Ground Level Category Archive: Baldwin Township

What's the water and sewer equivalent to gravel roads?

Posted at 8:30 AM on August 30, 2011 by Dave Peters (2 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township, Local government finance, Water quality

As cities and counties grapple with shrinking pots of money and a desire not to raise taxes, one of the ideas you hear from time to time is to let paved roads go to gravel.

We've built a road and street infrastructure, the argument goes, that we cannot afford to maintain, so let's turn back the clock and drive on gravel roads. Ground Level's Brooke Walsh wrote about it last year in regard to exurban Baldwin Township.

As that post noted, it's not so easy to determine exactly whether you save money in the long run with gravel, but on some intuitive level, at least, it makes sense that you would.

So I wondered when I saw this story in the Duluth News Tribune about a documentary being shot to show how the water and sewer infrastructure is falling apart beneath Duluth.

If the water system gets too expensive to maintain (a la paved roads), what is the gravel road equivalent? Private wells in every backyard? A common well on every street? Bucket brigade organizations to fight fires?

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Township spending and revenue ticked up in 2009

Posted at 5:00 PM on January 7, 2011 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township, Local government finance

Because they are closest to the ground and often considered the most efficient form of government, it's interesting to see how Minnesota's nearly 1,800 townships are handling the current financial pressures. As MPR News reporter Mark Steil points out on the Minnesota Today blog both spending and revenues were up in 2009, the most recent year available.

The numbers come from a state auditor's report that looks at township finances over the past 10 years. As Steil reports, state auditor Rebecca Otto offers no major concerns about township financial houses.

Townships used to get about half their money from local property taxes. But the state took away big chunks of aid some years ago, and now townships get about 70 percent of their money -- most of which is spent on roads and bridges -- from local taxes.

One nugget in the report will be interesting to track. In constant dollars, both revenue and spending had been declining for a number of years, but that trend reversed in 2009. Since almost 20 percent of Minnesotans live in townships, that's not inconsequential. A caveat, however: Not all townships obey the law requiring them to report to the state auditor, so there's some fluctuation in how many reports come in each year. The number was up a little in 2009.

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Land request highlights urban-exurban dividing line

Posted at 1:34 PM on December 30, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (1 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

Princeton city council chair Greg Anderson wants to have his agricultural land, which is currently part of the city of Princeton, detached and returned to Princeton Township.

The case is fascinating for the light it sheds on how cities have to take care on questions of land use, taxes and permitted activities when the economy delivers a curve ball. What once seemed a perfectly normal annexation into the city now isn't so clear. It also could be a bellwether for how Princeton might respond if parts of Baldwin Township that had been annexed seek to rejoin the township.

It's food for thought for exurban Baldwin residents as questions of annexation continue to arise in the years to come.

According to a recent Princeton Union Eagle article, Anderson's land was originally annexed into Princeton when former owners were planning a housing development. As the housing bust descended, plans dissolved, yet the land remained part of the city. Anderson, who has kept the land agricultural, is seeking to return to Princeton Township primarily for tax purposes.

But he is also seeking to be able to use his land in the way he could if it were governed by township ordinances instead of the stricter ordinances of the city. He wants to be able to have a wood-burning stove, hunt on the land and carry out such farming practices as having a feed lot.

Princeton is offering compromise after compromise to try to keep Anderson's land within the city. The city created an ordinance that allows for wood-burning stoves on agricultural land and officials are working on one that would allow hunting on certain properties, including Anderson's. The farm practices he's seeking to carry out on his land would also be permitted within city limits.

But one big issue remaining is that Anderson doesn't feel the amount of tax he pays is commensurate with the city services he receives. In response to this, Princeton is considering a Rural Tax District ordinance, which would lower the taxes on agricultural land, phasing it in over time as city services are added.

This would apply to many more parcels than Anderson's, so the city is considering it carefully. While creating a Rural Tax District ordinance would temporarily lower the taxes the city brings in, it would allow them to continue sewer and water main expansions already planned. In the alternative, if residents like Anderson begin detaching land and cutting the city's tax revenue, Princeton may have to reconsider some of its utility plans.

In the end, the decision to detach the land is not the city's to make. It's a legal matter decided by an administrative law judge. But the process is significantly easier if both parties (the land owner and city) agree.

Anderson and the city will seek mediation next to see if they can come to a resolution. If they cannot and Anderson decides to file a petition for detachment, a hearing will be held to decide the fate of the land.

A few of the main factors a judge uses to decide if detachment is warranted are whether the land is developed or rural in nature, whether the land is needed for reasonable future development, and whether the land affects the symmetry of the city.

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Early census figures suggest Baldwin is shrinking

Posted at 9:31 AM on December 23, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (1 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

Preliminary data from the 2010 census suggests Baldwin is shrinking. Current totals set the township's size at 5,551, which is down from the 2009 tally of 6,656.

Even if you take into account the preliminary margin of error of 20 people, that still shows Baldwin has lost over 1,000 people in the last year.

During the same time period both the township and city of Princeton grew slightly -- with its township population up to 2,448 from 2,231 and its city population up 4,647 from 4,518.

This could mean there has been a slight shifting of people from Baldwin into the greater Princeton area. But the modest gains in the township and city of Princeton area are too small to account for most of Baldwin's resident loss.

The message from the preliminary census results is clear: Baldwin is shrinking and it's shrinking fast.

This is the first significant population loss Baldwin has had since 1970, when the population of the township was 1,100 people.

Is this a sign of things to come? Will Baldwin continue to shrink? And if so, how much? Will the population growth of Baldwin's recent boom be undone or is this just a temporary readjustment?

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The end of the exurbs revisited

Posted at 8:30 AM on December 17, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

There is a modern view of the exurbs as these outlying areas where people move when they either can't afford to live in the city or inner ring suburbs or can't stand living there. But the exurbs began as a land of opulence, where the wealthy spread in order to buy up land and fill it with sprawling lawns and giant, intricate homes.

At least that is the view of the exurbs presented in John Tarrant's 1976 "New York Magazine" piece entitled, The End of the Exurban Dream.

I have written on this blog about many of the mechanisms that built the exurbs as they are today (such as the ponzi scheme of growth) but this "New York Magazine" piece brings to light an underlying social dynamic that may have led masses to flock to the exurbs feeling as though they were achieving the American Dream.

The exurbs of New York spawned from the pocketbooks of the elite who controlled big businesses. Living in the exurbs was a symbol of being part of a higher class others wanted to emulate. It's hard to tell how far-reaching the influence of this original incarnation of the exurbs has been. But it is clear that, even in 1976, the cornerstones of the exurbs were starting to crumble.

The article outlines the four basic cornerstones on which these exurbs were built:

Exclusion: zoning that called for large lots and kept out the densely packed developments that lower classes could afford.

Education: elite school systems that pushed children to college.

Women: homemakers who took on the majority of the parenting as well as volunteer work within the community that made neighborhoods work.

Distancing: isolation from the problems caused by neighbors, cities and even family members.

Some of these elements are still in play in the exurbs of today. In Baldwin Township, for instance, isolation is a top priority. People moved to Baldwin to have space from their neighbors and freedom from the hassle caused by the kinds of ordinances dense city developments make necessary.

But they were also looking for the same things the original exurbanites were looking for -- a house and land of their own. It is as though these early exurbanites helped disseminate a hypnotic message that real success is measured by the size of your house and backyard. That making it to the exurbs is the goal in Jefferson's pursuit of happiness.

The exurbia of the past, as described in this article, faced the same problems of not being sustainable, of not being walkable, of a desire to preserve public open space, but not being willing to shorten distances from house to house.

Some of the problems outlined in the story extrapolate issues exurbia created for cities. Many of these issues, such as cities lacking enough green space and being polluted and run-down, have seen progress since 1976. But what of the exurbs? What led to the exurbs continuing to face the same exact problems they have always faced?

And, perhaps more importantly, when will they change and what will make them change? Is this housing bust and recession enough fodder to foster a re-thinking of exurban development? Or will everything fall back into place when builders begin laying down foundation again?

After all, 1976 was the tail end of a recession that led to the first boom in Baldwin. If it was that easy to forget the faults of exurbia then, will it be again?

The last line of the article provides some food for thought: "Yes, it's the end of Exurbia. If we work it right it's the start of something better."

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Third World is ahead of exurbia in some green ideas

Posted at 7:30 AM on December 13, 2010 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

Here's Brooke Walsh's latest post from Baldwin Township in Sherburne County:

The analyst house Greenbang is calling for more sustainable city programs to come to the suburbs and exurbs. To draw attention to this goal, it notes in a recent blog post that green infrastructure, new ideas and "smart" technology are moving into many rural areas in the third world, yet the suburbs and exurbs of the First World are still mostly lacking in the kind of sustainable technologies embraced by urban areas.

For example, Phillips is working to advance solar lighting in Africa, GE is working on waste-to-energy in the Phillipines and IBM is working on IT-enabled health care in Nigeria, but who is working on improving sustainability with new technology in the exurbs?

Movement toward green infrastructure in the Third World is important, but it begs the question: why aren't similar improvement programs going on as extensively in the suburbs and exurbs of the developed world, where there are more resources, more money and more opportunities to create green improvements?

Elk River has made efforts with its waste-to-energy plant and windmill, but the city is still laid out in a way that makes it largely unwalkable.

What kind of green infrastructure could places like Baldwin benefit from in the future? Should Baldwin make new technology to promote sustainability a priority?

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Developers look to create small towns in the big city

Posted at 9:03 AM on December 10, 2010 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

Here's the latest post on Baldwin Township issues from Ground Level's blogger there, Brooke Walsh:

In a recent post, I suggested Baldwin's future developments may need to be a hybrid between the crammed developments of suburbia and the sparsely laid out plots of rural areas -- smaller neighborhoods, with ample land surrounding them.

It turns out the suburbs have the same idea.

According to a recent Star Tribune article, half of the roughly two dozen developments that have gone up in the Twin Cities in the past year have fewer than 50 houses. It's a big switch from the way developers used to do things.

The reason for the switch?

For one, smaller developments pose less risk for both the developer and buyer. Lower cost to build-out and fewer homes to sell means the developer is much more likely to recoup his money. Buyers, likewise, want the houses around them to be sold. It turns out buyers are tired of sitting in half empty developments.

But the piece of the puzzle most relevant to Baldwin is this: according to the Star Tribune story, the main reason people are moving to these developments is because they want to feel a sense of community. They want to know their neighbors, and smaller developments help people engage each other better.

None of Baldwin's developments were ever as massive as the Twin Cities projects these new mini-developments are beginning to replace, but it's interesting that the very thing many are suggesting is important for small towns -- the development of micro-communities -- is also catching on in the big city. People want to feel connected to the place where they live, and a well-designed housing development can help with that.

But if the suburbs are able to offer a small neighborhood feel close to the city, how does Baldwin differentiate itself? Perhaps more parks and trails? Perhaps homes set close enough together to build community, but with ample backyards?

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A bird's-eye view of sprawl

Posted at 7:30 AM on December 6, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (1 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

Artist Christoph Gielen uses aerial photography to offer a pulled-back view of suburban and exurban sprawl. The images create art out of the ordinary, but also act as Gielen's attempt to get people to think about sustainable land use.

He focuses on areas with the most foreclosures in the country, including Arizona and Nevada, capturing images of their densely-packed sprawl. Though Arizona's exurban sprawl is clearly quite different from Minnesota's (as written about here and here), Gielen's work and commentary can still offer food-for-thought for places like Baldwin.

In this post from CNN's website, Gielen elaborates on his views of the types of land-use featured in the photographs.

As a New Yorker, he says he finds the suburbs disorienting and notes that the way these places were developed put car-centric priorities at the forefront instead of the quality of life of its residents. They are focused on being commuter-towns, instead of neighborhoods.

These criticisms of the suburbs aren't new; in fact, quality of life issues are what brought so many people out of the suburbs and into the exurbs. But that doesn't mean the exurbs got it right, either.

In places like Baldwin, the answer to the densely-packed neighborhoods of Gielsen's photos became loosely packed neighborhoods. This solved the problem of neighbor-disputes (to an extent) but didn't address a bigger issue at the heart of the development of land outside of urban areas: how do you get people out of their cars and onto their feet, bikes or skis so they can interact?

While densely packed development may not be the best use of land, creating greater sprawl between houses, as seen in this aerial shot from Baldwin, may not be either.

Perhaps the answer is somewhere in between: smaller neighborhoods with denser housing connected to a system of trails leading from one to another.

Baldwin's already addressing the sprawl issue with trails (both existing and yet to come) that will one day connect many of its neighborhoods to places like Young Park, Princeton and Elk River. But what are other ways Baldwin can change the future of the township to make quality of life better?

Many experts say smaller, walkable neighborhoods are what increases quality of life, but what do you think?

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Cheaper snowplowing through GPS

Posted at 7:30 AM on December 2, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

When analyzing the cost of Baldwin's roads its easy to get caught up in the expensive fixes, such as bituminous overlay and crack sealing. During the development of its capital improvement plan, the township spent a lot of time making decisions about the most efficient way to accomplish these large projects necessary to keep their roads in good condition.

But there may be room for more efficiency when it comes to small, continual maintenance costs, such as running snowplows through the winter.

"We're trying to get a grasp of what doing our own plowing costs," said Town Board Member Jeff Holm.

Jeff advocates installing GPS devices on Baldwin's plows. The devices would be able to collect information about plow routes, length of time plows are in-use and even when the plowing blade is up or down. This information could help Baldwin streamline their plow-routes, creating more efficiency and hopefully save money.

Additionally, the GPS devices would help snowplow drivers navigate their routes more efficiently. In recent years, Baldwin installed signs marking township roads to help snowplow drivers recognize where they were responsible for plowing. Prior to the signs, township plows would often overlap county plow routes. These kinds of inefficiencies are not expensive on their own, but they add up over time.

The township looked into GPS in 2009, but ultimately decided against it.

There would be initial instillation costs to implement the devices, then a low monthly cost to run them during plowing months, but Jeff believes the GPS systems would be a net-positive.

Should Baldwin look into GPS for its plows again?

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Progress continues to be made at Baldwin's Young Park

Posted at 7:30 AM on November 26, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

Progress continues to be made at Young Park, where a Healthy Communities Partnership task force has been offering Saturday morning walks since October to show off hiking trails and discuss other plans for the park. Their last hike will take place this Saturday, Nov. 27, at 8 a.m.

These hikes have given residents an opportunity to get to know the land.

"I was amazed; many that had showed interest in Young Park at the June 29 dinner visioning meeting did not even know where the park land was," said task force member Dean Kleinhans.

The park is located at the intersection of 305th Avenue and 108th Street.

The task force has also applied for a State Health Improvement Program (SHIP) grant from Sherburne County, which would help it encourage participation in healthy activities at the park by funding a newsletter that would spread information about the park, trail signs, bike racks and events.

Members will find out if they are receiving grant funds Dec. 17.

While there are a few improvements yet to be made at the park, Dean and others hope to host its first event next month to celebrate the winter solstice.

Plans for the Dec. 19 event include a luminary-lit trail for hiking, snowshoeing or cross country skiing, healthy refreshments and a bonfire where neighbors can chat while keeping warm.

In order to spread the word about the event and look for more local support, the team has been canvassing neighborhoods surrounding the park to look for volunteers. Dean expects this effort will recruit new members to the task force.

The task force continues to make progress outlining the park's boundaries. Maps of the mowed trails are now available at the newly roughed-out parking lot for visitors to take with them as they explore the park. The task force is looking into creating a monument to Kermit Young, who donated the land, as well as making plans to refurbish some benches the Baldwin Park Committee already owns.

The task force has also been working on two of its other objectives. Members have been working to find community meeting spaces by looking at the fire hall's lounge/kitchen area, as well as the fire hall's upstairs training room. They have also found several private structures that may be available for future community gatherings.

Improving communication methods is another objective for the task force. It has made modifications on Baldwin's website to make the HCP program more visible and link up with their Facebook page. They have made HCP updates available via handouts, which were offered as residents exited the polls November 2.

They are also looking into a monthly newsletter that could be mailed to residents while they work toward collecting emails for paperless distribution of the newsletter.

Residents interested in signing up to volunteer for any of the HCP task forces can click on the HCP link in the left hand corner of the township's homepage.

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A push for new leadership in Baldwin

Posted at 8:29 AM on November 23, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

At Baldwin Township's September board meeting, Jeff Holm announced he was stepping down as chair. The decision emerged partly out of necessity when he began working in Baxter and living in Cross Lake during the work week to cut down on commuting time. He still came to Baldwin for evening meetings, but he wasn't able to undertake regular daytime duties such as payroll approval on Monday mornings.

But Jeff had a broader plan in mind when he stepped down.

"This is a good opportunity for getting some new leadership in," he said.

He's been feeling for a while that others deserve the chance and maybe even need a push to emerge as leaders in the township. Because he plans to leave the board in March, when his term is up, he thought stepping down now could allow someone else a chance to get used the position while he's still on the board to help guide them.

But come Dec. 1, Jeff will be chair again, likely until his term is completed in March.

When Jeff stepped down, Jim Oliver was appointed as his replacement. But in November, Jim announced he's selling his Baldwin home and moving out of Baldwin. The board appointed Jeff as his replacement, with a few modifications. Jay Swanson will be assistant chair and will take charge of approving payroll and other daytime obligations that Jeff can't meet.

While he'll be serving as chair again soon, Jeff is still consciously pushing himself into the background of projects, hoping others will seize the reigns.

"I'm maxed out in leadership experience in Baldwin," he said.

He's still taking a big role in the Healthy Communities Partnership work that the Initiative Foundation has helped with in the township, but he's not serving as chair or co-chair for that either. He thinks it's time for volunteers to take over center stage, and he's interested in behind-the-scenes work, such as with economic development.

"We have these actors who are taking roles and taking leadership," Jeff said, "and I have kind of reserved myself as, you know, if you have a problem come to me."

His plan is working well enough that he overheard another board member telling a resident he wasn't even involved in the Young Park project. In reality he's been hard at work helping to keep the ball rolling, but quietly letting others lead the way.

You can see videos and read more about Baldwin's background and challenges at the Baldwin topic page Ground Level created earlier this year.

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How would cuts to mortgage deductions affect Baldwin?

Posted at 8:55 AM on November 19, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

One of the proposals recently released by President Obama's deficit commission would eliminate the availability of deductions on second homes and home equity loans, as well as lower the cap for mortgages eligible for deductions from $1 million to $500,000.

Some writers and politicians are even suggesting the U.S. get rid of mortgage interest deduction entirely. There are several reasons for the suggested change of pace, including the facts that the current policy primarily benefits those with high enough incomes to allow for itemization and that it fails to accomplish it's main goal of increasing home ownership.

Ken Archer from the Greater Greater Washington blog uses a graph to compare rates of home ownership within several countries. While places without these types of subsidies, such as Ireland, Italy and Australia see rates of 83 percent, 78 percent and 69 percent respectively, the four countries with these types of mortgage interest deductions see considerably lower rates. The U.S. rate is highest, at 65 percent, followed by Sweden's at 60 percent, the Netherlands' at 49 percent and Switzerland's, which is lower than 43 percent, the lowest rate on the chart.

As he concludes, offering the world's biggest mortgage deductions isn't making the U.S. home ownership rate highest.

If either of these budget cuts go through, how will they affect Baldwin?

Will it make it even more difficult to fill some of township's already vacant homes or yet-to-be-populated lots? Or could it be a step toward a more resilient future, by encouraging growth that is tethered more closely to the market?

The Economist blog offers an alternative idea to subsidize home purchases in the form of a tax credit issued for the purchase of a home, as opposed to the acquiring of mortgage.

An incentive such as that could encourage new home ownership in Baldwin.

Are you in favor of subsidies for home ownership, or should the U.S. cut them to help balance the budget?

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Code for America helps cities share resources with townships

Posted at 4:30 PM on November 12, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

The non-profit Code for America is offering cities a unique opportunity to have five highly skilled computer programmers develop resources for them for a base fee of $250,000, which is much less than these programs would otherwise cost. This is great for the cities involved, but also great for other cities and townships like Baldwin because when the programs are finished, they will be released to the public for free.

In 2011, Code for America fellows plan to create a program for the city of Boston to help students engage in their education by interacting on the web, a how-to-manual for the District of Columbia to help other cities create programs similar to their Apps for Democracy contest (which challenges citizen developers to create useful web applications for the city), an open-source mechanism for Philadelphia that will help residents collaborate on neighborhood service activities, and a program to help communities work with one another in Seattle to create safer neighborhoods.

Some of these programs may be aimed at big cities, but Philadelphia's neighborhood collaboration program and Seattle's community-sharing public safety program could be useful to Baldwin.

Baldwin often looks to neighboring townships for examples of possible ordinances and other ideas to help it run better, but this Code for America project opens up a new world. What far away cities or townships might be sharing information that could help improve life in Baldwin?

And how does Baldwin find these ideas?

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Making the exurban commute without a driver

Posted at 9:53 AM on November 11, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

I've talked on this blog about many solutions to Baldwin Township residents' long commute to the city, including a community bus that could connect with the Northstar Commuter Rail in Elk River, ride-sharing and electric cars.

But there is a much more futuristic solution to Baldwin's long commute: autonomous vehicles.

Since one of the greatest expenses involved in bus transportation is the cost of employing drivers, driver-less vehicles could save some costs. Their backers claim they would be safer and run more frequently than driver-operated vehicles without raising costs significantly. Cost is one of the main factors standing in the way of a bus traveling from the Princeton/Baldwin/Zimmerman areas into Elk River. The lowered cost of an automated bus would make such a line more feasible for this community.

Automatically driven personal vehicles would completely change the experience of commuting. Instead of needing to concentrate on the road, commuters could relax or begin working for the day on their drive to work, which could cut down on the lost time commuting creates.

What if a commuter could read and answer work emails on the way to work or spend the commute home winding down, getting ready to enjoy life after reaching home? Automated vehicles could make commuting enjoyable.

But just how feasible is this idea?

A bus line or even electric cars that can drive exurban distances are probably closer to being implemented locally than the types of cars Netherlands company 2getthere markets and Google and other organizations are working on. But autonomous vehicles are getting closer to driving the streets.

In 2007, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) held a public competition for the development of fully automated vehicles they then pitted against one another in a series of simulated real-world driving experiences. Footage from The DARPA Urban Challenge can be seen in this video produced by TIME Magazine, which shows and describes how these cars are able to navigate without human assistance.

Autonomous vehicles use a system of computers to make the kinds of driving decisions humans make when they operate a car. A series of sensors surrounding the outside of the vehicle takes in information about where it is driving, then sends signals back to the computers to control the car. And controlling the car does not just mean the ultimate cruise control. These vehicles stop at stop signs, use GPS to decide where to make turns and even park on their own.

