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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Like former Chief Wade Lamirande, and Dewey Johnson before him, acting police chief Derek Randall has been a member of the Cloquet police department for years and has worked his way up the ladder at the police department. While Randall is now acting chief, soon the city council will be tasked with finding a permanent police chief. We hope they refer to the job description and city hiring procedures and encourage both internal and external applicants this time when appointing a new chief. A new police chief should meet the qualifications as set...
Ward 3 Cloquet Council Candidate profile: Uriah Wilkinson PKN: Briefly summarize your personal background and qualifications. Wilkinson: I have been a resident of Cloquet (with my five children) for 25-plus years, and have been working in the real estate industry for the past 15. I have served on the Cloquet Planning Commission for going on eight years as well as task forces including housing, transportation and zoning. PKN: What made you decide to run for Cloquet City Council? Wilkinson: This...
Ward 3 Cloquet Council Candidate profile: Ray Schow PKN: Briefly summarize your personal background and qualifications. Schow: I have held jobs in almost all sectors of the job market, from janitor to stockbroker, from call center supervisor to golf course manager, but I am best known as a teacher which I started at 22 and still sub to this day. PKN: What made you decide to run for Cloquet City Council? Schow: I decided first to apply for, and then to run for city council because I have been ver...
Ward 3 Cloquet Council Candidate profile: Chris Swanson PKN: Briefly summarize your personal background and qualifications. Swanson: I grew up and lived in this area of Cloquet most of my life. I've taught government classes at CHS since 2001. As a parent, resident and community member, I appreciate the importance of remaining level-headed under pressure, responsive to my fellow residents, and conscious of the public's trust. PKN: What made you decide to run for Cloquet City Council? Swanson:...
Three candidates — Uriah Wilkinson, Ray Schow and Chris Swanson — are running for the Ward 3 Cloquet city council seat vacated by Dakota Koski in July when he moved out of his ward. The special primary election for Cloquet Ward 3 councilor is Tuesday, Nov. 5. The voting location for Ward 3 residents remains at the former Cloquet City Hall location, 1307 Cloquet Ave. The polls will be open 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Following Tuesday’s primary, two of the three candidates will advance to the Ward 3 Special General Election, on Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2020. Abse...
Chris Swanson and Uriah Wilkinson advance to the general election on Feb. 11 for the Ward 3 Cloquet City Council seat. Not too many voters turned out for the primary election in Cloquet today, where the Ward 3 special election was the sole race on the ballot. Totals for the Ward 3 Special Primary are below: Chris Swanson - 124 Uriah Wilkinson - 54 Ray Schow - 7 The council will certify the totals at its meeting Thursday, Nov. 7. Ward 3 lies between Highway 33 and 14th Street, and Doddridge...
There’s a primary election coming up in Cloquet’s Ward 3, and three very good candidates are running. I had a chance to interview all three on “Harry’s Gang” on CAT-7. We talked, one-on-one, for an hour each; all three programs are airing repeatedly on CAT-7 until the election. Here’s a summary: I started with Ray Schow, whom I met on “Harry’s Gang” when I first got to town 20 years ago. Ray has an intense interest in local politics and a deep understanding of how government works. He believe...
Residents of Cloquet’s Ward 3 will vote Tuesday, Nov. 5 at the old City Hall. (Future Ward 3 elections will be held at the new hall, so this is the last election at old City Hall.) This is a primary election, as three people are running to replace former councilor Dakota Koski, who resigned when he moved elsewhere in the city. The City Council appointed Chris Swanson to the seat, pending the election. The Nov. 5 primary election will reduce the number of candidates to two, with the Ward 3 special general election set for Feb. 11, 2020. Ward 3...
Tuesday’s Cloquet City Council meeting marked the move of the “public comment” portion to the beginning — rather than the end — of the meeting. The council changed the process to allow public input on issues before voting, rather than after. The city installed a digital timer to keep comments under 3 minutes, and some rules about the mayor’s authority to limit comments, if necessary, were read. The new system did not get a trial, though, as no citizens were present to make comments at the meeting. The city got good news on the search for...
The Cloquet City Council heard a presentation on a proposed ordinance on tobacco sales from the Carlton County Public Health and Human Services Department at its Oct. 15 work session. “Tobacco 21” is an initiative backed by the health department to reduce tobacco use — including smokeless options such as vaping — by restricting sales of the products to those under 21 years old. “So far, 36 cities statewide, and eight counties, have passed ‘Tobacco 21’ ordinances in Minnesota,” said Alli Mueller, who made the presentation with Meghann Levitt,...
$52,000. That’s a lot of money to replace the refrigerant in the old “Barn,” especially since there is no guarantee this new batch of R-22 just won’t leak out again. Cloquet’s original indoor ice arena is showing its age, and the system under the floor that freezes the ice is old and in need of replacement or repair. Right now, though, all the refrigerant has leaked out and the City Council has agreed to spend the money to replace it, so we can have ice in The Barn this winter. Refilling the system with R-22 is the easiest and quickest...
News that the ice plant in “The Barn” — the city’s oldest hockey arena — had leaked as much as 5,000 pounds of R-22 refrigerant came as a shock to Cloquet city officials earlier this month. So did the price tag. At $10 a pound, the cost to replace 5,000 pounds of R-22 is $50,000. Councilors balked at paying that kind of bill without more information at their Oct. 1 meeting, and requested a special meeting with area hockey officials to find out more about the cooling system itself, use of the ri...
