Month: July 2021

The 38th Annual “Nite to Unite” celebration will take place this year on August 3rd. Communities and Law Enforcement can come together and take a bite out of crime with the event. The event will occur at the University of Minnesota Crookston this year, as Central Park is currently undergoing renovation and is no longer available.

Director of Outreach & Engagement at the University of Minnesota Crookston Michelle Christopherson explained a little bit of what the event will look like this year with the new location. “We were able to extend our campus as an option when Central Park became unavailable for the event,” said Christopherson. “We will have lots of vendors and different organizations that will host their company during the event. It’s an evening where the community can become more familiar with their law enforcement and the services that they provide.”

Many local businesses donate every year without hesitation to make the event so successful. However, with the COVID-19 pandemic taking a toll on many local businesses, they will not be relied on this year for the money. The manager at the Walmart in Crookston, Dave Olson, has graciously agreed to have the store fund the entire event this year. This will be the 18th annual event for the City of Crookston and the first time they’ve had one sponsor fund the entire event.

Christopherson also shared some of the events and highlights that they’re expecting from this year’s event. “There will be games for kids with prizes being given away every 15 minutes,” said Christopherson. “It’s a free event for all ages and should be a wonderful night.

One of the biggest events will be the K9 Unit that will be in attendance and will actually put on a live show. “The K9 Unit that will be here is going to do an extraction near the visiting parking on the campus,” said Christopherson. “It’s going to be a good demonstration for guests who want to take a look at how they handle things and how the K9s work.”

The event hours have changed this year compared to previous years. The main events will start rolling around 4:00 p.m. However, a Walt Keller Memorial Bingo will occur in the Campus’s Student Center, Prairie Lounge, from 3:00:4:00 p.m.

The main event will begin at 4:30 p.m. sharp at the mall, the center part of the campus. The national anthem will be played, and from there, Police Chief Paul Biermaier and Officer Don Rasicot will then recognize and award plaques to medical heroes for their dedication to the community in serving to cure and reduce COVID-19 infections.

For more information on the event and any questions you may have, you can check out the event’s Facebook page, “Crookston Night to Unite.”

The post CROOKSTON’S NITE 2 UNITE TO BE HELD AUGUST 3 appeared first on KROX.

The Polk County Transfer Station located at 320 Ingersoll Avenue in Crookston will be seeing an improvement by the fall of 2021. The biggest component of the project will be improving the compost receiving area.

Polk County Environmental Services Administrator Jon Steiner said there are multiple little projects they are working on that are not a part of the big construction project, which was replacing the old transfer station. “We have several little projects that weren’t a part of that big project,” said Steiner. “We lumped those together, with the major component of that being the compost receiving area for the public.”

They had recently been dumping on a concrete pad that had been holding up well, but a change was needed to the area with the construction of the new building. “The footprint changed a little bit, and we ended up not being able to use that anymore,” said Steiner. “We created a temporary pad to operate off of, and when the project went long, it pushed everything back and delayed doing something more permanent with the area.”

The project is to construct an area to fix for the public use. The current area is sinking and could not be completed last year as they ran out of time before the ground froze. There was also concern from the board regarding the pandemic and if they should’ve moved forward with the project at that time.

Steiner updated where the project is currently at now that its’ been pushed back to this year. “Because of the dollar amounts involved in that project as well as the other projects, we bid it two ways,” said Steiner. “The formal bid process requires notifications and everything that delays the process, but the board did accept the base bid at the last meeting to do the compost pad as well as the other components that go with that project,” said Steiner.

According to Steiner, the amount on the bid came back significantly higher than what was anticipated or hoped for. Four bids came in for the project, and the hope was for the amount to be around $320,000. The lowest bid that came in was at $459,000, and the highest that came in was just over $625,000. Steiner explained a little bit why the bids came back at such a higher rate than expected from last fall. “We’re looking at a 30-40% increase over the estimate from last fall,” said Steiner. “A lot of that is just materials and the scarcity of laborers as well as drivers. These are the fallouts that we see from the pandemic.”

The county took the lowest bid of $459,000 from RJ Zavoral & Sons out of East Grand Forks. Although they wanted to be around $320,000 on the bid, Steiner expected to pay more. “Definitely wanted to be around the initial estimate, but we knew we would pay a little more because we were going into a new year, and right now, as every business owner knows, you can’t find people to work, and that’s driving the costs up,” said Steiner.  

The contracts are currently being worked on and put in place. There is no firm timeline without them set yet, but the project will be complete sometime in late summer or early fall.

The post POLK COUNTY TRANSFER STATION TO UNDERGO IMPROVEMENTS appeared first on KROX.

With extreme fire risk conditions this afternoon in north-central and northeast Minnesota, the National Weather Service has issued a Red Flag Warning for the following counties: Aitkin, Beltrami, Carlton, Cook, Itasca, Koochiching, Lake, Lake of the Woods and St. Louis.

A Red Flag Warning means the area is experiencing critical weather conditions that are ideal for wildfire, including strong winds and low humidity. Do not burn while the Red Flag Warning remains in effect and check any burning done recently to ensure the fire is out. Any spark could become a wildfire under Red Flag conditions.

The Red Flag Warning expires at 6 p.m. today.

Stay connected, stay safe:

• Check the statewide fire danger and current burning restrictions webpage, which the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources updates daily.
• Follow @mnforestry (DNR Forestry) on Twitter for up-to-date information on statewide fire conditions.
• Follow @mnics (Minnesota Incident Command System) for information on large wildfires.

The post RED FLAG WARNING ISSUED FOR NORTHERN MINNESOTA appeared first on KROX.