All posts in the topic roseville city council election (Short link)
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- There are 11 posts — by 7 authors — in this topic.
- Latest post made by John Kysylyczyn at Nov 21 17:09 UTC
the current roseville city council election is the quietest election i can
remember. truthfully, i don't really know anything about some of the
candidates. can some forum members who are "in the know" provide us with some
meaningful information on a candidate or candidates? i for one would greatly
appreciate any information members might have. i don't want members telling me
"vote for so-in-so" and leaving it at that, i would like some real information
about the candidates!
I feel the same way too. With all the buzz over the presidential, senatorial,
congressional and all the state legislative elections dominating, it is easy to
lose track of what is happening in the community. With so much going on, it is
hard to find anything about our local election. I've been able to find
information but I perceive that it has not been as available as it has been in
elections past.
I somewhat attribute this to the city's move to have the council elections take
place in even numbered years. It was said during the debate about the move
from odd numbered year elections, that local issues would get drowned out by
everything else that has been going on and I think this has been borne out.
Having them during odd years allowed to the community to focus in on its own
local issues and how each of the candidates would deal with them. With even
numbered elections, we could then deal with our state and national issues.
I know the arguments for the move were largely based on financial reasons
(fewer elections to setup and staff) and also the belief that even numbered
elections produces larger turn out.
While I was sympathetic to the former, I never really did buy into the latter.
Yes, I agree that even numbered elections turn out more people, but it does
because people are coming to vote for these other offices, not the local
election. If they did care as much about the local issues, they would have
turned out in the same numbers with the odd years.
Since the even/odd election decision has already been made, we may need to
think of some better ways of cutting through all the election noise and hearing
more about the local candidates views on local issues.
Brent Engebretson
Roseville
Hear! Hear! You have correctly identified the problem. Seventy people showed up
and signed a petition to keep the elections on an off year basis with the cost
shared with the School District. All the points you made were brought us, but a
3-2 Council split under John K. (who favored the switch) pushed it through. Mr.
Klausing promised to undo all those things pushed through in that manner should
he be elected mayor. To my reckoning, he has not done a single one. It appears
that he, like John, recognized that by keeping the on year elections, the real
local issues are lost and voters go to the polls uninformed. It would appear
that those voters who are uninformed by also vote even though they have not
followed the issues. Unfortunately this opens the issue of support for local
candidates under the on year program. The on year switch doubled the cost of
running for office in Roseville. Mailings are important and they now have to be
sent to more than twice the households as before. So who pays for this? In an
on year, the money and focus goes to the broader races and what we have
experienced in Roseville is funding by developers. One local developer proudly
told several people, including an attorney that he spent about 60,000 dollars
on the two candidates he supported in our last election. Another candidate in a
previous election had a quarter page ad paid for commercial real estate
developers. We need to figure out how to allow residents to run for local
office without being bought by the development interests. There is very little
"residents first" in our council. The problem is that not a single one of the
"bought" members are willing to vote for such a change.Any suggestions?Tam
McGehee
What problem? Moving the elections to an "on" year at least gives us hope that
we might get a more fully representative turnout. Nothing is better for
"special interests" than low-interest, off-year elections in which the votes of
a few who are influenced by money and advertising can then be leveraged into
"representing" all. And to suggest that John K. is somehow against popular
representation shows only that you don't know the man -- I have not known John
long, but from what I have seen, John K. is one of the most populist -- e.g.,
Lou Dobbs-ian -- folks I've met. This is always an interesting theoretical
discussion -- what's the trade-off between an election with low turnout, but
where voters care enough to actually investigate issues and then get out there
and vote, vs. a large-turnout vote where many may only be half-knowledgeable
about what they're voting for. But that's democracy, for ya -- it's sometimes
very messy and doesn't always fit into little boxes! In the end, I come down
solidly on the side of on-year local elections -- get the folks in the booth,
and geez, if even the ONLY thing anyone has to judge on is a name on a sign
they saw on the way to the poll, at least it's the name of a candidate who had
gotten their act together enough to get a sign up. And you know, I think the
bigger populace may be underestimated -- since they KNOW there's an election
going on here, my experience this year is that many are investigating things to
prep themselves. My BIGGER fear is the restricted and limited access to
information via organized channels, (translated as "What organized channels?"),
that is the best friend of the incumbent, and the environment most controllable
by special interests. You get the Roseville Review? Lots of luck finding
anything either comprehensive, OR not slanted towards incumbents, and mainly
liberal ones.
