Township gives boost to community ed

The Thomson Town board came through bigtime for Esko Community Education during its meeting Thursday, Dec. 17.

These are tough times for the organization, which is part of the Esko school district. Community Ed has suffered financially from the pandemic — which restricted classes and activities, resulting in reduced revenue — and asked for funds from the town’s recreation fund. After agreeing to donate $2,000 to Community Ed as it has for years, along with an additional $2,000 to sponsor Esko Fun Days as it has for a couple years now, the board approved an additional one-time donation of $10,000 from the recreation fund, leaving a balance of about $45,000, town clerk Rhonda Peleski said.

Esko schools superintendent Aaron Fischer was thrilled to share the “wonderful news” with school board members during their meeting Monday night.

“The township was well aware of Community Ed’s dire financial situation from the loss of revenue from different programs,” Fischer said. “To see them come forward during a difficult time for our Community Ed program was nice to see, and important. How our community comes together is what makes Esko, I think, special.” Fischer explained they won’t know until the fiscal year ends in June exactly where Community Ed will finish the year financially, adding that it also depends on the Covid-19 situation, and whether or not the department can resume programming that is not happening with distance learning.

The board also spent a good amount of time discussing its contract with the town’s engineering firm.

For some time, the town has been contracting with MSA Professional Services — which has an office in Duluth — for road design and other civil engineering. Joe Jurewicz, the primary engineer from the company assigned to the township, recently moved to a new civil engineering company, AE2S Engineering in St. Cloud.

The board discussed the benefit of being a bigger client at a smaller company if it stayed with Jurewicz, versus having an engineer closer by — making it easier to attend plat review hearings, for example. The board also discussed a three-year contract versus using an engineering firm on a project-by-project basis. Despite the generally good relationship the township had with Jurewicz, the board ultimately decided to stay with MSA Professional Services, on a 3-2 vote, with supervisors Bill Gerard and Ruth Janke opposing.

In other business, the board approved hiring Wipfli again to conduct this year’s audit, citing its satisfaction with the firm’s previous work.