Almanac North

8/25/23 Episode: Duluth Budget, Sister Cities International,

8/25/2023 | 26m 47sVideo has Closed Captions

Duluth Mayor Emily Larson released her 2024 budget proposal to the city council this week,

Duluth Mayor Emily Larson released her 2024 budget proposal to the city council this week, the mayor came to the studio to talk about it. Duluth's Sister Cities International has been around since 1986, and we'll find out how it all got started. The Minnesota State Fair kicked off this week with something for everyone, and Danielle Kaeding from Wisconsin Public Radio is our guest on Voices of the

08/25/2023

Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback

Almanac North is a local public television program presented by PBS North

Almanac North

8/25/23 Episode: Duluth Budget, Sister Cities International,

8/25/2023 | 26m 47sVideo has Closed Captions

08/25/2023

Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback

Genre

News and Public Affairs

Share This Video

Embed Video
Almanac North
8/25/23 Episode: Duluth Budget, Sister Cities International,
S2023 EpNaN
Fixed iFrame
Width: in pixelsHeight: in pixels
Responsive iFrame

How to Watch Almanac North

Almanac North is available to stream on pbs.org and the free PBS App, available on iPhone, Apple TV, Android TV, Android smartphones, Amazon Fire TV, Amazon Fire Tablet, Roku, Samsung Smart TV, and Vizio.

Open in new tab

- I'm Julie Zenner, and here's what you'll see next on "Almanac North.

" Duluth Mayor Emily Larson presented her proposed 2024 budget to the city council this week. We'll find out what residents can expect. A delegation from Duluth Sister City in Japan is visiting the city this month. We'll have a report. And the Great Minnesota Get-Together kicked off this week. We'll have more about one of the state fair's most popular attractions. Those stories and Voices of the Region coming up next on "Almanac North.

" (gentle music) (gentle music continues) Hello and welcome to "Almanac North.

