Litchfield Public Works and Public Utilities employees spent much of their day Nov. 15 putting up the city’s Christmas decorations. Here the center wreath is hung in the garland crossing South Sibley Avenue at Pacific Street.
Garland lies on the sidewalk on Sibley Avenue North waiting for city employees to lift and hang it across the street.
It's time to hang the decorations! City employees Randy Groskreutz and Mario Provencher ride in the bucket as they position the garland crossing Sibley Avenue North in downtown.
The holidays officially arrived last week in downtown Litchfield, at least for some folks.
That’s when the city’s Christmas decorations — garland, wreaths, lanterns and lights — were hung across Sibley Avenue and a portion of U.S. Highway 12 East.
The 25 strands of garland, each 95 feet long, with 42-foot loops that frame red lanterns, went up under the watchful eye and busy hands of a city crew of about a dozen people. They hang across Sibley Avenue from Ninth Street to Lockerbie and across U.S. Highway 12/Depot Street from Sibley to Litchfield Avenue.
The decorations include more than 1,100 yellow light bulbs, 700 red bulbs and 125 clear bulbs.
Traditionally, the decorations are lit just before Thanksgiving to allow travelers passing through Litchfield, and those visiting friends and family in town, can enjoy them during the holiday.
The Chamber Serving the Meeker County Area will promote shopping local with its Let’s Keep the Cheer Here promotion this holiday season.
The Christmas season is just ahead, and businesses and advocates in Litchfield and Hutchinson are making sure there is plenty of reason to remember to shop local.
The Chamber Serving the Meeker County Area will focus on its “Keep the Cheer Here” holiday promotion, which starts Friday and runs through Sunday, Dec. 12.
“Litchfield is a small retail town but has something for everyone,” said Judy Hulterstrum, executive director of The Chamber. “Shopping local keeps jobs for people and keeps the dollar circulating locally. Our retail providers in town all have generous hearts to donate back to local charities when the cause arises. If you shop local, you will be giving back to the community.”
According to Hulterstrum, shopping at 31 participating Litchfield businesses will give shoppers a chance to win cash prizes given away on Thursday, Dec. 16.
Designed to keep the benefits of shopping local at the forefront of shoppers' minds, "Keep the Cheer Here" is similar in intent to the national Small Business Saturday promotion.
Small Business Saturday is this weekend, Nov. 27, and the Hutchinson Area Chamber of Commerce and Tourism is bringing back its ping-pong ball drop. Participants can gather at 10 a.m. on Washington Avenue for a shot at grabbing a ping-pong ball that could win a prize. Hot chocolate will be served courtesy of the Hutchinson Jaycees.
Also back are the Hutchinson Chamber elves, who travel around Hutchinson to surprise shoppers at local businesses by handing out gift cards. According to Mary Hodson, Chamber president, more than $3,500 in gift cards will be given out around town.
In case you're wondering where the money comes from for these perks, Hodson said it is money set aside. She also expects the Hutchinson Ambassadors and local businesses will donate as well, raising the total much higher.
So what is Small Business Saturday? American Express launched this event in 2010, encouraging people to support small, local businesses. It's a big deal, according to Hodson.
"It’s about reminding people to shop locally and support the businesses that support our community,” she said in an earlier Leader interview.
Hodson also cited the following reasons to shop in the area:
- It's easy to get support, help and knowledge.
- There's no finding a mailbox, UPS or FedEx box to return something.
- Dollars stay local and continue to regenerate.
- Local businesses support our community organizations and events. If you shop elsewhere or online, those companies usually do not support local organizations.
- Local dollars pay for amenities and services in our community.
- You support your friends, family and neighbors who work at local businesses.
It's also important to note that only 14% of the money spent at chain stores stays in the local economy, compared to 48% of money spent at independent businesses.
Shopping at local stores is “the gift that keeps on giving,” says Bill Brunelle, executive director of Independent We Stand, an organization dedicated to educating consumers and businesses about the economic benefits of buying local.
When you purchase something at a locally-owned business, more of your money stays in the community, he said. It’s not going out of town to a big-box corporate office. Store owners based in the community are also more likely to hire local accountants and marketing firms, as well as source more of the products they sell locally.
Betty Allen
They knew 30-plus capital projects over the next six years would have a financial impact on the city and its residents.
Litchfield City Council members now have a clearer picture of that impact following their meeting Nov. 15, during which Shelly Eldridge of Ehlers Inc. provided a financial management plan that considers the city’s existing debt, tax base growth and capital improvement plans.
What Eldridge described as a “conservative” financial management plan shows is annual tax levy increases of 5 percent or more — including a 13% increase in 2024 — from 2022 to 2027 when the bulk of the major capital projects are completed.
“I don’t know if that’s good news or bad news, but it’s news,” said Eldridge, a senior municipal advisor at Ehlers. “It gives you something to think about.”
