QA with Fargo park board candidates ahead of June 11 election

The League of Women Voters hosted and moderated a forum with Fargo Park District board candidates earlier this month ahead of the June 11 election.

There are two open seats. Candidates include:

Michael Graalum
Jerry Rostad (incumbent)
Zoë Absey

Find more information on the Fargo election at vote411.org. More information about the Fargo Park Board can be found at fargoparks.com.

Below are candidate responses to questions submitted by the audience.

Turn Up Your Support

MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all.

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

What are your top two priorities if elected or reelected to the Fargo Park Board?

Zoë Absey: My top two priorities include advocating for green spaces. Because creating a sense of belonging is essential in fostering inclusive community wellbeing and recognizing that maybe all of our communities don’t have equitable access to the green spaces that they might see that their community needs.

Also, recreation activities for all ages and abilities, recognizing that Fargo is becoming very diverse, so making sure that we have activities where our taxpayers can see themselves in and participate in. So really going and evaluating our programs and seeing what the community needs.

Michael Graalum: My No. 1 priority is to at least begin the construction of an end-to-end trails network connecting all our riverside parks from the northernmost part of Fargo to the southern most. This is really informed by my experience in Grand Forks where they have a wonderful greenway system. I think we can do much better than what they have. We have a much better set of riverside parks. Moorhead has excellent parks that we can connect to as well, and that would be a great amenity for our community.

Second would be to reinvest in our neighborhood parks. Some of these, particularly in our newer neighborhoods, are a little underwhelming and I think could use some additional amenities, as well as considerably more trees.

Jerry Rostad: Obviously the top priority of a board commissioner to be a good steward of taxpayer dollars and taxpayer resources. I take that very seriously. Look at the Fargo Parks Sports Center that we’re building and there’s a 40 percent private contributions and gifts to build that facility. So our taxpayers are getting a very good return on their investment in that facility.

The second thing that I think is most important for being a park board commissioner is to make viable decisions and as things evolve, we adapt to the different changes that the community is asking for. So pickleball courts is a perfect example. We didn’t talk pickleball courts when I first got elected in 2016, well, maybe a little bit. Suddenly now pickleball courts are very important to the community. And so we’ve responded as a park board and as a park district, and so we got to continue to meet the needs of our citizens.

The Fargo Parks Sports Center opens soon. How will you, if elected to the park board, be sure to also focus on the non-sports aspects, as not every Fargoan like sports?

Graalum: As far as the Fargo Sports Center, I think that’s going to be a good venue that we can use in the future. I’m sure we can host a wide variety of events there. But I want to look beyond just the Fargo Sports Center and bring these things into our neighborhoods, into our more publicly accessible areas of town.

Rostad: Certainly the Sports Center has a focus on youth athletics, competition, whether it’s ice, indoor turf, basketball, hardwood courts, pickleball courts. But there’s an indoor playground in there, there are six community rooms, there’s four party rooms, there’s three multipurpose rooms.

And as a park district, again, talking to our stakeholders across the city, we need to have places and opportunities for things like art classes and building birdhouses, and things like that. And we just don’t have that capability in our arsenal right now in the park district. So this is going to open up a lot of avenues for new opportunities to provide services and experiences for citizens, certainly well beyond the athletic competition side of it.

Absey: As an individual who would not say that they are very sporty, I would be a huge advocate for focusing on non-sport activities happening at the complex. However, I think we need to make sure that we're creating access to that location … making sure we’re working with MATBUS, and working in communities to make sure that they have access to go there and participate in those activities.

And I think from a program development standpoint, even though this is a project and a facility, in the first year looking at evaluation, on how the programs are being received, how the activities are, the participation and then future thinking for the next year of what can be changed and adapted.

Pickleball has become a popular sport in Fargo. But there aren’t enough indoor courts for wintertime play. Also, pickleball players at Courts Plus Community Fitness pay a lot to use the courts. How can we address this inequity? And what can we do to promote this very quickly-growing sport?

Rostad: Certainly the sport is growing and the indoor courts that are being built out at the Sports Center are going to help alleviate that. But the cost modeling is set up in such a way that whether you’re going to go to the courts to play tennis or you’re going to go there to work out, depending upon what you want to do — there’s different rates and different fees for using the facilities. That offsets the overall operation of the facility, and it also brings down the unit cost for a member because they pay to have the membership and then the rates to pay to play pickleball or tennis are less than what they would have paid if you’re not a member and you show up.

