Delson Saintal

Workforce Development

Public Safety

Strategic Growth

I own two barbershops and a barber school in this region. I also work as an assistant wrestling coach at Concordia Moorhead and hold various leadership positions.

Since graduating from college, I have explored seven fields: inside sales, retail sales, law enforcement, corrections, coaching, non-profit work, and barbering. This diverse experience gives me a unique perspective on problem-solving.

The most pressing issues will be affordable housing, the workforce, and homelessness. I plan to address affordable housing by revitalizing older neighborhoods to ensure they offer mixed-unit development. Inclusionary zoning will also help us ensure certain areas are not "segregated." For the workforce, we can address this by working closely with the colleges and using labor market data to help the graduated students find promising jobs within their industry. Homelessness will be addressed using the Housing First approach to ensure we reduce chronic homelessness.

We need to think outside the box and help out those generally marginalized within the workforce. I propose that we focus more on New Americans to help us out with growth. We can also use individuals coming out of prisons to help them stay out and reduce the recidivism rate. Lastly, work closely with our colleges to ensure we are giving these graduated students a chance to succeed. Offer more paid internships and incentivize more growth from smaller businesses to help fuel our economy and offer more positions.

I believe these tax incentives would be better used to revitalize older neighborhoods. I would still keep the exemptions for new builds but focus more on our core lower-income neighborhoods. As far as bigger businesses, I would mitigate incentive offerings and focus more on smaller businesses. In my opinion, we offer too many incentives to bigger businesses without having a system in place if we are earning an investment long-term.

Due to being a regional need, my first step would be to work with neighboring cities to ensure we are on the same page with the Fargo/Moorhead community to continue growing and ensure we can welcome the new growth. The best first approach for taking on any challenge is to take action. We have many great plans to fix our city but a lack of execution.