QA with Fargo city commissioner candidates ahead of June 11 election

Fargoans can vote for commissioners to fill the city’s two open seats on June 11.

Mayor Tim Mahoney, Commissioner Dave Piepkorn and Commissioner Denise Kolpack’s terms expire in June 2026. Commissioner John Strand and Commissioner Arlette Preston’s terms expire in June. 

Both Strand and Preston are running for reelection and five other candidates are vying for those two open seats. They include Michelle Turnberg, Nathan Pullen, Delson Saintal, Al Carlson and Anna Johnson.

The League of Women Votes of the Red River Valley hosted a candidate Q&A forum earlier this month (Turnberg and Pullen were not present at the forum.) The following are their responses to questions submitted by the audience, slightly edited for clarity.

Opening statements

Preston: I have been on the City Commission for the past four years. And prior to that, I did serve on the City Commission between ‘92 and 2000. I also was on the school board for four years and I have a nursing background. I owned a business for 16 years and owned and operated it. It was an in-home service for the elderly. In my past four years on the commission, I worked on increasing transparency and responsiveness of our local government. With my efforts, the financial management of the city has become a bit more open, especially to the commission and thus to the public. And it’s still being worked on. So it’s a work in progress. Affordable housing has been a concern that I have been working on quite diligently. It’s good. Housing prices are getting out of reach for people, whether you’re renting or owning. I look forward to the questions as we go along.

Strand: Thanks, everybody, for being here. And thanks to the League and to the sponsors for this opportunity to speak to the people. I’m approaching my third term, if I get through June 11. There’ll be eight years already. I’m looking for another four if I’m so, so fortunate. I had eight years on the school board before that when I ran in 2016, in my opinion, at that time, the biggest issue was the heroin opioid crisis, which I would say Fargo hit the ground running and I was very involved with that. For example, there’s Narcan everywhere right now. For example, we have medical-assisted treatment now. These are things that didn’t exist back then and that I helped champion. When I ran in 2020, my campaign slogan was ‘I’m going to lead the effort to settle the diversion, settle the lawsuit, so we get flood protection in place.’ And I did that. So I look forward to delivering. Ongoing there’s nothing new, I promise, except that I’ll do my best.”

Saintal: Good evening. My name is Delson. Thank you for having us today. I grew up in the north Fargo area and then attended local schools, from there went to Concordia and then I wrestled for the conference as well. After graduation, I have been in sales, law enforcement, corrections, coaching, nonprofit and today own two barber shops and a barber school in the region. And I’m also an assistant wrestling coach at Concordia and I am board president for Legacy Children’s Foundation. My main core issues are workforce development, public safety and strategic growth. I am asking for your support because I thrive on challenges and I’m here to improve the community. Thank you.

Johnson: Hi, I’m Anna Johnson. Some of you might have seen my murals around town. So I’ve been living here in Fargo for last 17 years. I’m an alum from North Dakota State University. I currently serve on the Arts and Culture Commission. I have previously served on the Native American Commission. Instead of focusing on platform, I really want to highlight the perspective that I bring to the table, which is that of a blue collar truck driving teamster. And when you look at the agendas and the minutes of the City Commission, there are a few common themes like taxes, incentives, rezoning infrastructure and all that. My promise is in advocating for what is best for Fargo. And my privilege is to represent the residents of Fargo and my responsibility is to be constantly in communication with those residents so we can grow the city in an empathetic and equitable way.

Carlson: My name is Alec Carlson. I’ve been a resident of Fargo for 54 years, graduated from NDSU. I was a teacher at Agassiz Junior High for six years. In the summertime, I sold real estate. And in 1980, my wife and I started a construction company. And we’ve been building properties around the city of Fargo ever since. I also spent 26 years in the North Dakota legislature, 10 of those years as a leader. This is a job interview. I think you need to bring a skill set that I have to help lead Fargo into the future. I look forward to your questions.

What do you think is Fargo’s greatest need at this moment?