So it is a challenge. And we need to keep working at it. Pickleball, like I said, and our other indoor amenities as well, in the wintertime it gets pretty busy in Courts Plus with all the different people showing up trying to find places to do things on a cold winter day.

Absey: I did get a tour of the sports complex last week. And I will say there are more pickleball courts coming for the winter months. I think it’s all about hearing from the community. I sound like a broken record, but really being in the community as a representative of the community to hear about these barriers that individuals are facing and bringing it back to the park district on how we can create change and maybe make more accessibility, whether it’s through scholarships or looking at grants to help support this work so maybe their cost is reduced.

Graalum: As others have said, it sounds like the Fargo sports complex will significantly alleviate the scarcity of pickleball courts, but to the specific question, we should not be charging them extra for that and we should do away with that.

Community engagement is crucial for successful park management. How do you plan to involve residents in the decision-making process regarding park development and programming?

Absey: At my work at Great Plains Food Bank, my role is really about hosting focus groups and community meetings to gather input on how we can better our services and create more access to food. And so I think, if elected to the park board, I would want to learn what the park district is already doing, and then provide insight or support to meet in neighborhoods where our neighbors are and have those meetings, invite them in, gather input and then see how we can put it into work.

Graalum: When it comes to these issues, I think we should be striving to have citizens take a more direct role in planning and determining what goes into these facilities. If you have a neighborhood park that we would like to do some work to, it should be the people in the neighborhood making the determinations of what goes into that park. They are paying the tax dollars already. It is their park that serves their neighborhood and they should have the say and be leading on the design and planning for that facility.

Rostad: The park district is very interested in stakeholder input. We’ve done master plans for Yunker Farm Park, Lindenwood Park, Island Park and the Island Park pool redesign. And in all those cases, we did conduct an extensive public input. We did mailings, we did online forms and surveys, we did face-to-face meetings, we brought the public in, we showed them what it is that we want to do, we took their input, and that’s so critical to get it right — to get what our citizens want.

And they also have to feel like they have some ownership in it. So it’s a win-win. And so stakeholder input is significantly important already in our park district and I’m so proud of our staff for the work that they’ve done to incorporate that work on getting input from people.

Since 2017, one out of eight new housing starts in the city has been built downtown. As a park board member, how would you handle this situation as infill continues to play a major role in new development as we are building many new developments downtown? How can we make sure to bring park amenities to where people live?

Graalum: First of all, I think our downtown parks are several of our best parks. In fact, most of our best parks are downtown, particularly Island Park. Lindenwood isn’t far away. Oak Grove is excellent as well. Across the river, we have excellent parks as well. So as far as the downtown neighborhood, I think we have a good thing to work with here. What we need to do is continue to optimize what we have, adding features as they are determined to be necessary. I think we could do more with the area along the levee next to Highland Park. But overall, it’s just a matter of continuing to reinvest in what we have, keep it updated and continue to tinker with what we have so that we have a park district that is continuously updated for what our residents demand.

Rostad: I’d like to touch on the Island Park pool redesign. If you recall, it was a lap pool with diving boards at the end, again through public input and soliciting a lot of feedback from the neighborhoods. We are now building a pool that’ll open a year from now. It’s going to have 50-meter competition lanes, we’re gonna have diving boards and platforms. We’re gonna have a leisure pool, a lazy river, tubes and slides. It’s really gonna be a destination not only for the neighborhood, but for the entire community because of the amenities that we are providing based on the inputs that we received from our stakeholders.

That’s a perfect, ideal situation. When we talk about infilling and downtown, [Island Park is] a perfect example of what we’re doing to sustain parks in that neighborhood. Broadway Square’s another gem that we’re so proud of in the city. It’s such an iconic place. It’s a destination for people, whether it’s the splash pads in the summer or ice in the winter.

Absey: I’m very excited to learn more about how parks do their park maintenance and how a park comes up first to be worked on. But when thinking about downtown, I do think that there is a lack of awareness of the communities that surround downtown, such as Unicorn Park where I reside, or Madison neighborhood. Broadway Square is wonderful and Island Park and Lindenwood. But there are neighborhoods that don’t have beautiful parks that could use some love. And so I’m really excited to learn about how parks come up for being redone.