The study of the Cloquet police department commissioned by the Cloquet city council was still not available to read in its entirety when the Pine Knot News went to press this week. Jonathan Ingram and Bill Connors of Novak Consulting Group, which conducted the study, made a presentation to the council at its Oct. 1 meeting. Mayor Roger Maki and councilor Kerry Kolodge asked for corrections to statements included in the study, and the consulting firm has yet to send the corrected version to the city, acting interim city administrator James...
Starting with the next Cloquet city council meeting on Oct. 15, residents will be heard before the council conducts its business, rather than at the end of the meeting after all the votes have been cast. Ward 2 councilor Sheila Lamb moved for adoption of new council procedures — as she was the one who originally proposed the change — but the rest of the council voted unanimously in favor and had previously expressed their approval. “We should hear from people before we make our votes,” Lamb pr...
Ward 2 Cloquet city councilor Sheila Lamb has been appointed to the state's newly created Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women task force. She was sworn in and attended her first task force meeting in St. Paul on Thursday, Sept. 19. The mission of the task force is to reduce and end violence against indigenous women and girls in Minnesota. Lamb said she was "thrilled" to be asked to serve on the task force, which includes representatives from tribal nations and law enforcement. "The fact that...
In another administrative shift at the Cloquet police department, Commander Derek Randall is now acting chief - effective Monday, Sept. 16. Randall replaces Commander Carey Ferrell at the helm, as Ferrell is taking voluntary paid leave for three weeks, according to city human resources director James Barclay. Ferrell, a 25-year veteran of the department, had been acting or interim police chief for five months, after former Cloquet police chief Jeff Palmer placed himself on paid administrative...
Read this: the Cloquet Public Library expansion is a go. Thanks to a rebidding process that cut out certain parts of the renovation project to lower costs, Cloquet City Council members voted Tuesday to hire a contractor and move ahead with the project. The expected finish date is August 2020, with work to start this fall. The expansion will add flexible meeting space to the library that can be divided into one to three rooms, a dedicated children's area, a dedicated teen area and spaces for...
They say you can’t go home again, but it sure would be nice sometimes if some people did. For example, former Cloquet City Administrator Brian Fritsinger served Cloquet for over 18 years — capably, by most accounts. But it’s been a few years now, Mr. Fritsinger, since you ran a city council meeting, and we miss you. Sure, the council has met every two weeks (or so) like clockwork without you, and probably will for years long after we’re all gone. After all, Cloquet has had a city council...
This is an exciting time for residents of Cloquet and the surrounding area. Our public library has been awarded a grant of $784,000, contingent on the City providing the balance of construction costs. That is no small change, and a great savings to our city for an improvement to a well-used city building. I understand that bids came in higher than anticipated, and this now creates a dilemma for our city council on whether to proceed with the project. If the council rejects the project based on the bids, they will lose $784,000. The library...
The Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa flag now flies in the Cloquet city council chambers, a reminder to those who do business there that the borders of the Fond du Lac Reservation and Cloquet overlap and the two entities cannot thrive separately. Charlie Smith, or "Nenaaw" in Anishinaabe, offered tobacco to everyone in the room, as well as to the drum itself, after the Cedar Creek drum group finished two songs and the flag was placed behind the council dais. They presented the flag so...
As recommended by members of the Cloquet planning commission, the Cloquet city council approved plans for the proposed Essentia health care clinic Aug. 20. The new clinic will be 10,000 square feet and located at 1413 Highway 33, currently the site of the vacant Driftwood Motel across Highway 33 from Walmart. City planner/zoning administrator Al Cottingham said now only the building permit needs to be approved. “We haven’t seen detailed construction plans, but I understand the architects are working on them,” he said, explaining that the appro...
The Cloquet city council is holding a public hearing on its intention to issue library expansion project bonds in the amount of roughly $1,275,000 during its Sept. 3 meeting, which begins at 7 p.m. Citizens are encouraged to speak at the public hearing. The library received a $784,000 library construction grant from the Minnesota Department of Education, and the Cloquet Shaw Memorial Public Library Foundation also committed $275,000 toward the more than $2 million project. If citizens disagree with the council decision Sept. 3, they can take...
In front of a standing-room-only crowd Tuesday, Cloquet City Council members first "reconsidered" a vote to deny a $1000 donation from Enbridge Energy, then reversed their vote from two weeks ago in favor of accepting the money. The donation became an issue at the Aug. 7 council meeting when Ward 2 councilor Sheila Lamb made a motion to deny the donation to the National Night Out celebration, asserting that if the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline goes through, sex trafficking will increase in Cloquet...
Three people filed to fill the Ward 3 Cloquet City Council seat vacated by Dakota Koski, including Uriah Wilkinson, Ray Schow and Chris Swanson. With three people filing, that means there will be a primary election on Nov. 5, with a general election to follow for the final two candidates on Feb. 11. All three men had also applied to fill the Ward 3 seat on an interim basis; the city council selected Swanson, who was sworn in earlier this month. Elected in the November 2018 general election,...
Cloquet police chief Jeff Palmer resigned last week, something which will change operations at the police department very little, as he had already been on “voluntary paid leave” since April 16. Palmer, whose salary was set at $102,096.37, submitted his resignation Thursday, Aug. 8, effective the same day. Patrol commander Carey Ferrell has been acting police chief since Palmer went on leave April 16, and city administrator Aaron Reeves said he expects him to continue in that role for now. Ferre...