Strand: I would say that behavioral social health issues, addiction issues and that whole lane of getting people assistance, so that we’re not putting all of the burden on these challenges of people or on the shoulders of our law enforcement. We talk about heroin and opioids, we talk about meth deaths. If you take those two deaths alone, the scale of them, then you add them up, we have more alcohol-related deaths in town. And I’m not saying people can’t drink or whatever. But we need to be smarter and more responsible with our community culture, and allow people to grow and flourish and get help when they need it. And help people’s children and family members when they need it. I just think this is a really pressing issue right now with the overdoses, with the deaths, with the cost to society, the cost of the families, the cost of people’s personal sense of self. I just wish I had a magic wand and I could address that right now.

Saintal: This is one of my main core issues, public safety. So I just piggyback a little bit on what John said, but I do believe there’s a mental health crisis going on. And there’s a consultant from Milwaukee that came here a couple months ago, and talked about the housing first approach. And I do believe if we focus on getting them a house first, and then help solve that, will help solve a lot of those issues. And because what’s going on right now is a lot of those guys are dealing with mental health or just going back into the jails. And then it’s just revolving doors. So how do we figure out a way for them to get the help that they need? And then that way, they can help out this community.

Johnson: I think that the biggest need we have is our workforce shortage. I think it’s so important that we look at what we can do with some of these resources that we have available to us, but also that it’s a multifaceted approach where we need to involve in the collaboration with the government, businesses, educational institutes in the community organizations to really make that work for us. And I think investing in education is a good start. And supporting immigration and diversity can’t hurt our cause, and I think with diversity, we really need to bolster that up and really show what we can offer here in Fargo as a community, the diversity that we have and really to help grow our workforce. I think we could do recruitment and retention strategies that we could talk with businesses about and specifically look at what we could offer them for that. That is just one idea.

Carlson: There’s no question in my mind that public safety is really a problem. And when I listened to the news at night and find out all the different things that have happened around our community, we need to address that. It’s a budget item, it’s a leadership item. I don’t have, as a non-commissioner, the ability to dig into the budget of the police department or how it’s run or where their people are being centered. But when you see articles of businesses closing because they can’t afford to have security to protect them, or a guy downtown getting his head kicked in, those are important things. People need to be safe in their neighborhoods, they need to be safe when they send their kids to school, they need to be safe downtown walking to a restaurant. And I think we there’s something amiss there. Even though the statistics say our crime is going down, I find that very hard to believe. And we need to tighten our belts, and we need to prioritize and we need to make public safety a bigger priority.

Preston: The one thing I would work on is housing. And I mentioned it a little bit in the opening statement, but housing is common to the mental health chemical dependency issues, it’s common to the homelessness issues. Building a new house today, it costs about $375,000 to $400,000. You add the specials on top of that, and it gets to be $450,000 to $500,000. Unfortunately, it’s gotten out of reach for a lot of people. Granted, houses on the market are both new homes as well as old homes, but we don’t have enough inventory for people who are in that middle income kind of segment of our population. So that’s the challenge. And that’s the thing that I would spend my time working on, and have and will continue to.

Some people believe the bars should close earlier, especially on weekends, and that bartenders need better training. And some people think that there should be less regulation on businesses. What are your thoughts?

Saintal: I just found out that it’s 50 percent cheaper for liquor licenses within the downtown area. And as Anna said, and John has mentioned a few times, alcohol is a big issue. We need to with the Liquor Board Authority. It’s kind of like the wild-wild west where we’re just giving out a bunch of liquor licenses. And it should just be a little bit more stricter on the requirements to get a board or to get a liquor license. I’m all for small businesses. We just need to find out a better strategy when it comes down to the downtown scene.

Johnson: I think that I’m gonna say something unpopular. As you know, everybody loves drinking in our city. We’re so proud of our ranking. We’re the drunkest city and some people are like, ‘Yeah, that’s great.’ And I don’t think that’s something we should be super proud of, when we have so many problems around that situation downtown that we’re not looking at. And I do think that we could review what time the bars close. Do we need to have all of these young, college-aged individuals out until 2 a.m. on those streets? It is not these people that you see downtown that are causing the problems all the time. They’re not the ones getting into the fights outside of the bar. It’s the college aged kids, it’s everybody who’s going to have a good time. And yeah, I do think that the staff need to be getting more trained, and that we do need to have more accountability for the bartenders over serving, because all of that is to save the children and to be safe in our community.