As for getting at local issues and candidate stances "buried" in the larger
races -- have you gone to the candidate forum? Have you read the lit dropped
in your mailbox or at your door? Have you at least gone to the websites of the
City Council candidates and seen what they choose to say about themselves?
Please, let's not revert to the small, friendly, good-old-boy, insider kind of
elections we had before they moved to the "on" years. Especially this
election, when the bath water stinks so bad, it may just be time say to hell
with it and throw the baby out, too.
Mike Boguszewski
1840 Merrill Street
Roseville, MN 55113
612/963-2431
<email obscured>
One more thing -- Tam McGehee decried the lack of "resident's first" in our
current Council. I agree. That's why one of the persons I'm voting for is Tim
Johnson...I've talked with Tim at a couple of events, and it seems he really
does have our interests first, and would do a better job of really representing
us and our needs on the Council. Since there are two open seats, I'm hoping
everyone will vote for Tim for at least one of them. (And, for the record, I
am NOT part of his campaign, nor have I received nor do I hope to recieve
anything out of this posting).
Mike Boguszewski
As a member of the Roseville Area School Board, I am particularly interested in hearing more opinions on the topic of the timing of local elections. Some of you may recall that this question arose during the last school board election. The Board is hoping to explore this topic in November and/or December. It will be very helpful to have citizen input regarding the pros and cons of even vs. odd years. I encourage you to share your thoughts through RIF or, if you prefer, you may contact any board member or the whole board. Contact information and information regarding board meetings may be found on the District website at http://www.roseville.k12.mn.us/schoolboard/<http://www.roseville.k12.mn.us/schoolboard/>. Thanks. Shari Dion 2241 Merrill St. Roseville, MN 55113 (651)639-9271 <email obscured><mailto:<email obscured>> This topic's messages may be viewed at: http://forums.e-democracy.org/r/topic/lvvxQItH8C0SzxRmGkyp5<http://forums.e-democracy.org/r/topic/lvvxQItH8C0SzxRmGkyp5> ----------------------------------------- To post, send your message to: <email obscured><mailto:<email obscured>> To leave or for daily digest, type "unsubscribe" or "digest on," in subject line and send to: <email obscured><mailto:<email obscured>> More info about Roseville Issues Forum: http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/roseville-issues<http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/roseville-issues> E-Democracy.Org rules: http://e-democracy.org/rules<http://e-democracy.org/rules> ----------------------------------------- Technical assistance thanks to our friends at http://OnlineGroups.Net<http://onlinegroups.net/> Roseville Issues Forum http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/roseville-issues/stats.html<http://forums.e-democracy.org/groups/roseville-issues/stats.html>
As the person who led the successful effort to change Roseville's elections to
the even-year, I am going to enjoy replying to all of these postings. Here we
go!
The claim that election information from city candidates has been reduced by
moving the elections to the even-year falls flat on its face. In years past,
TV never covered Roseville elections, today they still don't cover Roseville
elections. In years past, the big papers did a pitiful job covering Roseville
elections, and that hasn't changed. The Roseville Review is the only paper
that really covered elections in years past, and you know what? They are still
doing it today. The Review doesn't have a Washington DC correspondent to feed
them information on the presidential campaigns. They don't even cover the US
Senate campaigns. No congressional campaigns either. They cover local issues
like they did in the past and they still cover local issues today, regardless
of the year of the election. For those who will make claims on how the Pioneer
Press and Star Tribune used to cover Roseville in the odd year, yes that it
true, but their lack of coverage today has nothing to do with the election year
shift. It has more to do with cutting dozens of employees from both of these
organizations over the last three years. Or simply put, the collapse of the
newspaper industry nationwide.
