The Metropolitan Council tells us this about one of our Ramsey citizen-residents:
Natalie Haas Steffen
Metropolitan Council Member
District 9
Metropolitan Council Member Natalie Steffen was appointed to the Council by Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura in 1999, and reappointed by Governor Tim Pawlenty in March 2003. Steffen represents District 9, which includes Anoka, Coon Rapids, and nine other communities in northern Anoka County.
Before her appointment to the Metropolitan Council, Steffen was a member of the Ramsey City Council from 1997 to 1993 [sic]. She served as the Commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Human Services from 1991 to 1993, and was an Anoka County Commissioner from 1983 to 1991. She worked for the Anoka County Department of Health and Social Services from 1969 to 1983, her last position as Business Manager.
As a Council member, Steffen is a member of the Transportation and Community Development Committees. She chairs the Council’s Natural Resources Inventory Task Force, and serves as the Council’s liaison to the Highway 10 and Highway 65 Coalitions.
“One of our biggest challenges is how fast this region is developing and the need for infrastructure—roads and parks and sewers—to serve that development,” said Steffen. “Resources are very limited, and all levels of government need to work together to handle the pressures that this growth is creating.”
Steffen said she sought a second term on the Council because “ I enjoy what I’m doing, I know the territory, and there’s a lot left to be accomplished.”
Steffen has an impressive record of civic and public involvement, and continues to be active. She is currently on the College Advisory Board of Anoka-Ramsey Community College, and is also a member of the Northstar Corridor Development Authority. She has served on a variety of transportation and human services-related boards and committees. She is active in the Lord of Life Lutheran Church, the American Legion Ladies Auxiliary, the League of Women Voters and other local organizations.
When Natalie is not working for the public good, she enjoys spending time with her two children, eight stepchildren, and 22 grandchildren and step-grandchildren. She likes going to a variety of music performances, from opera to the blues. She also enjoys visiting museums, and she is an avid flower gardener.
To contact Natalie, you may call 763-753-4298, or e-mail:
natalie.steffen@metc.state.mn.us
We all can be thankful for Ms. Steffen's dutifully meeting her Met. Council duty of hearing what a community within the Council's jurisdiction thinks and feels; doing so by her repeated, steadfast, regular attendance at RAMSEY3 sessions so she can hear from all of us and take our passions and worries to heart.
That way she can better make decisions at the Met. Council level; decisions that affect us greatly, as she continues her stint of being our public servant.
Some may say they've not seen Ms. Steffen at RAMSEY3. That is a tribute to her studied keeping of a very low profile - a near invisibilty while quietly listening and absorbing all the ideas - so silent and observant that she, herself, goes almost unnoticed, session after session.
Moreover, Ms Steffen understands "old Ramsey."
"Old Ramsey" has many established neighborhoods. Each with its own character and a sense of local community built up over time. Each neighborhood has its own housing mood and integrity - ranging from some with affordable homes built in the 1970's on attractively sized lots, to Northfork.
Ms. Steffen lives in one such neighborhood. A neighborhood distant from the hustle and bustle of Hwy 10 and the tracks, and she fits quietly in her own neighborhood while choosing not to live in a newly built townhome project.
Instead, she lives in a very nice unpretentious 1971 home, on a large 1.45 acre fully-treed lot, with fire wood aplenty for the crackling winter fireside times, sitting next to the fire place blaze to enjoy hot chocolate and a nice novel, all in an older settled Rasmey neighborhood with character - one built before most of the dirt roads ever were first tarred and long before the landfill ceased operating. Not a new townhome but a home reflective of a more modest, toned-down and unaggressive Ramsey past, where "more home for the dollar" could be purchased than closer-in to downtown - a home assessed, land and structure, for less than $300,000 and a home free of expensive city water and Met. Council hookup costs, a home with a private well and private sewer -&- septic. Without any townhome presence within miles.
