Even though in year’s past I have interviewed candidates for Burnsville City Council, due to a variety of reasons including having to spend entirely too much time conducting the interviews and having a new baby, I haven’t done so this year. However, SunThisweek conducted some short interviews for the candidates including those running for mayor. While the questions themselves weren’t at all interesting in the least, Mayor Elizabeth Kautz’s answer to the final question, “4. Assess the work of the current mayor and council. What is your leadership style?” was hilarious.
From the article:
I am very proud of the work of the Mayor and council. I am a collaborative, caring, fiscally responsible leader focused on good decisions for Burnsville. I make business decisions rather than ideological decisions. Shifting paradigms in this global economy require the use of our experience, networks and relationships to attract business to Burnsville so that our citizens will have available jobs and live self-sustaining lives in a well-run, safe and beautiful city.
1. Collaboration
- Historically, Mayor Elizabeth Kautz only collaborates with those who agree with her. Because her opinions have prevailed due to having a guaranteed vote in deadbeat Dan Gustafson and a nearly rock solid supporter with swing vote Mary Sherry, she hasn’t had to show her true colors when she is challenged.
2. Caring
- This is a completely irrelevant quality for a city-level politician but her fake smiles and penchant for scratching the back of her campaign supporters shows who she really cares about.
3. Fiscal Responsibility
She has voted to raise taxes EACH AND EVERY YEAR since she was last elected mostly to help pay off the debt she happily accumulated by shoving through the BPAC and make sure the city doesn’t demoralize the staff while they demoralize their residents she cares for so very deeply.
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Elizabeth Kautz has proven over the last four years that she is not any of the three things she chose to claim she was. She has ALWAYS voted to raise taxes and increase spending on frivolous items including the BPAC and the HOC instead of funding public safety properly. She spent a good bit of her time in the last four years collaborating with other mayors as the President of the US Conference of Mayors instead of collaborating with the people she should have been.
While I have no faith in any of her opponents in 2012, Elizabeth Kautz is not a viable candidate for the Mayor of Burnsville. She has proven time and time again over her entire tenure that she is not willing to be the leader the city really requires to do the right thing. She needs to be removed from office in 2012 but based on the resumes and interview question responses, it’s quite unlikely it will happen in 2012. Hopefully her age will play a role in ending the pain by 2016.
What do you think about Elizabeth Kautz’s answers to SunThisweek‘s questions? Do you agree that she’s caring, fiscally conservative and works collaboratively with those on the council and in the city? Are you concerned about the qualifications and answers to the questions provided by her challengers? What qualities would you expect the Mayor of Burnsville to have? What’s most important to you as a citizen of Burnsville or resident of Dakota County? Whatever you have to say about this one go ahead and comment on as I’d love to hear what you have to say.
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August 10th, 2012 at 8:07 am
Some people will say anything to get elected, that being said none of the other candidates really impress me. I’ll probably write my own name in as I just can’t vote for her or any of the other candidates. HEAVY sigh.
August 10th, 2012 at 8:28 am
Well stated, and I totally agree!!!!!!!!
August 10th, 2012 at 9:22 am
Bill, you have expressed the sentiment of many Burnsville residents. This individual, along with her “reciprocating back scratchers” have wasted millions and millions of taxpayer dollars for self glorifying projects. Her “business decisions!?!?” The HOC is a failure!! The PAC is a failure! . We can’t forget her cronies on the school board who created the now defunct Envision magnet school…… another source of wasted taxpayer money for the PAC. The streets around her HOC condo have all been replaced while the lowly taxpayers dodge around their neighborhood pot holes. Where are our street light flower pots. The only thing that she has done for our neighborhood is to open up our dead end street to the trail system which now provides an endless supply of front yard leashed and unleashed defecating dogs. I’m tired of cleaning up other peoples dog shit!!
August 10th, 2012 at 10:03 am
If you don’t like the current leaders, you should vote them out (provided there is a candidate that provides at least a chance of being better than what is currently there). While writing in one’s own name symbolically indicates everyone else is a joke, why not apply to run the next time so that your name is on the ballot for everyone else to vote for? I would vote for many of the people on this forum over those currently in office. At the city level it seems like a big part of getting elected is name recognition, so a few strategically places signs could swing the election.
In this case, it seems like there may be a candidate which dislikes the BPAC as much as many of us do and has a chance (based on previous performance) to dethrone the current Mayor, so I have a desire to vote for that person.
August 10th, 2012 at 10:14 am
There are a couple of reasons why someone may not choose this avenue:
1. Time investment required.
2. Lack of knowledge — something which most challengers do not have when they apply to run for Council/Mayor. On average it takes 6-12 months of someone to passively participate through viewing of council meetings and reading background agenda information to gain a viable conceptual model of how the system works and how all the moving parts join up together before they can speak intelligently about the issues currently on the table. (See #1).
