretty much said they were going to close down the lake on the library  they did not seem to i think their model is more of large regional libraries and we were do not fit very well their idea of having kind of a small community presence so i think after a lot of discussion that's probably one that i think you know for some of us on the council we i guess we sympathize because we know that's the way it looks like to the public but we debated this for over a year and so i think sometimes when people say this was done somehow behind closed doors or in secret you know for some of us that's that's a little bit difficult to hear because we dedicated a lot of time in public forums and you know people were certainly there and we'd like to have people participate in that i think at the end the day when we saw the tax dollars of the county was getting from our community and we thought about how we could possibly leverage those and use those ourselves and then still reimburse people for the county card we felt like it was something that we wanted to try and i know the building was somewhat controversial i think at the end we felt like it was if you look at the downtown i think some of these older buildings are starting to be picked back up again i think that the way it was priced at the time it was not a not an unreasonable investment we've been talking about trying to pay that building off with and just a few years of having our library levy so i think it was a fiscally prudent thing to do i think at least for myself i can say that someone i think i hope we do end up back with the county again think library started out as being city and city type organizations the county came in and tried to provide some efficiencies and i feel like we're kind of at the risk of repeating history again here the county is pulling out of the communities but i think a lot of these small communities have reconstituted themselves with libraries and we'll find ourselves back again the county saying well if you are going to be running a library maybe we can help you out so i would hope we could have learned from that and i think if that building gets repurposed or something else in the future that's great thank you i'll begin the next question with ann what is the most immediate issue the council must address the most immediate issue that the lake elmo city council must address is really an issue that we've a bene dressing for eight years since we were forced to take sewer development getting that seward infrastructure and that water infrastructure to  residents of lake animal is a very daunting task it's in a very expensive task and i was part of the committee or the council that wrote the comprehensive plan we decided at that time that the best way to go about doing this very large daunting project would be to split that development up into two portions of our city down on i ninety four and up in the old village there's a thousand acres that sit on i ninety four knowing that there were failing set septic systems up in the old village that needed sewer and what people don't understand is when you have a system in a little town like this you have a quarter acre lot if your system is in failure it's in failure there are people that actually absolutely need the sewer up here in the old village so putting that pipe up which is going to be very expensive of is a daunting project the idea of  splitting that out was was basically done for those two reasons putting it up here to help those people in need but also to create that vibrant downtown there are a lot of things we need here senior housing that pipe that's going to service i ninety four and up here are going to provide us with opportunities for good business good housing good jobs for our own people and to be a wonderful thing to be able to actually live and work and not have to drive thirty or forty miles away thank you brett because i do think the development facing the community is probably the biggest issue that we have we've got mine mandates from the metropolitan council and i guess i would start out there i think it's maybe characteristic of my approach to a lot of issues you know i'd try to start from the basis and and look at that i mean we've and i've instigated some discussions with the metropolitan council really to talk about what is what are these mandate to do they still make sense and to start again i think they recognize or have been some changes in the market and they've hinted that they may be willing to sit down with us as they get their projections back and back in order so i guess i'm still hopeful that we can engage them at council and still have a little more control over our destiny and relook at some of these numbers but i guess you know i don't think we can bury our heads in the sand and just say that we're not going to be faced with some development i think we will be faced with development pressure so i think the next challenge really becomes how to do that in as wise and careful a way we have a wonderful open space character i think when we look to the public that's what we hear when we do our brainstorming and our type of visioning as a council we keep coming back to that we have a very unique community with a wonderful open space character and so i think that struggle of providing that same kind of character as development comes in is not a trivial thing so i feel like with my experience in terms of design understanding the infrastructure portions of this the city management and what goes into this fiscally but i do have some perspective to provide in some something to help out so that as i said earlier we don't get ourselves overextended with a lot of costs and then have development driving us rather that us driving development so i think our new staff is really i think brought a incredibly positive spin to that to be able to let us kind of take the reins and be proactive and guide what we want to see as far as development and provide some themes that really do reflect our community so that as people come in and want to propose projects there is a clear vision there for what we expect and i think that would just help to make the process even go much better when people know what we expect and then can respond to that in a positive way thank you justin i agree as well development to and and how to manage that growth is the largest issue facing like i am on the next term i unfortunately feel that we are on the backside of