If Minot City Council candidate Josh Wolsky has his way, Minot and then hopefully other places will experience a transformation in the way elections are conducted. That change starts at home for Wolsky.

Well, I dont have a campaign budget per se, he says. Im not putting out any yard signs, although a few people have volunteered to make signs and put them up. I think that if one runs a good public campaign, it will pay off in the election.

That public campaign is one based on well-communicated policy positions and ideas, things he feels elections often lack. Id like to see money out of politics completely, Wolsky says. Candidates buy influence with advertising dollars, so (the status quo) benefits the media.

It should come as little surprise to people who have known Wolsky that he should take such a maverick position. Hes taken a nonlinear path back to his native Minot and right into the heart of civic affairs, including his uncommon campaign style.

Still, colorful trails are in Wolskys blood. The Minot native is proud of his family history in the area. My great-grandfather from Norway walked here, or rather when he reached the end of the line in Fargo, he walked the rest of the way and homesteaded here.

Wolsky grew up and graduated school in a Minot with challenges similar to those today.

Growing up here, there was a problem in retaining young people and their talent in Minot, Wolsky recalls. There are these amazing people from Minot off in other parts of the world. Theyre products of Minot work ethics and values but arent here. Twenty-five years later, were still talking about it. I dont think we have made a lot of progress. The community cant afford to continue exporting its human resources.

Wolsky headed off to the University of Delaware where he would earn a degree in Economics. Afterwards, he spent a year in Arizona and several more in Charleston, South Carolina, chasing the dream of playing professional golf while supporting myself by working as a caddie and later on with a putting green construction business, he says.

In Charleston, Wolsky says he was able to have a ringside seat as the city experienced a renaissance, from which he feels he learned a great deal. When the lure of family brought him back to Minot in 2008, he returned with plans to develop websites for business owners and to help them take good steps in creating and controlling their online identity.

Like many people, the 2011 flood had an impact on Wolsky.

In the spring of 2011, I started paying more attention to the City of Minot in reaction to what I saw as a clear threat, Wolsky says. As I witnessed the city response to the threat, I became frustrated.

Wolsky launched a website that provided information on what would become the 2011 flood as the threat progressed complete with water level details, forecasts, etc. Im no hydrologist, but it wasnt too hard to get information and share it.

Then, June 2011 happened and in the aftermath, Wolskys website, The Minot Voice, became his priority. I believed there needed to be a place for the community to discuss issues, Wolsky says. It was developed as a place to have discussions and to spur discussions.

Later, a 2.0 version of the website was established, where Wolsky said he published a piece on how different city governments were structured and which polled site visitors. In four days, he says there were 1,300 responses.

The poll showed huge distrust in government not just the usual distrust in government, Wolsky says. In my mind, that was really the beginning of #MakeMinot.

#MakeMinot is, of course, the citizens group that launched and catered through voter approval and now, with this election, implementation, the structural change to the city council. Wolsky has been an integral part of the group since.

#MakeMinot was always about the system, Wolsky says.

In this election cycle, The Minot Voice (now version 3.0) has been a platform for candidates to address questions and share their policy positions. Wolsky says most candidates have participated. Furthermore, it is a component of perhaps example of the changes he would like to see in how campaigns operate.

The important concept is to give people a choice and with information, you can trust people to make a choice, he says. Im a systems guy. Part of that is a product of an education in economics. Part of it is that my dad was an entrepreneur. When you see the world through that lens, you see systems.

Wolsky makes clear that The Minot Voice is not a campaign website and that he has distanced himself from giving out information on candidates. Instead, candidates have been able to log in and upload their own opinions and reflections. He says he isnt selling advertising to candidates either.

This might turn out to be one of the worst business decisions I have ever made, an affable Wolsky quips.

Of course, the same might be true of Wolskys low-key approach to his campaign.

Honestly I would probably rather go to the lake, he says. But I do feel I am one of the better informed individuals in town and go to meetings and have ideas about where the community could go and how to get there plus the context of how we got to where we are. Those are the kind of things that elections should really be about.

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Wolsky: Let's change how elections work - Minot Daily News