Month: March 2023

On Wednesday, March 8, 2023, Crookston FFA competed in various Minnesota Region 1 FFA CDEs at the University of Minnesota Crookston. Crookston FFA had a tremendously successful day, sending three more teams and one more individual to the Minnesota FFA State Convention in April. 

The Horse Evaluation team took 2nd place out of 12 teams and is advancing to state. Brianna Colborn was the overall 3rd-place individual. In the Horse Evaluation, CDE members evaluate the desirable traits of horses in various classes, give oral reasons defending their placement of the class, take a written exam, and identify many pieces of tack and equipment. 

The Small Animals and Veterinary Science team came in 2nd place out of 17 teams and advanced to State. Out of 74 individuals, Samantha Rezac placed 5th, and Emily Shea placed 3rd. In the Small Animals and Veterinary Science CDE, members identify various breeds of dogs, cats, rabbits, tropical fish, birds, and other pets, examine and label animal body systems, and take an exam on veterinary knowledge. 

The Nursery Landscape team also took 2nd place out of 10 teams and advanced to state. Emily Bowman and Addisyn Schiller placed individually in 10th and 9th place, respectively. In the Nursery Landscape CDE, members take practicums on industry knowledge like pruning. They also identify many species of landscaping plants and tools. 

The Agricultural Mechanics team placed 8th overall and did not advance to the state competition. Ben Capistran placed 6th out of 47 individuals and earned an individual trip to State. The Agricultural Mechanics CDE challenges members to multiple aspects of “Shop.” Members take practicums on welding, electricity, construction, and engines. They also demonstrate their competency with hands-on skills such as welding or wiring a circuit. 

The Crops team also competed. Although they did not place, they tried something new and learned more about agriculture. 

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The post SEVERAL CHS FFA’S TEAMS AND INDIVIDUALS ADVANCE TO STATE COMPETITION AFTER REGION 1 FFA CDES appeared first on KROX.

The Crookston Visitor’s Bureau (CVB) met Thursday morning inside the Crookston Inn Shoreroom. After the Call to Order, the board began the meeting by approving their meeting minutes on February 9.

Hockey Tournament Review

Bureau Secretary Laurie Stahlecker and Chairperson Bob Magsam first reviewed the 15U A Olympic Regional Girls Hockey and Squirt A District tournaments that had happened last weekend. Over 172 players participated in the tournament, and even more came as spectators and guests. All of the hotels were full of guests, to the point they had to bring out extra cots to house many of the guests. However, despite their success, the bureau believed they could have advertised the spaghetti dinner better as they only had guests who stayed in the Crookston Inn attend it. Two businesses from downtown Crookston had reported they advertised specials for the tournament weekend, where they got six new customers to attend their specials, but mostly local customers came for the deals, while most guests spent the night eating, drinking, and swimming the Community Pool. Ellie Koepp from Happy Joe’s noted they did not see any significant influx in guests despite the many visitors to the city. They had also reached out to several companies to sponsor the spaghetti dinner but could not get a W-9 from the Blue Line Club to make it happen. While the event was a success, they believed a few personal improvements could still be made.
“We had a little bit of a discussion before the event of how we can promote Crookston, get the word out of what we have to offer, and try to get these visitors to our community out to our businesses to spend some money. We do have some legwork to do there, but it was great. We did visit with the Chamber and did a partnership with them to get the word out,” said Chairperson Bob Magsam. “Do we have room to grow and get better? Absolutely, but this was a really good starting point as this was a really unique kind of hockey tournament that came to town with two mini-tournaments rolled into one, and to add to it, UMC had games in between. The arena was crazy, the town had a lot of people there, and we just have to move forward by taking what we want to get better and working to get there. I think we certainly can as we move forward with future events.”

Grant Request

The Bureau discussed a grant request of $3,000 from Waun Vetter of Rochus Amusement for the Dart Divas tournament held at the Crookston Inn ballroom in April to help advertise the tournament.
“He made a grant request for some advertising to still get the word out to more throwers. It has been a successful event in the past. I anticipate it being a successful event and bringing a lot of people to town. Typically we can expect 70 to 90 rooms to be rented in town for that tournament alone in the last week of April. So kudos to Waun for getting the effort out there for this tournament. We want to help everybody we possibly can to market the area and get him some funding for advertising themselves to bring people to town and stay in our hotels.”
Last year’s event had 123 participants, with many participants from outside of the city, with a goal of reaching 140-50 participants this year. After much discussion, the bureau chose to award him a grant of $1,500 for the tournament.

