COUNTRY
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 8, 2017
Serving Marine on St. Croix, Scandia, May Township
VOL. 33 NO. 45 www.countrymessenger.com $.75
MAY TOWNSHIP: Support eroding for paving project? PAGE 7
Nice roads are an asset, but asphalt isn’t cheap Scandia weighs roads inventory, looming costs BY KYLE WEAVER CONTRIBUTING WRITER
JIM KENT
“We are all refugees,” reads a sign worn outside Emmer’s town hall in Sartell Feb. 22. The man in the background holds a Trump campaign sign (below the frame) reading, “Make America great again!”
Local Indivisible chapter treks to Emmer town hall BY SUZANNE LINDGREN EDITOR@COUNTRYMESSENGER.COM
A dozen locals were among the hundreds who gathered in Sartell late last month for a town hall meeting with U.S. Representative Tom Emmer. The large crowd reflects a nationwide trend of constituents flooding town-hall style meetings to question Washington
lawmakers on issues ranging from health care to environmental health. Others have joined the meetings to show support for their congressional representatives. The Marine-area contingent was comprised of members of the recently formed Indivisible chapter, which is part of a nationwide movement. All who traveled to Sartell, near St. Cloud, are Em-
Scandia has more than 70 miles of roads, many of them in good or better condition. But according to city staffers, the cost of maintaining those roads will be an ongoing and significant challenge for the city over the next few decades. In a focused and informative meeting March 1 led by City Administrator Neil Soltis and City Engineer Ryan Goodman, the Scandia City Council reviewed the current conditions of the city’s system of roads and its long term strategy for maintaining them. According to Soltis’ estimation, it would cost around $56 million—or about $1.8 million per year— to re-pave and maintain all the city’s asphalt roads through their full life cycle of roughly 31 years. Those numbers assume reclamation and re-paving of the asphalt, and not a more costly full reconstruction of the underlying gravel base.
mer’s constituents. Only two, Lee Thompson Kent and Jim Kent of Marine, actually made it in to the meeting room, which had seats for roughly 90 by the couple’s estimate. The pair left at about 2:30 p.m. for the 7 p.m. event, arriving around 3:45 to wait in line. “I was half expecting no one to SEE INDIVISIBLE, PAGE 6 COURTESY CITY OF SCANDIA
A map of Scandia’s roads shows the condition of each as rated by the Pavement Surface Evaluation and Rating (PASER) system. More than three-quarters of the city’s roads are rated with a “5” or higher—meaning they’re not in immediate need of repaving.
Bound by friendship, and a canoe BY SUZANNE LINDGREN EDITOR@COUNTRYMESSENGER.COM
Adventure, friendship, and rivers: As Natalie Warren recounts the journey she took with a friend in 2011, following the route laid out in 1930 by Eric Sevareid and later published in his book, “Canoeing with the Cree,” she grounds her story in these three themes. Warren was in her final year at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn., when her friend, Ann Raiho, suggested they make the voyage. “It was winter senior year and we were all SEE WARREN, PAGE 2
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By contrast, the city has levied less than half that amount in local taxes for roads in each of the last few years. The city typically chooses to re-pave a handful of roads on an every-other-year basis, with maintenance projects such as seal coating and crack filling occurring annually. “It really points out that if you want to have good roads, you need to make the investment,” Soltis said. “It’s on and beyond 2028. It’s a much bigger need.” While the long view of the roads situation is somewhat ominous, the city has been able to make headway in the last few years as prices for materials such as oil and gravel have come down. “We have been very fortunate with all the gravel pits around us that we’re getting such favorable bids,” Goodman said. Those favorable economic conditions have, in some cases, allowed the city to extend seal coating and crack sealing projects—maintenance efforts that extend the life of pavement, which Goodman deemed “the best thing you can do on a cost-per-mile basis.” “That’s the whole game: keeping water from getting into the base,” Soltis said. In other instances, the city has managed to tuck
Natalie Warren tells the tale of being one of the first two women to paddle more than 2,000 miles from Minneapolis to Hudson Bay, March 23 in Marine.
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