Nancy Edmonds Hanson
hansonnanc@gmail.com

The Moorhead City Council has approved a miniscule tax levy that will have an outsized positive effect on reducing homelessness throughout Clay County.
Dara Lee, executive director of the Clay County Housing and Redevelopment Authority, brought a request to the council on Monday. Speaking for the HRA’s board of commissioners, she asked the city to endorse the group’s first-ever levy within the city of Moorhead. The “special benefit tax” is estimated to amount to one dollar per month on a property of $200,000 market value.
Proceeds from the tax will be used for the county organization’s ground-breaking “Homework Starts with Home” to eliminate homelessness among families with children; 46 of the 47 families now being served live in the city. It’s also earmarked for rehabilitation of owner-occupied housing in Moorhead and support of the Moorhead Public Housing Agency, which has no levy of its own.
Lee explained the HRA has the legal authority to levy taxes countywide, but specifically asks for concurrence in Moorhead and Barnesville. Locally generated support is widely leveraged from other sources to support public housing and rental assistance. She said that Moorhead schools enrolled 134 homeless children a year ago; this fall, that total has been reduced to 46. After council members unanimously approved her request, she added, “Now our goal is to get it down to zero.”

Developing a Contract
The council also approved a contract between the city and the private Downtown Moorhead Inc. to provide economic development services for the entire city. The contract – set at $100,000 per year plus $6,000 for travel – replaces the city’s original plan to add an economic development director to its staff. Derrick LaPoint, president of DMI, will take on the dual responsibility of promoting the downtown district along with the entire city.
City Manager Chris Volker described the proposed direction as a “team approach,” combining LaPoint’s expertise with that of herself, assistant city manager Dan Mahli and economic development program manager Amy Thorpe. “We intend to offer a one-stop source of everything a developer needs to know to consider coming to Moorhead,” she explained, “rather than going all over the place to find the answers they need.”
The contract with DMI and LaPoint, who was hired by the newly formed downtown development group in March, marks the second abrupt change in direction in recent months. Until earlier this summer, economic development efforts were handled by a full-time director employed by the Moorhead Economic Development Authority, whose members are appointed by the council. They voted to bring the director’s job back within the city government structure, where it had resided until three years ago. Cindy Grafeo, then the director, was offered the city job but declined; the position has been vacant since mid-summer.
EDA President Charley Johnson questioned the wisdom of bringing the job in-house, then immediately outsourcing it again. “After all that has happened in the last 12 months, it’s become clear our board [EDA] is becoming irrelevant,” he told the council. “This contract is coming out of the EDA’s budget with no EDA input whatsoever.”
Volker assured the council that she, her staff and LaPoint will hold a workshop with the EDA board in coming weeks to clarify their respective roles.

A Burning Issue
Does Moorhead need to regulate late-night bonfires? That’s the question Assistant Fire Chief Chad Stangeland asked council members to consider. After talking it over, they gave a solid thumbs-down to setting a curfew for recreational back-yard fires, but left the door open to clean air concerns.
Stangeland cited a Minneapolis ordinance that bans wood fires on private property from 10 p.m. to 8 a.m. Burning would also be restricted during periods of air quality concerns, such as the weeks of smoke from distant forest fires that clouded skies in August.
Council member Mari Dailey spoke strongly against adding another layer of regulation – especially in the recently annexed Oakport area, where residents have been assured the rural nature of their neighborhood will be preserved as much as possible. “I’m not comfortable policing what people do in their own back yards,” she said, adding that enforcement could place an undue burden on the fire and police departments.
After weighing the annoyance of some city-center residents, whose yards are smaller and closer together, and health concerns over air quality, the council directed Stangeland’s department to further review the burning issue.