" Thanks for watching. Dennis Anderson is off this week but let's take a look at some of the week's headlines. Minnesota governor Tim Walz, this week, appointed judge Natalie Hudson to serve as Chief Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court. Judge Hudson will make history as the first Black chief justice of the state's highest court. Hudson will fill the vacancy of Chief Justice Lorie Gildea who will retire in October. Governor Walz and Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers, this week, announced they will ask for more than $1 billion in federal funding to rebuild the Blatnik Bridge. The bridge connecting Superior and Duluth is a major commercial link between the two cities and the region. Minnesota and Wisconsin's transportation departments are working together to replace the bridge with the goal of having it completed by 2030. The Duluth Airport authority will break ground next Wednesday on a new terminal at Sky Harbor Regional Airport on Minnesota Point. The $2.3 million project will feature a pilot lounge and flight planning room, and will be ADA compliant. Sky Harbor serves land and float plane traffic with more than 13,000 flight operations annually. And the Minnesota State Fair opened Thursday and runs through Labor Day. The annual gathering is the one of the state's largest fairs... One of the largest state fairs in the nation with more than two million visitors. This year's fair features 300 food stands, 100 acts performing about 900 shows, and plenty of interesting attractions. We'll have more on the state fair later in our show. Well, this week, Duluth Mayor Emily Larson presented her proposed 2024 budget to the city council. At current tax valuations, many homeowners could see a slight decrease in the city portion of their property tax bill under the proposal. Here to tell us a little more is Emily Larson, the mayor of Duluth. And Mayor, thank you so much for coming. - I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for having me. - Yeah. Appreciate you taking time in your busy schedule at a busy time of year for you. Now you're calling this budget good news for the city of Duluth. Does this represent a major change from budget seasons of the past for you? - In some ways, it does, because this budget really achieves three major priorities. The first is it responds to the needs and concerns we hear from the community. We always do that with our budget because budgets are the values document of any organization, any household, any business. It really keeps our commitment to addressing decades old challenges and issues. In this case, capital equipment, which is deeply underfunded. But the game changer, the reason why it's such a good news budget, is it really benefits from the relationships that we have around the state to get that increase in local government aid. And so we have received a permanent increase this year in local government aid that equates to a 10.4% property tax increase. And you know, and speaking of Governor Walz, you know, he is really the first person to say that property tax, taxpayers across the state of Minnesota have really been squeezed because the state never kept up on LGA. So we were really receiving the same amount since 2002, actually under that amount, up until the last couple of years. And now this year, we reset with a significant increase and that provides tremendous confidence and financial relief. - So this is not just a one-time windfall? - [Emily] No. - This is something that's gonna be carried forward. - No, that's right. And then also in my budget, I talked about one one-time allocations that I'm proposing to tackle 50 miles of streets in the next three years using some of our reserves. I also talked about a one-time public safety $3 million allocation from the state of Minnesota that will get to some of the public safety needs that we have. So everything in this budget is... It builds on the work we have been doing for years and gives us the space and the breathing room to have these priorities that we know are really important. - Now, of course, every time there's a budget that comes out, people wanna know how's it gonna affect you? - Oh, yeah. I'm so- - The average homeowner, the average business- - Your taxes are gonna go down. So I am proposing a 2% levy increase because of economic expansion. Because we have expanded the tax base because of local government aid, your taxes are actually going to go down. And this is true for residential and commercial and I think it is important to talk about when we talk about property tax. The city's portion is about 27 cents of every property tax dollar. About 40 cents goes to the county, about 26 cents or 27 cents goes to the school district. And then there's just a sliver of other taxes in there. But we're talking about only, you know, less than 30 cents on the dollar that goes to the city. But it is a tremendous budget for our community and it allows us to invest in downtown safety. It allows us to invest in streets in ways that are really game changing and very supportive of staff who have worked incredibly hard for these years and decades without a significant increase in local government aid. Bearing the brunt of that and now we're also gonna make significant investment in the capital equipment that they need and deserve. - You mentioned staff and this part of the budget is service bonuses- - That's right. - For staff. Talk about that. - Yeah. So it does include a one-time service bonus or service payment to all staff. We will work with bargaining units to figure that out. This is something that we have seen communities do whether it was through COVID or not. We are now in a financial position where we can share and benefit directly with our staff. We have kept our staff and our negotiations at very, very low wage increases. And our staff have been willing to do that because they're amazing public servants. But our wages do not keep up with market. We are at risk of losing staff because of wages. And so this is one of the ways, in a non negotiation year, we are not in a negotiation year. I can't just open up a contract and start moving things around. It's a way we can quickly and effectively show that we value staff without taking from other resources because the vast majority of that $1.6 million of that will come from local government aid. It is coming from a resource that we haven't yet dedicated somewhere else. - The capital equipment, snowplows, fire and police vehicles, things like that. Has the fleet really suffered in recent years because you haven't been able to invest money into it? - Yes, equipment is one of our, again, our spending has been stagnant since probably 1997, '98 on capital equipment, and it shows, because about 70% of the fleet maintenance we do is emergency repairs. It's not actually maintenance. It's like really an emergency repair to get that plow back out, to get that police car back out. And only 30% of it is maintenance, and we wanna flip that. We want most of that fleet and energy going into just simple maintenance 'cause they're in good shape, they're reliable, and they are the tools and equipment that our staff need. - What about the number of city staff members? Do you anticipate any cuts in any departments under this project? - You know, this year, I am not proposing cuts. And in fact, I am proposing to increase a couple of very specific positions. One is a housing inspector, so that we can keep up on the boon and investment. We need to be expanding and housing. We are down a housing inspector and that feels like that is a public safety issue to me. Another position is data practice. So we get all these data requests, which is great. We want to be... The government and transparency... Have the values of transparency but we really need a full-time staff person to manage that because as any entity knows who's watching the show, it takes a lot of time to put those together. - Now you do wind up tapping into the general reserve funds. I do. - A little bit. About $9 million, I understand. Does that still leave the city in a healthy position going forward? - I'm sorry, I cut you off, Julie. - No, go ahead. - Okay. Yeah, so our best practice policy and our industry practice policy for finance is to have 40% of your annual operating within your reserves. We are an award-winning finance department. We've won national awards. And so we're proud that we have a very high bond rating, that we have a