PINE CITY
THURSDAY, JUNE 2, 2016 VOL. 131 NO. 22 www.pinecitymn.com $1.00
TENNIS PLAYS TOUGH: Jon Blake heads to semis for Dragons. P10
County looks into sales tax New tax would pay for roads, replace current wheelage tax as funding source BY HENRY FISCHER NEWS@PINECITYMN.COM
JOE WOLF | THE PIONEER
Honor and memory Members of the Pine City VFW and American Legion led the annual Memorial Day parade through Pine City on Monday, May 30 before pausing at the service memorial in front of Pine Government Center to salute the sacrifice of those who had lost their lives fighting for their country. At Birchwood Cemetery, the Pine City High School choir helped honor the memory of those who had served with a rendition of “America the Beautiful,” and performances of other patriotic hymns.
Pine County officials are considering adoption of a local option sales tax that would replace the wheelage tax as a funding source for much-needed highway projects in the years ahead. At a special Committee of the Whole meeting last week, County Administrator David Minke and County Engineer Mark LeBrun noted that the Minnesota Legislature adjourned without approving a state transportation bill that they hoped would provide additional funding to help pay for several county bridge construction projects this year – including replacement of the CSAH 53 bridge at the south end of Pokeg-
ama Lake, plus new box culverts needed along CSAHs 13 and 14 in Pokegama Township. The wheelage tax approved about a year ago generates about $250,000 per year for road and bridge projects in the county, but LeBrun pointed out that the tax is only paid by people who purchase license tabs for vehicles used in Pine County – and doesn’t capture revenue from the thousands of motorists who drive through the county each day, including many from Wisconsin. LeBrun and Minke believe a better option might be to replace the wheelage tax with a local option sales tax, which could generate as much as $750,000 per SEE TAX, PAGE 11
JOE WOLF | THE PIONEER
Local writers make magic at poetry reading BY TANYA STARINETS NEWS@PINECITYMN.COM
On a warm afternoon on Sunday, May 22, more than a dozen people from Pine City and around Pine County gathered in Sandstone’s Old School Arts Center (OSAC). They ranged in ages from a 9-year-old boy to a woman in her 80s, lovingly known to regulars as Granny Annie. Some of the attendees were raised on farms, others had moved to Pine County from big cities. Some lived through the Great Depression, another spent her childhood in a children’s home. Despite such diverse backgrounds, what brought them together for a poetry/prose reading was their shared love of the written word. Everyone was welcomed to come onstage and read their own or their favorite author’s
piece of prose or poems. “This is a community arts space. We welcome anybody’s art here,” said Fran Levings, the OSAC event organizer. “Life would be much poorer if we didn’t have art,” added her husband Dave Baker, a professional artist. Their sentiment echoed OSAC’s mission, which is to enhance the community through arts education, exhibition, and performance, and to support local and regional artists. The afternoon poems and prose ranged from deep subjects like the meaning of life, to much lighter subjects like the tooth fairy and the unbeknown dangers of chairs. Steve Palmer enjoys writing poems to pictures, writing songs, putting together mementos. He is retired and works in Sauser’s Hardware store in Pine City.
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Palmer read a short story which he titled “The Land of Point,” after an old Harry Nilsson song. It expressed his longing and fond memories of a piece of land that he and his wife owned, located between Sandstone and Hinckley. “Wire fences and gravel road and the north branch of the Grindstone River border it presently. To some it’s just a square of land, like so many others. They might think it’s nothing special at all… For those willing to listen hard enough and long enough, a very special sound may be heard. The lonely echo of owls talking to each other through the darkness is a marvelous treat indeed. To some, it’s just a simple square of land. To us it’s much much more...” Palmer
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SEE READING, PAGE 11
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TANYA STARINETS | THE PIONEER
Ann Boldt brought her 9-year-old son Nick to the stage to read “A Poem from Boba Fett” by TK VonMerrik.
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