This is a voter guide for Daniel Orban for City Council. The purpose of this document is to educate voters on my stance on the most current issues. Keep in mind that I tend to focus on pragmatic solutions:
Below are answers to relevant questions:
I’ve lived in the East Phillips Neighborhood for over 10 years with my wife and two kids. I love the people, the culture, and the diversity. We know it as home! My ten year old daughter wants to graduate high school here. Whenever we return from a trip, my four year old son gets excited when he sees downtown. He cries out with awe and longing, “It’s Minneapolis Downtown! That’s where my home is...” We want to raise our kids as cross cultural ambassadors, who love everyone and understand the nuances between cultures.
It is for these kids and the kids in our neighborhood that I am running. I want a thriving, diverse, garden city where people know and look out for each other. We are not currently cultivating this environment. Instead, people are struggling with addiction and insecurity. Drug dealers and prostitutes are in our back alleys. Stolen merchandise and trash are hidden in our yards, and people are dying of overdoses and violence. Across the street, two houses caught on fire this summer, evicting my neighbors from their own homes. We wonder when someone will break into our house, and if anyone will come to our rescue. The current state of lawlessness in our city is not compassionate or loving. We need a better approach.
I cannot sit by and watch my community be destroyed when I have the power to do something about it. It is my responsibility to step up. Therefore, I’m running for City Council to amplify the voice of our community members, empowering neighbors who want everyone’s basic needs of public safety, security, and kindness met.
I am qualified simply because I live here, and I care about everyone who lives here, including those who are living in tents. I want what is best for everyone, not just what everyone wants.
Professionally, I am a teacher who is trained and has worked at all levels of education. I’ve taught at the public and private K-12 schools in Minneapolis and Brooklyn Center. I’ve been a professor at the University of Minnesota teaching logic and program design. I also actively teach industry professionals the newest technologies. Through this endeavor, I have discovered that people have an incredible creative power, able to conquer the most difficult problems if we work together. I also am aware of many of the current difficulties that face our children in our schools today.
Homeless encampments are not a solution. They are simply not leading to human flourishing. In fact, they are doing the opposite, and there seems to be no clear policy from the city that addresses these issues. What civilized country let’s people suffer and die in camps? Living conditions include illegal activity, theft, drug dealing, public indecency, and prostitution. People continue to die from overdoses and live in unsanitary conditions. Small businesses are robbed and shut down, residents feel unsafe, and the very people in the encampments are not shown compassion. Clearing encampments is costly and fruitless. This is unacceptable. We should invest instead in shelters and housing, where residents will get long term help with their needs, addictions, or mental illness.
Not everyone who lives in an encampment has the same story. We must use different solutions based on each individual need. We require a multi-pronged approach, focusing on the specific story everyone has. Not everyone needs drug treatment or help with mental illness. Some simply need housing and a safe place to live.
We need to stop the flow of drugs at every step of the distribution chain all the way back to the source. Production and distribution of these drugs is criminal, predatory, and destructive. To fix this, we need to starve the entire system economically, by breaking up open air drug markets, taking away the consumers, and beginning steps to treatment and recovery. This includes creating shelters and temporary shelters where substances are controlled. Key to the solution is to invest in and incentivize and/or mandate drug treatment. Addiction is not thriving, and we should be working towards equipping those in need. We need a positive pro-human approach that provides hope and purpose. We need to engage and implement interventions to help our neighbors overcome their addictions and other challenges. We need to build more houses for people to thrive. How can we accomplish this? One idea is that we offer everyone with or without a criminal record the opportunity to be employed in construction for all the new housing. Everyone should have a job and everyone should have the chance to literally build a better community.
This is a challenging question for a leader in Ward 9 because the 3rd precinct represents the epicenter of this worldwide conflict. It should not be considered lightly, but in humility and with an open respectful ear. People all over the world are concerned and troubled by what happened here. Let's continue to seek justice, peace, mercy, and grace.
My answer to the question is yes, I support increasing funding for police officers. That being said, I believe officers should adhere to the highest ethical and moral standards. Therefore, I also support increasing funding for accountability, transparency, and police partnerships. What we have tried recently is simply not working. Many of us feel a sense of lawlessness and no accountability for crimes committed. Citizens are crying out for public safety, realizing that it is a core function for society to thrive. People and small businesses do not feel safe and secure. The number of law enforcement workers is small. There is no guarantee that help will arrive in time if we experience an emergency.
