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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Free community meals will be offered Thursday May 20 and 27 at the Carlton VFW, Cloquet VFW and Fond du Lac Head Start. There will be approximately 100 meals per location. Distribution starts at 3 p.m. and lasts until the meals are gone. Recipients are asked to arrive no earlier than 15 minutes prior. The meals, provided by Loaves & Fishes, will be prepared by Jim Vnuk of Jim ’n’ Jo’s Katering and Paul Sapyta and Kevin Peterson of Room at the Table Catering and Bakery, with volunteer support from the area United Way, Lions Club, Fond du Lac B...
The Cloquet Public Library will not be collecting fines for families with children from May 14 through Aug. 6 so that families continue to read throughout the summer and participate in their summer reading program....
For the first time since spring 2020, Monday’s Cloquet school board meeting was open to the public. No one came, but they could have. The change arose from a ruling on open meeting law by the Minnesota Commissioner of Administration, detailed in last week’s Pine Knot News story, “State ruling causes alarm.” The advisory opinion requires that boards allow members of the public to physically attend a meeting at which there is at least a quorum of board members (four, in the case of the Cloquet...
Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College will offer a new sustainable food systems class this summer. This summer's class, SUST 2090 Field Experience, is the first course of several that will form a new track in FDLTCC's Environmental Science program. The course is rooted in Indigenous values and food sovereignty, aiming to translate reciprocal relationships into sustainable harvest and cultivation techniques. The course's seven modules are holistic in nature with topics in treaty rights,...
Esko seniors will graduate in a normal ceremony this year, if everything goes the way superintendent Aaron Fischer hopes it does. “Current guidelines will allow only two guests per student,” at the graduation ceremony, he told the Pine Knot News, “but we’re expecting the restrictions to be relaxed May 28. If they are, we’re ready to have a completely normal graduation ceremony on June 4.” Students will be allowed up to six guests if the Minnesota Department of Education modifies its guidelines...
Approving the choice for a new county auditor/treasurer was easy, but what salary to pay brought out some dissension among the Carlton County commissioners. On May 3, commissioners interviewed finalists for the Carlton County auditor/treasurer and recommended Kevin DeVriendt for the hire. DeVriendt worked for many years as an accountant for Carlton County Health and Human Services before moving into the auditor/treasurer’s office as an accountant the last two years. At the county board’s regular meeting Tuesday, May 11, chairman Tom Proulx mov...
A Cloquet man faces charges for allegedly creating an elaborate system of false identities and forged checks based on stolen mail. Jory Richard Johnson, 32, is facing 11 different felony charges, including two for mail theft, two identity theft, two theft by swindle, four for check forgery and one controlled substance possession charge. The charges were originally filed in November 2020, but it appears a warrant was issued for Johnson in December 2020 and not recalled until May 7. During the...
The Thomson Township Board of Supervisors welcomed Deputy Randy Roberts into his new role as the official deputy for Esko/Thomson townships at their meeting Thursday, May 6. Roberts was the temporary fill-in for the position after the retirement of deputy Rob Lucas this March, and he has now taken on the position full-time. Roberts reported there were 119 calls in April. He responded to 59 of those himself, including a string of mail thefts that have taken up a bit of his time. Roberts said that the case is on track to be handled at a federal...
The Carlton schools choir concert previewed in the April 30 issue went off with only one hitch, but a major one: technical difficulties. So while the students were able to sing together and the 75-minute concert was recorded, the livestream link didn’t work. Not to worry. It will run on CAT-7, the local cable access channel, at 5:55 p.m. Fridays, 2:05 p.m. Saturdays and 12:15 p.m. Mondays for the next month. Don’t have cable? Anyone who would like to view the concert over the internet can find the link on the Bethesda Lutheran Church page at...
Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College was set to award associate degrees and diplomas to 157 students during a virtual commencement ceremony on Thursday, May 13, after this issue of the Pine Knot News went to press. In addition to the virtual ceremony, modified in-person celebrations were planned, including pinning exercises for nursing program graduates and a drive-through graduate parade starting at 5 p.m. Thursday....
Photographer Dana Malkovich loves to visit Jay Cooke State Park, especially at this time of year when the first wildflowers of spring line the park's trails. "One needs a sharp eye," he said, "because the blossoms are not as large or showy as our garden flowers, and they often last no longer than a few days." The hepatica are his favorite, which makes sense for a retired physician. They are named "because of a supposed resemblance of the leaves to the lobes of a liver ... The blossoms come in...
Sometimes you just have to ask. But it never hurts to do a little homework first. That's pretty much what happened with Cloquet High School senior Maya Fairbanks this spring, when she decided to ask that her school allow students to honor their American Indian culture during graduation ceremonies. Fairbanks, a member of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, and her mother, Sheila Lamb, wanted to do more with decorated mortar boards or sashes. They initially found from talking to...
A recent state ruling regarding the state's open meeting law (OML) and public meetings during the pandemic had area school districts scrambling to make sure they were following the law, and changing procedures if they weren't. The Minnesota Commissioner of Administration issued an advisory opinion on April 19, in response to The Timberjay newspaper publisher Marshall Helmberger, ruling that the St. Louis County School Board violated the state's open meeting law when at least a quorum of school board members met in person, but members of the pub...
