Regarding the private message some of you (perhaps all of you?) received from the person behind the “Our Minnetrista” organization, I WILL PUBLICLY ADDRESS EACH LIE IN HIS MESSAGE:
1. “I supported her candidacy”. Prior to the election my neighbors reported they had found flyers from this organization campaigning against me. I did meet with the Our Minnetrista representatives when I filed to run but as soon as they discovered I wasn’t going to be a rubber stamp for the Mayor or staff they launched an effort to derail my campaign.
2. He claims the road budget was “slashed during the preceding four years.” The point here is that it wasn’t “slashed” 128% and that was the increase being considered. Yes, the road budget needed an increase but 128%, in my opinion, was extreme.
3. He claims “Council Member Bruce refused to answer my questions.” He never asked me a question but rather spoke at a public hearing where he had three uninterrupted minutes to speak. He never addressed a question to me. I, however, did ask the Mayor for an opportunity to respond to his allegations of being misled and stated that all the statements I had made in an op/ed column in the Laker were accurate and I stood behind them.
4. He claims to have been misled to think the 4.35% increase in the city’s tax levy (which just means the city’s budget) translated to a 4.35% increase in his property tax bill. That is just ignorance, but understandable given the complicated nature of property tax calculations in Minnesota. Many Minnetrista residents saw increases of more than 5% in the city portion of their property tax bill for 2018. Those figures are publicly available and easy to prove.
5. Lastly, in the MG blog post that seems to have ignited this smear campaign I was not questioning whether or not it was the “right decision” to pull snow plows off the city roads during a snow storm. I was questioning the decision to make a public announcement on the city’s website that they were being pulled because of blizzard conditions. That announcement, in my opinion, was unnecessary in the first place and, secondly, didn’t state the real reason for pulling the plows which had more to do with staffing levels than anything else. If I make a mistake I will apologize for it but I don’t apologize for what others do.
Minnetrista Governance Blog 