Ginka Tarnowski Announces Candidacy for Duluth City Council

At 5 pm on Saturday, March 18th, Ginka Tarnowski announced her candidacy to represent Duluth’s 5th District at Council. The announcement took place at the All American Club in Duluth's West End, a club founded with the ideal of being ‘a place where all Americans are welcome.’

After welcoming people and thanking them for being there, Ginka made the following remarks as regards why she is running for city council.

I believe in a simple concept, that building your future in Duluth should be the quickest and easiest choice you'll ever make.

And let's be honest: right now, it's not.

You deserve a city that puts people ahead of process. You deserve a city where you pay less to live and receive better services. And together, we can get there. With your support, and your willingness to join me in fighting for our city's future, building a future in Duluth should be the quickest and easiest choice you'll ever make in life.

And right now, it's not. You know it, I know it, even the City administration must know it. Over the past 10 years, Duluth has added only a hundred new citizens. Hermantown has added 1,000.
 
Duluthians deserve better.

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In her press release announcing this event she talked about her experiences growing up in which several of the schools she went to closed. “When they closed Chester, I went to Lowell. When they closed Woodland, I went to Central. When they closed Central, I chose Denfeld."

It was at Denfeld that Ginka says she experienced the potential Duluth could achieve.”

Adopted into a Duluth family sometime between the ages of 3 and 5, depending on which official birth certificate one looks at, Tarnowski has spent her life in Duluth asking questions and receiving unsatisfactory answers.

“I was in 4th grade at Chester when the heat magically disappeared,” recalls Tarnowski. “We had to wear jackets and gloves; it was hard to write with gloves, and we couldn’t learn." When she asked the adults around why things had to be this way, the only answer she got was, "That’s just the way things are in Duluth." That answer was just as unsatisfactory in 4th grade as it is today. Duluthians pay a high cost of living and receive a poor quality of services for it: Why?”

Over the years she noticed that many past candidates for Duluth’s Council have promised growth, yet "Duluth has continued its decline in statewide rankings faster than most Duluthians can do a bunny hill."

I myself first became aware of Ginka when I was researching the interconnected problems of homelessness and our lack of affordable housing. Her op-ed pieces in the Duluth News Tribune showed her to be a diligent researcher, dedicated to ferreting out data regarding the city's failure to recognize the ways the administration itself impedes the growth we claim we long for. 

Ginka believes that Duluth is the best of all places to live in America. So why can't we make it easier to move here and live here. 

One of the stats that surprised me is that in the past ten years Duluth added 100 people and Hermantown added a thousand. See the U.S. Census data Duluth here: 

https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/duluthcityminnesota/PST045221

As the 5th District’s representative on the City Council, Tarnowski promises to work tirelessly to deliver better to her constitutions. “It shouldn’t take three years of planning and listening sessions and one week of work to fill a pothole, nor should any business owner be left in tears after a visit from the city. Yet these are real things! They happen! That’s not cool, man!”

Speaking personally, I am impressed with what people who know her have to say about Ginka. She's a straight shooter and they trust her.

She's been an advocate for Duluth for a long time and feels inspired to help her community. In talking with people in the 5th District she's met a lot of unhappy people, people unhappy with city policies that need to be changed if we're ever going to have the better future we're trying to work toward. Two issues she's been hearing a lot about are the lack of transparency in city government and the cost of living for those who have settled here. "These are issues in the community that are not being heard," she said.

Is It Time To Give Duluth A New Name? Let's Call It Dylan Town.

While doing archival research on another project recently I came across a Jim Heffernan column that was published thirty years ago when Duluth city councillors were again debating the naming of a road after native son Bob Dylan. (This debate went on for two decades, fwiw.) Heffernan, a journalist and humorist, responded by saying the city should honor Bob Dylan by naming giving the city itself a new name: Dylan. He writes:

Let's say we change the name of Duluth to Dylan in honor of the performer Bob Dylan who was born here in 1941. Duluth is such an old hat name anyway. Let's get with the '90s. Dylan, Minnesota 55802. It's got a ring to it, don't you think?

The thing about this Dylan idea that's so interesting is that it also starts with a D so it would work well to existing logos. The Duluth Dukes (a 1990s minor league baseball team here) would be the Dylan Dukes. Students' letter jackets for Central High School wouldn't even have to be changed. Take UMD the University of Minnesota-Dylan. The Bulldog teams could still be UMD.  

Hef also suggested that the City of Superior could be re-named Joan Baez, even though UWS (University of Wisconsin-Superior) would have to be changed to UWJB.

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There's risk involved when newspapers permit columnists to propose such radical ideas. I mean, there are quite a few locals who might seriously want to pursue this. If that happened, the City Council may get bogged down with debating it and using valuable meeting time that could be used to address our city's other problems like the shortage of affordable housing and the cost overruns of roundabouts. 

Nevertheless, Hef did build on his case for a rename noting that "First Bank-Dylan adapts well. Dylan Lighthouse for the Blind--it adapts social services." We could also end up with a Dylan News-Tribune (DNT),  Dylan Entertainment Convention Center (DECC) and a Dylan Missabe & Ir Railway (DM&IR), which all roll off the tongue rather nicely.

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Another major benefit of the city being renamed Dylan is that we'll no longer be confused with Duluth, Georgia, he wrote. I myself can't tell you how many times I've Googled a local store name and ended up with stores in our Georgia sister city. 

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One drawback, a minor one I believe, to this idea would be what to call our Duluth Dylan Fest should this proposal ever get adopted. Would Dylan Dylan Fest (DDF) be the new title for our weeklong celebration each May? It feels redundant, but if you only call it Dylan Fest, one might wonder if we're celebrating the city or the Nobel Prize recipient who was born here. 

In a digression, Heffernan presented a novel idea that might work well as an alternative method of conducting our singer/songwriter contest. Currently contestants sing one Dylan song and a song of their own. Hef suggested a "Freestyle" song competition "in which entrants can sing any Dylan song in a non-Dylan style (as in the rap version of 'Like a Rolling Stone')-- or sing any non-Dylan song in Dylanesque fashion."

Heffernan's column appeared in the DNT on 8/12/92. If I remember correctly, he closed with this witty barb:

There is another, admittedly selfish, reason to change the name of Duluth to Dylan. Duluth has such rotten weather.

Heffernan is a News-Tribune columnist and editorial page associate.

RELATED LINK
The Case for Celebrating Dylan's Home Town