Today the work to create these vehicles is still being pushed forward by many companies, including Google -- whose cars have crossed the Golden Gate Bridge, driven the Pacific Cost Highway and even driven all the way around Lake Tahoe while automated, but with a technician on board. The Netherlands company 2getthere has created pilot projects at the Amsterdam Airport Schiphol and at a business park in Rivium, Netherlands. And VisLab has an automated vehicle that just completed an 8,000 mile trip from Italy to China.

The biggest obstacle is lack of an infrastructure in which they can operate safely. They are designed to work on everyday streets and are being tested there, but questions remain about how these cars will interact in a world that mixes automated vehicles with those driven by humans.

Would an automated vehicle make your life in the exurbs easier? Could this be part of the solution to Baldwin's long commute, or are more traditional options, such as extending current rail lines more preferable?

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Can farmers and commuters make good neighbors in the exurbs?

Posted at 11:26 AM on November 5, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (1 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

As noted in the last post, Indiana has a demographic layout similar to Minnesota's (with a main industrial metropolis surrounded by suburbs, then exurbs).

One of the core issues for Indiana is farmland preservation and managing the corridor between urban and rural, which largely takes place in the exurban boundaries of the greater Indianapolis metropolitan area.

This article in the Indiana Business Review demonstrates just how big the conflict between farmland and urban areas has become for the state. Economic Research Analyst Tanya Hall looks where land classified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as prime farmland (land most suited to produce high yields of crops) falls in Indiana, She then analyzes the urban development that has taken over much of this land and looks at the amount of farmland that will likely be lost to urbanism by 2040.

When prime farmland is urbanized, farmers are forced onto land that requires more upkeep to produce high yields of crops or can't produce the same amount of crops. This is why preserving prime farmland in agricultural uses has become a priority nationally, as well as from state to state.

The myriad of maps included in the article illustrate that Marion County, where Indianapolis sits, is full of prime farmland that can't be used due to urban development.

This issue is not isolated to Indiana. While Baldwin Township's sandy soil doesn't qualify it as prime farmland, many other suburban and exurban counties around the Twin Cities have large amounts of this kind of land.

According to the last available USDA data from 1997, Wright County has more than 200,000 acres of prime farmland, some of it bordering Hennepin County.

Scott County has around 100,000 acres of prime farmland, much of it in rural middle and southern Scott. But around 25,000 acres are in Shakopee, where most of it cannot be used because of urban development that emerged in the last few decades.

Dakota County has 150,000 acres of prime farmland, 50,000 of which is in the Burnsville and Apple Valley areas.

Mcleod County, which has also seen quick growth and was classified as a Boom Town by patchworknation.org, is full of prime farmland: over 225,000 acres are spread across the county.

Movement to preserve farmland began in the 1980s, but critics continue to argue that market values of land predicts how it gets used. Hall argues the market hasn't resulted in satisfactory land use patterns in Indiana, partly because publicly funded infrastructure (such as highways, schools, sewer and water facilities) affect land value, thereby increasing market value artificially.

What should Minnesota do when prime farmland falls so close to a city? The state has made preserving open spaces, even within metropolitan areas, a priority, but what about its urban-bordering farms?

On the other hand, if a land owner can't get full market value for their land, should the state be able to stop them from rezoning it for residential or urban uses?

Is there room in the exurbs for farmers and commuters to be neighbors?

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Sherburne's place in the Patchwork Nation

Posted at 10:07 AM on November 2, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

The new book by journalist Dante Chinni and political scientist James Gimpel, "Our Patchwork Nation", catalogs all 3,141 counties in the U.S. into 12 categories in order to make the diverse community types throughout the country more understandable. The information they collected can be used to compare Sherburne County with other counties in the state and nation.

It's no surprise that Sherburne County is classified as a Boom Town, or fast growing community with a rapidly diversifying population. A graph of Sherburne's population growth easily illustrates why the county finds itself in this category.

In 2000, the county had 65,275 people. By 2008, that number had increased to 87,660. This type of growth has been mirrored in Baldwin.

The data available on their website, which is a partnership with other organizations, also helps compare Sherburne with other exurbs.

Looking at the map of Minnesota counties, an interesting pattern emerges from the Twin Cities center, where Ramsey County is categorized as an industrial metropolis. The first-ring suburbs surrounding the county (Dakota, Washington, Hennepin, Wright, Anoka and Isanti) are categorized as Monied 'Burbs -- highly educated communities with income levels of $15,000 above the national average for counties. Then outer-ring suburbs and exurbs are categorized as either Emptying Nests (counties such as McLeod, Meeker, Mille Lacs, Kanabec, Goodhue and Le Sueur where aging populations or baby boomers find themselves) or Boom Towns (counties such as Sherburne, Benton, Stearns, Chisago, Rice, Scott and Carver).

Looking at the map, a county's development as a boom town appears to be linked to its distance from the industrial metropolis. Areas that offered commuting distance to major employment centers boomed, while some surrounding areas, such as the Emptying Nests, began to lose population.

The online version of the Patchwork Nation data allows for analysis of other areas besides basic population data or categorization. It allows for mapping of foreclosures, education levels, religion, presidential election data, health, employment data and more. Some of the data can also be viewed by voting districts, which the authors have also cataloged into 9 categories.

Mapping the state's foreclosures highlights the fact that foreclosure rates have concentrated near the Twin Cities, radiating out into the Monied Burbs and boom towns, then lessening as you continue outward.

According to foreclosure rates from August 2010, Sherburne, Anoka, Wright, Hennepin, Ramsey, Scott and Dakota had the highest foreclosure rating of 5, while Mille Lacs, Chisago, Washington, Goodhue, Rice and Carver were rated as 4s. Ratings dissipate lower the further you get from the Twin Cities, with the exception of a few out-state areas that also faced 4-rate foreclosures.

The mapped data also sheds light on why it's difficult to compare Minnesota exurbs to those in the west, such as when this blog looked at Surprise, Arizona. Arizona's system of counties is demographically entirely different from Minnesota's, whereas places such as Ohio or Indiana have similar demographic layouts with industrial metropolises acting as epicenters for concentric rings of different community types.

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Case Study: New Prague's golf course

Posted at 8:53 AM on October 29, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

New Prague, MN has a city-owned golf course that is becoming hard to afford. After already cutting the amount they spend on grounds maintenance, the exurb faces tough decisions highlighted in a Star Tribune article this week.

While New Prague is a city, it has a lot of similarities to Baldwin -- the two exurbs are roughly the same size and are a similar distance from the Twin Cities. But New Prague was able to allowed it to run a golf course for many years until the economic downturn made golfing in the exurbs less attractive. Now, that golf course may be another example of the kind of liability exurbs won't be taking on in the future.

It seems a financial reality is emerging: if consumers don't have a lot of money to spend on recreation, they aren't likely to travel for things they can experience without traveling.

If New Prague, Baldwin or any of the exurbs in between want to attract people from the city in this new emerging economy, each will have to discover unique, localized ways of doing it. What can exurbs offer that other places cannot?

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Gravel or pavement? Running costs to ground in exurbia

Posted at 11:33 AM on October 26, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (2 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township, Local government finance

Between 1998 and 2007, Baldwin Township's population grew quickly and with that growth came mile after mile of new paved road.

These young roads are relatively easy and inexpensive to maintain for now, but they are aging at the same pace. This means that when it's time to overlay more bituminous on one, others will need the same maintenance shortly.

Baldwin, in the northeast corner of Sherburne County north of the Twin Cities, sees this coming from 20 years away and is trying to find a way to afford its road infrastructure. In its 2010-2015 Capital Improvements Plan, Baldwin splits its road costs into two categories: maintenance and capital improvements. The plan states that Baldwin will likely need a 6 percent increase per year in maintenance costs to roads -- to continue the kinds of processes that increase a paved road's life, such as chip sealing -- and a 20 percent increase per year in capital improvement costs -- the larger, more expensive projects, such as reconstruction and overlay -- for some time to come.

It further concludes that costs will only increase if these repairs are delayed because the township is unable to raise enough funds.

But if the township can't afford upkeep on all of these roads, what are its other options? What if it returned some of the roads to gravel? It's a question getting increasing attention as local governments find themselves under stress. And, in fact, what at first glance seems short-sighted, in Baldwin Township might save money in the long run.

Stutsman County, N.D. recently decided to return roads to gravel in order to be able to afford its infrastructure, and they aren't alone.

As the Wall Street Journal article states: "In Michigan, at least 38 of the 83 counties have converted some asphalt roads to gravel in recent years. Last year, South Dakota turned at least 100 miles of asphalt road surfaces to gravel. Counties in Alabama and Pennsylvania have begun downgrading asphalt roads to cheaper chip-and-seal road, also known as 'poor man's pavement.' Some counties in Ohio are simply letting roads erode to gravel."

But how feasible is this process?

Sherburne County's road maintenance figures show that costs to keep up gravel roads far outweigh those to keep up bituminous. From 2005 to 2009 the county spent $43,411.23 in maintenance costs on just over 23 miles of gravel county roads. But over the same period of the time the county only spent $27,293.13 in maintenance costs on 2,028.6 miles of paved road. Using those figures, it cost the county about $1,887.44 per mile of gravel road that needed maintenance and about $13.45 per mile for maintenance on bituminous.

The yearly maintenance costs of gravel roads make them appear inefficient, until you consider the capital improvement costs associated with bituminous roads at the middle and end of their lives, which isn't always reflected in yearly maintenance figures.

Baldwin's own cost estimates for maintenance over the next five years illustrate the hidden costs of paved roads. In 2010, reconstruction of 0.128 miles along 99 1/2 St. cost $49,863 dollars, or $389,554.69 per mile. In 2011, reclaim/overlay of 289th and 127th streets for 0.7 miles will cost $43,659, or $62,370 per mile. In 2012, reclaim/overlay of 0.7 miles along 100th St. will cost $97,241, or $138,951.71 per mile. In 2013, overlaying a mile of bituminous on 112th St. will cost $99,915.

While bituminous overlay only needs to be done to roads 20 years after they are built and reclaim/overlay 40 years after they are built, these high costs are hard for townships to absorb all at once, even when they plan for them years in advance.

Over its 40-year lifespan, a low-volume paved road will need to be chip sealed twice, undergo overlay once and then reclaim/overlay. Baldwin's 2010 estimate to chip seal paved road is $3,885 a mile. Cost for capital improvements is obviously dependent on the condition of a road. As the figures above show, these can vary significantly.

Using a weighted average of the above figures, the reclaim/overlay costs are approximately $124,844.90 per mile of paved road. Adding the chip seal costs twice, the estimated overlay cost from the above figures ($99,915) and the reclaim/overlay cost, Baldwin's paved roads will cost an estimated $232,529.90 per mile every 40 years, or $5,813.25 per mile per year.

That's about 3 times what it costs to maintain gravel roads in the county.

As the Wall Street journal said, paved roads were once a hallmark of the United States. With this mentality, it is hard to let go of paved roads, but maybe it's something Baldwin needs to consider. Letting some roads return to gravel at the end of their 40 year lifespan could help Baldwin afford the paved roads it needs while keeping taxes manageable for all residents.

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Baldwin's community effort creates a park in phases

Posted at 8:30 AM on October 23, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

The Community Visioning Session that Baldwin Township residents held in June roused a lot of interest in developing Young Park at 305th Avenue and 108th Street. In fact, it was tied for the top idea when residents voted that night on what they most wanted to see accomplished in Baldwin.

But residents who got involved in the Healthy Communities Partnership program of the Initiative Foundation are not just interested in seeing a park built. They want to help.

At Tuesday's park meeting, representatives from the Partnership group reminded township officials that their volunteers are still ready, able and hoping to get things rolling on the park before winter sets in.

Town Board Chair Jeff Holm said progress has been made on the park, though mostly from the planning side. A survey was done this week, and the township plans to refine the park's trails and identify the wetlands within the survey in order to reissue a set of construction plans.

There are already lights up at the park, which Jeff said make the otherwise empty park look like the field of dreams.

Further park development will happen in phases, with the first phase taking place as soon as possible so that the park will be usable for the remainder of fall and in the winter months. Further improvements will be made later.

This fall, the township plans to fill and level the gravel parking lot, mark the edges of the park with signs and possibly create trail markers so that the park's trails could be used for winter recreation. The township does not plan to grade or plow the trails yet, but marking them should be enough to help residents and visitors make use of them in winter.

There are a variety of other projects planned for the park to be completed later that will offer opportunities for volunteers to help.

There is a large garage on the Young Park property that the township wants to turn into a pavilion for people to use during the warm months. In the cold months, picnic tables and other movable park features could be stored in the garage. But the garage needs a little bit of work -- painting and attaching doors among other things.

The township needs help planting trees as well as sanding and painting several park benches and matching trash cans they have acquired.

Additionally, volunteers are already thinking about what kind of events could be held at the park to draw in residents from around the local area. They are trying to set up a winter solstice event for this year. In the future, they're thinking about offering guided nature walks and having Sherburne Wildlife Preserve experts provide talks about area wildlife.

There are some bigger plans for the park that will require more funding. The township is looking into the terms of how they access the parks money they already have that is in the county's possession and investigating possible grants for park improvements. Future plans for the park include a ball field and/or mixed-use athletic field, interpretive signs for trails, bike racks and more special events.

"One thing you can do to help is just show up," said Dave Patten, Park Committee Chair. "I've been doing this for 11 years, and there are usually six people here [at the meetings]."

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Electric cars that can go exurban distances

Posted at 7:30 AM on October 21, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (2 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

Electric cars are usually advertised as great for urbanites or first-ring suburbanites who can make all of their daily driving trips in the lower range of miles these cars offer in a single charge.

But for Baldwin's residents, who need to travel more than 50 miles to reach downtown Minneapolis, even the high-range Nissan Leaf with its full-charge distance of 100 miles isn't an attractive option.

There are at least two options currently in the production process that can go exurban distances -- the Chevy Volt, with a late 2010 release date, and the Tesla Model S, with a 2012 release date.

While the 4-door, 4-seat Chevy Volt was advertised as a fully electric car until recently, it is actually somewhat of a hybrid. Its motor is completely electric, but it also has the capability of converting gas (stored in one of the two gasoline or E85 compliant tanks) to electric power to run the vehicle. While the Volt can only go 40 miles on a full electric charge, this gas-conversion system allows it to travel an additional 300 miles before needing another charge or more gas.

Running the electric Volt on gasoline is obviously not the most efficient way to use the vehicle, but if it is driven this way it will get around 50 mpg. Calculating the over-all fuel efficiency of the vehicle can be tricky, because as long as the vehicle has been charged, its first 40 miles will use no gasoline at all. Therefore, in a 55-mile trip to Minneapolis from Baldwin Township, the Volt would be using gasoline for only 15 of those miles.

If the car is being used as a commuter car and the employee has the option to charge the car at work, the return trip will also allow 40 miles with no gasoline use. If the commuter can't charge the vehicle, he or she will use about one gallon of gas on the way home.

Charging the Volt takes up to 10 hours on a standard 120-volt outlet, or about 4 hours with a 240-volt supply.

Obviously the electricity to charge the Volt isn't free, but Chevy estimates charging the Volt to go 40 miles a day will cost about $1.50.

The flexibility to not charge an electric vehicle is huge for exurban residents who likely travel long distances. Without that option, or higher ranges for electric cars, these vehicle types just aren't a feasible option.

The Tesla Model S is a fully electric car with no gas tank of any kind. Its base-model battery will allow it to travel an average of 160 miles per charge, but it will offer additional battery options that allow it travel 230 or 300 miles on a single charge.

They haven't released estimated charge times with a 120-volt outlet, but they plan to offer a 45 minute quick charge option.

The Tesla Model S tackles the issue of passenger capacity in a way other electric cars haven't. It offers seating for five adults and two children with rear-facing jump seats in the back of the vehicle.

But in the end, is longer traveling distance and more capacity enough to tempt exurbanites to spend the estimated $49,900 for the Tesla Model S or $33,500 for the Volt (both prices reflect a federal tax credit of $7,500)?

Would you consider an electric vehicle for your travel out of the exurbs?

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Shifting perspectives about the exurbs

Posted at 8:17 AM on October 13, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

In April 2008 the Star Tribune wrote a story about failing developments in Otsego, highlighting worried council members staying up late to try to solve the problem of 138 open houses in a population of 11,000.

At the time this sounded like a disaster. Now it sounds almost ordinary, with smaller communities, such as Zimmerman facing 138 foreclosures last year and already accumulating 101 from Jan. through July of 2010.

There is a difference between 138 vacancies in tightly planned suburban developments, versus the same amount spread as foreclosures across the expanse of a community. First, it's infinitely easier to spot a failing community whose empty residences are standing side-by-side. I think this is one of the main reasons the Otsego issue was being showcased at the start of the bust: it was an outward sign of what was secretly going on across communities around the state.

But it's the difference in reaction to the vacancies that stands out as a signpost of how our views of outer-ring suburbs like Otsego and exurbs like Zimmerman are changing.

Instead of being shocked that fewer people are flocking to them or can afford to continue living in them, the vacancies are beginning to seem like an inevitability.

Looking at the overall sustainability of the exurbs -- number of jobs that can be sustained in the area, tax-base for needed services such as roads, businesses it is possible to support locally, and commuting options that are both economically and environmentally feasible -- the question of whether the exurbs need to shrink rises to the surface.

Has Baldwin grown too big to be resilient? Will its future see fewer residents, fewer houses, fewer roads?

Or is the growth that emerged from the boom here to stay even after the bust?

It's possible that changing trends will find the suburbs shrinking as exurbs and cities absorb new suburban expatriates.

In the recent curbside chat, Charles Marohn opined that the future of development meant urban areas would become more urban and rural areas would become more rural. This is possible for inner-ring suburbs and outer-ring exurbs, which can just assimilate to their urban and rural neighboring communities.

But if this is really the trend that communities follow, then suburbs are in trouble. Stuck in the middle, either change won't be easy. It's likely suburbs will shrink, seeing residents flee back to the city or onward to the exurbs.

If this happens, Baldwin will likely see growth again. Or, at the very least, residents to fill its vacancies.

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Rethink what can be cut from local budgets

Posted at 4:49 PM on October 7, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

In last week's recap of the Strong Towns Curbside Chat, I talked about how every city
and town is facing tough financial situations similar to Baldwin's. It's hard to believe this is the reality, even while reading examples of it in a recent New York Times
article.

The piece talks about how cities and counties have had to cut basic services -- street
lights in Colorado Springs, school days in Hawaii, and a whole bus line in Clayton
County, GA -- in order to meet budget shortfalls.

Locally, communities such as Ogilvie have transitioned to a four-day school week based on budgetary considerations, as well.

These are changes that would have sounded unthinkable earlier this decade, but large deficits are driving leaders and residents to rethink what can be cut.

As these stories emerge from communities around the state and country, it becomes apparent that Baldwin's problems really are manageable by comparison.

While the township may have overbuilt housing divisions and the roads that lead to them, it doesn't have failing malls, too-costly streetlights or other things it couldn't afford.

In order to gain sustainability, Baldwin needs to find solutions for a few key issues:

How can the township afford its roads? What can be done with vacant houses and stalled or in-progress developments? How can Baldwin continue to attract residents and maintain its resident-base?

While Baldwin's problems may be on a smaller scale than other communities, it still faces tough decisions, particularly where roads are concerned.

In the end, to afford its road infrastructure, Baldwin will likely have to raise more money through taxes, or downsize the cost of its roads.

Now the question becomes: which option is more acceptable to residents?

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Rethinking the way communities grow

Posted at 8:34 AM on September 29, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

Last week Charles Marohn gathered with leaders from Baldwin, Princeton and other area communities to share strategies for the future maintenance of cities and towns of all sizes in a Curbside Chat. The talk's primary recommendation was for cities and towns to become resilient by realizing their current trajectories are not financially feasible, letting go of dead ideas and beginning to transform into self-sustaining entities.

This is part two of a two-part post. Part one highlighted current ideas that are not financially feasible. This post explores techniques to improve resiliency in communities moving forward.

Marohn urges towns to create a capital improvements plan that fully takes into account all of the town's current liabilities. The good news is Baldwin has already done this.

In fact, it was looking at that capital improvement plan -- and discovering Baldwin does not currently have a way to pay for all of its public infrastructure -- that has spurred area leaders to have a desire to change the way the township does things and led to many of the posts on this blog.

Baldwin's situation may look bleak when outsiders read about the township, but Marohn says that no town or city in the state is able to afford their current infrastructure. And while Princeton may look more prosperous, the city is actually in a worse financial state than Baldwin.

The take-home point here is, no matter the size of the community, we are all in this together.

So how do we get out?

Cities and towns need to start building strategies that capitalize on infrastructure that is already in existence, instead of building new infrastructure. This means continuing to invest in improvements to high density areas, and lessening improvements spent on low-density areas.

Most areas in Baldwin are already low-density, so for Baldwin this may mean making serious decisions about future road improvements. Perhaps Baldwin has too many paved roads for the township to sustain overtime and should consider a path to return some of them to gravel instead of following improvement patterns for paved roads.

Or perhaps they could consider decreasing the width of some of their less traveled roads as neighboring Livonia is beginning to do.

Some roads in Livonia will now be half the width of many of the roads in Baldwin, making it necessary for cars to slow when they meet. This may sound like an unsafe idea, but when you consider the Livonia Township road in question sees an average of one vehicle on it every 7 minutes, the likelihood of two cars meeting is low.

Livonia has decided the cost-savings of laying down half the asphalt is worth the inconvenience of the smaller road.

Marohn also suggests towns begin to re-think their development and zoning standards, moving away from the auto-centered standards that emerged with suburbs in the 1950's and toward more modern, place-creating standards.

He sees the practical application of this being urban areas becoming more urban and rural areas, like Baldwin, becoming more rural. This plan clearly leaves suburbs and more suburban exurbs with the biggest conundrum: do they surrender to the city or deconstruct and become more rural?

Part of this process involves focusing on improvements that increase the quality of life for a community -- and, thereby, property values within the area. Parks, sidewalks, street lights, churches, buildings of character in downtowns, and centralized parks are all examples of improvements that accomplish this, he says.

One final important strategy he offers for building resiliency in a community is strengthening existing businesses. In past posts on the blog I've talked about current or potential Baldwin business ideas and the interdependence between Princeton and Baldwin, but Marohn has a different idea.

He says that Baldwin is tied to the Princeton economy whether or not it wants to be and that in order for Baldwin to have a healthy economy, the township must look at ways to help Princeton maintain a healthy economy.

The local economy doesn't have township borders.

