On Nov. 8, Moorhead residents will elect one new member to the City Council to represent each of the city’s four wards. Each will be introduced here in The Extra between now and Election Day.

This week we talk with Ward 2 candidates Heidi Durand, who is running for her second term, and challenger John Rowell, who served on the council for 12 years before his defeat in 2009. Councilman Chuck Hendrickson also represents Ward 2; his term expires in 2018.

Heidi Durand

Heidi Durand had served seven years on the Moorhead parks advisory board when the council member who’d appointed her, Diane Wray Williams, reached out to see whether she’d consider running for her Ward 2 council seat.

Heidi, who teaches sociology at M State, talked first to her husband Chad about how it would impact their family of three sons — including one facing complex health challenges, and the youngest only 1 year old. “He knows about my passion for public service,” Heidi remembers, “and he was instantly on board.” A native of Climax, Minn., she has lived in the F-M area since 1993 and Moorhead since 1999.

After serving for five years, she deliberated with her family before announcing her run for a second term. The experience and rewards of serving, she says, finally tipped the balance.

Her time serving the city has been both rewarding and, at times, frustrating. “It’s satisfying when Ward 2 residents reach out to me and I can be of help to them,” she notes, adding that these contacts have become a close-to-daily experience – especially in winter. “There’s a sense of real accomplishment when good, even great, things get done for our city.”

Heidi cites her five years as a liaison between the council and the Moorhead Public Service commission as one of those good things. When she started attending MPS meetings, the city-owned utility’s relationship with city leaders was at its nadir. “There wasn’t a lot of trust there,” she says. “There was a lot of animosity on the commission over the city council’s transfer of variable portions of MPS revenue to minimize property taxes.

“Chuck (Hendrickson) and I worked very hard with commission members to create a stable, predictable transfer agreement,” she continues. The result – the Electric Transfer Agreement – establishes a stable model tied to kilowatt hours. Two years remain of the four-year pact.

If she’s reelected on Nov. 8, the councilwoman predicts that Moorhead Public Service will remain a focus: “There’s still work to be done.” She also looks forward to meeting the challenge of finding the next city manager. “We need someone with creativity and vision, with the ability to innovate … the right person who will focus on all-encompassing collaboration with the council, city staff, the county, the school district and all our citizens.”

John Rowell

John Rowell was one of Ward 2’s council members for a dozen years before his defeat by Mark Altenburg in 2009. Now, 11 months after retiring from 30 years as a Moorhead postal carrier, he says one recent issue in particular prompted him to submit his name for the 2016 ballot: The firing of City Manager Mike Redlinger six months ago.

“After saying they were satisfied with both the quality and the quantity of his work, he was fired behind closed doors,” he says of the manager, whose hiring he’d been part of during his council tenure. “Their explanations were laughably inadequate. That’s how people lose faith in their government.”

Beyond the immediate effect of its action, he says, the council has made it “very difficult, if not impossible, to hire a truly qualified candidate as the next manager.” He adds, “A simple Google search will tell the best potential applicants everything they need to know.

“If Moorhead were a football team, we’d be stuck with sixth- and seventh-round draft choices.”

The former Eagle Scout and father of two adult children cites another major issue he’d like to see addressed: amending the city charter to return the size of the council to just five members from the current eight ward reps plus the mayor.

“Prior to the 1980s, that’s the way it stood,” he says, “… one member elected from each of the four wards plus a voting mayor elected at large. Fargo stumbles along with five. West Fargo has five. Dilworth has five. There’s no logical reason why Moorhead needs nine cooks in the kitchen stirring the pot.”

The change would require amending the city charter – a move that would require far more than one man’s support. He is passionate on raising the issue for community-wide discussion.

“The care and feeding of eight council members, two from each ward, becomes a substantial burden for the city,” he says. “It gets to the point of being counter-productive, and also makes it harder to reach consensus on measures that matter to all of us.”

Local politics has changed, John says, since his first election before the turn of the century. “It’s gotten a lot more personal,” he concedes. He traces signs of the change to the 2009 election. “It’s more cutthroat now. I admire everyone who is willing to run. Unless you have pretty thick skin, it can be a daunting process.”