Marketing

The bureau began discussing the decision they made of marketing with KVLY. Magsam had delivered proposals they had with advertising to the rest of board and asked their thoughts on which one they should choose. They currently had two commercials showing the various businesses and shops in downtown Crookston, and the other advertised the hotels around the city. Koepp shared her belief that they should focus their advertisements on smaller commercials or ads for social media and websites like Facebook, as television is not as popular in advertising as it used to be. They had heard of Bo Broby taking drone footage of local businesses that were getting a lot of attention.
“The primary mission of the CVB is to market, and probably with a lot of these board members, we don’t know the best ways to do it. We have some ideas, so we’re still wading through those waters of what’s the right and wrong way and how we can be more effective in marketing our community for tourism and helping the businesses out. We chose to currently table the KVLY presentation decision that we had last month until next month. They do a lot of television, which is great, and a little bit of digital work. Some of the discussions that were brought up are that we have local talent that can produce advertisements and commercials to heavily promote the different things that Crookston has to offer. So, we’re going to reach out to those people, get some information, and try and spur a conversation of what they can offer to all of us and bring that back to the board so we can make a firm decision and what we’re going to do with our marketing dollars moving forward.”
Magsam and Jess Bengtson proposed a meeting with Broby to discuss plans to make smaller ads on social media for certain businesses.

KROX Marketing Presentation

The bureau then welcomed KROX General Manager Chris Fee to give a presentation on who they chose and ran advertisements on their website, mobile app, and on the air of their radio station. Fee reported that the website saw 19 million unique page views last year and just under 1.9 million this year, with about 4 to 7,000 unique devices during the week. Their top ad spots were rotated between four businesses in the top right corner of the website on every page for $50 a month. Their top area of views was in the Metro area of Minnesota, with the Fargo area being close after, as well as certain spots in Arizona during the winter and even in Germany during sports games. Their next highest viewed page was their Obituary page, which could have advertisements put on it for $250. Fee said they had the CVB’s guide on their Community tab’s dropdown menu and the Local News page, which got them a good amount of views. He noted that one potential reason why the site wasn’t as viewed as it could be because people did not know you could click on the advertisement to learn more about it, as some ads can redirect to a new page rather than just be an addition to the page. The bureau decided it would review its finances before making a final decision on whether it would continue with its current deal or upgrade it to be seen more on the website.

Treasurer’s report and bills payable

The bureau then approved the February Financial Report from Bureau Treasurer Dean Adams. The bureau had a beginning Balance for the month at $83,283.01 and made their annual payments of $250 to KROX, Consumer Cellular, and Inuit Business Services. They also completed their Tax Payment to the IRS for $1,058.50 and to the Grothzone Chamber of Minnesota Association for $390. They had received nearly $9,000 this month for their lodging taxes to increase their balance to $90,138.12, which along with their ending balance of $15,463.26, gave them a grand total of $105,601.38. They did have two checks they still needed to be approved for their payment to KROX and Adams’s payment.

Board Reports

The board finished the meeting by hearing board reports. Magsam reported he had furthered a discussion of creating an internship with UMC working with the bureau and had to work with it more once the school returned from spring break.

Ellie Koepp reported that the Crookston Eagles was hosting the Crookston Blue Line Club’s Spring Bash on Friday and was inviting the Johnny Holms band to play for the guests.

The Crookston Visitor’s Bureau’s next meeting will take place on Thursday, April 13, in the Crookston Inn.

The post CROOKSTON VISITOR’S BUREAU AWARDS $1,500 GRANT TO ROCHUS AMUSEMENT FOR DART DIVAS TOURNAMENT appeared first on KROX.

The Fournet Building has received the official Certificate of Occupancy from the city to allow occupancy for the second and third floors of the building, which has allowed the Tri-Valley Opportunity Council to begin moving their entire business into the new building.