the clock right now and development is driving us and we need to we need to take a proactive approach or it will drive us right into high density housing and taking the lowest hanging fruit come twenty thirty the issues we face are how do we manage how do we work with the mess council in a way to get the lowest in my opinion lowest possible densities we can in the areas that we need to right now again we're in a fiscal crisis we are in a horrible housing market and the only demand out there is four units of two point five acres or less i think is what mr  over the last five years seven years we should have been working on getting those development set up and then going back to the met council trying to get relief from them on our issues the longer we let time take the time go and then when the economy starts to turn around and there is a desire for role housing and high density housing we won't have the excuse to the met council or six use the leverage with them at council to reduce the growth requirements so they have so i feel that time is of the essence and we need to put a comprehensive plan together and get moving on on the development thank you the next question is for brett bread do you do you feel that there is a lack of decorum in the city council and if you do what can and should you do to improve that i don't think i would call it a lack of decorum i think we do sometimes get caught up with our passions and we get a little more drama than we necessarily need seems like we've had another new recent flare up of that and i personally could live without some of the drama i feel like i try to reflect the respect and trying to work together i think we we all recognize that we have different perspectives on things and we feel passionately about the community and i think those are good things that the council brings but i think beyond that we are still learning how to organizational dynamics and philosophy we need to still be able to understand how to work together and respect each other's differences say our piece put it out there but then come back together come up with something that we can all get around and live with and then move forward and unfortunately that doesn't always happen that we can kind of step away from that and say ok the decisions made we still need to be able to talk to each other out in the hallway and respect each other and so i think that's definitely gotten better i think we need to set the tone ourselves as counsel and i if you want to ask folks that kind of pay attention to things in the city i think i've i've reflected that type of approach and i think our staff we've had some we've built our staff and a lot of the staff are i think very excited about this idea of we need to come forward with a respectful approach have our debates at the counsel table be willing to then walk away and be a little more less passionate to the point where we recognize some decisions don't always go our way they don't always go my way and we need to move forward so i consider myself early independent i'm in the right the latest thing out there seems to be questioning who's aligning with who i just look at it is i'm one independent person here i agree with many of the council members the mayor the other candidate running for mayor that's on the council and we agree on some things but we also disagree on some things and we just learn to work together and work through that thank you justin i mean i'm not on the city council i'm a challenger so i don't know the inner workings of the city council as well as brett and do so i don't think would be appropriate for me to comment on the well from your perspective do you believe there's a lack of decorum on the city council and what if you do what could you do to improve that i believe what i could do to improve it as i take from my job again i am sorry i expected to have minutes and i'd want to have minutes i missed it it would have been in my speech in my job we have multiple personalities multiple backgrounds we've just met each other we have to get along in order to survive a four day trip and to get passengers from  b safely and i think that transfers into what we do here at the city council we all have different backgrounds we have despite different political philosophies we need to be able to get along with each other and eyes civil basis and operate for what will be the best interests of the citizens in the city of like elmo we can't let the personal grievances we have with one another interfere with our day to day operations and i don't believe that that would be an issue for me thank  liked name off other cities that's probably inappropriate but when you have five people getting together at a table who are very passionate about the community that they love you're going to have disagreements and on any issue whatever that issue is it can get heated i think there are times when it it appears that the council is divided and when they're divided you're going to have that that struggle between council members or council member and mayor or mayor and council member i believe that actually reflects the leadership and how the meeting is run you know as far as using robert's rules of order we have we have a timer i think it's inappropriate i don't like it i think that when people are standing up at the podium and they want to speak the last thing they need while they're speaking is a time or ding in their ears and i think that  past in the past when i've had to run meetings as the vice mayor i've never used a timer i've never used anything other than not even raising my hand the meetings just seem to flow and there's not the gaveling and the  the constant pressure of the time or so i'd like to see change i'd like to see a change in leadership and i think with change in leadership will get change and how the council works together thank you i'll begin the next question with justin what more if anything should be done to increase commercial development in your city i think we do need some commercial development to help with the new growth that we're going to take they can have services they're going to need we have in the comp land designated commercial zones in both the old village and south tenth street and that's aside from that that's all i would see that we do to develop commercial businesses we're do not in the government is not in the business to go out and and build a business we let people come to us and decide if