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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Mike Creger and Jana Peterson Fires this past week have displaced at least seven people in north Carlton County. A family of four in the lower unit of a duplex on the 100 block of 13th Street in Cloquet had to move to a hotel this week after a suspected electrical fire set a couch on fire early Saturday evening. The fire spread and there was heavy smoke damage. A woman who lived in the upper duplex was also forced to find housing and is living with family members. Everyone evacuated safely. Earl...
The results are in and an overwhelming number of people who filled out a recent survey support the Carlton and Wrenshall school districts creating a consolidated district. Across the board, in age categories and among those who have children in the district and those who don't, 80 percent of respondents want consolidation. The results were released Tuesday night at a special meeting of the school boards with a representative from School Perceptions, a company that has performed more than 10,000...
Wrenshall and Carlton school district officials continue to prepare for a possible consolidation vote this year. Last Friday, the two superintendents and board members met with local legislators to kick off what is hoped to be a successful lobbying effort when the Minnesota Legislature opens Feb. 11. That’s the same day the districts will release the results of a survey put out last month to ask residents and parents of students about their support for a consolidated district and the costs associated with it to shore up district campuses. R...
Kwe Pack has been up and running, literally, for nearly a decade. The group of indigenous women based out of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Reservation run for wellness, socializing and share volunteer activities. They have been featured in national magazines and on television. The exposure caught the attention of Oprah Winfrey. So when she was planning to be in Minneapolis last weekend for her 2020 Vision tour, Kwe Pack members were asked to be a part of the event that focuses...
In 2016, Minnesota passed legislation establishing a presidential nomination primary, bringing the state into Super Tuesday, when a host of states hold primaries. The state is better known as a caucus state, where people gather and discuss their preference for candidates instead of simply voting. But Minnesota isn’t new to presidential primaries. There have been four: in 1916, 1952, 1956 and 1992. In most cases, the legislature voted for a primary to try and gain some political edge. In 1992, the primary was considered rather meaningless as i...
The Wrenshall school board certified its 2020 levy Monday night that shows a 43-percent increase in taxes for residents of the district. While that is a huge jump, it wasn’t unexpected as the board this fall approved a nonvoter-approved $9.3 million bonding project that will cost taxpayers more than $400,000 a year for 20 years. The bonding will improve air quality at the school. If there hadn’t been bonding, the tax increase for next year would have been about 6 percent. There were a few people at the Truth-In-Taxation meeting that took place...
The Carlton county board will join a list of those waiting on decisions regarding consolidation between the Wrenshall and Carlton school districts. The Carlton school board has been drafting a letter to the county regarding the possible sale of its high school property, which sits next to the county jail. The county board approached the district with the idea of using school property to build a new jail. It told the district earlier this year that it wanted an answer about the availability of the school land by next week. That won’t happen. T...
The results of what at times was a contentious meeting of school board members from Wrenshall and Carlton Tuesday will be seen at each board's regular meetings next week. There should be two identical resolutions on the respective agendas. They will be worded the same, but judging from the conversation at the joint meeting Tuesday, they're being crafted by two clashing mindsets. Wrenshall board members were expecting a firm commitment from the Carlton board that it was moving ahead on...
When Jack Thornton carried his wife Joyce over the threshold of their new home on Jan. 23, 1955, the newlyweds weren’t alone. A thousand people stood outside and cheered as they entered the two-bedroom, pre-fab house at 109 7th St. in Cloquet. It had been this way for a while, ever since the previous August when a story about the blind couple flashed on newswires and landed in every newspaper across the country. “We were well-known,” Joyce coyly said of all the attention. The new home was a gif...
Tragedy happens in an instant. To triumph over it, well, that can take much longer. One day you are simply a newly minted teenager leaving school. One day you are an infantryman fixed in a foxhole, already accustomed to a daily deluge of enemy fire. In an instant, you are literally blinded. ... Joyce Campbell of Cloquet fell flat on her back. The icy snowball had hit her square in the face. Her school books went flying, she probably hit the back of her head - hard. It was boys horsing around....
Public meetings are continuing on the question of consolidation between the Carlton and Wrenshall school districts and it seems a bit of a divide lingers between residents in each district. A handful of people braved the nor’easter storm on Oct. 21 for the first public meeting outlining the two-site consolidation plan and its associated costs. There, the pressing question was about whether or not to keep the current nonfunctioning pool at the Wrenshall school or scrap it. Another question rang loud and clear as well: What does the Carlton schoo...
The consensus reached at a joint meeting Monday of the full Carlton and Wrenshall school boards is that members will likely seek a referendum in August of next year on facilities improvements at two schools. But that fact, as opposed to having a vote in February, does not mean board members are easing up on what has been a whirlwind of meetings this late summer and fall trying to work out possible conditions for a consolidation. “Let’s keep the momentum going,” Wrenshall board member Janaki Fisher-Merritt said. While the Wrenshall board is al...
Kwik Trip is expanding its footprint off Interstate 35 in Scanlon after its corporate owners bought the defunct motel near the convenience store. There will be a shuffle of properties as the Golden Gate motel is expected to be demolished this fall and the lot used for a liquor store and parking expansion. Kwik Trip bought the Gramma Polo's liquor store earlier this year and has run its Kwik Spirits operation out of it. It now plans to demolish the five-year-old building to make way for a car...
