The Crookston City Council met on Monday evening at the City Hall Council Chambers and approved a contract with Anchor Marketing to get a new logo and branding, approved non-profit grants, and cannabis business application fees and more.
ANCHOR MARKETING CONTRACT
The council approved a $30,000 contract with Anchor Marketing of Grand Forks at the request of Crookston Economic Development to help promote the City and the Industrial Park and possible housing additions in the community. Anchor Marketing has worked with several local communities in support of their economic development efforts. Among these groups are the City of Fosston and Perham to provide marketing and advertising services for their Progressive Perham economic development initiative. “There’s half of it that’s internal, half of it external. The internal part is the strategic communication plan that will essentially assist me with communicating with all of our residents. They’re going to be doing research on all different parts of our community and figuring out the best ways to be able to reach everybody,” said City of Crookston Marketing Director Keenan Devier. “The second half of it is a new brand strategy guide. It consists of a new logo, new tagline, new positioning statements, and really refreshing our branding as a city. Our city departments do a great job with a lot of the stuff that we have going on, especially over at the EDA with improvements going on at the industrial park to working on childcare. We’re a city that’s actively working on evolving and moving forward. And I’d like our branding to reflect that. We have a fantastic downtown with great architecture and our current branding doesn’t really reflect that. So that’s something that we want to change.”
Anchor Marketing will help create the following items for the City of Crookston-
• Strategic communications plan development — $4,000
• Logo, tagline, positioning statement — $5,000
• Brand guide creation — $5,000
• Key messaging development — $4,000
• Graphic and messaging website updates — $6,000
• Paid and earned media campaign — $6,000
The council unanimously approved the contract.
NON-PROFIT GRANTS APPROVED
The council approved $113,000 in grants to four non-profits. There were eight applicants and the council voted to fund four of the requests. “Tonight was just a summary of that to put that in a formal resolution to detail what nonprofit grants they wanted to fund,” said Interim City Administrator and Police Chief Darin Selzler. “There was a little bit of discussion on that, again, going back and forth on the amounts, but ultimately they did decide to fund all four of those for a total of $113,000.” The amounts that will be given out are below.
1. Golden Link Senior Center for $75,000.00 for Community health, entertainment, and educational events.
2. Tri-Valley Opportunity Council for $17,000.00 for Public Transportation.
3. Ox Cart Days for $6,000 for fireworks.
4. Care & Share Organization of Crookston, Inc for $15,000 for operational needs.
Voting for the grants was Derek Brekken, Wendy Ault, Don Cavalier, Henry Fischer, Clayton Briggs, and Joseph Shostell. Voting no was Morgan Hibma. Dylane Klatt was not in attendance.
FALL CLEANUP NUMBERS
The City of Crookston 2025 Spring and Fall Cleanup events were completed successfully with steady participation and consistent debris totals compared to previous years. Overall tonnage remained stable, though garbage volumes decreased while appliance collections increased. “It was just as busy as ever. Some of the numbers lowered. Your typical garbage household trash, that went down. We don’t have an extensive amount of information, but we’re thinking due to waste management being in town, that’s removing that portion of the pickup from the city, which is gonna be very helpful,” said Crookston Public Works Director Chuck Getsman. “We’re gonna continue to look at the numbers going into next year to see if we see the same trends, and hopefully we do, as well as more bins being, people signing up for the bin service.” Getsman said they have over 500 people that have signed up for the Waste Management Garbage service. “We did have more appliances going out, and a lot more demo tonnage was going out so we had to work a little bit longer use more equipment and items like that.”