Crookston Building Official Greg Hefta had already awarded a minor form of a Certificate of Occupancy to Tri-Valley in late September to allow them to use a small office space near the south side of Robert Street to let them move a server for their fiscal operations into the new building and continue work there, but now is beginning to move the rest of its departments to the building.
“The process has been ongoing for a while. We’ve actually had staff here since September. We had to move a server that was related to our fiscal operations, and the staff had to move with the server. So, we received permission to have some staff here starting, I believe on September 25, and subsequently, as Jeff Evers got more of the Health and Safety and HVAC systems finished up, we were able to have our Human Resources department move a month or so ago,” Tri-Valley CEO Jason Carlson explained. “So we’ve had some staff operating here for a while now, but we received the Certificate last week, and now the remaining staff are getting their offices set up and are able to move about the space freely.”
With the Certificate now, Tri-Valley will move the rest of its departments into its new building across the street from its old building over the next several weeks and will make an official announcement when they are entirely moved in. While Tri-Valley is moving into its new building, they are still working with people who need help or referrals at its current office at 102 North Broadway. However, they are starting to have items delivered to the new building and notice some major differences with their new building compared to their old one. Mainly with it having more windows to allow more light into offices and break rooms to make it more welcoming and having insulation to help keep the building warm.

A major difference the Tri-Valley Opportunity Council will have is they will have to share the building with the State of Minnesota for the Public Defenders on the third floor and other starting businesses, which they look forward to interacting with.
“It’ll be interesting and different for us. We own the building across the street that we’re currently in and have been the sole occupant of that building for over 30 years, so this is new for Tri-Valley. We will have to think differently about how we go about our business and certain things like, for instance, an open house,” said Carlson. “We know there’s curiosity about this space out in the public and community, so we’d like to invite folks to come in and see the space, but instead of us just deciding what’s going to happen, we’re going to have to coordinate with our neighbors. Things like that will be a bit of a change for us, but it’ll be a welcome change.”
There aren’t any set dates or plans for an open house yet, but Tri-Valley thinks they will have some open houses in the summer once everything has been moved into the new building.

As for their current building, Tri-Valley is unsure of what they will do with the building once they officially move into the Fournet building, but it has been discussed by the Tri-Valley board.
“Tri-Valley’s board has decided that we will hold onto it for the rest of the winter into spring, and then we will reevaluate what our options are at that time,” said Carlson.”

Stay tuned to KROX and kroxam.com for more news about the Fournet building and its official opening and events.

The post TRI-VALLEY OPPORTUNITY COUNCIL BEGINS MOVING INTO FOURNET BUILDING appeared first on KROX.

Polk County Sheriff K9 Buffy has been doctored with an unknown medical condition. After many visits to the veterinarian and several trips to the University of Minnesota Veterinary Medical Center, the sheriff’s office received the results of her medical condition. It is sad news, but the office feels it is the best decision for Polk County and Buffy that she retire. K9 Buffy was a great asset to the county during her years of service.

K9 Buffy responded to numerous types of calls during her tenure with Polk County, assisting multiple law enforcement agencies. Buffy’s participated in close to 60 calls for service, K9 tracks, building searches for alarms/burglaries, and drug searches at schools, houses, vehicles, and at the Tri-County Community Correction Center. Buffy enjoyed spending countless hours patrolling Polk County and meeting our residents with Deputy Olson.

Buffy’s partner, K9 handler/Deputy Kyle Olson, stated, “It is very unfortunate, but Buffy has taken care of the residents of Polk County and me for the last three years. Now it is my turn to take care of her.” Buffy will continue to live with Deputy Olson and his family transitioning to “retired life.”

The K9 program is still going strong with K9 Rex and handler Sergeant Ben Stout. The Polk County Sheriff’s Office has plans to pursue an additional K9 to enhance the safety of our community.

Thank you for your service, K9 Buffy. Enjoy your retirement!

Polk County Sheriff Jim Tadman also wanted to thank the community for their generous donations to bring K9 Buffy and the K9 program back to Polk County.

The post POLK COUNTY SHERIFF K9 BUFFY FORCED TO RETIRE appeared first on KROX.