Access to Democracy
Since 1999, Access to Democracy has been a staple of Minnesota television. The program has featured more than 2,000 half-hour interviews with politicians, legislators, judges, academics, athletes, public figures, and everyday residents. Guests often share their expertise and debate with the host.
Access to Democracy
Eagan Councilmember Mike Supina - Candidate for Eagan Mayor
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Hosted by Steve Francisco. Mike Supina has served on the Eagan City Council since 2021. In this interview, Mike joins host Steve Francisco to discuss why he is now running for mayor of Eagan and what he sees as some of the key issues facing the city. As a LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) accredited architect, Mike is concerned about energy efficiency and protecting our environment. He explains why he opposes the building of any new artificial intelligence (AI) data centers in Eagan and the need for the city to help create affordable housing options. While much of the city's population is aging, many young families find Eagan to be an attractive city to call home. Mike discusses why he believes the next mayor must be accessible to residents and responsive to their concerns as the city moves forward.
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Access to Democracy. I'm your host, Steve Francisco. Thank you for taking part of your day to join us. I'd like to thank our sponsors, Recalibra Health, the 45th Parallel Distillery, the Sheridan and Dulas Law Firm, and True Stone Financial for sponsoring our program. We have with us today a member of the Egan City Council and a candidate for mayor of the City of Egan. He's a return guest to our program and a friend of ours. Councilman Mike Sapina, welcome back to Access to Democracy. As always, thrilled to be here, Steve.
SPEAKER_01Good to have you. So how long have you served on the City Council? I was elected in 2020, so I'm at about five and a half years right now.
SPEAKER_02And what committees or what issues have you sort of made the focus of your work during these past almost six years?
SPEAKER_01That's a great question. The issues that have that were that resonated with me the most were also issues that I campaigned on in 2020. And three of the big ones were sustainability, kind of diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, and the New Egan Art House. And I'm happy to say that in the last five and a half years, the city has made great strides on all three of those things.
SPEAKER_02For our viewers who may not be familiar with the new art house, tell folks where it is and how it's changed now from what it used to be.
SPEAKER_01Well, how it's changed is just night and day. So old art house was literally a house. It was somebody's house at some point, a small house as well. Yes, a small house. And um and I took classes in the Eganer House, so I spent a lot of time in the old one and in the new one.
SPEAKER_02On Lexington Avenue. Correct.
SPEAKER_01It's on Lexington right ne adjacent to Patrick Egan Park. Right. And the new art house is just on the same property, just behind where the old one was, because they wanted to keep the old one operating while the construction of the new one was going on. So they just kind of shifted it over. And uh Julie Anderson was a longtime uh recreational um supervisor for the Egan Art House. She's wonderful. Um every time I went there, I I just had great admiration because she shared a tiny office with two other people in the old, basically the Rambler building, you know, the the old Rambler house. Um and she was willing to do it because it was her passion. So and and Julie is you know bears a great deal of the um responsibility for kind of advocating and and eventually having this New Egan art house get built.
SPEAKER_02And tell us uh about the art house. It not only displays works of artists, but you can actually take classes there. Tell us about some of the classes that one can take.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, for sure. The classes are actually the the main focus. Right. But there is a beautiful kind of exhibit area right in the middle where they rotate exhibits by artists that create the art either at the art house or artists that um you know come in from outside. They have a call for art and they'll display someone's art. Um half of the art house is pretty much all pottery, um, which is what I do. Um I don't want to claim to be a great potter, but I love doing it. Um and I have a lot of friends, I've met a lot of friends there.
SPEAKER_02You feel you've improved your skills over the years from when you first started?
SPEAKER_01Yes, I've improved from when I first started. Uh still not excellent. In fact, just two nights ago, three nights ago, I saw one of my old pottery teachers who no longer lives in Egan, and she was visiting. And I said, you know, I've been doing this for seven years, and I once in a while I make some pretty good stuff. I think when you were after you were doing it seven years, you're already teaching us pottery. So I'm moving pretty slowly along that along the pottery uh learning curve, I guess I would say. But um I have a few pieces I really like.
SPEAKER_02Very good. And some of the other classes they teach, let's say someone's interested in doing watercolors, doing watercolor paintings or perhaps oils, or working with ceramics and things. Yeah. Uh do they do anything with textiles? I forget if that's part of the currently no.
