(upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - Welcome to Almanac North.

I'm Maarja Hewitt.

Tonight on Almanac North, our conversation about civics in the region continues with a look at local city councils and highlighting some races in the region.

That's up next on Almanac North.

But first, the St. Louis County Board honored Bob Olen on Wednesday with its Outstanding Citizen Recognition.

Bob is a longtime St. Louis County horticulturalist, master gardener, educator, and PBS North Great Gardening co-host.

Commissioners praised Bob for his passion and willingness to share his knowledge through the countless classes he's led and for making St. Louis County a more beautiful place, one garden at a time.

Bob, of course, was humble, and thanked the Board for its support over the years.

He said, "I just love growing things of all types."

As more than 45,000 dock workers on the East and Gulf Coast have gone on strike, the Port of Duluth Superior remains open and ready for business.

While some dock workers in the Twin Ports are members of the striking union, the International Longshoremen's Association, they are under a different contract region and are not part of the work stoppages affecting other ports.

The strike, which began early Tuesday morning, follows failed contract negotiations between the dock workers and the United States Maritime Alliance.

It's the first major strike of its kind in nearly 50 years, raising concerns about potential supply chain disruptions and rising consumer prices.

Officials at the Duluth Seaway Port Authority report that the port is already receiving inquiries from companies looking to divert shipments from Europe or the Mediterranean.

Jason Rohn, Director of Communication and Marketing at the Port Authority, confirmed that the port is fully equipped to handle any rerouted cargo, highlighting Duluth's infrastructure, onsite customs support, and access to multiple major railroads.

As North America's furthest inland seaport and the westernmost container handling hub on the Great Lakes, the Port of Duluth Superior offers a key alternative for moving goods to and from the North American heartland.

The Great Lakes St. Lawrence Seaway System can handle double its current traffic volume, providing a potential relief route for critical cargo during the strike.

While the strike is still in its early stages, Rohn noted that ship and cargo owners are already exploring alternative routes, including the Great Lakes, as they navigate this disruption.

Now to dive into our look into city councils, we go to Dennis Anderson with another edition of Denny's Desk.

Denny.

- Thank you very much, Maarja.

And hello everyone.

Welcome once again, to Denny's Desk.

Now today, I'm going to take a moment to talk about city councils and their role in civic governance here in Northern Minnesota.

City councils play a critical role in shaping the policies and decisions that affect our everyday lives.

One of the key responsibilities of a city council is to make laws or pass ordinances that address local needs.

These ordinances can cover a wide range of topics, including regulating businesses, maintaining public spaces, or supporting public services like police, fire departments and public works.

City councils also serve as a voice for citizens.

Council members are tasked with listening to the concerns of residents and ensuring that local government remains transparent and responsive.

When issues arise, it's often the city council that addresses them.

Whether it's revitalizing downtowns or investing in environmental sustainability, city councils shape the long-term development of their city.

Their decisions have a lasting impact, so it's essential for residents to stay informed, participate in meetings, and make their voices heard through civic engagement.

Now, this election season, remember that city councils are the backbone of local governance.

They ensure that our towns and cities remain vibrant, responsive, and forward-looking.

Don't forget to stay involved, because your voice matters in shaping the future of your community.

And so this has been Denny's Desk.

I'm Dennis Anderson.

Now back to you Maarja.

- Thanks, Denny.

As our series of civics episodes continues, tonight, we are going to be focusing on city council races in the region.

We reached out to several candidates for local city council seats.

Our first guest tonight, our guest candidate is John Packa from Hibbing.

We also reached out to candidate Jennifer Hoffman Saccoman to join us tonight, but she was unavailable to attend due to her obligations as a city councilor.

Councilor Saccoman has provided some written responses.

John, thank you so much for joining us.

- Thank you for having me.

- Well, let's start.

What do you think the biggest issue the people of Hibbing face?

- Well, we're facing a couple issues.

But just a lot of increasing property taxes, blight, problems with the outdated equipment with the fire department, police department.

- Is there anything that stands out for you?

- Well, with the fire department, they're doing about 4,000 calls a year, whereas a couple years ago, they were doing 3000.

And they're working out of a fire hall that's in rough shape.

So, there's some of those challenges, as well as just Northern Minnesota roads here in Duluth.

So if you don't keep up on the roads, they get bad pretty quick.

- And to that same question, here is Councilor Saccoman's response.

"Taxes are an ongoing concern.

I believe taxes are essential for building strong communities, but transparency and how these funds are allocated is equally important.

While high taxation is a concern, Hibbing strives to make every tax dollar count by pursuing outside investments and seeking continuous improvements.