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Letting go of "dead ideas" about growth

Posted at 8:09 AM on September 28, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

Last week Charles Marohn gathered with leaders from Baldwin, Princeton and other area communities to share strategies for the future maintenance of cities and towns of all sizes in a Curbside Chat. The talk's primary recommendation was for cities and towns to become resilient by realizing their current trajectories are not financially feasible, letting go of dead ideas and beginning to transform communities into self-sustaining entities.

This is a two-part post. Part one highlights Marohn's comments on where cities went wrong on growth. Part two will explore techniques to improve resiliency in communities moving forward.

There are four primary mechanisms that fueled current growth patterns that will not fuel growth patterns in the near future, Marohn explained.

Transfer of money from state or federal programs -- whether through earmarks, grants or other programs -- have helped fund projects in the past. But local and national government debt will prevent much aid from filtering into cities and towns in the future.

Government transportation spending, seen in Baldwin as improvements to county roads, Highway 169 and other grants for improvements, will also likely wane over time due to budget shortfalls.

Whereas infrastructure was once funded primarily through taxation, recent development has been funded mostly through public and private debt accumulation. This is not sustainable.

Recent growth has been funded through a ponzi scheme. New growth has been paying for old growth. But now the growth has stopped and there is no new growth to contribute money to maintenance of old growth, leaving cities desirous of new growth.

Marohn calls these four "dead ideas" that must be left behind.

He adds towns tend to think attracting a large employer to a small town will solve a their financial problems. Instead of searching for a business that would employ 25 people, Marohn argues, cities and towns should invest in building 1 new job among 25 businesses that already exist in the community.

The reason why centers on one of his key points of resilience: cities and towns need to start thinking about the continuous cost of growth.

In the past, when a new development was built, developers paid the up-front costs for most improvements. This made developing seem like a great asset for cities and towns because their up-front cost was low and they would get the tax benefit of having their land developed.

But what city council members and town board members failed to internalize was that the responsibility to maintain those developments -- the sidewalks and streets providing access to these places -- belongs to the city forever. As it turns out, most developments cost cities and towns far more than they earn beginning in the 25th year of their existence.

Marohn doesn't oppose public incentives for private growth. A town might offer funding to employers as an incentive to create new jobs. This one-time fee is a better financial decision for the city or town than taking on the long term liabilities of new growth.

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Baldwin curbside chat tonight

Posted at 8:13 AM on September 21, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

Representatives from the Strong Towns Blog are headed to Baldwin this evening as part of their curbside chat program. The meeting, which is aimed at local leaders in both the township and neighboring city of Princeton, will be held at Baldwin Town Hall at 7 p.m.

According to their website, the presentation will cover the following points:

1. Background on the current financial crisis.

2. The triggers that are forcing changes in the way we inhabit the landscape.

3. The "dead ideas" we need to overcome to renew prosperity in our towns and
neighborhoods.

4. What the coming new economy is likely to look like.

5. What local leaders can do to position their communities for success in the new era.

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Is tourism the answer in the exurbs?

Posted at 7:30 AM on September 20, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

Rural tourism is not a new idea, even if exurban tourism may be. The USDA's rural information center has a webpage devoted to helping rural areas develop tourism by providing information, as well as case studies, for city or town officials.

One of the case studies focuses on agritourism in southwestern Minnesota. They offer the following rural-rooted tourism ideas: winery tours, dude ranches, hayrides, corn mazes and pick-your-own farms.

Of course, one hayride or winery isn't going to draw in much tourism, but the study points out that "disparate rural sites offering an array of attractions from farming to fishing to festivals can be woven into a cohesive package that has marketing weight to draw tourists."

In southwestern Minnesota, as farming became industrialized and individual farms began to consolidate, many farmsteads and their old homes and big barns were being left vacant. This prompted conservation groups to restore the old farmsteads, creating the Olof Swensson Farm museum and other tourist destinations. Eventually people began leaving their old farmsteads to conservation groups in their wills, and the effort grew.

In the 1980s, a group of museum managers, business owners and economic development coordinators from five counties got together to create the Western Minnesota Prairie Waters Tourism Coalition, which helped formulate a tourism package from among the area's attractions.

The study cites this collaboration effort between multiple counties and multiple tourism sites as the reason southwestern Minnesota has been so successful in its agritourism.

When Baldwin considers it's possibilities as a tourism destination, it should not ignore the areas surrounding it. Sitting at the border of Mille Lacs County sets Baldwin up to become the gateway to Lake Mille Lacs, which already draws a large amount of vehicles up highway 169 through Baldwin. Right now they don't stop, but that doesn't mean it will always be that way.

One way for Baldwin to capitalize on already existing northbound tourism would be to establish a restaurant like Tobies in Hinckley, MN. Tobies is a massive conglomerate of services sitting squarely along the path from the Twin Cities to Duluth. It's a restaurant, diner, bar, reception hall, bakery, gas station, gift shop and ice cream parlor that has become a common stop for travelers headed to Duluth, partly because it is well-located at about the halfway point of the trip and partly because it has everything in one stop.

For most people in the Twin Cities, Baldwin is also about halfway to Lake Mille Lacs. A similar restaurant in Baldwin could not only bring in the business of those passing through, but also draw locals from Princeton, Zimmerman and other surrounding areas.

There are a variety of other rural-based amenities Baldwin could create to try to get some of the people passing through to stay for a while -- a unique system of trails (perhaps leading to the refuge), bed and breakfasts, or camp grounds.

In the end, the USDA study seemed to be driving one important point home: advertising plays a vital role in attracting visitors to a town. In southwestern Minnesota, they found that $4,000 spent on advertising in 1998 resulted in $100,000 spent in local economies through 1999.

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Building Baldwin's tax base

Posted at 7:30 AM on September 17, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

It isn't sustainable for Baldwin to continue with the tax base it currently has.

Eventually, the expanse of inefficient roads will need to be repaired or replaced at nearly the same time, and the resident base, built largely of people who escaped to Baldwin to pay less taxes, among other things, is not going to take kindly to huge increases to support the road system.

As the exurb envisions how it can build a sustainable financial future, it's considering additions of commercial business that would make Baldwin less rural. But Baldwin's rural identity is what drew in many of its residents.

Rural areas usually gain their tax base through agribusiness. Suburban communities gain their tax base through commercial development. Baldwin and the other Minnesota exurbs are a hybrid between suburbs and rural areas. So this leaves the question: how will Baldwin build its tax base to meet the needs of its infrastructure spending without fundamentally changing its rural identity?

Right now Baldwin has a choice. Does it become more suburban, seeking to add commercial businesses to increase the tax base to maintain the current level of development? Does it try to reverse its past momentum and encourage more agribusiness? Or should it compromise with a mix of both?

A huge factor in this equation is the type of businesses interested in a place like Baldwin. Whereas inner ring and even outer ring suburbs have the population to attract large retailers and office spaces, it's more difficult for an exurb, even a large one like Baldwin, to attract commercial development.

At the same time, with all its residential housing and sandy soil, the township isn't exactly suited for farming, either.

It's a commuter town, which makes it particularly suitable for some kind of tourism. So maybe what Baldwin should be asking itself is, what could draw people here?

And when the tourists get here, what businesses should be available to help Baldwin capitalize on their tourism dollars?

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Rerouting the flow of commerce between Baldwin and Princeton

Posted at 7:30 AM on September 13, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

This blog often focuses on Baldwin's identity as an individual exurb and its relationship with the Twin Cities or other exurbs. But one of Baldwins greatest assets, and sometimes challenges, is quite literally attached to it.

Princeton and Baldwin border each other intimately. To someone who has never looked at an aerial map of the area, it is practically impossible to tell from ground level where Baldwin ends and Princeton begins.

It would be easy to think that the rural area is dependent on the more developed area -- that Baldwin needs Princeton.

To an extent this is true -- the grocery store is in Princeton, the diner, the banks and doctors -- but this does not make Baldwin dependent on Princeton. Instead it make Princeton dependent on the commerce of Baldwin's residents.

When you look at population size, it becomes clear just how much Princeton may rely on Baldwin. In 2009 Baldwin's residents totaled 6,656, while the city of Princeton had 4,518 residents and Princeton Township's residents added up to 2,231.

In other words, Baldwin Township is only slightly smaller than the city of Princeton and Princeton Township combined, yet most of the commerce that goes on between the two entities ends up in Princeton where there is a downtown, parks and schools.

As Baldwin looks forward and begins to think about what kind of new commercial development it would like to have, it is important to think about what will draw in not just its own residents, but also those in Princeton and Princeton Township. Baldwin could take a mostly one-way relationship and create a symbiosis with Princeton by drawing people out of town.

The big question is, of course, for what? Baldwin doesn't want to copy what already exists. Instead it must figure out what isn't here that residents have always wanted.

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America in 2050: a look at the future of sprawl

Posted at 3:22 PM on September 8, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

In July, Greg Lindsay from Fast Company magazine blogged about a debate entitled: "America 2050: What Will We Build."

While the debate posed urban development against suburban development, many of the arguments made in favor of suburbs and the way they can change can be applied to the exurbs, as well. While neither Lindsay, nor the debaters specifically highlight the exurbs, I will be including them where I feel it is relevant here.

The debaters -- Joel Kotkin, author of The Next Hundred Million, and Christopher Leinberger, a developer, and author of The Option of Urbanism -- focused on the four key issues of demographics, housing supply & demand, transport, and density while battling in the familiar war of city versus sprawl.

Kotkin proposes the demographics of the suburbs will emerge as a mix of young immigrants, retiring baby boomers who chose to stay close to home and millennials choosing non-city areas to raise their kids as their parents did. He argues this group of people will be large enough to soak up excess housing created by the boom and bust.

But Leinberger pulled out statics similar to those asked by the Ohio State University's "Is Sprawl Dead?" analysis. They show households with children are shrinking, and he argues that they will continue to shrink to 14 percent with children and 86 percent without in the coming decades. This leaves sprawling areas "awaiting a second baby boom that isn't coming," Lindsay writes.

Kotkin has faith that cars will evolve to continue to provide transportation from sprawling areas through a combination of smaller electric vehicles or perhaps even cars that drive themselves. He argues this is much easier than rearranging where people are already living. In the blog post, Lindsay sites this article to describe why getting rid of cars in favor of densely packed walkable cities is unfavorable. It concludes that ultimately the freedom cars created in society will be hard to give up and doing so might even be detrimental to economic development.

Leinberger sees continued efforts placed in creating walkable neighborhoods and mass transit. He calls on developers to pay for part of light rail and other commuter trains, who would then benefit from the increased value of the land surrounding the mass transit system as an incentive for shouldering part of the burden.

Kotkin says cities will grow, too, just not as much as suburbs. In the end he argues that people will continue to choose to live outside of cities as they have done since suburbs emerged in the 1950s. "You're not going to change the way people live by forcing them to live a way they don't want to live," he told Lindsay.

Leinberger reiterates a theory from his book about how suburbs emerged in the first place as a result of a massive partnership between industries. Lindsay puts it this way: "By the end of the 1950s, the Big Three auto companies and the industries they spawned or converged with -- oil, steel, mining, finance, insurance, repairs, highways, and the construction of a vast suburbia navigable only by car -- were responsible for as much as a third of U.S. GDP." This industry created and necessitated the suburbs, but Leinberger argues the days when the market called for sprawl are past, leaving cities as the dominant location for populations.

While they are calling for different locations, their visions of what life will be like in the future are similar: Denser concentrations of houses with walkable amenities that rely on green transportation (whether by cars run on renewable sources or mass transit).

When we look at these ideas in the exurbs the question emerges: if what brought people to the country was distance from their neighbors, how would Baldwin respond to denser housing developments? Is there a way to marry walkability with rural living?

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What exactly is an exurb?

Posted at 8:24 AM on September 2, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

What defines an exurb seems to shift from state to state.

Distance from the city is one piece of what makes an exurb in Minnesota, where neighborhoods spread out in concentric circles from the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro. Emerging on the outskirts of the urban areas, the suburbs make up the first ring and the exurbs comprise the second.

Atmosphere is another piece of what makes an exurb here. Minnesota exurbs usually have rural ties and lots of green space and lack the characteristic concrete jungle strip malls of suburbs like Maple Grove or Eden Prairie.

They are often townships with sprawling homes, large lawns and few sidewalks.

Looking at Minnesota, an exurb is a community located outside of a suburb in a more rural area within commuting distance to a large metropolitan area.

But when you take this definition to other states, it doesn't always hold up. Surprise, Arizona, for instance, is considered an exurb even though it sits less than 13 miles from Glendale -- a city large enough to host its own professional baseball and hockey teams -- and only 27 miles from Phoenix.

In a story about the area, the magazine High Country News, describes it as though it's a suburb, while referring to it as an exurb:

"Home Depot and Wal-Mart rise like islands from an ocean of pavement, and late-model SUVs gleam in the midday sun. Homes with red-tiled roofs line up like stucco boxes on a giant supermarket shelf. There's little to distinguish this from the hundreds of square miles of housing developments that have sprouted around Las Vegas and San Diego. If it weren't for the palm trees, you could be in suburban Salt Lake City."

While that sounds nothing like the exurbs of Minnesota, there is something that is tying places like Baldwin with places like Surprise. Sprawl and an unrealistic housing market led both to boom, and foreclosures have left both asking, "what's next?"

While Surprise may look more like a suburb than an exurb to a Minnesotan, its history of quick development followed by crashing house prices and a glut of empty homes is reminiscent of exurbs everywhere.

Probably because of its distance to major metro areas, it was able to lure in big box stores and build, build, build, not just homes, but national chain stores. Now many of those are closing or already sit vacant and Surprise is left with a concrete jungle ghost town.

I think what places like Baldwin or Princeton can learn from Surprise is that there is a silver lining to big boxes avoiding your area if they deem it's not big enough -- you're left with open space instead of a ghost town of strip malls.

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Building exurban identity with a history trail

Posted at 7:30 AM on September 1, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

One of the side effects of Baldwin's quick population explosion is a fractured identity.

While older residents or children who grew up in the area may know its history, some newcomers hardly realize Baldwin exists as its own entity.

It sounds strange to think someone could live in a township without even knowing it, but when you consider that Baldwin's residents technically have addresses listed in Princeton or Zimmerman, it's possible to see how a few people can slip through without knowing much about the township.

Baldwin doesn't have a downtown, community center or other area that can provide it with a physical identity. While many ideas are being considered about how to create such an area, budget constraints make progress difficult.

One inexpensive way to build community while educating residents about the history of Baldwin could be a history trail.

The idea is an off-shoot of a project St. Cloud State Professor Jerry Wellik is working on to create a poetry trail in his hometown and other areas.

He said poetry trails usually follow a path like any nature trail with poems posted along the path that help add meaning to the place in which they are located. The end of the trail leads to a gathering place.

Baldwin could create a poetry trail, but a history trail -- with historic stories or information posted along the path -- could provide a wealth of meaning to residents.

To do so, Baldwin would need some interesting land for the path, plaques and to clear a space for gathering at the end. A few picnic tables, or perhaps someday a gazebo, could stand at the end the path.

Perhaps building the path could be a community project that involves area youth.

What else could Baldwin do to help residents engage in the community while learning about its past?

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Rethinking outward signs of propserity in the exurbs

Posted at 7:30 AM on August 27, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (1 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

Earlier this month Charles Marohn over at the Strong Town blog posted two pictures of roads for his readers -- an old dirt country road and a new paved highway -- and asked which was more a mark of prosperity.

As he said in his response, it's easy to see the newest, nicest improvement as a sign of prosperity. But what small towns and townships (and perhaps even big cities) learned in the recent recession is that outward signs of prosperity do not always signal real prosperity.

He gives an example of two cars -- a shiny new Chevy and an old Volvo -- which asks the same question about prosperity. In this example it's easier to see how the car someone drives is not an accurate representation of his or her prosperity. In his example the new car belongs to someone who has lost his home and business, while the beat-up car belongs to a prosperous doctor.

While we know the newest car doesn't mean its driver is rich, just that he is willing to pay, why we do assume townships with nice new roads are more prosperous than those still clinging to dirt or gravel?

With this juxtaposition he sets up a dramatic point about development: despite knowing the logic that bigger isn't always better for individuals, development has been driven by constant growth. Marohn goes so far as to call the constant drive to build, build, build a "Ponzi scheme of growth."

Of course, Baldwin had a reason to grow. After all, between 1990 and 2009 Baldwin township gained 3,747 residents. Growth of new developments produced the homes in which they now live. The real hubris here probably lies in the belief that growth could keep going.

What Marohn calls for here is a shift in perspective of what we view as prosperity. As the township moves forward it will have to look at the world differently.

Ultimately the purpose of the post is two-fold: to explain what happened and then offer an opportunity to start building solutions for the future through Strong Towns'curbside chats.

A curbside chat is planned for Baldwin Township and the Princeton area Sept. 21. The location is yet to be determined.

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MN Supreme Court denies Vollkommer appeal ending dive team litigation

Posted at 9:21 AM on August 22, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

The State Supreme Court denied former Baldwin township Supervisor Paul Vollkommer's appeal to hear his case against the township and several of its current and former agents, The Princeton Union Eagle reports.

The lawsuit alleged that the township did not have the authority to create a dive team. This decision essentially ends the litigation.

More information about the case can be found in our previous coverage here, here and here.

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Healthy Communities Partnership continues

Posted at 8:49 AM on August 18, 2010 by Nancy Leasman (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township, Todd County

Representatives of four communities met August 17 at the Initiative Foundation in Little Falls in the next step of the Healthy Communities Partnership Program. Eden Valley, Brainerd, Baldwin Township and Todd County residents spent the day analyzing, refining and considering the best direction for their projects.

Dan Frank of the Initiative Foundation led the groups in determining institutional assets, financial assets, built assets and social assets as they "built a web of resources." He also recommended increasing the interaction among unlikely folks within a community which then increases the information and knowledge base. This engenders greater success as the diverse group works together.

After individually assessing the assets, flip charts came out. With five minute rotations on specific subjects, participants shared their ideas.

"The next step is assets to action," said Don Hickman and noted this exercise was a starting point for task force development.

Speakers were then invited to take the podium to offer resources to help the community groups as they develop projects. Included were: Tom Leach of the USDA, specializing in rural development; Adeel Ahmed of the U of M Extension with expertise in community economics; Diane Knudson from the Department of Employment and Economic Development and Chuck Marohn from the Community Growth Institute. As grants coordinator for the Five Wings Arts Council, I also gave a presentation.

Todd County will continue to focus on economic development, youth retention and senior services.

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Cohousing offers exurbs efficient development, ample green space

Posted at 7:30 AM on August 19, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (2 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

What if instead of spreading houses out across the acres of a neighborhood, developers placed them close together, preserving the rest of land as open space?

The idea to do so is catching on in Minnesota neighborhoods in Northfield, St. Louis Park and Rushford. These Cohousing communities seek to create tight-knit neighborhoods, while using the rest of their open space for joint purposes, such as farming or recreation.

In the city in neighborhoods such as the Monterey Cohousing Community in St. Louis Park this manifests as a development on 2.5 acres of land with a shared apartment building and surrounding townhomes. Their open space consists of a large front lawn, woodlands, a park and community garden.

In the rural developments of Rushford's Zephyr Valley Community or the planned Buffalo Commons in Northfield, larger plots of land are used, but houses are still built near each other to foster community and allow for greater green space. The Zephyr community has woods, ponds, land for goats and lots of open space where neighbors can mingle and children can explore.

There are some big benefits to this type of construction. Houses grouped together allow for incredibly efficient construction of shared amenities, such as sidewalks and roads. However, this efficiency comes at the price of individual backyards.

Would exurbanites be willing to give up their own backyard for miles of shared land? Is Baldwin the right place to consider a cohousing community?

Cohousing may sound a little like a commune, especially when many of the current iterations of cohousing communities are focused on eco-friendly lifestyles and share values similar to the back-to-the-land movements of earlier decades. But in theory the cohousing concept can be anything a group of like-minded people wants to create.

For instance, a cohousing community could use some of their shared land to build a recreational vehicle track or preserve a section of woods for hunting, as well as the usual uses of farming, raising animals and recreational open space.

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Baldwin's foreclosure rate remains steady

Posted at 7:30 AM on August 16, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

The rate of foreclosures in Baldwin Township in 2010 remains about the same as it was last year, according to foreclosure listings put out by the Sherburne County Sheriff.

In 2009, there were 49 foreclosures in Baldwin, with 27 occurring between Jan. and July of that year. From January through July of this year there have also been 27 foreclosures.

How does this compare to foreclosure rates in neighboring areas?

Princeton's foreclosure rates are similar to Baldwin's and also appear to be keeping the same pace as last year's rates. Baldwin foreclosures listed with Princeton addresses made up about 54 percent of the total foreclosures with Princeton addresses for both the entire year in 2009 and Jan. through July of 2010.

While Princeton and Baldwin seem to be holding steady, Zimmerman's foreclosures are skyrocketing.

In 2009, Zimmerman had 138 foreclosures. From January through July of 2010, there have already been 101 foreclosures in the area. And Baldwin residences with Zimmerman addresses make up only a small fraction of that -- 15 of Zimmerman's foreclosures in 2009 were in Baldwin, and only 8 of Zimmerman's foreclosures from Jan. through July of this year have been in Baldwin.

How will this influx of foreclosed homes affect the developments sitting unfinished in the area? When people begin to buy again will they be looking for old vacancies or newly constructed homes?

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Thinking "green" in the exurbs

Posted at 12:36 PM on August 11, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

"Green" has become synonymous with all things environmentally friendly and usually conjures up images of windmills, solar panels and bio fuels. There are myriad possibilities for this kind of alternative energy production in the exurbs, but when Baldwin says they wants to maintain a green exurb, they're usually not always talking about tech; they're talking about trees.

A huge piece of what separates an exurb from a suburb, besides driving distance, is its green space -- open fields, trees and a green highway corridor that separate man-made elements from one another in the skyline. Suburbs often set aside huge pieces of land for parks and mandate green space in developments, but these often turn into manicured lawns, which have just as much of a man-made feel as their housing divisions.

Green space is the aesthetic hallmark of the exurbs and a big challenge for these areas is figuring out how to add amenities without filling the landscape with concrete and brick.

We've talked about small farming possibilities, which are one way to maintain green space. But how can Baldwin create a green town square, bus stop or community center? How do you balance buildings and green space while trying to create a walkable landscape?

Obviously leaving lots of open space between buildings does this well from an aesthetic standpoint, but that creates an inefficient system that would require more pavement or road, as well as decrease ease of walkability.

Perhaps part of the solution involves considering carefully the design of added buildings: does a modern, sleek building fit among tall grasses, cattails and trees? Is Baldwin more suited to old-style constructions with a small town feel? Or is there, perhaps, something in between?