3. Knowing that they cannot, as a single individual, effectively change the way the system works to meet the demands they have set.
4. Financial investment (see #1): including having business partners or others willing and able to get a campaign to work effectively against an incumbent who has already pandered to enough people throughout their time on the council to get the dollars required to unseat someone who has had at least 3+ years of backscratching to get where they need to be.
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There are more but those are some of the main points. However, if you’re able, willing and knowledgeable I certainly suggest to those people to run for office. It wouldn’t be hard to unseat an incumbent if you have the four things listed above. Unfortunately all of the challengers I have interviewed over the years make some real big mistakes:
1. Misunderstanding the role the City Council/Mayor has in the political process (e.g. believing the City Council controls the School Board or plays some pivotal role in its operation).
2. Settling on one single issue to hinge their entire campaign upon (i.e. BPAC).
3. Only being there to unseat the incumbent rather than offering some real solutions on how to affect positive change within the community.
August 10th, 2012 at 10:31 am
Bill makes some great points here. I haven’t taken a good look at all of the candidates for this year yet since candidate profiles don’t usually come out until close to the election (which probably means they’re all out now and I need to get moving…). That said, I generally haven’t been thrilled with the options I’ve had in the past.
I’ve been asked by a number of residents and a few councilmembers why I haven’t run. Here are my primary reasons:
1. Time investment. I’m not as worried about the time required to be in office, I’m worried about the time required to run for office.
2. Lack of community connections. Unless you have a really strong base of community connections – involvement in a civic organization, previous experience serving on a city commission, grew up in the community, etc. – you barely have a chance of winning. If you do win, it will be because you sacrificed every single spare minute for months pounding on every door in the city to introduce yourself to all of those people you don’t know already.
3. Lack of a solid platform. Sure, I think my views are better than anyone else’s. Everyone thinks they’re right all of the time. But tell me why I should vote for you. I rarely see candidates with a solid platform, especially at the city level. The more I follow city government, the more I’ve developed a pretty good core that I could potentially structure a campaign around, but that takes time to develop. You don’t just wake up one day and decide to run because “it’s time for me to give back to my community.” I don’t think that’s the best approach. You need to have an agenda, a list of things you want to accomplish or a list of strong policy reasons for why you’re running.
4. A relatively short time in the community. I’ve been a Burnsville resident for 4.5 years. I think it’s best to have at least 5 years in a community before running for office. That’s not a requirement, of course, and I can see exceptions to the rule. But I’ve seen so many people run for office after less than 2 years in the community. People want to put someone in office who they know is invested in the community.
The list could be longer but that’s my short list.
August 11th, 2012 at 6:30 am
Will:
What makes the HOC a “failure?” Be specific. A failure for taxpayers? For businesses? Both? Either? What are your metrics? What was the mix of local and regional (Met Council) taxpayer funding for HOC parkland and infrastructure? Aren’t there thriving businesses there? More than there used to be? Do you remember how it looked 15 years ago, with a shitty liquor store and a couple of gas stations? Have you compared tax collections then, with public investments since then, with tax collections now? Again, metrics on what makes “failure.”
The Nicollet strip LOOKS a whole lot better now. Would you prefer old Bumper’s (they probably would have abandoned that crappy building), two old gas stations, a crummy liquor store building (since upgraded) and an outdated office/retail complex?
How much did the mayor have to do with Envision? Really? How do you KNOW who on the school board were her cronies? Explain their interaction.
Are you aware that most of the Envision money (and money for the other, existing magnets in 191) is state money? Was there something harmful in having mostly state money being paid as rent to the PAC?
Do you really think the MAYOR opened up your dead-end dog-shit street?
I’m not a shill for the mayor, but your embodiment of your every complaint in the mayor is hopelessly naive.
She was, of course, the primary backer of the PAC. So if you don’t like that, have at her.
August 11th, 2012 at 8:13 am
cripes,
While I know you were responding to Will, considering the private sector’s crown jewel of the HOC (Grande Market Square) is in foreclosure, probably due to the fact that it’s mainly empty and the various condos around the area are also empty/unsold, I would be willing to bet that’s why he believes it’s a failure.
Of course the BPAC would have been vacant long ago had it been actually built and operated with private dollars but it’s still going and losing hundreds of thousands of dollars a year due to ever-rising taxes used to offset losses in other areas as well as an influx of private investment from Burnsville’s favorite cronies (Frontier, Pepsi, Rixmann — all of whom want the City to continue doing things for them).
