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 1077 - 1101 of 3909
Last week, state Rep. Spencer Igo, R-Wabana Township, voted with a small group of Minnesota House Republicans to help the DFL pass a $1.9 billion package of infrastructure projects. On Thursday, his counterpart in the Senate — Rob Farnsworth of Hibbing — voted against the same plan as Senate Republicans blocked a major construction bill from reaching the desk of Gov. Tim Walz as part of a bid to secure new tax cuts. “It was a tough vote but I’m getting more emails and requests from people to end the tax on Social Security,” Farnswort... 
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With a potential project labor agreement vote on the Cloquet city council agenda, union members from Duluth, Superior and beyond packed City Hall Tuesday. Well over 100 people, mostly men, filled the council chambers and the atrium, the hum of their voices outside the meeting room making it difficult to hear Mayor Roger Maki as he opened the meeting. In the end, councilors voted 5-2 to table the issue, with Maki and Ward 4 Councilor Kerry Kolodge dissenting. That vote to delay a decision came...
When Barnum residents elected Dale Riihiluoma as mayor, running unopposed, in November, it was the culmination of decades of public service. It was also something his wife of 47 years, the late Diane Riihiluoma, didn't want to see happen. Diane passed away in November 2021 after three decades of battling cancer. She tended to favor blending in over standing out. "When Diane was still living she never wanted me to be mayor - it was too far out there," Dale said. "'You're not doing that,' she'd...
A new animal rescue group operating out of Carlton County has registered with the state as a nonprofit organization, and could begin fostering lost or stray dogs and cats in a matter of weeks. "We're 30 or 60 days away from taking our first official animals for rescue," said Erin Thompson, a board member of the new Carlton County Animal Rescue. Thompson met with 16 others Tuesday at the Cloquet Public Library as part of the group's monthly meetings. It has been gathering since October 2021, but...
College sports will no longer be part of Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College, according to a letter from acting president Anita Hanson. Hanson said it was a difficult decision, but she decided to discontinue the athletics program there, including men’s basketball, women’s basketball, and women’s volleyball. Football had already been eliminated. “Following conversations with campus leadership, the college’s athletic director, head coaches, staff, and faculty, it has been determined that funding currently used for athletics should be reallo...
One of the oldest traditions in the history of Minnesota carries on Tuesday, March 14 in the annual township meetings. The township system of government was established as part of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which included the northeast portion of today's Minnesota as a territory. Areas of land were divided into 36-square-mile units called congressional townships. Today, the term "township" refers to organized but unincorporated areas of the state usually governed by a three-person board of...
Duluth Judge Sally Tarnowski died March 6 while on vacation in Florida. Judge Tarnowski served as the Chief Judge of the Sixth Judicial District from 2016 to 2020. She most recently served as a St. Louis County judge in Duluth, and occasionally heard cases in Carlton County. “All of us within the Minnesota courts community are devastated by the loss of Judge Tarnowski,” said Supreme Court Chief Justice Lorie Gildea. “Beyond her exemplary service to Minnesota, Judge Tarnowski was a vibrant person whose commitment to justice shined through in ev...
Nineteen Cloquet students participated in the Ecology Science Fair on Jan. 28, held at the University of Minnesota Student Center in St. Paul. The Ecology Science Fair focuses on student‐driven investigations in ecology, the study of relationships of organisms to one another and their environment, encouraging students to engage in all steps of the research process, including the important final step of data presentation. Attending the fair were 14 Cloquet middle school students, Jeremiah B...
Cromwell-Wright choir students worked hard this past month and it paid off as many students achieved high marks at the choral subsection contest Tuesday, March 7, at Virginia High School. Max Hanni and Aurora Gervais, Brian Goodrich and Grace Swenson, and Kieriahna Goodin and Haylee McCuskey received "Excellent" ratings for their duets, as did Brian Goodrich, Grace Swenson, Trinity King, Kieriahna Goodin, Kaylee Smith and Haylee McCuskey for their solos. Gracie Foley and Kaylee Smith won a...
Robotics, where teamwork extends beyond the team. They call it a robotics competition, but it's really a collaboration. It starts by entering events like last week's FIRST Robotics Regional Competition in Duluth. Team members had to work together to design a robot according to specifications outlined just a few short months ago, and it had to pass inspection before head-to-head scrambles in the arena began Thursday. For Cloquet's Ripsaw team, it also meant sharing a practice space in February...
Due to a plumbing issue, Cloquet's Washington Elementary School will have an e-learning Day Thursday, March 16, while crews make repairs. All other buildings were planned to be open as of 9:30 p.m. Wednesday, when superintendent Michael Cary notified the newspaper of the change....
New face minds Cloquet lakes, trails `The timing wasn't great, two weeks before the birth of his second son, but the opportunity for Tony Elwell and his family was too good to pass up. "Otherwise, chances of getting back here were slim," said Elwell, the new face of the Department of Natural Resources in Cloquet. "We'd have to wait years, and we've always wanted to come back to this area. So, I put in for it." Elwell's request was granted, and he started as the conservation officer for the...
Following two weeks of uproar related to proposed ordinance changes in Wrenshall, the city council earned a muted response at its meeting Wednesday. There were fewer than a dozen visitors to City Hall, compared to the almost 100 who objected to an RV park ordinance at a public hearing in February. The city council said Wednesday it won’t address the RV ordinance again until a planning commission meeting at 10 a.m. April 19 — the first date the council can meet in full due to an absence from councilor Joyce Gvesrude. The council, which also act...
