Tyler Hamilton
Name: Tyler Hamilton
Public Office Sought: Maplewood City Council
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 612-594-0685
Website: TylerHamiltonMN.com
Twitter Handle: @TylerHamiltonMN
Facebook: Tyler Hamilton
Candidate Bio
I've been in this area for nearly 20 years, since I was a baby and my parents moved here from Duluth in search of more opportunity. Having lived near White Bear Ave while attending Maplewood Schools, I've seen and experienced the impact of the many challenges our community faces.
Our seniors losing their independence, the lack of easily-accessible community-oriented amenities in much of our city, economic insecurity, crime and police profiling, the high cost of education and healthcare, discrimination, unsafe roads and unreasonable commutes, marginalized populations (like our neighbors with disabilities) having to rely on our poor or nonexistent sidewalks and transit to get around, and more.
Not all of these can be reasonably addressed by local government, though we can fix many of them at relatively little cost. Beyond just experiencing what needs to be fixed, most importantly, I have the vision, values, and policy solutions to actually fix them after years of involvement with local activists fighting for our quality of life. It's not just about what you've done, it's about what you'll do if elected and the future you want. I want Maplewood to be a great place for my future family, and for all us.
Business climate
1. How would you characterize the business climate in Maplewood?
The business climate in Maplewood could be a lot better than it is today, though we have seen some improvements. New housing and commercial space is getting built, but overall our commercial and housing stock is aging, and it hasn't been enough to keep up with depreciation.
The Maplewood Mall had 18 vacant storefronts when I visited a month or so ago, with more retailers leaving (Sears and Best Buy Mobile, as two very recent examples). If we don't act soon and effectively, the Mall will close.
We have the policy levers and assets to fix this, but only if we have the know-how and political will to do so.
2. What role do you think the City should have in attracting and retaining jobs, and what steps would you take to solicit new businesses to, and retain existing businesses in, Maplewood?
I believe the City of Maplewood needs to simplify and streamline some parts of the permitting process for new business and development, particularly our zoning code. In the majority of our city, because of our zoning code, any new development or business would be illegal without action from the City Council (spot rezonings).
Because small and medium-sized businesses don't have as much expertise and experience navigating the rezoning process, and can't afford the political risk embedded in our current zoning permit process, only larger developers and businesses can invest in Maplewood.
Unfortunately, those larger developers usually gravitate towards areas with more/better amenities than Maplewood, which is why we have to open ourselves up with by-right zoning in our commercial areas for small and medium-sized businesses.
Beyond zoning, maintaining and improving the quality of life for our residents (who are both workers and customers for Maplewood's businesses) is important in order to keep turnover low. I am against the use of tools like TIF wherever possible, and prefer to levy for a large project ahead of time (and over a period of many years), unless interest rates are low enough to offset the opportunity costs of bonding.
3. Would you support hiring a business advocate as a member of the city senior staff, to concentrate on business retention and expansion; new business recruitment; and business impact of proposed regulations on the business climate in Maplewood?
I am open to hiring good staffers to ensure Maplewood is well-run and maintains institutional memory, and I understand the appeal of having a dedicated staffer for working with businesses in Maplewood, though I would want any “business advocate” to have more qualifications than just that. Understanding the mechanics of how zoning and transportation affect businesses would be key, as those are the primary responsibilities of cities like Maplewood.
4. Do you support an increase to the minimum wage in Maplewood? If so, what specific steps would you take to understand the impact of an increase on the many types of businesses in Maplewood and do you support proposals to mitigate the effects on businesses like a tip credit, a youth wage, a training wage, and/or a phase-in?
As someone who would like to start a business one day, who's various family members have worked for and run several small businesses, I support increasing the minimum wage (and think it will ultimately help many small businesses, because employees are customers too). I think a phase-in period is a must for consistency, given how minimum wage increases have always been implemented, and to give businesses time to adjust to higher wages.
I do not support a tip credit because it is difficult to enforce and leads to several negative equity outcomes. The largest is that 90% of women working in the restaurant industry have experienced sexual harassment, and 50% experience it at least weekly, a huge and disproportionate number, which is directly related to their reliance on tips to make ends meet. There are similar discrepancies between how much servers of color, as an example, get tipped vs white workers, which is unacceptable.
I'm open to other efforts to help businesses adjust to paying higher wages, like a youth wage, training wage, ect, which seem reasonable to me (depending on how they're implemented). While I wouldn't vote “no” on reasonably raising the minimum wage, until St Paul raises theirs, and we have implemented some concrete policy steps towards saving the Maplewood Mall, I don't plan on pushing for a minimum wage increase.