Playgrounds may look less out-of-place constructed of wood or if their themes are nature-based than if they emerge from the horizon as brightly colored plastic forms. Or, perhaps, incorporating trees and other plants into a playground, as the Princeton ECFE park has, can off-set the less-than-natural look playgrounds can take.

A community center could be surrounded by floral or fruit and vegetable gardens and other plants.

What are your ideas for maintaining Baldwin's green space as it continues to develop?

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Will Baldwin grow again? Not just yet

Posted at 4:00 PM on August 6, 2010 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

This isn't too surprising, but the state demography center this week put out its annual population estimates for cities and townships. Fast growth has not returned to Baldwin Township, but the population hasn't headed south or back to the Twin Cities either.

We've raised the question a couple times (most recently here) whether Baldwin Township will ever see its rapid growth return. Like exurban communities almost everywhere around the Twin Cities, housing has screeched to a halt and foreclosures are frequent.

But the demographer says Baldwin grew by 81 people -- for a total of 6,656 -- between July 2008 and July 2009. That's actually a little bit greater than the previous few years but nowhere near the pace of the 1990s. The township added more than 400 between 2000 and 2001.

It's still the state's third largest township, behind White Bear in Ramsey County and Big Lake, also in Sherburne County. The next largest behind Baldwin is neighbor Livonia.

You can find all the estimates here.

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What if the thing that defines your community is noise?

Posted at 2:18 PM on August 5, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

I wrote about the micro-community concept last week -- which is a way to build community in localized neighborhoods instead of focusing on broader community throughout an entire township.

In Baldwin, the Winding Trails, Northgate and Pinegate developments have built up a micro-community of sorts based partly on a shared desire for freedom to make noise -- the ability to ride three wheelers, have parties and work on their vehicles as they like. Most members of the community enjoy the freedom to engage in these activities more than the quiet that would result from rules limiting noise in the area.

But there is one notable exception: Wade and Beth Ficek, who have been losing sleep for months as the sound of their neighbor's semi drifts into their bedroom window.

The Ficeks want a noise ordinance in Baldwin, but their neighbors do not.

This scenario illustrates one of the main issues with micro-communities -- how can neighborhoods advertise their benefits to potential residents?

If the Ficeks had realized how noisy the community was before they moved in -- and that being able to make noise in this way is a priority to their neighbors -- they probably would have chosen a different place to live and avoided this problem. As of now they feel trapped in the neighborhood because of a housing market that is unfavorable to sellers.

Residents and potential residents want to know the priorities of their neighborhood, but it's unlikely a developer is going to want to advertise their development as "noisy." How can exurban micro-communities communicate these nuances in ways that give potential residents a realistic view of what it's like to live there?

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Americans still want to live in exurbs

Posted at 7:30 AM on August 2, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

This month Joel Kotkin argued in the Wall Street Journal that the predicted back-to-the-city migration has actually been more myth than reality.

"Virtually every survey of opinion, including a 2004 poll co-sponsored by Smart Growth America, a group dedicated to promoting urban density, found that roughly 13% of Americans prefer to live in an urban environment while 33% prefer suburbs, and another 18% like exurbs. These patterns have been fairly consistent over the last several decades," Kotkin writes.

That means that despite all the problems of living in the exurbs -- long commutes, increased gas prices, lack of walkability -- people continue to come there for its benefits.

When planning for the future of Baldwin, it's easy to look at development trends in cities or suburbs and wonder how exurbs can take part in similar movements -- less dependence on cars, for example.

But the township can't ignore its inherent strengths, greatest of which is probably that Baldwin is nothing like an urban environment.

How can the township work towards walkability, building central gathering places and maybe even a town square, without building itself up into a suburb?

I think green space is a big piece of that. Green space is a hallmark of exurban life. Baldwin's residents may not be able to walk to do all their errands, but when they do go for a walk they see trees, open land and lakes -- the very things that drew them out of the city in the first place.

And these open spaces are likely what will continue to draw people out of the city.

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Starting small: Defining Baldwin with micro-communities

Posted at 7:30 AM on July 29, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (2 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

In a comment on a recent post about the future of urban sprawl, Sherburne County Planner Jon Sevald brought up an interesting idea about how to build community in Baldwin:

"It is difficult to notice the difference where one community ends and
one begins whether it's a township or a fully developed city. It is
even more difficult when townships like Baldwin lack a physical
community center, such as a downtown or a lake that defines the
community. Baldwin has a number of lakes, but I don't think the
lakes themselves define Baldwin. The township is more than just a lake
community.

What Baldwin may want to consider rather than trying to define the
township as one community, is what are the distinctive neighborhoods
within the township, and how can those neighborhoods be improved to
further establish micro-communities."

Baldwin certainly already has established neighborhoods, particularly around its lakes. Could focusing on building up these individual neighborhoods be key to creating the identity of the township as a whole? Does the whole township need to be defined one way, or can it find strength in a diversity of definitions among its neighborhoods?

There are also some benefits that can come from micro-community concepts where groups of neighbors share similar interests or desires for their land, as well

I could see a group of people wanting an agriburbia-type development growing their own food in backyard gardens and setting up a central framers market within the community.

Or a outdoor recreation community built near trails where they'd have easy access and could enjoy hiking, biking, and snowmobiling with their neighbors.

Perhaps an artist community could emerge, as well, with a centralized exhibit area.

But I wonder if micro-communities would just cause further isolation in an already isolated population. Perhaps instead of building physical micro-communities, Baldwin could build intellectual ones within the matrix of something that would bring all of these neighborhoods together.

Creating a community center received 45 votes at the June visioning session. Perhaps a community center could be a central space of activities for a variety of micro-community groups to form -- where gardeners, snowmobilers, artists and other like-minded individuals could connect.

What do you think about the micro-community idea?

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Is exurban sprawl dead?

Posted at 9:45 AM on July 16, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (8 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

As part of their Exurban Change Program, the Economics department at Ohio State University completed a study last fall whose goal was to determine whether current economic climate impacts -- the housing crash, high gas prices and increasing levels of unemployment -- would have a lasting effect on suburban and exurban sprawl both in Ohio and across the country.

In essence, they were asking a question that hits at the heart of Baldwin Township and other places like it around the Twin Cities: Is sprawl dead?

Their presentation concludes that "unfettered sprawl is a thing of the past (largely due to changing markets and emerging government policies)," but new kinds of more specialized sprawl may emerge, such as something they call "rurbia," or rural suburbia.

They cite a variety of reasons why they see sprawl changing.

As the demographics of households in the U.S. continues to shift from those with children -- 69% in 1990 (U.S. census records) -- to those without children -- 60% in 2008 -- the priorities of home-buyers begin to change.

This analysis of the 2000 census shows a clear shift: over 80% of downtown city populations are composed of non-families and families without children while the same demographic groups make up just over 60% of the suburbs. This shift to cities will reduce demand for exurban development.

However, other factors will continue to increase demand, the researchers found.

High gas prices have recently slowed exurban development, but improvements in fuel efficiency and public transport, as well as technology improvements that make working remotely possible, will create opportunities for people to live further from cities in the future, the researchers say.

It is possible that companies will begin to create clusters of suburban or exurban remote work-sites as technology improvements continue.

One of the biggest factors slowing, or even stalling, sprawl is an oversupply of houses. The Ohio researchers pointed out that according to a USA Today article in April 2009, 1 in 9 houses in the U.S. were vacant. Situations like this mean less household-mobility, a lower demand for new housing and a long-term decline in new builds, which will limit sprawl.

They also cite that there are new demands for undeveloped land competing with housing development such as energy-production (wind, solar, biofuels), increased demand for local food and carbon or nutrient trading.

How will these ideas affect Baldwin?

Baldwin's proximity to both the Twin Cities and St. Cloud areas coupled with its rural character suggest that it will continue to be an attractive place for people to settle. But the stalled developments and empty homes Ohio researchers were describing are familiar to Baldwin, as are the commuting issues. Perhaps the Ohio researchers are right that it is specialized developments, such as agriburbia or other concept-developments, that will be the new hallmark of exurban sprawl.

What do you think, is sprawl dead or simply dormant? How do you think Baldwin will build up again?

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Baldwin dive team dismissal challenged again

Posted at 8:32 AM on July 12, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (1 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

Former township supervisor Paul Vollkommer has filed a petition to have his case against the township and several of its current and past agents heard by the Minnesota Supreme Court. The defense has 20 days to respond to the petition before the court will make a decision on whether they will hear the case, the Princeton Union Eagle is reporting.

This petition is a response to last month's action by the state appeals court to dismiss the case, which challenges the township's creation of a dive team.

More information about the dive team controversy can be found in our previous coverage, here.

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Learning from St. Cloud's mistakes

Posted at 10:12 AM on July 8, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

Last month the St. Cloud Times ran a series about growth in the St. Cloud area, how it's been affected by the bursting of the housing bubble and where they should head next. Although St. Cloud has a different infrastructure than Baldwin, it's dealing with eerily similar problems -- divisions that have roads built but are missing houses or are filled with empty ones and big questions about how to pay for road and other assessments.

The first two parts of the story illustrate the problem:

Part 1: So many lots, so few houses
Part 2: In stalled developments, disappointed homeowners wait for expected amenities

The next two parts take a look at Avon and a development, called Avon Estates, that dreamed big, but failed. What the division was trying to accomplish is familiar -- rural living with proximity to a large city. That very attitude brought many people to Baldwin during the housing boom. Now, with few houses and a defunct developer, Avon is in trouble.

Part 3: When development stalls, cities are left paying the bills
Part 4: In Avon, debt replaces high hopes

The conclusions offered in the final story of the series are intriguing. It seems the city is still selling itself, trying as hard as it can to attract growth to finish and fill empty divisions while they refine how they work with developers to guard against the kind of debt problems that were created by past development deals.

Part 5: Optimism remains, but cities, builders are proceeding with caution

What the series really makes me wonder is whether it is possible to have something like Avon Estates ever work. There is no shortage of people who want the amenities offered by a city but enjoy the open space and freedom of the country, but is it, ultimately, possible?

And can it work as close to the city as Avon? Or does Avon's failure highlight Baldwin's strength of being truly rural?

Additionally, looking at the immediate financial issues present in St. Cloud made me realize Baldwin has another huge asset: time to figure it all out. It's as if the recession hit a huge pause button on Baldwin's growth, allowing the township to take stock, really think about what it wants to be, and proceed in building and marketing itself in that image.

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A ballfield for Baldwin?

Posted at 6:20 PM on July 6, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

Completing development of Young Park tied for the top desired outcome at last week's visioning session in Baldwin. When you consider that the other top desired outcome was a community center with activities for all ages, it becomes clear that Baldwin's priority is a mixed-use area where neighbors of every age can connect.

While people were excited by the idea of a community center at the visioning session, I also heard concern over the cost of such amenities. Others were throwing out the idea of putting a baseball or softball field at Young Park.

These ideas were floating in my mind while I was down in the tiny town of Whalan watching their softball tournament this weekend. I realized, looking at the simple construction of Whalan's softball field, that something like it could probably be built in Baldwin inexpensively if community members were willing to pitch in to help construct it.

Then the construction of the field could also be a way for residents of many ages to engage.

For ideas of how this could be done, take a look at Whalan's field:

The backstop of the field is comprised of what appear to be old telephone poles holding up simple rows of fencing material that have been bound.

The stands sitting behind the backdrop are also a simple construction. Notches along an angled piece of wood create a place for the bench slats to sit. They are then reinforced with other piece of wood underneath the stands.

The fencing lining the remainder of the field is the same material as the backdrops, but is supported by simple pieces of wood secured into the ground. It's lined at the top with metal piping to create a clean edge and secure the fence.

Take a look at the image that appears at the beginning of this post again. The dugout consists of a simple bench with backrest.

The score-keeping box is a simple stand, with stairs and lattice work to enclose it. Additional fencing has been added, bound by metal piping, to protect the scorekeeper during games.

Whalan also has a small snack stand that resembles an open-air picnic shelter.

Next to the field there's a simple playground, providing activities for young visitors and a small picnic shelter.

Parking is nothing more than an open field.

What do you think, should Baldwin build something similar? Does the simple construction give it rural character, or do you prefer more contemporary park construction?

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Parks, roads, planning in Baldwin residents' vision for future

Posted at 10:05 AM on June 30, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

Tuesday's visioning session brought about 230 adults and 29 children to First Love Fellowship church to talk about Baldwin Township's assets and challenges, while brainstorming for desired outcomes in the coming months and years.

The turnout for Baldwin's visioning session will likely be the biggest of any of the four community sessions the Initiative Foundation's Healthy Communities Partnership is helping orchestrate. Other communities in the partnership include Todd County, Brainerd and Eden Valley.

Residents were not shy about offering up their view of the assets and challenges in Baldwin, one resident going so far as to say there were no assets in Baldwin.

But even among the acrimony at that table, there was politeness while residents worked together, guided by community leaders acting as facilitators to steer the conversation.

Hearty laughter erupted from the crowd when such assets as proximity to Pamida -- which was mentioned to illustrate the rural nature of the township -- and an "excellent cemetery" were mentioned.

"I love Baldwin Township," said Initiative Foundation session leader Don Hickman, "and again, you have so many assets, but also some tough choices."

The desired outcomes from each table intermingled with those from other tables on large pieces of paper, which were then hung along the length of the church. Residents used stickers to show support for their three favorite ideas, systematically and thoughtfully.

In end, the following were Baldwin's top desired outcomes and vote totals:

A community center with activities for all ages -- 45 votes
Complete development of Young Park -- 45 votes
A road maintenance plan -- 35 votes
Preserve township independence through planning -- 33 votes
EMS number signs on driveways -- 30 votes
Remain a township -- 27 votes
Economic and job development -- 22 votes

It's also important to note that two topics concerning a comprehensive plan received a large amount of votes, with "a comprehensive plan for 5 years" receiving 19 votes and "our own planning and zoning" receiving 21 votes. This makes the total number of votes concerning comprehensive planning 40.

Additionally, 40 residents signed up as volunteers in the areas they felt strongly about.

The core team plans to meet July 8 to begin going over this data.

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Ex-urban growth -- a pause or an end? Still unknown

Posted at 12:42 PM on June 28, 2010 by Dave Peters (1 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township, Community Development

As we were exploring issues in Baldwin Township earlier this year, one of the questions that bubbled to the surface was whether it would continue to grow rapidly, or more precisely, whether the growth it saw in the 1990s and the early years of this century would resume post-recession and post-foreclosure crisis.

We kicked the issue around in February.

Since then, foreclosures have continued unabated and there's little evidence of growth. The state demographer's office will put out its 2009 population estimates in a few weeks and it will be interesting to see what trends are evident at the city and township level.

In the meantime, state demographer Tom Gillaspy sends along this intriguing chart based on U.S. Census Bureau estimates of county populations in Minnesota.

Central cities have been growing faster; exurban places like Baldwin Township and suburban places have been growing more slowly. Ex-urbia's growth rate has been falling since 2002, and growth rates everywhere seem to be converging on slightly less than 1 percent a year. That's a significant historic change, Gillaspy says.

But . . .

"Is this a long-run change or a short-run one driven by the housing and job markets? Don't know yet," Gillaspy says.

It's always interesting to read Chuck Marohn on this topic. Put him in the growth-is-gone camp -- here's his latest piece looking specifically at Baxter, near Brainerd, and his contention that planning that assumes continued growth is unwise.

What does a place like Baldwin do in this environment with its roads and other services? What do cities around Minnesota faced with tighter and tighter budgets do if growth is less of an option? How does planning change in a new growth world?

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Baldwin expects big turnout Tuesday

Posted at 10:26 AM on June 28, 2010 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

Baldwin Township residents planning a "community vision" session Tuesday evening say 275 people have responded to an RSVP.

Jeff Holm, township board chair, says he's hoping 400 people attend the gathering at 6 p.m. at the First Love Fellowship church.

This is a chance for township residents to toss out ideas for the community's future and to start setting priorities. MPR News coverage of Baldwin Township earlier this year was aimed at illuminating issues that residents might want to take up, and you can find that work on our Baldwin page.

The Initiative Foundation is supporting the effort and helping people organize, but the main drivers are Baldwin residents involved in a core team that will carry on after Tuesday's idea session.

Brooke Walsh will be blogging about the process here on Ground Level and you can also track things on the core team's Facebook page.

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Farms and suburbs collide in Agriburbia

Posted at 2:43 PM on June 25, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township, Local Food

When Colorado developers Quint and Jenny Redmond set out to create more sustainable suburbs, they uncovered one big obstacle -- the carbon footprint being left in the wake of transporting food to suburbs.

So they came up with a development in which food is grown locally that they call Agriburbia.

The idea of a development that devotes its green space to farming food for its residents may sound a little odd, but what if it could work?

Farmstead, an Agriburbia being developed in North Carolina, acts as a good case study to explain how these communities function.

Like many developments, Farmstead incorporates a variety of housing types -- from single family residences to town homes -- a playground, watershed and green space. But Farmstead's playground is in the middle of an orchard of fruit trees, and its green spaces, including backyards upon resident request, are mixed vegetable and fruit farms.

Instead of hiring landscapers, housing association funds pay farmers to tend the land. The food is then sold at an on-site farmer's market and the profit returns to the HOA. Residents who choose to dedicate some of their yard to farming can either consume the produce, or apply the money earned from its sale to their HOA fees.

The houses are designed to be energy-efficient and are required to contain root cellars for storing harvested food.

This kind of development not only provides locally-sourced food for its residents, but also allows for unique learning experiences for both children and adults -- such as opportunities to help on farms and the ability to see first hand where their food comes from farm-to-table.

When you consider that even urbanites are starting to turn their Twin Cities yards into farms, with organizations like Backyard Harvest's guidance, it becomes hard not to see Baldwin's open space as a possible local food source.

What do you think? Is Baldwin township a good place for Agriburbia?

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A marketer's view of Baldwin

Posted at 7:30 AM on June 24, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

When planning for the future of a community it is important to first know who lives in that community. Most of that information is gained from everyday conversation with neighbors or in visioning sessions like the one coming up Tuesday, but it can also be important to know how those outside of Baldwin view the township.

The marketing firm Claritas theorizes that the communities in which people live dramatically affect their purchasing habits and has developed a series of categories they call segments to define different demographic groups. Their website allows you to look up any zip code in the U.S. and find the set of consumers that live there.

What do they have to say about Baldwin? The following are the descriptions for the five segments of people they estimate live in the area:

• The New Homesteaders are "young, upper-middle-class families seeking to escape suburban sprawl [and] find refuge in New Homesteads, a collection of small rustic townships filled with new ranches and Cape Cods." These 25-44 year-olds live in households with kids and lead child-centered lives.

• Fast Track Families have parents age 35-54, with multiple kids living at home. They have "the disposable income and educated sensibility to want the best for their children. They buy the latest technology with impunity: new computers, DVD players, home theater systems, and video games. They take advantage of their rustic locales by camping, boating, and fishing."

• Country Casuals are baby boomers age 46-64 who have older children not living with them. "Most households boast two earners who have well-paying management jobs or own small businesses. Today these Baby-Boom couples have the disposable income to enjoy traveling, owning timeshares, and going out to eat."

• Greenbelt Sports are 55+ with high incomes who thoroughly enjoy the outdoors. "Few segments have higher rates for pursuing outdoor activities such as skiing, canoeing, backpacking, boating, and mountain biking."

• The Mayberry-ville segment is comprised of people 55+ trying to live a simpler life that hearkens back to TV shows, such as Andy Griffith. "In these small towns, upper-middle-class couples like to fish and hunt during the day, and stay home and watch TV at night."

What do you think? Does your household fit any of these descriptions or have they missed the mark? What do you think this says about the types of businesses that would be attracted to the area?

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Getting youth involved

Posted at 7:30 AM on June 22, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

There is no shortage of great ideas in Baldwin, but there is a shortage of volunteers to help foster those ideas into reality. Adults are usually targeted as possible volunteers, but youths can also play an important role in building community.

High school students and even those younger can help with a variety of tasks, from organizing to hands-on work, like these Montana teens that helped build a Habitat for Humanity House.

No only does this kind of work help Baldwin grow, but it also helps youths feel engaged in their community and gives them a chance to learn from the task they are doing while connecting with their neighbors young and old.

There are even grants specifically designed for young people looking to make a difference in communities great and small, such as the Do Something Growth Grants, which gives out $500 to one youth-generated project each week. Details on how to apply for the grant are available on their website.

With summer in full swing, now is the perfect time for young community members to get involved.

Youth of Baldwin, what kinds of things do you want to see here? What kinds of skills can you contribute to community growth?

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Baldwin dive team lawsuit dismissal upheld

Posted at 2:41 PM on June 16, 2010 by Dave Peters (1 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

The state appeals court has upheld an earlier dismissal of the lawsuit a Baldwin Township resident brought to challenge the creation of the township's dive team, the St. Cloud Times is reporting.

The suit was brought by former supervisor Paul Vollkommer. You can find Ground Level's earlier post on him and the controversy here.

Here's the court's full discussion of Vollkommer's case, which was filed in July 2008.

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Headwall hearings arouse core issue

Posted at 7:30 AM on June 17, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

Angry residents gathered at Baldwin's Town Hall for this month's headwall hearings claiming their disgust at the intrusion of government into their lives and some even asserting that the headwalls and other decorative items Baldwin had stated were in the right-of-way were actually on private land.

It turns out some of those items were, in fact, on private land. Additionally, Baldwin has learned from lawyers that there may be more room for how the township chooses to interpret the law than previously understood.

As a result, Baldwin is suspending the August 1 deadline for removing the headwalls. At their July 12 meeting, the town board will set a date for a future meeting in which they can create a policy about right-of-way infringement.

"What we are probably going to do is go after the very big boulders and we're not going to nitpick the little things," Town Board Chair Jeff Holm said.

The hearings floated some of Baldwin's core issues to the surface. Many of the township's residents moved to and love Baldwin for its lack of city control and the ability to use their land, for the most part, as they wish, without constantly having to seek permits.

Some residents thought Baldwin should take a wait and see approach with the headwalls, waiting until something happened that would necessitate their removal before doing anything and letting any resulting lawsuit hammer out the details.

But, Jeff says, the poor planning that put Baldwin in the situation it is in today was created by that hands-off approach.

"Now I am really interested to see what happens June 29 [at the visioning session]," Jeff said. "Is it all going to be like that," with residents wanting to wait and see, rather than move forward with changes?

When people moved from the cities up to Baldwin, they thought they were escaping the type of issues that required strict regulation, Jeff says, "but, really, they brought the issues with them, it's just the enforcement that hasn't been there."