this is the proper business for like animal and if it is and it's a business that fits our needs they're free to operate in the city like oh well then let me rephrase that question what more if anything should be done to encourage commercial development take another thirty seconds sure i think the i believe like um was rated the second worst city in the state behind another city to  to do business with and i think we need to change that and i think we've started that by changing the the you know bring in a new competency administrator and a little you know and moving forward with the comp lan up to this point we've drug our feet for the last what was its ten years on updating the com plan i think by having that having an economic development authority and a city minister who is open to and willing to work with developers and business owners that with that will help for the how many years like i was just been no no no no no and i think we're starting to see that change thank you and can you repeat your question or for me what more if anything should be done to encourage commercial development in like animals this is an interesting question because when we wrote the comprehensive plan the i ninety four corridor or the businesses were all placed in one specific area not along the corridor which is what i would like to see it's actually now sitting just south of the junior high school and the problem i see with that is people aren't going to want to exactly live on the other parts of the i ninety four corridor or so i think one of the first things we need to do is have a comp land amendment changed to allow for that development to be right in the corridor we have thirteen hundred wreck units of business development to put in thirteen hundred wreck units of business development for the out of the sixty six hundred rec units required that's forty jobs per acre forty jobs per acre is like a like a three hour or a state farm and we all know where state farm sits right now empty so i don't know how we could ever possibly get the type of development in that would meet that forty units of jobs per acre what i'd like to see is discussion the realistic number of units per acre we could have or in jobs per acre that we could meet and i'd like to see a reduction in those job rec units i've heard numbers thrown out there that were ten to fifteen percent off of what their projections were so let's take ten to fifteen percent of those units off the top of the required units and apply that towards the commercial so we can get a good solid commercial with reasonable requirements for those jobs twenty units per acre perhaps thank you fred it is a good challenging question i think it's something new that this city has not had to deal with a lot in the past  think there's a degree agree to a certain extent that you know some things are going to be naturally going to come on their own but having seen a lot of communities deal with development i think there are also some things you can do some tools you can put in place and things that you can have that are available some of the i believe we have passed the comp plan change for the i ninety four corridor so there's zoning and guiding zoning there for commercial development and so i think what we're trying to catch up on is making sure we have sort of the vision the theming is kind of way we've characterized it so we can try to find a good match so when people come here they can recognize what they're going to do and i think as you've been in this game of development there are seen that happen a lot you also recognize that sometimes people come in with their sort of standard boilerplate what they like to do which is kind of quick and easy but if you work with them and tell them you have a higher standard there are a lot of precedents where stores have come in and adapt standards or come in with a concept that does fit more your character and so i think there is some well they may not seem flexible first i think they can be flexible you just have to hold your ground and i think that is important for us to be inviting but still set a vision and be willing to stand up to  do have we have talked about having an e t a economic development authority is one of those tools that can be at least a kind of a place where businesses can come and get some answers or they may need some infrastructure put in place to make their facilities work so sometimes you may need to kind of get in front of that and try to have that there if they're if they're the right fit to fizzing other tax increment financing is another tool that we've been looking at we're still not decided if that fits our community but that might be another tool to be want to leverage to bring in and so i think it's important for us to look at it as a collaborative approach and i think getting our plans in place and then being willing to work with them and show them what our vision is and then have them come to the table all the work with them is how the best happen for community thank you if i don't always follow the question of rotation perfectly just know a lot of questions and a lot and know it's everywhere but i know for sure and you get the next question in what situations of any would you feel justified to vote to increase taxes what situation would i feel justified to vote to increase taxes where we have the lowest tax rate in the metro area and we have a wonderful  lifestyle here but i see in the future there are things that you know we may have to have slight increases as we develop in and grow in the future we have a police force or more sheriff's service needs we're seeing it already those costs don't go down generally although they haven't really gone up lately i think we'll see an increase in those costs i believe that the residents feel that we are out here making decisions to protect their health safety and welfare and so on those issues fire service making sure that the the sheriff's department is there if something's happening at your house those are the things that we need to make sure we can do plowing the roads i know that sounds goofy but people in all communities need to get from point a to point b so that they can put food on their table and so those public works department equipment issues fire equipment issues if your house is burning down you want to know that the fire department is going to be there protecting your property and the lives of yourselves and your children so