“Where the coffee’s hot, the lakes are cold, and all the children are above average.” — Serving the Chain since 1897.
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After six weeks, sixty-six written comments, two file drawers, one full public hearing and a special meeting that used almost every chair again, the planning board recommended conditional approval of the Hagen-pasture subdivision. It is not a final approval, and everybody in the room knew the difference.
MISQUAH — The planning board voted 4–1 Tuesday night to recommend conditional approval of North Pine Land & Homes’ proposed eighteen-lot subdivision on the former Hagen pasture, sending the matter to the City Council after a summer in which the file acquired a second drawer, sixty-six written comments, nineteen pages of hearing minutes and a reputation larger than the forty-one acres themselves. At 9:18 p.m., after two hours and eleven minutes of discussion, Commissioner Hovde moved to recommend conditional approval of the eighteen-lot preliminary plat subject to five conditions. Commissioner Ellefson seconded. Chairman Ross Vig restated the motion, asked Clerk Donna Skoglund to read the conditions back once, and then called the roll. The recommendation keeps all eighteen lots in the preliminary plat but attaches five conditions before a final plat could be considered: a single common shoreline-access plan in place of eighteen individual dock locations; county-engineer approval of a widened entrance shoulder and turning area; site-specific septic and well review before any building permit; a seventy-five-foot vegetated shoreline buffer except for approved access corridors; and a final stormwater plan acceptable to the city engineer. Those five conditions are not decorative language. Under the recommendation, North Pine would have to submit revised drawings showing the common-access area and shoreline corridor before staff would place a final plat on a council agenda. Individual lots would still be sold separately, but shoreline use would be governed through the common plan. The county-road work would have to be approved before the city signs off on the development agreement, and septic and well approvals would happen lot by lot rather than by assumption on the preliminary map. “The word tonight is recommendation,” Vig said after the vote. “Not approval, not construction, not somebody showing up with a backhoe Thursday. We are telling the council what we think can work and under what conditions.”
News
The summer reading finale ended with certificates, melting ice cream, one green pen and the answer to a blank space the library had been guarding for three weeks.
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The county-record pumpkin did not place at the State Fair. C. Bjornstad stood beside pumpkins that made his look reasonable, filled three notebook pages, and came home pleased to have been made small.
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The dairy-barn sweep from Pine County became a State Fair week of long classes, respectable placings and homework on an aunt’s kitchen table in Roseville.
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Seven women drove south to see the quilt they spent roughly four hundred hours making. It is not in competition. This did not prevent a complete evaluation of the display.
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The Sunday after the county fair did what it always does: emptied the resort faster than housekeeping could turn the rooms, even with Labor Day still a week away.
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Lakeside opens Wednesday under the Legislature’s temporary waiver, becoming the first pre-Labor Day start in district history. Thirty-one kindergartners begin in two sections; eleven 4-H students begin from St. Paul.
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The midway left overnight, the livestock barns were swept by Wednesday, and the new shade fly has been folded into the pavilion inventory. Eleven borrowed tables have gone home. Number twelve remains under discussion.
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The opening-day line is gone, the Friday taco-truck arrangement is now routine, and the Holts have reached the stage of a new business where the town has started complaining about ordinary things.
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The adults left during fair week. Both juveniles remain on Big Pelican, flying every morning and feeding on their own. Greta Solberg’s LEAVING page has room left on it.
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Fair week gave the lake a rest. This week gave it people back. The water is cooling, the deep-summer pattern is loosening and Tim Brevik has stopped pretending a jacket at dawn is optional.
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Labor Day closes the State Fair, the family-vacation season and, unofficially, the part of summer when somebody is always backing a trailer down the landing.
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Coach Ryan Mattox got through two-a-days and the fair scrimmage healthy. The first game counts Friday, which is why the week has become noticeably less funny.
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The rest of the fall season begins as school begins: volleyball at home Thursday, runners next week, and Denny Dahl says the copier is cooperating under observation.
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Twenty-seven names, nine vehicles, four different departure times and one note reading “NOT THE 6 A.M. GROUP.” Pat Reinholt says everybody will get there.
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The town has now established the St. Paul price of coffee to within twenty-five cents, despite nobody being asked to conduct the survey.
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Red mud came home on boots, quilts came home in garbage bags, livestock shirts came home in plastic tubs and somebody is still finding mini-donut sugar in a truck seat.
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Twenty-three Septembers taught, a twenty-fourth beginning tomorrow, and the third-grade room still gets walked once at child height before the name tags go down.
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The first Doris Knutson Spelldown is still three weeks away, but the six manila folders are now a working document and Phil Brekke has begun pronouncing at walls.
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