Election information at the local level has always primarily come from the
candidates themselves. When there is a primary, typically there is always more
information provided, but not always. Since there was no city primary this
year, that means less mailings and therefore less information. In this
election cycle, I have seen nothing from Schafer. I have heard there is a Jeff
Johnson walk piece but have never seen it. Nothing from Pust. My parents got
a Tim Johnson walk piece. From county commissioner candidate Jan Parker, all I
got was a lousy post card that told me relatively nothing.
So in summary the larger elections are not drowning out local races. The fact
is that the local candidate have done dittily squat to promote their campaigns.
You can't drown out a group of campaigns that don't exist.
Yes one reason I promoted the switch was to save money. That is one of the few
parts of the discussion that was actually based upon facts that you could not
argue.
The reason of having more people vote in city elections was also part of my
motive. But it is much more complicated than this. First, there is a general
government question to be raised when someone can get elected mayor by only
garnering the support of 10% of the registered voters. Is this democracy? No.
Second, Roseville suffered for years because small little special interest
fringe groups had the ability to sway 50 or 100 votes to control the outcome of
an election. You look at the history as to why certain things in this city are
screwed up, or how they built a money losing Oval and a lot of it ties back to
council members appeasing tiny little special interest groups that represented
a tiny fraction of the population, but worked hard pounding campaign signs and
distributing campaign literature. Third, while some claimed that voters were
better educated in the odd-years, they could provide no evidence to support
this. All we knew was that voters who voted in the odd-years were better
educated that there was an election date that year. Many of the voters I have
met who regularly voted in the odd-year were as clueless about city issues as
even-year voters. Sometimes they were more clueless.
Now Brent asked how we can think of some better ways of cutting through the
election noise so we can hear more about local candidates. As I stated above,
that really isn't exactly the question to answer. The question is how, or is
there a place for government, to help these candidates make some noise in the
first place. The local candidates are pretty much silent in many election
cycles. You can do all the cutting through the noise as Brent states, but most
times all you are left with is silence.
My proposal was for the taxpayers to fund a voter's guide. My grandparents in
Nevada each get a booklet every election. It has every candidate and their
photo, bio, and a brief paragraph from the candidate. Ballot questions have
pro and con commentary. They do this in Washington State, and several other
places. I also talked about a campaign finance program like the State of
Minnesota has. Other cities do both of these ideas. No need to reinvent the
wheel. I brought the issue to the council for discussion but the first person
to complain about it was Mr. Klausing of course. Some of his supporters simply
complained and refused to even have a discussion on it simply because it was my
idea to discuss this. Unfortunately there simply wasn't enough time to put
something together and pass it. I can understand one reason why an incumbent
would oppose this. Proposals like this level the playing field between the
incumbents and challengers. The big developer money that showed up in the last
Mayor's race would have been somewhat neutralized if we would have had these
plans in place at that time.
As Tam indicated, maybe 70 people showed up to oppose the change. But when you
factor in that most of the people were husband and wife combinations, we had
probably 40 households. If you dug a little bit deeper, you would have
discovered that most of the people were recruited by a specific special
interest group that was used to controlling the outcome of city elections and
knew that their days were numbered if this change was enacted.
Yes as Tam indicated, Mr. Klausing promised to undo all those things that I
changed if he was elected Mayor. He also promised to bring consensus to the
council. In fact that was pretty much his whole campaign platform. His
opponent, Tammy Pust, actually had a platform of public policy goals and ideas
that wasn't based on a campaign of personal politics. Well the handful of
people who vote in the odd-year bought into the rhetoric and Mr. Klausing was
elected. To date, I don't believe there has been one thing Mr. Klausing has
changed back in 5 years. One or two of his attempts failed I believe on 4-1
votes. I could go into details and list the items point by point but that
would stray too far off our current topic. The claim of bringing consensus to
the council? The dirty little secret is that the council has more split votes
today than it ever did during my term in office and they only get half the work
done, and meetings run just as long as they ever did.
Now Tam raises the issues of the cost of elections in the even-year. Well I
had a solution to that. Dump the primary. Looking at the last 40 years of
election statistics, we have never had enough "serious" candidates to warrant a
primary. Since it was initially enacted in the early 1970's, our population
has actually done down by several thousand people! Eliminate the useless
primary and you cut election costs by 40%. No need to run two newspaper ads.