Carlson: There’s lots of laws on the books about who can buy alcohol, what the consequences are if you get picked up for DUIs and all these things. But there is a part of this that nobody talks about and as an individual responsibility, we cannot legislate or we cannot have an ordinance for everything. Should the police be involved? Absolutely. Should there be closer scrutiny as to who’s getting these liquor licenses? There are penalties in place. If they’re violating these rules, serving to minors over serving somebody who’s already drunk, then there should be consequences for that. So we need to enforce what we have because there are plenty of laws out there already.

Preston: The Liquor Control Board has actually started to implement some things that I think will help. One is background checks, regular background checks on both owners and managers. That also should include additional training, which de-escalation training has just been put in place. And it should be a requirement. I don’t believe it is a requirement at this point. But it should be. You know, I think the biggest issue downtown is the density of the number of liquor licenses and liquor establishments. When you put a whole bunch of bars together, they start competing against each other. And it’s easy to walk from one bar to another and difficult then for servers and managers to keep a handle on how much people are actually taking in. So there’s some things that we need to do to address that. We haven’t done it at this point, but certainly something that needs addressing.

Strand: It’s really good we’re having this conversation. People in public health would say, ‘You’re dancing around this elephant in the room.’ But we can’t dance around it forever. And yet, we need a thriving community and a thriving downtown. When I moved my business to downtown Fargo in 1997, it was dismal downtown, there was nothing. And we’ve had a resurgence of our downtown and in a way that it’s an entertainment district. And my newspaper was part of that culture — music and bars and entertainment and activities and things to do. But on the other side of that back, before Fargo emptied out, the bars were around the periphery of our downtown, because the downtown was most full. So we’ve had a really major shift that we’ve filled the downtown with bars. The last liquor license that came before us, across the street from Commissioner Preston, I voted against it. Because there’s bar after bar after bar, and I respect these owners, I work with them a lot. I think they’re terrific investors in our community, but we need to always be responsible and look for the greater good in the health of the people.

What can the city and you as a commissioner do to help our unhoused population?

Johnson: What I really see is a housing problem. It’s not a homeless problem as much as a housing problem. And I think that we have to really look at what that means. I was here in the chambers when we had the guy from Milwaukee come in for the housing first talk, and he had a lot of good points, statistics and research and facts. And if you can take a city like that, and bring it from 200 homeless to like 17, in three years, like he did, we can make magic happen here. I mean, we have the resources and we have the social services doing great work already downtown. And if we can just bolster that a little bit and help grow that a little bit, I think we could really be successful in helping the homeless population and unhoused. I do think that one of the things we really need to look at is the demographic of who those people are and what we need to do to service those individuals. Like recently, I found out that 44 percent of our homeless are Native Americans, what is that about? What can we do to service them to help those people find those services?

Carlson: The homeless issue is a tough one. But you have to figure out where you’re going to put these people, and which neighborhood. I’ve heard a lot of things that have come before the city and they say everybody wants to find a place to house them until it’s in their neighborhood, and then they would prefer they not be there. So there are empty buildings, the city has some responsibility, but it’s a partnership. It should be a partnership between some of all of the great nonprofits we have in this town who focus on mental health, who focus on feeding the homeless and focus on those things. The city should be partnering with those people. And if we do that, the state has programs, the cities has programs, West Fargo — we should all be working together. Because these people come from somewhere. They don’t just come all from Fargo, they come from somewhere. And we need to get our heads together as a group and say, ‘How do we lift them from the homeless to being a productive part of our society?’ And that should be our end goal. And we’re not just providing food and place for them to stay warm, but how do we move them out of that status.

Preston: So the last answer really leads into that whole issue of case management. We have a model in Milwaukee and what they did, and we can follow, it’s pretty well proven as Anna mentioned, the numbers there are real impressive. One of the issues is housing inventory for sure. We need to be able to identify places where individuals who are chronically unhoused can actually get admitted and can live in a space. Part of that could be accommodated and actually administered by the city. It’s called a master lease program. That’s one of the items. The other most important issue is case management, wrapping services around these individuals so that they can begin to learn to live again inside four walls. Individuals that are chronically on house, have difficulty adjusting into that. So those are some of the issues.

