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 1209 - 1233 of 3909
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... Full story
The final school board meeting of the year in Wrenshall on Monday featured a host of financial housekeeping updates for a district in cut-mode as it tries to account for a drop in enrollment and subsequent decline in state funding. The board’s final levy certification included a 1.58-percent increase to $1.52 million — the amount of money district property owners’ taxes will account for on the district’s estimated $6.2 million budget in 2023. That budget is in flux, needing to come down from the figure previously approved in June. The school...
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...
The Minnesota Department of Transportation sent out a reminder to the public this week to say it is illegal to deposit snow on or next to a public highway or street. Snow on or near public roads can create hazards such as drainage, drifting and sight obstruction, MnDOT said in a news release. Minnesota law and many local ordinances prohibit the plowing, blowing, shoveling or otherwise placing of snow onto public roads or sidewalks. This includes the ditch and right of way area along the roads. Violations are considered misdemeanors, but civil... Full story
The University of Minnesota Extension is offering day-long training for those that work with or know farm families experiencing stress, loss or tough decisions for their family or business. Ambiguous loss and farming facilitator training will be offered at five locations across the state of Minnesota during January. Locations include the Cloquet Forestry Center on Jan. 11 at the Library Room (175 University Road, Cloquet). Ambiguous loss is related to grief. In farming, it can be the loss of a farmer or farm, or something psychological like... Full story
Community Memorial Hospital employees are “spreading the warmth” to patients in need. Laurie Korby, hospital foundation executive director, and Jeff Hakala, Thrivent financial advisor, decided that they wanted to bring their organizations together for a community service project, one that would give the hospital and clinic employees the opportunity to help their patients outside of their eight-hour shifts. Korby found a willing group among the hospital’s quality improvement team. The foundation, Thrivent, and the quality improvement team spear...
Minnesota Power crews are prepared and are responding as safely and as quickly as possible to restore power outages caused by high winds downing trees and limbs, the company said in a news release Friday afternoon After last week’s heavy, wet snow of two feet or more coated trees in the region, Friday’s high winds are taking down many trees and limbs, causing scattered outages. The largest outages today were in the Duluth, Lakewood Township and Carlton areas and affected up to 1,200 customers at times. By 3:30 p.m., crews were working to res... Full story
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... Full story
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... Full story
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... Full story
“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... Full story
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... Full story
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... Full story
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... Full story
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... Full story
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...