that would be probably where i would look and say to myself do we need to have a small increase to make sure we're providing those needs for our residents thank you brett i think we have as a community echo the comments just made that we've been trying to be very fiscally cautious conservative whatever word you want to use we have tried to be careful with our spending we do have a low tax rate i think we are faced with some challenges we've we had a road reconstruction cycle that we had gotten behind and we were starting to have a road to get older so i don't people notice but we have been raising taxes and taking bonds to get more active with our road projects i have not supported all of those or been one or two that i would have preferred to have held off on and not spend that but as a community we've decided that we need to stay on top of that and make sure our roads are up to a certain standard the fire department public works we have old equipment so i think we are kind of we've been trying to keep things low cost in the short term but i think at some point we have to acknowledge in the long term there are going to be some costs facing us and as we get into development we might be a little naive if we look around a lot of our neighbors in the taxes tax rates that are paid there versus our kind of more rural based community are going to see that ours are lower so i think as we get into more of these infrastructure and more services that are needed for a growing community and i think we might be facing those challenges with taxes so like i said before i think in terms of infrastructure i'd like to see us be more conservative and be cautious with that i'd like us to not get too far ahead of ourselves and have the risk of having to raise taxes more quickly more so than we would like to but i guess that's something we struggle with at the council level in terms of making those decisions so i feel like we've i at least have tried to be cautious when appropriate if we need to  may have to do that but i'd like to see this kind of be as careful and conservative on that front as we possibly can thank you jeff michael in the city council would keep taxes as low as is humanly possible just to echo what councilwoman smith said health safety and welfare is the only area in which i could see taxes being increased if if the people decided that's what they wanted we do have to decide whether or not we want to have a rural or an urban style  services rural to me means that there are some risks involved the fire department you know we don't need to have fifty full time guys in a full time police chief and and all these things we can contract out to police to washingtonians we are and i don't think anyone is talking about getting our own police force but i did see it on a brochure so it's out there but i'm not in favor of that so people have to decide whether they want to urban or rural and then when it comes to development i don't think that the the people who live in like i'm right now should foot the bill to develop for people who are moving and i think those taxes should be borne by the divel uppers and again i'm not a fiscal wizard a policy wonk by any means or just would like to make the decisions and headed off to staff w know better but i'd like to see if it has to be vonage or howard however it's done it goes back in the people who require the services are the ones who pay the services once the the buildings are built and the people come in and have the housing thank you i'll begin the next question with bret how well does the city keep in contact with its residents and how should it keep in contact great question we know things are changing in terms of technologies we've been slowly but surely ramping up in terms of our type web presence and this idea that we can have facebook and these other so social media techniques is something that you know for not all of us it's star first natural instinct but i think for a lot of the younger people and just people that are more savvy with this that is more the expectation so we recognize that we know we're not there yet but we are we have that as a goal for ourselves and we have a new staff person that has a very strong communications background with that particular goal in mind we have the code red system which is this idea we can we have a special need area special area we can send out a call through the phone system i think it's a looter this earlier i think it is also interesting being on the side that table when you're out there and your issue is coming up and you kind of look at the council little suspiciously in your little frustrated that you wish you knew more but then being on this side i think it's also challenging to try to get the word out and to know what the best vehicle is i mean for every decision we have we could send a direct mailing to every single home in the community but i think as we looked at that the cost of that are you know pretty hefty is that really how we're trying to operate so i think we're still it's so and now we're trying to crack i think we're getting better in terms of  using more modern techniques where our newsletter has been overhauled and trying to be much more effective with how we format and lay that out so i think with some of the staff additions that we have a think they're very conscious of that that was one of the factors that we looked at when we hired a new administrator and his talent abilities to communicate well with his community where he was last and that was one of the big pluses that we saw and so we want to see see that translated over to our current workings because i think there is some room for improvement thank you justin the first thing i would like to see i don't know if it's logistically possible i'm sure it is because if it's everywhere else is the council meetings put on the internet so people can just open them up off the like on what dot org and watch them most people in town i would imagine don't have cable and  therefore are unable to see that i think we need to establish what the rules of the game are when it comes to how we notify people as i brought up earlier the library a lot of people felt it didn't get the notification that it did it needed and i think that was probably in the shadow again of the lake issue where cord reds were sent out every week and so i think you know the rules of the game need to be established by the city council and mayor of how they're