Reaching Everybody!
Presorted Standard U.S. Postage Paid St. Joseph Newsleader St. Joseph, MN 56374 Permit No. 21 ECRWSS Postal Customer
Newsleader St. Joseph
Friday, June 28, 2013 Volume 24, Issue 26 Est. 1989
Town Crier
Newsleader closed July 1-5
The Newsleader office will be closed July 1-5. A July 5 edition will not be published. The office will reopen on July 8 and will resume weekly publications beginning July 12.
Common Ground asks for surplus produce
The Common Ground Garden at St. Benedict’s Monastery will host a space to share surplus produce. From 8 a.m. to 7 p.m Mondays, anyone with surplus produce is invited to drop it off at the garden. Anyone is welcome to stop by and pick up surplus produce. You are then invited to share the produce with friends or family, help out in the garden, leave a donation to support the ministry, or pay the generosity forward and do something kind for someone in the community. The garden is located on the edge of the College of St. Benedict campus next to the big yellow barn.
Lymes Disease group meets July 8
Learn more about Lyme Disease by attending a support group meeting at 7 p.m. the second Monday of each month at Good Earth Co-op at 2010 Veterans Drive, St. Cloud. The next meeting is July 8.
Library contest seeks blue-ribbon winner
Great River Regional Library is giving teens and children a chance to win a blue ribbon and visit the Minnesota State Fair this year. The library is having a Blue Ribbon Reader contest for children and teens ages 8 to 18. They are being asked to hand-write a one-page essay to answer this question: Why do you love to read? All entries must be completed on the official essay entry sheet available from the library. Entries must be submitted to a branch of Great River Regional Library on or before Saturday, July 27. Each of the library’s 32 branches will select a winner. A grand-prize winner will be selected from those, and he or she will receive four free tickets to the Minnesota State Fair together with a big blue ribbon. The Minnesota State Fair has a Read and Ride Day on Wednesday, Aug. 28. On that date, public library card holders will receive a discounted admission ticket price when they purchase a ticket at the gate and present a valid library card (one discount per card). For additional criers, visit www.thenewsleaders.com and click on Criers.
Postal Patron
Group seeks funds to rehab vacant rental houses by Mike Nistler news@thenewsleaders.com
if the first five homes are fin- sota Housing Partnership of St. ished in a timely manner. Cloud. The local agency that will According to Jason KrebsWith a July 11 deadline loom- submit the application to the bach, community development ing, local realtor Cori Ehlert Minnesota Housing Finance director at the CMHP, the rehahopes to garner support for se- Agency is the Central Minne- bilitation funds would be used curing an application to receive state money that would help restore rental houses in the city. Ehlert is asking the City of St. Joseph, the St. Joseph Area Chamber of Commerce, the St. Cloud Area Association of Realtors, the College of St. Benedict and local civic organizations to back the project. And while some of those entities have verbally supported that effort, Ehlert is wanting them to put some financial backing on the table in the form of “participation funds,” which would make the application look even stronger. His goal is for at least $50,000 in backing to help bolster a chance of receiving state funds that could be used to fix a minimum of five homes out of the estimated 10 to 15 vacant rental photo by Cori Hilsgen houses in the city. Additional The All Saints Academy playground has been moved to a new homes could also be completed ready just in time for the July 4 celebration.
to address the city’s vacant rental housing issue brought on in part by new student-housing requirements at CSB. CMHP proposes to purchase Rentals • page 8
ASA playground is ready for July 4 celebration
location and is in place and
St. Joseph area residents weather week of storms by Mike Nistler news@thenewsleaders.com
For the most part, St. Joseph residents were spared the worst when it came to last week’s stormy weather. A couple different rounds of storms knocked down trees and left some without power, but compared to other places in central Minnesota, that didn’t seem so bad. By early this week. Xcel Energy reported the number of Minnesota customers without power was down to about 60,000. photo by Mike Nistler
Crews worked to restore power to homes in St. Joseph that were left in the dark after last week’s volley of storms. Downed trees and branches were common but for the most part St. Joseph residents were spared the worst of the storm.
See inside for July 4th festival activities! INSERT:
St. Joseph Resource Guide
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The Minneapolis-based utility worked for days to restore power following a series of severe thunderstorms that swept through Minnesota from Friday to early Saturday. At the peak of outages more than 550,000 Xcel Energy customers were without service. The utility says it expects to restore power to the vast majority of its customers by Wednesday. The utility says it responds with top priority to situations that threaten public safety, such as downed wires. The next priority includes hospitals and nursing homes. Then crews focus on restoring service in densely populated areas. The St. Joseph area received upwards of five inches of rain during the turbulent weather. The moisture caused the groundwater to become over-saturated, which led to many trees toppling over in the high winds. From Friday through Monday, the area picked
up anywhere from 3.95 inches of rain (Collegeville) to 4.77 inches (Melrose), according to Bob Weisman, St. Cloud State University meteorologist. “The storms produced two waves of straight-line wind damage, the one affecting central Minnesota early Friday morning,” Weisman said. “This line of storms moved from the Morris and Benson area east and southeast throughout the St. Cloud area. Many large branches were torn off trees, trees with one- to twofoot trunks were snapped in half and a few large trees were completely uprooted.” Winds were measured at 85.5 mph at Benson, 64 at Paynesville and 53 at the St. Cloud Airport, he said. “Some of the responsibility for the large trees being down was the persistent heavy rains, softening the ground a bit, so large leafy trees were vulnerable,” Weisman said.