Strand: When I was new to Fargo this last time — I’ve been here three times starting in 1998 or so — there was an incident in Fargo that I think was a tipping point for us. On March 8, if I recall, a Native American woman in town showed up at a shelter, knocked on the door and asked for assistance to get in. Times were different back then. She was refused service, sent out into the weather and the next day we found her frozen to death. This was a moment for us to decide we never want to ever have this ever happen again. You know, the housing homeless issue is one of my portfolios. I’m very close to it. Today we met the executives from the Bloomberg Institute to try to figure out how they can come and help us in Fargo. But long story short, it’s everywhere. It’s every community. It’s everybody. And it takes a whole community to take care of each other. When we have evictions, when we have joblessness, when we have people living in poverty, when we have people battling addictions, people battling these struggles, we have to all be paying attention to what’s going on and give them a hand.

Saintal: I mentioned the Housing First Initiative earlier. but what’s going on here is that we’re getting a plan. We’re getting a plan from the Milwaukee consultant and we can have the best plans that we want, but there’s no execution and what are we doing? As Al said, as John said, we have to figure out a way to start. We just simply have to take first step. And it does take everyone — it takes law enforcement, takes small businesses, nonprofit, community partners, local government, everyone has to pitch in. And that’s how we do it. But once again, we can say that we’re going to do something and if nothing ever happens, what are we doing? We have the blueprint. It’s easier said than done. But I do believe that we just have to simply take the first step.

What policies and actions would you initiate to assure that Fargo’s housing stock is adequately maintained?

Carlson: Well, I’ve maintained for years that the certain neighborhoods that we have in Fargo where the houses are 120 years old, that sometimes they’re beyond fixing, and we need to address those neighborhoods is does that mean that we go in and we purchase those homes, and then tear them all down and build affordable housing in those neighborhoods, I mean, you have to look at more options than what we have. Because it isn’t always a matter of giving somebody a $50,000 loan to fix up a house that really shouldn’t have $50,000 invested in it. So we need to address those core areas. And I think that’s a perfect spot to look at over time for trying to move, because there’s less cost, there’s less special assessments. And it allows us to move first-time homebuyers into the houses that may be even more affordable. So we need to look at those neighborhoods that have really aged, weathered things that need to be either torn down or redone. And the city needs to work with the Housing Finance Agency out of Bismarck or with any other agencies that are willing to work with us and find plans and programs to help with that, not to give it for free, but to help with it.

Preston: So the core neighborhood, the housing inventory inside the core neighborhoods, are truly the first homebuyer kind of homes that individuals can purchase. Because they tend to be works in progress. One of the things that the core neighborhood plan had identified — and we’re very slowly moving into it, talk about execution of plans, this is been taking a little too long — and that is the housing rehab fund. That would be a fund that would be available for individuals to rehab a home. And I would caution against tearing down all of the homes that that may look like they’re becoming dilapidated. We really need to try to preserve and get in front of this instead of wait until they’re so totally destroyed that it’s difficult to rehab them. So the housing fund would be a major initiative to try to turn that around.

Strand: I would suggest we all look at the Roosevelt neighborhood up around NDSU. We have a declining student population of, I hear, as much as 77 percent of those bungalow type homes or small homes or rentals. And they’re going into a state of blight. And then we have apartments being built next to the periphery of NDSU, which further empties those houses out. What we have here is an opportunity, if we decide to look at it that way: taking all these homes, coming up with incentives and encouraging people to take over ownership; helping them rehab the homes moving into their neighborhoods with their families and their kids and populating the Roosevelt schools and the Horace-Mann school up there. That’s good neighbor policy. The other side of that is if we don’t address this blighting neighborhood, what are we going to end up with in awhile? It’s really not pretty, so we’re going to have to show people how to do that.