going to notify people and they need to stick to those rules and we don't use how we're going to notify people to engineer outcomes of how we want policy to be dictated by who we send code reds to in order to get people to show up so that that is what i would like to say thank you and well i unfortunately i'm old school and of happenings in like elmo unfortunately that's not the case anymore so we have to use papers that are outside more often i think with the hiring of our new administrator he has brought some technology ideas to us that he has utilized in western wisconsin where he came from and that is getting things out on the web getting it all on the web being able to download documents the minutes the council minutes certain what's happening in the old village he's also upgraded and worked hard on this because he's real heist it's so important for this mean can indication between us in our residence the the source which is the new name for our quarterly that goes out which just was the lay come a quarterly before there's a lot of news in there and it would be nice for people to understand that if they have questions about water usage or or where is sewer going to be it's laid out for him or them i also would like to see us use code red i mean this idea was brought to us years ago but for instance we're we're we're in we're looking for new people to be on our library board which is a governing body which is means they dictate how the money is spent in lake elmo and you know this is great facebook is or this paper or that paper i think it would be great to have the opportunity to say over the code red system these positions are available be it for planning commission library board parks commissions we can get people or people involved thank you begin the next question with justin and terms of being a good representative for your residents including your stances on issues and what if anything distinguishes you from the others and trying to help them voters better and you know make them so they have an i clear choice when they go to the polls had this is the question or in terms of being a good representative for your residents including your stances on certain issues what if anything distinguishes you from your opponents well i don't know if the word distinguish would would work right but i believe in an open and transparent government i think we need to with the growth that's facing like emma we need to be as open and transparent as possible when it comes to what's going to take place we can't hide behind closed doors and make a backroom deals on how we're going to develop like animal everyone needs to know what is going to take place and and how it's going to take place i believe in meeting with the residents of lake am i've done that with one one group they you know i listen to what they had to say and then came back and made the decision that i felt was best best suited for like imo and i would do that and again be please repeat the question in there as i said this is done so the voters have clear choices when they go to the polls because it's not all of you can get in in terms of being a good representative for your residents including your stances on certain issues what if anything distinguishes you from the other two the other three running against you well i've been here the longest creasing me i've been on this legal city council for eight years and i helped write the comprehensive plan i've helped write the village master plan i know all the numbers and all the details and all the commitments and all the promises that we've made and i feel that at the council table there are often times where i'm reminding people numbers and commitments etc etc so i think it's important that you take the phone calls i think people think that  as council members we have a couple meetings every month maybe two or three meetings every month it's a it's a lot more than that because people are asking asking you to respond to them help them understand why our processes are our process sees you get e mails you are inundated with e mails you need to have good listening skills i think that i've taken a lot of phone calls from people and a lot of e mails one have responded to them as as as immediately as possible and i've really listened but i try not to make promises that i can't keep i think it's absolutely wrong to promise someone something when you know that what the decisions we have to make in the future have got to be for the betterment of lake animal and the majority of the residents thank you bret help i keep my promises or similarly feel like it's good to be able careful not promise things and be thoughtful and deliberate my i think the some unique things that i bring to this are my technical background i do know a lot about infrastructure and city types of things i sometimes challenge staff and ask tough questions which i hope they respect and i think we we have a good report i respect that their expertise is very valuable and just want to make sure that we  as well as we can i think i am probably on in terms of the styles on the council i am pretty sometimes soft spoken and more deliberate in terms of our look at things is probably just kind of the technical way i look we look at personality profiles that's probably a characteristic that i have that may be compliments and all different from the others on the council i was i don't know just as well i can't say as much in his case about that i agree with the open door policy i've always been willing to take time and stop and talk to people and maybe different than others would too i know coming into this i was not even sure i was going to run again for council i was encouraged by people in community including many people in the council to go and run again so i don't have a big desires for big things but i am willing to help serve the community and so i decided i was willing and cared enough about community there are some things that are ongoing that i wanted to see through to the end  i really care a lot about open space character i think we all say that but i think if you look at some of the decisions and i kind of cautious approach to spending money on some things and kind of wanting to be a little more careful with that i think that is reflective of the fact that i just want to make sure we're in control of our future and not the other way around thank you and i'll begin with you how can like elmo maintain it's a rural