We are committed to delivering cost-effective services, maintaining a balanced budget and keeping taxes low."

John, why did you choose to run for city council?

- I plan to live in Hibbing for a while.

My kid just started kindergarten, so we will hopefully be there for a while.

He's growing up a little too fast, but we have a little bit of time, and I'd like to keep it a good place to live and grow up in.

And being on city council, being involved with the decisions, seemed like a good idea.

- And that same question, here is the response from Councilor Hoffman Saccoman.

"I'm passionate about improving the quality of life for all residents in Hibbing by delivering quality and sustainable services aligned with our strategic plan for 2023 to 2025.

I aim to ensure that our community thrives.

Essential services like police, fire and ambulance response, public works and sanitation, are crucial for keeping our citizens safe and healthy.

I stand behind our dedicated city staff who work tirelessly for every day to make this happen."

And John, if elected, what immediate steps would you take to make a positive impact in the community?

- Well, I'd like to go into taxes.

I'd like to somehow get a little, the property taxes keep going up, as she mentioned in the first one.

But we need to be a little more responsible with how we're allocating money, like roads, fire department, police, the main stuff, and then work outwards from there.

Because last year the city levy went up 8.5, or 5.8%., and then this year it's been voted to go up a minimum of 2.8, maximum of 9%, which is just not a sustainable model.

We need more business in the city, rather than just increasing the taxes on a smaller and smaller portion of people.

So it's, I dunno, it's a problem.

- And to that same question, here is Councilor Hoffman Saccoman's response.

"I will continue to work with community stakeholders to develop housing options, including single family, multifamily, and senior housing options.

As a seated council person, I have collaborated with the Hibbing HRA on a housing needs analysis in 2023 to quantify the demand evident in our market.

I believe in equity, fairness, openness, and integrity.

I will continue to ensure all voices are heard, focus on improving our city, work on behalf of the constituents in Ward Three and all citizens of Hibbing."

Well, John, thank you so much for taking your time and joining us tonight.

- Thanks for having me.

- Up next, we are joined by Two Harbors City Council candidate, Todd Redmann.

Again, we reached out to the other candidate, Laura Osbakken Goutermont, but she was unable to join us tonight.

Todd, thank you for being here tonight.

- Well, thanks Maarja.

Appreciate you having us on.

- Of course.

What do you think the biggest issue the people of Two Harbors face?

- Well, I think if you talk to any community in our region, the answer to that question's gonna be the same.

It's the lack of housing.

In Two Harbors, specifically, I would say senior housing, because we have a rapidly aging population in Lake County, and workforce housing, it's been a little bit of a drag on our local businesses that are having a hard time recruiting and retaining employees because there isn't adequate workforce housing.

And then we have a lot of seniors aging and structures that are no longer appropriate or fit their needs.

So trying to attack both of those types of housing is one of our big challenges.

- And why'd you choose to run for city council?

- Well, I've been involved, I'm on our city's planning and zoning commission and have enjoyed that role.

We have some exciting things going on with possibilities for development with some land being turned over from the DNR to the city, and with a school building, that now there's finally a project concept plan to knock down an old school building and build some housing there.

Those were issues that got me onto the zoning and planning, because they're interesting and they're gonna be really important to Two Harbor's future.

And when there was a vacancy, the Ward Four counselor, he and his wife moved out of town and so there was a vacancy.

I thought, well, that's where the action really happens, is that the council.

Commissions can recommend, but the council makes the final decision.

- So if elected, what immediate actions would you take to make a positive impact on Two Harbors?

- Well, we're lucky in that we have a very good, steady mayor right now.

I don't know if you're aware, but Two Harbors went through a lot of pain and suffering with a recall election for our mayor.

We now have a mayor who is rebuilding trust in the community.

I've been impressed with him.

I've enjoyed working with him.

And really want to be part of that now more functional group.

As far as immediate plans, I guess it would be to make sure I'm learning what I need to learn to be an effective city council person.

You know, I don't come in with any grand agenda.

I want to be a part of the solution and work as a group.

- Well, Todd, thank you so much for joining us.

- Yep.

Yeah, thanks for having us.

- Our next guest this evening is Grand Rapids City Council candidate Rick Blake.

We reached out to the other candidates, Dan Mertes and Joe Burns, but they were unable to attend.

Rick, welcome to Almanac North.

- Oh, thank you.

I'm glad to be here.

- So what do you think the biggest issue the people of Grand Rapids face?

- Well, I think residents are always concerned about property taxes.

And so, I think we have some good news this year.

One thing is that our tax rate's not going to increase.

We're able to keep it about the same.

So that's really important.