No need to do two mailings. Signs stay out a shorter period of time so less
get stolen. Institute a city voter's guide and you no longer need to do a city
wide mailing, so that cuts off another 20% of the cost. So all that leaves you
with are signs, walk pieces, and a good pair of shoes for door knocking. That
is about a $3000 campaign. That is half the cost of our current campaigns.
This stuff isn't rocket science, it is simply common sense.
Yes, a developer spent $60,000 to get Mr. Klausing reelected. Yes he would
have never won without this help. I work on campaigns professionally, about 12
of them this year, and when a developer spends $60,000 on one candidate, and
the challenger doesn't bother starting her campaign until mid-September, I can
tell you who will win.
If you want to run for Roseville City Council and win, give me a call. I
expect something like 80% of the candidates I am working for to win this year.
Frankly, this isn't rocket science.
In no particular order, the first thing you need is a candidate who has certain
qualities that you simply can't train someone on. Good smile, good handshake,
etc. Second, they have to be able to be educated on simple issues. Third,
some common sense. Fourth, $10,000 cash. More is always better, but anymore
than $15,000 just doesn't do much more for you. Fifth, the ability to put 60
hours a week into the campaign. One of the candidates I work for this year can
door knock 1000 homes a week. She is now working on going through her district
a second time. Sixth, the ability to start the campaign in May. Seventh,
someone who can design material, do mailings, and knows how to craft the
message that will energize the voters.
If Tam wants to win, or anybody in her group wants to take over the council,
find some candidates who can put in the time, and she can make it happen.
If you say no he doesn't know what he is talking about and that can't work,
well how do you think that I took a majority on the city council and pushed
through several earth shattering reforms, cut taxes for the first time in over
20 years without cutting city services, and passed the first referendum on the
first try since the 1960's. It wasn't by starting campaigns in September, or
being too lazy to knock on doors. Look at the last two outsiders who got
elected, Greg Schroeder and Tom Kough. They pretty much followed the formula I
outlined above.
Developers can buy city council seats with a snap of the finger (they clearly
have already purchased one), if you allow them to do so by putting up second
rate challengers.
John M. Kysylyczyn
K Solutions LLC, owner
3083 Victoria Street
Roseville, MN 55113
email: <email obscured>
home office: (651) 484-1384
www.ksolutionsllc.com
Mayor of Roseville, MN 2000-2004
Ive been out doorknocking with a local candidate since early August. While weve had some great conversations at peoples doors, the truth is that many people arent home when we knock or arent interested in taking time out of their busy day to discuss local issues, though theyve been happy to take our literature for later review. That is absolutely their right and we thank themfor doing that. As voters, though, we cant sit on the couch and wonder why all the local candidates didnt happen to show up on the one evening we were home and willing to answer the door or the phone. There are some valuable resources available that will provide us information about the candidates for our local races. Heres a few: http://ww2.startribune.com/news/metro/elections/returns/mcitsm.html - the Star Tribunes questionnaire asked of all candidates. Scroll down to Roseville to compare the answers of the four candidates for Rosevilles two council seats. http://extras.twincities.com/car/vote/search_result.htm - the Pioneer Press version. Scroll down to the near bottom to find Rosevilles candidates. http://rosevillereview.com/main.asp?SectionID=97&TM=16354.68 the Voters Guide published in the Roseville Review. http://www.mnsun.com/articles/2008/10/23/news/fo23rvcouncil.txt - the Voters Guide published in the Sun Focus. In addition,you canwatch the candidates submissions and the League of Women Voters debate on CTV 15. Go to http://elections.ctv15.org/ and click on Election 2008 in the middle of the page. Also, each of the candidates has a website where theyve tried to put information out for the public to consider. You can find them at: www.PustforRoseville.com http://www.votejeffjohnson.com http://www.schafferforroseville.com/ http://timjohnson4roseville.com/ The websites also have contact information so you can get a direct answer to any specific questions you might have about issues that concern you. So until weve all reviewed all this information, lets not conclude that the candidates arent working hard or that the process is flawed. Rather than sit back and complain, lets invest some of our time and find out what we need to know to elect people who will do a good job for us at the local level.