very low interest rate because of our savings. Our ability to take this one-time money that is really derived primarily from interest that's accrued has no negative impact on the important evaluations of bond rating and credit. - Now the mayor's budget is always a starting point. - That's right. - What happens next? And do you anticipate knowing the city council that the final budget that's approved is gonna look pretty much like what you're submitting? - Well, I don't ever really have a full grasp on that because the council is its own legislative body and they have their own authority, and I respect that. I've been a counselor. I respect their ability to impact the budget. I proposed my budget early to give council time to figure out what they wanted to do and what they wanted to impact. We need to approve a final levy, maximum levy, by the end of September. So between now and the end of September, the council will start thinking about their own priorities. All of that has to be public. So they will bring any proposals forward that has to be voted on by the majority. And I do, I always expect the council to have some additional priorities that weren't mine or weren't the ones that I chose to prioritize in the budget. - Are you hearing any feedback from people so far? - Oh, people are... Yes, a ton of it, and it's exciting. I'm a budget geek. I wanna talk about the budget all day, all year. We work on the budget starting in January, we propose it now, once the money's approved or the level, then we'll spend the next few months working it out. People are very happy with this budget, and they should be. The wins of this budget are what we have had to work on and endure and prioritize as a community. And honestly, it is that LGA that is a tremendous game changer. They should be happy about it. We have really established ourselves to be very strong and solvent, and not all cities can say that right now. - We only have just a couple of seconds, but the library is not in the budget. But big news for the library this week. - Big news. Well, thank you. We've been talking about the library. This is a fac... I've been talking about the library for 10 years. They were talking about it before I became mayor. It's a facility that needs a lot of investment. It is a treasured series of public facing services. And so my vision and the vision along with our workforce development and library team is to co-locate some important critical public facing services to do that in a facility. And it can't be the existing facility. It needs too many repairs. We need to be making adjustments to that facility. And so that's what that story is. Happy to come back and talk in much greater detail about it. But we will just to put a pin in that, that is part of my bonding, recommendations and request for next year. And it is included in congressionally directed spending by Senators Klobuchar and Smith. - All right, well, Mayor Emily Larson, thanks so much for coming in and talking with us. - Have a good weekend. - Always good to have you here. - Thanks. - Thanks. (gentle music) It's time now for Voices of the Region, when we hear a report from an area journalist about stories making news. Our guest this week is Danielle Kaeding from Wisconsin Public Radio. (gentle music) - Several power providers hope to begin construction next spring on a roughly $700 million gas fired power plant in Superior. And that's despite regulatory hurdles and opposition from environmental and tribal groups. Duluth-based Minnesota Power signed a labor agreement with the Northern Wisconsin Building and Construction Trades Council. And the utility is working with La Crosse-based Dairyland Power Cooperative and a North Dakota subsidiary to build an Nemadji Trail Energy Center or NTEC in Superior. The president of the Northern Wisconsin Trades Council says the project would create 350 jobs during peak construction. Environmental and indigenous groups oppose the project. The Sierra Club said the plant's emissions would cost $2 billion in climate damages and that would be through 2040. And they've been urging utilities to pursue cleaner alternatives like battery storage, wind, and solar. The facilities owners, however, say that they think that natural gas is necessary to meet demand as they shift to renewable energy. And they've been looking at other sources like hydrogen which would be possible they say in the future, but not now. There's still a comment period though that's ongoing through the middle of September for this proposed project and its latest environmental review, and people can find information about that review on the USDA's website for the Rural Utility Service. (gentle music) Recently, a distressed northern Wisconsin town received a roughly $600,000 loan from the State Public Lands Board. And that loan aims to ease financial challenges after a federal court ruled last year that tribal properties can't be taxed on some reservation lands. And if you recall, this was a lawsuit that was brought in 2018 in federal court by four northern Wisconsin tribes including the Red Cliff Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. And the decision that came down from a federal appeals court meant removing tribal residents from the tax rules in the town of Sanborn which lies entirely within the Bad River Reservation. And that caused taxes to skyrocket for remaining residents. The loan that's been issued will help refund tribal members who paid taxes under protest while that ruling was pending. And the town's chair, Luis Salas, says the loan provides financial stability for the town. They think that it should make the community feel better about the future of the town moving forward with, you know, the increased tax rate that remaining residents have seen and that he also said that they hope that they can start mending fences because this has created a lot of tension. You know, for tribal members, the court ruling was a win for treaty rights, but it also sparked concerns and tension and anger as tax bills doubled for non-tribal members. (gentle music) Earlier this month, parts of Douglas and Bayfield Counties along Lake Superior reached the exceptional drought category from the U.S. drought monitor. And that's the first time that any part of Wisconsin has received the highest rating since that monitor was first created in 2000. While areas of the state have seen moderate to heavy rain in recent weeks, the National Weather Service says it's unlikely to reverse drought conditions. They said a very wet period for a month or two would be needed to really make a turn on these drier conditions. And according to the National Weather Service Office in Duluth, many rivers in Bayfield, Douglas, and Ashland counties are currently less than the 10th percentile of their normal stream flow with several rivers at an all time low stream flow. And that includes the Nemadji River in Superior and also the Tyler Forks River in northwestern Wisconsin. And in Douglas County, you know, farmers have been reporting reduced yields on crops, less water and ponds and creeks and even purchasing hay to make up for the loss of pasture. So the drought conditions this year have been significant. (gentle music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) - The Duluth Sister Cities International program welcomed a group of students from Japan this month. The Sister Cities program began back in 1986. Videographer AJ Larson and producer Megan McGarvey bring us this look at how the program got started. (gentle music) - The Sister City Organization is over 30 years old and when it started when a bell that had been in Isumi City, Japan had been taken, ended up in Duluth, Minnesota. After the war, Duluth recognized what was going on, wanted to return it. At that point, Isumi City was so pleased that the Sister City relationship started. And with that came an exchange. So for 30 years, there's been residents of Duluth who then go to Isumi City and vice versa. Sister Cities involves six different cities. There's some in Russia and Sweden and Iran, I believe. And so there's a dynamic of worldwide that Duluth is connecting. But this organization is specifically around Japan and I think it was the first sister city organization relationship that was established and maintained. - The whole business of Sister City is people-to-people relationships, governments not involved. And my favorite phrase is, "Getting to know the world one person at a time.