A typical residential property within the city valued at $140,000 would see property taxes climb from $701.62 this year to $1,321.03 in 2031, according to the model Eldridge presented to the City Council.
That’s just a model, however, Eldridge said, and the City Council and staff have levers they can pull, including altering the capital improvement plan to push some projects further out into the future. An expansion of the city’s tax base through the addition of new businesses or expansion of existing business also could change the property tax picture.
Eldridge also suggested the city could talk with the Meeker County Assessor’s Office to try to more accurately determine any significant future change in the city’s tax base.
The Ehlers financial management plan calls for a 0.5% growth in Local Government Aid annually, 1% growth in non-property tax revenue, and a “conservative” 1% growth in existing tax base annually. It also does not anticipate any growth in development or redevelopment. Actual tax base growth has averaged 5.5% annually over the past three years.
Regardless of the potential changes that could be made to the capital improvement plan, the impact on taxpayers seemed to hit hard with some Council members.
“Property tax is almost going to double in the next 10 years” according to the Ehlers plan, Ward 3 Council member Betty Allen said. “I think people need to look at that.”
The financial management plan highlighted six major capital investments totaling $28 million between 2022 and 2026, including construction of a public works facility, street infrastructure improvements, Civic Arena upgrades, golf course improvements, community reinvestment projects and the proposed wellness/recreation center.
The largest of those projects — at an estimated $15 million — is the wellness/recreation center. Slotted in on the financial management plan for 2023, that facility’s cost would contribute $349,123 in annual debt in each of the next eight years.
The plan shows a 13.09% jump in tax rate in 2024, with 10% of that increase due to the wellness/recreation center, according to the documentation. The tax levy amount for the center is 105% of the $10 million bond issued at 3% for 20 years, calculated after revenue from a local option sales tax, which is estimated to generate $339,000 annually.
While conservative in its estimates of tax base growth as revenue source, the financial management plan does include several known funding sources, including a $5 million state grant for the wellness/recreation center approved during the 2021 state legislative session. Other funding sources include the use of the city’s cash on hand to minimize bonding and tax impact, interfund loans used for library improvements, and municipal state aid available for street overlay projects in 2022.
The plan also includes, however, a local option sales tax that would be used to help pay 49% of the wellness/recreation center construction cost. The sales tax must first be approved by referendum of city voters.
“What happens if the referendum does not pass?” Allen asked.
That’s one of many variations that are possible with the financial management plan. Depending on what City Council members want to do, what priority they put on various projects, and what the appetite is for property tax increases, the financial management plan and capital improvement plan both could change.
“Again, this is good, basic background information,” City Administrator Dave Cziok said. “As we went through the capital improvement plan, we were trying to provide you guys with … some estimates of what the impacts are going to be. Now you have actual impacts, and what can actually get funded and what it looks like….
“At a future timeframe, we need to sit down, we need to go through the capital improvement plan and look at it side by side with this financial management plan, and make some determinations about where we sit and where our comfort level is,” Cziok said.
Assumptions in the financial management plan could be altered on the revenue side of things to reflect a more aggressive stance on growth of the city’s tax base, Cziok added, but the more likely and realistic approach would be on the expense side, or altering the capital improvement plan.
“Working on how we issue debt and how we structure it, in which years (capital projects) come on” to even out the anticipated annual tax levy increases, Cziok said. “But that’s something Ehlers can help us with, if we want to try and make it more flat across the board.”
Amid a surge of coronavirus cases that has rocketed the state to the hottest of U.S. hot spots, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz last week said he has no plans to declare a peacetime emergency to enact the types of strict lockdowns and mandates that typified previous responses to the pandemic.
They wouldn’t work — and they shouldn’t be needed in the age of vaccines and other precision responses, Walz said in response to reporters’ questions.
“Just get vaccinated!” a somewhat exasperated Walz said at one point during a media conference call from Helsinki, Finland, where he led a trade delegation to there and England last week.
And for those already vaccinated, get a booster shot when your time comes.
It’s a message he, Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm and doctors have been hammering for more than a week as the state has found itself in a surge that has seen the highest number of cases this year and stretched the health care system to its limits, with some hospitals delaying procedures and boarding patients who would normally be sent to other facilities.
As of Wednesday, there were nearly 1,400 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 in Minnesota, including 320 in intensive care. That’s the most dire it’s been since December, the height of the state’s worst surge — and a time before vaccines were widely available.
Meeker County is among the rural areas of the state where infections continue to rise, while vaccinations remain stagnant. The state reported 147 new cases of COVID-19 in the county for the week of Nov. 15-19, the highest yet during the recent surge of infections. The county has seen 805 new cases and eight deaths since Oct. 1, according to Minnesota Department of Health.
