Commissioner reflects on decision to step away

Dick Brenner knows how to win an election. Eight of them, amounting to 32 years on the Carlton County board alone, to go with 17 years as a Cloquet school board member.

"I have a philosophy," he said. "When you run you have to have a visible name and the best way to do that is to put out lawn signs. I had over 500 lawn signs in my district. Particularly, you need to get all the corners."

Brenner also knocked on doors in his district twice each campaign season, receiving sandwiches, cookies and bottles of water from residents who had the time to listen.

Brenner, 85, announced he won't seek a ninth term earlier this month. He spoke with the newspaper after Tuesday's meeting.

"That played the biggest factor," Brenner said of his age and health, which includes contending with chronic kidney disease. "Sometimes you're not as enthusiastic as you are when you started. I figured it was plenty of time."

Brenner resides in Cloquet and serves District 1, representing west Cloquet, Scanlon and Sawyer. He'll finish out his term and then plans to do some traveling with his wife, Elizabeth.

"I've got other things I'd like to do," Brenner said. "My wife says it's time we spent more time together."

In a half-hour conversation Brenner touched on his career in politics as well as his private and professional life, retiring from the local paper mill as its controller, overseeing an accounting staff that began with 44 people and ended with half that.

"Computers," he said. "They changed the world."

A single father after his wife decided she wanted something else in life, Brenner raised six children to adulthood before remarrying.

"I thought it would be too difficult for them to have a step-mother," he said.

Born and raised in Mankato, he finished his college education at then-Mankato State University. After jobs with Pillsbury Company and Control Data Corporation, he joined Potlatch and settled for good in Cloquet, where he said he developed "great union support" for his political bids.

He'll leave office with a great admiration for his peers on the board and county leadership and staff.

"The people here have been great," he said. "In my experience they've been cooperative and willing to talk about what their needs are and what they don't need."

He laments the rising tide of taxes.

"As long as taxes stay at a reasonable rate nobody complains," he said. "But when you have to jump taxes 5-6 percent people complain. We've reached, I think, we're very close to the breaking point on raising taxes in this county. We're a very high taxed county."

Oftentimes, hands are tied. The state and federal mandates force the county to fund health and human services programs which are among the county's costliest endeavors. But funding for law enforcement and the justice process, along with road and bridge maintenance, are expenses that don't yield the reimbursements that can be gained back in health and human services.

"Those are the big three and it's hard to say we're going to cut public safety," he said. "You're going to cut the sheriff's office? That's hard to do with a high rate of crime in the county. It's very difficult to say no."

Most complaints are directed at human services, he said, from people who don't understand them and don't interact with those services.

"They're what's demanded by law," he said.

Following the Nov. 5 election and his term ending at the end of the year, those difficult choices will be someone else's.

He plans to watch the candidate filing period closely. It starts Tuesday and runs through June 4.

In the meantime, he'll reflect on the positives he's been a part of, including strengthening relations with the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and revitalizing the facilities in Carlton County.

When he started, road maintenance staff worked on vehicles outside in the cold during winters and human services staffers were packed into an old grocery store in Cloquet. Now, there's a proper Transportation Building in Carlton, Government Services Center in Cloquet, and a $75 million Justice Center scheduled to open in October. The soon-to-be Historic Courthouse in Carlton will be repurposed and remodeled on the interior to house offices for the auditor/treasurer, recorder, assessor, zoning, extension, property management, economic development and information technology.

"We brought our facilities into the 21st century," Brenner said.

As far as relations with the tribe, Brenner and former tribal chairman Peter Defoe bonded over things like a love of basketball. Brenner later grew appreciative of Defoe's successor, Karen Diver.

"We could laugh," he said. "She's a smart, smart lady."

Those relationships helped generate semi-regular meetings between the county and tribe that saw each bring a list of issues the sides would tick through one at a time in search of cooperation.

"I'm willing to trade anything as long as it makes sense," Brenner said.

With those days nearing an end for him, Brenner reflected: "It's been a good trip," he said.