" The way the student exchange works is a student from here will go over there and stay with Japanese family that has a student of similar age. And when they come back, that student, the Japanese student, will now stay with the host family of the student that went there to begin with. - Yes, I went through this program when I was 14, so that was 2017, yep. It was really fun. It was not my first time home stay, but there was new people, new experience. I've been Duluth a lot of time, but it was first time to hanging out with friends in Duluth, so it was a great experience, yeah. I kind of grew up with English. It just because my mom, she went through the program. She has lots family in Duluth, so I kind of educated that way, but I loved it. So, yeah, and it was all new but it was a really fun, really good experience for me. - This year, it's kind of unique because of COVID, that we haven't had this for two summers. And so we're actually going there and coming here. And so as chaperone, I was helping Mary Hoffman, the director, with the organization and getting our kids safely there. And then engaging the Japanese kids that are here. - Well, I think it's absolutely wonderful. For some kids, it's totally life changing to go, first of all, they go into a foreign country. A foreign country that's not just in, you know, Cancun, although that's fun, but long ways away, different culture, different language for people that now really want to see you and entertain you and be with you because we've been this for 30 years now. - Too often in this day and age, we latch onto things that separate us culturally, age-wise, gender-wise, you know, politically. And so this is one example of something that brings us together. And in this case, it's two different cultures and it's great distances between each other. But at the same time, all these people that continue this program and all the supporters that continue to fund it and make it possible, everybody's saying, yes, we're on the same globe whipping around here. Let's find a way to be peaceful. (gentle music) - Okay, raise your hand if you've ever been to the Minnesota State Fair. If I could see you right now, I would guess that most of you have your hands raised. The state fair is an annual event for many or a bucket list trip for others. And one of the popular spots for fairgoers is the Minnesota DNR's fish pond which was stocked with fish this week. Some of the state's most unique fish are on display. - Probably the paddle fish. We do have paddle fish. It's a very iconic fish. You can't mistake it for anything else because it has that really long snout, a paddle on its face. We also have some really big, beautiful muskie, some nice gar, and some nice sturgeon too. People of Minnesota have decided it's a big deal. This is a tradition that goes back many, many, many years and people really love coming every year and seeing the fish. I am just happy to be able to be a part of this story. I really love being able to walk around and watch the people be able to see these fish that they might not otherwise see in their day to day life. We're all trying to be cognizant of the hot weather but the water here is well water which means it's nice and cool and tempered from the heat up until it gets to the surface. So the pond temperature should be probably in the mid-50s, low 60s. - And it's nice to know they keep those fish cool during the heat. Well, our time is up this week, but you can keep up with "Almanac North" by following us on Facebook and Twitter. Go to the PBS North website for program updates, news about the station, and our upcoming events. And don't forget to download the PBS video app to watch your favorite PBS programs anytime you'd like. And we leave you tonight with some music from the Cactus Blossoms, recorded in our studio last week for a live from studio A session on the North 103.3 FM. For the crew here at PBS North, I'm Julie Zenner. Have a great weekend. We'll see you next time. (gentle music) ♪ Hey, baby, do you want take a trip with me ♪ ♪ I've got a feeling there might be ♪ ♪ A silver lining all around ♪ Hey, maybe we could drive the whole night through ♪ ♪ See what this old truck can do ♪ ♪ I've only driven it in town ♪ Hey, baby, I hope it all works out ♪ ♪ It always works out (upbeat music) ♪ Hey, baby, do you wanna go to Mexico ♪ ♪ Or take Ten west to the coast ♪ ♪ And One up to the bay (upbeat music) ♪ You know what's crazy ♪ Never seen a mountain range ♪ In a hundred miles, a lot can change ♪ ♪ If clouds aren't in the way ♪ Hey, baby, I hope it all works out ♪ ♪ It always works out (upbeat music) ♪ So many things I thought I'd never see ♪ ♪ Like you sittin' shotgun starin' back at me ♪ (upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) ♪ Days are shady ♪ Way up here in the trees ♪ No place I'd rather be ♪ Nothing's gonna bring me down ♪ ♪ Hey, baby, I hope it all works out ♪ ♪ It always works out (gentle music)