News

The 15th annual Meander Upper Minnesota River Art Crawl had strong attendance and was well regarded by its many visitors, continuing a strong tradition in the five-county area of the Upper Minnesota River Valley.

Artists at Meander studios and galleries reported hosting between 120 and 1,500 customers during the three-day event. Art sales during the Meander totaled just over $108,000 with average sales at the studios and galleries up nearly eight percent over last year. Meander customers, traveling in groups that averaged 2.5 people, spent an average of $103 on Meander art and visited an average of 11 studios and galleries during the event.

Thirty-eight percent of those surveyed during the 2018 Meander were first-time participants, and 81 percent of those surveyed said they would return next year. Seventy-five percent said the quality of the art was excellent and 76 percent said their overall experience of the Meander was excellent...

School-industry collaboration and city beautification also important

By Reed Anfinson
Publisher Swift County Monitor-News

Editor’s note: This is the first part of a two-part story on Doug Griffith’s two days in Benson. Next week’s story will get more into who the community seeks to bring here and what shapes a community they find attractive.

Through his two days of meetings with students, senior citizens, business people, young adults, and local government leaders Doug Griffiths was always seeking an answer to a two-part question: What is the most important thing to the future of your community and what assets do you have that will help you ensure your future is bright?

Young families moving to Benson was the first answer and excellent, affordable and readily available daycare the second.

Two firms seek to use small part of Benson Power site for steam generation
 

By Reed Anfinson
Publisher
Swift County Monitor-News
 

Benson Power, Inc.’s, Foster Wheeler combustor and other assets of the plant represent the potential for tremendous economic development for the Benson area.

That was the message representatives of the Chippewa Valley Ethanol Company (CVEC) and BioPro Power (BPP) gave the Benson City Council Monday night. However, they said, they need to be given time to research the feasibility of the project and get the financing in line to move forward.

The problem is that CVEC and BPP are coming to the discussions about the future of the Benson Power site very late. They began exploring how the two could work together to repurpose part of the biomass power plant facilities to generate steam in late August.

Eric Peterson won the two-year term on the District 777 Board of Education beating his nearest competitor Chad Payne by 389 votes. Payne is the current chair of the school board. There was only one two-year term on the ballot. It was to fill the vacancy left by an earlier resignation.

Two-year term

Candidate                     Vote

*Eric Peterson                 897

Chad Payne                    508

Sunday morning at 2 a.m. clocks will fall back an hour giving Minnesotans an extra hour of sleep as Daylight Saving Time ends.

This coming Saturday morning the sun will rise at 8:04, but Sunday morning it rises at 7:08.

But with the earlier morning sunlight it means it will be getting darker an hour earlier in the evening.  Saturday the sun will set at 6:07, but Sunday the sunset comes at 5:06.

An easy way to remember how DST affects our clocks and daily lives is the little saying, “Spring ahead, Fall behind.”

As we move toward the winter solstice Dec. 21, the days keep getting continually shorter. We are still losing about 3 minutes of sunlight a day, nearly 20 minutes a week. Through the month of November the area loses 1 hour and 6 minutes of daylight. However, the rate of loss slows in December as we approach the winter solstice and the shortest day of the year.

Benson has two full days scheduled for Nov. 15 and Nov. 16 with economic development and community “therapist” Doug Griffiths.

It is an event that will include the public in a community session planned for 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Friday, Nov. 16, at the Benson Golf Club.

Griffiths, who is the co-author of the book 13 Ways to Kill Your Community, calls himself a community therapist. He assesses a community’s strengths, weaknesses, misconceptions about itself, untapped potential and the built-in roadblocks it may face in moving forward.

“Strong communities are the foundation upon which prosperous families, businesses and nations are built,” is the stated vision of the 13 Ways community consulting group he helped found.

Swift County’s two incumbent county commissioners who are up for re-election this November are running unopposed.

Swift County’s treasurer, attorney and sheriff will also be on the Tuesday, Nov. 6 ballot without opposition.

Commissioners Ed Pederson, District 2, and Joe Fox, District 4, are seeking re-election to four-year terms on the Swift County Board of Commissioners.

Fox won his first term on the Swift County Board of Commissioners in November 2006 defeating then Appleton Mayor Ron Ronning. When he ran for re-election in 2010 and 2014, he was unopposed.

Lyle Koenen, a former Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Minnesota state senator and representative, is running against two-term incumbent Republican Tim Miller for the Minnesota House District 17A seat.

Miller was elected to the Minnesota house in 2014 when he defeated incumbent DFL Rep. Andrew Falk in a narrow win. He won re-election by a wide margin against Falk in a rematch in 2016.

House District 17A includes all of Swift and Chippewa counties, most of Renville County, and the four southwestern Kandiyohi County townships of Edwards, Holland, Roseland and Lake Lillian.

Koenen was elected to five two-year terms in the Minnesota House serving from 2002 to early 2012. He was elected to the state Senate in District 20 in a special election April 10 following the death of DFL Sen. Gary Kubly in 2012.

Swift County’s Board of Commissions voted unanimously to reject the two bids it had received for the demolition of three dilapidated buildings in Appleton at its meeting Tuesday, Oct. 16.

It also moved to re-advertise the project with a new set of specifications for the job.

It wasn’t what low bidder Dennis Larson, president of MAAC, Inc., in Montevideo wanted to see from the county board. He believes the decision to rebid the job with his bid already public will lead to some outside company, perhaps one from the Twin Cities, to now come in and get the bid.

Larson’s displeasure with the county board goes back to its approval of the bid of T&K Kennedy Excavating, Inc., of Benson, at its Sept. 4 meeting despite it being $40,000 higher. Kennedy’s bid was $217,080 while MAAC’s was $177,112.

Commissioners cited two reasons for taking Kennedy’s bid over MAAC’s. They said it was more detailed and that Kennedy was local (a county taxpayer.)

Windy conditions along with clear skies over the past 10 days have helped dry out crops and soils allowing the fall harvest to progress rapidly.

However, one danger has been steadily increasing with the dry, windy days – the chance for a fire to start in a field or in a piece of machinery.

Benson’s Fire Department has responded to three fires in four days and has been joined by fire crews from Danvers and Clontarf.

Monday a John Deere combine that had been harvesting soybeans in Section 27 of Pope County’s Langhei Township north of Benson caught fire. By the time the fire department arrived, it was engulfed in flames. The black smoke billowing from the charred combine was flattened out in a long trail rushing to the southeast pushed by a northwest wind gusting to 30 mph.

Earlier Monday the fire departments had been called to a fire near Danvers. A garbage fire had gotten out of control and was threatening a nearby corn field.