Can you share your vision for the future of our city parks? How do you plan to enhance the accessibility, sustainability and recreational opportunities?

Rostad: Oh, we’re doing that already. With the sports center that we’re building, with the Island Park pool redesign, with the master plan. The other thing that’s really important too that doesn't get any attention — it’s not out on the front page of the papers — is we’re just now finishing up a strategic planning process for the Fargo Park District. And when we have that plan finished and finalized, it’s really going to serve as a guiding post for decision making well into the future for the city of Fargo in the Fargo Park District. That piece is so vital for our ability to sustain the projects that we’re already doing to add new things to remove things. Another thing that we’ve done that I think is important that, again, happens behind the scenes, is I helped bring a cost modeling program to the park district. So we can now model our programs and look at the unit cost whether it’s $1 per participant or $5 per participant. But that quantitative data helps drive us in our decision making in terms of what we do, what we add to and what we look at taking away.

Absey: The strategic plan is very exciting to hear about. And I think having a strategic plan will really help set goals and mile markers for how we are creating access and the well-being of our community. And I think a really big part of that is, which I know the park district is already doing, but enhancing our partnerships and collaboration because the park district can only do so much. And so with collaboration and partners in this wanting to make sure that our city is accessible and that community members are thriving, that is how we are going to be able to make sure that there’s access to green spaces and parks where our neighbors see themselves in.

Graalum: First, I’d like to highlight the pedestrian bridge being built into Bluestem Park in Moorhead. I would like to see us do several more of those particular, from Lemke Park into River Oaks in Moorhead, and most importantly, a bridge from the Fargo side into MB Johnson in Moorhead.

Further connecting all the Riverside parks with a single, coherent network of trails and integrating that with the trails which already exist, particularly on the south end with the Milwaukee Trail and the Rose Creek trails.

And then finally, to put more features into our neighborhoods, rather than being dependent on large complexes, reinvesting in our neighborhood ball diamonds or neighborhood soccer fields, putting pickleball courts in neighborhood parks or basketball courts, things to that effect.

How can we make sure that there are basic amenities like trash cans, receptacles that aren’t open to animals or the wind, and bathrooms in all parks and along the trails that would make the parks much more usable?

Absey: There needs to be an inventory of what each park has and what needs to be updated at each park. And so making sure we know how many trash cans are in Unicorn Park, for example. And if one blows away or one is no longer usable, having that timeline of when it needs to be completed, to make sure that everyone, that people have access to bathrooms, and I think, too, making sure that the bathrooms are open and not locked, because I have been in that situation where you have to find an alternate place.

Graalum: Echoing what Zoë said, I think on top of that, we need to make regular inventory of what we have. And making sure on a regular basis as we do our inspections, as we run the mowers through or whatever, that everything’s in place and everything is being taken care of. And from there, working with the city and determining where we can best put facilities like bathrooms. At the end of the day, we’re kind of dependent on the city infrastructure for where we can put those and where we can do that most efficiently. So that has to be really a multibody effort.

Rostad: I’d like to focus my answer on accessibility. And I’d like to again congratulate our staff on all their tremendous work in the area of accessibility. This past year, they adopted a sensory night for Santa’s Village at Yunker Farm. We have a sensory room that’s going into the sports center that provides sort of space for people that are have have those kinds of needs. The sports center’s ice is going to be adaptive for sled hockey, so that we’ll be able to have people play hockey that otherwise don’t have the ability to do that. We do adaptive camps. We do adaptive bowling, we do adaptive softball and our staff actually go do training on the different kinds of disabilities that are out there to be able to accommodate our residents and our citizens that need the special accommodations that are so important. And we also adopted, through the foundation this past year, two golf carts that are adaptive for people who have disabilities that can go out and play golf, using those carts. So there’s a lot of good work being done there.

Climate change poses significant challenges to park ecosystems. How would you integrate climate resilience and adaptation strategies into park planning and management?