SPEAKER_01No. Um but on the yeah, on the side that's not pottery, there's classrooms where they do painting, like different watercolor, acrylic, different kinds of uh so there are different mediums that people can experiment with in that they offer courses taught by people who know these subjects. Absolutely. And and a lot of children's classes over there too. So sometimes you come out of pottery class when you're done, and there's a bunch of kids coming out from the other side. So it's a very active place. One of the things I like about it the best is that central area where they display art is also it's just open from get the time right, 8:30 a.m. to 7 p.m., I think every day of the week. And you don't have to take a class. You just walk in and bring your coffee or bring your laptop or your book and just sit in the middle part there and read your book. It's kind of just a hangout, you know, and it's just a cool place to hang out. And there's sometimes I've had meetings with people in the community. I just say, meet me there, and we'll just sit on the you know, comfy sofa and uh have our meeting there, you know.
SPEAKER_02What tell our viewers a little bit about your professional background, talking about other than service on the city council, because you've been identified closely with issues of sustainability and environmental protection. What is your career background and um how have you been able to implement some of those ideas in your work on the city council?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, great question. So, career. Um, I've had a over 30-year career as an architect. Um, uh undergrad in the East Coast at MIT, grad school at Berkeley, and then I worked there for a little bit in California until my wife finished her grad school, and then off we were to Minnesota, and we've been here ever since 33 years now in the same house in Egan, um, which we love our community, we love our neighbors. You know, a few times we were like, meh, maybe we should move because we need more space. No, we just adjusted the house that we had because we did not want to want to leave there.
SPEAKER_02I believe if I recall from a previous interview, you were have also been what's called a lead certified professional. Explain what is that? L-E-E-D. What is a lead certified professional?
SPEAKER_01A lead accredited professional is a um, you have to take a test, uh, and basically it it shows that you've gained an expertise in sustainable design. And um I've I've done that. I'm actually keeping up my, even though I'm not working in architecture anymore, I'm keeping up the lead credential just because it and my architecture um credential, just because I feel like it's part of my identity. I don't want to let go of it yet. So in fact, well you worked hard to get it. Absolutely. In fact, the the deadline for the state was just a couple days ago to to uh to reapply and keep your license current. So I did all the continuing ed, and I'm still doing that uh at some point. I suppose I'll stop. But um I've done a couple of lead uh lead certified buildings, um not in Minnesota, they're in other states. Um, but it's it's a way to kind of um let's say quantify that something is is you know, lead is an environmental building. You know, before that there you could say it and you could do things, but there was wasn't really any way to quantify it. And and LEED is a program, and there's other ones too, but LEED is one of the programs that allows you to quantify that.
SPEAKER_02And if I understand this correctly, it's important this type of architecture because it has to do with energy usage, energy efficiency, not just aesthetics, correct?
SPEAKER_01Yes, yes, and and more than that, yeah, water usage. Right. Um, even things as far as the sighting of the building. Um, is it near transit? Do you have um uh you know ability for um electric cars and bicycles and and you know what kind of landscaping do you have? Um there's all kinds of, you know, even the materials that go into the building, where are they being sourced from? If they're sourced from nearby in in more um sustainable ways, you get points for that. So all of these things add up to a building being LEED silver or lead gold or lead platinum.
SPEAKER_02Okay, very good. I want to turn to politics, which is inevitable whenever we sit down and talk together. You announced, I believe, in May this year, that you have decided to become a candidate for mayor of the city of Egan.
SPEAKER_01That's true.
SPEAKER_02Uh which means you will be challenging the incumbent mayor, Mike McGuire, who has also announced that he is seeking to run for re-election as well.
SPEAKER_01Correct.
SPEAKER_02What prompted you to make this decision to run for mayor?
SPEAKER_01Well, it was not a short process. This is something I've been thinking about for a very long time. And I'll just before we get into that, I'll also add there's a third candidate. Um, which means Thank you, yes. Yes, which means there will be a primary. So the first vote that happens in this mayor's election um is gonna be August 11th, which is actually not that far away from today. So um, so yeah, there are three candidates. There'll be a primary, the primary will eliminate one of the three, and then the remaining two will go to the election that's happening in November. Um, as far as what's prompted it, um it was not one kind of aha moment where I said this this is something that I have to do. It was kind of a an accumulation of of kind of realizations and understandings of of what I would like to see happening, not just in the city, but in the appro how the job of mayor is being approached. Um and there's a few different aspects of that. There's policy, of course, there's you know, accomplishments, there's um values is an important one to me. And all of those kind of put together, you know, to me is something that I would like to and an approach to the job is is something that I would like to see how I could do that in a way that maybe is a little bit different than what's happening now.
SPEAKER_02Let's go back to that because I'd like to examine each one of those specifically on policy. And I think it's a fair question. Where do you and the incumbent mayor differ on policy? Do you have policy differences on particular issues that you can tell voters about?