This identity crisis is at the core of Baldwin -- a desire to have better planning, but a large group of residents who are appalled by too much government involvement.

As Baldwin continues to better enforce the regulations it already has and begins to create plans for the future, it will walk this tightrope.

Come share where you sit on the sliding scale between Baldwin evolving into something new and Baldwin maintaining the identity of what already exists here on the blog and at the June 29 visioning session.

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A partnership for parks

Posted at 7:30 AM on June 16, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

Funding for parks and trails can be hard to come by even in the best of times, let alone in the current climate where budgets are being scrutinized.

Recognizing that bigger entities are more likely to gain access to funding than individual municipalities, Baldwin has joined with area communities to create a regional parks board that will help maintain a cohesive vision for parks and trails in the greater Princeton area.

The Rum River Resource and Recreation Board currently consists of representatives from the towns of Baldwin, Greenbush, Princeton and Livonia as well as the City of Princeton and the Princeton School District.

In addition to opening up new funding opportunities, the group will work to create and maintain a unified parks and trails system that can work synergistically to support the region's economic and environmental health, while drawing visitors to its outdoor spaces.

The group grew out of a grass-roots effort spurred by citizen interest and funding from the non-profit 1,000 Friends of Minnesota, which is working to help Minnesota communities maintain a balance between rural and urban areas in their development.

Baldwin's representative, Jim Oliver, meets with the group monthly to discuss topics such as a planned bike trail along the old railway corridor throughout the area.

This summer the board will be developing a plan for regional parks, trails and open spaces.

This is just one area in which these communities can work together to create a shared resource. What others are out there?

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Residents trying to create visions in central Minnesota

Posted at 7:30 AM on June 8, 2010 by Dave Peters (1 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township, Community Development, Todd County

Tonight is the first of four "community visioning" sessions planned by residents working with the Initiative Foundation in four central Minnesota communities.

Residents in Todd County, where one out of six people is over 65 years old, are gathering at 5:30 p.m. at the community center in Browerville to focus on the challenges and opportunities of maintaining service and quality of life as the community ages. Check out our video, audio and text coverage of Todd County at Ground Level's Todd County web page.

Next up, on June 22, is Brainerd, where residents are likely to focus on the high unemployment and high rental rate in the city itself, as opposed to the more prosperous lake country surrounding Brainerd.

On June 29, residents of Baldwin Township in Sherburne County, will tackle the questions of growth, planning and the foreclosure boom that has been lowered on many communities in the outlying regions of Twin Cities exurbia. Find out more at our Ground Level Baldwin page.

Then on July 20, residents in Eden Valley will hold a similar session, looking at the general issues of how small, rural towns compete and survive.

All four places are participating in the Initiative Foundation's Healthy Communities Partnership, a program that provides training, expertise and cash incentives for residents trying to grapple with issues that can make their communities better places to live. MPR News' Ground Level has conducted a pilot project by providing news and information in two of the communities in an effort to increase the level of engagement among residents.

In each case, the "visioning session" is an opportunity to let anybody in the community have a say in what issues residents want to address. It begins a process that will narrow those suggestions down to a manageable few and then allow a core team of residents to take action. A key to success is that the team have a broad spectrum of support from business, education, local government and other interests.

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Commuter bus plans already underway

Posted at 7:08 AM on June 10, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

It turns out the idea of bringing a bus to Baldwin is nothing new. Jim Oliver and Jeff Holm have been working for over a year on the prospect, studying what other cities have done and talking to various bus lines to gauge interest in a commuter bus that would run from Milaca to Elk River where passengers can take the Northstar line to downtown Minnepolis.

"I checked with the bus company in [Princeton,] and they were excited about it," Jim said, but there are still obstacles to overcome.

In order for the service to be cost-effective for passengers, cities and townships partaking in the service would need to help supplement the cost. So far Princeton and Baldwin are willing to help, but Mille Lacs County is not.

"When I first started it was the first week the Northstar ran," Jim said. Now that the line is more popular, he thinks there may be more interest in a commuter bus.

As Jim continues planning the nuts and bolts of scheduling and cost, they are also pursuing broader goals.

They're hoping to host a transportation summit, drawing together local city and township officials, various transportation experts and politicians this summer.

"I think it would be extraordinary that a township would be the one to step forward ... instead of it being one of the cities or some other group," Jeff said, "It's a little more grass roots."

Jeff envisions using the Princeton park-and-ride as the bus stop at first, but has big plans for an eventual commuting hub.

He'd like to use a chunk of land at the intersection of County Road 9 and I-169 to create a transportation hub and nearby town square. The hub would be accessible by trails that are already in the works, including a trail along the old railway corridor, so commuters could choose to ride their bike down Baldwin's trail system to get to the hub.

Additionally, Jeff would like to see the town square become home to a few businesses and other amenities, all in walking or biking distance of the transportation hub and trail system.

Right now, it can be hard to entice commuters to spend locally when they pass myriad big box stores on the commute home. Having a downtown next to a trail system and commuter hub would encourage local spending.

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Native Baldwin: Prairie or forest?

Posted at 9:16 AM on June 4, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (1 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

A collection of palm trees used to line the street in Princeton. They were a gift from the millionaire and later imprisoned drug-smuggler Casey Ramirez and part of a history the town would rather forget.

But for years Baldwin Township board chairman Jeff Holm remembers seeing them in town during the warm months. During the cold months, they were placed inside to shelter them from the hostile Minnesota winters.

The point of this story, Jeff says, is that if Baldwin really wants to do something with its land, residents can do almost anything. It's all a matter of how much effort it takes to maintain its plants and open spaces.

The more native its vegetation, the less effort it will take to keep open spaces vibrant. But there is some disagreement over exactly which plants are native to Baldwin. It matters as residents try to figure out what to plant in their yards and in the township's open spaces.

Is Baldwin home to prairie or more suited for young forest? It turns out there are arguments on either side of that and I'll explore them in this post and another to follow next week.

Up first, the prairie position:

The history of Princeton and Baldwin has been well-connected to their forests and early logging that was done here. But according to Josh Richardson of Baldwin-headquartered Prairie Restoration, the area has always contained a variety of flora.

"Sherburne County, in general, is a real mosaic of different plant community types," he said.

His research shows that prairie in the area has shifted in location over time dependent on climate and wildfire. Pollen records suggest that cooling trends in the area expanded forest, while warming trends encouraged prairie growth.

And so it is in a wax and wane of forest and prairie that Baldwin has found itself.

"Obviously Baldwin township is not a good place to grow turf grass," he said. But prairie thrives in the area.

"Prairie grasses and prairie flowers are very deep-rooted and well suited to the soils in Baldwin Township," He says. "The deep roots allow them to thrive even in the heat of the summer," with minimal watering and maintenance.

The crux of the argument is that if there is evidence in pollen and observational records that prairie has been here in the past and prairie grasses seem to thrive here, then prairie belongs here. Therefore, it is one of types of plants Baldwin should consider in restoring open lands and residential backyards.

Check back next week for the notion that Baldwin was really less prairie than you might think.

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Baldwin's land: the foresters' soil solution

Posted at 9:02 AM on June 7, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (4 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

Baldwin sits at the convergence of two different worlds, at least from a soil perspective. This drastically affects the vegetation that is native and will thrive over time.

Most of the township sits squarely in the Anoka Sand Plain, with a small piece in the southeastern corner along Sandy Lake in the Elk River Moraine.

What plants are native to the Anoka Sand Plain is a point of contention between foresters like Steve Nelson, who allege the soil composition calls for young forests and small plant specialists, like Prairie Restoration's Josh Richardson, who claims prairie grasses are native. I discussed the prairie side of the argument in a post last week.

"The trouble is is that nobody had ever identified where the [prairie] oak savanna was in the Anoka Sand Plain," said Nelson, and it turns out none of it is in Baldwin Township.

In fact, according to recent soil samples of the 650,000 acres of the Anoka Sand Plain only 5% is prairie oak savanna and all of it is along the edge of the plain.

This is because the Anoka Sand Plain is the refuge from what was once a string of glacial lakes that pushed coarse, heavy sand to its shores, depositing lighter, fine sand in its center as it dried out. The coarse, sandy soil is known as mollisol among soil specialists; the fine sand that encompasses the majority of Baldwin is called entisol.

The piece of Baldwin in the Elk River Moraine is comprised of Alfisol, or old forest soil, which is also more suited to trees than prairie.

From there, the argument becomes simple for foresters: soil type depicts the vegetation that belongs within it.

Mollisols are a mix of coarse sand and organic matter in which prairies are meant to grow. The organic matter is renewed by wildfires or controlled burns, which help prairies restore themselves.

Entisols consists of basically nothing but fine sand and are only suitable for young forests. They do not benefit from controlled burns.

This seems like just a battle between academics until you consider what is at stake -- millions of tax dollars that have been spent over the last 20 years to restore prairie oak savanna throughout the Anoka Sand Plain in many places where Nelson says it never belonged in the first place.

And doing so in places such the Sherburne Wildlife Refuge -- which is comprised primarily of entisol soil -- has led to an increase in oak wilt disease that Nelson contends threatens native trees in other areas within the state.

The oak wilt problem is compounded by several factors. Natural Oak Savanna is comprised of a variety of oak types, but burning entisol soil that contains a variety of oak seedlings kills the seedlings. Then, as northern pin oaks are replanted, the non-native oak savanna becomes dominated by one type of tree, otherwise known as a monoculture. This monoculture is more susceptible to disease, especially once the bark of its trees have been scoured by fire.

Instead of controlled burns in these areas, foresters like Nelson recommend passive oak wilt control.

"This sounds like letting nature take its course, but it actually means speeding up nature taking its course via harvesting, usually up to a cover type change," Nelson writes.

When it comes down to it, foresters like Nelson are simply arguing that restoring prairie where it doesn't belong is not sustainable. Native prairies should renew themselves overtime, but prairies planted in entisols will not.

What plants does he recommend for Baldwin's open spaces, as well as the average resident looking for sustainable plants for their backyard?

The majority of Baldwin is well suited for mixed oaks, hardwoods and conifers such as red, jack and white pine, as well as red cedar forest.

The Southeastern corner near Sandy Lake is well suited for mixed deciduous and coniferous trees, such as quaking aspen, spruce, white pine, basswood, sugar maple, northern red oak and balsam fir.

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Who's in the toughest shape when local aid vanishes?

Posted at 3:31 PM on June 1, 2010 by Dave Peters (4 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township, Community Development, Local government finance

Who in Minnesota should worry most as state and federal officials put the squeeze on money that goes to local governments?

To name names:

That's the conclusion of Chuck Marohn, who in March joined our MPR News Ground Level public forum panel on Baldwin Township and whose planning and consulting group has now ranked Minnesota's cities on how vulnerable they will be if and when local government aid continues to shrink.

That's a prospect that is becoming an assumption among leaders around the state and nation, by the way.

Marohn's group simply calculated how much of a local property tax increase Minnesota cities would have to levy to replace the money coming from state and federal governments.

As the top of the list indicates, some small towns are clearly in the toughest shape, by his analysis. In the Top 50, only eight have populations over 1,000. The biggest of those is Chisholm, on the Iron Range, where Marohn figures the elimination of state and federal help would force a property tax increase of more than $2,400 on a house worth $100,000, unless spending dropped or revenue was found elsewhere.

Marohn's conclusion in the report Vulnerable Cities:

State funding of local government activities has waned, placing intense pressure on cities to reduce services and raise revenue using their primary source of local funding: Property taxes.

He goes on to analyze the tax-and-spend divide this way:

• It's a revenue problem because property taxes are clumsy, regressive mechanisms that create a direct disincentive to more efficient land use. It's a spending problem because we as citizens are accustomed to consuming local police protection, clean water and well-maintained streets which we do not fully fund through local property taxation.




• It's also a productivity problem. The most vulnerable Minnesota places produce local tax revenues that are less than what voters there demand. Using state and federal subsidy to meet core public needs is a way of addressing inequities, perceived or real. It also effectively tables discussion of how communities need to redesign their physical layout, infrastructure, or human capital to fund a higher percentage of total public services consumed.

In a phone conversation this morning, he went so far as to suggest that one way to interpret the problem facing rural towns is that an inability to cope without state and federal help is an indication that metro areas are now subsidizing the small town life so many people (including him) cherish.

On the other hand, he offers more creative ideas than simply whacking away at the budget and saying sorry to residents. Local sales taxes and better comprehensive planning are two. But in the end, he says, the reality is some cities just won't be viable in the 21st Century.

Maybe, he said, it's a choice between hospice care and a new model based on smaller scale economies, not big infrastructure.

If that's true, what principles will determine who lives and dies? Proximity to regional centers? Strong leadership? Tax base upheld by some large corporation? An entrepreneurial spirit? More cooperatives?

Marohn writes the Strong Towns blog about small town issues. You can find the city ranking here and if you want to look up a specific city, use this list.

Is there another way to interpret this analysis? Is there a role in some small towns for the big infrastructure approach to entice a big company?

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Could a parade put Baldwin on the map?

Posted at 9:34 AM on June 1, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

One of Baldwin's maintenance trucks rolled through Zimmerman's parade Saturday, sparking interest in the June 29 visioning session.

Look for the truck again in Princeton's parade at 6 p.m. June 10.

One of the advantages of living in between two cities with festivals is the ability to share in these celebrations without having to host. But that doesn't mean Baldwin couldn't host its own summer festival in the future.

Perhaps a unique festival or parade could help put Baldwin on the map, like it did for Whalan, MN -- a town of 64 residents which hosts a Stand Still Parade each year. Whalan neighbors the larger town of Lanesboro, which has its own festival.

Whalan's tiny, two-block town draws about 1,500 people to walk around the static parade floats each year. The story of their journey to create the parade is detailed in this chapter of the book, Way Off the Road: Discovering the Peculiar Charms of Small-Town America , by Bill Geist.

Do you think Baldwin should have its own summer festival or parade? What pieces of Baldwin's history could be celebrated?

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Baldwin pushing residents to get rid of driveway walls

Posted at 8:28 AM on May 28, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

Small retaining walls known as headwalls, driveway markers and other decorative items encroaching on road right-of-ways have been illegal for years, but Baldwin Township hasn't forced the issue with residents until now.

One hundred and sixty five letters were sent out to residents recently informing them of the encroachment and providing the state statute that makes them illegal and a description of how to fix the problem. The letters even included pictures of the offending items -- anything from circles of stones around a mail box to light poles and large boulders.

Two years ago the Town Board made a push to get rid of the dangerous headwalls, but after sending out letters the push lost momentum.

Then last year the board made a commitment that "if we are going to start something we need to bring it to fruition," said Board Member Jay Swanson.

Hearings where residents can voice concerns and ask questions about headwall removal will be held at Baldwin Town Hall June 8 and June 14 from 7-8 p.m.

If residents don't remove items, the township will do the work and send a bill.

Many residents are not happy about this.

But the push to remove these fixtures isn't a local initiative.

"This is a state law and that is throughout the entire state of MN --anywhere and everywhere. It doesn't matter where you go," said Swanson.

The average Baldwin Township road has a right-of-way easement of 33 feet measured from the center of the road. Nothing should be placed within the easement, which is designated to provide space for the road, water drainage and utilities.

Headwalls and other items residents place in easements not only cause problems when maintenance needs to be done on cable, gas and buried telephone lines, but can get in the way of snow plows and even leave residents liable for lawsuits.

Swanson gave an example of a child riding a bike down the road who crashes into a big boulder in the easement at the edge of a resident's driveway and is injured.

"[The residents] have taken on all of the liability [for the accident] and I don't think people know that," he said.

Technically, if the township doesn't push to get rid of these fixtures, it could be held liable, as well.

Swanson also pointed out that if people had checked where they were allowed to build prior to placing items in the easement they would have avoided this problem.

He urges people considering property improvements to contact Cathy at the Town Hall by calling 389-8931 or Sherburne County to get more information about where they can legally build.

As residents begin to remove the items, he also wants to remind anyone planning to dig to call Gopher State One Call at (800) 252-1166 or visit the service online. The free service not only provides information about where to dig but will prevent residents from being liable for digging up buried lines should it occur by accident.

Some residents have headwalls that they can remove themselves with nothing more than a wheelbarrow, but others may need to hire heavy equipment. If multiple residents need to hire help to remove items in the right-of-way, perhaps they can make it a joint effort, sharing the fees and equipment. If you're interested, leave a comment and get connected with others.

What do you think about headwalls?

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Evolving the Baldwin commute

Posted at 9:23 AM on May 24, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

The folks over at the Minnesota-based Strong Towns blog are asking tough questions about the development of towns of all sizes. In their recent post, The Cost to Cities of Auto-centricity, they discuss how revamping cities from a small town model to a current suburban model has weakened towns by making their residents beholden to cars.

Cars which, they point out, come at a high cost.

The American Automobile Association estimates that if you tally up purchasing price, gasoline and maintenance, it costs about $9,519 a year to operate a medium sized car driving 15,000 miles annually. That number jumps to $11,085 for four-wheel-drive SUVs, and even more if you consider the average 24,000 mile yearly commute to Minneapolis from Baldwin.

Writers of the Strong Towns blog are asking: what if a two-car family could become a one-car family who uses the money they've saved to purchase a better house or improving the one they have. This would raise the tax base.

What if that one-car family spent that money in the local economy? What if the option to be a one-car family attracted new residents Baldwin or enticed current residents to stay?

Of course, the reality is that even if Baldwin residents want to give up their cars and use public transportation to take the Northstar Line into the city, they still have to get to the Elk River station first.

But what if Baldwin had a bus that connected with the Northstar line, like the one running out of St. Cloud?

Perhaps Princeton, Baldwin and Zimmerman could work together to share the cost of a bus, which would provide service to the three communities.

Even without finding a way to manage a bus route, Baldwin could help its commuters facilitate car pools by having a section of their website that helped riders connect. Or by adding links to sites like eRideShare.com, which already do this. The website also helps connect people seeking non-communting ride sharing options.

Taking public transit has its own costs -- less freedom for the traveler and fees per ride. But comparing apples to apples, it does save money to commute this way.

Combining the cost for riding the bus (using the St. Cloud line figures), riding the Northstar Line and then the Light Rail once you get downtown to reach a final destination the total yearly cost to travel 5 days a week is about $5,400. That's over $4,000 in yearly savings.

Is that enough to inspire you to give up your car and take public transit? How do you think Baldwin can help its commuters deal with increasing transportation costs?

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Heeding the paradox of choice in exurban planning

Posted at 10:14 AM on May 17, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

Big box stores, such as Target and Walmart, are beginning to re-think the way they do business by providing fewer products instead of more.

They're heeding the theory of the paradox of choice, which states that contrary to popular belief, more choice doesn't lead to greater happiness. Instead, too many choices overwhelm a customer, making them spend so much time agonizing over which item is best they are eventually dissatisfied with the whole experience, including the resulting product.

Why is this good news for Baldwin?

For one, it's more proof that industry in Baldwin doesn't need to try to compete with industry everywhere else. Small town businesses don't need to have the variety of big boxes if they choose to focus on quality items and making the entire experience satisfying instead.

On a broader scale, it makes me think about land use in Baldwin. For some there is a temptation to model suburban and exurban development after metropolitan development. To make sure everyone has everything they want in close proximity to where they live.

But being mindful of the paradox of choice, perhaps it's better to think more about what people need and how the topography of Baldwin interacts with that, than providing them with everything they think they want.

Yes, good development puts people in walking distance of area assets, but Baldwin's assets aren't just future stores. They're open spaces, wet lands, trails and the absence of the overwhelming amount of man made buildings you find in cities or suburbs like Maple Grove.

What assets do you see in Baldwin and how can the township use those as it moves forward?

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Share a meal, idea at Baldwin's visioning session

Posted at 9:43 AM on May 14, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

Baldwin's Initiative Foundation Core Team met last night to continue planning for the upcoming June 29 Community Visioning Session.

They finalized the design for the invitations to the event, which will be arriving in Baldwin residents' mail boxes in a few weeks.

The visioning session will be a time for residents and Baldwin business owners to meet their neighbors over a shared (and free) meal, then break into smaller groups to discuss the township's future.

Even childcare will be provided at the event.

The community visioning session will be held June 29 at 6 p.m. at First Love Fellowship Church.

What kind of things would you like to hear discussed there?

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Reinventing the bedroom community in Baldwin

Posted at 9:04 AM on May 12, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (1 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

Dale Norby is asking how you change the nature of a bedroom community while working with other members of Baldwin Township's Initiative Foundation Core Team to plan an upcoming visioning session, which will be held June 29.

The Core Team is knee deep in the tiny details it takes to make an event work that hopes to draw hundreds of residents -- location, food, advertising -- but they're not losing site of the lofty, over-arching goals that are the inspiration for the session.

One of the assets that drew many people to Baldwin is its commuting distance to the city. But as gas prices rise, housing equity falls and urban renewal begins back in the city, some wonder where that leaves Baldwin. How can a township adapt to become a different kind of bedroom community?

A community from which you could commute, but don't have to. A community that uses the resources it already has to build up local industry.

Perhaps home businesses are part of the answer. Buying locally, instead of from the myriad of retailers lining the commute home from the city is another piece. But before residents can buy locally, they have to know what is available locally and those services need to be competitive with services they'd get elsewhere.

This all starts with ideas. Come share yours June 29.

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Musing in Florida about Baldwin and Princeton

Posted at 3:32 PM on May 7, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (1 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

In Florida in the dead of winter you'd expect Minnesota to be the last thing on the mind of Greg Lonsky of Princeton. But he began thinking about Baldwin Township and Princeton after picking up a local paper, The Naples News, and finding this article.

In the opinion piece, Michael V. Reagen (President and CEO, Greater Naples Chamber of Commerce) urges residents of Florida's Collier County to look past the hardships caused by the current recession and see it for its possibilities.

"Now is the time to dream, to plan and recreate our local economy," he writes.

This inspired Greg because he saw the struggles of Collier County mirrored in Princeton and Baldwin.

"We are not alone in this battle to make our community (that includes all the associated townships and counties) sustainable and long lasting," Greg writes.

Perhaps working together both communities can find greater success.

Greg thinks this collective community needs to:

• increase its visibility.
• market its location.
• market its services.
• draw new business to town to increase employment, which will increase the tax base.
• stop in-fighting between city services and offices and township growth.
• encourage people to spend locally.

Greg was once part of a Princeton group of business people that were working to reinvigorate Princeton, Baldwin and other surrounding townships and counties, much like the one described in the Naples story. While that group eventually disbanded, Greg advocates working together now as they did in the past.

"I think we should start the process all over and do what is necessary, regardless of turf and ownership. If, and that's a big if, we don't work together, we will sink. And then the real finger pointing starts," Greg writes.