5. Do you support any other specific employment-related proposals in Maplewood (such as mandatory sick time or scheduling notice)? If so, what specific steps would you take to understand the impact of an increase on the many types of businesses in Maplewood and how would you define any exceptions to those policies?
While I am generally supportive of the working families agenda, I think some objections to specific policies have merit, and some policies would be difficult for a city the size of Maplewood to successfully implement.
The effects of fair-scheduling rules on restaurants with outdoor seating is one example, since the amount of people willing to eat outside varies greatly with the weather. I also think it's far more effective and realistic for smaller businesses to have the state or federal government (or perhaps even Ramsey County) pay for guaranteed sick/family leave, instead of mandating businesses must offer sick/family leave and pay for it.
Thus one example of a smart exception would be a fair-scheduling exception for restaurants with a given threshold of outdoor seating (which can be determined with input from the impacted restaurants). Another would be mandating businesses above a certain size provide sick & family time and pay for it, while smaller businesses would be exempt from paying for it (until a higher governing body appropriates funding for it), and maybe fully exempt from providing and paying for it if it's a very small business. Where exactly those boundaries would fall would require input from businesses and the community.
Public safety
6. What is your strategy to address public safety concerns?
I am a strong believer in the philosophy that the best solution to crime is to prevent it from happening in the first place. And to do that, we must address the socio-economic causes of crime.
While a city government can't conduct an anti-poverty campaign like the state or federal government can, our housing policy can determine whether we live in a segregated or integrated society. The worst areas for crime and public safety have always occurred in segregated metros, where public policy has concentrated public and affordable housing into already poor neighborhoods, instead of spreading them around and including them in higher-opportunity neighborhoods.
Using affordable housing tools like inclusionary zoning and land trusts in a targeted manner to desegregate our society can go a long way to fixing crime. Cleaning up environmental pollutants such as lead, which have been shown to strongly increase rates of violence and crime, also helps.
As far as direct public safety policy goes, making sure our police department is a part of our community in a humanizing way is key, instead of them being perceived as an occupying force. Getting officers out of cars and on foot/bike works in walkable areas, though we need to build more walkable areas in Maplewood for that to be an effective strategy. Organizing community-building and charitable events makes them a force for good beyond their employment as peace officers. Making sure they have the proper hiring-practices, resources, and training to handle whatever comes their way on-duty is important.
Budget
7. What are your priorities for the City’s budget?
Maintenance, strategic infrastructure investments, and increasing revenue (tax base) are my top three priorities for the City budget (all at once, and not in any given order).
Maintenance isn't a sexy word, but it saves money over the long-term, and thus should be one of our top priorities. Additionally, strategic investments in infrastructure that allow us to increase our tax base (above and beyond the cost of said infrastructure) need to be made. Raising revenue by increasing our tax base is self-explanatory.
8. How do you view the relationship between commercial and residential property taxes?
In most American suburbs/cities, the average single family home only pays between ¼ to 1/3 the cost of the local infrastructure and services it uses through property taxes. There isn't any hidden math beyond that, because low density suburban sprawl has been bankrupting our society. Low-density commercial areas can require similar amounts of subsidy (ie a walmart) because parking lots don’t pay much property taxes, though they usually aren’t as bad.
The only way our balance sheets have broken even thus far is because dense neighborhoods and commercial development has subsidized our bedroom communities. The solution is not to increase property taxes on single family homes, because very few of us can afford that. The solution is to create more walkable neighborhoods that provide both high-levels of amenities (at a lower per-capita cost) and provide a net-gain for city budgets.
9. What will you do to expand Maplewood’s tax base?
While I have touched on this elsewhere, The biggest things we can do are simplify and liberalize our zoning code, while building (in cooperation with other local governments) the basic level of infrastructure (local bus service and sidewalk coverage) to sustain new growth.
Commercial areas (White Bear Ave, the Maplewood Mall, and Highway 61) should allow new development with minimal restrictions on height, FARs (Floor Area Ratios), setbacks (beyond what is needed for future infrastructure), and parking. All areas of the city should allow context-appropriate mixed-use development.
As an example, low density residential neighborhood interiors should allow smaller neighborhood oriented retail by-right. Meanwhile, White Bear Ave should allow at least 6 floor buildings with whatever mix of hotel/office/residential/commercial space works for any given location.
Workforce development
10. How will you work with K-12 and post-secondary educational institutions and businesses to ensure our region develops and retains an educated workforce?