Saintal: You look at Roosevelt, you look at Jefferson, look at Golden Ridge — I grew up in the Golden Ridge neighborhood — and speaking of the core neighborhood plan, that was one of the biggest issues they had is preventive care and maintenance. We’re given all these incentives to these new houses, and that’s fine, too. But why don’t we give them to these older neighborhoods and help build them up? And also, if you look at Golden Ridge, and if you look at the Jefferson community, you realize a lot of them are new Americans. And they come from all different places. Some of them, they just may not know what’s going on. So this is a good way for us to educate them and then give resources for them. My dad has been here for 30 years and his English is alright. But for the most part, I don’t think he really understands what’s really going on and what resources he has to fix up his place. So if we really went in there and facilitated and give them the resources and educated them, I think a lot more people would understand.

Johnson: I think supporting incentives for some of this revitalizing these core neighborhoods is important, because it can stimulate the growth and the community development. And also it helps with interest attracting investors to our area and also creating jobs. It can revitalize those communities that we’re talking about that really need it, and it’s essential for our city to consider these design and implementations of incentives. But it’s also important that we ensure that they’re cost effective, and they align with our beliefs.

What are your thoughts about fire planning?

Preston: We’ve had some dry years. So I understand the question. You know, I think from a fire prevention/firefighting perspective, the fire department has taken a real aggressive stance in making sure that we do have the water pressure, as well as the engineering and the water staff, the water department staff. We’re building new water towers when we need them. And pumps put in the system to assure that pressure is there when we need it. The fire department has actually been recognized, I think, pretty highly for the response that they have. I think it’s under seven minutes or something like that. And they are really close to meeting those goals. I think it’s less than seven minutes, actually. So from the firefighting side, I think we’re really pretty good.

Strand: When this question surfaced, my head went to public health and personal health, people who have COPD and have trouble with breathing and so on. But it’s more than that, and it’s good to hear from somebody who’s been through that because one thing we understand in Fargo is how to prepare for a flood. But we don’t know how to prepare for some of these other things. Because we don’t have that regular experience with bad quality air where you go outside and you’re hacking and you can’t breathe. I’ll say a couple things that might not be real popular: This is climate change stuff, to a degree. Nobody wants to say those words. Part of why I fought for the diversion settlement was we have to be prepared for floods. And we were going to be tied up in court and not have a project if we didn’t get past that federal lawsuit. When we were in a drought, we were bringing water in from the western part of the state to counter the dry spells. Air quality is another one of these things tied to climate. We have to make climate a priority for the people sake.

Saintal: So I do not have enough knowledge in that area. But if I was elected, and I believe that, let’s all sit down on the table. And let’s figure this question out together. So yeah, just showing humility. You know, I don’t know everything. But this is where we come in as the citizens and the leaders and we make sure we figure something out if this is an issue. Thank you.

Johnson: I wish I had a good answer for that. I think in this day and age and in the state we live in, we have climate and environmental issues every day, like you look at the weather we’re having in the winter we’re not having or the rain we’re getting a lot of that’s great or not getting, and the fires in Canada are real. We’re really close to that. So it is something that we should have a plan for. And I do think that is something to have a conversation about. And like he said, I don’t have all the answers either. And I would like to sit down and have some of those conversations with the fire chiefs and kind of get to an understanding of what we can do to prevent these huge disasters in our city.

Carlson: Now that the diversion is being built, I think our biggest concern should be what happens if we do have this drought. And the Red River is almost dry. Because that’s where our water supply comes from. We get some through the Cheyenne that we get pumped over that reservoir. When I was in the legislature, we put the first dollars in at the state level for the Red River water supply. So if there’s anything that should be a major concern for us, it should be to make sure that that continues to be available to us, so that we can get that water supply to the valley when we need it when we are in those drought conditions. I remember when Dennis Walaker came to the state, and he said we need two things: ‘We need diversion and we need water.’ I said, ‘Which one do you pick?’ He says, ‘I want the diversion.’ We need to keep our eye on the ball there to make sure that gets completed, so we do have the water when it’s time to fight those fires.

What policies and actions would you initiate to prevent patterns of racial segregation here?

Strand: I was the one who put that on the agenda to have High Plains Housing share that information with us. We’re a changing, evolving community — 90-some languages spoken here in our community. So and then we have pockets of people. We’re in an ongoing discussion about what type of government would be ideal for Fargo in the present and future. Is it a commission form, a government or a council form of government? If you have a council form of government, you have wards and districts. In my head, if that’s the issue, we have pockets of demographics that won’t otherwise get elected at an at-large election, but could in their neighborhood, I think that’s a compelling reason to study wards and districts as a future form of government.

