A hometown newspaper with a local office, local owners & lots of local news
A hometown newspaper with a local office, local owners & lots of local news
Sorted by date Results 76 - 100 of 166
At what was expected to be an uneventful hearing for a new countywide parking ordinance Monday, more than 20 people gave opinions, often straying from the details of the ordinance to complaints of trespassing, confrontation, and fear surrounding activities associated with Enbridge Line 3 pipeline protests. The Carlton County committee of the whole moved on the parking ordinance May 4 for consideration without discussion. The Monday hearing had plenty of it. In the end, the board passed the ordinance with little fanfare, compared to the hearing...
Planning for a new county jail, although slow and methodical, is getting closer to a decision on site and building design. The Carlton County jail steering committee and the property management department headed by county coordinator Dennis Genereau have recommended the green site as the preferred building site. The “green site” is a forested area north and northeast of the current Carlton County Transportation complex on Old Highway 61. The area set for soil borings and water table issues is in an area that was once the Northern Pacific bor...
I was taught at an early age that land, for the most part, does not change. It is the forest and the plants that naturally grow there that always are adapting to the natural forces of the earth. Tornadoes, wind shears, fire, heavy snow and ice, groves of trees past their maturity, and disease will thin the timber and, at times, clear the land regardless of what man tries to do. The last of the glaciers left 15,000 to 20,000 years ago, retreating north. All vegetation had been ground off with a...
Approving the choice for a new county auditor/treasurer was easy, but what salary to pay brought out some dissension among the Carlton County commissioners. On May 3, commissioners interviewed finalists for the Carlton County auditor/treasurer and recommended Kevin DeVriendt for the hire. DeVriendt worked for many years as an accountant for Carlton County Health and Human Services before moving into the auditor/treasurer’s office as an accountant the last two years. At the county board’s regular meeting Tuesday, May 11, chairman Tom Proulx mov...
The latest news regarding Minnesota property tax assessments was good for Enbridge and other utility companies and fairly dire for local governments, who find themselves on the hook for many years’ worth of past overpayments. Carlton County is no exception, with the total payback estimated at close to $5 million after the Minnesota Tax Court ruled that past tax assessments were too high on state utilities and pipelines. With that in mind, the Carlton County Board of Commissioners scrambled at their meeting Tuesday to formally support state l...
It is now apparent that the construction of a new jail/justice center will be the most significant Carlton County project since the Carlton County courthouse was built in 1922. County coordinator Dennis Genereau related that one of the candidates for a new Carlton County auditor/treasurer position shared that observation during the job interviews earlier in the day before the Carlton County Board Adjourned Session Monday, April 26. With that as a backdrop, Genereau requested permission from the...
With an end-of-year clock ticking, county officials are digging into the details of what a new Carlton County jail building plan will look like. The county's building committee, court system, finance committee, and the jail steering committee have focused on the project. Now a special Committee of the Whole meets at 2 p.m. on the third Monday of each month to study issues related to a new or expanded jail. The state has set a deadline of July 2023 for the county to have a new facility in place....
The Carlton County Board of Commissioners selected a firm to do the preliminary work on architectural and engineering concepts for the new Carlton county jail during Tuesday’s meeting. Adolfson & Peterson Construction has its main office in the Twin Cities but also has a branch office in Duluth. Several firms were interviewed before a final choice was made. Adolfson & Peterson worked on the Minnesota Sex Offender Program facility in Moose Lake and the Great Lakes Aquarium in Duluth. Their contract as a Construction Manager at Risk will carry a...
Community service was drilled into many of us growing up. This was necessary in rural communities of the past that had little money to spare. People gave time and energy to provide community centers, local celebrations, 4-H groups, local theater, food drives, cemetery care and more to enrich our rural lives. As a volunteer myself - township officer, reporter, western Carlton County promoter, and donor - without any fanfare to many good projects, I see this tradition continue. Read the local...
In addition to the popular $1,400 payments for many citizens, the recently passed $1.9 trillion federal American Relief Plan also allocated $86 billion to help stabilize distressed multi-employer pension funds for the next three decades. The money would shore up 185 union pension plans that are close to collapse. It’s a group that includes a million retired truck drivers, retail clerks, builders and others who face a loss of earned retirement income. Cloquet’s Sherman Liimatainen serves as vice president of the National United Committee to Pro...
The future of the Carlton County Extension program services appeared up in the air Monday when the County Board shifted a vote on the proposed restructure to a Committee of the Whole meeting April 6, despite the presence of a number of County Extension committee members, people from the business community, plus staff from the University of Minnesota Extension. The board did not hear from any of the audience members before postponing the discussion. The Extension program has a long history in the county. It was set up as an educational outreach...
A total of 54 local small businesses and nonprofit organizations were approved to receive the latest round of Carlton County grants, courtesy of Covid-19 county relief money provided by the State of Minnesota Legislature. In total, the grants add up to $691,466. The Carlton County board of commissioners approved 54 out of 71 applications on Tuesday, as recommended by the CARES Act committee and a grant application review committee. All grants must be awarded by March 15 and the funds distributed by April 1, pending some final compliance...