"It doesn't make a difference which side of the political fence one is on; this is for everyone."

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Baldwin turns out for clean up

Posted at 3:13 AM on May 5, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

Baldwin's annual Clean Up Day brought 201 vehicles filled with unwanted items to the town hall May 1, where residents could unload four tires and one appliance for free, as well as other items for a small fee.

Toward the end of the event, a mountain of tires and an electronic store's worth of TVs sat in the parking lot being whipped by the wind as a few volunteers rummaged through the rubble to uncover hidden gems.

Zach Good (pictured) pulled a sled out of a pile of what other people had considered trash because he saw value in it.

"They don't make them like this anymore," he said.

While his fellow workers teased Zach for being a pack-rat as he recounted the items he'd salvaged from past Clean Up Days, I began to think about the value in what he and the others digging through the junk were doing -- taking a second look to uncover useful things all around them.

If the Township takes a second look at what it already has, what will it find?

What skills and ideas do Baldwin residents already posses that can help the community plan for its future? I wonder how many people here have ideas they dismiss as "junk" that others would find value in.

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Welcome to a new voice for Baldwin

Posted at 1:13 PM on April 29, 2010 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

You may have noticed a new name on the blog post earlier today. I'm very happy to say that MPR News has enlisted Brooke Walsh to write for Ground Level about all things Baldwin. Good food for thought today about Thomas Jefferson and who, really, people should be making decisions for.

Brooke lives in Princeton and is well tuned into the issues we've been talking about here regarding growth, planning, annexation, incorporation, preserving community values and the sense of identity in Baldwin Township. She'll be writing about those things and more, particularly tracking how folks move ahead with the Initiative Foundation's process for creating a community vision and setting priorities.

Her background includes news coverage for Thisweek newspapers covering Savage, Farmington and other communities with some issues similar to those in Baldwin Township.

Brooke's presence on the blog signals how interested MPR News is in maintaining a place where the conversation can continue. If you live in Baldwin Township, don't be surprised to hear from her, and you can always reach her by commenting on this blog or by emailing her directly at brookewalsh@gmail.com.

(For readers in Todd County, MPR News' other focus so far with our Ground Level project, look for a similar addition soon.)

So, welcome, Brooke!

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Jeffersonian advice for Baldwin residents

Posted at 9:19 AM on April 29, 2010 by Brooke Walsh (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

Former Baldwin Township board member Elly Rittenour has been thinking about what Thomas Jefferson might have said about Baldwin Township while reading a letter he wrote to James Madison entitled, "The Earth Belongs to the Living."

"The earth belongs in usufruct to the living; that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it. The portion occupied by any individual ceases to be his when himself ceases to be, and reverts to the society. ... The earth belongs always to the living generation. They may manage it then, and what proceeds from it, as they please, during their usufruct."

Archaic language and all, to Elly, this quote concerns the fact that while today's decisions about the future of Baldwin will primarily effect its youth, most of the decisions makers are, as she put it, closer to the grave.

"I still think Jefferson's thoughts can be applied to whatever burdens may visit the next generation of Baldwin and how township planning should be built specifically for those below my generation. I think that is the legacy of the older generation," she writes.

How can communities engage their youth and guard for the future of younger generations as they plan? How will Baldwin manage the mixing of the experience of its older members with the new ideas of its youth?

Elly states, "this is a bigger picture and it's a picture not for your life, but for your kids' life. What is best for that?" she said. "I want to think about those yet to come; what is good for them?"

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Baldwin, Todd, Eden Valley and Brainerd zero in on getting people involved

Posted at 9:07 AM on April 16, 2010 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township, Todd County

Residents of four central Minnesota communities were in Little Falls again on Thursday to get more training on how to get their neighbors involved in taking up civic challenges.

The four places -- Baldwin Township in Sherburne County, Todd County as a whole and the cities of Brainerd and Eden Valley -- are participating in the Initiative Foundation's Healthy Communities Partnership. The goal is to get residents involved in whatever problems they think should be tackled -- better planning, for example, or a more vibrant business district, more parks and trails, a stronger safety net for old people.

People from each community zeroed in on their issues, showing photos of what people like and what they want changed and starting to figure out how to bring friends and neighbors into the process.

In the next couple months, each place will hold a public gathering to give residents a say in what issues get tackled and an opportunity to help tackle them.

If you've been following this blog, you know that Minnesota Public Radio News' role here has been to focus on two of the places -- Baldwin Township and Todd County -- and tell some of the stories that illuminate challenges. We're testing the notion that our journalism can enhance people's engagement in their community.

Jeff Holm, one of the prime movers of this effort in Baldwin Township, says he's pleased with the enthusiastic group involved so far. Next up for them is a session at 7 p.m. 6 p.m. (note the UPDATED time) Wednesday to discuss how to recruit more community members to that "vision" session this spring.

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More evidence Baldwin's growth has stopped -- for now

Posted at 8:46 AM on April 12, 2010 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

The halt to growth in Baldwin Township that Curtis Gilbert wrote about here in February is a Twin Cities-wide phenomenon, the Star Tribune reports today in a story by David Peterson and Katie Humphrey.

The new evidence comes in the latest U.S. Census Bureau population estimates for counties for 2009. Sherburne County, which was adding some 3,000 people every year in the first half of the decade, grew by less than 600 in the year ending last July.

The big question Baldwin residents have been asking remains. Is this halt permanent or merely a pause? Has something fundamental happened to demographics, gas prices and house prices or are we seeing only a temporary change that will reverse itself when the economy improves? You can find experts on both sides of the question in the STrib story.

And in either case, how should people plan for the future?

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The Huffington Post on Baldwin

Posted at 8:04 PM on April 5, 2010 by Jennifer Vogel (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

Somehow we missed this Huffington Post column from a few weeks back discussing Ground Level's adventures in Baldwin Township.

Writes F. Kaid Benfield, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's Smart Growth Program and contributor to HuffPo's "Village Green" blog:

"Its story is like that of many rural and once-rural places in America: First, a small community is populated with independent souls...who are drawn to the easy-going, peaceful lifestyle... But, over time, others become attracted to the same lifestyle. And, if the town is located within driving distance of a job center, some of the newcomers are commuters, reaping the rewards of a city or suburban job on weekdays while coming home in the evenings and on the weekends to a more bucolic environment.
This, essentially, was the promise of the great suburban migration of the 1950s and 1960s. As readers of this blog know, that migration exacted an environmental, economic, and social price."

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UPDATE: From Baldwin to Greater Minnesota: Whither the Big Box?

Posted at 10:19 AM on April 6, 2010 by Dave Peters (2 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

NEW INFORMATION ABOUT TODAY'S VIRTUAL CONVERSATION. JOIN US AT 3 P.M.

Baldwin Township has a decision to make. Residents there love the rural nature of the town and want things to remain the same. But some leaders say that infrastructure improvements need to be done - and that might mean inviting in development.

MPR's live online forum will tackle the question: How do you know when the "big box" development is right?

On Tuesday at 3 p.m., we invite two representatives from Baldwin Township to talk about how their community is grappling with decisions about land use and development. They are:

Jeff Holm, town board chairman for Baldwin Township.

David Patten, member of the Princeton Area Visionary Committee

Then at 3:30 p.m. we'll invite two panelists who can broaden the question out to greater Minnesota. They are:

Chuck Marohn, president of the Community Growth Institute in Brainerd

Ben Winchester, demographer and sociologist specializing in rural development at the University of Minnesota's Extension program

You have a place at the table too. Just pose a question to the panel and join the conversation.

THIS IS THE ORIGINAL POST FROM MONDAY

Minnesota Public Radio's focus on Baldwin Township continues with an online discussion. And the topic of this virtual forum was prompted by comments at the Baldwin community discussion held last month .

Growth, of course, was the topic of discussion, more specifically, how to handle infrastructure in light of the growth. Everything from incorporation to merger to annexation with the nearby city of Princeton came up.

But many residents who attended this forum talked about keeping the rural character of Baldwin as unchanged as possible. They talked about the fresh air, seeing the northern lights and not needing street lights.

The rub of maintaining that bucolic setting with needing public financing was articulated at the end of the meeting by Town Board Chairman Jeff Holm. He pointed to the main road that cuts through Baldwin - Route 169. He asked, what's going to happen if it's not maintained?

Jeff Holm: "Access to employment - that's what really going to matter. Maybe we do need some job growth and some industrial growth....(A)re we going to be able to go up and down 169 and travel to the Cities, economically. (So) that people are going to want to live here."

If you lose the commuters, your tax base erodes, Holm said. A few minutes earlier Charles Marohn, president of the Community Growth Institute in Brainerd, put a finer point on this. He called this the clash of two values.

Charles Marohn: "(A)s a town supervisor you are pulled in two different directions. We want to keep taxes low and we want to keep services where they are at. The problem is, the big box becomes the solution then. Because what happens is the roads are deteriorating and we don't have the tax base to maintain it."

So the question we'll pose on Tuesday at 3 p.m. is this: "How does a small community decide when to beef up its tax base by doing commercial/industrial growth?"

Holm and Marohn will be in the mix. We've also invited Ben Winchester, a demographer and sociologist for the University of Minnesota Extension program, who studies rural areas. And we'll have someone else involved in Baldwin planning to round the talk.

You are invited too. Just plug in your email address for a reminder to attend online. And then make sure to have questions and comments.

Come back to this blog post on Tuesday afternoon and join the discussion.

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Baldwin, Princeton and a good use for vacant homes

Posted at 2:57 PM on April 5, 2010 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

I caught Baldwin resident Dale Nordby thinking out loud on the phone this morning about the differences between Baldwin and Princeton and about a possible use for the many foreclosed homes in the township. I urged him to write me a note about his thoughts and here it is:

My first thought was; What keeps Princeton and Baldwin apart? Physical? Town/country, Structure/no structure? People? Old/young, independent/dependent, renters/owners, natives/new residents, political? Part time government/full time professionals, bottom up/top down, motivation? Business interests/family interests, control spending/control taxes.

My other thought; I read in the Princeton paper that there was a large turnout for a Habitat for Humanity meeting to help build a couple houses in Princeton this summer. My first reaction was that it was great to see so many generous people in these hard times. Then I thought, don't we have too many houses now? I don't want to rain on the parade but wouldn't it be better if we could use these resources to clean up and fix up the vacant ones and move someone in?

Thanks, Dale. Anybody have anything to add on either point?

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Likes? Dislikes? Take a picture in Baldwin Township

Posted at 10:57 AM on April 5, 2010 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

Baldwin Township residents looking to map out a future for the community are looking for help in the form of pictures.

A team of residents involved with the Initiative Foundation's Healthy Communities Partnership this year is going through a training process to help it organize its thoughts. Part of that is to come up with 18 photos of things that are assets in Baldwin and six photos that show challenges the community faces.

What do you like and not like about Baldwin. Take a picture and email it to the township by clicking here.

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More sign up to fight invasive weeds on Little Elk Lake

Posted at 12:01 PM on March 28, 2010 by Dave Peters (1 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

More lakeshore property owners have signed up this year to help battle invasive species of weeds on Little Elk Lake in Baldwin Township.

Dean McDeavitt, president of the Little Elk Lake Improvement Association, says 35 people have signed up via association meetings and the association website, about a 30 percent increase from last year.

The plan is to treat for curlyleaf pondweed in May, Eurasian water milfoil in June. McDeavitt says he thinks better involvement in association meetings and some new blood on the association board have gotten more people to sign up. There were flyers up at Ridgewood Bay, too.

McDeavitt also said about 15 people turned out on March 6 to help remove garbage and other debris from the ice before spring sent it to the bottom of the lake.

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Princeton annexation talk stirs again

Posted at 1:39 PM on March 26, 2010 by Dave Peters (1 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

After a period of calm over the notion of Princeton annexing land in Baldwin Township, the city's economic development authority raised the possibility of charging newly annexed property owners a lower tax rate until they received full city services.

It's an idea that has been tried elsewhere, like Elk River, as the Union-Eagle's Joel Stottrup writes in this story.

There's a lot of time to weigh in, since the matter would go to the city planning commission and then the full city council.

Thanks to Sue Hix for calling my attention to the Union-Eagle story.

You can check out some other nearby township-city relationships at Ground Level: Baldwin.

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Baldwin Township is on Facebook, Twitter

Posted at 10:23 AM on March 25, 2010 by Dave Peters (1 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

Jeff Holm, Baldwin Township board chair, has launched a page on Facebook to track how residents are getting engaged with the Initiative Foundation. Become a fan by going here and then join in.

You can also now follow Baldwin Township on Twitter. Go here to follow and learn, for example, that the core team of residents working with the foundation to plan for the future is meeting at 6 p.m. April1 at Town Hall. Everybody's welcome to attend, welcome to join the core team.

This is fantastic, yet more opportunity for Baldwin residents to stick their oars in the water and then stay engaged. Here at Ground Level we'll monitor those platforms, reporting on them here and joining in when it makes sense. See MPR News' multimedia work on Baldwin Township.

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Is another foreclosure wave heading for Baldwin?

Posted at 3:18 PM on March 23, 2010 by Dave Peters (4 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

As we showed in our reporting on Baldwin Township, more than 200 homes were foreclosed upon in the past three years.

Now comes the suggestion that a new wave of foreclosures is pending and that it will hit exurban areas like Baldwin particularly hard.

Thanks to the Minnesota Home Ownership Center for pointing out some Minnesota Housing Finance Agency findings.

The ring of exurbia is where the number of non-prime adjustable rate mortgages that haven't reset is concentrated. A stubborn unemployment rate in those areas hasn't helped.

Does this ring true? Anybody see it happening yet?

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70-plus people facing the future

Posted at 8:40 AM on March 19, 2010 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township, Todd County

The Initiative Foundation's effort to help four central Minnesota communities come to grips with what residents want to deal with was in full swing Thursday in Little Falls.

While the swollen Mississippi River was roaring through town a couple blocks away, more than 70 residents of Baldwin Township, Todd County, Eden Valley and Brainerd spent the day getting training from the Initiative Foundation's Dan Frank and Don Hickman. The foundation's Healthy Communities Partnership tries to help people identify the assets they have where they live and then figure out how to set priorities to make something happen.

They go back at it with another training session in a month and then each community will hold a session to let anybody in town participate in the process. It was good to hear the folks from Baldwin Township were making use of the MPR News material from our public forum March 4.

Similarly, I hope the folks sitting around the Todd County table yesterday will be able to build on the reporting we're doing now. We expect to partner soon with local newspapers in the county, to build a Todd County web page and to hold a forum in the county May 6.

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Help us define Ground Level

Posted at 8:50 AM on March 22, 2010 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township, Brainerd, Todd County

If you've been reading this blog you know that MPR News' Ground Level project is focusing lately on Todd County. But we're also thinking through what happens after that and who in the long run is the audience and what is the subject matter.

I had coffee at the Stomping Grounds coffee shop in Staples last week with Cheryal Lee Hills, executive director of Region Five Development Commission, to help me think about those questions.

First, who's the audience for our journalism?

The easy answer is anyone interested in how Minnesota communities try to maintain or revive their vibrancy. At this point, it strikes me that includes two groups.

One is the people on the ground, engaged or getting engaged in what's happening where they live -- people like Jeff Holm, Sue Hix, Jay Swanson, Elaine Phillippi and Elly Rittenour in Baldwin Township who are trying to figure out how to plan better in their 36-square-mile community.

But a second, broader part of our audience is made up by the surprisingly large and not entirely coordinated industry of people and organizations trying to help folks like those in Baldwin Township and Todd County. We're working with the Bush Foundation and the Initiative Foundation, of course, but there's a million more out there -- other large foundations like Blandin and Wilder, smaller community foundations, non-profits like 1,000 Friends of Minnesota and Minnesota Design Team, the University of Minnesota's extension operations, governmental entities like Hills' that do planning for multi-county areas, local governments and more.

Thousands of Minnesotans are engaged in helping people build livable communities, trying to bring out the potential. The web of connections among those people is complex. As Hills told me, sometimes her regional development commission flies at 100,000 feet and offers planning and coordination; at other times it's on the ground implementing and providing money for specific projects. It all depends on what's appropriate for the time and the topic, she says.

I'd like to think Ground Level can help in the conversation.

So, second question, what's the subject matter of Ground Level's journalism? My answer today (again, thanks to Hills for the metaphor): Anything that helps people who are getting their hands dirty.

That might be literal where a community garden is playing a part in a sustainable food network among farmers and local buyers. But it's meant to focus on real people on the ground in real places. It doesn't mean simply saying a committee was formed; it means looking for ways to illuminate, to inform, to enlighten, to show people things they perhaps didn't know about their communities.

I think that happened in Baldwin Township, where we've gotten encouraging feedback from residents figuring out how much they want to do collectively to deal with unplanned growth.

It can happen in Todd County, where residents are wondering how to maintain a sustainable community as the proportion of elderly grows steadily.

In Brainerd, residents are exploring how to take better advantage of their natural setting. In Crosby, residents want a better downtown. In Cook County and elsewhere, people are pushing for greater access to broadband.

In general, we're interested in any place where people are thinking hard about creating livable, sustainable places to live, tackling the big questions of transportation, energy use, housing, land use, food use -- in other words, wherever Minnesotans are taking action to make better places to live.

I'm eager to hear whether this resonates with readers, both those with their hands dirty and those who are trying to help them.

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Baldwin meets peacefully for once

Posted at 7:38 AM on March 10, 2010 by Curtis Gilbert (3 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

About 75 Baldwin Township residents showed up for the shortest and most civil annual meeting in recent memory Tuesday night. (MPR Photo/Curtis Gilbert)

"No fireworks," Baldwin Township Board member Jay Swanson marveled as the gavel fell.

Baldwin's annual meeting, infamous for chaos and acrimony, was a swift, orderly and civil affair this year. The 75 residents who showed up approved the township's $784,000 budget on a unanimous voice vote.

The meeting lasted less than two hours. Last year it dragged on for more than three and devolved into a shouting match at several points.

"This was wonderful. This was exactly what this township needed," Swanson said.

Unlike cities where the city council determines the budget, township residents set their own taxes in an annual meeting.

Baldwin's 2011 tax levy will be 3 percent less than this year's. It's the second year in a row the township voted to decrease its budget.

Much of the savings will come from zeroing out the township's contribution to the retirement fund for its volunteer firefighters. Baldwin supervisors recently discovered they had overfunded the account by more than $150,000.

Baldwin also decreased its road and bridge budget by $5,000 to $385,000.

"We have to make do with what we've got," Baldwin maintenance supervisor Terry Carlile said. "I'm satisfied with how [the budget] turned out."

Baldwin also held elections for the township Board today.

Jim Oliver was elected to a second term, beating back challenger Dean McDevitt on a vote of 188 to 103.

Tom Rush won the seat vacated by retiring board member Bryan Lawrence in a four-way race. Rush received 124 votes. Carlile came in second place with 77.

All vote totals are unofficial.

The only issue that received significant debate in the meeting was whether to install signs with house numbers in front of every house in the township.

The Fire Department says the signs would aid in navigating the township's labyrinth of cul de sacs during emergency calls.

"This is the only township I know of that doesn't have these signs," said developer and Baldwin resident Dylan Howard, who has built homes in many other townships in Sherburne County.

The signs would cost an estimated $47,000 for materials and labor, and there could be additional costs for maintaining them.

At one point it was suggested that individual property owners should be required to maintain their own signs, if the township installs them.

"And what's the penalty if you don't do it?" one resident asked.

"You die!" another called out as the room erupted in laughter.

Residents voted against raising taxes to pay for the signs, but Board Chair Jeff Holm says the board may look into spending unused funds from other accounts to pay for them.

Like Swanson, Holm was delighted by the positive tone of the meeting.

"I think there's been a turnover here in Baldwin," he said.

He also urged the residents continue that conversation here on Ground Level.

"We encourage you to go on there, post feedback and keep the discussion going," he said.

That's what the form below is for.

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Baldwin conversation audio available

Posted at 7:53 PM on March 9, 2010 by Curtis Gilbert (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

Planning consultant Charles Marohn speaks at the March 4 Ground Level: Baldwin Township event in Princeton, Minn. (MPR Photo/Chris Welsch)

In case you missed last week's Ground Level event at the Performing Arts Center in Princeton, the audio is now available for your listening pleasure.

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If you want to listen to the program on-the-go, you can download a mp3 using this link.

This is a recording of the hour-long conversation at the end of the event. The panelists were:

Charles Marohn: President of Strong Towns and the Community Growth Institute, based in Brainerd.

Sharon Pfeifer: Community Assistance Manager for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.

Eric Hedtke: Attorney for the Minnesota Association of Townships.

Minnesota Public Radio News editor Kate Smith served as moderator.

The audio posted above doesn't include the opening video or multimedia presentation from Thursday's program. But you can watch them both online at the Ground Level: Baldwin Township homepage.

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Advice for Baldwin

Posted at 10:08 PM on March 8, 2010 by Jennifer Vogel (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

One of the experts on stage during last Thursday's lively public discussion was Sharon Pfeifer, a community assistance manager with the state's Department of Natural Resources. She wrote this follow-up note, hoping to leave Baldwin Township residents with a bit of advice for moving forward.

"My message for Baldwin would be:

1. Create a vision and plan that incorporates solid natural resources information. So many developers and local government staff have insisted that holding to the community's vision of itself is essential and helpful to developers.
2. Have patience. Thoughtful change takes time and change is as much a process as an outcome.
3. Seek partners. Don't be afraid to ask for help or feel that by asking for assistance the community will lose control. These challenges are complex and none of us can solve them alone.
4. What Baldwin does matters - to its residents, to Princeton, to the entire surrounding area, and to those downstream because many land use impacts of development follow the flow of water.

What do people think? Do any of Sharon's recommendations resonate especially well? We didn't talk a lot on Thursday about conservation or natural resources. Do people think those are vulnerable in Baldwin Township? What partners might be most useful to Baldwin residents?

Let us know by commenting on this post.

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Baldwin turns out to talk about tradeoffs

Posted at 11:52 AM on March 5, 2010 by Dave Peters (1 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

(MPR photo/Chris Welsch)

Close to 150 people turned out at Princeton High School last night to see MPR News' Ground Level forum on the future of Baldwin Township. More important, they came to talk about where they are heading. It was great to see the response to our work.

You can see the Nikki Tundel video portrait that started the evening and watch the audio-slideshow piece that reporter Curtis Gilbert performed live. And we'll post the audio of the panel discussion and community conversation that ensued, managed very ably by host Kate Smith. (Our full Baldwin coverage, including Jennifer Vogel's four-part series on the township's future, is here.)

