John Nephew

Special Election Discussion

noreply@blogger.com (John Nephew) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 23:18:00 +0000

In last week's election, sitting councilmember Will Rossbach won the race for mayor. This will mean a special election in 2010. Numerous residents have asked me about the mechanics of this, so I brought it up at Monday's council meeting. Here is the discussion:

To summarize:

When Rossbach takes the oath of office as Mayor, it creates a vacancy in his council seat.
Since more than 6 months remain in Rossbach's council term, the 2005 ordinance requires that we hold a special election.
There is some flexibility as to when exactly to hold the special election.
The earliest it could be held is about 90 days after the vacancy is declared, in order to comply with all the relevant state laws (notice, filing periods, etc.).
If we combine the special election with another election (such as the state primary), we can save the $26,000 we otherwise would have to spend on a stand-alone special election.
Regardless of when the special election is held, the ordinance requires the council to appoint a person to fill the vacancy until the winner of the special election is sworn in, just as happened in 2005.

From what I've read and a recent conversation with a legislator, it sounds like it is very likely that the primary date will be moved up from September to August. This change was in the elections reform bill that was passed and vetoed last session, but it was not itself a controversial provision. (Besides having bipartisan support, it will be needed in order to comply with pending changes in federal election law.) The idea of moving it forward is to protect the voting rights of Minnesotans overseas, especially the deployed members of our military. General election ballots obviously can't be printed and mailed until the primary results are finalized (sometimes including a recount, as in one of the judicial primaries last year).

"New direction - for now"

noreply@blogger.com (John Nephew) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:45:00 +0000

I see that a new article about the Maplewood elections, "Maplewood government headed in new direction � for now," is on the Minnesota Independent this morning. Reporter Paul Demko has been keeping an eye on Maplewood ever since writing the March 2007 City Pages cover story, "Welcome to Maplewood."

What Could Have Been

noreply@blogger.com (John Nephew) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 15:59:00 +0000

What might have happened if Will Rossbach and I had not won in 2007 and changed the balance of power on the Maplewood City Council?

Take a look at the City of Greenfield for an object lesson. This past summer the League of Minnesota Cities Insurance Trust imposed special conditions on their insurance renewal, in response to a high level of losses and a perception that their mayor and city council were continuing on a path that was likely to bring more lawsuits.

Those conditions were comparable to the ones imposed on Maplewood in 2008, after the wave of costly lawsuits under Greg Copeland's management in 2006-2007. When the LMCIT imposed its conditions on our renewal, Maplewood had already taken steps in the right direction -- with the 2007 election results, the dismissal of Mr. Copeland, the start of a process for hiring a permanent, professional city manager, and so forth. As one would expect, those changes have since corresponded to a sharp drop in lawsuits and losses.

Greenfield has proven to be less cooperative. Without getting into all of the soap opera details, the result is that the LMCIT has chosen to cancel Greenfield's insurance coverage altogether, as reported by the Star Tribune and the South Crow River News, in order to protect the other member cities. If I understand it correctly, the LMCIT gave notice of across-the-board cancellation effective in 30 days. The board is then willing to offer a new coverage package limited to personal injury and property damage claims. Other types of lawsuits (e.g., employment, defamation, land use) that may occur will be at the full expense of Greenfield's taxpapers, both for the legal defense fees and the ultimate costs of any settlements or judgements.

For a city with a population under 3,000 and a tax levy under $1.3 million, such expenses could have a large and costly impact on taxpayers. The city might look to private insurers for coverage, but it is likely to be very expensive and in some cases (such as land use defense) my understanding is that no private insurers even sell such coverage.

I will be interested to see if the LMCIT's harsh decision results in any changes in the way Greenfield's elected officials govern, or if it will be left to the voters in their next elections.

Article about Even Year Elections

noreply@blogger.com (John Nephew) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:25:00 +0000

The publishing cycle of the local weekly newspaper, the Maplewood Review, means that this week's issue doesn't include the election results (though their web page does have the story). What it does have related to Maplewood politics is an article about even-year elections, a topic that I brought up at the October 26 council meeting.