As a 2015 Alumni of North High School, with friends and family members who have also recently attended (or are still attending) our public schools, there are several improvements we can make to ensure our region develops and retains an educated workforce.
Working with our k-12 and post-secondary institutions:
Otherwise making sure our region retains an educated workforce:
The 2 biggest factors that lead to Minnesota's amazing retention rate for businesses/workers are a high quality of life and a relatively low cost of living. We can preserve both of those factors by keeping the price of housing down (by increasing the supply of housing!) and continuing to invest in the amenities that improve our quality of life (parks, schools, transportation, ect.)
11. What do you see as the city council’s role with regard to Maplewood Public Schools?
There are two roles the city council can play with regard to Maplewood Public Schools. The first role is to encourage growth of the property tax base so our schools can have higher funding per-pupil at a lower cost per-taxpayer. Traditionally ISD 622 has had difficulty securing levy increases. Making school levy increases less impactful by increasing the property tax base can help with that.
The second role is to work and cooperate with ISD 622 as much as we can to influence educational policy. While this second role is a political role and not officially delegated to the Maplewood city council, the bully-pulpit is available to city council members for trying to improve our schools.
Other
12. What is the biggest challenge facing the city and how would you address it?
The largest immediate challenge facing the city is the decline of the Maplewood Mall, which provides a substantial amount of jobs and tax base. If elected, I would form a task force of all the institutional stakeholders in the area to take action. The city of Maplewood has some useful policy levers, but does not own the land and call all the shots for what will happen in the area.
The task force will probably include (but may not be limited to) the city of Maplewood, the Maplewood mall, the individual department stores at the mall (they own their own land), Ramsey County, Metro Transit, St John's, and likely some business representation for the commercial areas around the mall.
Ultimately, the only way to sustainably and affordably save the mall would be to fill in the parking lots around the mall with housing and mixed-use development. It's decline is being caused by customers moving their sales elsewhere, and thus the solution is to bring enough people and activity to it's doorstep, where it would be their most convenient option.
The Maplewood library, Maplewood transit center, and a reinvigorated mall would serve as excellent amenities for an urban village in the area. All the new development would not only preserve the existing jobs and tax base the Maplewood Mall area provides, but increase our business activity and tax base on top of what we already have!
13. What would be your top three priorities if elected?
14. What do you think should be the city’s top transportation related priority?
Improving our local bus service. While Ramsey County's work with the Rush Line and Gold Line are good and helpful, they are large, expensive, and slow projects. For us to sustainably increase our tax base, we need to work with St Paul, Metro Transit, and Ramsey County to improve our local bus service, which can be done faster, cheaper, and more effectively.
15. Are there any services currently provided by the city that you believe should be cut back or eliminated? Or, are there new opportunities to share services with other entities?
For most local governments, there aren't many areas to find savings left at this point after decades of budget problems and cutbacks. The most effective way we can save money moving forward is to use our fixed infrastructure to the greatest reasonable extent we can. Ultimately by having more walkable and dense neighborhoods, more people can choose to live in areas with less infrastructure & service costs per-capita, keeping property taxes down.
16. Is there anything else you would like to share with voters not covered above?
Most local politicians only collect feedback for new policies after they're elected based on vague value statements. When meetings at city hall are the main way to gather feedback, usually only a small and unrepresentative slice of our community can show up (most of us have families, jobs, and other responsibilities to tend to).
One reason I'm running for city council with a platform of tangible policy goals is so that I can bring the process of governing to the people of Maplewood, and directly get your thoughts and feedback on our policies. You shouldn’t have to spend your evenings at meetings in City Hall to get yourself heard.
Please feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions, or would like to talk or meet over some coffee. Texting my phone number above with a brief introduction is the best way to reach me.
~Tyler Hamilton, Building a Better Maplewood!.
Public Office Sought: Maplewood City Council
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 612-594-0685
Website: TylerHamiltonMN.com
Twitter Handle: @TylerHamiltonMN
Facebook: Tyler Hamilton
Candidate Bio
I've been in this area for nearly 20 years, since I was a baby and my parents moved here from Duluth in search of more opportunity. Having lived near White Bear Ave while attending Maplewood Schools, I've seen and experienced the impact of the many challenges our community faces.
Our seniors losing their independence, the lack of easily-accessible community-oriented amenities in much of our city, economic insecurity, crime and police profiling, the high cost of education and healthcare, discrimination, unsafe roads and unreasonable commutes, marginalized populations (like our neighbors with disabilities) having to rely on our poor or nonexistent sidewalks and transit to get around, and more.