It has been a whole year since this plague of Covid-19 first crept into the Northland, and the days of mass vaccination have finally arrived. It is new, and yet not so new to me. I was a product of a Minnesota education that celebrated the wonders and power of science and trusted our doctors and scientists when they said we should do something. I was in an elementary Kalevala school line that first got polio shots and other immunizations that surely protected us so we could lead productive...
The Carlton County board of commissioners gave its blessing Tuesday, Feb. 22 for two township grant projects that will compete for limited transportation funding from an annual Legislature initiative for Greater Minnesota. County engineer JinYeene Neumann requested the board’s support at the adjourned session of the county board Monday, Feb. 22. Almost all the Carlton County townships inquired into the possibility of funding needed township road projects, but the highway department staff explained that the competition throughout the state w...
The county has formed a special committee to focus on plans for a new county jail building and programming, which met for the first time Tuesday, Feb. 23. Sheriff Kelly Lake said there is increasing urgency in what has already been a long process. "The state of Minnesota has given us a deadline of July 31, 2023 when we can no longer house inmates in our current facility," Lake said. "As it is now in the planning process, the goal is to have a jail facility completed by 2024 and we will need an...
With a pandemic still throbbing, the recent annual presentation of the Carlton County Emergency Medical Service took on special significance as volunteers and professionals were honored. Steve Trenhaile from the Moose Lake Fire Department heads the county EMS association and he presented awards to several people at the Feb. 9 Carlton County board meeting. With 25 on the roster of the Esko Fire Department, the group was recognized as the EMS Unit of the Year. It has responded to more than 230...
The Carlton County Board of Commissioners voted unanimously Tuesday to make changes to the way the county operates the Carlton County Transfer Station. Zoning and Solid Waste Management administrator Heather Cunningham presented a plan that would end a contract with private contractor Mahkahta Trucking and hire two full-time employees to run the processing of demolition refuse coming into the facility. The station would continue to have three half-time employees, two to run the office and one...
A hub in the Mahtowa community serving a large part of western Carlton County, TJ's Country Corner has the feel of the neighborhood grocery once common in American locales. But with the death of founding owner Tom Bislow two years ago, the patrons of the store and the Mahtowa neighborhood braced themselves for what the future would hold. Bislow's commitment to the local area, making the store a community hub, could change with new owners. In this case, change brought more good. And during the...
The Carlton County Board of Commissioners had its annual organizational meeting Tuesday with expected leadership changes. As has been the tradition, each of the five commissioners takes a turn as board chair over a five-year period. District 3 commissioner Tom Proulx, representing Cloquet, was elected Tuesday and takes charge of running the board meetings. District 5 commissioner Gary Peterson was elected vice chairman and is taking his turn as chair of the Committee of the Whole. District 4...
Despite an 8-percent increase in health insurance costs, the Carlton County Board of Commissioners approved the smallest property tax levy increase in years on Monday, voting to set it just 2 percent higher than last year. The levy for 2021 will raise $28,790,977 through property taxes. Following are some of the ways the levy will be allocated: • $8.2 million for public health and human services; • $3.67 million for roads and bridges; • $3.46 million for the sheriff’s office; • $2.5 million for the county jail; • $2 million for community c...
Not too many locals can say they make most of their yearly income from Christmas sales. I make mine harvesting and selling spruce tips from the swamps here in Carlton and other surrounding counties. It's hard work, and it's changed over the years, but I love it. I am - like others who go into the swamps - a "swamp rat." When I was a kid in the 1950s, there were truckloads of black swamp spruce Christmas trees shipped to the South. My uncle, Ray Koivisto, hired men from the Automba area and 10,00...
A total of 62 local businesses applied for the Carlton County Covid-19 small business relief grants this fall. Those businesses will know soon if their applications were successful, following approval by the Carlton County board of commissioners at its meeting Tuesday, Dec. 8. The grant program offered Carlton County businesses grant money to offset expenses and losses caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and is funded federally through the CARES Act. Requests for the small business grants came in at $812,583, with some businesses requesting far...
For years, the Sixth Judicial District has wanted more space at the Carlton County Courthouse in Carlton, which houses both the courtrooms and myriad county departments. Lawyer-client conferences happen in public hallways and stairwells, plus the district needs additional space for courtrooms and court administration. During last week's board of commissioners meeting, county coordinator Dennis Genereau recommended the Community & Family Initiatives Department led by Donna Lekander be moved to...
The Carlton county board made moves to end the county's participation in the Sentence to Serve program and hire a probation officer to be responsible for Intensive Pretrial Release at its meeting Monday, where commissioners Gary Peterson and Mark Thell were present with Dick Brenner, Tom Proulx, and chairman Marv Bodie participating virtually. A probation committee has been working for some months on an overview of the county probation program, as it affects the number of inmates in the Carlton County jail. County attorney Lauri Ketola shared...
It took 12 minutes for the Carlton County board of commissioners to meet Monday, Oct. 26. Chairman Marv Bodie chaired the meeting, which was livestreamed and attended virtually by commissioners Tom Proulx and Dick Brenner. A permit for the use of the Alex Omar land on the Bromfield Road in Atkinson Township for pipeline construction staging needed no board action, because the company withdrew its permit application after residents living near the proposed staging area voiced concerns at the board’s Oct. 13 meeting. The negative neighborhood f...
