by Judy Frank
posted January 5, 2009
Back when Marti Rutherford was District 6 representative on the city council, Candy Corneliussen recalled Monday evening, "when you had a problem you'd call Marti and she'd say 'OK, I'll handle it,' and she did."
All that changed when Ms. Rutherford was forced to resign from the council in 2006 after it was determined she did not live in the district, Ms. Corneliussen said.
Carol Berz, who became the district's new council member, expected residents to get busy and help solve their problems -- which was exactly what the residents had long wanted to do, Ms. Corneliussen said.
That's why Ms. Corneliussen -- one of the leading organizers of the Brainerd Unity Group - said she was on hand for Ms. Berz's campaign kickoff at the Town Centre Cafe inside the Eastgate Town Center.
"The Brainerd Unity Group is strictly non-partisan," she said. "The group is not endorsing anybody for any political office. But I personally am supporting Carol."
Already there have been hints that the campaign pitting Ms. Berz and Ms. Rutherford against each other may become bitterly divisive as Ms. Rutherford fights to regain the seat from which she was ousted.
But Ms. Berz emphasized Monday that she intends to center her campaign on issues, not personalities.
"We are not going to demean this campaign with mud wrestling," she told the cheering crowd at her rally. "And that is not a weakness. Don't mistake me for a weak person."
During an address that only vaguely resembled the written speech she had prepared ahead of time, Ms. Berz said one of her primary objectives from the time she decided to seek a seat on the City Council was to make sure that her constituents were involved in any and all decisions that impacted them and their communities.
"I had talked with neighbors who felt like they couldn't do anything without running it by their representative (on the City Council)," she recalled.
That had to change, she said she determined.
Once elected, she said she began setting up meetings about problems in Brainerd that were attended both by the affected residents and by representatives of the appropriate city government departments. That way the parties got to talk to each other directly, without a council member acting as go-between, she said.
She also said she set out to increase tourism and visitors in the Brainerd area as a way of creating new jobs in the community. Toward that end,,she said she became an enthusiastic supporter of efforts to create a park around historic Brainerd Mission and to acquire a swatch of land adjacent to the mission in order to expand its boundaries.
"Why is this work on the mission and (adjoining) cemetery so important?" she asked rhetorically in a recent newsletter dubbed "District Six News."
"According to a survey conducted by the Travel Industry Association of America, 65 percent of American travelers say they included a cultural, arts, heritage, (and/or) historic activity or event while on a trip of 50 miles or more away from home," she wrote. "This percentage equals 92.7 million cultural travelers . . . Those numbers can mean important new tourism dollars and new jobs for District 6 in the future."
Ms. Corneliussen said, "Brainerd is a large area . . . represented by three different representatives on the City Council, and, in the past, those three people often didn't work together . . . We needed change. We needed things to improve."
Today, she said with Ms. Berz and other council members supporting grassroots organizations, she said, "I feel like Brainerd is slowly changing for the better."
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