A one-time Cloquet resident was sentenced Tuesday to 38 years in prison — the maximum sentence — for the murder of Minneapolis North student and athlete, Deshaun Hill Jr. in Minneapolis. Cody Logan Fohrenkam, 30, was found guilty of second-degree homicide by a Hennepin County jury on Jan. 26. The shooting occurred after the two happened to pass each other on the sidewalk — Hill wearing a walking boot on one foot, Fohrenkam searching for the person who punched him four times and stole his phone at a store that morning. He shot Hill three times...
In the black and white world of auditing, the letter the Minnesota State Auditor sent to the city of Kettle River last month is clear. "We found several instances where the city violated Minnesota state law," state auditor Julie Blaha told the Pine Knot News this week. For city officials of the small town, population 172, things are apparently a bit more gray. Mayor David Lucas described the 10-page letter outlining administrative violations in three areas as "nothing." Those items include...
The slate of candidates is set for Lake Country Power’s director elections this spring. Director ballots for Districts 3, 4, 6, 7 and 8 will be mailed to co-op members between March 31 and April 5. Northern Carlton County areas fall in districts 7, 8, and 9. Members running as candidates for the LCP board in the area are: District 7: Craig Olson, Culver. District 8: Marvin Ketola, McGregor; Brian Napstad, McGregor; Daniel Reed, Kettle River; Danny Smith, Tamarack; and Paul Vernon, Tamarack....
A quick and aggressive response by firefighters saved the storefronts at the Bergquist complex last week, but the large warehouses in the back are likely a complete loss. Cloquet Area Fire District Chief Jesse Buhs said the stores were connected to the warehouses by two breezeways. Both Bergquist Imports and Erbert & Gerbert's sandwich shop sustained smoke damage, but the fire didn't spread to the front. Erbert & Gerbert's owner Al Kurtz used Facebook to thank fire suppression efforts, saying...
Icy roads did not deter a dozen concerned Kettle River citizens from attending Monday's Carlton County Board meeting to ask why the grader was pulled from the Kettle River area county garage. "Six months ago the Kettle River people were assured the county garage would stay open," Bob Hattenberger said to county commissioners. "No one from the county let us know the garage was empty. Our first inkling the man and machine were gone was when we saw no tracks in the snow in front of the garage. We...
For the second time in less than a year, Esko schools were again the victim of a “swatting” incident, essentially a fake 911 call made to bring about the dispatch of a large number of law enforcement officials to a particular address. According to a news release from the Carlton County Sheriff’s Office, a 911 call came in at 10:39 a.m. Thursday, March 2, indicating there were injuries due to violence at Esko High School. Sheriff’s office staff made contact with the school and both entitie...
Cloquet resident and WKLK sports guy Dwight Cadwell has a new lease on life, and a new liver. He and his wife, Diane, got the call that a donated liver was available just before midnight on Feb. 18. The doctor told them they needed to get to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester within 5 to 5 ½ hours. Diane made it there by a little after 4 a.m. She may have exceeded the speed limit, despite her hatred of nighttime driving. "When you know you have to get there for a liver, you get there fast,"...
Editor's note: Cloquet School District officials canceled the special meeting mentioned in this story and will finalize athletic facilities plans and funding at the board meeting on Monday, March 20 instead. Cloquet superintendent Michael Cary told school board members he’s been working “fast and furiously” with contractor Kraus-Anderson and Members Cooperative Credit Union officials on plans for the $4.5 million outdoor athletic facilities project, but not fast enough to bring it to the board...
Persia Erdrich's son had just turned 2 years old when he spoke his first sentence in Ojibwe. The pair were visiting the Minnesota Zoo as part of a group of babies, toddlers, parents and elders in a program to teach Ojibwe to young children and their parents. Erdrich, whose Ojibwe name is Netaa-niimid, said it happened when her son Patrick Linehan, whose Ojibwe name is Ogimaagaabaw, pointed at a bear in an enclosure. "Mokwa nibaa," he said. The bear is sleeping. This was possible for Erdrich's... Website
No one was hurt Saturday when the pilot of an experimental light sport aircraft made an emergency landing on the ice-covered Big Lake Saturday afternoon. The Carlton County Sheriff's Office described the aircraft as a "home-built fixed-wing aircraft" in a news release, explaining that the landing was planned after pilot Rich Mattson realized one of the landing gear wheels had broken off when he departed from Fish Lake in Fredenberg Township in St. Louis County. After originally planning to land...
Nearly 100 people appeared Tuesday at a public hearing in Wrenshall related to proposed RV park regulations. About 15 percent of attendees spoke at the hearing, doing so resoundingly and to repeated applause. Their message to the city's planning commission, which is also its town council: leave business owner Jeff Bloom alone. "For you to pick this man out and single him out and try to create ordinances to cause him to spend more money that could possibly cause him to go out of business is compl...
A fire at the site of Bergquist Imports along the Minnesota Highway 33 frontage road in Cloquet drew a large response Wednesday afternoon as smoke poured from the back of the complex of buildings. Steady smoke curled from the back, carrying across the four lanes of Highway 33 and blowing south. Firefighters with axes and steel wrecking bars were entering at the back of the complex, disappearing into thick smoke. "I'm a little shocked," said Barry Bergquist, who owns three buildings on the site,...