lodge large lot character in the face of the future pressure to develop well i think that we in writing the comprehensive plan in two thousand and five we did a good job of listening to what our residents wanted because we did choose a knife set it before to put the sewer development into specific areas in lake animal i think there was a fear that if sewer came to lake elmo it would be spread throughout lake elmo and so we had a planning commission that worked very diligently on figuring out how are we going to actually be able to do this and make it look good that and i could go into all the wreck units sixty six hundred wreck units where do we put them how do we make it so that you don't have fourteen thousand people living south of ten st and eight thousand people living north of tenth street and yet we still want to keep these large open lots we did that by making that move in and alleviating some of the pressure from down on i ninety four by putting some of that sewer up in the old village while creating that wonderful  master plan or village plan for the downtown i think we're almost there it's we're at the point where we we need to pull the trigger and start our implementation we have two million dollars in grants for sewer and water and i'd like to see us not lose the opportunity to capitalise on that two million dollars we've we've had a five year reprieve from any development we've had time to actually put these plans together and figure out how we're going to move forward in the future now we seem to simply need to tighten it up get the right experts in to help us make good decisions so that legally we're not forced to take development that we don't feel is appropriate i say to everybody we can look fabulous or we can look a so so i'd like to be fabulous thank you brett we are there's a big challenge of refer to it a couple times i think we need to understand that there is going to be some density that comes in and i guess a start by going back to the source of that mandate which is metropolitan council so we have engaged with some discussions with them and i'd like to see us come back to them they've told us that they need a little time to do their projections but i think they're starting to get their data back on from where they see things going because i think they could not look a straight in the face and say that things haven't changed over the last five to seven years they know they understand the new reality times of change so i think they've they're now open and at the table willing to talk to us about what that means and maybe these quotas are not maybe appropriate given the change in the dynamics so i think that's where i want to start and continue to to look there a not to be antagonistic not to be unrealistic but simply to work with them cooperatively and say what really makes sense that you know you are interested in growth but we are interested in keeping our community the special place that it is beyond that i think even coming into office i was concerned about the number of units around the village i think the villages going to be an area of growth i think we can have mixed use and have a very walkable wonderful place i think that that whole concept is to concentrate that girls around the village and then leave open spaces around it is one of those key creative ways of looking at it in terms of smart growth approach but often that i there are sometimes numbers thrown out there higher for the village than i was excited about but i think as i've thought about it more and saw it can be done well and and done at the scale of the character of the lake elmo i think that is ok to have that development concentrated in certain areas even to have more maybe in the village than i was initially looking at and just be cautious with how we manage the growth so that the areas that do grow are high quality but we are limiting them to use fewer areas as we can thank you justin to answer your question i don't think any of the land that is involved in the comprehensive plan changes is going to be able to be large lots characteristic of what we have right now so to me that is we need to work with them at council and lower density as lower population growth as much as possible but how to save the large lots i think are unique in the the beltway we're next to a city with many fortune five hundred companies and population is really going to grow so as those populations grow and people be acquiring more wealth and want larger lots we need to  need to work with them to get those lots we need to sell five we need to encourage the farmers who are all around the sea to be able to break the lots of on a five acre lots and build homes on there that's how we keep our men and maintain our large lot presence and unfortunately that's not anything that's going to happen in my term for the next term we're going to be focusing on the met council mandated growth but if you're talking about keeping their characteristics of like that's what we need to do in the longer term future to do it thank you now i found over the years that forum sometimes tend to lock you into certain areas so i'm going to ask this question think it through is there any topic that you have not yet addressed that you would like to share your views on  people residents of janet these are always very well attended you have it's going live right now it's going to be covered by the stillwater is that now begin with i believe is it you breath again this is a look at i'm looking around h issue that's not been brought up i think the only one i would touch on an open don't step on any toes but i would i'd certainly look at this is a nonpartisan type of race i mean  established that this is a nonpartisan office at city council and so i guess i would like to keep it that way i think of what we're looking for is kind of partisanship we've seen what that looks like at a different scale and i don't i think what i appreciate about my time so far in the council has been just sitting down with people and not worrying about some of these fractious type of issues but just saying you know what makes common sense we're down here making kind of on the ground decisions about roads and plowing and water and where they need to go and how much that costs and i think what i found is we actually work well together yes maybe in a different form we have a different discussion but we've been able to just kind of put that aside and that's