MPR reports: “Ice jams caused flash flooding along some Minnesota rivers over the weekend, while sandbagging efforts continued along others as water levels kept rising. More than 40 people were evacuated from a riverside restaurant near St. Cloud on Saturday night after a flash flood along the Sauk River — a flood apparently caused by an ice jam, one of many along Minnesota waterways in the past couple weeks.”
The Star Tribune’s Paul Walsh reports, “Rodney Horgen frantically tried to grab his wife as a massive wall of water crashed into their crippled Norwegian cruise liner. He counted 20 or more people riding the rapid water, along with chairs and tables: ‘I tried to grab her, but I just couldn’t’. She whooshed by twice more on the rollicking ship before he was able to catch her. Hours later, the couple from the tiny town of Deer River, Minn., was among several hundred passengers rescued from the Viking Sky, and hoisted one by one to a helicopter.”
At MPR, Mike Moen and Andrew Krueger say, “Shopko’s plan to close all its remaining stores in the next few months will leave a retail gap in many small towns across the Midwest, including Minnesota. Wisconsin-based Shopko plans to close its remaining 120 stores by mid-June. The chain — particularly through its Shopko Hometown stores — is one of the few large retailers of its kind to have locations in smaller communities. One city set to lose its Shopko store is Roseau, in northern Minnesota. Community development director Todd Peterson said when the store closes, it won’t be a quick drive to the next large retailer.”
Neal St. Anthony of the Strib writes, “For the first time, a bill that would expand the network of independent businesses that could work on everything from consumer electronics to tractors is heading for a vote in April on at least one floor of the Legislature. … The digital ‘Fair Repair’ bill has been a goal of a consortium of independent repair shops, environmentalists, the Minnesota Farmers Union and others. They contend the manufacturers of everything from iPhones to computer servers and entertainment devices have violated rights of owners by increasingly restricting device repairs through licensing and restrictions on repair instructions and diagnostic tools, essentially, forming monopolistic cartels that also encourage product replacement.”
Says Hope Melton for the Sun Current, “I live in an endangered species – a small, older home in Edina’s Concord Neighborhood. Homes like mine, in the $350,000-$400,000 range, are rapidly being destroyed and replaced by much larger houses going for a $1 million and more. I bought my house from the same family that built it in 1946. A generation ago, it contained five children and two adults. Beautifully cared for and solid as a rock, it was one of the first houses built in an area of farmland. … As houses enlarge, households shrink. I’d guess the average new house in my neighborhood is 3,000-4,000 square feet. The average American household shrank by 30 percent from 1948 to 2012, to 2.55 people from 3.67.”
In the Star Tribune, Erin Golden says, “School leaders in Owatonna hope that an unprecedented show of support from the city’s largest businesses will drive voters to approve a $116 million bond referendum this spring and replace the district’s aging high school. Last fall, a group tasked with figuring out whether the district should spend millions of dollars to fix up the nearly 100-year-old building or replace it recommended that the old building be torn down and replaced with a larger and more functional facility. The price tag: $138 million.”
Also from the AP: “Two northern Wisconsin sheriff’s deputies rescued a pair of bear cubs trapped in a flooded culvert that had served as their den. The Ashland Daily Press reported that Ashland County deputies Zach Pierce and Dylan Wegner discovered the baby bruins Friday near the Bad River Indian Reservation in northern Wisconsin. Pierce said the cubs were soaked and cold, so they brought them into their squad car to warm up. Pierce said they realized they risked angering the cubs’ mother, who was nearby. He said she was slow and groggy from waking up and ‘the little cubs were screaming and crying like crazy.’”
In the PiPress, Frederick Melo says, “While this winter was a challenging one for the city of St. Paul, there were lessons to be learned from it. … Eureka Recycling and St. Paul’s eight remaining private trash haulers had a tough time navigating icy alleyways this winter. Six of the eight haulers missed pickups, according to St. Paul Public Works. Even proponents of organized trash collection were taken aback by the degree to which national haulers such as Waste Management and Republic Services delayed pickups or skipped routes entirely.”
Shopko: “We’re Tired of Winning”