Maybe Barbara missed my point. I was not complaining that I could not find
information (I have used many of the sources she has compiled). My point was
that is it was my perception that it was harder to find with everything else
that goes on with an even year election. I am a junkie when it comes to
elections and if I perceive that it harder to cut through everything to find
these things, my concern is with the people who don't share the same passion
trying to find these resources.
With the odd-year election, there seemed to be more of a buzz in the community
about the council race. I'm not feeling it this time because the buzz is with
the presidential election and in couple of years the buzz will be the
gubernatorial election. The sources Barbara compiled seemed to be more front
and center during the odd-years, they seem buried this time.
Barbara did a service for all of us and placed all of these online sources in a
very useful posting. Using part of John's idea of a voting guide, maybe
something like this could be posted on a higher profile webpage (a city website
perhaps) or emailed so it can be of use to the larger community.
I still disagree with Mike's point about it being better to have more voters
essentially throwing darts at the ballot to pick our council members than it is
to have fewer people vote who are a little more informed on the issues. If you
have to win because of the color of your campaign sign rather than on the
issues, I'm not sure I would be feeling very good about that. Last time I
threw a dart on my ballot, I ended up helping to elect someone who I thought
turned out to be exactly the wrong person for the job.
My view is that if you choose not to vote then you have no right to complain.
But if you do vote, you have a duty to educate your yourself about the person
you are checking the box for. If you don't know who that person is and what
they represent, you should leave the box blank and trust your neighbor has done
their homework when they make their selection. That's good democracy.
Brent Engebretson
Roseville
With the election over with, I am sure that some would like to forget that a wealthy developer has now heavily invested in three of the 5 city council members campaign efforts as of 2009. Some would also probably like to forget that the size of this developers investment could have purchased a home in some local communities. Some people have asked me off forum how the community can deal with this problem. Well you have to take a look at it from two perspectives. One way is to eliminate the activity that is occurring. The second way, and most often the only legal way available, is to fight fire with fire so to speak. In other words, you often can't prohibit certain types of activities because they are categorized as free speech, but you can do other things to make their activities less influential. The obvious ways is for government to get involved in the form of publishing voter guides like they do in several states. My grandparents in Nevada get a booklet every election cycle that has information supplied by all the candidates and pro and con commentary on ballot issues. Federal Way, Washington, now home to former city manager Neal Beets, has voter guides too. (as a side note, the voters came very close to eliminating Neal's job just a few months ago at the ballot box) We can also look to our own state as an example of how government can put taxpayer money into these elections. No one can argue that having the campaign subsidy and $50 refund program has created contested elections in every legislative district statewide, even in districts that one party has sole control like the DFL in Minneapolis or the GOP is SW Minnesota. In states that do not have this program, it isn't unusual to have a situation where many if not a majority of legislative seats have no challenger. But there are additional options that are available, which is why I am writing today. Just this morning, I ran across my copies of the books called "Local Campaign Finance Reform, Case Studies, Innovations, and Model Legislation" and "Addendum to Local Campaign Finance Reform, Additional Case Studies" both published by the National Civic League and supported by the Ford Foundation. Both these books are available at the NCL website. http://ncl.org/publications/descriptions/local_campaign_finance.html http://ncl.org/publications/descriptions/local_campaign_finance_add.html They look at ideas that have been used in cities located in Utah, North Carolina, Colorado, Arkansas, Washington, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, California, and Ohio. Again, these are city programs, not state programs. I thought that some of these ideas used by other cities were good, and others disastrous. But no one says that you have to incorporate a particular cities plan in its entirety. I thought the material was valuable in getting a discussion started as to options and ideas that are available. As a side note, I certainly do not endorse every publication from this organization, like their 1950's backward thinking Model Cities Charter, but I highly recommend reading both of their Local Campaign Finance Reform books. I have found them to be very informative, strong on facts and light on opinions, so the reader can come to their own conclusions. John M. Kysylyczyn K Solutions LLC, owner 3083 Victoria Street Roseville, MN 55113 email: <email obscured> home office: (651) 484-1384 www.ksolutionsllc.com Mayor of Roseville, MN 2000-2004