what i think has worked well and one reason i guess i've been glad that i ran for city council going to run again because i'm not necessarily interested in getting into some sort of a partisan type thing so i guess i would prefer that you know the partisan this ship of stay out of city races i think that's the way it's designed to be and i think if we just going to set that aside and sit down across the table and talk about what we want to see in the community i think we'll have a much better community thank you justin i think the biggest issues were covered at the deform tide which was growth and i think we spent a lot of time on that to address bret's issues what i found walking around the city trying to have a positive campaign speaking on the issues of les campbell is that the partisanship issue does come up a lot and it's being used by one side in particular to attack candidates who i understand this is a nonpartisan office but it doesn't mean that you don't have a view that fall one way or another i don't think anyone's going to take their views into the city council  and and deal with those we're talking roads and sewers and whatnot this is not the state legislature we're not appointing anyone for the supreme court so i think the discussion of partisanship is being used by a group to try and direct away the the questions of what's best for like thank you and you know i'm going to go with the connection and why i'm here and why i'm sitting here today running again for my third term because i  love like elmo but what i really love about like elmo is the people and every time i do this campaigning thing i say to myself i got to hit three thousand houses and talk to all these people and then i get out there and i get to talk to these people really talk to them and understand the rich and vibrant history we have from the past because it's woven tightly through all the families that i've been talking to for the past two months and it's really a wonderful experience to really know who you represent and to have them really know you when you go to their door and so i'd say connecting with those people that's something we really haven't talked about because most of us residents connect with our neighbors because we live next to them we're in our little pod our little development connection is important to me which is why i got on the old village planning group because i think the connection is in the old village the heart of our community and getting people who sit in four separate areas of lake because we have the lake park reserve in the center and getting them to connect by coming to coming to downtown meeting each of their so that people from the southwest you know people from the northeast and boy nobody gets an opportunity like candidates like us who actually get out and get to talk to all of you and connect with all of you thank you i'm going to begin one half minute closing statements with bret thanks for the opportunity to sort of banter about and give us some of our their opinions come out on the table you say i don't have any because i can look at myself as i'm not driving to have this job but i'm certainly willing to do it if people would like to have me here i believe a lot in this community i think we have some very special unique open space kind of characters that i do feel passionately enough about that i want to be here and try to help them see through some of the things have been put in place i think these are challenging tough times that we're facing we've all acknowledge that that we have a lot of  development things that are in our pathway so i guess i'd like to use the things that i've learned over the last four years but still have a fresh approach to this and an open mind and use my background my expertise with these kind of issues to be able to help us navigate  i've done a lot of things over the past eight years and i really enjoyed sitting at this table and making the decisions that i've made most of the time it's hard it's very difficult when you have to make a decision and ninety percent of the people are going to be happy about it and ten percent art it's a really tough position to be in because you can always put yourself in their shoes i've negotiated with them at council local corporation state and county agencies all for the betterment of like almost i have made communication with legal residents a top priority being honest being open having integrity i've used my verbal and listening skills to ensure that my decisions are representative of their interests because sometimes even i don't agree with something or decisions i have to make but i have to listen to what they have to say because they are who i represent i have a thorough understanding of the overall workings of the city with regards to finance public safety parks and recreation and upcoming upcoming development which is the sewer and water infrastructure and i just have a fantastic vision for what this city which i i look at is a open book right now it can be something really different that people say wow look at what lake elmo did they're different than anywhere else thank you justin and thank you brett in an atmosphere and burger for moderate in the event i do want to be on the city council i want to be involved in the decision making process for the next four years i think it's important i go back to a simple thing out of anyone whether they're running for councillor maire i've lived in like them of the longest i know what like i was about i know the dynamics of it granted i was young but i've been involved in politics my entire life i have a unique piece of property that i was able to afford and buy from my parents and i want to hopefully someday give it to one of my children so that will be the driving force behind the decisions i make for like emma which is what is best for the long term viability of waco thank you and thank you all for participating again greg hall had a medical emergency  unable to a tan you can vote for up to two of the four candidates running for city council a reminder that ramsey washington t v will be playing rebroadcast of this for my channel eighteen and then please call them to find out the days and times the oakdale they will review had been invited twice to cover this form however a write up of this forum will appear in tomorrow's paper friday october nineteenth issue of the stillwater does that and then on behalf of the still argues that thank you