SPEAKER_01There there are, I would say the policy issues between all five of us on the council are relatively small. There's there's not a lot of daylight. Most of our votes are unanimous. Um there are some different kind of areas of emphasis that each of us have, but um policy to me the the policy issues are more that um I've been on the council for six years. Beyond me, the most recent council member I believe is 16 years, and then we have 24 years, 24 years, 26 years. And what what I'm noticing just in our discussions is that sometimes um when folks have been on for that long, and especially when they've been on for that long unchallenged, I think that they have they struggle to understand what it is the folks in the city want, which a city that's been changing a lot in 24 or even 16 years.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_01Yes, in Egan now um 33 percent of our residents are um BIPOC, 46% of our school children children are BIPOC. That was that is um black, indigenous people of color. That was when I moved to Egan 33 years ago, that was we weren't even close to that. So that's a huge change that's happened in the city, and um I think our our approach to the city and approach how we approach our residents needs to reflect that. And and the engagement that I think I can bring to this office I is something that's important.
SPEAKER_02So I take it from your answer then, Mike, that you don't feel that's an issue right now that's being adequately addressed in terms of opportunities for people of color.
SPEAKER_01It is more. Um so I I'll give you an example.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01When I first my very first months on the city council, um, we had our interviews for advisory commissions, which we do every year. Um I don't remember how many in applicants there were that year, probably over 20. Um I think there were alarmingly few members of the BIPOC community among those among those applicants. And I that was I was only on the council for a couple months. I left the interviews just thinking, what's going on here? What are we doing wrong? We're somehow we're not reaching everybody in this city. And since then, things have gotten that's improved a lot for a number of reasons. In fact, I was talking to one of our staff members just maybe a month ago, after our last round, or a couple months ago, after our last round of advisory commission interviews, and unprompted, she just said to me, Isn't it great that we have so many more, such a more representative pool of candidates than we had even five years ago? And I told her, you know, that's not by accident. There's a few reasons why that's happened. First of all, um this our city staff has put a much greater emphasis on that. Um uh especially our assistant city administrator, Sarah A. Lig, um, has kind of been tasked with outreach, and she does a very, very good job of that. She's been a guest on our show previously, too. Yes, and she's wonderful. Um other, I would say, probably not as um notable a reason, but something that's important to me is when I realized that we weren't um doing the outreach that I think we needed to do, I took it upon myself. Every time I met folks that I thought were would be good candidates for an advisory commission, but um, and also you know were from an underrepresented group, I would just call them and invite them and say, we need your it's not um it will make us look good if you apply or get appointed, or it would be nice. It's we need you. The city can't optimally function without every voice on our advisory commissions, and by extension, for that matter, every voice on our city council.
SPEAKER_02And you want the advisory commission to reflect the population, the diversity of our city. We're gonna continue our discussion, Mike, in just a moment. We'll take a break here real quickly for a word from our sponsors. We'll be right back.
SPEAKER_00Access to democracy is made possible thanks to the following organizations. Recaliber Health, a new nationwide telehealth platform designed to provide safe and effective health and wellness products at affordable prices, all administered under the direct supervision of expert physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants. Visit RecaliberHealth.com for more information. By Sheridan and Dulos PA, a family and criminal defense law firm that has been serving clients in Dakota County and throughout Minnesota for over 40 years, ranked a tier one best law firm by U.S. News and World Report every year since 2009. Sheridan and Dulos are here to help you in your most difficult life circumstances. Learn more at ssdpa.com. Established in 2007 and based in New Richmond, Wisconsin, 45th Parallel Distillery was among the first 50 micro distilleries in the United States. All aspects of production occur at their facility. If you're interested in learning more about the 45th Parallel Distillery, please check their website and plan a visit to tour their facility and taste their spirits. That's 45th Parallel Distillery.com. And by Truestone Financial, with locations in Minnesota and Wisconsin, has proudly served as members since 1939. Truestone engages, educates, and supports its members to ensure they have the tools to empower their financial well-being. True Stone Financial, your neighborhood credit union. You can learn more at Truestone.org.
SPEAKER_02And we are back with Egan City Council member and candidate for mayor of Egan, Mike Sabina. Mike, we were talking about the reasons you have decided to run for mayor of Egan this year.
