Hendriksen is running for the seat Dennis Berg held because he thinks positive protective steps to manage growth and rate of change are possible in the next few years that will impact peoples' lifestyle enjoyment over the next 20 years of county government.
Hendriksen wants to be a part of shaping the next twenty years, and you should too, with your vote.
The county board has a great impact on our day-to-day life, yet elections are often decided by a handful of voters.
Often vote margins between candidates can be razor-thin differences. It is important, then, that every voter should know the choices and vote every contest from a fully informed perspective.
Information is available, links are given at the end of the post.
I support Terry Hendriksen in the District 1 contest because he is not a lifelong politician looking to complete a legacy.
Because he has no agenda other than representing District 1.
Because he is not viewing the Anoka County commissioner position as a springboard to launch into higher office to advance a political career. It is the only seat he will seek, without ambitions toward the State legislature or metro-wide appointment.
Because he is not aligned with any special interests, individuals or groups.
Because he has financed his campaign in a way beholden to no one but himself and the citizens of District 1.
Because he is not an insider of any political party, or any faction within a party, but instead is independent.
Because he never has sought any partisan office where he would be declaring himself in favor of one party or another, and has no present intent to ever do so.
Because he counseled caution and not the faulty and discredited headlong plunge into Town Center growth advocacy shown by others without due caution toward downside risks.
Because he would not have voted to pay as much as was paid to bankers when the current council of Ramsey decided to buy the Ramsey Town Center. He will truly be a vigilant commissioner against waste, not one merely calling himself that while spending millions of public money on failure remediation, and then calling it a "success."
And finally, because I know personally how he continuously in years in Ramsey fought against questionable practices, special interests, and conflicted land dealings advanced by people sitting at the Ramsey council table and ostensibly representing the public's interest.
If you agree that Hendriksen is a good choice in the August 10 primary for the District 1 County Board vacancy, please take the time to say that to two of your friends. People talking to one another is what counts.
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Now, agree or disagree, but please, before voting, have a look at online information that will prove helpful to your decision making.
An informed active electorate will make better choices than having indifferent voters showing up at the polls to vote in the governor's primary without having a sound belief and knowledge about local office vacancies.
ABC Newspapers, presents information about each of the four District 1 Board candidates at this link. It is a compilation of candidate prepared responses to press-prepared questions served in advance.
In alphabetical order, Star Tribune presents candidate prepared information:
Hendriksen, this link.
Hillebregt, this link.
Look, this link.
Steffen, this link.
Look and Hendriksen both have campaign website links given in the Strib items linked to above. My understanding is that Steffen has no website going into the primary, and that Hillebregt has begun one, although Strib reported none at the time the item went to press:
vote-for-andy.com
The other two:
Hendriksen, electterry.com
Look, mattlook2010.com
As presently online, Hillebregt and Hendriksen post phone numbers and I know Terry has said publicly that he welcomes people calling with questions or problems to discuss. Andy appears to be equally accessible. Look has a "contact me" web-form you can use, and his phone number, I believe, is elsewhere on the web, City of Ramsey, with an email address.
Hendriksen --- terry@electterry.com --- 763-427-8352 (evenings)
Hillebregt --- andy@vote-for-andy.com --- 612-723-0772
In earlier Anoka County Union reporting (not online); Steffen gave contact info:
763-753-4298 --- nataliesteffen2010@yahoo.com
For Matt Look, similarly via Anoka County Union, not online:
612-558-9111 --- mattlook2010@gmail.com
Star Tribune, this link, overlaps with and repeats most of the individual link info separately noted above, in reporting about all open County Board seats for which there will be a primary election, with reporting by board district and in alphabetical order for each district, with Strib generically reporting:
Five of the seven seats on the Anoka County board are up for election this year. Three races involve contested primaries, in which the top two vote-getters on Aug. 10 will advance to the Nov. 2 general election. Four candidates are running in District 1 for the seat held by Board Chairman Dennis Berg, who is retiring at the end of his current four-year term. Five people are running in District 2, where Commissioner Dick Lang also is retiring, and five are running in District 5, which Scott LeDoux resigned in May because of illness; two years remain in that term.
Here is information provided by the candidates to the Star Tribune for the primary Voter's Guide that is posted online at startribune.com. For space, the candidates' endorsements have not been included.
To see these and entries for other races, go to www.startribune.com/politics and scroll down to "Who's running in the Aug. 10 primary.
I point that out because the current online version begins with the District 1 individuals, and after Steffen as last in alphabetical order for District 1, Strib puts those paragraphs, as if a formatting error was made within the online reporting.
