My name is Heath Dobberpuhl and I'm running to be elected to the City Council of New Ulm.  

The City of New Ulm is a special place.  It is full of content law-abiding citizens and welcomes many to visit and enjoy.  It is a safe and quiet community, but it still has many things to participate in and do.  I am running for City Council because I want New Ulm to retain these qualities.  

• According to CliftonStrengths, my top strengths are Strategic, Learner, Achiever, Deliberative, and Intellection.  

• My primary occupation is teaching.  I am now a science professor at Martin Luther College, but I've also served as a science teacher at Minnesota Valley Lutheran High School for 15 years. I also had the opportunity to be an elementary principal at three different schools before moving to New Ulm.  Teachers can get a good understanding of the citizens in a community.  Over the years a teacher gets to know a cross-section of the community and an appreciation for the many different types of people.

• I have a side job making Plat Drawings for real estate transactions in New Ulm and the surrounding communities.  Over the past four years, I've done over 500 Plat Drawings.  In the process, I became very familiar with the property lines and zoning in New Ulm, which has made me knowledgeable about every neighborhood in New Ulm.

• Through my years of working in schools, I have learned the importance of precedence and establishing priorities.  Growth and improvement do not happen passively.

• I am the type of person who follows the happenings in the city fairly closely by reading the Journal and reading the council's minutes.  Now that my children are grown up and mostly out of the house, I do have the time to serve the city.  This is something I've always been interested in doing.

• I've attended the City Council meetings as a spectator for the last few months.

• I've spent quite a few hours using the reports and data from New Ulm's website and the websites of other cities in Minnesota that are similar to understand what makes New Ulm unique and what the possibilities are.

• Photo:  My view when walking to work in the morning.

• I believe in fiscal responsibility.  One of the main responsibilities of the City Council is to wisely manage taxes and expenditures.  I think the council should compare the budget with other cities of our size.  There are differences in priorities between the cities.  Is the city prioritizing some things over others too much?

• Too many people are traveling to New Ulm to work.  Affordable housing has long been identified as an issue facing our community.  Perhaps a new approach should be used to entice the workers of New Ulm to live in New Ulm.  Fixing the housing issue will help the employers of New Ulm confidently strengthen their businesses.

• Now that the Highway 14 project is done, we need to look at the city's south side.  When people enter the city they are greeted by too many vacant properties.  It sends a bad message to our visitors and prospective citizens.

• Please see the link on the left to the video made during the League of Women Voters of New Ulm forum for my comments.

Ward 3 is generally northeast New Ulm.  All of the area between Center and Garden is in Ward 3.  It also includes 27 blocks below the hill out to Jefferson from Center to 10th and out to Payne from 10th to 17th.

My wife, Stacy, and I have been blessed with three children.  My two daughters are off studying in college and my son is a junior at MVL.  Stacy was born in New Ulm and is related to the Schaefer and Gulden families.  She works at New Ulm Medical Center as a Patient Service Representative and Provider Coordinator.

In my free time, I like to read about various topics, cook, manage the garden, play disc golf, and go on a lot of walks.  I have lived in three different states and in Southeast Asia, but prefer to live in New Ulm.