FARGO, N.D. – Fargo mayoral candidates joined the League of Women Voters of the Red River Valley and AARP of North Dakota for the latest candidate forum Wednesday night at Fargo City Hall.
The five candidates – state legislator Josh Boschee, Human Rights Commission Chairman Sekou Sirleaf and City Commissioners Dave Piepkorn, Denise Kolpack and Michelle Turnberg – spent an hour answering questions on the issues surrounding the City of Fargo. The forum was moderated by Vice President of the League of Women Voters of the Red River Valley, Ashley Ladbury-Herchena.
Addressing downtown safety
The five candidates were asked how they would address downtown safety.
“I think you’re gonna see change coming very soon in how we are gonna be approaching the collaboration, working with other departments, divisions, with the city and with the local businesses and again, that starts with relationship,” Kolpack said. “But we also, when you look at the safety downtown, we need to be really clear on what the issues are we’re trying to solve. And there isn’t just one solution for a number of the complex problems.”
Piepkorn said ‘there’s lots of issues that we need to do and a lot of them are very simple.’
“We’ve had leadership that’s soft on crime,” he said. “I will not be soft on crime.”
Piepkorn, a downtown property owner, says he cannot have his kids at the library during the summer.
“There’s so many people that are either intoxicated or have mental illness,” he said. “We need to get them help. We don’t need to enable them.”
Sirleaf said the problem surrounds perception, data and reality.
“We need to address those because I listened to the current acting police chief and he said our crime is down 10 percent. So that is good news, but the perception doesn’t show that,” he said.
Sirleaf said that if he’s elected, he plans to meet with stakeholders, meet with the police chief, meet with business owners downtown, meet with the residents that live here so that we know by hearing from them exactly where the perception is coming from.
Turnberg pointed to the change that’s already started – Fargo will be getting a new police chief.
“We will be getting a new police chief, a new police administration, which was sorely needed in this city,” she said. “Our police force is below the national average.”
Boschee said he spends a lot of his free time downtown.
“I certainly understand the concerns folks have,” he said. “I think one thing that we certainly need to bring back is the foot patrols and the presence of law enforcement, just engaging with the community.”
Relationships with city employees
The forum addressed city employee morale. It was stated that employees ‘are demoralized in part because of some of the leadership within the city,’ and asked candidates how they would help heal some of those relationships.
“We have excellent staff. I can go down the list. We have excellent, and so that’s not the issue,” Piepkorn said. “But the same thing that’s gonna happen is we’re gonna have to start reducing because as we all know, budgets are tightening. We have, obviously with our downgrade, we’re gonna have to reduce spending ourselves on top of the state reducing spending. So we’re gonna have several challenges.”
Sirleaf said people are not satisfied.
“And we never heard anything like, okay, maybe we sit with them and ask them what’s going on and get to know exactly what they’re going through,” he said. “That is the problem with City Hall.”
He said his job will be to listen.
“That’s why you need to elect me so that I can listen to our city staff, know what they are complaining about, know what’s causing a low morale, know exactly what we can do for them,” Sirleaf said.
Turnberg touched on a recent city survey.
“(It) was a bit confusing in leadership,” she said. “What did that mean? Did that mean the directors of the departments or did that mean elected officials? There are good and bad apples in every workforce. And I think it’s imperative that we have personnel evaluations and get to know what the problems are, if it’s leadership or if it’s in the workforce, and get rid of that problem and fix it.”
Boschee said the most important asset to the city ‘is the people who work for us and serve us.’
“Under the current commission, we have seen the morale go down, as proven through the employee engagement survey that was released last year,” he said. “30 percent of City of Fargo employees indicated that they were ready to leave at any time. That is not a good number for the people who deliver or pick up our garbage, who take care, keep our streets clean, who clean the streets during the winter and keep us safe when we need them most.”
Kolpack agreed that the most important people are those who work for the city.
“Without people, we don’t have services delivered,” she said.
She said work is being done on action items from the survey.
“There has been a lot of work since by departments, some more than others, on how they’re going to specifically address the concerns that were raised,” Kolpack said. “And so we need to support city administration on implementing those findings and those recommendations and work with the entire cabinet.”