Saintal: As we continue to grow, we can do mixed-unit development. I keep talking about the older neighborhoods, so Jefferson and Golden Ridge. My parents live in the Golden Ridge neighborhood. And I was just there last week, but do you see a lot of older homes, some are blighted. This may be a little tough for some people, but a renter registry could be another option, and it will be tough for some landlords, but this has to happen — otherwise, we’re going to keep having this segregation going on within the city. And yes, it’s gonna be tough at first, but anything new is a little tough at first, and you just move on.

Johnson: Recently, we had a forum with the Building Industry Association of the Red River Valley. And one of their questions brought up inclusionary zoning, which really promotes the socio economic diversity within the neighborhoods, and especially now that we’re seeing this segregation that we’re seeing, that this could help stop some of that segregation. And I think we need to look at that. And also, you know, some of these unpopular things that people are talking about, like with the registering the landlords and stuff, I think it’s important that we hold landlords accountable for the raising of the rates for the renters and keeping things affordable for the people who don’t have houses. I don’t know what the percentage is of people who aren’t homeowners, but it’s a lot more renters than homeowners. We really need to take a look at that system and hold everybody accountable for it.

Carlson: There’s neighborhoods where there’s different ethnic groups living in those neighborhoods. Maybe they want to live there because they want to be near people who speak the same language who have the same values as they do. But landlords should always be held responsible for their actions and what they do. On the other hand, you can also tell them and have rent controls and say you can’t charge more than X amount of dollars, because pretty soon they’re just going to abandon the project if they can’t have a reasonable return on their investment. So again, you need to encourage instead of discourage, you need to talk assimilation to our society, to our city. And hopefully those kinds of things will make some of these problems go away. And so it’s a big issue. It’s not an easy answer. But it’s one you need. We need to look at keep our eye on the ball, make sure they're treated fairly, just like every other citizen city of Fargo.

Preston: The data that Michelle presented was quite concerning in that this has happened in the last three decades. And it was a very clear progression. We really need to try to get in front of this before we find ourselves in a much worse situation. You know, I truly can’t sit here and tell you what should be done to stop it. But I do think and some of the points being brought up here, point towards needing more information, we need to find out. Are individuals choosing to live in a certain apartment building? Or are they being directed towards that building? And I know I’ve had stories told to me by friends that those apartment buildings need some maintenance that haven’t been followed through on. So if we let this continue, we’re going to be in a situation where people are in very vulnerable, inadequate housing. So we need to sit down and figure out how to how to address that.

Would you support a rental registry for all multifamily rental units in the core neighborhoods?

Saintal: Yes. It’ll discourage some people. But we’re having these issues and nothing’s getting fixed. There are many slumlords out there. As long as we give an opportunity to voice our opinions as well, we can all come to the table work together. But if we don’t do anything for the citizens that have these slumlords, then what are we doing? I know plenty of friends that have property out there. And once again, with any new changes, there’s gonna be a little pushback. But if we don’t do anything, then we’re not helping out the community as well.

Johnson: One of the things that I’m hearing with these come with the comments that we’re getting back from these answers is naiveness. Racism exists, okay? Racism exists in our city, and we need to stop acting like it doesn’t. If we don’t hold these landlords accountable, it will never change ever, period. Point blank, period. I do not know why we’re even having this conversation when we all know what the problem is. The color of your skin matters and where you live matters. It could be because they want to live together. Wouldn’t you rather live with other people that care about you and your community? Because they look like you? But is that a forced situation? Because they can’t afford to live somewhere else because of the slumlords. Because of the racism. We cannot be blind to something we see every day.

