Shakopee

Page 1

Fate of downtown fire station?

Indians take a big step

Sell, lease, other options explored by City Council

Defending state champs eye home field advantage

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Pages 15

www.shakopeenews.com

THURSDAY, JULY 21, 2011

SHAKOPEE

VALLEY

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news

Area will feel state budget pain Transit funds cut; schools to borrow BY SHANNON FIECKE & KRISTIN HOLTZ kholtz@swpub.com; sfiecke@swpub.com

After the loss of two of its busiest weekends and 12 days of racing,

Canterbury Park will open today, but without the news that could have salved its pain. Local legislators say they had the votes to pass a racino during the special session that ended the state government shutdown, but couldn’t get the legislation heard on the floor. Sen. Claire Robling, R-Jordan, who spent late hours this last week fi nal-

izing details in bills, said she had the governor’s agreement but wasn’t in on the last meeting where the list of bills was fi nalized. The Republican leadership felt it didn’t have the votes to include a racino, she said. “I think they were wrong. I had been counting the votes and we worked really hard to get them,� she said Wednesday morning. “It was just

the right time yesterday when people were thinking the school shifts and how to pay it back. We had some votes we might normally not have had.� Both she and Rep. Michael Beard, R-Shakopee, who threatened to reject the budget deal without racino legislation, were crushed. Beard said more than enough spare votes were there to pass it, but

not enough to suspend the rules to hear the racino separate from prenegotiated bills. “It is just breaking my heart. Canterbury and the whole industry were really given the shaft,� said Beard, who worries if Canterbury will be able to make it. With the racetrack

Budget to page 8 ÂŽ

A chance encounter, deeper way to serve

H

Shannon

FIECKE STAFF WRITER

church youth groups do to teach teenagers their lives aren’t so bad. My only experience with a soup kitchen was being dropped off on a scary-looking Minneapolis street corner 15 years ago to serve meals with my confirmation class from rural Carver County.

Loaves to page 8 ÂŽ

STAFF PHOTO BY SHANNON FIECKE

With Loaves and Fishes opening up Monday nights in Shakopee, Lynn Winick, right, and other parishioners from St. John the Baptist Catholic Church in Savage can volunteer closer to home. They previously served meals in Minneapolis.

Energy-saving plans in the works at public utilities

Seeking home — together Blind dog, son get around just fine BY LORI CARLSON editor@plamerican.com

BY SHANNON FIECKE sfiecke@swpub.com

T

his is a tale of two very special dogs who are also remarkably normal. Daisy, 10, is completely blind. Duke, her 6-year-old offspring, has become her seeing-eye dog. The two are inseparable. If they get too far apart, Daisy barks and Duke runs to her side. Duke watches out for her and guides her throughout the house and yard — he even taught her how to maneuver through the doggy door of their foster home just outside of Prior Lake. Daisy and Duke had a family once, until one day they found themselves lying on the concrete floor of a shelter, their family having lost its home to foreclosure. They spent months in that Nebraska shelter, the fur on their elbows so worn down by the

PHOTO BY LORI CARLSON

Daisy, 10 (left) is completely blind. Her son, Duke, 6, sticks close to her side and has become her very own seeing-eye dog. concrete that their skin was raw. The yellow labs came within about 24 hours of being euthanized because the shelter couldn’t find a suitable home for them. A rescue group in Iowa saved them from death row, and Secondhand Hounds, a Twin Cities rescue group, brought them to Minnesota. That’s when a woman who lives between Prior Lake and Jordan (she only wants to be identified as

“Leslie�) signed on as their foster caretaker. “She said, ‘We can’t let these dogs be euthanized,’� dog trainer Leda Blom recalls Leslie saying. Blom, who has trained Leslie’s own dogs, was hired to train Daisy and Duke three days a week. In just one week, they went from having major separation anxiety to being

Dogs to page 7 ÂŽ

Starting this week, Shakopee residents can compare how much electricity they use with their neighbors. Shakopee Public Utilities will be publishing quarterly energy reports, hoping that residents adopt a keepingup-with-the-Joneses attitude when it comes to energy conservation. “We think it’s something the residents of Shakopee will really like and hopefully embrace so they can save energy and money and make their homes more efficient and do the right thing for the environment,� said utilities Manager John Crooks. The report, which goes out this week, tracks a residence’s energy usage and compares it with about 100 similarly sized homes. The Shakopee Public Utilities

INSIDE OPINION/4 OBITUARIES/6 CALENDAR/9 HAPPENINGS/14 SPORTS/15-16 CLASSIFIEDS/22-25 TO REACH US SUBSCRIBE: (952) 345-6683 EDITOR: (952) 345-6680 OR E-MAIL EDITOR@SHAKOPEENEWS.COM.

Commission hired Washington, D.C.b a s e d O p ower t o prepare the reports. Opower, whose other clients include the city of San Diego, is customizing the program for Shakopee. Shakopee is only John the 10th city to deCrooks ploy the program in Minnesota, but it’s been done quite a bit on the East and West Coasts, said Crooks. Shakopee customers can log onto an e-Portal site to set goals and track their progress. They’ll also find a couple hundred conservation tips there specially geared for the Minnesota climate.

Energy to page 7 ÂŽ

VOL. 150, ISSUE 29 Š SOUTHWEST NEWSPAPERS

84FBA Ÿ!$+ <AA8E C?4AF 7BA0G 4?K4LF :B 4F C?4AA87 Same-day appointments when you need them. From the everyday to the unexpected, Park Nicollet Clinic—Shakopee is here for you. Saturday appointments Complete eye care services 9 medical specialties, including Urology and Cardiology 1415 St. Francis Ave. • 952-993-7750 • parknicollet.com/shakopee

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e looked like Jesus, only down on his luck. While driving to lunch, I passed a man who looked like the sketch in my childhood Bible, only his long brown hair was in a ponytail and he was walking Marschall Road in street clothes in the middle of a workday. The image stuck in my mind and I wondered what his story might be. A few days later I was facing the same man while serving food for Loaves and Fishes in the kitchen of St. Mark’s Catholic Church. It was strangely humbling to encounter him again. It’s easy to wonder about somebody and just keep on driving; it’s another thing to truly be face-to-face. I had long scorned the idea of volunteering in a soup kitchen. It seemed so clichÊd ‌ something wealthy families do on holidays or


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