Tofte’s annual town meeting was a well-attended, rather docile affair, compared to some of the contentious meetings of the past. The consensus for the evening seemed to build upon a renewed spirit of cooperation.
Reflected in that were the parting comments by outgoing Town Board Supervisor Jeanne Larson, who remarked that if she was to grade the Tofte community, she would give it a C-! In part because of past contention over a general lack of cooperation and a certain “mean spiritedness” fueled by a rampant rumor mill, Larson said she hoped that in the future the town “would play better together in the sandbox.”
“We need to approach each other with more compassion and to work together to solve our differences,” and with that she closed with a heart-felt thank you for the last three years.
Tofte then turned the page in electing Sam Crowley as supervisor to a new three-year term by a rather overwhelming margin of 55 to 13.
As with last Thursday’s monthly meeting most of Tofte’s town services and its operating apparatus seemed to be functioning on all cylinders with most, if not all, in agreement on budgets and finances.
The dominating issues at hand seemed to be the affordable housing to be built and further defining Birch Grove School and Community Center’s mission.
As for the housing the town needs to wait until at least June 1 for a revised engineer’s report, though everyone seems to be reassured that the project will be “about as risk-free as possible for an affordable housing project” and that moderator noted that he wished that his home would have been built as well as these units will be.
“$1,000 per month seems high, but it’s really affordable for what you get,” he said. Like Lutsen’s new housing, the main criteria is defined that one member of the household needs to be employed in Cook County and the leases will be for at least a year.
It appears the demand for the housing will be high, but in talking to a few of the potential eligible workers in the area their immediate response to the cost was, “How is that affordable?”
“Our wages haven’t gone up” and in Tofte they have been told that the Homestead’s rents are going up. Hypothetically, even if rents only go up $60 a month per person in a three-bedroom unit, that is still almost $800 a year and almost certainly their wages won’t be increasing to meet the rising cost of living.
The county commissioner showed up for a brief moment and dropped a couple of bombshells and then in an instant “poof” she was gone with the only promise that they were working to create “listening sessions” about county finances. All right! That made my day. Though they will be meeting on how to set up such “sessions.”
For me one of the interesting little nuggets was that the area around Britton Peak was going to be logged in an area where many trails have been put in for hikers up to that peak and across the road to Carlton Peak.
Initially logging was to be set at 50 feet from the trail, but the USFS “compromised and moved it back to 100 feet (how about a mile!). They are going to do about $20,000 worth of logging, so hopefully that won’t be too disruptive to the local wildlife in the area. Remember it generally takes “Lawyers, Guns and Money” ha ha to make any decision about cutting down even one tree. Oh yes, they must build a road too!
There was a little bit of discussion about the new Gitchi Gami bike trail from Ski Hill Road to Clearview which may entail using parts of old Highway 61 and connecting the extension from the Fish Museum in Tofte past the Coho Café to hook up with the rest of the trail across the street from the salvage yard.
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