2009 Election Results Spreadsheet

noreply@blogger.com (John Nephew) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:52:00 +0000

For those who are curious about the precinct-level details, you can find a spreadsheet of the election results on the city web page. (I've also archived it on this website, in case the city page is moved at some point in the future.) The tally includes total write-in votes, but does not break them down by who they were for, which requires manual counting. We should have that complete information when we canvass the results of the election at our regular council meeting on Monday.

More Election Coverage: Maplewood Review

noreply@blogger.com (John Nephew) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 05:07:00 +0000

The weekly Maplewood Review put a story on their website about the Maplewood elections earlier today.

Longrie is quoted as saying, "I might be throwing in my hat here in the next couple of months," which sounds like she might be a candidate in the special election that will be held to fill Rossbach's current council seat until the end of its term. So voters who expressed their disapproval of her in the 2007 defeat of her city council allies, the 2008 obliteration of her primary challenge to State Rep. Lillie, and now the 2009 repudiation of her reelection campaign, may be given yet another chance to vote against her in 2010.

Media Roundup, Post-Election

noreply@blogger.com (John Nephew) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:28:00 +0000

Some quick day-after-the-election media links:

Pioneer Press, "Maplewood voters oust Mayor Diana Longrie after a contentious term"

Star Tribune, "Six suburbs elect new mayors; councils also see fresh faces"

Minnesota Independent, "Rossbach wins Maplewood mayoral contest"

Victory for Rossbach, Juenemann, Llanas

noreply@blogger.com (John Nephew) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 05:40:00 +0000

I'm home from an election night gathering, where we saw Will Rossbach win the race for mayor by a huge margin, Kathy Juenemann retain her seat on the city council for a third term, and Jim Llanas win the seat that Erik Hjelle will be leaving in January.

While it soon seemed clear that Juenemann would hold her seat, the race for the second council seat was a nail-biter. The first precincts to report were ones where Dave Hafner, who ultimately finished third in a field of four, did well. But three of the last four precincts to report � P3, P6 and P7 � were ones where Llanas' primary vote totals were around three times Hafner's. As those precincts came in the tide turned, and the end result was a solid win for Llanas.

Here are the total votes as reported by Ramsey County, for mayor:

WILL ROSSBACH	3080	51.26%
DIANA LONGRIE	2348	39.07%
Write-in Votes	581	9.67%

and for council:

KATHLEEN JUENEMANN	3023	26.73%
JAMES LLANAS	2801	24.77%
DAVE HAFNER	2648	23.42%
REBECCA CAVE	2368	20.94%
Write-in Votes	468	4.14%

Here's something striking: incumbent mayor Diana Longrie received fewer votes than any of the four candidates on the ballot for City Council.

2009 Election Result Links

noreply@blogger.com (John Nephew) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 02:03:00 +0000

As I post this, the polls have just closed. Now it's just a matter of waiting for the results to be tallied and reported.

If you'll be at a computer this evening, the place to watch results as they come in is the Ramsey County Elections web page for 2009 election results. This will be updated with new totals as the precincts report. (There's also a link to the Ramsey County page from the top of the Maplewood website's elections page.)

On the Minnesota Secretary of State website, you can also find election results. If the past is a guide, this information will not be as up-to-date as the county page, but will have more details when it does appear (such as precinct-level totals).

If you have cable TV and live in Maplewood, I've heard that the city's Channel 16 will also be showing election results. (Right now my TV screen tells me that it's about to rebroadcast the 10/26 council workshop, so maybe that's not going to happen after all, or at least not in real time.)

Election Day 2009

noreply@blogger.com (John Nephew) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:03:00 +0000

Today is Election Day. Have you voted yet?

If you don't know where to vote, visit the Ramsey County Precinct Finder to identify your polling location. The same page will show you your precinct's sample ballot.

Are you not registered to vote? In order to vote, you must be:

18 years of age or older;
A United States citizen; and
Have lived in Minnesota for at least 20 days by Election Day.

If you are eligible to vote, you can register today at your polling location. The Secretary of State's website has information on how to do this, including a list of documents that you may use to verify your residence.