Our panelists were Chuck Marohn, a private planner and consultant; Sharon Pfeifer, a community assistance manager with the state Department of Natural Resources; and Eric Hedtke, attorney for the Minnesota Association of Townships. They started the discussion by talking about the values that Baldwin residents have to balance.

Desires for good roads, conservation of natural beauty and a small-town feel don't always coincide with the hope for low taxes.

"People want to maintain what we have right now," said town board chairman Jeff Holm. But he was clear that may not be possible, given the challenges brought by growth. Even if the boom times don't return to this piece of exurbia, residents will be paying for past growth for years to come. Marohn referred to the "Ponzi scheme" of counting on future growth to pay for past developments.

Residents joined in a great and civil back-and-forth. Someone pointed out how low township taxes are compared to those for the county and the school district. Somebody else said, essentially, "Great, but I have to pay those taxes, too, and I need all levels to keep tightening their belts."

Another resident made a plea for professional help to analyze tradeoffs in terms of hard numbers.

Hovering over the debate for some is the question of annexation versus incorporation. As resident Elaine Phillippi put it, "If you make too many mistakes, pfft, you're Princeton."

Said another, referring to past animosity both within the township and between the township and nearby Princeton, "For goodness sakes, people, let bygones be bygones at some point."

One resident captured the tenor this way: "We all would like our slice of heaven to stay just that. But at some point somebody's slice of heaven is going to become a rusted car lot with leaking batteries. We've got to have some rules."

The conversation was very local -- which roads need repair at what cost? -- and at the same time universal -- what do we want to do collectively as a community? Some of the comments would have been at home in any policy discussion. Whether it's Baldwin Township or national health care, the debate isn't entirely different.

Near the end, a woman who had been silent, sitting in the back of the beautiful Performing Arts Center, said, a little plaintively, "I really like it small, the way it is."

The sentiment was poignant and heartfelt and I felt for this longtime resident who clearly loves the place that is her home. But after the previous hour and a half, I think it was clear to many in the room that it was a plea that might not be realistic.

It was great to foster that conversation, and the hope for us is twofold -- that Baldwin residents for their own sakes keep that conversation going and that MPR News is able to bottle what we got to happen and take it to other communities in Minnesota.

Thanks to all who joined in and helped make it a great community conversation.

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MPR's Baldwin forum tonight

Posted at 8:16 AM on March 4, 2010 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

The coverage is online, it's in the paper, it's on the air, and tonight we'll have an actual conversation about the future of Baldwin Township.

MPR is hosting its first Ground Level public forum for residents in and around Baldwin Township in northeastern Sherburne County, about an hour north of the Twin Cities. It's at 7 p.m. in the Performing Arts Center at Princeton High School.

MPR News' Kate Smith is hosting the forum, which we think will run about 90 minutes. We'll start with video and audio work we've produced. But then we'll have a conversation about the choices in front of a community that saw a housing and residential boom in the 1990s and early 2000s and then a virtual halt to growth during the recession.

It's a great chance to learn and to contribute your thoughts. Bring a friend.

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Who tells the story of a place?

Posted at 2:03 PM on March 3, 2010 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township, Todd County

All over the country, local foundations are trying to help residents identify and deal with the challenges communities face -- school achievement gaps, the digital divide, desires to establish sustainable food networks, you name it. Many of these efforts have been in place for years, including the Initiative Foundation program that MPR News has become a partner of this year.

But in the past couple years, those foundations have been getting a harder and harder push by the Knight Foundation to think about providing information about their communities as a key activity if they want democracy to flourish locally. The "information ecosystem" has changed and Knight has been providing millions of dollars for experiments around the country.

I spent a couple days this week at a conference Knight sponsored to keep shining a light on those efforts and to encourage foundations to figure out ways to provide residents the information they need.

Foundation CEO and president Alberto Ibarguen:

"The flow of local news is as important as the flow of jobs, or the flow of traffic, or electricity. It is a resource essential to a properly functioning community - a resource we can no longer take for granted."

There was a lot of talk about new technology tools, of course. But what struck me most is how the nature of a place's storytelling and who gets to provide it is changing.

A foundation in Colorado produced a slick magazine full of data and a narrative pointing readers to the persistent gap between Hispanic and non-Hispanic students. One in Florida created a forum for residents and got a big response from residents after the Haiti earthquake. These are new ventures that take the foundations to places they haven't been before.

Residents telling their own stories, or at least joining in the conversation over what stories should be told, is getting more important. Citizens and non-traditional media are getting into the act.

But even the people running experiments that seem promising worry about sustaining the effort.

This Ground Level project falls right into the middle of that conversation. We want to hold up a mirror where a place's residents are trying to figure out their future. We want to help residents determine and tell their stories. By connecting with the Initiative Foundation, we've been able to settle on Baldwin Township and Todd County as two places to focus for now, and the stories are robust.

Looking ahead, we want to enlarge our view -- to other communities, other organizations, other means of getting people involved in the storytelling. If you have ideas, let us know.

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Case Study: The Annexation of Becker Township

Posted at 8:20 AM on March 3, 2010 by Jennifer Vogel (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

At times, Baldwin Township's relationship with its neighbor, the city of Princeton, has been contentious. And talk of orderly annexation--the melding of the two communities--has been met with enthusiasm, outrage, and deep shrugs.

Former town board member Elly Rittenour argued in favor of annexation in a blog post here last week. "Mainly, I feel annexation will provide more and better services, provided and administrated by professionals," she wrote.

The combining of two communities is a momentous process that can take decades, even after an annexation agreement has been reached. Generally, the terms are up for negotiation, so each situation is unique.

Becker Township and Becker city, both in Sherburne County, agreed to orderly annexation in 2007. Says Kelli Neu, Becker's Assistant City Administrator and Community Development Director, the arrangement affords the township significant control over planning decisions. The joint planning board is stacked three to two in favor of the township. "This is something unique," she says. "We really put a lot of power in the township's hands."

In addition, says Neu, the city has agreed that it won't annex property unless the landowner or the state makes a request, or the city already owns the land. Perhaps most appealing to township residents, the agreement includes a two-tiered tax system: Those who receive city services like sewer and water pay more than those who don't.

The city benefits too. Becker is paid on a contractual basis for township planning services. The city also gets to have a hand in designing surrounding properties, including those that aren't presently part of the city but likely will be in the future.

"We have a community where our Becker residents are just that," says Neu. "They don't know if they live in the city or the township." She says perhaps the greatest benefit of the annexation and planning agreement is bringing township decisions home, rather than leaving them up to Sherburne County, where township residents sometimes didn't feel heard.

"We wanted our Becker residents to make the decisions for Becker," Neu says, "rather than having them made down in Elk River at the county. We wanted to bring it local."

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New Fire Chief in Baldwin

Posted at 4:46 PM on March 1, 2010 by Jennifer Vogel (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

(MPR photo/Chris Welsch)

Members of the volunteer Baldwin Township fire department got together on Sunday night and elected a new roster of leadership. Seventeen members showed up for the meeting and chose former assistant chief Mike Rademacher to be the new chief, replacing Brian Torborg.

The new assistant chief is Larry Boeke, formerly a department captain. Four new captains were chosen as well in a vote that ran 14 in favor, zero against, and three abstaining.

According to Jim Oliver, who serves on the fire department as well as the township board, "I think we needed a change and it was expected. Hopefully we can go in a nice positive direction now. The new chief will bring communication and transparency, something that was needed."

Rademacher was nominated to stay on as chief but declined, according to Oliver. Several others were nominated for various positions within the embattled department but declined as well.

Department leaders have been chosen by appointment some years and election others. "The board voted to put back elections this year," says Oliver. "We wanted people to have more input. It's a good barometer of the department, to find out what the rank-and-file think of the chief."

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A voice for annexation to Princeton

Posted at 5:21 PM on February 26, 2010 by Dave Peters (1 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

The growth pause in Baldwin is taking off a little of the pressure -- for now -- regarding annexation to Princeton or incorporation. But an email just rolled in from Elly Rittenour, a long-time Baldwin resident and former town board member, on the topic.

Here, with her permission, is what she had to say:

I just heard on television news that the state is starting to promote ideas concerning duplication of services provided by townships, cities and counties. I have always supported orderly (25-30 year) annexation and this new attitude makes it even more unlikely the state would approve incorporation, at least one that would protect Baldwin's present borders. What would be left of Baldwin? I wonder.....

Baldwin Fire Department is most apprehensive about annexation because of its territorial attitude, as most fire departments share. In the long run everything would be fine. It's just change.

Mainly, I feel annexation will provide more and better services provided and administrated by professionals. Certainly, road upkeep would improve, not only by more staff and tools, but also by getting more road funding from the state, due to a larger, more populated city.

Something the board could do now is to separate the position of clerk/treasurer into two separate positions. The clerk is needed every day at the hall, but the treasurer could be part-time.

I'm hoping the exposure your reporters, etc. are providing for Baldwin Township will instill a better sense of professionalism on our board. Whatever happens I appreciate your coverage and interest. I'm also a big fan of the Initiative Fund and have gone through their Healthy Communities Program several years ago. I deeply thank all of you at MPR for your effort in this. Perhaps our township will learn from this experience and other municipalities will too.

I know the question has been kicked around for years in Baldwin Township, but what's the wisdom in 2010 about getting together with Princeton or creating a city of one's own? Add a comment.

And while I'm at it, if anyone has thoughts on any other Baldwin issues, send them my way and I'll be happy to post here.

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Case Study: Livonia's Roadway TLC

Posted at 1:51 PM on March 2, 2010 by Jennifer Vogel (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

(MPR photo/Chris Welsch)

Once the building boom slowed in Baldwin Township, residents found themselves with a swelled population, more than 100 new housing developments, and 80 miles of roads to maintain. The question of how to keep the roads from falling into ruin has been hotly debated.

Livonia, the township just to Baldwin's south, experienced growth as well, and happens also to have 80 miles of roads. But while Baldwin spent around $480,000 last year for maintenance and repairs, Livonia spent quite a lot more, $750,000.

Some might call that crazy. Don Sherper, chair of the Livonia town board, calls it common sense. "The key is to maintain the roads in a good condition for as long as you can and be careful so they don't all go to pot at once," he says. "Because then you really have a problem."

The township has adopted an aggressive program with the goal of stretching the life of its roads from the more typical 20 years to as many as 40 or 60 years. First, it established standards for road construction. "If a developer comes in and puts up a road, it has to be up to township standards or we won't accept it," says Sherper.

He says the town requires a two-layer system. "We like to see the first layer put down and go through one freeze and frost cycle, and then put the second lift on. That way, any poor spots or sub-surface problems might pop up and you will catch them."

If a road starts to fall apart within three years, the developer has to come back and fix it. "This is the only township I know of that has a three-year warranty on its roads," says Sherper. The arrangement is backed by a letter of credit from the developer.

Once the roads are built, the town engages in intensive maintenance, a system of close monitoring and regular repairs. "Each year we have a road tour to evaluate the conditions of the roadways," says Sherper. "Every two years, we have a road rating report with the township engineer. We go over every road."

"You can postpone the reclaiming of a road if you do certain things like crack sealing and maybe chip sealing within a certain period of time," Sherper adds. "And you delay the major expense of reclaiming the road, grinding it up and repaving it. That's the major cost. And that is what you want to prevent. That's what hopefully our capitol improvement plan helps us do."

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Case Study: Nowthen Becomes a City

Posted at 3:32 AM on February 28, 2010 by Jennifer Vogel (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

One of the questions before Baldwin Township is whether it should become a city. I spoke with Corrie LaDoucer, the treasurer and clerk for Nowthen, which incorporated in 2008, about that city's smooth transition. And the few bumps along the way.

Says LaDoucer, "There were sewer lines coming in our direction, so we thought it was probably better to protect ourselves." Nowthen, formerly Burns Township, has 4,400 people and is surrounded by the cities of Elk River, Ramsey, and Oak Grove. Though no annexations had occurred, township residents figured it was best to secure the borders just in case.

"Elk River had some pretty big developments coming in that bordered us," LaDoucer says. "Ramsey sewer and water was starting to come further north. We weren"t sure what would happen."

Four Minnesota townships have successfully incorporated since 2000, according to the website for the state's office of Municipal Boundary Adjustments. Two others petitioned: One case was denied and the other was dismissed.

"Ours was one of the easiest incorporations our attorney had ever seen," says LaDoucer. "None of the bordering cities were against it." She says the town board wrote up a proposal and presented it to the various city councils to smooth the way. "We had not one person who was against it," she says. "Not even our residents."

The situation in Nowthen differs from that in Baldwin Township, mainly because even before incorporation, Nowthen provided some city services and had its own comprehensive plan. It also had an independent downtown with a restaurant and gas station. "The majority of our functions were already running like a city," says LaDoucer. "We had our own planning and zoning. We did everything a city does."

There have been a few hitches. Nowthen's leaders are scratching their heads trying to figure out how to maintain low taxes while paying for policing - a service that counties typically provide for townships.

But, says LaDoucer, the hardest aspect of becoming a city was getting people to stop calling the place Burns and start calling it Nowthen. The name is an homage to James Hare, an area postmaster from the 1800s, who often began and ended sentences with, "Now then." Says LaDoucer, "If it had been the city of Burns it wouldn't have been as difficult."

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Leave the roads unplowed?

Posted at 11:26 AM on February 24, 2010 by Dave Peters (1 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

I thought of an icy patch I hit in the dark last night on Sherburne County Road 9 when I read this Dan Gunderson piece at MPRNewsQ this morning.

The biggest single expense in Baldwin Township's budget has to do with the 80 miles of roads the township maintains. What if nobody plowed them?

As Dan's story reveals, Nordick Township in Wilkin County in northwest Minnesota has fewer than half the road miles Baldwin does -- 32. This winter they're plowing only eight of those miles and relying on residents' four-wheel drive vehicles and tractors to solve the problem.

Is that an option for budget-strapped Baldwin or anybody else?

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Good turnout in Baldwin last night

Posted at 9:11 AM on February 24, 2010 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

I talked with about 40 Baldwin Township residents Tuesday evening at the town hall, joining Dan Frank of the Initiative Foundation for a "kickoff" session that will start people participating in the foundation's Healthy Communities Partnership.

Dan explained the foundation's process for getting people involved and providing training to enable residents to take on issues that concern them. My role was to explain MPR News' Ground Level project and to urge everybody to attend our forum next week -- 7 p.m. March 4 -- at the Performing Arts Center at Princeton High School.

The forum will be a good show -- a Baldwin video by Nikki Tundel from around the township, a presentation by Curtis Gilbert on a particular example of growing pains and a conversation among thoughtful folks, all hosted by MPR's Kate Smith. Please come and bring friends. There will be cookies.

Baldwin resident Dylan Howard told me I was the first MPR person he'd heard from yesterday who wasn't asking him for money. Glad to provide a little relief. And I love swapping outstate Minnesota tales with people who know about the Gibbon ballroom and Franklin's Catfish Days.

Look for Part 3 of Jennifer Vogel's series on growth and its consequences in the Princeton Union-Eagle today. The story, which will be available shortly on our Ground Level: Baldwin page, shines a light on how the recession and its foreclosures have changed the game in Baldwin Township.

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Case study: Big Lake, where city and township get along

Posted at 5:50 PM on February 25, 2010 by Jennifer Vogel (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

(photo courtesy of biglaketownship.com)

For a number of years, Baldwin Township has been grappling with questions revolving around incorporation, planning and annexation to Princeton. So, as part of MPR News' Ground Level project, we've spoken to people in other townships to see how they make things work.

Big Lake Township, at just under 8,000 residents, is the largest township in Sherburne County and the second largest in the state. According to township board chair Bob Hofer, it has no plans to incorporate and is not in favor of orderly annexation with its neighbor, the city of Big Lake, which has about 9,000 people.

And yet, Big Lake and Big Lake Township have found ways to work together, says Hofer. The two share a fire department. They also co-own two industrial parks that contain restaurants, a hotel, and a medical and dental clinic. Both the expenses and the tax benefits are split 50/50. "It's much easier and cheaper to get along than it is to fight each other," says Hofer. "Only the lawyers win when you fight."

The first joint project was "created from scratch" after a township business, Remmele Engineering, which makes parts for aerospace and medical companies, wanted to expand but needed city services to do so. Remmele required more water than a rural well could provide, explains Hofer. "They stayed in the township and took on city water and become a joint venture."

To maintain the industrial parks, the entire city council and the entire township board meet once every two months to hash over various issues. "It's a good working relationship," Hofer says. "The city and the township could be considered pretty much married. There are differences that come up, but they are settled amicably for the most part. At least people don't throw things."

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Planning Guru on TPT

Posted at 8:25 AM on February 23, 2010 by Jennifer Vogel (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

Baldwin Township has experienced incredible growth, but it's not alone in thinking about the consequences of that growth. More than 100 subdivisions have gone up since 1995, and some feel the resulting landscape is disjointed, a patchwork of housing developments with too little green space and too many roads to maintain.

The new trend in development circles is conservation planning, which aims to protect local flavor and natural resources, while still accommodating growth.

If you're interested in learning how other towns and cities have experimented with conservation development, tune in to TPT on Thursday, Feb. 25, at 8 pm for "Land Matters: Rethinking Main Street."

The program features a talk by Randall Arendt, a Rhode Island-based conservation planner who was brought to Minnesota last year by 1000 Friends of Minnesota. The broadcast will be followed on March 4th by another TPT-televised Arendt presentation, "Land Matters: Smarter Subdivisions."

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What would de Tocqueville think of Baldwin Township?

Posted at 9:16 AM on February 22, 2010 by Curtis Gilbert (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

My only disappointment with the Ground Level project is that by March 9, we'll have moved our focus to Todd County. And that means I may miss Baldwin's annual meeting.

Baldwin held its 2009 annual meeting in its maintenance building -- the same place it stores the snow plows. (Image Courtesy of Baldwin Township)

That's where the town's residents set the next year's property tax levy.

When Baldwin was smaller they were sleepy affairs.

"I have been a part of going across the road and getting a husband and wife to come over to the Town Hall, so somebody could make motions and second them, so we could have an annual meeting," said former Supervisor Jess Hall, who served 27 years on the town board.

But they're not sleepy anymore. Gavels are pounded. Voices are raised, and the spectacle can drag on for three hours or more.

For your listening pleasure, I assembled some audio highlights along with what some Baldwin residents say about the meetings:

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Some residents are so turned off by the acrimony, they just stay home. But others argue they provide an important forum to keep town leaders in touch with the residents.

"I love the annual meeting," former Supervisor Elly Rittenour said. "It is chaotic, but it always is when you have 60 people discussing something. At least it gets discussed."

Alexis de Tocqueville would agree.

"Local institutions are to liberty what primary schools are to science; they bring it within people's reach; they teach the people how to use and enjoy it," he wrote in his famous treatise "Democracy in America."

Some of America's Founding Fathers shared that admiration of small-town direct democracy. But not all of them did.

"The smaller the society ... the smaller the number of individuals composing a majority, and the smaller the compass within which they are placed, the more easily will they concert and execute their plans of oppression." James Madison wrote in the Federalist Papers.

Who's right?

"I think they're both right," University of Minnesota law professor Myron Orfield said. "And I think that's the genius of American democracy."

One of the choices facing Baldwin is whether to take a step away from the direct democracy de Tocqueville idealized. If Baldwin becomes a city -- either by merging with Princeton, or attempting to incorporate -- it won't need annual meetings any more.

City councils can set their tax levy directly; they don't need to put it up for a vote.

Will Baldwin lose something special if the annual meeting goes away? Or is it something worth losing?

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Union-Eagle Publishes Second Story

Posted at 4:55 PM on February 17, 2010 by Jennifer Vogel (1 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

The second installment of my four-part series about Baldwin Township is in the Princeton Union-Eagle this week. The story discusses some of the obstacles Baldwin has encountered in building a sense of community. Participation in local government is less than robust: Fewer than 10 percent of registered voters typically cast ballots in the township's elections.

"It's hard to use the word 'community' when you have very few people who participate," says town board chair Jeff Holm. He wants residents to speak up on issues such as how best to manage the town's infrastructure and how to plan for future development projects.

These concerns led Holm, on behalf of Baldwin, to apply for a Healthy Communities Partnership grant from the Initiative Foundation. "We have to figure out what we are fighting for," he says.

This story, along with the first installment, can also be viewed at our Ground Level: Baldwin website. Through the Union-Eagle series, the website, and a public forum on March 4 at the Princeton High School's Performing Arts Center, MPR News offers residents a chance to engage in debates about your community.

So, let us know what you think. Are we asking the right questions and are we finding the right answers? Let us know by commenting on this post.

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Dive team controversy divides Baldwin

Posted at 8:44 AM on February 16, 2010 by Curtis Gilbert (2 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

If you want to meet the most controversial person in Baldwin Township, all you need to do is show up in the K-Bob Café in Princeton at about 6:30 on any given morning. Paul Vollkommer will be there.

Former firefighter and township Board Supervisor Paul Vollkommer is engaged in a lengthy legal battle with Baldwin.

"It keeps the arteries well lubricated," he says with a wink and a laugh.

Vollkommer is suing the township, its Fire Department, its clerk and four past or present members of the Board of Supervisors over the Fire Department's now-defunct dive team.

The team was formed in 2005 with the goal of performing water rescue operations. Vollkommer argues it was unnecessary, illegal and so fraught with sloppy bookkeeping it's impossible to account for all the tax dollars spent on it.

As a former volunteer firefighter, Vollkommer also claims the department violated whistle blower laws when it fired him in 2007. The issue divided the young Fire Department, and a number of firefighters quit in solidarity with Vollkommer.

"This isn't about me. It's about what happened," Vollkommer says. "It's an issue of safety and public waste."

Vollkommer's crusade against the dive team began four years ago, when he was elected to the Board of Supervisors.

First, he brought the case to the attention of the State Auditor. The Auditor's office told the township to improve its accounting standards and reimbursement processes. It also advised Baldwin's Fire Department to leave the diving to the County Sheriff. The town board disbanded the dive team in 2007.

Vollkommer wasn't satisfied. He pushed for a criminal investigation, but the Sheriff's office found no charges were warranted. A judge refused his petition to appoint a special prosecutor, so he went to civil court instead. He lost there, too, and now Vollkommer is appealing.

"They won't take 'no' for an answer, even though it's been proven that there was nothing criminal that went on," said Supervisor Jim Oliver, who was a member of the dive team and is a defendant in the lawsuit. "When you look back, no, we should not have [formed a dive team,] but there was no criminal intent."

Oliver says at first the controversy had some positive effects, because it forced the township to improve its bookkeeping. But he argues the cost of the lawsuit far outweighs the $51,000 that was spent on diving equipment.

Others have harsher things to say.

