Anglers stand at attention and cover their hearts during the singing of the National Anthem before the start of the Wintercade ice fishing contest Saturday on Lake Ripley.
Brady McGraw sits among the hundreds of others working their lines in pursuit of a prize winning fish during the Wintercade ice fishing contest Saturday on Lake Ripley.
Before the fishing could commence Saturday, 800 holes had to be drilled in the ice on Lake Ripley. Litchfield High School football team members took on that job. Here, Ryan Schutz drills the hole as Tyler Jansky looks on.
Shawn Marthaler offers ice fishing instruction to his son, Joseph, at the start of the Wintercade contest. Marthaler, a Litchfield Fire Department firefighter, got his son started fishing before heading to the department's concessions booth on Lake Ripley.
Gary Husmann manages a smile amid single-digit temperatures that greeted him and other participants in the Wintercade ice fishing contest Saturday.
Ice anglers salute and cover their hearts during the singing of the National Anthem before the start of the Wintercade ice fishing contest Saturday.
It was cold Saturday, but it didn’t seem to matter to the hundreds of people gathered on frozen Lake Ripley.
In fact, recent history indicates that if temperatures aren’t hovering around the 0-degree mark, with subzero windchills, it just wouldn’t be the Wintercade Veterans Appreciation Ice Fishing Contest.
And with thousands of dollars in prizes — and more importantly, thousands of dollars of support for community programs — at stake, the temperature is a minor consideration. As long as you’re properly attired, which was not an issue for the ice fishing veterans who crowded onto the west side of the lake where about 800 holes had been drilled in the ice serving as the contest area.
Though final totals were not yet available at press time, the Wintercade Veterans Appreciaton Ice Fishing Contest has raised more than $120,000 since its inception in 2011, with proceeds donated to area non-profit groups, youth groups, and veterans’ needs.
Tickets for the contest, limited to 1,200 total, sold out three weeks in advance of the tournament, according to Litchfield VFW Commander Daniel Lease. Nearly 200 sponsors donated prizes this year that ranged from cups of coffee to a weekend trip to a lodge on Lake of the Woods in northern Minnesota, and a grand prize of a 6-foot by 12-foot fish house. The prize cache included a drawing every five minutes, during which four prizes were given away to contest participants.
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A Brainerd man involved in an exchange of gunfire with police early Saturday morning died of a self-inflicted gunshot to the head.
The Midwest Medical Examiner’s Office in a statement released Sunday afternoon identified the man as Stephen Chris Poissant, 34, and his cause of death.
According to a Minnesota Department of Public Safety news release, Poissant exchanged gunfire with Eden Valley police officer Evan Borscheid, and suffered a “graze injury” to his knee during the incident west of the city. The news release did not say at what point Poissant shot himself.
Borscheid, who has been in law enforcement for five years, according to the news release, was not injured. He has been placed on administrative leave, which is standard procedure in such cases.
The incident began at approximately 2:20 a.m. in Eden Valley when Borscheid attempted a traffic stop for speeding and a headlight violation. But when he tried to pull over the vehicle Poissant was driving, Poissant took off on Highway 55. The chase ended when the vehicle drove into a ditch about one mile west of Eden Valley, Meeker County Sheriff Brian Cruze said in a statement.
Poissant got out of the vehicle he was driving and exchanged gunfire with Borscheid. After the man was shot, the officer began life-saving measures, Cruze said. Sheriff’s deputies from Meeker and Stearns counties, Litchfield Police, Watkins Ambulance and LifeLink II responded to the scene. Poissant was pronounced dead at the scene.
Eden Valley police do not wear body cameras, but a camera in the squad car recorded what happened, the Meeker County news release said. A handgun was recovered at the scene.
The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is investigating the officer’s use of force. When the investigation is complete the BCA will provide its findings without recommendation to the Meeker County Attorney’s Office for review.
Charting the city’s financial course continues to spark disagreement among Litchfield City Council members.
The philosophical divide between rising taxes and capital investments played out again during a more-than-one-hour discussion of the city’s Capital Improvement Plan that was part of the City Council’s Feb. 7 meeting.
In the end, the CIP received unanimous approval from the five Council members at the meeting.
The resolution included Commercial Street stormwater improvement, Memorial Park parking lot and exterior repair of the Litchfield Library for 2022. In addition, the fate of a wellness/recreation center will be left up to voters if the city proceeds with a referendum on a local option sales tax this fall.
But those decisions only came after some tense moments of disagreement.
At one point, Mayor Keith Johnson responded with raised voice to questions from Ward 2 Council member Darlene Kotelnicki, who said she was concerned about taxes and that there are “certain groups and departments who routinely benefit from fund transfers and some that don’t.”
Her comments followed discussion of the Commercial Street storm water improvement project and a new Public Works Department building. Originally slated for construction this year, the Public Works facility was moved to 2023 as part of updated CIP suggestions by City Administrator Dave Cziok. Meanwhile, Cziok said, the Commercial Street project could be funded by a storm water utility that he suggested the City Council look at implementing.
Johnson offered a strong response to Kotelnicki’s questions.
“These people (city staff) know what the city needs,” Johnson said. “How can we, do you know enough about this to make that recommendation? I don’t. You can bring up all the percents and all you want to … we can nickel-and-dime all over the place. I’m tired of this. We’ve got to get things done.”
The debate came after Cziok introduced the revised Capital Improvement Plan, something the City Council had requested during its last regular meeting in January.
It was there that at-large Council member Ron Dingmann suggested that a two-pronged CIP — dividing projects into “essential” and “nonessential” — might help members make decisions about moving forward. As one list, the CIP included 28 items and more than $20 million in spending during the next five years.
Cziok suggested a “critical” and “non-critical” division of projects, and the updated plan in the Feb. 7 agenda included only the critical projects, with explanations of “why a project was removed, why the council may want to consider adding it back in, and how to reduce any fiscal impact.”
That fiscal impact was included in an analysis that consultant Ehlers and Associates presented to the City Council in January that showed tax rates on a steady and steep incline from 2022 to 2030. If the original CIP were to be followed, property tax rates would climb from 64.05 this year to 98.67 by 2030, according to the analysis.
Along with moving the Public Works facility back one year, the amended CIP included removing upgrades to the Commercial Street storm sewer, exterior improvements to the public library, the Memorial Park parking lot, the wellness/recreation center, the civic arena floor, electrical circuit improvements, library interior upgrades, downtown alleyway improvements, Jaycee Park improvements and repair of the parking lot at Litchfield Golf Club.
“Taking a very sharp edge to anything that’s not that critical service … that’s where we were at with taking those off the list,” Cziok said.
Johnson questioned removing the Commercial Street storm sewer project, saying he thought it should be included in the CIP for this year. Dingmann also asked how that project might be accomplished.
Johnson suggested that some of the American Rescue Plan funding the city received could be used to tackle the project, which could also open the door to other projects like the library exterior work being funded in the CIP.
The storm water project, with a $700,000 price tag, likely would require most of the American Rescue Plan funds, Cziok said.
“I would offer we don’t need to make a decision tonight on American Rescue Plan dollars,” Cziok said, or on the storm water utility.
The list of projects in the CIP is long, and it’s possible, Cziok said, that some of the projects scheduled out five years will have to be done before then out of necessity.
“I struggle with the balance,” Cziok said. “We’re talking about a plan … talking about guiding staff to develop projects to get them to Council to follow this plan … so you guys are making educated decisions as we move forward.”
