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 1849 - 1873 of 3909
The victim spoke first in Thursday’s sentencing hearing for the former Barnum girls basketball coach. She talked about how she fell in love with basketball at age 12, and how the sport is forever tainted by her experience. She shared how her 33-year-old coach first started messaging her on the phone over Snapchat, asking if she would play on a slow pitch softball team that weekend, and how he didn’t want to take “no” for an answer. It got worse. He would ask her uncomfortable questions about her personal life, did she have a boyfriend, things...
Unanimously, the Carlton County board of commissioners approved the sale of $10,000,000 worth of bonds to pay for early planning and early construction costs of the new jail/justice center to be built just south of Olsonville at Carlton Junction. In action at the regular session on Dec. 14, the board sold the bonds, which are scheduled to be paid off in 2043 at an average interest rate of almost 1.758 percent. Auditor/Treasurer Kevin DeVriendt commented, “The funding package came in as expected, the true interest cost is a good rate, and this w...
After repeated attempts to contact the owners of the building that formerly housed first Mexico Lindo, then Pedro's Mexican restaurant, Cloquet City councilors voted Tuesday to declare the historic downtown Cloquet building "a vacant and hazardous substandard building." Community development director Holly Hansen said the hope is to acquire (via condemnation) the building at 915 Cloquet Avenue and then try to find a developer who would revitalize the building. A public hearing is set for Feb....
After a month of hearing from irate taxpayers in mostly Thomson Township, the Cloquet Area Fire District is right back where it started 12 months ago. Following the CAFD Board vote Wednesday at the Scanlon Community Center, the property tax levy for 2022 will be exactly what it was a year ago: $3,143,425. Likewise, the ambulance district levy will be set at 0.019 percent of estimated market value (EMV), exactly what it was a year ago. The fire and rescue levy will be close to what it was a year...
At a special meeting Dec. 7, the Barnum school board approved, by a 4-3 vote, specific facility maintenance projects totaling more than $8 million. However, board members tabled anything to do with funding those projects this week. Some of the items would be funded by bonding for health and safety, which does not require a vote by school district residents for approval. Other projects, such as roof replacements, are not covered under health and safety, just long-term facilities maintenance, explained Barnum superintendent Mike McNulty in a...
Editor’s note: Because of a production error, several paragraphs were missing in this story that ran in the Dec. 17 issue of the Pine Knot News. We are reprinting it in whole here. A Kettle River woman was allegedly shot and killed by her husband Friday, Dec. 10. Raymond Arthur Julian, 65, allegedly told police he killed his wife, Tracy Ellen Julian, 62, when they came to his house Friday. Raymond made his first appearance in Sixth District Carlton County Court Dec. 13 on charges of murder in the second degree, with intent-not premeditated. B...
Here’s one final reminder that the Carlton County Disabled American Veterans Chapter 18 is hosting the annual community Christmas dinner in Cloquet this year from a new base of operations at the Cloquet VFW, 210 Arch Street. You don’t have to eat alone on Christmas or even cook for yourselves. Everyone is invited to enjoy a free sit-down or pickup meal from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Christmas Day. The deadline to order pickup meals ended at noon Thursday, but people coming in to dine don’t need to sign up in advance....
The Pine Knot News offices will be closed Friday, Dec. 24 and Dec. 31, for the holidays. Cloquet City Hall will be closed Thursday-Friday, Dec. 23-24 and Friday, Dec. 31. All Carlton County offices will be closed on Friday and Monday, Dec. 27, in observance of the Christmas Day holiday. This includes courthouse offices, government services, transportation department, human services, public health, motor vehicle license bureau, veterans services, and the Extension service....
Carmen LaPlant cuts the ribbon at the grand reopening celebration at Burger's Shoes in Cloquet on Dec. 9 surrounded by family and friends. LaPlant is the new owner of the store after taking over from Maria Leyrer, standing left of LaPlant, whose father, Ludwig Burger, started the store 54 years ago. At right, the two women hug after the ceremony. The store, at 1609 Carlton Ave., is now in the hands of LaPlant, who worked under Leyrer for seven years. "We knew we had to make it work so this...
Sigfred Johnson considered himself the "black sheep" of his family. It was likely because he liked to drink beer while most of his relatives were teetotalers. And there were a lot of them. Born in 1909 to Severin and Anna Johnson, Sigfred was in the middle of a pack of 12 children growing up on 22nd Avenue in Cloquet, where the city rubs against Scanlon's west side. Sig, as he was known, worked for the city of Cloquet's sewer and water works department and had an outsized personality. He drank h...
The fact that Cloquet Area Fire District taxpayers have been paying more than their share of ambulance expenses for over a decade didn't pacify Thomson Township residents Thursday during the CAFD truth-in-taxation hearing. Close to two dozen people attended the CAFD hearing, nearly all of them township residents, most of them shocked and angry that their proposed ambulance district taxes showed a more than threefold increase from the previous year. "I look at my proposed tax statement and I see...
Cloquet postmaster Todd Manisto gazed at the piles of boxes - some towering over even the tallest letter carriers - stacked in carts clustered in the mailroom at the post office Monday. "This is nothing compared to yesterday," he said. Add all the gifts and holiday cards to everything else that people started ordering online during the pandemic, and these are busy times. The Cloquet office delivered 1,695 packages on Sunday alone, Manisto said. On Monday, they were at it again. Manisto had...