Not all of these can be reasonably addressed by local government, though we can fix many of them at relatively little cost. Beyond just experiencing what needs to be fixed, most importantly, I have the vision, values, and policy solutions to actually fix them after years of involvement with local activists fighting for our quality of life. It's not just about what you've done, it's about what you'll do if elected and the future you want. I want Maplewood to be a great place for my future family, and for all us.
Business climate
1. How would you characterize the business climate in Maplewood?
The business climate in Maplewood could be a lot better than it is today, though we have seen some improvements. New housing and commercial space is getting built, but overall our commercial and housing stock is aging, and it hasn't been enough to keep up with depreciation.
The Maplewood Mall had 18 vacant storefronts when I visited a month or so ago, with more retailers leaving (Sears and Best Buy Mobile, as two very recent examples). If we don't act soon and effectively, the Mall will close.
We have the policy levers and assets to fix this, but only if we have the know-how and political will to do so.
2. What role do you think the City should have in attracting and retaining jobs, and what steps would you take to solicit new businesses to, and retain existing businesses in, Maplewood?
I believe the City of Maplewood needs to simplify and streamline some parts of the permitting process for new business and development, particularly our zoning code. In the majority of our city, because of our zoning code, any new development or business would be illegal without action from the City Council (spot rezonings).
Because small and medium-sized businesses don't have as much expertise and experience navigating the rezoning process, and can't afford the political risk embedded in our current zoning permit process, only larger developers and businesses can invest in Maplewood.
Unfortunately, those larger developers usually gravitate towards areas with more/better amenities than Maplewood, which is why we have to open ourselves up with by-right zoning in our commercial areas for small and medium-sized businesses.
Beyond zoning, maintaining and improving the quality of life for our residents (who are both workers and customers for Maplewood's businesses) is important in order to keep turnover low. I am against the use of tools like TIF wherever possible, and prefer to levy for a large project ahead of time (and over a period of many years), unless interest rates are low enough to offset the opportunity costs of bonding.
3. Would you support hiring a business advocate as a member of the city senior staff, to concentrate on business retention and expansion; new business recruitment; and business impact of proposed regulations on the business climate in Maplewood?
I am open to hiring good staffers to ensure Maplewood is well-run and maintains institutional memory, and I understand the appeal of having a dedicated staffer for working with businesses in Maplewood, though I would want any “business advocate” to have more qualifications than just that. Understanding the mechanics of how zoning and transportation affect businesses would be key, as those are the primary responsibilities of cities like Maplewood.
4. Do you support an increase to the minimum wage in Maplewood? If so, what specific steps would you take to understand the impact of an increase on the many types of businesses in Maplewood and do you support proposals to mitigate the effects on businesses like a tip credit, a youth wage, a training wage, and/or a phase-in?
As someone who would like to start a business one day, who's various family members have worked for and run several small businesses, I support increasing the minimum wage (and think it will ultimately help many small businesses, because employees are customers too). I think a phase-in period is a must for consistency, given how minimum wage increases have always been implemented, and to give businesses time to adjust to higher wages.
I do not support a tip credit because it is difficult to enforce and leads to several negative equity outcomes. The largest is that 90% of women working in the restaurant industry have experienced sexual harassment, and 50% experience it at least weekly, a huge and disproportionate number, which is directly related to their reliance on tips to make ends meet. There are similar discrepancies between how much servers of color, as an example, get tipped vs white workers, which is unacceptable.
I'm open to other efforts to help businesses adjust to paying higher wages, like a youth wage, training wage, ect, which seem reasonable to me (depending on how they're implemented). While I wouldn't vote “no” on reasonably raising the minimum wage, until St Paul raises theirs, and we have implemented some concrete policy steps towards saving the Maplewood Mall, I don't plan on pushing for a minimum wage increase.
5. Do you support any other specific employment-related proposals in Maplewood (such as mandatory sick time or scheduling notice)? If so, what specific steps would you take to understand the impact of an increase on the many types of businesses in Maplewood and how would you define any exceptions to those policies?
While I am generally supportive of the working families agenda, I think some objections to specific policies have merit, and some policies would be difficult for a city the size of Maplewood to successfully implement.
The effects of fair-scheduling rules on restaurants with outdoor seating is one example, since the amount of people willing to eat outside varies greatly with the weather. I also think it's far more effective and realistic for smaller businesses to have the state or federal government (or perhaps even Ramsey County) pay for guaranteed sick/family leave, instead of mandating businesses must offer sick/family leave and pay for it.