Graalum: One of the most important things we can do to both save money for a community and also to make it more livable to affect our microclimates is to extensively plant trees throughout our city. You can look at the map and you can often find the parks by finding the brown fields. And that is something that is unacceptable to me. We need to put a significant investment into reforesting many of our less utilized parks. We’ve done good work, I have to say; we’ve expanded the riparian zones along our riverfront which are great. Our nature parks on the south end are outstanding. And we need to work to expand those and to continue to improve them. So it’s going to be a long process and it’s going to take some investment.

Rostad: Well I’m sounding like a broken record here, but the park district is already doing a lot of these things. We have an aggressive aggressive emerald ash borer management program to deal with that insect as it makes its way into our community. The park district’s groundskeeper staff looked for conservative ways to apply herbicides to our golf courses in our green spaces. Every tree in Rose Creek or Edgewood Golf Course is mapped by our state forester. He can tell you where every single tree is there. So to suggest otherwise — we are very conscious in terms of dealing with the environment and sustainability. And we’re doing it on a daily basis.

Absey: Going off what Jerry was saying is making sure that we’re leaning on those partnerships and collaborations that the park district has in the community. River Keepers is doing a lot of great work around advocating for the Red River and the park district is a huge partner and collaborator in that and so making sure that we continue those partnerships and continue to seek out those partnerships with with experts in the community. And I also would like to make sure folks know about the different initiatives that they can be involved in, like the boulevard gardens, or that the park district and the foresters work hand in hand, I think is very valuable for to let the community know about the work that is happening and ways that they can get involved.

What are your thoughts on the proposed Yunker Farm project/changes?

Rostad: I think they’re great. Again, we solicited a lot of public input on the development of Yunker farm. To me, it’s an underutilized facility up there … but it is going to be a beautiful facility — it is already. That farmhouse is iconic; we want to make sure we keep that. The Botanic Garden is in there. And if you’ve not been back there — it’s almost hidden from view from University Drive — beautiful, beautiful spaces back there. And we want to expand that park and have more green space, expand the capabilities of it and just make it so we don’t want to take away from any of the usability of it. But there’s so much. Once we get that master plan fulfilled, it’s going to be just a wonderful resource for the city of Fargo.

Absey: I’m excited that there’s going to be new life up in north Fargo. I’m excited to see how the plan goes and looks. I want to make sure that we are still thinking of communities and making them feel welcome there and that they have adequate access to accessing all the amenities that will be there. And again, sounding like a broken record, making sure that we’re evaluating after so much time to make sure that the activities, the programs, the spaces are what the community want and desire.

Graalum: I have mixed thoughts on the Concord Park project. On the southern end, I like many of the things that are planned for the Botanic Garden. But for the northern portion of that, I think we could have done a much lower impact plan that would have achieved many of the same goals. I don’t really see how it’s necessary to move the dog park, for instance. At the feedback meetings, everyone from the neighborhood spoke out against that. I think we should maybe go back and re-address some of that plan to maybe make it a more cost-conscious plan and maybe lean more into the farm aspect of Yunker Farm and leave it as more of a rustic area rather than a manicured downtown park like Island Park is.

Budgets are always complicated. How can you find a way to help the average Fargoan understand the park board budget?

Absey: I’m excited to learn about the budgeting process that the park board goes through. And I think having elected officials that you are electing and are part of the community be those spokespersons for it. So having community forums, going to speak at local gatherings about what the budget entails, and here’s the activities we’re doing, this is why the budget is this way. I think just having that transparency and being part of the community can really help with the messaging around the budget.

Graalum: First of all, I think we need to go into more detail in our publicly available documentation about exactly how much is being spent on which park. For instance, with the golf courses: Break it down by golf course rather than just giving us a summary. Adding those extra details would go a long way to improving the transparency of how we’re budgeting. And once I, presumably, get into this position, going into the details of what our long term perspectives is, how our facilities are aging and what our future needs will be will be something that I’ll be very interested in.

Rostad: First of all, I’d line you up with our budget people and have them explain things to you because sometimes it is daunting and I have to sit down with our budget folks once in a while to have him explain this and that, but that’s the important thing — is that they’re there for us to do that. And not just us when I say commissioners, I’m talking about us, the city. So you know, if there’s something that you’re not sure of, pick up the phone and give us a call.