Carlson: I don’t have enough information to tell you. When we look at police reports, or if you look at the condition of buildings from the building inspection department, who is not taking care of their properties? Are they overcharging their rent? Are they not properly taking care of the tenants when they have concerns? Those are the kinds of things you need to look at. I’m not sure I agree that Anna says how racism is such a great problem. Maybe it is, and maybe it’s in certain neighborhoods. But most of the people that I deal with that have apartment buildings and things are very glad to have good quality tenants. And if they can pay the rent, they don’t have problems with that. So I need a lot more information before I would tell you that we have an instant solution for this. Do we have a lot of slumlords? I’m not sure about that. I don’t think so. But there might be some and those bad actors have to bring their buildings up to code and deal with those kinds of things. And if they’re not being good actors, we’ve got to fix it.

Preston: Yes. I introduced the topic probably about two years ago and it got voted down. Yes, there are definitely slumlords in town. And yes, we do have inadequate, unsafe housing situations that really need to be watched much more closely. And that’s what a rental registry program would do. It also establishes a standard that’s a little bit higher than what we’re currently seeing. And Grand Forks has a rental registry program in place. And they saw an increase in the standard of the housing just because of the registry program’s existence. And that was without any kind of strong enforcement — it was just talking about it raised the expectation. So it is effective. A lot of these are single-family homes that are being converted into multi-family. And the city doesn’t even know that they exist.

Strand: Commissioner Preston did advance this proposal to the city and she and I were the only two who voted for it. Around that time, the North Dakota Legislature came very close to pre-empting cities from having rental registries, saying Fargo shouldn’t be able to do this. There was an immense pushback from the notion of rental registries. Almost 60 percent of our population lives in apartments, so we need to watch out for their conditions they’re living in. We need to watch out and pay attention to: Are their landlords delivering what they say they will? Or is it affordable? Is it reasonable? There’s a real need for tracking the safety and the health in the space that people are living in. And we’ve done this for dilapidated homes; we’ve set our inspection part in our department after old homes to tear them down. We need to do the same similarly to step up the safety in our apartments and require it.

What can we do for transportation and safe sidewalks?

Johnson: I think we need to invest in that stuff for sure. Our transportation system we have here is great, we need to invest in it more so it’s better; so that we can get access more places now that our city is growing. We need to be able to invest in more bus drivers. And this is one of those things that’s a little bit closer to my heart, because I used to be a city bus driver. That’s kind of where I started. We started off small and we’ve grown so much and we can keep getting better. So I think transportation is almost there, we just need a little bit more. And with the sidewalks, there are a lot of problems there. And I think we need to really go and look at what those look like and do a whole city assessment on that. Because if we’re requiring new builds to build sidewalks and curbs and all of that, then we really need to be looking at the old neighborhoods and making sure they’re up to code and safe for people with wheelchairs and people who need to walk. Our population doesn’t all drive and we need to really take that into consideration when we think about stuff.

Carlson: I remember the debates: ‘Do we have city sidewalks on both sides of the street? Or do we have it on one side of the street and make it more accessible for people?’ I can tell you that a lot of the parts of town they’ve redone all the curbs and they put in the handicap accessible ones; there’s a dip in that sidewalk so it’s easier for them to get across the street. We always want to make sure that we make Fargo a safe, walkable city and whether it be with a wheelchair or walking, that costs money. Then we have people saying, ‘Well gosh don’t put it on my Specials. You know I’d really like it but don’t put it on my Specials.’ But somebody’s got to pay for it. So yes, we should continue to make sure that our mass transit is done so that people can get to the places they want to be in the times they want. And is it safe for me to walk on those streets and curbs? If it’s a bad sidewalk with uneven concrete, the city should step in and take care of things like that and make sure it’s done. Somebody has to pay — it will probably be Specials.

Preston: I’m going to answer this question in a slightly different way and talk about the whole issue of walkability. Yes, sidewalk maintenance is an important part of that. There are attempts in the community here as we’re going through a growth planning process. An ideal neighborhood is one that’s safe and promotes healthiness and an active transportation. Whether it be walking, biking, skateboarding, whatever is a large part of that. So having sidewalks that are maintained well is part of that, but also the design of the neighborhood. A person should be able to walk to the grocery store and get groceries if they need to, at least a carton of milk. They should be able to go to a coffee shop and meet a friend. So those are the kinds of things that we’re talking about working into new neighborhood design. But we also need to incorporate that into the older neighborhoods as well. So yes, sidewalk maintenance is an important part of that.

