PLATFORM
My philosophy is to consider the issues thoughtfully, listen to other points of view and decide responsibly, with a focus on the long-term best interest of Brooklyn Park and its’ residents. My decision-making is common sense, non-partisan and moderate. With nearly 30 years of community development and government experience, I believe we can find solutions, work together and get things done. I want to continue to build on our successes to work toward the future particularly in the areas of public safety, youth, high quality development, and housing preservation.
PLATFORM
TONJA'S MESSAGE
Youth
I want to see youth programs initiatives continued and strengthened to ensure kids have constructive things to do in their off school time. In addition, I'd like to see that all of our youth have at least one adult in their life they can rely on.
We need to support our young people by continued to investment in the current city programs, facilities and staff. We need to analyze what we're doing to see if we still have gaps. We also need to continue to support agencies that assist them, like BrookLynk and Avenues for Youth.
High Quality Development and Preservation
I want to ensure development meets the adopted design guidelines, while bringing jobs and higher value new construction. This needs to be balanced with preserving and improving our existing housing stock. I want foster development that will create opportunities for all stages in life and at all affordability levels. Brooklyn Park is known as a great first time home buyer community and for its affordable rental apartments. Everyone should be living in decent, safe, affordable housing.
We have about 50 percent of our renters in the city that are cost burdened, so I support the mixed income housing policy the city adopted at the end of 2017. Which, broadly will require that any rental multi-family housing unit developments with more than 10 units that receive city financial subsidy or require land use or zoning changes, to be required to include a certain percentage of units to be affordable at 30, 50 or 60 percent of area median income. I would like to see it include a longer period of affordability and more emphasis on allowing for more new construction. I want to see the Apartment Action Plan 2.0 implemented to continue to foster responsible property management while encouraging owners to invest in their properties. In addition, due to its’ anti-displacement and other virtues, we need to do what we can to preserve our Naturally Occurring Affordable Housing (NOAH). Residents who live here should be able to continue to live here.
After having seen the state of our single family housing stock through the foreclosure crisis programs. I would like to see us take an inventory of our current single family housing stock and continuously improve programs that can realistically assist our homeowners to keep up and improve and maintain their homes and thereby increasing the value of our housing stock. I encouraged and supported changes and increased funding in our homeowner rehab programs to make them more accessible, which has increased their usage.
Public Safety
I strongly support our Police and Fire Department. In addition to the basics of what they need to do their jobs, I will support whatever they need to continue to provide the incredible service and low response times they already provide. I would like to ensure we keep the trend of lowering the crime, year by year. I'll continue to support community policing, community engagement, the violence' disrupters and other strategies we have implemented and other strategies we can come up with to try to reduce violent crime and increase the feeling of safety. I'll continue to work to enhance training for handling mental health crisis. I supported Brooklyn Park being the pilot for the County's co-response team to embed social and mental health workers with and in the police department so that police officers have the support they need when they go out to mental health calls.