We should also focus on police partnerships and positive alternatives. Alternative public safety approaches are wonderful, but they often require support from officers who are trained to handle dangerous situations. We should invest in preventative and deescalation jobs within law enforcement. Ultimately we need to somehow restore trust in the institutions that keep us safe. This does not happen overnight, but through many failures and challenges. Let’s continue to iterate here, for the problem is complex, nonlinear, high dimensional. There is no simple solution, but we need a more balanced approach than we have now.
What do we do here in Ward 9? I believe we need a local presence of law enforcement, but we also need healing, vision, and reconciliation. We need to work together with the police department to do something good, completely different, and in a different context. How can we see each other as humans, created in the image of God? Can we garden together? Can we build something? How can we view each other in a different light? We need a common goal and purpose to work towards. These are not easy questions, but reconciliation and perhaps reformation of the police is vital to the health of our city.
Many helpful ideas have been proposed from the community. To list a very few, some examples are: police officers paying for their own insurance as an incentive to treat the public well, police going down to tasers only, having an MN police academy, police and community members engaging regularly in projects like building houses together, improve understanding between police and the deaf and non-English-speaking communities.
I want to hear your stories, concerns, and questions for this issue. Let’s work together to build a safe community for everyone, especially those who have been hurt.
As with any difficult problem, the solution will also be complex. First, we need to increase the number of homes, driving the market prices for rentals down. I am encouraged by the city’s attempt to zone for multi-family public housing. This seems to address some density problems that occur with single family homes. I think that a balanced approach is best here, with both public and private development adding to housing. Increasing the number of options will help diversify the market, removing unforeseen risk. Second, we need to encourage and support more home ownership. People take pride in their properties, and establish mortgages that are not as subject to market fluctuations. In other words, home ownership can be much better than rent control. Third, we need to encourage and invest in meaningful jobs that allow people to pay for housing.
I do not support rent control due to many potential unexpected economic consequences. Rent control seems like a great idea at first glance, and it has the potential advantages of stability and predictability for both the renter and owner. However, the lack of incentive for the owner to maintain the property and for builders to create new properties can encourage rapid decline and incentivize bad maintenance for the current renter. In the end, the owner may indirectly force the renter to leave, forcing them to pay higher rent when they move to their next place. First, we can work towards solutions by improving access to home ownership. We should also build more affordable public housing and increase the number of clean safe shelters.
Perhaps the number one issue in my community involves the lack of public safety. Small businesses need security to know that they are protected and cherished by local law enforcement. This is a basic need for both the employees and the business owners. If Minneapolis is considered unsafe, which it is, small businesses will leave and stay away. If we do not fix the public safety issue, small businesses will not be able to thrive. There is no end to the number of jobs that need to be created to improve public safety and support treatment centers.
Second, we need to innovate in making meaningful work with our neighbors to engage everyone’s talents. We need meaningful jobs, new jobs, more jobs. A friend of mine recently described the collective anxiety throughout our city. We have lost our purpose, our reason to live. Let’s focus on the needs of our city. For example, after our isolation during COVID, many people have social needs that are not being met. People will pay for places to engage with others, sharing in productive dialog and growing healthy. We should analyze the unique opportunities in our community that have recently emerged.
Finally, our neighborhoods are especially diverse, housing people from all over the world. We contain decades of history in people as they moved into Ward 9 because housing is affordable. Let’s not lose our culture, but embrace the special place it is. Let’s build businesses that thrive because of the uniqueness of the local small businesses. We should encourage entrepreneurs to share their culture with others. This builds a broader community and has people coming from all over the city to experience and invest in something new. People, however, will not come if the public safety issue is not solved. Ward 9 is known worldwide, so let’s welcome the world. Let’s build something beautiful and purposeful.
We have a wonderful opportunity here. Clearing snow and ice from sidewalks is a basic need in the city of Minneapolis, and that need is currently not being met. I do not necessarily agree with the current suggested approach, which includes increasing taxes to plow the sidewalks. This seems like an expensive approach that is not environmentally friendly. Yet, we have a plethora of people who are looking for meaningful jobs. Even people who have a criminal record can shovel sidewalks!
Good solutions are usually complex and include multiple dimensions. Here is one idea. First, many of us like shoveling our own and our neighbors sidewalks. Let’s not let the city take this good feeling away from us. It is good for us to enjoy shoveling sidewalks. Second, not everyone has the ability to accomplish this task for many reasons. There are programs out there to help those in need, but often they are volunteer based. Let’s investigate how we can pay people to help each other, employing those who need jobs. Third, for those who are able and are negligent, we should enforce policies to ensure it is done. It is important to have clean sidewalks in the winter. It is a basic and vital safety need for the most vulnerable. It is right for people to take responsibility for their property and for them to be held accountable. Policies should be followed quickly and efficiently. This encourages personal responsibility to help build healthy communities.