I leave things there, for readers, except to add that one District 1 candidate, Steffen, has sought endorsements while the remaining three have not. That is clear from the individualized Strib items. The names offered appear to me to be a tie-in to an established Anoka County old-boy network that has often been criticized as a de facto ruling elite. It is what I characterize as a group-membership intent on preserving "the way we do things here." Certainly some names prominent in that category have withheld endorsement of anyone, but I would favor the papers not reporting endorsements as if important. I am less concerned with who likes a candidate and has an existing friendship or basis for respect than what the record of each candidate is, and what each says about himself or herself or about other candidates, motivation to run, etc. To me that is what matters. And I realize that means my support of Hendriksen should not influence anyone beyond looking at what I say the record is to confirm it as true or false; and what he, himself, says in comparison to the others, all of which is set out in the linked items. For disclosure, my friendship with Hendriksen began out of respect for his opposition to conflict of interest in the Town Center real estate dealings part of that promotion, after the 2000 election, and I did not know him at all before the November 2002 election, first meeting him in 2003.
NOTE: If any reader discovers error in the post, mistyping a phone number or email address, or has other cause to weigh in, please leave a comment or send an email. Comments are moderated to prevent comment spam, things I find offensive and of no merit, and to avoid links being left in any comments which might be to malware sites.
____________UPDATE____________
Pioneer Press has coverage this link. There it is reported:
District 1 / Anoka County board chair Dennis Berg's departure has left four candidates vying for his seat in a district that represents Ramsey, St. Francis, Bethel, Nowthen and parts of Andover, Anoka and Oak Grove.
A struggling development in Ramsey is the focus of the debate between two candidates.
Former Ramsey City Council member Terry Hendriksen is critical of fellow candidate Natalie Steffen, saying that as a Metropolitan Council member, she pushed the troubled Ramsey Town Center project through.
The Town Center project, recently renamed COR, was supposed to be a $1.3 billion mix of homes, shops and businesses that would create a heart of the city in Ramsey. But the scaled-back development has met financial and developmental setbacks, including criminal charges against three of its main financial backers. [Also, the key appraiser in a kick-back scheme with one of the bankers laid out his records for follow up investigation before hanging himself in his bedroom closet. Also, there were two anonymous Swiss bank accounts nobody, to my knowledge, has been able to unravel, as to who funded them and who the beneficiaries were.]
"I want us to recover," Hendriksen said. "I want to support Ramsey in what it needs to move forward."
Steffen said her role with Ramsey Town Center was limited — as a liaison between the Met Council and the city. She said it was the city of Ramsey that decided to apply for a Met Council grant for the project.
"I did not initiate the grant," said Steffen, noting that Hendriksen was on the council at the time. "I was not on the Ramsey City Council when Ramsey Town Center went through."
Well, my memory does not fade with age, and there are items of tangible evidence that indicate that Steffen misrecollects her forceful presence in things that she exercised fairly consistently, from her Met Council station.
First there is the "our Dream Team" thing, dated Oct. 2002, immediately before the 2002 election, which was scrubbed subsequently from the Met Council website:
The word "our" is inescapable in accompanying images of Steffen and Elvig, who was challenging Hendriksen for the same seat on the council that election and getting publicized with Steffen on the Met Council's website. It says "our," and not "their" and the wording is inescapable.
Second, Steffen was chief muck-a-muck at the autumn 2004 groundbreaking of her dream Town Center opportunity grant project, this screenshot of the WayBack Machine's archive of the failed Nedegaard firm's propaganda website. Click to enlarge and read:
Billion dollar urban village. It says ---
Third, the Steffen hand in control and its indifference to local desire or hardship is exemplified with her "get the pipes in the ground" hard hearted mentality and insensitivity to the extreme cost and assessment sacrifice citizens might be forced to face when forced hookup to Met Council sewer system points is required, it being evidenced in Ramsey spring of 2004 minutes:
A further indication Steffen was the key pushing factor; the one time I met with John Feges of the Nedegaard LLC and Ms. Barbara Dunlay of the PR firm Feges and Nedegaard used. We met at Nedegaard's office site, where John Feges indicated he had looked at the site previously, "And I said that's nice farmland but $30,000 to $40,000 is overpriced." What he indicated to me as the decisive factor changing things was that "Natalie Steffen and Met Council designated the land as a transit oriented smart growth opportunity site," and while I would accord Ms. Steffen more credibility than Mr. Feges per any disputed facts, his statement was consistent with Nedegaard's plunge for that land at over $90,000 per acre. Money talks, and does so consistently with the prior presented evidence.
Steffen either misrecollects, or is being overly modest, now, about the strength and scope and sheer power of her role as she played it.
I am told she was proud as a peacock taking credit for things at the groundbreaking, before things went splat. That, again, is the Ramsey Town Center groundbreaking event she chaired due to her pivotal role in the thing being where it is, as it is. I declined to go. Others went.
Steffen's role is clear.
Now, lest I forget, a fourth and final documentary set of pages, council minutes from 2001, showing Steffen calling the shots and Hendriksen trying to preserve land for places to work.
Hendriksen was protective of the land bounded by Ramsey, Armstrong, the tracks, and Hwy. 116, prior to a "Calthorp study," by that California firm, funded by Met Council - NOT - by Ramsey.
