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
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Requiring Herculean effort to regain a sense of normalcy, the first major snowstorm of the winter buried Cloquet and surrounding areas last week. The storm transformed Carlton County into a winter wonderland, but the heavy snow also wreaked havoc on roads, electrical grids and trail systems. It left young trees bowing like monks while older trees fell or dropped limbs overwhelmed by the weight of the wet snow. Evergreens turned white, with giant globs of snow pasted to every branch. The snow...
Following Monday’s Truth in Taxation hearing, Carlton school board members voted unanimously to set the school district’s payable 2023 levy at just over $1.5 million, down from $1.6 million in 2022. The board adopted the 2022-23 total budget at just over $7 million, with expected revenues at $6.66 million, a projected deficit of $348,101. While it might come as a relief to taxpayers, a decline of nearly $100,000 (6.14 percent) in the school levy isn’t a good thing for the school district, which seeing increased expenses. But most reven...
A woman charged with hitting a car and then coming back and hitting one of its occupants was sentenced in Carlton County Sixth District Court last week. Rebecca Lee Glader, 39, pleaded guilty in October to felony criminal vehicular operation with substantial bodily harm, with the driver who caused the collision leaving the scene. Under the terms of the plea agreement, six other charges were dismissed, including two other felony criminal vehicular operation charges, along with gross misdemeanor and misdemeanor traffic violations, including...
After decades of playing in the state’s largest hockey class, the Cloquet-Esko-Carlton boys hockey team will likely move to Class A next season. Cloquet High School activities director Paul Riess told Cloquet school board members at their meeting Monday that the change has been a frequent topic with supporters. The Lumberjacks girls team made the move five or six years ago, then played their way to second place in the 2019-20 season’s Class A state tournament. The last couple years, Riess said, he’s faced even more people asking why the boys...
During a special Truth in Taxation hearing Monday, Cloquet school board members unanimously approved a 2022-23 budget of nearly $47 million, including a levy increase of 6 percent, payable in 2023 for the 2023-24 school year. The $7.4 million levy makes up 16 percent of the school district revenues; the other $39.6 million in revenues come from state and federal aid and other local sources including fees and grants. The levy is paid through local property taxes, which are increasing significantly for next year due largely to a hot housing marke...
A tour through the new Cloquet High School Career and Technical Education area makes one thing immediately obvious: This is not your father's shop class. Yes, there are still lathes and bandsaws, wrenches and screwdrivers, welders and automobile lifts. But there are also 3-D printers that can build parts and other three-dimensional objects out of plastic, and laser printers that can etch designs on wood, glass, leather, and even three-dimensional objects. It's been about a year since Cloquet...
Two property owners addressed the Cloquet City Council on Tuesday about substantial property tax increases. Marty Hill said he was still suffering from sticker shock after seeing his taxes climb by 25 percent from this year to next, without any renovations to his property. “You hear about how we have to tighten our belts. I hope the city is doing that too,” said Hill. “It would be nice to give us a little bit of relief.” Scott Brander shared his estimated 2023 tax statement — and the 36.2 percent tax increase it contained — with city admini...
The city of Cloquet is accepting applications to fill the Ward 3 Cloquet City Council seat for the next two years, with plans for interviews in mid-January. Applicants must reside within Ward 3 — which lies in the area between Highway 33 and 14th Street, and Doddridge Avenue and Avenue B — plus be at least 21 years old upon assuming office and an eligible Minnesota voter. The Ward 3 position has been vacant since mid-August, when incumbent Chris Swanson moved to a new home in Ward 1. Since then, Swanson won the November election for a seat he...
After decades of playing in the state’s largest hockey class, the Cloquet-Esko-Carlton boys hockey team will likely move to Class A next season. Cloquet High School activities director Paul Riess told Cloquet school board members at their meeting Monday that the change has been a frequent topic with supporters. The Lumberjacks girls team made the move five or six years ago, then played their way to second place in the 2019-20 season’s Class A state tournament. The last couple years, Riess sai...
By 10:36 a.m. Thursday, some 300 Thanksgiving meals had been delivered across Carlton County, all of them free, all of them cooked, packaged and driven to their destination by volunteers. Then the power went out. "Luckily the ovens at the VFW are gas, so they just kept cooking in the dark," said Raffy Johnson, noting that the lights were out for about two hours. It was just another challenge to conquer, Johnson said. He has led the annual community meal for the past six years as a member of the...
A multimillion-dollar athletic facilities project got another step closer to reality Monday, when Cloquet school board members voted unanimously in favor of using the state government bid process for contracts and purchasing and hired Kraus-Anderson Construction to act as construction manager for the district. What started in the spring as a group of community members wanting to raise $1 million dollars for turf has turned into a larger school project, estimated to cost $4.5 to $5 million. The vote also fast-tracked the project. If things go...
Although time did not roll back to the 1980s when shoppers could get everything from hats and dresses to men's suits at multiple department stores on Cloquet Avenue, there were definitely pockets of local activity on Small Business Saturday. Numerous shops and restaurants ran specials on a day which highlights the locally owned and operated side of commerce each year. Mainstream Boutique, on Cloquet Avenue, saw a steady stream of customers. As they entered, each shopper was invited to choose a...