Thus one example of a smart exception would be a fair-scheduling exception for restaurants with a given threshold of outdoor seating (which can be determined with input from the impacted restaurants). Another would be mandating businesses above a certain size provide sick & family time and pay for it, while smaller businesses would be exempt from paying for it (until a higher governing body appropriates funding for it), and maybe fully exempt from providing and paying for it if it's a very small business. Where exactly those boundaries would fall would require input from businesses and the community.
Public safety
6. What is your strategy to address public safety concerns?
I am a strong believer in the philosophy that the best solution to crime is to prevent it from happening in the first place. And to do that, we must address the socio-economic causes of crime.
While a city government can't conduct an anti-poverty campaign like the state or federal government can, our housing policy can determine whether we live in a segregated or integrated society. The worst areas for crime and public safety have always occurred in segregated metros, where public policy has concentrated public and affordable housing into already poor neighborhoods, instead of spreading them around and including them in higher-opportunity neighborhoods.
Using affordable housing tools like inclusionary zoning and land trusts in a targeted manner to desegregate our society can go a long way to fixing crime. Cleaning up environmental pollutants such as lead, which have been shown to strongly increase rates of violence and crime, also helps.
As far as direct public safety policy goes, making sure our police department is a part of our community in a humanizing way is key, instead of them being perceived as an occupying force. Getting officers out of cars and on foot/bike works in walkable areas, though we need to build more walkable areas in Maplewood for that to be an effective strategy. Organizing community-building and charitable events makes them a force for good beyond their employment as peace officers. Making sure they have the proper hiring-practices, resources, and training to handle whatever comes their way on-duty is important.
Budget
7. What are your priorities for the City’s budget?
Maintenance, strategic infrastructure investments, and increasing revenue (tax base) are my top three priorities for the City budget (all at once, and not in any given order).
Maintenance isn't a sexy word, but it saves money over the long-term, and thus should be one of our top priorities. Additionally, strategic investments in infrastructure that allow us to increase our tax base (above and beyond the cost of said infrastructure) need to be made. Raising revenue by increasing our tax base is self-explanatory.
8. How do you view the relationship between commercial and residential property taxes?
In most American suburbs/cities, the average single family home only pays between ¼ to 1/3 the cost of the local infrastructure and services it uses through property taxes. There isn't any hidden math beyond that, because low density suburban sprawl has been bankrupting our society. Low-density commercial areas can require similar amounts of subsidy (ie a walmart) because parking lots don’t pay much property taxes, though they usually aren’t as bad.
The only way our balance sheets have broken even thus far is because dense neighborhoods and commercial development has subsidized our bedroom communities. The solution is not to increase property taxes on single family homes, because very few of us can afford that. The solution is to create more walkable neighborhoods that provide both high-levels of amenities (at a lower per-capita cost) and provide a net-gain for city budgets.
9. What will you do to expand Maplewood’s tax base?
While I have touched on this elsewhere, The biggest things we can do are simplify and liberalize our zoning code, while building (in cooperation with other local governments) the basic level of infrastructure (local bus service and sidewalk coverage) to sustain new growth.
Commercial areas (White Bear Ave, the Maplewood Mall, and Highway 61) should allow new development with minimal restrictions on height, FARs (Floor Area Ratios), setbacks (beyond what is needed for future infrastructure), and parking. All areas of the city should allow context-appropriate mixed-use development.
As an example, low density residential neighborhood interiors should allow smaller neighborhood oriented retail by-right. Meanwhile, White Bear Ave should allow at least 6 floor buildings with whatever mix of hotel/office/residential/commercial space works for any given location.
Workforce development
10. How will you work with K-12 and post-secondary educational institutions and businesses to ensure our region develops and retains an educated workforce?
As a 2015 Alumni of North High School, with friends and family members who have also recently attended (or are still attending) our public schools, there are several improvements we can make to ensure our region develops and retains an educated workforce.
Working with our k-12 and post-secondary institutions:
- retain and expand access and offerings to college-level courses like AP, CIS, and PSEO
- offer second-language classes at earlier grade-levels. I had the opportunity to start taking german classes in 8th grade at John Glenn. The earlier we start learning a second language, the easier it is to learn and retain. Studies have also shown learning additional languages improves overall academic performance.