"I have never seen more destruction to a community done by one person ever in my life," Supervisor Jay Swanson said of Vollkommer. "It completely shut down the board. What's illegal? What am I going to get in trouble for now? I'm not going to stick my neck out ever, because holy cow, the ones who did are screwed."

Swanson is not named in the lawsuit, because he wasn't on the Board of Supervisors when the dive team was formed.

Jess Hall was on the board at the time, but Vollkommer didn't sue him, because they agreed on the dive team issue. Still, Hall doubts Vollkommer will succeed in court.

"I advised Paul from the start, 'Forget it, Paul. You're not going to accomplish anything with a lawsuit. All it's going to do is cost a bunch of money and cause some concerns in the township. And in the end, nothing's going to change,'" Hall said. "But Paul being Paul, he went ahead with it anyway."

And Vollkommer isn't giving up.

"I'm a very principled person," he said. "This is about recovering the money and making sure it never happens again."

An appeals court will hear Vollkommer's case on March 24.

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Baldwin's Bounty Hunters

Posted at 9:06 AM on February 12, 2010 by Jennifer Vogel (3 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

(MPR photo/Chris Welsch)

On the first Monday of each month, Baldwin Township clerk and treasurer Cathy Stevens shows up for work an hour early in order to partake in an age-old tradition. She opens the doors to the town hall and collects and counts severed gopher feet, paying bearers $2 per pair of front paws. "It's the fresh ones I don't like," she says. "They are still bleeding."

This is not Stevens' favorite part of her job. "I'm such an animal lover," she says, "I even take ladybugs and throw them outside." In order to reap the bounty, which was raised from $1.50 in December, the feet must be attached in pairs to a piece of cardboard. "That's so they are easy to count," says Stevens. "So it's not just someone dumping out a peanut butter jar."

The practice, which is authorized by the state, dates back to when Baldwin was more rural, when gopher holes tripped up livestock and farm equipment. Today, it serves as a source of much-needed income for some residents. The town paid out a total of $1,293 in 2009, according to Stevens. "There are times when there are so many that come in I have to give somebody a 1099, which means they made over $600."

After the feet are counted, Stevens says she puts them in a plastic bag and stores them in the garage, in case there is a discrepancy. Then she throws them away. "It used to be the old farmers who would come in," she says. "Now it's a variety of people. More parents are teaching their kids how to trap. It's a way for kids to make money."

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Ground Level: Baldwin page goes live

Posted at 5:12 PM on February 10, 2010 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

We've launched the Ground Level: Baldwin Township page. So far, we have the first part of our series that the Princeton Union-Eagle is publishing, a slideshow tour with township board chairman Jeff Holm, a map from the original 1855 land survey and a series of links for more information.

We'll build on this in coming weeks by adding stories, including audio, video and graphics. The most recent Baldwin-related posts from this blog will appear on the page as well. So if you bookmark the website you can always use it to get back here for the full blog.

As always, tell us what you think.

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Coverage launches in Princeton Union-Eagle

Posted at 2:26 AM on February 10, 2010 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

Check this week's Princeton Union-Eagle for the first of a four-part series about Baldwin Township that Minnesota Public Radio News is creating as part of this Ground Level project.

We've had reporters talking to Baldwin residents and others for the past month or so, and the series, by reporter Jennifer Vogel, kicks off with a look at how township residents are pulled in two directions. There's a strong pull to take advantage of the prosperity and economic advantage growth can bring but also to preserve both the natural setting and sense of roominess that brings people to the area.

MPR News will house the series and more material on a Ground Level: Baldwin Township website appearing soon.

In the 1990s and 2000s, Baldwin Township saw some of Minnesota's fastest growth and now ranks as the state's third largest township, with about 6,500 residents. The recession has brought that growth to a halt and posed a number of questions: Will the growth resume some day? If so, should the township take steps to plan for it better? If not, how will people deal with the consequences of the growth that already has taken place?

Through the Union-Eagle series, this blog, our coming website and a public forum March 4 at the Princeton High School's Performing Arts Center, MPR News is offering residents an opportunity to engage in that debate about your community. So let us know what you think. Are we asking the right questions and are we finding the right answers? Let us know by commenting on this post.

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Baldwin board proposes budget cut

Posted at 9:36 AM on February 9, 2010 by Curtis Gilbert (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

The Baldwin Township Board will ask residents to approve a 2011 tax levy of $784,000 at this year's annual meeting -- 3 percent less than the 2010 levy.

Baldwin supervisors Jim Oliver (L) and Bryan Lawrence study the township's 2011 budget. (MPR Photo/Curtis Gilbert)

"It's important to reduce it to show fiscal responsibility, to show that we understand the economic times," Supervisor Bryan Lawrence said. "Everybody's in a tough situation and we need to do our due diligence as well. It will also help us be more efficient."

The board's action sets up the township's annual meeting March 9, where the total tax levy is set by a simple majority vote of residents. Unlike cities, where the city council can approve a tax levy on its own, the town board's proposal is basically a suggestion. The township is the state's third largest, with some 6,500 residents. Partly because of Baldwin Township's size and recent growth, Minnesota Public Radio News' Ground Level project has been focusing attention on it.

The largest proposed cut was the township's contribution to the retirement fund for its volunteer firefighters. The board wants to zero out that budget line, after discovering it had over-funded the program by more than $150,000.

It will likely be many years before Baldwin's 7-year-old Fire Department sees any retirements, but the township had been putting $15-$25,000 into the fund every year.

"It just kept on going and nobody really questioned it," said Supervisor Jim Oliver, a member of the fire department.

The retirement fund surplus would come in handy if Baldwin were to increase its retirement benefit, but Oliver said Baldwin can safely stop contributing for now.

The board will recommend decreasing the road and bridge fund by $5,000 to $385,000. Lawrence pointed out the township has enough carryover funds in the bank to cover the next two years of scheduled road repair projects.

But Terry Carlile, who runs Baldwin's maintenance department, called that road plan "bogus," arguing it puts off repairing Baldwin's most decrepit roads.

"We need to do something with our worst roads first," Carlile said.

Carlile is running for Lawrence's seat on the Baldwin board this year. Lawrence is not seeking re-election.

The board will recommend cutting $4,000 from the Fire Department budget. Board Chair Jeff Holm suggested a cut to the department would "keep them on their toes."

Last year, residents followed the board's recommendation and reduced the tax levy by more than 6 percent.

The levy peaked in 2009 at $864,000 after years of steady increases fed by Baldwin's explosive growth.

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Will Baldwin grow again?

Posted at 8:09 AM on February 11, 2010 by Curtis Gilbert (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

The housing boom that transformed Baldwin Township from farm country to exurbia has ended. This chart, derived from Sherburne County planning data, shows new home construction has virtually ceased.

And in the last three years more than 200 Baldwin homes have gone into foreclosure. That raises the question: When will Baldwin start to grow again?

"Three to four years ago I thought it would have happened by now, and it hasn't" Sherburne County Planner Jon Sevald said.

Sevald predicts that if Baldwin sticks with its current standard of 2.5-acre residential lots, it could expect to max out at about double its current population.

"But when that gets built out it's difficult to say," Sevald said. "It might be 50 years from now. It might be 20 years from now."

Howard Homes, which built hundreds of houses in Baldwin Township over the course of the boom, is down to just five full-time employees. It used to have more than three times that. Owner Dylan Howard doesn't expect Baldwin to start growing again for at least several years.

"A lot of the people that moved out to this area in the last decade or so were people in primarily construction," Howard said. "As you drive through a lot of these houses have a pickup truck with some insignia on the side of it and a ladder rack, and I think because of that, it's going to take growth in a lot of other areas before this area kicks back."

Dylan Howard

But what if the question isn't, "When Baldwin will grow again?" What if it's, "Will Baldwin grow again?"

"If you talk to the Realtors and developers and standard bureaucratic planning organizations, they'll say we're in a lull. After the lull, we will be magically transformed into 1995. We'll see roads with cul-de-sacs and tract housing going up. That's insane," said Charles Marohn, president of the Community Growth Institute in Brainerd. "It ignores what has caused this downturn. It ignores the financial situation the country is in."

Marohn, a planning consultant who works with small towns around Minnesota, predicts tighter credit markets and strained government budgets will make further development in areas like Baldwin impractical.

But Sevald disputes that. He argues the magnet that drew people to Baldwin will continue to draw them there in the future.

"People are still going to want to move out where land is more affordable and where they can get away from other people," Sevald said.

What do you think? Will growth return to Baldwin? How does the answer to that question affect the decisions facing the township?

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Myron Orfield book coming on Twin Cities sprawl

Posted at 10:37 AM on February 19, 2010 by Dave Peters (1 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

Those interested in the Baldwin-Princeton annexation-incorporation debate should look for a new book coming soon from the University of Minnesota's Myron Orfield and Thomas Luce.

"Planning the Future of the Twin Cities" sets a framework for regional planning in the metro area, focusing on the seven-county area but including Sherburne and three other "collar" counties in some of the discussion.

Baldwin Township is at the very northern edge of this 11-county area but has been among the fastest growing by virtue of lying in the Highway 169 corridor, as the book's colorful maps show dramatically.

The authors note the vast number of local government entities in the Twin Cities and the substantial variation in tax and spending levels.

One tidbit: In 2004, the 172 cities in these 11 counties spent an average of $617 per person on services. The 97 townships spent an average of $145 per person, most heavily on public safety and transportation. Baldwin Township taxed at a lower percentage of its total tax capacity than did its township neighbors, the study shows.

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Why I moved to Baldwin Township

Posted at 2:50 PM on February 5, 2010 by Curtis Gilbert (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

As I noted in an earlier post, Baldwin Township has experienced an incredible level of growth in recent decades. Here are some of the people who moved there and why they came.

Sue Wondra
Moved to Baldwin in 1989
"We had young children and we wanted to raise our kids in the country with with what we thought were better morals -- not so much pressure to conform to what's hip and what's current."

Dave Lehr
Moved to Baldwin in 2006
"In the city, my kids were a minority in the school that they went to. There's nothing wrong with that, but they didn't get the help they needed, because the teachers were too busy helping all the other kids."

Gary Butz
Moved to Baldwin in 1993
"I had a one-bedroom apartment in the northern suburbs that was a real nasty place, and it was like $600/mo. And I got this three-bedroom, two-bath, attached garage for $56,000, new."

Jody Link
Moved to Baldwin in 2005
"What drew us to this area was the peace, the location, the solitude. You deal with people all day. You want to go home. You just like your own place. You want to be around people that you choose to be with."

Jeff Dotseth
Moved to Baldwin 1996
"I really enjoy the feel of the country. I like to have green space -- a place where if you want to go for a walk, you can. Maybe I'm selfish. I guess I enjoy privacy."

Use the comment link below to add your story of coming to Baldwin!

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We're starting to look at Todd County, too

Posted at 9:40 AM on February 5, 2010 by Dave Peters (15 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township, Todd County

In the first post on this blog a few days ago, I mentioned the experimental nature of what Minnesota Public Radio News is trying to do here. For starters, we're zeroing in on the people and issues of Baldwin Township, and it's been fun to hear from Baldwin residents both in the comments and via email.

Next week, the Princeton Union-Eagle will start publishing a series of stories by MPR reporter Jennifer Vogel about what Baldwin Township residents are facing as they look to the future. We'll post that and more material on a separate Baldwin web page within MPRNewsQ. As always, tell us what you think.

At the same time, we're broadening our view and starting to look at a second community, Todd County, about 100 miles to the northwest.

As in Baldwin Township, residents in Todd County have asked for help from the Initiative Foundation in order to address some concerns, and MPR aims to do reporting and writing that will shed light and make it easier for folks to get engaged.

Just as we did in Baldwin Township, where housing development, planning and a skepticism of government are on front burners, we've started by asking what's on the minds of people in Todd County, tapping MPR's Public Insight Network.

And we're getting answers: Jobs topped early responses, but demographic changes are clearly on people's minds as well.

Nancy Leasman of Long Prairie pointed to the "empty storefronts" in that city and the loss of jobs in the last year at one of the county's largest employers, RR Donnelley.

"Though the city has built an incubator building with the hopes of attracting new industry, it hasn't happened, yet," Leasman wrote to us.

The mayor of Long Prairie (and the owner of the local bowling alley) Don Rasmussen told us that his city has become quite diverse, and poses a challenge to long-time residents.

"About 1/2 of the current Kindergarten class is of Latino descent. We have people from the Island of Palau, Pakistan, India, and other countries as well as a growing Amish community. The European flavor of our city has changed. Citizens do not understand it and have trouble with the immigration."

"Our county social services are strapped financially and unfortunately the very old are the last to receive help as a result," wrote Corrina Brown who works for the county.

We're planning to ramp up our listening in Todd County in the next few weeks. In the meantime, if you live in Todd County, tell us what you think are issues facing your community.

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Goodbye to Green Acres

Posted at 9:12 AM on February 8, 2010 by Jennifer Vogel (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

(MPR photo/Chris Welsch)

Dave Price, a road builder and baker who moved to Baldwin Township in 1978, has a bone to pick with lawmakers who, in 2008, made it harder to qualify for the state's Green Acres program. "It's all about money," says Price, whose yearly tax on 15 acres has jumped from $46 to $460. "It's about building up the tax base. The county wants to divide everything up and sell it and develop it."

Green Acres was established forty years ago to protect farmers in areas of rapid development. The program gives qualifying landowners a reduced tax rate in order to mitigate the effects of growth and rising land values. This makes it easier for farmers to hang onto their land instead of allowing it to be developed.

Until recently, the program was fairly easy to qualify for. A landowner had only to earn a small amount of income from a property in order for it to be deemed agricultural--a standard that could be met, say, by chopping down some trees and selling wood. But the new language, which took effect in 2009, specifically excludes, "non-productive acres such as sloughs, woodlands and wetlands that are not used for agricultural production."

That description fits an awful lot of land in sandy-soiled Baldwin Township, which is more conducive to Christmas-tree farming than raising corn or soybeans. To some degree, Green Acres was a force for preservation in Baldwin, which has erupted since the mid-1990s with houses and cul-de-sacs. "This will make more people sell their land for development," Price asserts. "Because, why not?"

In response to complaints about the changed law, in 2009, the state created the Rural Preserve program, which offers a similar tax break on property that no longer qualifies for Green Acres. Landowners must gain approval from the county and agree to follow a conservation management plan for ten years in order to reap tax benefits starting in 2011.

Green Acres is just one of the forces determining how Baldwin Township might change in the future. What's been your experience with it? Have your taxes gone up because of changes to the Green Acres law? Will higher taxes push you to sell your property? Will you enroll in the Rural Preserve program?

Let us know by leaving a comment.

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Why kids love Baldwin Township

Posted at 9:02 AM on February 4, 2010 by Nikki Tundel (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

The best part about living in the Baldwin area?

"There's no laws here about riding dirt bikes or four-wheelers or anything."

That's one of the first things 9-year-old Owen Pelarski told me on Tuesday night. I had stopped by his house to interview his parents Butch and Carrie about the place they call home. But Owen had plenty to say as well. When he wasn't trying to get me to play board games, he was telling me about one neighbor's horse and another neighbor's trampoline. (Both the horse and the trampoline are "cool.")

The family was part of the Baldwin boom earlier this decade, people looking for something suburban life wasn't offering them. Owen was 3 years old when his family moved from Brooklyn Center to the Baldwin area. His father Butch just couldn't take the "hubbub of the city" any longer. He craved neighbors like those he's found here -- not necessarily ones with horses or trampolines to share, but ones who are "friendly and not all wrapped up in the rat race."

Butch wanted to be able to walk out his door, jump on his four-wheeler and ride. But in the Twin Cities he had to load his ATV onto a trailer and haul it to some distant trail before he could get started. Like his son, Butch loves that Sherburne County offers nearly 200 miles of trails for four-wheelers and snowmobiles. It's common, and legal, for people to snowmobile out their driveways and straight down to the local bar or over to Sunday morning worship.

Owen's sister Melanie is a fan of the area as well. The 7-year-old told me all about her huge backyard, compete with playground, playhouse and hot tub. (Her father says they could never have fit all that in their tiny yard in Brooklyn Center.) In the non-cold months, the family grows all kinds of things in that huge yard, including peaches, strawberries, tomatoes, cucumbers and peas.

While showing me his Pinewood Derby trophies, Owen shared that his mom and dad let him drive the golf cart around the yard: "You can't do that in big cities."

Shortly after that, Melanie insisted she and Owen be allowed to interview me since I got to interview them. Unable to fight that kind of logic, I fielded their questions. Among their inquires: "Do you like rap music?" "Do you like eating fish?" and "What's your favorite thing to do in the car?"

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Townships by the numbers

Posted at 3:27 PM on February 3, 2010 by Curtis Gilbert (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

A couple of Baldwin residents have expressed surprise to learn they live in Minnesota's third largest township. Here are some other interesting bits of trivia about Minnesota townships I compiled using data from the Minnesota Association of Townships.

As of 2007, an estimated 937,585 Minnesotans lived in the state's 1,786 townships.

The smallest is Hangaard Township in Clearwater County. Population: 7.

The largest is White Bear Township in Ramsey County. Population: 11,802.

The second-largest is Big Lake Township, which like Baldwin is in Sherburne County. Population: 7,787.

The average Minnesota township population is 525.

While the overall number of townships in Minnesota has been declining slightly as they either become or merge with cities, there are new townships created from time to time. The most recent one was Clearwater County's Long Lost Lake Township. It was formed in 2005.

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The Big Commute

Posted at 9:50 AM on February 3, 2010 by Jennifer Vogel (0 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

Those long drives loom large in people's lives--with so much road time, many residents feel hard-pressed to find time for community-related activities.

Until 2001, Hix worked in downtown Minneapolis--50 miles and more than an hour away--as a training and communications manager for National City bank. "I'd listen to the traffic reports," she says. "I had all these alternate routes. It was like doing a brain teaser every day." Her job started at 8:00, but she'd set out so early in order to avoid traffic, she'd usually be there by 7:00. Her bosses loved her.

"My record was two and a half hours to get there," she says.

Then, at the end of each workday, Hix would do the whole thing in reverse. "You didn't want to leave at rush hour, so you'd stay late," she says. "By the time I got home, there was just time to shove in some food and go to bed so I could start all over the next morning."

Got a tale of the big commute you want to share? What are your strategies for beating the traffic? What would you do if you weren't on the road?

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Baldwin Township: A brief overview

Posted at 1:01 AM on February 2, 2010 by Curtis Gilbert (2 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

Our first Ground Level project centers on a place called Baldwin Township. If you've never heard of it, you're not alone. Many people who live there are only vaguely aware such a place exists.

Even so, residents are facing some big issues, many of which they share with other Minnesotans. Here's a brief overview of the place.

Baldwin is a 6-mile by 6-mile square of what used to be mostly farmland. It sits in the northeast corner of Sherburne County, just south of Princeton, Minn. on Hwy. 169.

Baldwin has grown tremendously in the last 40 years. Just 1,100 people lived there in 1970. Today the population is about six times that.

The average Minnesota township has about 500 residents. These rural (or formerly rural) areas of the state are characterized by a low-tax, low-service, direct democracy form of government. Baldwin is the third-largest township in Minnesota.

Some residents would like to see Baldwin become a city unto itself. If successful, that would give town leaders more authority over planning and setting their budget. It would also make it more difficult for the city of Princeton to annex parts of Baldwin, as it has done from time to time in recent years.

Other residents would prefer Baldwin to negotiate some sort of merger agreement with Princeton. But perhaps the largest share of Baldwin residents is oblivious to the township's existence. They have never voted in a township election or given any thought to where the town should go in the future.

That's why town leaders applied for help from the Initiative Foundation in the first place. They want a larger swath of Baldwin's citizens to take part in deciding its destiny.

"The problem is the people don't understand that we're on the threshold of a whole new book, a whole new story for Baldwin Township," town board Supervisor Jay Swanson said. "And what is that going to bring? It's going to bring whatever we want it to."

If you live there, what thoughts do you have about the place's future? If you live elsewhere, what experience or advice would you give residents?

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MPR launches Ground Level; join the conversation

Posted at 4:20 PM on February 1, 2010 by Dave Peters (7 Comments)
Filed under: Baldwin Township

Welcome to Ground Level, a new Minnesota Public Radio project examining people trying to make their communities better places to live. We aim to be on the ground with reporters, engaging residents and exploring ways people want to mold the future..

First off, this is a pilot project and we've just started. So this blog is your invitation to watch and, more important, help out. Talk to us; point us in new directions; tell us if we're going down a rathole. I'm leading the project but when you come back to visit, you'll often find the voices of the other journalists working on it.

Second, we are zeroing in on one particular place to start with: Baldwin Township in the northeast corner of Sherburne County, about an hour north of the Twin Cities. The formerly rural township of 6,600 residents grew rapidly in recent decades and now has more people than the neighboring town of Princeton. It is facing some of the transportation, housing, planning and lifestyle issues that growth can present.

MPR reporters have been talking to people and doing research in Baldwin Township since the beginning of January, hitting the K-Bob Café in Princeton, talking over dining room tables and joining the ice fishing on Little Elk Lake. In coming weeks, we'll start producing material in a number of formats - video, audio and text. Our reporting will be in the Princeton Union Eagle, and we're planning a public forum for township residents on March 4 at the Performing Arts Center at Princeton High School.

The other journalists you'll be seeing on this blog are Jennifer Vogel, a long-time Twin Cities writer and editor; Curtis Gilbert, who has been part of the team producing MPR's Morning Edition; Nikki Tundel, who has turned her considerable reporting skills to video; and Michael Caputo, who brings from MPR's Public Insight Network the talent for assembling and moderating discussions.

A little background about how we landed here: The Bush Foundation and MPR last year formed a partnership to test whether our journalism could enhance the level of civic engagement as a community tries to address things that concern its residents. A short time later, the Initiative Foundation, based in Little Falls, was added to the mix because for many years it has been helping central Minnesota residents do just that.

What if, we all asked, Minnesota Public Radio took its ability to draw people out, to tell stories and to provide insight in a place that was working to explore ways to create a better place to live? You're looking at the beginning of the answer to that question. Can we provide insight that enables residents to take action if they want?

As we tell you what we're up to in Baldwin Township and eventually other communities, we want to hear from people. What makes your place tick? What would make it tick better? What don't you want to lose about living where you do?

Come spring, the Initiative Foundation will fully launch its process to help Baldwin residents start to address what they want. If we, with your help, succeed, then that conversation will be a better one for many months and years to come.

That's pretty much it, pure and simple. We're experimenting; we want to see what works and what doesn't; we want to discover what we couldn't think of ahead of time. Join us.

Dave Peters
Editorial Director, special projects
Minnesota Public Radio
P: 651-290-1387

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