Ground Level Category Archive: Brainerd

Central Minnesotans kick the tires of regional plan

Posted at 3:24 PM on May 9, 2012 by Jennifer Vogel (0 Comments)
Filed under: Aging, Brainerd, Community Development, Economic Development, Local government finance, Rural

For more than a year, a group of a couple hundred people--business owners, elected officials, students, retirees and others--from five counties has been meeting to drink coffee and work toward establishing a set of goals for central Minnesota. They've been hashing over transportation, housing, job creation and other topics with the goal of creating a shared idea of what residents and local governments should try to accomplish by the year 2035.

It's an example of how organizers and leaders in Minnesota and elsewhere are looking for new ways to both sample public opinion and engage people in making choices about the future. The belief is that a strong, consensus-driven vision will lead to better policy and economic decisions. Ground Level has been tracking the project and we've even hosted a couple of related online discussions, which you can find here.

Yesterday afternoon, the group gathered at The Lodge in Baxter, where wooden boats and old motors festoon the walls, to review and give feedback on a preliminary set of plan recommendations built around 11 topics. In some cases, participants expressed skepticism at what the group has so far rendered and pushed toward greater specificity.

"We're getting closer to the end," said Dan Frank of the Little-Falls-based Initiative Foundation, which is helping facilitate the sessions. The process is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to the tune of $825,000 and is one of about 45 efforts HUD is underwriting around the country. "This is the input part today," said Frank. "We want to give you the chance while [the plan] is still in draft form to give us input."

Participants, seated at numbered round tables, were asked to select four topics out of the possible 11 to discuss and to move to the appropriate, topic-centric tables. Specifically, they were asked to comment on what works, what doesn't, what's missing and what's next. "Focus on goals, rather than the how-to," advised Frank, adding that the action steps will come later.

At a table focused on "Changing Populations," participants contemplated an outstate population that's both aging and becoming more diverse. One person said immigrants will be crucial when it comes to offsetting the loss in economic contributions from retiring baby boomers. Another suggested including the goal of trying to improve the attitudes of locals when it comes to immigrants. Yet another said she simply didn't think the draft recommendations were attainable.

At another table, where people were talking "Education and Workforce Development," participants pushed to make the recommendations more specific by suggesting a focus on funding for college and apprenticeships. One person suggested that an emphasis on teleworking and online jobs should be included.

The meeting, it seemed, accomplished what leaders hoped it would. The group kicked the tires of a variety of proposals and gave frank, real-world feedback, which will be incorporated into the final plan.

Cheryal Lee Hills, executive director of the Region Five Development Commission, which has spearheaded the two-year project, told the group that central Minnesota is being held up as a model in other parts of the country, due to the high level of participation in the visioning process and the partnerships forged with foundations.

Hills said there are just two meetings left, one in June and another in August. In June, the group will review draft policies and discuss implementation. "On August 14th, we'll celebrate the final plan," she said, adding that she'd invited U.S. Senator Al Franken to be the keynote speaker. "So far, we're on his calendar," she said.

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Without revenue reform, city services will dim

Posted at 3:26 PM on July 20, 2010 by Michael Caputo (0 Comments)
Filed under: Brainerd, Local government finance

Brainerd has taken a rather symbolic approach in dealing with financial pressure - they've shut off the lights. The city has turned off more than 400 street lights hoping to save $91,000 (The city council just decided to turn back on 40 or 50 of those lights, but the savings plan is still in effect).

Darkened street lights are noticeable. But, as we've pointed out, budget constraints are pushing cities across the nation to shut down even more essential services.

Minnesota cities may soon face those same tougher choices.

We wrote about the effort Willmar is making to survey residents on those choices.

And leaders have begun weighing on the topic at MPR's website for discussing issues, Insight Now.

Regional planner and professional engineer Chuck Marohn, said cities now face dwindling state aid "with much deeper liabilities in terms of infrastructure to maintain and bureaucracies to support."

Knowing what we know today - that LGA (local government aid from the state) is going to end - it would have been better in most instances had it never happened.

Some city officials who joined the Insight Now conversation also had little use for the state aid program as it is today. One of them, Jason Benzing, a Dassel city councilmember, said the state ought to eliminate LGA entirely and let cities "be freed to raise funding as they see fit."

State policy does indeed restrict how cities can tax their residents. Minnesota has imposed a property tax cap for cities. And the LGA program not only provides state aid, but also bars city governments from enacting sales and income taxes.

Dan Erkkila, a college administrator who just stepped down as a Grand Rapids city council member, said this creates fiscal instability for cities.

"Multi-year labor (agreements) and other contracts necessitate stability in resources for efficient and effective operations. The current system appears to have broken down, if for no other reason than the fact that many small cities cannot plan well enough in advance to know what the state may or may not provide."

Unless the state increases city funding or alters city revenue policies, the only recourse for city councils will be cutting or even shutting down services. How those decisions get made will be the discussion across the state in the months to come.

