Jess Arneson

In addition to owning and operating a bustling small business for eight years, over the past twenty years I have served in numerous volunteer capacities for several organizations, boards, and committees including: Casselton Ambulance, West Cass Thrivent Financial Chapter Board, Generations Connecting Board, Eastern North Dakota ELCA Synod Hunger and Justice Committee, Creating a Hunger Free North Dakota Coalition Core Committee, Martins Lutheran Church Council in Casselton ND, and the Cass Clay Food Systems Advisory Commission. While I live in Fargo, I have also lived many years in small, rural communities in North Dakota, and I understand the needs, strengths, and challenges that they hold.

• Addressing the widespread workforce shortages in the fields of people taking care of people: particularly the roles in the front lines of healthcare, childcare, vulnerable adult and senior care, social work, law enforcement and emergency services, and education

• Increasing access to mental healthcare and addiction services

• Protecting the individual rights of every North Dakotan. I am an advocate for EVERY North Dakotan to live their best life possible, regardless of their age, income, or location

I believe the biggest challenges facing North Dakota continue to be in regard to the shift of our population centers and age demographics. As our rural communities shrink and have less of the goods and services available that their aging populations and young families need, these populations are moving into our urban areas, putting pressure and increased demand for middle to lower income senior housing and single family homes, which are not as profitable for builders. While our urban areas continue to experience unprecedented growing pains, our rural communities are experiences the opposite, which presents a different set of challenges to operate on; including decreased property tax bases, decreased sales tax revenue, and higher investment risks required by any small business owners brave enough to start up. I believe the state has a responsibility to support the infrastructure needs of high-growth centers so they can maintain stability, as also finding measures to prevent our rural communities from becoming ghost towns.

Yes, though I believe the state's top priority should be attracting, developing, and retaining North Dakotans! We should be putting A LOT more effort into incentivizing North Dakotans to stay, from lowering their interest rates on student and housing loans, to investing in childcare and early childhood education, to helping rural communities and municipalities maintain viability.

I support state funding being used to strategically spur new businesses in the fields of business and in the geographical areas where there are service gaps and product needs that the business can fill. I support state funding to be used in assisting proven small, local businesses to grow. I also support state funding to be used to aid small, local businesses in meeting specific goals that will help our state to retain workers and families, such as tax credits or direct funding with strings attached for increasing employee wages and benefits, such as paid family leave.

I believe that one of the best ways to support working families and also to break cycles of generational poverty is for the state to incentivize and assist high quality childcare providers in both large and small centers. There is a reason why there are so few childcare providers, and why they close as often as they do, leaving families (and the businesses that they work for) between a rock and hard place. I was an at-home childcare provider for one year. I charged my families what the going rate was at that time (early 2000's), and at the end of the year came out making almost exactly minimum wage. That was the end of that! It was hard work for very long hours and very little pay. While providing direct child care assistance for low income families helps a particular family, we need to be putting more resources into the supply end.

Yes, absolutely. Regional projects benefit the whole state and should be supported by the state rather than shouldered on localities.

I need to research this more before taking a stance.

I absolutely oppose measure 4 as it is written, and oppose the complete elimination of property taxes. I do, however, always support making systems better and our state legislators have a sworn duty to represent their constituents and the public has made their demand for change very, very clear. While no one enjoys paying taxes of any kind, I do believe that it is best to have diverse income streams to fund our communities, like our current system of sales, income, and property tax. I personally think that the state should be sending more money raised off of the Legacy Fund back to the communities to alleviate some property tax pressure and that more creative solutions regarding where property tax burdens could be lessened based off of negotiable variables.