Students have been planting trees on Arbor Day since 1872, when more than a million trees were planted in Nebraska for the first official celebration of trees. Now add research, science and satellite imagery to the mix. That's what Cloquet students and staff did in advance of this year's Arbor Day plantings last Friday, with the goal of maximizing the chances the tiny seedlings will grow to big strong trees over the upcoming decades. Cloquet High School teacher Matt Winbigler explained that...
After repeated requests from bars and restaurants that were hammered financially by closures and restrictions because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Cloquet City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to reduce liquor license fees by 50 percent for the next license year starting July 1. The reduction applies across the board to all liquor license fees, including the more expensive bar and restaurant licenses as well as liquor store licenses. The city normally takes in around $30,000 in liquor license fees, finance director Nancy Klassen said. City...
By the narrowest of margins, the Cloquet City Council voted to overturn the city's Project Labor Agreement, as recommended by staff last month. The 4-3 vote came after extensive public comment during Tuesday's meeting, which set a record for participation since the council started meeting virtually because of the pandemic. Including councilors and city staff, more than 50 people logged on or called into the meeting. Seventeen addressed the council directly Tuesday, and three had submitted... Full story
The latest news regarding Minnesota property tax assessments was good for Enbridge and other utility companies and fairly dire for local governments, who find themselves on the hook for many years’ worth of past overpayments. Carlton County is no exception, with the total payback estimated at close to $5 million after the Minnesota Tax Court ruled that past tax assessments were too high on state utilities and pipelines. With that in mind, the Carlton County Board of Commissioners scrambled at their meeting Tuesday to formally support state l...
For the third year in a row, the Advanced Wound Clinic at Community Memorial Hospital was awarded the Center of Distinction award by Healogics, the nation’s largest provider of advanced wound care services. The Advanced Wound Clinic achieved outstanding clinical outcomes for 12 consecutive months, including patient satisfaction rates higher than 92 percent and a minimum wound-healing rate of at least 92 percent within 28 median days to heal. There were 555 centers eligible for the Center of Distinction award and 278 achieved the honor. “We are...
The Carlton County Historical Society has seen its fair share of change over the past year, including a new roof and a new director who came and went in that time. Former board president Ed Kavanaugh resigned in March to serve as interim director following the resignation of Beth Lyle, who served March 2020 until March 2021. Lyle has taken a full-time job elsewhere, as the CCHS job is part-time. The board has begun the search process for a new executive director. Kavanaugh will return to the...
The Cloquet branch of Members Cooperative Credit Union (MCCU) was recognized recently with a CUNA Diamond Award for its distinctive lobby design and aesthetics. Hosted by CUNA Marketing & Business Development Council, the annual Diamond Awards ceremony took place in a series of virtual events recognizing credit unions nationwide for creative excellence and outstanding results in marketing. The event drew 1,278 entries across 35 categories. MCCU was chosen Best in Category (Color) with an award...
Vandals spraypainted a Nazi swastika and a Star of David - a widely recognized symbol of Judaism - on the back of the toilet shelter at Cloquet's Veterans Park last week. The symbols and the letters "olf" and maybe "jaz" or "taz" were quickly removed by city parks staff, who power-washed the building. Cloquet parks maintenance worker Karin Stedman said they found more graffiti underneath the Highway 33 overpass, letters and numbers that may have been gang signs. There were also more...
Music can have some surprising ways of bringing people together. And now - after several years apart - the Carlton choir is back by popular demand. They're set to livestream their spring choir concert on Sunday. Carlton's previous youth choir had to disband in the spring of 2013 after nearly five years of making choral music. Last year, high school students who had sung in that choir as elementary schoolers remembered how much they had enjoyed singing together. They got together and asked that...
For several years the Rotary Club of Cloquet has sponsored two local projects revolving around literacy, an important mission of Rotary International. This month a total of 299 third-graders from Churchill, Washington, Winterquist, South Terrace, and Wrenshall elementary schools each received a handy dictionary/reference book to keep. In addition, 286 kindergarten students at the same schools each received a personal story book with the characters and the settings preselected by each student and woven into a story. The kindergarteners are...
The U.S. Census Bureau released the first population data from Census 2020 Monday, showing that Minnesota’s population grew by 7.6 percent to 5,706,494, outpacing most Midwestern states and keeping pace with the national average.The state grew just enough to hold on to all eight of its congressional seats. “I want to thank Minnesotans for their nation-leading civic engagement, which made us the No. 1 state in responding to the Census,” said Gov. Tim Walz. “Because of that participation, we will be fully represented in Washington and will ha...
Despite cold (for April) temperatures and a layer of snow that covered the ground, close to 50 people turned out Saturday for an Earth Day cleanup organized by the Boldt Company along with the city of Cloquet. "It's still easy to find the big stuff," said Camille Wilton, who was picking up trash with her daughter, Lynnea, age 8, along the south side of the St. Louis River on Dunlap Island. "We've found towels, plastic, lots of liquor bottles." Volunteers were divided into five groups of roughly...