There's another issue that affects the level of property taxes in that we're considering adopting a franchise fee for road maintenance for streets.

And that would also reduce property taxes, because a franchise fee applies to everyone.

It's not a tax.

So even tax exempt properties like a hospital, a county, those kinds of operations also have to contribute.

It would be more like your electric bill.

And in fact, a franchise fee is going to be based on electricity use.

So I think that'll help.

And I know in the past I've had conversations with people at Coalition of Greater Minnesota Cities events and I've said, "I've always been worried about streets.

How do we do that?"

It's expensive.

We have a hundred miles of streets.

And I do remember a few years ago, when somebody told me that they had this franchise fee that they used and it worked well there.

So I'm glad to see that we're considering that.

It hasn't been adopted, but that's one of the things that we're considering.

- So what made you decide to run for City Council?

- Well, initially I ran in 2014 because I was concerned about adopting, there was another council member who decided not to run.

And one of her issues was housing.

And we didn't have a rental ordinance, and I was interested in seeing that Grand Rapids adopted one.

And it did, but it took a long time.

It didn't happen the first time I was on the council.

In fact, I actually lost that election.

But right after that, the person who won, transferred.

Their job transferred, so I was appointed.

Then I had to run again.

So, then I was on the council for a while.

And then two years ago, I decided that to run for the legislature because I thought we needed better representation.

I lost that.

So I was off the council for a year.

But then one of the other council members got a job that required them to resign, so I was appointed again.

Now I have to run again, because I was appointed, and plus the term I was appointed to expires this year.

So I'm happy to run again.

- So if elected, what immediate steps would you take to make a positive impact on Grand Rapids?

- Well, I think the first thing would be to support the franchise fee, 'cause that does make a difference.

That'll help people with their property taxes.

So, that's one thing.

I know we have lots of other things in the works.

Highway 35 is a cannabis facility that we're working on developing in Grand Rapids at an industrial site.

They use a lot of energy for that.

L&M is expanding.

Yanmar is a manufacturing facility that's expanding.

So we need housing, and we have developed a lot of housing.

An interesting story about one of those is there was a housing developer who was developing housing in another community in Minnesota that had Rapids in the name.

They put an ad in the paper.

It was a mistake.

They put Grand Rapids, and they guy started to get calls.

Well, it turned out that he called our community development person and said, "Do you need housing?"

And we said, Yes."

Well, he built a apartment building.

Now he's building another one and perhaps a third.

No, I think that at least two.

- All right, Rick, thank you so much for joining us tonight.

- Yep.

(bright gentle music) (bright gentle music) (bright gentle music) (bright gentle music) - Switching gears for our final guests, Gus Ganley, Director, Savannah Williams, lead actress, and Tom Morgan, and Executive Producer of the film Birch Bark.

They're joining us tonight, and they're here to speak about Duluth's sister city in Russia and the special projects they've made possible.

Thank you all for joining us tonight.

- Thanks for having us.

- Thank you.

- So Tom, maybe we could start with Duluth Sister Cities International, what it is and what the mission is.

- Well, it's an organization, it's a private organization, NGO, you might say.

It's not government involved at all.

And staffed primarily with volunteers.

We have one Executive Director, Christy Rounds.

And our primary mission is managing and encouraging and promoting people to people relationships between people of Duluth and people in various countries, Japan, Russia, Sweden, Canada and Iraq.

And the idea, it's non-political, and it's basically grassroots peacemaking.

That's the mission.

- So how...?

- To bring people together to talk.

- Sure, so how does the Birch Bark film project fit into Sister Cities?

- It's certainly a lot of communication and a lot of working together.

I have to take, I take some credit for this, not the directing or the artistic vision or anything like that, but I had been going to Russia, Northwestern Russia, for a long time, 30 years.

I bet I've been there 25 times.

And one thing I noticed is these little villages in remote areas where they were not Russian and they were not speaking Russian.

They had their own language, their own culture.

Their culture is in some ways, formed around birch bark and tapping trees and living off the land.

And well, what does that sound like?

I mean, and so I've always thought that we ought to look at that a little more deeply, comparing the situation that Karelian people are in, kind of strangers in their own land, with the Ojibwe people in this country.

I thought there were a lot of similarities.

And the time was ripe for us to apply for a grant, I mean, some years later.

And I'll spare you all the details, but it was a long process to get the money, to develop, to find the people to do it, and all the rest of that.

But that was the idea.

- So Gus, can you share a little bit about the premise of Birch Bark?

- The premise is following the birch tree throughout the seasons of a year.

And we have our amazing star, Savannah, who rose to the occasion to really bring the film to life here in the Ojibwe side of the story.