(Note also, that is the same Calthorp study where the first item above highlights Steffen's speechifying at the report's unvailing. Her show. Not Hendriksen's. Not anyone noted by her employer's website, but her, Natalie Steffen.)
Go back and read it there. Then read of it within the several pages unequivocally showing Hendriksen protective of land contiguous with the band of places to work reaching without interuption between the tracks and Highway 116, from the Anoka-Ramsey border to the east side of Ramsey Blvd.
Hendriksen wanted preservation of contiguous job sites. The Met Council cramdown position was it had to be Natalie's way or no way.
The paper trail does not misrecollect or shade truth.
Steffen did a cramdown on the question of mixed use status for the land that now is the failed Ramsey Town Center, while Hendriksen tried to save it as a jobs-only development site to grow high quality Anoka County jobs without a need to commute long distances.
These are important proof of history pages. Please read them before making a ballot choice. Hendriksen wanted the Northstar stop and surrounding housing [mixed use] to be constrained west of Armstrong Blvd., with the industrial corridor east of Ramsey continuing where Steffen wanted to force train and housing to be built.
The record is crystal clear. Back in 2001 Hendriksen was saying protect the job base and Steffen was saying do it my way. It fits hand in glove with this post. Those realizing big time land profits doing it Steffen's way display her campaign signage. Many others are out of work or drive quite far for their jobs. There is the dense housing Hendriksen anticipated, there is a vast middle emptiness, there are no good jobs but clerking etc., there is a ramp in the middle of nowhere, and the responsibility is clear so that accountability should not be allowed to be escaped. Steffen is responsible. Steffen should be held accountable.
Like it or love it but don't try to BS out of it. It is as it is.
The tangible record does not lie, and should jog uncertain personal recollections to a truthful reawareness of past facts.
_____________FURTHER UPDATE____________
More irrefutable paper trail evidence. Saying above that Steffen showed "indifference to local desire or hardship is exemplified with her 'get the pipes in the ground' hard hearted mentality and insensitivity to the extreme cost and assessment sacrifice citizens might be forced to face," is not a contention without past evidence - and it reaches back to 1996. Yet it probably is an overstatement for the present; one I would qualify.
Hendriksen then sponsored and worked hard to achieve protective charter language that is now the bedrock protection in Ramsey for homeowners against catastrophic family costs of forced hookups to Met Council sewer system links, via SAC [sewer access charges] that would attach as assessments against homes. Steffen's spouse [Bernie Steffen] who died in 2002 was then head of Ramsey's charter commission, and he championed a delay-it half-measure.
Natalie Steffen, then on the County Board I believe, circulated a letter against the Hendriksen citizens' petition version, and in favor of the commission-Bernie Steffen "delaying assessment" version, allegedly as chair of a "Citizens for Fairness," which group to my knowledge had not been heard of before or since the single anti-referendum letter went out.
Here are screenshots of canvassing board [election] results showing what citizens decisively favored. And the two versions are part of this set of minutes so you judge whether or not there was a "hard hearted mentality and insensitivity" in the watered-down and defeated "Citizens for Fairness" language in comparison to what Hendriksen and the signing and supporting citizens behind the referendum sought for the community [red text added for clarity]:
There is a government-populace balance to this, and it is clear that Steffen favored the government's powers to assess homeowners while Hendriksen favored the populace being free of forced costly government measures. In going to Met Council, Steffen continued her support for the SAC policies that the referendum vote had proven unpopular. Tensions between Steffen on Met Council and Hendriksen on city council continued after Steffen's 1999 appointment to the metro body, particularly regarding comprehensive planning - where Hendriksen wanted less centralized mandates about how localities should grow.
In fairness, people can change positions and beliefs with time. Steffen's "pipes in the ground and let people decide if they want to hook up" position in the one UPDATE page is a softening of the Citizens for Fairness "give them only delay as relief" position she championed in 1996. Presumably that would mean she acknowledges there should be neither forced hookups, nor any forced "imrpovement" assessments imposed whether homeowners hook up or not. After all, it is the assessment that is the hardship, not whether staying on well and septic service, or connecting to distributed services. That would be a wash either way for homeowners already having working satisfactory private systems as long as there were no assessment. It's the assessment that hurts. But it is how Met Council makes money to service its debt. That and monthly charges.
Given that change "let people decide if they want to connect" and doing a leapfrog extension of sewer and water beyond the areas where conflict might have happened if a MUSA line extension approach had been maintained; I am backing away from "indifferent and hard hearted." Those words arguably might have applied earlier, but the more recent statement can be read as wanting to square the growth-oriented pipes in the ground aim, with desires of existing homeowners on acre lots to not be imosed upon. Were there some way to ensure that policy into the near-term and mid-term future, things would be more comforting for existing county homeowners having private services for their homes.