ME FALL HOMENT E IMPROVin this issue
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Actor brings Mark Twain to life. See Thisweekend Page 12A
NEWS OPINION SPORTS
Thisweek Burnsville-Eagan SEPTEMBER 23, 2011
Included
VOLUME 32, NO. 30
www.thisweeklive.com
Opinion/4A
Announcements/5A
Real Estate/6A
Public Notices/6A & 7A
Classifieds/8A
Sports/11A
Race raises little Teachers dump Q Comp in 191 for food shelves Incentive-pay plan was embraced with fanfare in 2006 by John Gessner
Large overhead, lack of ticket sales cited as reasons behind losses by Aaron Vehling and Tad Johnson THISWEEK NEWSPAPERS
Local city officials and some media members racing cars against each other sounds like a fun way to raise money for local food shelves. But the Sept. 9 Race for Hunger at Raceway Park in Shakopee drew a small crowd and raised a small fraction of what attendees and participants anticipated. Rosemount Mayor Bill Droste, Apple Valley Council Member John Bergman, Eagan Council
With fanfare, Burnsville-Eagan-Savage School District 191 embraced Q Comp in 2006. Alice Seagren, then Minnesota’s education commissioner, came to Burnsville to laud the district for being the 25th in Minnesota to sign onto the state’s optional new teacher-pay model. By adopting its own plan under the 2005 Q Comp law, the district also qualified for an extra $2.8 million in aid to pay teachers for meeting personal instructional goals as well as student-achievement goals. But by overwhelming majority vote Sept. 14, teachers union leaders abruptly ended 191’s participation in a program that paid most teachers an extra $2,000 in
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It’s just that there’s a lot of new people (in the administration), and it takes a while to build trust. It’s not instantaneous.
— Libby Duethman BURNSVILLE EDUCATION ASSOCIATION PRESIDENT
performance incentives and even higher bonuses to teaching coaches, mentors and evaluators. The Burnsville Education Association’s executive board voted 30-3 against sending a rewritten Q Comp plan to a vote of the full membership, BEA President Libby Duethman said. Since the district’s program,
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THISWEEK NEWSPAPERS
Member Meg Tilley, Lakeville Mayor Mark Bellows and Burnsville Council Member Dan Kealey participated in the event, which lost money for organizer, Click Club USA. Dennis Barlau, president of Click Club USA, said that after the $10,000 to rent the race track and about $1,200 to print the tickets, about “$700 is as close as we can come� to donating to food shelves run by 360 Communities, Neighbors Inc. and the Emergency Foodshelf Network. The event sold 788 tickets, Barlau said, and, in a letter to Thisweek, he wrote that “$1.00 of each ticket sold will go to the designated food shelf organizations.� See Race, 6A
dubbed Pro Pay, requires annual authorization of the BEA and the School Board, either side can quash it. Duethman said the program has been a winner for District 191. But uncertainties surrounding the recently completed rewrite, a looming deadline for See Teachers, 14A
Burnsville composer to bring her opera ‘Pocahontas’ home Performed by Duluth Festival Opera, ‘Pocahontas’ will kick off arts center’s first performance series by John Gessner THISWEEK NEWSPAPERS
The opera “Pocahontas� is a story, not a history; a story, and a mystery. So claims librettist Joan Vail Thorne, who wrote the words of an opera set to music by composer Linda Tutas Haugen of Burnsville. This “Pocahontas� — which will be presented at the Burnsville Performing Arts Center on Saturday, Oct. 1, at 7:30 p.m. — is not a 20th-century movie adaptation based on a crosscultural love affair between colonist Capt. John Smith and the teenage daughter of a power Algonquain Indian chief. The Smith-Pocahontas affair, perhaps the most enduring myth of the Pocahontas legend, is surely bunk, Tutas Haugen said. But mysteries do endure. The Pohatan Indian tribes of Virginia had no written language, and the Poca-
