WHITTIER, STEVENS SQUARE, LORING HEIGHTS, VENTURA VILLAGE, and PHILLIPS WEST
Sustainability, conservation, and economy in Minneapolis government

January 10, 2009 seems to be about the day I decided to run for City Council.  That was the date I wrote a document describing “What I want from my government”.  It is still on the back of my brochures and on this website as the home page.  I am proud to say that it has hardly changed at all.

Had I been changing it would suggest that I was tailoring my message.  That has not been the case.

At someone’s doorstep last summer I was told, “I always appreciated Paul Wellstone not so much because I agreed with him, but because I always new exactly where he stood on an issue”

I hope I am living up to that standard.  This website is an in-depth review of my philosophies, Everyone who looks at it will be able to find something they disagree with.  However, now you know what I am about.

I don’t know what I will do, politically speaking, if I lose the election.  I may just concentrate on being a very good Refrigeration and Maintenance Mechanic, or I may take up a specific cause.  I think it might be good someday Minneapolis were to have a Part-time City Council.

But, win or lose, it has been interesting!

I want to win because we in Minneapolis simply have not been well served by our City Government.
HOME      JOBS

Jobs, and how this should be addressed:

I believe the City has to create incentives for industry – manufacturing  - to move here. 

What I have seen the City of Minneapolis do time and time again is favor residential development over job creation.  Think about that - people with no jobs!!

Taxes are as a significant and burdensome an expense for business as they are for you and I.  In fact, it may be the much talked about transfer of property tax from downtown buildings to residential housing to be in part because the large building owners couldn't pay their taxes and got the ear of political leaders.

I know from working downtown that there are entire floors of empty space in many downtown buildings.  This lost revenue, and the argument put up that downtown companies generate wealth, were, my thinking goes, the reasons for the tax base being transferred from businesses to homeowners a few years ago.

This led to significant if not outrageous increases in homeowner and apartment owner property tax.

It is important to note that real wealth is created by the production of goods to sell, not the sale of investments, or the presence of legal firms, or government offices. 

Why can’t we have start-up solar hot water panel manufacturers, solar electric panel manufacturers, an electric wind generator manufacturer, and all the support industries that go into such businesses, right here in Minneapolis?   Let them first open their doors in Minneapolis.

Toro, 3M, John Deere, Medtronics, Tenant, Starkey Laboratories, Honeywell, Ford, just to name a few, in addition to unnamed manufacturers of the products stated above, or what about Joe's Garage, the corner drugstore, independent clothing retailers - these are the kinds of businesses that I want to be drawn to create facilities within the city limits.

Instead Minneapolis encourages hi-rise, cheaply built, expensive to operate multi-housing that may just create a new definition of the word ‘ghetto’.  Detroit has a story I do not want repeated here.

People have got to have good jobs!!!

I have been so lucky.  I have not made a lot of money, but I have always made [almost!] enough money.  Most of my working life has been in industrial-type employment.  I have left good jobs that others stayed at and now are much better set for retirement than I. 
I want those same opportunities for others.
SOME DISAGREEMENTS IN POLITICS ARE PERSONAL, SOME ARE PARTISAN, AND SOME GO TO THE HEART OF THE MEANING OF A CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY.
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