- As much as we can while governed by state and federal law, give our teachers more independence to teach as they find most effective! Throughout my entire experience in our school systems, teachers have been frustrated that they have to “teach to the tests” (for good reason). In one of my little sister's classes, because of how the curriculum the tests test for diverged from the curriculum present in our aging textbooks, the teacher had to abandon using the textbook and use a test prep book to guide the curriculum. Frustrations like this are common.
- We need more and more highly qualified teachers. The amount and qualifications of our teachers limits both the quality and scope of classes we can offer at our schools. There are classes not yet offered at North, like AP Computer Science, because we don't have enough teachers with the degrees to teach them. Our teachers that are well-qualified (usually meaning degrees in both education and the subject matter they teach) are at their limit in terms of what they can accomplish with their time and energy. A program where we help our teachers (both new and current teachers) get degrees in both Education and whatever subject matter they teach could help with this.
Otherwise making sure our region retains an educated workforce:
The 2 biggest factors that lead to Minnesota's amazing retention rate for businesses/workers are a high quality of life and a relatively low cost of living. We can preserve both of those factors by keeping the price of housing down (by increasing the supply of housing!) and continuing to invest in the amenities that improve our quality of life (parks, schools, transportation, ect.)
11. What do you see as the city council’s role with regard to Maplewood Public Schools?
There are two roles the city council can play with regard to Maplewood Public Schools. The first role is to encourage growth of the property tax base so our schools can have higher funding per-pupil at a lower cost per-taxpayer. Traditionally ISD 622 has had difficulty securing levy increases. Making school levy increases less impactful by increasing the property tax base can help with that.
The second role is to work and cooperate with ISD 622 as much as we can to influence educational policy. While this second role is a political role and not officially delegated to the Maplewood city council, the bully-pulpit is available to city council members for trying to improve our schools.
Other
12. What is the biggest challenge facing the city and how would you address it?
The largest immediate challenge facing the city is the decline of the Maplewood Mall, which provides a substantial amount of jobs and tax base. If elected, I would form a task force of all the institutional stakeholders in the area to take action. The city of Maplewood has some useful policy levers, but does not own the land and call all the shots for what will happen in the area.
The task force will probably include (but may not be limited to) the city of Maplewood, the Maplewood mall, the individual department stores at the mall (they own their own land), Ramsey County, Metro Transit, St John's, and likely some business representation for the commercial areas around the mall.
Ultimately, the only way to sustainably and affordably save the mall would be to fill in the parking lots around the mall with housing and mixed-use development. It's decline is being caused by customers moving their sales elsewhere, and thus the solution is to bring enough people and activity to it's doorstep, where it would be their most convenient option.
The Maplewood library, Maplewood transit center, and a reinvigorated mall would serve as excellent amenities for an urban village in the area. All the new development would not only preserve the existing jobs and tax base the Maplewood Mall area provides, but increase our business activity and tax base on top of what we already have!
13. What would be your top three priorities if elected?
- Reforming our Zoning code to allow equitable growth.
- Reforming our transportation policy to emphasize multi-modal transportation (A complete streets policy).
- Working towards Racial and Economic equity through various other policy measures
14. What do you think should be the city’s top transportation related priority?
Improving our local bus service. While Ramsey County's work with the Rush Line and Gold Line are good and helpful, they are large, expensive, and slow projects. For us to sustainably increase our tax base, we need to work with St Paul, Metro Transit, and Ramsey County to improve our local bus service, which can be done faster, cheaper, and more effectively.
15. Are there any services currently provided by the city that you believe should be cut back or eliminated? Or, are there new opportunities to share services with other entities?
For most local governments, there aren't many areas to find savings left at this point after decades of budget problems and cutbacks. The most effective way we can save money moving forward is to use our fixed infrastructure to the greatest reasonable extent we can. Ultimately by having more walkable and dense neighborhoods, more people can choose to live in areas with less infrastructure & service costs per-capita, keeping property taxes down.
16. Is there anything else you would like to share with voters not covered above?
Most local politicians only collect feedback for new policies after they're elected based on vague value statements. When meetings at city hall are the main way to gather feedback, usually only a small and unrepresentative slice of our community can show up (most of us have families, jobs, and other responsibilities to tend to).
One reason I'm running for city council with a platform of tangible policy goals is so that I can bring the process of governing to the people of Maplewood, and directly get your thoughts and feedback on our policies. You shouldn’t have to spend your evenings at meetings in City Hall to get yourself heard.
Please feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions, or would like to talk or meet over some coffee. Texting my phone number above with a brief introduction is the best way to reach me.
~Tyler Hamilton, Building a Better Maplewood!.