Mankato Free Press Article Kerfluffle

Thursday 8/6 I was emailed requesting answers to 6 prompts to be printed in the Saturday 8/8 paper.

Here is the text of the instructions:

"Hello, The Free Press is hoping to run unedited responses to the following questions. To aid in that please respond in brief, 75-100 words, by tomorrow at 4p. Please also send a headshot to use in association with your campaign.

Thanks,"

The 6 questions are specific and a detailed rational response would be longer than 100 words, so I answered as always with practical fact based answers and cited examples. So 4 out the 6 were then severely edited the ones severely edited were 111-183 words long. They could have simply cut the response off at 100 words, but instead chopped it to the one single opening sentence. Also one of the other candidates didn't answer two questions at all, so there would have been space in the article for the full responses.

Here is a link to the Mankato Free Press Article

For those who want the full answers here they are: (to ensure I maintain my own complete honesty and integrity, no matter what the Free Press does, I left the misspelling of "hundreds" as "hundres" in this post. Even though it makes me look stupid like I can't spell hundreds, I leave it in because I am showing you the unedited answers I sent to the Mankato Free Press)

1. What experience do you plan on bringing to the seat, if elected?

I would bring a lifetime of leadership, service, and practical problem-solving to the mayor’s office. As an Army veteran, educator, counselor, and small-business owner, I have worked with people from many backgrounds, managed budgets, followed complex regulations, and been accountable for real-world results. Running a business has taught me the importance of fiscal responsibility and making every dollar count. My experience in education and public service has taught me to listen, communicate clearly, and bring people together. I would bring those skills to City Hall every day.

2. What is the biggest issue facing the city right now, in your mind?

The biggest issue facing Mankato’s City Council is the city budget. When you include all the various monies directly and indirectly controlled by the city council, including such things as water billings, parking fees, etc… the total is a bit over $162 million per year. If one assumes there are slightly over 40,000 residents of Mankato that works out to be about $4000 per resident. This begs the question “did you get your $4000 worth?” To aggravate the situation, we look at the property tax levies for 2027, ISD 77 is looking at a 10-11% increase, Blue Earth County 9.9% increase, while the city levy is only increasing 5%. This is more than the federally announced inflation rate of 2.7% which is questioned by everyone who has gone grocery shopping recently. With everyone getting squeezed financially, the city council must consider how to make life more manageable for the residents.

3. If elected, what policies or ordinances would be first on your priority list to advocate for?

The priority would be to look at the budget and see what we can do to make life more manageable for the residents. The city council is supposed to spend money on behalf of the residents. I would go through the budget line by line with the attitude of “if this were money from my own pocket, would I spend it on this item?” If I wouldn’t spend my own money on something, I shouldn’t be wasting “taxpayer’s money” on it. Every penny spent by government is spent on behalf of the residents is taken from someone, and the government usually does not have explicit consent to do this. Without explicit consent the city council should be very careful to ensure it is for the betterment of the residents.

4. What makes you a better candidate than your competition?

My background is in science. I am very analytical and look at numbers and analyze options based upon what has been shown to work in various situations by experts in the appropriate field. This means that as options are offered to the city council I will look up peer-reviewed articles on similar situations to see what researchers specializing in the field recommend and what outcomes to expect. This would give the city council an objective lens to see what would be best for the city. I also have a couple decades working as a counselor, professor, and advisor, to temper the direct objective analysis and ensure that as we are looking at the clear solution we account for the human side of the equation.

5. What is your stance on the placement of Flock cameras and other ALPR's in the city?

The city does not have a contract with Flock. There are flock cameras on private property, and those property owners have their own contracts, which the city has no involvement. The city has contracts with Axon, a competitor with Flock, that has similar capabilities to Flock. The Auto License Plate Readers (ALPRs) are a constitutional problem. The constitutional problem is that they collect data on everyone regardless of if they have committed, suspected of having committed, or completely uninvolved in a crime. This data collected by Axon is ripe for abuse which we have seen happen numerous times across the country. The city also has hundres of cameras feeding into the Milestone system throughout the city. This system is enhanced with AI with all the same constitutional issues as the axon system, but more Orwellian in that it focuses people in addition to license plates. The police claim that the footage is only recorded, and the AI enhanced search capabilities cannot work in real time, only retrospectively, but the Department of Public Safety has not been entirely transparent on the capabilities and usage.

6. What is your stance on the city's response to ICE officers in the area at the beginning of the year?

The federal government has used, and will use in the future, the supremacy clause in the constitution to override any local ordinances. This has been shown in the situation in Philadelphia, where the city passed a local ordinance in May banning federal agents from wearing masks, using unmarked cars, etc… and after the DOJ sued a federal judge blocked enforcement of the local ordinance. Thus, my stance is the city, and the local police have no authority over the ICE officers in the area.

7. What is your stance on whether a data center should be in or near Mankato or not?

The moratorium on building data centers in Mankato was written too broadly and has banned basic internet infrastructure. One example is expansion of high-capacity fiber optic trunk lines between cities and the servers needed to run them are banned. We have stifled the necessary infrastructure for companies to keep up with increased demand for internet services. I have spoken with an IT consultant for Fidium and even though the moratorium is only weeks old, they have already run into one project that has been inhibited by it. If the moratorium is extended without modification, we will start to see the lacking bandwidth manifesting as slow internet and dropped cell phone signals.