~ ~ ~

I've made no secret of my own choices on this ballot � Rossbach for Mayor, Juenemann and Llanas for City Council. All three represent common sense and a strong commitment to the common good. In my time on the council, I've had policy disagreements and voting differences with both Rossbach and Juenemann, but I know that we disagree in good faith while sharing a commitment to the good of our city. The same will be true of Jim Llanas.

Maplewood needs to move past the failed leadership of Diana Longrie, whose position as mayor has given her a platform to perpetuate divisiveness and dysfunction in our city even while the election of 2007 removed a lot of her ability to do damage. While she and her partisans try to distract you with lies about Will wanting to take away your fire pit and other silliness, remember how much she has cost our city � the hiring of her utterly unqualified crony, Greg Copeland, as city manager; the unnecessarily large (10.2%) tax increase of 2007; the excessive and avoidable lawsuits that nearly left us uninsurable; the use of the city newsletter for electioneering; her sabotage of our legislators' bill to fund conservation in Fish Creek; her promotion of the conservation easements gimmick while eliminating the Parks & Recreation Department; and so much more.

After losing reelection in 2007, Rebecca Cave vanished from sight. Now she's on the ballot again. While she seems to have put some distance between herself and Longrie, she can't escape the legacy of the 2006-2007 period and all the city problems created by her being the third vote on so many issues with Longrie and Hjelle � appointing Greg Copeland, passing the 2007 budget with its 10.2% tax increase and its staff reorganization with illegal retaliatory firings, land use decisions that led to costly lawsuits, etc. She may have the political sense not to link herself publicly to Longrie during this campaign, but is there any reason to think she would govern differently than she did in the past?

Dave Hafner tries to portray himself as being apart from Maplewood's political divisions, but his record shows a rabid partisan for Erik Hjelle, Rebecca Cave, and Diana Longrie, as seen in his letters to the editor, visitor presentations, and other public statements from before he was a candidate. He even had public praise for the 10.2% levy increase of 2007. Given how he overrreacts to issues on the campaign trail, voters might question if he has the temperament to handle the criticism and even personal attacks that we routinely receive on the city council. I think of Hafner as being like Erik Hjelle, but without the refined diplomatic skills.

The 2007 election was a major step in returning Maplewood to normalcy, but there's much more to be done. Today we need to continue the changes of 2007 by electing Will Rossbach as our new mayor, returning Kathy Juenemann to the council, and bringing Jim Llanas on board. Do your part by voting, and remind your friends and neighbors to vote. Help rebuild a Maplewood we can all be proud of.

Blowing Smoke

noreply@blogger.com (John Nephew) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 22:16:00 +0000

Have you heard that nonsense about Maplewood wanting to ban wood fires?

If so, you've encountered the disinformation campaign spearheaded by the supporters of Mayor Diana Longrie and others opposed to Will Rossbach. As has been the case in so many past elections, these people can get into office only by spreading lies and distortions, and by tearing down their opponents. This year it's wood smoke; two years ago it was the bogus claim, promoted by the team of DelRay Rokke and Rebecca Cave, that there were plans to sell city parks and open space to developers. Four years ago there were baseless claims about closing fire stations. No doubt we'll see last minute efforts to exploit every one of these lies again. Even if their tactics don't win new supporters, their fundamental strategy is to turn people off and suppress voting. If turnout is low enough, the thinking goes, their devoted core of supporters will be a majority on election day.

Sometimes they spread their messages through anonymous flyers (like the scare tactic pieces the mayor's husband was caught distributing earlier this year, or the bigoted ones that have more recently appeared). Sometimes they use websites (such as the one that often features Erik Hjelle's bile, and has a domain name registered to council candidate Dave Hafner), cable access TV shows, and photocopied "newspapers" that loudly proclaim independence and non-partisanship while blatantly promoting their candidates.

It's instructive to actually watch the meetings of the wood smoke task force. From the outset, Rossbach made it clear that a ban was not an option. The point was to find ways to improve the ordinance, in ways that both pro- and anti-burning residents could support.

