Star Tribune
Duluth mayor, challenger clash in standing-room-only debate
DULUTH — It was standing room only at the first major debate for Duluth’s mayoral race, where incumbent Emily Larson and former lawmaker Roger Reinert labored to paint their differences during an often tense hour.
Both candidates are Democrats and have similar campaign platforms, making the non-partisan race the most competitive the city has seen in 16 years. Reinert, a commander with the U.S. Navy Reserve and a former Duluth city councilor who also served in both chambers of the Legislature, shocked many by capturing more than 60% of the vote in the five-person field in Duluth’s August primary election. Larson, the two-term mayor, was at 35%.
On Wednesday, Reinert criticized Larson’s reliance on local government aid in her 2024 budget proposal, the number of open positions on the police force and the city’s reputation as a tough place to do business.
Larson questioned how Reinert would pay to bolster the core city services he’s promised in his campaign and attacked his level of experience.
“You as a community are not hiring an interim mayor and you are not hiring an adjunct mayor,” Larson said, referring to Reinert’s short stint with the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center and part-time teaching job with a local college. “You are hiring a long-term leader to be the CEO of your community.”
In a forum hosted by the Duluth Area Chamber of Commerce and the Duluth News Tribune in Canal Park, Larson and Reinert agreed on several issues: the need for all types of housing, including as a way to boost downtown; the importance of workforce development and increasing the city’s commercial tax base; investing in road improvements and city parks, and devising long-term solutions to the city’s persistent problem with homelessness.
But they picked apart each other’s records when it came to some of those, including the city’s use of tax increment financing to help pave the way for major construction projects.
“When we do projects, we end up needing to use tools like tax abatement or TIF, which also don’t contribute to our local property tax base,” Reinert said. “And when commercial isn’t contributing, residential pays more.”
Duluth, a city of 87,000, has a dozen projects that are currently benefiting from tax abatement, including the NorShor Theatre, Bluestone Commons and the Maurices Tower.
While Reinert has criticized the state of the city’s streets, he voted to cut street crews in 2006 when he was a member of the City Council, Larson said.
“The crew number we have now is the one that he made possible,” she said, noting 2023 is the first year in decades the city has patched all primary and secondary roads.
They also disagreed on a public golf course in eastern Duluth, which the city closed when it could no longer afford to operate two. The city is seeking bids for a housing development. Reinert said he’d consider keeping nine holes of golf and less housing, while Larson said the city already explored that to no avail.
Larson, a social worker who has served on the City Council, received endorsements from the Duluth DFL and Gov. Tim Walz. Reinert has the support of the city’s police and firefighter unions. (Reinert announced in May he would not seek the DFL endorsement, after initially pursuing it.)
Reinert led the Duluth Entertainment and Convention Center on an interim basis in 2020-21. He teaches as an adjunct instructor at the College of St. Scholastica and is a licensed attorney.
Defending his experience, Reinert said that if “the only person qualified to serve in the office is the incumbent, we could just skip the election and save the taxpayers money and time.”
Several times he pointed out work he did as a state legislator that impacted the city, leading Larson to criticize him for taking credit.
“I don’t think it’s false credit to just point to a tool that I wrote as a state senator and passed through the Legislature that gives us a food and beverage tax,” Reinert said, referring to the city’s tourism tax collections.
He said he’s running because it’s time for “something different.”
The city right now is “sort of good, and we should be exceptional,” Reinert said. “In the last Census we grew by 400 people … That’s not growth, it’s stagnation. We have to challenge ourselves to do better.”
Defending her record and her desire to finish the work she’s started, Larson said there are “clear” differences between herself and Reinert.
“I am not going to shy away from ensuring that you are seeing distinction and choice and difference of vision, of tenacity, of strength, of experience, of qualification to continue to move this community forward,” she said.
There will be a three hour-long forums for City Council candidates Thursday at The Garden in Canal Park.
St. Louis Park will soon require landlords to give renters more notice before they file for evictions over late payments.
The city currently requires landlords to give tenants notice seven days before they file for eviction. Starting in November, landlords will have to give 30 days notice and use a form prepared by the city.
“This is a tough ordinance,” Council Member Lynette Dumalag, the only person to vote against the change, said during a meeting this week. “At least for me, personally, I felt that it pit those that care about affordable housing against one another.”
In public hearings and other forums, city leaders heard from renters who said the current requirements didn’t give them enough time to scrape together payments if they face a sudden hardship, such as losing a job. They also heard from at least one landlord who said he might have to increase deposits because he already struggles to make ends meet when renters fall behind on payments.
The change passed 4 to 1. Council Member Tim Brausen and Mayor Nadia Mohamed were absent.
PARK RAPIDS, Minn. — Ryan Leckner has resigned as Mayor of Park Rapids and the city council has officially declared a vacancy.
City Administrator Angel Weasner said councilmembers will hold a workshop on Sept. 24 to determine how to proceed. They can fill the vacancy by appointment or hold a special election, which Leckner said seems unlikely given that the November general election is just around the corner.
Until then, Leckner said “we’re thinking that we’ll just be able to get by with just one less council member.”
He added that Councilmember Liz Stone would likely serve as acting mayor until voters hit the polls.
Former Park Rapids Mayor Pat Mikesh is running uncontested for Leckner’s now-vacant seat.
In 2018, Mikesh stepped down a month before the election and Leckner successfully ran as a write-in candidate.
Leckner first joined the council in 2015 and is ending his third, two-year term as mayor early because his family built a home outside city limits. Construction of the home in Henrietta Township, and the sale of his existing home in Park Rapids, all happened faster than expected, he said.
“My term was up in November anyways,” he said, “so I was kind of planning on just not running.”
In the 27 years since Rhode Island’s first charter school opened its doors, just one has closed. Segue Institute for Learning, a community charter in Central Falls, R.I., is among the state’s successes. It has an extraordinarily low student-to-teacher ratio of 4 to 1, even though it spends less than a typical Rhode Island school.
Part III
How Rhode Island’s charter schools succeeded where Minnesota’s failed
Each spring, Blackstone Valley Prep in Rhode Island hosts a loud, spirited and celebratory “college signing day” ceremony for its high school seniors. One by one, the teenagers step onstage to proudly announce their post-graduation plans. Many are the first in their family to seek a degree.
Rhode Island is the smallest state in the country, but it’s here — and not in Minnesota, the birthplace of the charter school movement — that this daring experiment in public school education is paying big dividends for students and their families.
Left In the 27 years since Rhode Island’s first charter school opened its doors, just one has closed. Segue Institute for Learning, a community charter in Central Falls, R.I., is among the state’s successes. It has an extraordinarily low student-to-teacher ratio of 4 to 1, even though it spends less than a typical Rhode Island school.
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