August 12th, 2012 at 6:17 am
Bill:
Condo occupancy has risen off the market bottom in the HOC. I don’t have figures at hand, so I’ll refrain from trying to further quantify that statement. You didn’t attempt to quantify your statement, either.
The apartment component of Grande Market is a smashing success, and has been since it opened. That’s why Sherman invested in it.
Then there’s CVS. And the Cub mall (I don’t know the name) is very successful. The bank building with the diagonal parking in front appears to be doing fine.
So then: The city takes steps (chiefly TIF and Met Council-funded land purchase) to revitalize an area that was moribund (you’d agree with that, wouldn’t you, or haven’t you lived around here long enough?)
By any measure — foreclosures and vacancies notwithstanding — that commercial area is vigorous with economic activity, and tax collections there are up compared with the gas station-Kmart-Bumper’s days.
There’s something WRONG with that? Would you prefer an empty Kmart ocean of concrete, a shitty fucking Texaco station and an early-60′s era obsolete commercial building?
Is all the renewed activity negated simply because Grande Market Square is in foreclosure? Does GMS not still pay property taxes? (I assume they’re at least tallied and liened on the property.)
I challenge Will (and you) to quantify how vacancies and foreclosures in a revitalized, high-traffic area of the city that was going nowhere COSTS city taxpayers any money compared with the low-tax environment that existed before.
If a redevelopment project doesn’t outperform the larger marketplace, is it somehow illegitimate? Maybe George Sherman should get the blame.
Will’s embodiment of his every complaint about the city in the mayor remains hopelessly naive. Regarding HOC redevelopment, only Crichton and his blue-haired brigade were demonstrably against it.
As for the PAC, have at her, as I wrote before.
August 12th, 2012 at 6:39 am
I see what you did there.
August 12th, 2012 at 11:00 pm
cripes, you’re either a Kautz Krony (definite shill) or know absolutely nothing about the reality of Burnsville government. Choosing the latter, you obviously have never been involved in local government citizen committees, attended council meetings, brought issues before the city council, know personally, the private investors who bailed out of the BPAC or know personally the private investors who lost their ass in the HOC. It’s ignorant individuals that make for impossible dialog! You talk about Grand Market being full. Did you know that over 40+% of Grand Market is taxpayer financed low income housing? Did you know that Kautz, without council approval, secured additional funding for Commons Park which created this amount of low income housing for Grand Market? Did you know that city staff admitted that this was done only for the money and not for equal housing?
You mentioned the city received state aid……………… Do you understand that this IS taxpayer money??????????
Regarding the trail system……LITTLE TO NO RESIDENT INPUT!!
cripes, believe it or not, ignorance is NOT bliss!!
August 13th, 2012 at 10:31 am
Yes the Nicollet Strip looks nice, but I do not visit it frequently. Most often I only visit as I have found it faster to drive on Nicollet than to drive on 35W during the morning commute. I wonder how much of the rest of the “high traffic” in this area is people passing through as these streets are far less busy than the other options.
I don’t see the fixing up of downtown providing much for the city as a whole especially related to bringing in more business nor improving our city’s image. When I tell people I am from Burnsville, they never have mentioned HOC or BPAC as something that they think of when they think of our city. I would think more people are coming into our city to visit Costco, Target, Buck Hill, and other areas surrounding Burnsville Center than to visit downtown. Why not spend more money in that area on facilities that might bring greater volumes of people to the city. A 5-10% increase in sales down there is going to do a lot more for the city than a 5-10% increase in downtown.
If our leaders really wanted downtown to be revitalized, wouldn’t it have been better for private entities to take the lead? Private companies don’t build unless they see their expense being worth it, which makes me wonder why they didn’t build there before getting the kickbacks.
August 13th, 2012 at 5:52 pm
I drive through that area at least once every day, but I don’t stop there too often. I think it’s true that a lot of the traffic is people like me passing through.
But Cripes makes some good points and it would be nice if the people that felt differently would actually debate them and not just resort to name-calling.
August 14th, 2012 at 1:58 am
Bill, what did I do there?
August 20th, 2012 at 2:44 pm
“Foreclosure Strikes ‘Heart of the City’—Grande Market Square Sold at Sheriff’s Auction” — Burnsville Patch
http://burnsville.patch.com/articles/foreclosure-strikes-at-heart-of-the-city-grande-market-square-sold-at-sheriff-s-auction
August 20th, 2012 at 10:21 pm
Well maybe they will reduce the rates so they can get some tenants to fill the retail space so it doesn’t look so pathetic when you drive by.
September 6th, 2012 at 12:33 pm
Oh this Letter to the Editor is priceless and says a lot about the voters in Burnsville: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Thisweeklivecom/~3/jRc2pWBDsqk/
September 6th, 2012 at 1:18 pm
Delusional.