Halverson, Youakim Seeking Another Term on Hopkins Council

The two Hopkins city councilwomen up for re-election this year will be seeking another term in office.

Both Kristi Halverson and Cheryl Youakim have filed to run for the two City Council seats up for election in 2013.

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Cheryl Youakim

Youakim, who’s in her eighth year of office, said she’s seeking a third term to help guide to completion the projects she and the rest of the council have worked so hard on, including the Southwest Light Rail Transit project and associated development.

Her time on the council has already seen substantial redevelopment—including Marketplace & Main project, Klodt’s Gallery Flats and the Cargill corporate campus, which started shortly after she joined the campus.

“It’s just wonderful being a part of the city and seeing the excitement,” she said, adding that the process is made easier because there previous councils laid the groundwork with a strong vision.

Youakim said she’s found the most difficult issues to be the street projects that the City Council does each year. Neighbors have clear thoughts about what they want to do about sidewalks, maintenance and other issues it’s not always easy to make those ideas mesh with the larger plan for the city.

But she said she makes the tough decisions by considering what’s best for the city as a whole in the long run.

“It’s not just the next five years, but the next 50 years,” she said.

Youakim has lived in Hopkins for 16 years. She has a husband, Jacques, a daughter and two sons. In her day job, she’s a committee administrator for the state Senate Judiciary Committee.

Kristi Halverson

Halverson is also in her eighth year of office and is also running to see the completion of the big projects before the council, such as light rail.

“There’s a lot of things that we have gotten started, and there’s a lot of stuff that we’ve been working on that’s beginning to pop,” she said.

Seeing that type of development is Halverson’s favorite part of her council position. She saw that happen even before she was on City Council, when she served on the city’s Zoning and Planning Commission, and it hasn’t stopped thrilling her.

“(You see) an old buildings sitting there and then all of a sudden there’s a hole and then another building sitting in its place,” she said. “You plan and you plan and you wait and you wait, and then all of a sudden stuff goes at the same time.”

Halverson said that waiting is the most challenging part of the job. Although it’s tempting to say yes when a proposal comes before the council, she said it’s important to hold out for the right project.

The clearest case of that came in 2011 when the council rejected maX It Pawn’s request to put a pawnshop on the old Blake Road BP site. In a parting shot council members never forgot, Smith criticized the city for choosing a “hope and a dream” over a real project and that there is “no magic pixie dust” for a site that has proven difficult to redevelop. His broker predicted the property would sit vacant for at least five years.

But it took just a little more than five months for a new project to come along that developed into the retail center under construction now that will include a Five Guys Burgers and Fries and more.

“I like it that we have the perception that, yeah, we’ll wait,” Halverson said.

In her next term, she would like to see Cottageville Park, Cold Storage and other Blake Road improvements completed.

Halverson has close ties to the Blake Road corridor. She lived in the Westside Village Apartments when she moved here in 1983 and worked as a youth director at Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church, which has played an active role in the area.

She’s now a mortgage processor at Wells Fargo.

So far Halverson and Youakim are the only people to file to run for office. In addition to the two council seats, Hopkins’ mayoral seat is also up for election.

The filing period is open from July 30 to Aug. 13. The last day for candidates to withdraw is Aug. 15. Details on how to file can be found here.