hontas legend lives on only through the writings, real and invented, of the English who knew or claimed to have known her, the composer explains in the opera’s program notes. To research their opera, she and Thorne went to the source — Jamestown, where 104 Englishmen and boys settled in 1607. The work was commissioned in 2006 by the Virginia Opera and the Virginia Arts Festival for a 400th anniversary celebration. The Duluth Festival Opera is bringing “Pocahontas� to Burnsville with assistance from a Minnesota State Arts Board touring grant, Tutas Haugen said. “Pocahantas� is the first event in a 2011-12 performance series sponsored by the Performing Arts Center. It’s the 2-year-old, cityowned venue’s first selfbooked series, and the first to draw on an “angel fund� of corporate donations and
a $50,000 city loan. Tutas Haugen is an 18year Burnsville resident who, in addition to writing opera, has written for instrumental and vocal chamber ensembles, symphony orchestras, voice and chorus. She’ll give a talk before the hometown performance. Tutas Haugen said she suggested Burnsville as a touring destination for the Duluth opera’s “Pocahontas.� “The acoustics are excellent,� she said of the Performing Arts Center. “Visually, it’s beautiful. I can’t say enough good things about it. I’m very proud that my community has a facility like that.�
Looking for the real Pocahontas While in Jamestown, Submitted photo Submitted photo Tutas Haugen and Thorne Linda Tutas Haugen composed the music This is a scene from the Duluth Festival Opera’s consulted with a local for “Pocahontas,� an opera that will be “Pocahontas,� which will be performed in performed Oct. 1 in Burnsville. Burnsville on Oct. 1. See Opera, 6A
Two local men charged in mortgage scheme
Hot dogs and hot rods
by Jessica Harper THISWEEK NEWSPAPERS
Photo by Rick Orndorf
Xcel Energy held its “Hot Dogs ’n Hot Rods� car show and lunch Tuesday at the company’s Black Dog generating plant in Burnsville. The show, part of Xcel’s annual United Way campaign, featured collectable cars provided by Xcel employees as well as the Minnesota Street Rod Association. For more photos, go online to www.ThisweekLive.com.
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Two Dakota County men were indicted for allegedly defrauding mortgage lenders out of more than $14 million. Joseph Steven Meyer, 46, of Eagan, and Garet Clark Wright, 32, of Rosemount, were charged by the U.S. Attorney’s Office Sept. 13 with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering and 22 counts of wire fraud. Meyer was also charged with witness tampering. The indictment alleges that the men conspired to defraud mortgage lenders while marketing the Cloud Nine Sky Flats in Minnetonka between Dec. 1, 2006, and October 2007. Unbeknownst to the lenders, buyers of these units were told they would receive kickbacks of between 25 and 30 percent of the reported purchase price of the unit. These kickbacks were allegedly made to the buyers through an account controlled by a co-conspirator and funded with mortgage loan proceeds, which were illegally wire transferred. More than 40 Cloud Nine units were allegedly sold through this scheme, and more than 80 percent of the mortgage Email Jessica Harper at: jessica.harper@ecm-inc.com loans have since defaulted.
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By May 2010, authorities were hot on their trail, and Meyer allegedly attempted to persuade Wright to provide authorities with false information about the scheme. Authorities say an excess of $4.2 million was transferred to accounts for the purpose of paying kickbacks and otherwise sharing the proceeds of the scheme among its participants. “The cost to these mortgage lenders is often higher than what the criminals took themselves because they lose money when the mortgages default and have to try to sell these properties and so on,� said Jeanne Cooney, spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minneapolis. Three other individuals have pleaded guilty for their roles in the scheme. If convicted, Meyer and Wright could face up to 20 years in prison on the money laundering conspiracy and wire fraud charges. They also face up to five years of prison if convicted of conspiracy. Meyer faces an additional maximum 20 years in prison if convicted of witness tampering. All sentences will be determined by a federal district court judge.
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