SPEAKER_01Yes, so the kind of four um uh categories I would say would be approach, accomplishments, values, and policy. We talked a little bit about policy already. Um values is something that's very important to me, and I and I would like to kind of talk about that just for a little bit. To me, um that's that's what everybody brings to the table, no matter what you do, whether it's an elected office, whether it's a job, whether it's your family, whether it's just people that you meet out on the street, that's something that you carry along with you. And the way I look at it, the way you can tell somebody's values is um how they treat others, how they show up, and how they behave when no one's watching. And to me, all of those are important. What people notice, well, they probably notice all of them, but the showing up to me is a very important value. Um and I hear that all the time when I go to a chamber event, when I go to other events around the city, it's very frequent where someone will say to me, We're so glad you showed up. Because people are looking for their elected leaders to be there with them when they're celebrating, when they're um serving, and when they're hurting, right? When they're, you know, Juneteenth. Great celebration. We've only had it for three years. We should be there. All of us should be there because that's an important celebration. And actually, you attended that at the end of the year. Oh, absolutely, yeah. In fact, Carmen Lewis, who is one of the co-founders of Juneteenth, is one of the honorary co-chairs of my campaign. And I was so thrilled that she agreed to do that, you know.
SPEAKER_02I want to move on to another issue which has been in the news a lot and is of great interest to a lot of people. This is the issue of the expansion of these artificial intelligence or so-called AI data centers. Uh, here in Minnesota, they've made headlines in the news. Hermantown up near Duluth is uh dealing with a controversy about the possible location siting of a data center there. Next door in Invergrove Heights, there's an issue about a potential data center there. The city of Egan was the first city in the state of Minnesota to actually enact a one-year moratorium, right? And the can if I understand, just to quickly capsulize this, the concerns that residents seem to have center around large amounts of electricity usage for running these data centers and also large amounts of water usage, both of which could potentially affect what residents pay for electricity and water. Where do you stand on the issue of the moratorium in Egan? Did you support it and do you support the further expansion of that?
SPEAKER_01Okay. So the moratorium was, I believe, February 17th, we passed it, and it was unanimous. One year for one year, yes. Um it expires this next February 17th. And um all of us supported it. And um uh personally, my my view of it was that our city code and pretty much no city code in in Minnesota or anywhere is has a handle on these, and I I will call them the hyperscale data centers, you know, the one hundred megawatt type data centers. No one has a handle on that. Nobody's code really deals with it properly, and we thought it was prudent to have a moratorium and have our you know, our city staff figure these things out and figure out how it fits into our code. Um it's interesting you mentioned Hermantown and and Inver Grove because the data center in Hermantown, I believe, is one of the hyperscale data centers. The data center in Inver Grove that where they where they just had a meeting on a few days ago is five megawatts, which is smaller than anything in Egan. Um so the words data center have become so toxic now that anybody that anything that that includes those words people kind of get very upset about.
SPEAKER_02In Minneapolis, they're having a discussion about this. There's a lot of talk about office vacancies in downtown Minneapolis and possibly putting data centers there to increase the property tax base, which Minneapolis and other cities, St. Paul, facing budget shortfalls. So, where where do you think this issue should be resolved? Is it really appropriate to resolve the issue through moratoriums at the city level, or would you be calling upon the state legislature to deal with this as a statewide issue?
SPEAKER_01I would love to see the state legislature deal with it, and I think they will. They were considering it this past session, it nothing happened. But um, having a piecemeal approach city by city is is hard. Um, and having cities deal individually with lawsuits is hard. And and, you know, um, uh as I believe you know, Egan was sued, um, and that's ongoing litigation, so that pretty much, you know, um puts the kibosh on how much I can talk about this because the advice of the city's attorneys are, you know, we're in the middle of litigation, you can't really talk about things that are directly related to the litigation. Um general issues of data centers, yes.
SPEAKER_02Let me ask you though, just as a general proposition, the issues I identified earlier, water usage, electricity usage, and maybe environmental impact. Right. Are those the same concerns that you would have looking at this issue?
SPEAKER_01And I would add maybe your third item, environmental. I would add kind of just the character of a city. And I'll give an example of that. I've read articles about data centers happening out east, I believe in Virginia, kind of suburbs of DC. And there's communities, suburban communities just like Egan, and all of a sudden in the farmlands surrounding them, data centers popping up. These folks they can't leave their their development, their town, and go to the supermarket without driving through this maze of data centers. And uh besides everything else, water, energy, those things, the question is what what is it doing to the character of where you live? Um that's important. You know, and and that I would say um in my six-year political career and interest in politics before that, data centers is probably one of the very few issues that unites, or I maybe I should say, skepticism of data centers, if that's a that's a term, that unites nearly everybody.
SPEAKER_02People of all political persuasions.
SPEAKER_01People are just very, very up in arms, as as we learned in Inver Grove when they have a quite a small one, and that created just as much opposition and backlash as some of the big ones that means.
