Gustafson, 67, was elected to the council in 2004 and 2008 and again in 2016. His time away included dealing with a personal bankruptcy stemming from his former freight logistics business.
In 2016 he said he ran on restarting economic development in Burnsville, including the boom in new apartment construction. Prior councils lacked working majorities needed to approve zoning measures allowing new apartments, but that changed when Gustafson and Schulz were elected in 2016.
“We were falling behind all of our neighbors,” Gustafson said. “All of our neighbors had all of these state-of-the-art apartments, and we had none at that time.”
Now a number of projects have been built or are in the works.
“The city’s changed a lot,” said Gustafson, a Realtor. “Our economic and cultural demographic has changed. We have quite a few more people here that want to rent, including a lot of boomers that are selling their houses and they’re not buying another house — they want to rent a place. A lot of them used to leave Burnsville because they didn’t want to rent what we had.”
The new rentals have prodded owners of some older complexes to improve their properties, Gustafson said.
Burnsville’s new 2040 comprehensive plan lays out a denser development blueprint with more mixed uses, Gustafson said. Density is a tax-base booster that helps hold down taxes on existing properties, he said.
In his current term the city has become more “customer-friendly,” softening its interactions with residents on property code violations and removing costly regulations for trash enclosures at commercial buildings, he said.
“I like what I’m doing,” Gustafson said. “I like the city, and there’s a lot of work left to do here. There’s going to be a lot of work rebuilding after this (COVID-19 pandemic) is done.”
He was on the council that cut the city budget and staff because of the Great Recession.
“A lot of institutional knowledge can come in handy as these decisions are being made,” Gustafson said. “I’ve got that. Elizabeth has that. We’ve been down this road.”