It quickly became clear that a number of people on the task force (among them two people who would be candidates in the primary, Delray Rokke and John Wykoff) were not motivated to find consensus or improve the city code. Their agenda was to make the whole affair into a distorted political issue that could be used against Rossbach in the upcoming campaign. Obstruction and misinformation were the order of the day. Members of this faction would spend a large percentage of the meeting arguing loudly over whether or not to approve the agenda, or disputing the minutes of the previous meeting. Every meeting, with a new audience of angry residents turned out by a new batch of misleading anonymous flyers, they would declare that the true, secret purpose of the task force was to ban wood fires, and would attempt to argue with this straw man in an effort to keep anything from actually being done.

At one meeting, while Dave Hafner yelled at task force members from the audience, John Wykoff even began shouting, "Don't vote for Will Rossbach!"

Is it any wonder that some members of the task force stopped showing up? You can understand the frustration of the people who were there in good faith, on both sides of the issue, while this group hijacked each meeting with their malicious political agenda. The same strategy these people use in city elections � drive away enough reasonable people so that your partisans constitute a majority of those who remain � ultimately enabled them to vote against any changes whatsoever, even to update the city code to match the current state fire code (which supercedes city code anyhow).

For certain people, and the candidates they support (whether it's Rebecca Cave falsely taking credit for moving visitor presentations to the start of council meetings, Dave Hafner declaring at the LWV Forum that there should be no time limits on abusive visitor presentations, or Diana Longrie taking pride in how she mismanages our meetings), this is what they mean by "citizen participation." It means turning city meetings into a cesspool of personal attacks, defamation, and invective. It means driving away reasonable, normal people, and leaving most of the "citizen" voices in the room to be those of the malicious, the obsessed, the dishonest, and the delusional, the failed candidates and the out-of-town agitators who just come for the face time on camera � and then declaring that their voices must be heeded, because "they are the citizens!" and "the citizens are the city!"

A few candidates � such as Jim Llanas, Kathleen Juenemann, and Will Rossbach � think that being a leader means also representing the people who are not in the room. Speaking for the people who elected you because they trust your judgement, and, having jobs and families and lives to live, they have better things to do than be there themselves all the time. Representing the needs of the whole community, not just the loud and obsessive few.

When you vote next week, ask yourself which candidates will be representing you next year, whether or not you're there in the room when they make decisions.

More Metro Media on Maplewood Elections

noreply@blogger.com (John Nephew) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 18:35:00 +0000

For those tracking coverage of Maplewood in the metro media, there were a couple of new examples yesterday.

In the new media realm, the Minnesota Independent followed up on their story from last week with a new article featuring more comment from the candidates. Mr. Llanas, target of the hate literature, says that he "wants to keep the campaign positive" and believes "residents ... are fed up with this type of political nonsense." On the other hand, write-in opponent DelRay Rokke speculates that Llanas "figures if he can get the vast majority of members of those groups [gays and Hispanics] ... he has a good chance to win." As for the flyer itself, Rokke doesn't understand what's the big deal, calling it "quite a stretch to say that it is racist and homophobic."

Dave Hafner told the Minnesota Independent that his campaign committee did not distribute the flyers -- but added that he does not actually have a campaign committee. That seems to leave open the possibility that he answered the literal question asked while evading its substance. Compounding his earlier praise of anonymous pamphleteers ("Cowards? These people obviously are quite the opposite" he wrote in comments on the previous story), Hafner commented, "I wouldn�t identify myself either if I didn�t have to."

The story concludes by reviewing the altercation between Hafner and a neighbor that resulted in a 911 call. It may be worth mentioning that Hafner later called the police on his neighbor in turn, for allegedly "staring at me from his steps" and making "a comment which was inaudible, however I think it was directed at me."

Local radio station KSTP-AM also picked up on the Maplewood story. While praising Llanas for keeping positive and focused on the issues in spite of the deplorable personal attacks, hosts Prebil and Murphy lamented the vicious mudslinging that so often characterizes local elections and discourages potential candidates from serving their communities. You can find the audio on the KSTP website, in the archived podcast MP3 of hour 4 of their October 27th episode; the conversation was between 12:38 and 12:44 PM. (Hat tip to K.R.)

