Yesterday, near to county hall closing time, I was at the county election office when Terry Hendriksen and Becky Fink filed candidacy papers for the District 1 and District 5 seats, respectively. Jerry Newton also filed for reelection to his House District 49B seat in the legislature.
It was not a group thing planned in advance, merely a coincidence.
At the time, Julie Trude had previously filed for the District 5 seat [the one Scott LaDoux is vacating because of his ALS medical situation worsening].
The election office keeps a binder book of filings it receives. It is a public record open for inspection. The practice appears to be putting items atop others in the binder, as recieved, forming a list with the earliest filers' papers lower in the book.
For the seat affecting Ramsey most directly, the First District, in descending order in the book,
Terry Hendriksen
Terri Cleveland
Matt Look
Natalie Steffen [aka Natalie Haas-Steffen].
By now there may be others.
I only noted those two as having filed for District 5, and the four as having filed for District 1, when I was there.
Also, I may have the temporal order of filing reversed for Cleveland and Look.
However, Steffen filed earliest. Poised for the move apparently.
I have no direct cause to believe Berg might have privately given notice to some before publicly announcing his intent to not seek reelection, yet it is conceivable, and it is interesting as a coincidence to see the Steffen name first in line.
It made me wonder. With her recent track record at Met Council, the water adequacy doubts, her role over Ramsey Town Center, and her driving sewer and water comp plan expansion thinking within the county, (even beyond Ramsey into City of Nowthen, Oak Grove and Ham Lake), where there was a clearly mixed reception and some substantial hostility; I was surprised that she'd make that move from Met Council back to seeking a job in the county.
I doubt she can expect people will overlook such things. She has to anticipate questions will arise over her role in leading the promotion of the failed Town Center fiasco, and in aggressively wanting to lay pipe in the ground hither and yon with the people then having to deal with it.
She is on record with the Town Center being her dream, not necessarily Ramsey's, with an understanding that some can force their dreams on others, (and ditto for nightmares); this link.
One of my favorite colloquies in all the multitude of City of Ramsey Minutes is from a work session in April, 2004, when Jerry Zimmerman, always a gentleman and one of the best public servants Ramsey ever had, was noted as saying, "is it a really good idea to be developing in such a 'leap frog' fashion" with regard to what ultimately was abandonment of a MUSA line concept so that gun club ownership interests and John Peterson (wanting high density housing in his cornfield project on the west side of Nowthen Blvd. just south of Trott Brook) could advance development ambition in a non-contiguous manner.
The question was specifically raised regarding rate of growth, and the debatable wisdom of "leapfroging" it well north of where Sewer-water had been, at a point where Town Center build-out had not been achieved to any real extent. A question about over-building, about possible irrational exuberance.
Minutes reflect, "Ms. Haas Steffen replied that the City has developed in a "leap frog" fashion and they can't change that the only answer is to get the pipe through and let people decide if they want to hook up. Secondly the issue of what it states to the Town Center; she personally contacted the developers of the Town Center they were not upset by it at all."
Wow.
This hands on participation in detail of town center then, and at other stages, was a Steffen hallmark. She, more than anyone else. was the project pied piper, leading the children of the town astray and into "dream team" mischief and failure.
When there was the tent show groundbreaking at town center, she claimed her "credit" as it appeared due; although the kinship of this child is now being either willfully ignored, or perhaps even denied.
I recall Steffen, along with James Norman before his China junket, along with those standing to make a land-profit killing, as the cabal that collectively propagandized and pushed and pushed and pushed the thing into being.
We know what's there now; and we should never forget that whether the entire county may fare poorly from flawed decision making in the future could depend on this year's ballot box result.
__________UPDATE_____________
ABC Newspapers, Peter Bodley, today reports information online; this link. No excerpt. Have a look.
_________FURTHER UPDATE__________
Shamed, chastised and repentant - I erred. Matt Look beat Natalie to the filing window.
Sorry about that.
I heard no news about anyone waiting from the night before in a sleeping bag at the county hall door. Other than that lack of enthusiasm, it is like a fishing license.