The state currently reports 62 percent of the eligible population as fully vaccinated. Meanwhile, less than half of Meeker County’s eligible population (47.2%, or 10,895) has received one dose of the vaccine. Vaccinations do seem to be on the uptick, however. After not reaching 1,000 administered doses in any month from June through September, the state saw 1,471 doses administered in October and 1,876 so far in November.
There continues to be a stark age disparity in those getting vaccinated in Meeker County, as in other parts of the state and nation. So far, nearly 84% of the 65-and-older population in the county has received at least one dose, while the 16-and-older population with at least one dose stands at 57.4%.
In December last year, Walz used emergency powers to limit indoor activities at bars, restaurants, gyms and museums and place limits on social gatherings. It was an echo of his stay-at-home order in the spring of 2020, but it was needed, he and public health officials said, to curb the uncontrolled spread of cases.
So, nothing like that now? Nope.
NO EMERGENCY?
In March 2020, Walz declared a “peacetime emergency,” using a Minnesota law that gave him sweeping authority to control a range of sectors of society and the economy. Governors across the nation used similar laws. The Legislature allowed those powers to remain in place for 16 months before ending at the end of July in an agreement with lawmakers, especially Republicans who control the state Senate and opposed the state of emergency within several months of Walz declaring it.
But the law remains in place, and there’s nothing to stop Walz from declaring an emergency again; it could last for nearly a month before the Legislature would take up the issue.
“If I believed I could declare a peacetime emergency and save lives, I would do that,” Walz said Nov. 17.
But Walz said he doesn’t believe the public — or at least the part of the public that would be needed to heed, say, a statewide mask mandate — would follow any such orders.
“With (75 percent of people 18 and older) vaccinated and doing the right thing and staying safe … it’s not for them,” he said, suggesting the minority of the eligible population that has refused to get vaccinated would also refuse to abide by an emergency edict. “If you’re unvaccinated, don’t gather around people indoors unmasked.”
Walz didn’t directly address the prospect of declaring an emergency to close businesses or other public gathering places, but it’s clear that’s not in the cards.
‘TOOLS DIFFERENT NOW’
While vaccinated people can still contract and spread the coronavirus, public health officials believe that the wildfire-like spread of the highly contagious delta variant is being driven by unvaccinated people.
The bulk of hospitalizations are among the unvaccinated, and the unvaccinated are 15 times more likely to die or require hospitalization than those who are vaccinated, Kris Ehresmann, director of infectious disease prevention for the Minnesota Department of Health has said, quoting published studies.
But protection from the vaccines fades over time and many of the first to be vaccinated — including the oldest and most COVID-vulnerable people — are well past six months from their initial vaccination. Officials have noted that the vaccinated have begun to stream into hospitals as well. So-called “breakthrough cases” made up 32 percent of hospitalizations and 45 percent of deaths from mid-September to mid-October, according to data from the Minnesota Department of Health.
Thus, Walz and Malcolm are urging boosters for all adults six months after receiving a Pfizer or Moderna vaccine or two months after receiving a Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
“The tools are different now,” Walz said, referring to his previous restrictions as “blunt instruments” that he said saved lives in the pre-vaccine stages of the pandemic. But now, he said, “the data doesn’t support” such measures as being the right course.
“It’s more important than ever that we use the tools that we know work, and the most important tool is the vaccine,” he said, referring to the whole suite of vaccines now widely available: first doses for everyone age 5 and older and boosters for adults.
OTHER MEASURES
& POLITICS
Using his office as a soap box to urge vaccination isn’t the only response Walz and Malcolm say are needed. They announced Nov. 17 that teams of medical staff from the Department of Defense will be swooping into Hennepin County Medical Center and St. Cloud Hospital to try to relieve overwhelmed staff. Malcolm said they hope more such teams might be in the offing soon.
Walz supports expanded vaccine-or-test mandates for teachers and long-term care workers, but Republicans leaders, while often encouraging vaccination, have resisted requirements.
There are other measures that Walz, a Democrat, and top Republicans generally agree are needed, but politics is getting in the way.
In early October, Walz sent a summary of proposed changes to state laws and regulations that could allow more staff at hospitals and nursing homes and more flexibility for child care centers and personal care attendants, among other ideas.
But these issues have become mired in back-and-forth posturing between his administration and Republicans in the Senate. Some senators, for example, have said they want to fire Malcolm. It’s unclear if there are enough votes in the Senate to do that, but Walz has continually pointed to the threat as a roadblock to progress. Additionally, partisan disagreements over how to reward frontline pandemic workers have blocked progress on prompt COVID responses.
On Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Jeremy Miller, R-Winona, issued the following statement following Walz’s remarks: “We remain ready to come back for a special session to address frontline worker bonus pay, drought relief, and immediate COVID needs. The governor is the only person who can call a special session and we look forward to continuing discussions with the governor when he gets back from his trade mission.”
- Independent Review general manager Brent Schacherer contributed to this story.