Roseville School Board Elections

noreply@blogger.com (John Nephew) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 22:02:00 +0000

While the Maplewood city races for Council and Mayor get most of the attention, those of us in the western three precincts of the city will have another race on our ballots next week as well: ISD 623, the Roseville Area School District board.

There was no primary for this race, just the general election. According to ISD 623's website, there are three candidates on the ballot for three positions. (The board has six members with four year terms, half ending in each odd year.) Incumbents Kitty Gogins and Bill Majerus are running to keep their seats. The third candidate is Mona Langston.

I haven't heard about any school board campaigning or seen any literature, but then it seems that this race has a foregone conclusion.

Flyers in Gladstone

noreply@blogger.com (John Nephew) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 22:14:00 +0000

This past weekend, the Hafner campaign was putting flyers in the Gladstone neighborhood. While the weekend before the flyers in Parkside appeared on mailboxes with anonymous attacks on Jim Llanas (attached with pieces of identical blue tape), in Gladstone a new leaflet accompanied the Hafner material. This one claims to be from Dave Hafner -- it is written in the first person and ends with "Thanks, Dave," and has the almost the same text as the first comment attributed to Dave Hafner on the Minnesota Independent story.

I obtained a copy of the flyer and scanned it. As you can see, Mr. Hafner goes to some length to deny being "racist, sexist, or homophobic." He explains that he has lived in "three of the top four hotbeds for the gay lifestyle in the United States," and has Asian-American neighbors who are the "quietest, most respectful people I know." He writes that besides being respectful (something Dave seems to really appreciate in minorities), Hispanics "are predominantly Christian and I like that too."

One notable difference between the printed flyer and the comment in MnIndy: The last line, "You want honesty, that is all you will get from the entire SMART team," is not in his website comment. Maybe he realized it would sound hollow alongside the revelation from the site's moderators that he had been attempting to post multiple times under different assumed names.

Your Tax Dollar

noreply@blogger.com (John Nephew) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:16:00 +0000

To better visualize our budget and property tax decisions, this is a graph I've been interested in seeing:

Rather than focusing on the total budget expenditures of each city department, what this graph illustrates is how much of your property taxes go as funding to each, using 2009 budget data.

For example, despite the large size of the Community Center in the city budget, it only takes about a penny from each dollar of your city property taxes. The rest of its funding comes from member fees, room rentals, advertising revenue, and the like. The Fire Department slice of the tax pie is considerably smaller than its budgeted expenditures, because so much of its operations are the ambulance service, paid for by charges to its users.

In contrast, the Police Department has only a small percentage of alternative revenues sources -- such as fines, forfeitures, grants. Police are a big part of the city's spending budget, but an even bigger part of the property tax pie because of this.

In most budget areas, cut on the expenditure side also bring cuts to revenue, and only a fraction of the apparent savings could actually translate into property tax reduction. Take the Community Center again. If you eliminated entire operation, cutting all of its payroll and other expenses out of the city budget, the net effect would only be about a 1% reduction in property taxes. Our staff continues to work to reduce the subsidy to the Community Center, but it's wishful thinking to suppose that just eliminating it would mean big tax savings.

Hafner Comments on Flyers

noreply@blogger.com (John Nephew) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 15:00:00 +0000

After writing comments anonymously under multiple names -- a violation of the Minnesota Independent's comment policy -- Dave Hafner posted two comments under the article about the anonymous flyers attacking Jim Llanas.

After denying that he is racist or homophobic, Hafner went on to say that he sees "no racist or homophobic intent" in the flyer, and "I do see a number of facts, many of which come from Llanas� website and the website of the Victory Fund (which is the fourth link down on Google). There are a few opinions that appear to be reasonable conclusions to me." He also endorses the use of anonymous attack flyers, saying of the people who distribute them, "Cowards? These people obviously are quite the opposite."

I can see how he would worry that the Pioneer Press would "misquote" him.