Fall cleanup costs were roughly $3,500 higher due to additional labor and fuel needs, but total year-to-date expenses remain $47,000 under last year’s levels.
| Item | Spring 2025 | Fall 2025 | Difference |
| Demolition Debris | 64.08 tons | 65.24 tons | +1.16 tons (1.8%) |
| Garbage | 30.23 tons | 22.89 tons | -7.3 tons (-24%) |
| Appliances | 39 | 85 | +46 |
| Tires | 71 | 60 | -11 |
| Crew Cost | $19,000 | $22,000 | +$3,000 |
| Demolition (disposal cost) | $5,895.36 | $6,002.08 | +106.72 |
| Fuel Cost | $863.34 | $1,286.69 | +$425.35 |
| Total cost | $25,758.36 | $29,290.77 | +$3,532.41 |
CANNABIS APPLICATION FEES APPROVED
The Cannabis application fees were approved by the council. After a lengthy dicussion in the Ways and Means committee meeting on November 3, they decided on the fees they discussed earlier this month. “Tonight was just the formality piece of it to pass the application fees and the associated fees that would go with that if an applicant did apply for a cannabis retail store or something else,” said Interim City Administrator and Police Chief Darin Selzler. “Again, in those fees, we mirrored state statutes and what the amounts that we can charge are up to. So as we move forward with the process, we can kind of use these numbers and this resolution for that.”
Registration Period and Fee:
License Type Initial Fee Renewal Fee
Cannabis Microbusiness up to $0.00 up to $1,000.00
Cannabis Mezzobusiness up to $500.00 up to $1,000.00
Cannabis Retailer up to $500.00 up to $1,000.00
Cannabis Retailer –Municipal Cannabis Store – Initial fee up to $1,000
Medical Cannabis Combination Business – Initial Fee up to $500 and renewal fee up to $1,000
Lower-Potency Hemp Edible Retailer – up to $125 Up to $125
Voting yes was Derek Brekken, Wendy Ault, Morgan Hibma, Henry Fischer, Clayton Briggs, and Don Cavalier. Voting no was Joseph Shostell. Dylane Klatt did not attend.
CONSENT AGENDA
The Crookston City Council unanimously approved the consent agenda.
They approved City of Crookston Bills and Disbursements for $437,950.63, the correction of the execution period for the Minnesota Department of Transportation Airport Maintenance and Operation Grant contract to the correct grant period of July 1, 2025, through June 30, 2027. The council also approved the final payment for Tax Increment Financing District 3-7, which was established to help Tri-Valley Opportunity Council in the construction of affordable housing, originally executed on December 15, 1999 providing principal assistance of $90,000 at 7.75% interest, and later amended on October 23, 2017 to extend the payment date. It was decertified at the end of 2020 with the remaining fund balance of $28,145 not being paid to Polk County yet. The payment will allow the closure of TIF 3-7.
The council also decided to not waive the statutory limits of liability established by the Minnesota State Statute Section 466.04. It is something cities need to do each year.
The council also approved payment number 2 of $485,662.41 to Gustafson & Goudge, Inc for the 2025 Hangar Construction for the Crookston Municipal Airport.
DOWNTOWN CROOKSTON PROMOTIONAL VIDEO
Jeff Evers and Bo Brorby gave a presentation in video format of a Downtown Crookston promotional video that promoted several downtown businesses and the Fournet Building. “The video is really promoting existing businesses that are already the major draws for downtown. All the successful businesses along within about a block or so of the Fournet building. And the idea behind it is if you go into the Fournet lobby, which is about halfway down the building. This video will be playing for anybody from town that maybe hasn’t been downtown lately or people from out of town that don’t know where to go, don’t know what’s all available within a short walk, within a block or two,” said Evers. “So basically, it’s a visitor bureau type of a deal where you go in there and watch the video. maybe there’s an out of town hockey tournament and there’s a two or three hour delay before all the families go to this location, watch the video and then go from there. Or maybe the video is played at the arena and then it kind of says, okay, this is some areas you can go downtown and what you can do.”
Evers said he is offering a special deal for at-home businesses that are looking to promote their business and products. “The two empty storefronts we’re offering to have any home-based business or a business that doesn’t need a storefront, or maybe they’re small and they can’t afford one right now. They can have a window display of what they offer. And then people walking by, they can have their whole window display, their business, you know, name, how to contact them and all that,” said Evers. “So if you have a home-based business, you make something at home and you want to get it out there so people know what it is, you can contact me and you can have one of the halves of those storefronts and put your display of what you have and and it’s fun for people walking by to get a chance on something maybe they wouldn’t see.”
To watch the city council meeting, click on the video below.