Santa's Home for the Holidays festivities have always been something that comes together thanks to the efforts of many, with many organizations each doing their part, and ending with the parade and fireworks Saturday evening. Several downtown business owners instigated the annual event, recalled John Buskala of Buskala Jewelry, downtown's oldest business. The city had reconstructed Cloquet Avenue that year - digging up and replacing the pavement, water and sewer - and businesses were...
For decades, the two churches have stood across the street from one another: one Lutheran, the other Presbyterian. Each holding services every Sunday, plus weddings and funerals, Bible studies, baptisms and confirmation classes. Each seeing the number of people in the pews declining over the years. Now the two Carlton churches - Bethesda Lutheran and River's Edge Presbyterian - are taking action together to change that. They formed a partnership, starting in October, that leaves them with...
Staff and students at Churchill Elementary capped off their Blue Ribbon awards season with a party in the gymnasium, complete with drumming and a brass band, special guests, a funny heartwarming movie and hundreds of blue and white pom-poms. The celebration began in September, when U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona announced the 2022 National Blue Ribbon schools. Churchill was one of 297 schools in the country - and only eight in Minnesota - to make the list. The Cloquet school was the...
When Thomlin Swan moved to a home on the Fond du Lac Reservation in early 2021, the theater artist was astounded by the lack of visible Ojibwe culture within the city of Cloquet, "despite having a reservation as part of its borders." Swan wanted to change that. In 2021, they received a West End Flourish grant to produce a piece of youth puppet theater that would help bring Ojibwe stories to downtown. After a slow start, things started coming together last summer when Swan connected with two...
Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College lost one of its strongest supporters Monday, when its president, Stephanie Hammitt, died of cancer. Hammitt, 60, spent much of her career at the Cloquet college before officially becoming the first female president in January 2020. At that time, more than one person - including Minnesota Commissioner of Higher Education Dennis Olson and former FDLTCC president Larry Anderson - declared Hammitt the "perfect" person to lead the nation's only combined...
The free community Thanksgiving meal is returning to Zion Lutheran Church Thursday, and all Carlton County residents are invited to sit down and enjoy a nice turkey meal with all the fixings and in good company. Meals are also available for delivery countywide. This marks the sixth year in a row that the Carlton County Disabled American Veterans and Auxiliary have organized and prepared the free Thanksgiving meals. The DAV's Raffy Johnson spearheads the annual event with plenty of help. He...
What started in March as a group of sports-minded private citizens, business owners and coaches brainstorming ways to fundraise for artificial turf at Cloquet High School has now turned into a much larger project. Cloquet school board members gave their approval Monday for school district officials to explore possible revenue sources and a construction process/timeline for the following items: replacing the grass football/soccer field with turf, moving the tennis courts and doubling the size...
After watching the rental property next door deteriorate for 20 years, Cloquet resident Mark Vandervort turned to the Cloquet city council on Tuesday. At his wits' end, Vandervort asked the council to create a better path for holding landlords accountable for hazardous conditions or nuisance issues at their properties. He talked about garbage piling up outside the rental home on Prospect Avenue until he paid to have it removed himself, and plenty of police visits over the years. A renter told...
The Cloquet city council canvassed votes Tuesday, making the final numbers official with a unanimous vote. Those vote totals included the write-in candidates for Cloquet’s Ward 3 city council race, with Iris Keller receiving 49 votes to Pete Erickson’s 40. The totals are meaningless, however, as they were too low to beat former city councilor Chris Swanson’s landslide 602 votes. The race for Ward 3 was, undoubtedly, the most confusing race in the county. Swanson was the sole candidate on the ballot, but cannot serve again as the Ward 3 counc...
Although the local Salvation Army thrift store is gone, the social programs run by the local charity are alive and well, said social services coordinator Leah Fosle, in an interview earlier this year. But they need money to fund those services, and more than half of those funds comes from one annual fundraising campaign: the Red Kettle program. Those are the bright red kettles manned by volunteers at Super One, L&M and Walmart in Cloquet each year. A manned kettle can bring in $40 an hour or more. An unmanned kettle brings in zero, because they...
Election judges reported a steady stream of voters all day Tuesday, with many expressing surprise at such a good turnout for the midterm elections. Thomson Township clerk Rhonda Peleski said they had a line that wrapped through the community room for much of the day, reporting that 2,134 residents voted in person at Thomson Town Hall, the polling place for Carlton County's largest precinct. "It was a long day. Really busy," Peleski said. In Cloquet, Ward 2 residents voted at the public library....
The race for Cloquet mayor was much closer than it was four years ago, but the end result was the same: voters elected Roger Maki to lead the city forward. Maki defeated former Ward 2 city councilor David Bjerkness by 118 votes. Maki had 2,312 votes (51%) to 2,194 (48.5%) for Bjerkness. The race looked a little different when the polls closed and the in-person votes were tallied. Bjerkness had the advantage then, leading by 48 votes. That didn’t include the absentee votes, however. Those early votes made a critical difference for Maki. Maki cre...
The Thomson Township Board of Supervisors announced plans to finally interview finalists for its vacant board seat, as the process for selecting those three final candidates is under scrutiny by the state of Minnesota. The board will select one person to replace Jason Paulson, who resigned in August from the board with two years remaining on his term due to a busy work schedule as a pilot. Six people initially applied for the opening, but township supervisors narrowed the applicant pool from six to three in a closed meeting Sept. 8,...