Given his demonstrated propensity to leave comments on news articles while pretending to be multiple people agreeing with one another, one wonders how many of the anonymous commenters in the Pioneer Press article discussion are actually Dave Hafner's sock puppets as well.

Anonymous Flyers in the News

noreply@blogger.com (John Nephew) — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 03:43:00 +0000

Last weekend, I wrote about the anonymous flyers that appeared all over my neighborhood, along with brochures promoting Dave Hafner and the write-in candidacies of Ken Smart and Delray Rokke. Since then, the story has been covered by both the Minnesota Independent and the Pioneer Press.

Like any city, Maplewood includes bigots among its residents. I was reminded of this fact at the League of Women Voters forum on Thursday. The candidates were talking about inclusiveness and specifically about Hmong families that are enthusiastic users of our parks, and one woman in the audience (who is, as it happens, a vocal supporter of Hafner, Cave and Longrie) declared loudly, �They don't speak English!� Setting aside the obvious falsehood of this generalization, so what? I can only suppose this person lives in fear of change and loathing diversity, and is the kind of voter who would be persuaded by the flyer's not-so-subtle message and other similar scaremongering.

Even on the city council, we saw Councilmember Erik Hjelle declare earlier this year that basketball courts are magnets for �gang members� and should be removed.

But as I told the Pioneer Press, I don't believe these people represent our community. They are the bad apples that often spoil public discourse with their hate, whether open or veiled � but we find them so noxious in part because they are the exception, and they offend our idea of our community and the values of human rights and human decency that most of us share.

Fall Clean-Up Day 2009

noreply@blogger.com (John Nephew) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 13:12:00 +0000

Tomorrow is Maplewood's Fall Clean-Up Day, taking place at Gethsemane Lutheran Church, 2410 Stillwater Road. Besides accepting many other types of waste, the city will be collecting bicycles in any condition for recycling by Re-Cycle. Donations for the Second Harvest Food Bank will also be accepted.

For more information, see the flyer on the city website. (Printed copies of the flyer have been available in City Hall, too.)

Even Year Elections?

noreply@blogger.com (John Nephew) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 13:51:00 +0000

Erik Hjelle did bring up an interesting idea in his farewell editorial in the October city newsletter: Should Maplewood switch to even-year municipal elections? From my perspective, costs savings is the biggest likely benefit, especially now that the North St. Paul-Maplewood-Oakdale school district no longer has odd-year elections.

I've placed an item on the agenda for Monday, under Council Presentations, to sound out the rest of our city council and see if there's interest in gathering more information and discussing the idea, and wrote a one-page memo for inclusion in the meeting packet.

Lillie News Voters' Guide 2009

noreply@blogger.com (John Nephew) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:03:00 +0000

The Maplewood Review's sister publication, the Woodbury-South Maplewood Review, appears earlier in the week. Thus it already has posted this year's voters' guides, one for city council candidates and the other for mayoral candidates, with candidate answers to questions posed by the editors of the newspapers.

I have to admit, I find Dave Hafner's answers particularly entertaining, as he proposes to "rid the city of the acrimony," touts his "people-skills," proclaims himself "good, decent, honest" and proposes "charging zero taxes" (I guess that's one way to one-up Longrie's proposal to cut the tax levy on top of losing our MVHC), which he thinks would be "the kind of imaginative thinking that we need in Maplewood." "Imaginative" as in "fantasy," I guess, much like his pal Erik Hjelle's belief in a free lunch. Maybe, persuaded by Hafner's legendary people skills, volunteers would run all city services for free, donate blacktop for roads, etc.?

911 Hafner Audio

noreply@blogger.com (John Nephew) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 01:36:00 +0000

On September 14, Maplewood resident Pat Downs described an encounter with city council candidate Dave Hafner that resulted in him calling 911. In response to Mr. Hafner's statements attacking Mr. Downs at the October 12th council meeting, Mr. Downs stated that he had obtained a copy of the 911 call audio recording and intended to put it on the internet so that people could hear for themselves.

Mr. Downs provided a copy of the audio to me. I'm told his family has also posted it on Facebook, but you need a Facebook account to access it.