The full school boards for Carlton and Wrenshall schools will meet jointly Monday for the first time since committees from each district reviewed costs for facilities in a consolidated school district. The cost of remodeling and building new parts of the schools in Wrenshall and South Terrace remains about $47 million. The committees met Monday to fine-tune construction details and also consider an idea presented by superintendents from both districts. Wrenshall superintendent Kim Belcastro said she and Gwen Carman wanted to provide the boards...
The price tag is in on upgraded facilities for a consolidated Carlton and Wrenshall school district: $47.3 million. That was the estimate presented to district superintendent and school board members during a meeting Monday in Wrenshall. The firm ARI is working with the districts on the idea of a two-site option for consolidation - an elementary at Carlton's South Terrace school and a high school in Wrenshall. Both current campuses would need significant upgrades under the two-site plan. But...
Continued decreasing enrollment is driving decisions in the Carlton school district this month. Outside of the continuing discussions about consolidation with Wrenshall, the school board set its preliminary levy for next year at the maximum. By law, districts need to set levy parameters by Sept. 30 each year. While the levy could go down before December, it can’t be increased. The exact numbers, and impact on taxpayers, has yet to be determined as the state dictates the maximum levy for every school district. The district has seven fewer s...
There will be a flurry of meetings in the next two months as school boards in Wrenshall and Carlton continue to explore a consolidation of the districts. After joint meetings this summer with the full boards, members are moving in the direction of a single district with buildings in Carlton and Wrenshall, known as the two-site option. This week, committees from both boards met to discuss needs at the current schools should the school populations be merged. There are several state mandates that are pushing the boards along in the complicated...
Hey, it’s the 100th annual Labor Day celebration in Cloquet coming up this weekend. As your newspaper of record on such milestone events, we thought we’d check in on some history about what has become one of Cloquet’s signature yearly events — and a unique one at that, as few cities celebrate the holiday in grand style any more. So we went back to 1919. Sure enough, there was a big celebration. Fun was had by all, the old Pine Knot reported. The weather was perfect. Everything went off “withou...
More hard numbers are coming in regarding how much Carlton County and other taxing authorities within it will need to repay utility companies for overcharging in tax assessments. County assessor Kyle Holmes reported this week that a recent ruling in Minnesota Tax Court, that property for Northern Natural Gas across the state was overvalued, means that entities in Carlton County will need to repay the utility $517,092. If divided equally among all Carlton County residents, the amount refunded would equate to just under $40 per household. But...
The stalemate over a joint powers agreement between the Big Lake Area Sanitary District and the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa required a mediation session this week. Results of that effort, which began Wednesday, were not available when this issue of the Pine Knot News went to press. The mediation was agreed upon by both bodies in an effort to finalize a deal that would allow a release of funding and construction of a new sewage collection system in the Big Lake area in order to...
The second joint board meeting this summer to broach the idea of consolidation between the Carlton and Wrenshall school districts, in Wrenshall Monday, went much like the meeting in July at South Terrace in Carlton. Until it didn’t. After a series of statements about goals and visions for the districts, and talk of how each district could use its facilities in a school pairing, Wrenshall’s Michele Blanchard had heard enough. It was her sentiment, soon agreed on by other Wrenshall board members, that the Carlton board seemed to keep thr...
The theme for this year's annual celebration in Kettle River is apt historically and for the event itself: "Ma & Pa Kettle Days Rebuilds After the 1918 Fire." It was the devastating forest fire a century ago that forced two distinct ethnic groups, the Finns and the Poles, to merge their communities and form the heart of a rebuilt Kettle River. Ma & Pa Kettle Days is rebuilding as well, after talk of the event's demise circulated in 2017. Morgan Yeats and Marcia Sarvela were not ready to see the...
The picture always gnawed at Lynn Shaw. There she is, in 1958, posing with her brother and father next to their typical suburban Minneapolis home. The landscape is bare. Don Siiter is towering over his children. And he is wearing a graduation gown. "I was always bothered by a picture of me at 4 years old with my dad," Shaw wrote in an email to the Pine Knot News. Attached was the picture. "He said he did not have enough credits to graduate." So why the gown? Lynn, who is an educator with a docto...
When the Carlton basketball team came home from Hibbing in March of 1959, players decided to get a bite to eat at a diner in Cloquet. They were in a celebratory mood, after all. Against all odds, the Bulldogs had gone to the regionals and won it, earning them a spot in what then was the most-coveted high school sports achievement in Minnesota - a spot in the state basketball tournament. But the road to that triumph included tiny Carlton knocking Cloquet out of the districts a week earlier. The...
There was history. There was agreement. There were dull-as-unbuttered-toast moments. And, like a main event, the moment everyone had been waiting for - direct opinions from each school board member on the future of the Wrenshall and Carlton districts. While there likely never has never been a joint meeting between the full boards before, it doesn't mean the two districts are on solid footing when it comes to consolidation, a notion that has fallen on the two small districts for decades. The...
