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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The Thomson Township Board of Supervisors is once again accepting applications for an open seat on the board. In an effort to self-correct after the Minnesota Department of Administration ruled this month that the board violated open meeting law during its previous appointment process, a special meeting Thursday, Dec. 8 was used to reset the process. At the suggestion of township attorney Dave Pritchett, newly appointed Thomson Township supervisor David Sunnarborg resigned from his seat during...
A city of Cloquet broadband project was among nearly $100 million in internet connectivity grants announced by Gov. Tim Walz last week. Dubbed “the largest single investment in broadband infrastructure in state history” in a city news release Friday, the grants are spread across 61 projects as part of the Border-to-Border Broadband program administered by the state Department of Employment and Economic Development. Walz said the funding and projects would dramatically improve access for thousands of residents, including 33,000 homes and bus...
In addition to closing schools, the blizzard and severe winter weather also caused a delay in the delivery of the Pine Knot News print issue from the printer to the Post Office. It was nobody’s fault, rather an emphasis on keeping our employees safe. We apologize for any inconvenience....
Lake Country Power line crews responded to a growing number of outages on Wednesday during the winter storm, and they were expecting to add to the more than 1,900 co-op members in the region without power as the snow piled up into Thursday The snowstorm dumped heavy wet snow across the region, causing trees to sag and snap onto power lines. Some lines are down and at least one broken pole has been reported so far. Most outages were being caused by lines slapping together from the wet snow, Lake Country reported. When the weight of the snow...
The Minnesota Department of Health this week urged parents to get children vaccinated against Covid-19 and to make sure they and the entire family are up to date as the holidays approach. The push comes just after the Food and Drug Administration authorized and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expanded recommendations for children age 6 months through 5 years to receive an updated vaccine dose to help increase protection against currently circulating variants. Vaccine doses are arriving in the state this month. Children younger...
“Do the cuts that you can make right now. The longer we wait the deeper the hole.” — Angela Lind, Wrenshall business manager Superintendent Kim Belcastro announced her resignation during a special meeting of the Wrenshall school board Dec. 8. The meeting also served to announce early rounds of $300,000 worth of budget cuts, including the immediate losses of one full-time paraprofessional and a retiring math teacher. “I made the decision I am leaving,” Belcastro announced after 15 years in the district. “I can leave as early as Jan. 5, or I’m w...
About 20 Carlton County residents came to the Truth in Taxation hearing on Tuesday to voice fears of losing their homes under heavy increases in local property taxes. An Eagle Lake summer resident testified she had a 23 percent increase for taxes payable for fiscal year 2023 although she and her husband lived there only 47 percent of the time. Jim Jankowski lives on a small farm in rural Esko where he had milked cows in the past. The farm has been in his family for more than 100 years. The 80-year-old took the podium. “I have worked hard in m...
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...
The Northland Foundation announced this month the individuals and projects being awarded Maada’ookiing grants. Maada’ookiing (“the distribution” in Ojibwe) is a foundation program designed to strengthen relationships within the indigenous community, build partnerships with Native nations, and offer support for community members to expand capacity in northeast Minnesota. A grant opportunity is being offered three times per year, awarding up to $2,500 per grant for tribal citizens, descendants, or those having kinship ties or affiliation to indi...
The United States Postal Service appeared to work quickly to address mail delivery issues in Barnum this week after a social media post raised concerns about service in the area. A Facebook post by a Barnum-area letter carrier said the Barnum post office was working with one carrier for all routes, with people out sick and hospitalized. "We are doing the best we can with what we have," the post said. "We have to focus on packages right now because the post office is completely full to the...
A preliminary look at the Carlton school district audit Monday revealed what board members and administrators expected: expenditures are outstripping revenues, enrollment is stagnant at best, and solutions like dipping into the fund balance and Covid-19 relief money won’t last forever. “Those are temporary solutions for the next couple of years,” business and human resources manager Norman Nelis said during the school board’s committee of the whole meeting. “We’re going to have to discuss aligning our revenues and expenditures.” But not all hop...
Minnesotans facing mental health crises can now dial or text 988 to connect to Lifeline support 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The new 988 code will serve as a universal entry point, so callers can reach a trained crisis counselor who can help regardless of where they live. People can also dial 988 if they are worried about a loved one who may need crisis support. People should call 911 if they suspect a drug overdose or need immediate medical help The change is part of a nationwide effort to transition the National Suicide Prevention...
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...