Insight Now plans on being part of those discussions on city financing. Please have a look and join the conversation.

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Almost 200 turn out to talk about Brainerd's future

Posted at 3:30 PM on June 24, 2010 by Dave Peters (2 Comments)
Filed under: Brainerd

Putting a new Vikings stadium in Brainerd probably won't make the cut, but it was one of scores of ideas city residents tossed out earlier this week when they were asked to think about how to improve their community.

Close to 200 people showed up for a "community vision" session under the umbrella of the Initiative Foundation's Healthy Communities Partnership. Brainerd is among four communities the foundation is working with this year to help residents engage and set priorities to solve problems. Two of those four -- Todd County and Baldwin Township in Sherburne County -- have been early focuses of the Ground Level project for MPR News.

We didn't cover Brainerd or the fourth community, Eden Valley, with that intensity but those places also represent Minnesota residents trying to find ways to take action to improve quality of life.

Lisa Paxton, CEO of the Brainerd Lakes Chamber and a participant in the session, noted that one interesting thing about the Brainerd effort is that it's focused on Brainerd itself, not the lakes vacation-land or the more well-off city of Baxter.

Brainerd is less prosperous than outsiders sometimes think, having to deal with a high proportion of older homes and rental dwellings, lack of vibrancy downtown, unemployment. It also has a long history of contentious local politics that sometimes sets it apart.

So what do people want to tackle? Here's the short list of priorities Paxton gave me today. It will get narrowed in coming weeks:

--Combine the cities of Baxter and Brainerd.
--Restore downtown Brainerd as a destination.
--Tackle the chronic question of jobs.
--Provide places for teens to hang out.
--Come up with a young-adult gathering place that doesn't involve alcohol.
--Turn Central Lakes from a two-year college to a four-year college.

Some of these are more systemic and difficult to deal with than others. A few things, like creating a summer choir or building a dog park, can be dealt with more easily and probably won't need the full force of attention from the core team of interested residents.

But what I find instructive about looking at a wish list like this is that it reflects the mindset of a cross-section of residents. People want to live in a place with some vibrancy, so when 200 of them get together and describe what that might look like -- whether it's enticing the Vikings or silencing the train horns in town -- it makes sense to pay attention.

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Getting together around Gull Lake

Posted at 12:49 PM on April 9, 2010 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Brainerd

Five years ago, people in the Brainerd lakes area saw growth streaming their way from the Twin Cities, possibly threatening the very natural resources that were drawing newcomers. So a variety of local government, business and non-profits got together to set priorities.

Out of that came a pilot project focusing on Gull Lake and involving two counties, three cities and a township that wanted to compare notes and maybe work together on lake quality, land use, recreational trails and a few other matters.

Now, the economy has caused the growth pressure to subside but has also put the squeeze on local budgets. Different forces, same desired outcome, says John Sumption, a consultant who is putting the finishing touches on a report about the cooperative effort.

"Before it was desire; now it's out of necessity," he said.

Officials in Crow Wing and Cass counites, East Gull Lake, Lake Shore, Nisswa and Fairview Township tell Sumption they have benefited substantially from the knowledge transfer they've been able to conduct. Examples range from discussing a trade of sewer services where political entities are broken up by the waters of Gull Lake to trading expertise on getting trails built.

"For almost every challenge that one jurisdiction identified, there was someone else with a successful program or idea," Sumption's report says.

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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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Brainerd residents are tackling housing, neighborhoods under pressure

Posted at 4:34 PM on February 16, 2010 by Dave Peters (0 Comments)
Filed under: Brainerd

Thousands of Minnesotans over the years have told their friends and neighbors they were heading to Brainerd for a long weekend or a summer vacation.
Really they weren't.
They were heading for a few days off in the Brainerd lakes area; Brainerd itself typically gets passed by.
While the lakes area boomed and tourism prospered, the city of close to 14,000 residents suffered many of the problems of other core cities around the nation. Housing deteriorated, the percentage of homes that were rentals rose, income dropped relative to the rest of the area and the state.
Can residents do anything about it, maybe improve an aging infrastructure, take advantage of the Mississippi River flowing through town, create vitality in the business district and the community as a whole?
Some are trying. Last week, the Initiative Foundation held its "kickoff session" with a team of residents who in coming months and even years will try to come up with plan. The effort is part of the foundation's Healthy Communities Partnership.
That's the program this Minnesota Public Radio News project called Ground Level is working with in Baldwin Township and Todd County. While we're focusing on those two places for now, community organizing work is going on elsewhere, with the help of the foundation and a myriad of other non-profit, educational and governmental organizations.
Ultimately, we'd like to take Ground Level to the point we can shine a light at efforts like these around the state.
That means we're in the market to learn about people making organized efforts to make their communities better places to live. If you know about such an effort, let us know by commenting on this post or sending me an email.
If you want to see residents starting to engage in a conversation along these lines, check the comments on a post from last week about Todd County. There are some very articulate and thoughtful comments about coming to grips with what a community ought to be doing for itself.

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