And half of the story is following that year in the birch's life here.

And the other half of the story, of course, is taking place in Karelia, over there inside of the Russian borders.

- Oh wow.

So Savannah, how did you get involved with this project?

- Well, it was by luck, honestly.

I was doing a film with Lighthouse, 'cause I used to work there and that's where I was also getting my GED.

And Gus had came in and was doing a commercial for us.

And he took me to the side and asked me if I wanted to work on a project.

And from there on out we started filming.

And then throughout all of the filming process, everything just started to change and melt together and just really bring the story to life, while I still got to express myself and still was able to make everything else come even more to life.

- What are some of the themes that Birch Bark explores?

- Certainly change, I'd say, is a major theme.

We see Savannah changing before our very eyes, reconnecting to your culture.

And we see the birch trees themselves change with the changing seasons, and the way the seasons themselves are changing.

Not a lot of rain this winter.

A lot of rain in the summer.

And how the birch trees do or don't adapt.

- Is this, this film project, is this something you've done in the past with Duluth Sister Cities, or is this a first collaboration?

- Well, actually we did do a couple of other films that were much less ambitious.

I mean recently, in the last couple of years.

And they were primarily done by high school students.

High school students in Petrozavodsk in Russia, and high school students, mostly in the Fond du Lac reservation area and a couple from Duluth.

And they were about life.

These films, these two short films that we made, were about life around Lake Superior and life around Lake Onega, which is another big lake, almost Lake Superior size, in Russia.

So there's that commonality too.

And we were exploring that in film.

- Are there any future projects that Duluth Sister Cities is hoping to do, or that you two also hope to be involved with?

- I do hope so.

I hope this is just a start of a ball that's never gonna stop rolling, honestly.

because it's been a great experience, especially working with Gus and Duluth Sister Cities, and just getting to learn so much more about our culture, me jumping into my heritage, and then also being able to share it with somebody else halfway across the world.

- What did it take to do this film here and in Russia?

- A lot of collaboration, as Tom had alluded to.

And you know, we didn't, although you have been to Russia (indistinct) 25 times, we didn't go there for this film.

It was a lot of Google.

A lot of Zoom.

- [Maarja] It's amazing how we can communicate throughout the world.

- Yeah, without Zoom, it would've been impossible.

- A lot of communication.

- We would've figured something out.

- Yes.

- We probably would've.

- I have to, in response to your question about other projects, I just have to mention that we are just starting, as of today in fact, a brand new project, another big grant we got from the State Department.

Has nothing to do with film, but it's all about people to people relationships between our two cities.

And this is connected with domestic abuse.

And we're beginning to work with the domestic abuse agencies here in Duluth, and particularly the home of the Duluth model, and working with the counterparts in Russia dealing with that very serious problem.

- So we'll have to have you back on here to ramp up that project.

- No film, I doubt, will come out of it.

Oh, maybe a couple of training films, but not nothing artistic.

- And before we wrap, I did wanna mention you have a theater screening at the North Shore tomorrow.

- Tomorrow night, Saturday night, 7:00.

Prime slot.

- Do people need tickets beforehand?

- Yep, there are $12.

I am going to go around tomorrow and start posting some flyers.

It was a little bit late on announcing it, but I mean, for all the work that we've put into it, it's so worth it.

So I hope anybody and everybody can make it before it either sells out, or hopefully we'll have another showing soon.

- Well, thank you so much for joining us tonight.

- Yeah, thank you.

- Thank you.

- Thanks for having us.

- Well, before we go, let's take a look at what you might be up to this weekend.

Saturday at 10:00 AM is Photography and Art at the Rock featuring Kris Kieper.

Come to the Split Rock Lighthouse Visitor Center for this monthly exhibit showcasing local artists.

Kris Kieper, a talented needle felting fiber artist, will display her work inspired by Northern Minnesota landscapes.

Experience her unique fiber art that captures the beauty of sunsets, night skies and more.

This is a free event, so stop by and enjoy the art.

Also on Saturday, don't miss the Jake Forsman Memorial Car Show and Burnout Competition from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM at Ely City Hall.

Enjoy a day filled with classic cars.

This car show includes an auction and a chance to support local youth pursuing trades.

Saturday and Sunday from 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM, stop by Mr. Ed's Farm in Hibbing for their fall experience.

Enjoy hay rides, goat, fishing, and lots of fun games.

This family friendly event offers plenty of opportunities to meet farm animals and enjoy the great outdoors.

No reservations are required.

Well, that's it for this week's show.

Make sure you go out and enjoy your weekend.

For everyone here at Almanac North, I'm Maarja Hewitt.

Thank you for joining us.

Good night.

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