Multi-day power outages are possible along the Interstate 35 corridor, including Cloquet, said Minnesota Power as it reported crews responding as quickly as possible to restore power after the second and most powerful wave of this week’s winter storm. A foot or more of additional heavy, wet snow and high winds brought down numerous trees and limbs on power lines across the companies’ service areas, causing outages affecting about 14,800 Minnesota Power customers as of 10:30 a.m. Thursday. The Duluth-based Minnesota Power has reports of at lea...
Thirty years ago, when Joanna Wiegert was entering the legal profession, having graduated from Valparaiso University, she found Duluth. An outdoors enthusiast, Wiegert found that Duluth was smaller than her suburban St. Louis upbringing and less urban than the greater Chicago area where she'd gone to law school. "I didn't want to go to a big city. I wanted something different," said Wiegert, 57. "But I wanted to do criminal law, so I had to go to a place that was big enough that they would have...
The University of Minnesota's Bell Museum is known for its dioramas and the massive wooly mammoth in its main exhibit hall. But it is also home to a giant herbarium - a collection of nearly a million plant specimens collected from all over the world. Amid the vast holdings are hundreds of specimens collected by the peripatetic, boot-clomping, chain-smoking librarian who grew up in Carlton and blazed a trail across the Arctic starting before World War II. Margaret Oldenburg "was an early pioneer... 
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A 58-year-old Grand Lake Township resident was rescued Tuesday morning after she lost control of her vehicle on a slippery roadway and crashed into a pond. Tammy Shelton was driving on the 5200 block of Munger Shaw Road in Grand Lake Township when the crash happened at 8:24 a.m., a St. Louis County news release said. The vehicle was partially submerged and Shelton was assisted out of her vehicle by first responders. She sustained non-lifethreatening injuries and was transported by ambulance to a local hospital. The St. Louis County Sheriff’s O...
Fire crews with the Cloquet Area Fire District had a busy 30-hour window last week, dealing with three fire calls starting at 5 p.m. Thursday and ending with a third at 11 p.m. Friday. The most serious fire call came in at about 3:30 on Friday, Dec. 2. Occupants of a home on the 100 block of Third Street reported there was a fire on the second floor. They heard smoke alarms and exited the house, but four cats remained inside. Fire crews rescued the cats, and all were deemed in good condition. A woman who was in the home went to the hospital to...
The Minnesota Nurses Association and more than a dozen hospitals in the Twin Cities area and Duluth reported tentative agreements on new three-year labor contracts Tuesday, averting a walkout by thousands of nurses that was scheduled to start Sunday. The union said it has reached tentative deals with Children’s Minnesota, North Memorial, Allina Health, M Health Fairview and HealthPartners — all in the Twin Cities — as well as Essentia Health and St. Luke’s in Duluth. It’s recommending that its members vote to ratify the agreements, and has c...
The Thomson Township board of supervisors violated open meeting law in September when it used closed session to trim candidates for appointment to the board, the state Department of Administration ruled last week. “The board did not identify any other provision within the (open meeting law) or any other statute that would permit it to close a meeting in this situation,” wrote commissioner Alice Roberts-Davis in her advisory opinion. “Therefore, the board did not comply with (open meeting law) when it went into a closed session to review applica...
Editor's note: On Dec. 8, appointee David Sunnarborg resigned his new position so the board could rewind its selection process after the Minnesota Department of Administration ruled that they had violated open meeting law when they illegally closed a meeting to narrow the original list of six applicants to three. Read more about that decision in next week's Pine Knot News or here: https://www.pineknotnews.com/story/2022/12/09/news/thomson-town-board-rewinds-supervisor-selection-process/8447.html. Following months of an empty seat and controvers...
The Northland Foundation was recently awarded a federal grant of $500,000 over two years to support intergenerational programming in northeast Minnesota, leveraging the foundation’s “AGE to age” program which brings generations together in helping children’s programs. The program taps the skills and experience of older adult volunteers to support children in tutoring, out-of-school time, and enrichment activities like reading programs, homework help, art clubs, sewing projects, fitness activities, and holiday gatherings. Anyone age 55 or olde...
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...
It was cold, but Cloquet's Santa's Home For the Holidays celebration last week was a warm embrace of the season with a flurry of activity, including the Saturday night parade downtown with Santa and Mrs. Claus in a sleigh, delighting children along the route. Fireworks punctuated the end of the parade, capping off three days of events. As Old Man Winter brings lower temps and longer nights, Santa Claus and his helpers arrived with a special kind of magic during the annual Santa's Home for the...
