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	VOICES ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL Listen to the Midday segments with the participating candidates. Lisa McDonald R.T. Rybak Sharon Sayles Belton Mark Stenglein

First elected mayor in 1993, Sharon Sayles Belton says her approach to the job is to look at long-term solutions. She's been working on affordable housing as a member of a U.S. Conference of Mayors task force. The mayor says to relieve the current shortage Minneapolis needs financial help from the federal government and its suburban neighbors to build more affordable housing.

"We need partners here," Sayles Belton said. "We need the private sector, the philanthropic community and others to be our partner in making available some 15,000 housing units that they believed were needed at this time. But by itself, Minneapolis cannot solve this problem."

But Sayles Belton is drawing political fire for suggesting an increase in city property taxes is needed to pay for affordable housing and other commitments, due to recent changes in the state's property tax laws.

Lisa McDonald, a two-term DFL City Council member representing the 10th ward, is proposing a $50 million trust fund for affordable housing. She claims it would produce up to 8,000 units in five years. McDonald, who calls herself a moderate, says the plan would use various state and federal housing funds and require no tax increase. "What it does is it floats $250 million worth of affordable housing trust fund bonds, which would generate $50 million a year up front for the first five years. The repayments sources for that would be sources that we're already using in the city," McDonald said.

Independent candidate Mark Stenglein, who's served on the Hennepin County Board since 1996, also opposes any tax increases. He says the city needs to return to focusing on providing core services. Stenglein says the key to affordable housing is to clean up some of the city's most distressed neighborhoods. "Right now we sweep the city twice a year. We need to get back to sweeping it once a month. We need to go into those inner city areas and give a concerted effort to keeping them clean," Stenglein said.

Internet consultant and neighborhood activist R.T. Rybak says the private sector must play a role in the affordable housing issue, but he also wants more city money in the equation. Rybak, a DFLer who describes himself as a community mobilizer, says the city should remove some of the hurdles now slowing housing development. "We have to take a very dramatic look at the inspections and zoning issues that go up before entrepreneurs wanting to reopen those boarded up buildings," he said. "Let's make it as easy as possible to do that. New Jersey and Maryland have both done great jobs with that."

Rybak says the city's next mayor must do much more with much less. He's proposing a comprehensive review of city operations to improve efficiency.

The four Minneapolis mayoral hopefuls will get to square off face-to-face Wednesday night in St. Paul during an hour-long Minnesota Citizens' Forum at the Twin Cities Public Television studios.