I love our town.  Jodi and I began dating in the early 70s.  I was a want to be sailor.  One summer, I got a job on road construction and worked 75 hours a week.  I made enough money to not only pay my college tuition but to buy a shiny new sailboat.  I lived in Columbia Heights and Jodi was from Fridley.  Every summer weekend we would head over to White Bear Lake.  It was either the County beach or Matoska.  We spent the day sailing, swimming, relaxing in the sun, topped off with a BBQ.

We dreamed that we would someday live in White Bear Lake.  We envisioned one of the houses near the lake with a white picket fence. Some years later I was fortunate enough to start a small software company developing educational software for microcomputers.  We sold that company to McGraw-Hill.  I took some of that money and purchased a Johnson C Scow.  I even took a lesson from Skip Johnson to learn how to sail that big boy.  I kept that boat at Tallys.

I am a technology early innovator.  By the late 1980s, I worked my way up at McGraw-Hill and landed a position as Director of the Byte Information Exchange (BIX).  Byte was the magazine about microcomputers.  BIX was an online service where computer programmers could post articles and have discussions on hundreds of topics.  We had 20,000 subscribers! 

I knew then that magazines would become obsolete and digital publishing was the way of the future.  In 1990 I started a company to make a living in digital publishing.  Internet Production Inc. is still building digital publishing software.   My son John runs that company today.

One of my first clients was Newsbytes News Network.  They were a digital news service covering emerging technology.  They could not afford to pay me, so I took a small percentage of the company as compensation.  We ended up selling that company to the Washington Post! 

Jodi and I decided we could make the move to White Bear Lake and we purchased a lot on Bald Eagle Lake.  We tried to build a house, but we simply could not afford to get the space we need for our four kids.

Fast forward to the year 2000.  We purchased a house on Birch Lake.  We packed up our four children and settled into new community.

It is through Birch Lake that I became active in our community.  Birch Lake is shallow.  It is only seven feet deep.  It is very clean but is often overrun with weeds.  You can’t sail on Birch Lake.  We had a lake association, and I became president.  Every year I would go around the lake and beg for donations to help control the weeds.  Then I learned about a new state law that allowed a group to form a Lake Improvement District.  This is a special tax district that works as a part of the city government.  All I needed was 51% of the lake shore owners to sign a petition.  So, I went around the lake one last time and we formed the Birch Lake Improvement District.

We have a board of directors.  I am the current Chairman.  We have taxing authority.  We manage a budget for controlling weeds, stocking fish, and running an aerator to keep them alive through the winter. 

By the way, the fishing on Birch is good!

For the past ten or fifteen years I have stood before the White Bear City Council and presented the BLID budget for approval.  I watched those meeting and thought to myself.  The people who run for City Council and Mayor really perform a service.  It is one that few see but it is one that when done well results in a wonderful town.

I am running for Mayor because I want to serve our city and advance our tradition of a destination place to live.