SPEAKER_02Maybe the fear that it's small now but could expand in the future. Let's talk about housing. Um, there was an interesting story that appeared in the Star Tribune a few days ago about the millennials looking to move to the suburbs, that for a long time, uh pre-pandemic, millennials were looking to live in the city. They like the amenities, they like the diversity of restaurants, cultural offerings. But this article was suggesting that more and more millennials are looking to move to suburban communities, perhaps even places like Egan. On your campaign website, you say that you are an advocate for life cycle housing options.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02What does that mean?
SPEAKER_01So that means um having a place for young people, young families to move in, and that's, as you pointed out, difficult, very difficult. Um the types of jobs that are available to them and the cost of housing isn't met, there's a mismatch there. And um this all kind of boils down to housing as a commodity, right? We maybe when you were a young person when I was when I was a kid, I mean, we lived next door to my grandfather. He just had kind of odd, his job was just milkman or guy that works in the hardware store. My grandmother didn't work, and they owned a house, right? Can that happen today? I don't think so.
SPEAKER_02You know, it's like you need two incomes, you need like professional, you know, all of that in order to be subject to fluctuations in mortgage rates, interest rates, which as soon as an interest rate goes up a little bit, it immediately excludes lots of people who otherwise might have been eligible for a mortgage to buy a nice town home or a home here in Egan or anywhere else. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_01And yeah, so housing is a commodity now, but it's also something we all need, right? I mean, that that's just a fact. And there's people that can't afford a decent place to live. And then, of course, places like Egan, which are very desirable, the same house in Egan is going to cost a lot more than a similar house in a less desirable suburb, right? So it so it's not even just what is the house, it's where is the house, what's the school district like, all of the other kind of add-ons to that. And, you know, to to many people, that makes Egan unaffordable. I've I've I know people around town that live, like say, in adjacent suburbs, and I'm like, you know, you spend so much time in Egan, why aren't you moving here? And they said, I can't afford to live in Egan. And I hate hearing that.
SPEAKER_02You know, because you take it from that comment that you think um there currently is not an adequate mix of affordable housing here in the city of Egan, and what can be done to change that at the municipal level?
SPEAKER_01Right. Yeah. Well, the the majority of the affordable housing of the single family is what they call um uh NOAA, right? Naturally occurring affordable housing. Um and there's somewhat of a supply of that in Egan. But even that, those homes cost more than they would in other places because of all the other amenities and all the other things Egan brings to the table. The great schools, the great parks, great city government, I guess I have to say.
SPEAKER_02Um, that's what the surveys of residents seem to show. They consistently say residents think of Egan as a great place to live.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I'd love to take credit for that. And and I and I think all of the the council to some degree does and should. Um the lion's share of that goes to our city staff. Our city staff is it's basically almost like the the end point, you know, of where city staff people want to be. You know, they want to be in Egan. And and when we have openings, especially for leadership positions, um, we know that we're gonna have a great pool of applicants because people want to be in Egan. And of course, we just did add two leaders very recently, and our new police chief.
SPEAKER_02We've both been on the show. Yes, new uh fire chief was on recently, and police chief uh Sale Momari was on.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and they're both wonderful. So um so we know that people want to be in Egan, and and that's part of why the housing costs are higher here than in other places. There are ways other ways of creating affordable housing. We have a county um community development agency which develops affordable housing, and they have a number of developments in Egan. Excuse me, but um that's not enough. And there are bills in the legislature that maybe that's where you are going with this.
SPEAKER_02Um uh well, maybe I'll let you ask your question and then we can kind of unfortunately as always happens, we're down to about a minute. That's how fast this goes. I'm gonna give you the last minute to tell the voters of Egan directly why you believe or why you hope they will vote for you to be their mayor and why should they vote for you to be the mayor of Egan.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. So um, well, first thing I want to put in there is that everybody who runs for elected office, whether you've been in office for 24 years or six years or zero years, needs to make the case of why you should be in there for the next four years. What's happened before is great. You know, I've accomplished a lot, and the council's accomplished a lot since I've been on, and so has um so has everyone else. But it's what's coming up that's important. And I'm intending on looking outward and ahead. Um, I don't want to be looking backward and inward because to me that's not what all of the new residents in Egan are looking for.
SPEAKER_02Very good. Mike Sabina, member of the Egan City Council for the past almost six years, and now a candidate for mayor of Egan. Thank you for joining us today.
SPEAKER_01Great. Thank you, Steve.
SPEAKER_00This program was recorded at Egan High School. The views and opinions expressed on this program are solely those of the producers andor the persons appearing on the program and do not reflect the views and opinions of ETV or those of District 190.