Sebastian McDougall
Ward 4

Moorhead City Council

Nancy Edmonds Hanson

Getting To Know the Council: This is the sixth in a series of Extra profiles of members of the Moorhead City Council.
Sebastian McDougall joined the Moorhead City Council when the beginnings of many of the city’s major undertakings were well underway. He was appointed a year ago to serve the unexpired term of Ward 4 councilman Steve Lindaas after he resigned to take a fellowship in Washington, D.C. One of six candidates, he was the choice of six of the seven voting members.
Since officially taking the seat in September, McDougall has brought his experience on the Park Advisory Board and Moorhead Public Service board of directors to the fore. With his colleagues, he has watched dramatic changes in the city where he grew up – the first major projects digging in downtown and the first year of progress on the 11th Street double underpass, as well as the first phase of the new Moorhead High School and street reconstruction projects throughout the city.
“We’re finally seeing a lot of work for a lot of years coming to fruition,” the newest council member observes. He represents Ward 4 in the southeast area. “It’s time to grab the reins and hold on. Nineteen acres of new developments downtown … a $171 million project to get around the trains. Big things are coming! We’ll have some headaches for a few years. I get that. But when everything is done, it’s going to be so much better for everyone.”
“For everyone” is a theme the 50-year-old business consultant repeats a lot. When he first took his seat on the parks advisory group, he says, he was determined to take a big-picture view of the possibilities and challenges. He brings that same point of view to community issues in his council service.
“I’ve always supported equality and fairness for everybody – what’s best for the whole city, rather than just one neighborhood or one group. I approach the work of the City Council from the same point of view. Though I specifically represent the part of town where my family and I live, we all benefit from initiatives that are good for the whole city.”
McDougall has spent the last eight years as the U.S. sales consultant for MyBudgetSoftware, a cloud-based budgeting system for K-12 school districts. The software allows for multiple users to access the program anytime, anywhere, on any device. The firm, he says, works with almost one-fourth of the school districts in Canada, where it is headquartered, but provides its software worldwide, including a growing list of U.S. clients. He calls his companyWater’s Edge Consulting, and works from an office in his home.
But high-tech sales was far from his mind in 1992 when he graduated from Moorhead High School. He enrolled at North Dakota State University to major in exercise physiology, then called corporate community fitness. The trim, athletic 50-year-old explains his interest this way: “I used to be the fat kid in school; I played guard on the football team. Eventually I slimmed down by exercising and lifting, and I’ve worked out daily ever since to make sure I stay this way. I wanted to help others do the same thing.”
After claiming his bachelor’s degree in 1998, he and his wife Tracy chose to stay in Moorhead. “It was time to get a big-boy job,” he says.
That led to 15 years with Sunmart, much of it managing the Moorhead supermarket on Eighth Street South. He moved on to become the sales manager of Pepsi Americas, the independent bottler based in Fargo. When the company was bought out by Pepsico, he joined DakTech. “That was my introduction to working with schools,” he explains. It opened the door to his work with the cloud-based software firm he has represented since 2016.
Sebastian calls himself “a simple man who always needs to be doing something.” He traces that to his childhood, when he spent summers at work and play on his grandfather’s resort on Little White Earth Lake. “I did everything you can think of at Grandpa’s place,” he remembers, “selling leeches and worms, cleaning cabins, picking up garbage, tending his honeybee farm. He was also a butcher, so I helped with that, too.
“If I wasn’t helping Grandpa, I was working at my cousin’s farm near Detroit Lakes. I learned you had to get all your work done before you got to play.” (That farm, incidentally, is now the site of the Country Campground near We Fest.)
He adds, “I can’t sit still, even when we’re at our cabin at Pelican Lake (the one near Brainerd). I always have to be doing something.”
Which eventually led to a search for ways to be involved with his city. He was appointed to the Parks Advisory Board in 2019. A year later, he was also added to the governing board of Moorhead Public Service, the public utility that provides Moorhead’s power – “more challenge, and an even better way to serve.”
He calls MPS a more intense environment. His temper rises when he considers the common perception that Moorheaders pay more for utilities than their counterparts across the river: “That’s not true at all. Our bills look bigger only because you get just one with everything on it – water, sewer, city fees for forestry and others. Fargo residents get separate bills for everything.”
He adds, “And MPS is proactive in every area.”
One year ago, Sebastian was one of six applicants for the Ward 4 council vacancy. “It was a new challenge. Our kids (Noah, now 23, and Landon, 19) were mostly grown, and I was looking for ways to serve my city.” He adds, “By now I’m kind of a ‘jack of all trades, master of none.’
“Some things I knew; some things, I’ve expanded my knowledge,” he continues. He brought firsthand experience with Moorhead’s parks and power, and says he was schooled on the big picture by this year’s inaugural Citizens Academy, conducted by staff across the entire spectrum of city departments.
McDougall’s council portfolio includes the Human Rights Commission, where his Native American heritage comes into play; the Airport Commission, and the city and county planning commissions. He fields plenty of calls from his constituents, too. “I love people who fight for what they believe in,” he emphasizes. “But we also have to look at the bigger picture.”
He’s a busy man, just the way he likes it; but family plays the central role in his life. Wife Tracy has urgent work of her own, as the lead embryologist for Sanford Health; “she makes babies,” he says of her role helping couples conceive.
Their elder son Noah is a foreman with Lemke Siding and Gutter. Landon, 19, a 2023 MHS graduate, is taking a gap year after attending automotive classes at the Career Academy. Besides pursuing his passion for cars, he is learning the ropes of videography with a local company.
Landon’s knowledge of cars has accelerated his father’s lifelong passion. “I finally got my dream car, a 2001 Audi S4,” Sebastian reports. His son got there first, though, then devoting months to working on his own Audi in the family garage.
Both men spent last weekend racing in Powercruise at the Brainerd International Speedway … and camping in the blistering, humid heat. The event’s website calls it a weekend-long horsepower party “unique in the world of car and driving events.” Hundreds of entrants like Sebastian and Landon were there to “drive their cars the way they were built to be driven, without fear of breaking the law.” It featured “cruising sessions, burnouts, off-street racing and the always- exciting powerskid competition.”
In the end, Landon’s 500-hp Audi outdid his father’s 400-hp dream car. Sebastian reports, “You race anybody who pulls up beside you. I did have some good races. But sometimes you get smoked.”