But beyond that, budgeting is a year-round process. We get the budget approved in the fall, and we’re already starting to work on the next year’s budget. So it’s a continuous cycle, we generate lots of input throughout the district, it percolates up, it gets to the board, we start having some reads on it, we send it back for more work. And then it comes back. And as I mentioned in my opening remarks, I’m a fiscally conservative person. And, and so I’m very conscientious of being a public steward of taxpayer dollars. I think that some of the other members of the board feel the same way. So we’re all approaching this from the same perspective.

How do you presently use the Fargo Park District facilities and resources?

Graalum: The park that I probably spend the most time in by a considerable margin is Forest River. I love the natural areas along the river. I spend an enormous amount of time there and I have probably explored just about every square foot of it at this point.

On the south end, I think we should work to expand that complex of parks. We have good plans coming forward to add more trails in there. In the future, it’d be excellent if we could find a way to link those two parks up with Heritage Hills, which is also turning into what will be a very excellent nature park. On the north end, we have a similar amount of natural land wild woods that we could bring trails into and improve that area as well. So I really like the natural, the wild areas of the parks.

Rostad: I’m trying to think of areas that I haven’t explored in the park system. We’ve got trails and pools and golf courses and parks, neighborhood parks, regional parks, courts, plus, I mean, there is something for everybody in the Fargo Park system. And it’s more fun than ever to get out and explore, whether you take your bike out and find a path and ride along the river, or go down south by the Old Orchard Park and go into that area. There’s so many things … it’s all about getting out and playing and having fun and making memories. We talk about that a lot. So, make memories, and that’s what the Fargo parks are here for.

Absey: I am definitely a user of the pickleball courts. I am really grateful that those have been expanded at Brownsville Park. I also was part of the group that helped start the Dike West garden by the sledding hill. And that was a great collaboration, and I’m grateful for the park district for allowing us to use that space, because oftentimes gardening might not come up as a recreational activity. However, for many it is recreation, maybe not hockey, but gardening. And of course, I appreciate all the trails and wildlife that you can see along the way.

Closing remarks

Rostad: Again, I want to thank the League of Women Voters for doing such great work. It’s great for our community. It’s been an honor and a privilege to serve the past two terms as a commissioner on the Fargo Park Board, and I seek your support for a third term. I’m fully engaged on all the issues that are going on in the park district now. So I’m not going to hit the ground running — I’m already on the ground running.

I think community service is hugely important. I’m invested in this community, I want this community to be successful, and I went do everything I can to help. I served 28 years in the Navy Reserve. So I think community service is important and and giving back to your community, whether … you’re volunteering at Growing Together Community Gardens, which my wife and I have been doing for six years, or if you’re volunteering at your church or whatever. I just think it’s important that we get back to such a great community and and certainly I’ve been blessed with all kinds of things in my life. And, and so I think it’s critically important to give back to the community.

Absey: Thank you so much for having me here tonight. I have learned so much in my three months of campaigning, really learning about what the park district is doing and hearing from communities about what they want to see in the future. I was privileged and lucky enough to have access to parks and recreational activities. And I hope, if elected, to create access for all of our communities and make sure that they know about scholarships and initiatives that they can be part of. And I’m hopeful that they see themselves in these spaces because everyone is part of this community. If you want to learn more, you can check out Zoë for Fargo Parks on Facebook. Again, this has just been a wonderful experience. And I’m excited to learn more.

Graalum: I’d like to thank the League of Women Voters for hosting this event. I think it’s a very good thing for this community to get out and talk about the issues in public, to address the concerns that people have.

There’s a lot that we can do to get to the point where we have that world-class park system because we have the excellent building blocks. We have excellent parks that already exist throughout our town. And it’s just a matter of taking it to the next level, taking those next steps, continuing to tinker with what we have and improve day by day, and get to the point where we can say proudly that our park system is better than Minneapolis’ or whoever’s so that we don’t have to look at Grand Forks and be like, ‘Oh, they have a better greenway system than we do.’ I want us to lead and have the best system that we can possibly have, and to do it as affordably and efficiently as we can.

Have thoughts or questions about the upcoming election in Fargo? Let us know!

You can text our SMS club below or email MPR News digital producer Amy Felegy at afelegy@mpr.org.

Want more Fargo-Moorhead coverage? Check out our local news page at mprnews.org/fm.