The Steffen home is big enough for visits from twenty-two grandchildren, others paying homage, attendees at councilmember campaign fund raisers, or people otherwise visiting to chat and chart courses.
We can see there's even a place for a cute red VW beetle in the driveway. Clearly, it is a pleasant place in which to live a quiet and pleasant life; and when choosing for herself and not others, Ms. Steffen has not chosen this:
None of us should ever forget the leading advocacy and support Ms. Steffen has consistently given, from the outset, to the Ramsey Town Center "dream," a dream with a reality some have compaed to the simplicity of "baking a cake" while Ms. Steffen at the same time cautioned against the worry, somebody could lay down a different dream on you.
We should always recall her avid co-participation with Mr. Feges, the mayor, and other key dignataries, in the LLC's well-hyped September 2003 groundbreaking tent celebration and ceremony, door prizes included.
With school children on the agenda even, the Wayback Machine remembers, and so should we, the thinking, hoping RAMSEY3 Ramsey residents.
Now --- that "dream" should fittingly be tempered and perhaps down-sized with a bit of reality mixed in. The dignataries' mood should be one of openness to newer different thoughts, the concerns and dreams of others besides the regular city hall crowd of insiders. All others who want a voice and who take their time to be at RAMSEY3 sessions as Ramsey citizens deserve to be listened to by the insider crowd, and not be ignored or deliberately stood up by officeholders whose duty, or sense of duty, should compel their due and regular attendance at every RAMSEY3 session, to quietly listen and absorb the ideas - and the dreams - of others. Others besides the insider cadre, others with wisdom and personal visions to share.
That is how accomodation and consensus can arise, and how hubris and error are best avoided.
Put another way, this following sobering view of reality should chill and quell the zeal of anyone who would want to dictate answers for the City's entire population and the entire 2008 Comprehensive Plan. Based on past track record where the camera does not lie, there should be more than a deaf ear turned to us and our notions of prudent, duly exuberant real estate master planning, fitting and understated promotion efforts, and sane city tax-and-bond allocation decisions.
Beyond that, this just in from the statewide press:
Ramsey / Charges stem from probe of project
Ex-Town Center figure implicated in separate matter
BY DAVE ORRICK
Pioneer Press
TwinCities.com-Pioneer Press
Article Last Updated:07/20/2007 10:55:30 PM CDT
The former chief financial officer for the troubled Ramsey Town Center development in Anoka County has been charged with lying to federal investigators about a Columbia Heights development, according to charges made public Friday.
The federal felony charge against James W. Heisel is the first to stem from an IRS and U.S. Postal Service criminal investigation into the Town Center and its late developer, Bruce Nedegaard, according to the charges, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis.
According to the charges, Heisel lied to investigators earlier this year about altering financial records, at Nedegaard's direction, about "bogus purchase agreements" to ease the sale of New Heights Development, a Nedegaard company that was struggling to complete Grand Central Lofts in Columbia Heights. Neither Heisel, who was an accountant for New Heights as well as CFO for the Town Center, nor his attorney returned phone calls seeking comment Friday.
The charges do not allege any impropriety connected with the Town Center, but many of the same people are involved.
Nedegaard was forced into bankruptcy in November and died of cancer days later, [...] His most ambitious endeavor was the envisioned $1.3 billion, 322-acre, 2,800-home Town Center along U.S. 10 in western Anoka County. Earlier this month, the Pioneer Press chronicled how the project's collapse included questionable financing, hundreds of thousands of dollars in Swiss bank accounts and federal investigators looking for answers.
Nearly half of the land remains undeveloped and slated for a sheriff's foreclosure auction next week.
Some should reflect. Possibly, just possibly, the general citizenry might know best, and might not have been drawn so far into the hype, irrational exuberance and misadventures that appear to have ensnarled our city's fiduciaries, those entrusted to protect and not waste or endanger the public fisc and public interests, when serving as elected, retained, and appointed office holders, in Ramsey or on Met. Council.