Last week's photo from the Carlton County Historical Society, at right, had many people chiming in on where the photo was taken. It was obviously Scanlon, and readers pointed out that it was most likely taken near where the Rendezvous Sports Bar & Grill is today (1) at Jefferson Avenue and Scanlon Way. Using Google Earth technology, below, we found that two homes in the old photo, just below the school building off Washington Avenue, appear to still be standing (2). And the Google Earth image...
More than 30 people spoke Monday in a last ditch effort to convince Carlton School Board members to keep the high school open and the district a preK-12. Ostensibly, the public hearing at Carlton High School was about a proposed tuition agreement with Cloquet High School that both boards appear to favor. Under the terms of that agreement, Cloquet would guarantee acceptance of any Carlton student in grades 9-12 when the high school is closed there, possibly next year. But the meeting was really...
A Kettle River woman was allegedly shot and killed by her husband Friday, Dec. 10. Raymond Arthur Julian, 65, allegedly told police he killed his wife, Tracy Ellen Julian, 62, when they came to his house Friday. Raymond made his first appearance in Sixth District Carlton County Court Monday afternoon on charges of murder in the second degree, with intent-not premeditated. Bail was set at $1 million. Carlton County County 911 dispatch received a call at 2:35 p.m. Friday, Dec. 10, requesting a...
Only a few people attended Tuesday’s Carlton County board of commissioners Truth in Taxation hearing. The commissioners held the hearing to talk about the property tax levy they are proposing for the 2022 budget year and how the individual county departmental proposed budgets affect the overall county financial picture. Of those who came, several complained about their property tax bills, which by law are not addressed at this hearing. A handful came with a few questions. Auditor/Treasurer Kevin DeVriendt reported that he received no c...
The mask requirement for students was discussed at length during the working meeting of the Cloquet School Board Monday, Dec. 13. Superintendent Michael Cary presented data from the Minnesota Department of Health and Carlton County Public Health comparing the number of people that have been vaccinated versus the number that had not been vaccinated in the different age categories. The data was not available for children 5-11 years old, but data for older children showed that 22 percent had started the vaccination process, and that 17 percent...
An Onamia woman who crashed into a tree in Cloquet last year in an accident that killed her 3-year-old son was sentenced in Sixth District Carlton County Court Monday, but won’t serve any time in prison. Misty Louise Mattinas, 27, pleaded guilty in October to criminal vehicular homicide, a felony, for driving while under the influence of alcohol. Twelve other charges were dismissed as part of the plea agreement. The Cloquet police responded to the single-vehicle crash on the 1500 block of White Pine Trail on the afternoon of Nov. 8, 2020 and f...
Esko administrators and school board members know there will be at least one certain resident at their annual truth-in-taxation hearing. John Luomala didn't disappoint; he was the only resident there Monday. The board didn't disappoint Luomala either, eventually adopting a levy increase of 1.7 percent. Esko superintendent Aaron Fischer went through budget and tax levy highlights with the board. Esko School district taxpayers will see an increase of 1.7 percent in their school tax levy in 2022....
The number is big, but not a real surprise for residents of the Wrenshall school district. Taxes for residents and business owners will go up 26 percent next year. The school board approved the increase Monday at its regular meeting after a truth in taxation meeting and audit report Dec. 8. There was no public comment about the increase at either meeting. It is fueled by the continuing building improvement projects in the district the past year. The levy is increasing by $311,202, at $1.5 million for payable taxes in 2022 after $1.2 million...
Under the instruction of Community Memorial Hospital nurse practitioner Greg White, far left, eight students from the Veteran to Bachelor of Science in Nursing program at the College of St. Scholastica are completing a five-week clinical rotation at the Cloquet hospital. Every Tuesday evening, his students are at CMH rotating through a variety of specialties, including intensive care and medical/surgical. It is their first time being in a clinical setting and getting to put their classroom...
By the time the English poet John Milton had completed his epic poem “Paradise Lost” in 1664, he was completely blind. He dictated most of the verse to his aides, which included his three daughters. That is partly why the theme of light plays so heavily in the text with many references to the light inside of us and comparisons between salvation and light: “Long is the way and hard, that out of Hell leads up to light.” Written at a time of political upheaval in Britain, Milton uses the poem to...
Jim Meikle wasn't going to let it go. "The whole thing bothered me," he said from his home in Baudette this week. He was talking about the plaque he saw hanging at a salvage yard this past summer and the nagging suspicion that a veteran was buried somewhere without a marker honoring his service. "My dad was a World War II vet, so I take it seriously," he said. Meilke has a trucking firm and had been in the area doing work related to the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline. He needed a wheel and went to...
After two emotional meetings filled with public testimony in the past week, the Carlton school board failed to pass a resolution Monday night that would have led to an agreement with the Cloquet school district to take Carlton high schoolers. The tuition agreement, which would have eliminated the high school in Carlton, failed on a 3-3 vote. The board spent the past year going over its options after another consolidation effort with neighboring Wrenshall fizzled. The board now faces the...
A substantial hike to 2022 Cloquet Area Fire District taxes for ambulance-district-only properties only has Thomson Township residents in an uproar. Township chair Terry Hill is frustrated with the CAFD’s tax increase, feeling that the township has been “backed into a corner.” Residents feel that the nearly fourfold increase in the CAFD portion of their 2022 property taxes, without prior notification from CAFD, is too much for the services they are provided and unfair. Thus, the town board...
