Issues

Transparent decision-making that engages residents in the issues that impact their lives.

Vision St. Louis Park has helped our community grow and thrive, soliciting and embracing the best ideas from our wonderfully talented and smart residents.   This Vision lays the direction for how we as a community want to continue to grow.  Bringing divergent viewpoints forward ensures that decisions are made with full information and an understanding of their impacts.  Together we can create better solutions than any one of us can come up with alone.

Smart, human-scale development.

Resident-driven planning has resulted in award-winning developments that are in line with the character of our community.  We need to continue this process to ensure that future developments blend in with our neighborhoods and add value to our community.  We need to work to attract and maintain our vibrant business community.  And we need sidewalks for people and paths for bikes to provide safe access to parks, schools, businesses, and to our future light rail stops.

Fiscally responsible city government.

The City of St. Louis Park maintains a AAA bond rating, despite facing the same economic and fiscal consequences that other Minnesota communities also face.  This means that the city saves tens of thousands of dollars in the normal course of financing basic city services.  We need to continue this long-range financial discipline to ensure our ability to deliver quality city services.

Values.

With the budget challenges facing our city, I believe it is important that increases in service costs or reductions in services overall do not disproportionately impact our most vulnerable community members, such as retirees, disabled individuals and families already living on the edge.   The amazing support our community provides to organizations such as STEP (St. Louis Park Emergency Program) demonstrates how we share these values of taking care of each other.

Creative collaboration.

Creative problem-solving and cooperative planning will ensure that our entire community is moving forward effectively in the same direction. The city must work together with the schools and with the business community in planning our community’s future.  In addition, opportunities for collaboration that could create efficiencies and economies of scale in delivering services should be explored with other communities.

Safe, green city for our children.

St. Louis Park has received numerous awards for its supportive environment in which to raise children – it’s why I moved here to raise my own children!   I’m so proud of our Children First Initiative, which provides a framework for involving the entire community in raising healthy children – it really does “take a village to raise a child”.  Our responsibility is to make sure our City’s policies and programs support green technologies, keep our community safe and affordable, and ensure that our children will someday be able to come home to St. Louis Park and raise their own children in the same healthy, supportive, and quality community.