Strand: Pay attention to those of us who can’t get down the sidewalks. In winter, we have places where there’s no snow removal. People can’t park and can’t get into the sidewalk. We’re just not cognizant of what challenges people who are facing disabilities and ability issues are. I lived in Rochester, N.Y., and they get a lot of snow and they did something pretty phenomenal there. Every time there was snow, an army of people will come out and clean every single public sidewalk in this city. That was really something for the people who had mobility issues and needed to use those sidewalks. I wish we could do that here. But at a minimum, hold them responsible, make them shovel their sidewalks and repair them for those who need them.

Saintal: We definitely have to focus on his old neighborhoods and make sure that everyone has an ability to get to the bus stops and have well-maintained sidewalks. But it comes down to who’s gonna pay for it. And most likely, it’s gonna come from Special Assessments. Someone has to pay for it. And we’re all for improving those old neighborhoods, it’s just that we’re gonna have to pay for it.

Closing statements

Carlson: Thanks for having us here. This is a job interview for two spots open on the City Commission. I think I have the skill set between my leadership skills and the business skills that I’ve developed over the years to be a good city commissioner. I’m a problem solver. I’m also a budget hawk. I spent a lot of years making sure that billion-dollar budgets were balanced, and they were scrutinized. And I think that’s important, because tonight we talked about a lot of things that cost money. How are you going to pay for them? You know, those are the kinds of tough questions you have to ask. I will create good public policy, make good decisions and also make sure I’m a good steward of your freedoms, not only your freedom spit your checkbook, things will balance. We have a great city. I want to be part of it. I have the time, the energy and the ability. And I’m looking forward to the opportunity to help take Fargo into the future and making some of these things that were talked about realities, and to scrutinize and be good stewards for our citizens.

Preston: First of all, I want to thank the league and AARP and Hawthorne Neighborhood Association for hosting this. I just want to say with my public and private experience, I’m well prepared to serve for another four years. And the city is right in the middle of a number of large initiatives, which will require some seasoned leadership. I’m running for reelection to bring all those initiatives to their completion and implementation. Also, personally, and I am a mother, a nurse, former business owner and experienced community leader. I’m ready to continue to work on these initiatives that are so important for our community. I am asking for your support for your vote. And if you want some more information, you can go to arletteforfargo.org. Thank you.

Strand: Again, thanks to the League and all your partners for putting this on. And nobody should think this is fun and easy. It’s really nerve racking to do this type of a job interview. It’s incredibly humbling to serve the people, and that’s our job. I grew up in a little town. And I tell folks: My best example of leadership was at home. What a good leader to me, a mom who can tell seven kids you’re not going to fight at the dinner table. And they don’t even dare fight at the dinner table. You know, a good leader is somebody who sees opportunity in the future for everybody. You know, lots of mothers do that. When my mom was mayor of my hometown of Crystal. She ran it like a family. She treated everybody like family members and there’s something to that. Everywhere we look lately, people are fighting. There’s fight in their eyes, there’s fight in every discussion. I’d like to emulate my mom and just put the fight aside and go forward.

Saintal: First of all, thank you for having us. And thanks for hosting this. I love what Al says all the time: This is a job interview. And this is the time pick to the best candidates. But let’s take it a step further. A lot of us have great plans. But what happens is that there’s no execution. And that’s where I feel that I’ve excelled a lot in my leadership opportunities I’ve been given. And secondly, as John was saying, this is not easy. This is courageous that you’re doing this but there’s plenty of people that smarter than me. There’s plenty of great leaders out there. Next election, go out there and put your name, but vote for me on June 11. Thank you.

Johnson: Thank you, everybody. Thanks for being here and all of our hosts and the League. representation matters. And it matters because it validates people’s existence and their experiences. It fosters inclusivity, it challenges stereotypes and it provides role models for individuals who may feel marginalized or underrepresented. And when people see me I don’t think they immediately think truck driver. But what I hope they think Anna Johnson loves Fargo and wants to see it thrive. I’m proud to be the first Native American to run for City Commission. And I hope to represent a previously underrepresented population of Fargo as their newest Fargo City Commissioner, and thank you so much.

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