Note: I made two edits to this audio, as will be obvious if you listen to it -- I inserted a tone over the parts where Mr. Downs states his home and cell telephone numbers to the dispatcher.

(Use this direct link to the MP3, if the embedded player doesn't work for you.)

Who Would You Guess is Angling for the Racist Homophobe Vote?

noreply@blogger.com (John Nephew) — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 20:41:00 +0000

All over my neighborhood this morning, anonymous flyers attacking council candidate Jim Llanas -- "a non-native of Maplewood" who "apparently spends much of his time in Minneapolis supporting gay politicians" -- showed up on mailboxes, appearing at the same time and attached with the same distinctive blue masking tape as flyers from one of the campaigns.

Would it surprise you to learn that the non-anonymous flyer is for Dave "911" Hafner and his write-in running mates, Ken Smart and DelRay Rokke? It would appear that Hafner's campaign wanted to make sure, if you are the kind of person who is frightened by an anonymous flyer talking about gays and "non-natives," that you know that he and his lily-white not-at-all-gay "dream team" are ready and eager to receive your vote.

(For whatever it's worth, I don't think those three were born in Maplewood either, but you know that's not really what the flyer is getting at with the term "non-native"...)

Hjelle Calls for Free Lunch

noreply@blogger.com (John Nephew) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 18:07:00 +0000

This week's Maplewood Review includes an article with the headline "Council member calls for maintaining police and firefighter levels."

On September 14th, the city council debated the maximum property tax levy for 2010. One option was a zero levy increase. Each department laid out the implications of that budget scenario, given the loss of more than half a million dollars in Market Value Homestead Credit from the state. For the police department, which uses a very large percentage of our property taxes and spends most of their budget on payroll, the impact included not hiring two new officers to fill vacancies created by recent retirements.

Even knowing the impact that a zero levy increase would have, Erik Hjelle and Diana Longrie proposed going even further in the revenue cuts, by offering a motion to cut more than $1/2 million more from the property tax levy. Had their motion passed, the city would need to consider a lot more than just leaving two officer positions vacant in order to balance the budget.

Two weeks after voting with Mayor Longrie against the funding needed to maintain Maplewood police and fire (and other property-tax-funded city services -- if you like having your streets plowed in the winter, for example), Erik brought forward his motion "that the city council support not cutting any police officer or fire staffing levels in the 2010 budget."

This was my response to his original motion:

In the end, we agreed on language to say that it is a priority of the council not to make cuts to police and fire, something that all five of us agreed on. It remains to be seen whether the whole council will step forward and take responsibility for paying for it as well when the final levy decision comes before us. In the meantime, Councilmember Hjelle and Mayor Longrie seem determined to have their cake and eat it too, taking symbolic votes in support of public safety while voting against the taxes that pay for them.

You Talkin' to Me?

noreply@blogger.com (John Nephew) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:19:00 +0000

At Monday's council meeting, city council candidate Dave Hafner declared, "I called the police on him twice," in reference to Mr. Downs, the neighbor who had previously brought issues to the council about Hafner's behavior.

After the meeting, Mr. Downs provided me with a copy of the police report from one of those calls. On 9/19/09, Hafner called the police to report what he regarded as harassment. As recorded by the responding police officer, the "harassment" consisted of Hafner's neighbor "staring at me from his steps" and making "a comment which was inaudible, however I think it was directed at me."

I've uploaded two pages of the report (redacting some information in the interests of privacy) so you can read the whole narrative for yourself.

Dave Hafner Assures Us That He Is Not Ranting

noreply@blogger.com (John Nephew) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 18:21:00 +0000

In what was undoubtedly the dramatic highlight of the evening, City Council candidate Dave "911" Hafner came forward at visitor presentations this past Monday to defend his self-image, to rebuke one of his neighbors (along with sitting councilmembers), and to ask voters to write in his teammates who didn't make it through the primary -- Ken Smart and DelRay Rokke -- on the November election ballot.

Here's the video, including a rebuttal from the neighbor, and Mr. Hafner's effort to come forward again to rebut the rebuttal.