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WINNERS TAB: Results are in for Best of Contest SEE INSIDE
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Credit union, eye clinic win Best Place to Work BY SHANNON GRANHOLM MANAGING EDITOR
City limits can get a bit complicated around here. Perhaps that’s why a Lino Lakes business won the Best Place to Work in The Citizen’s Best Of Contest, while a Hugo business won the Best Place to Work in the Quad area’s Best Of Contest. Each year, Press Publications hosts its Reader’s Choice Best of the Press Contest, asking locals to pick their favorites, ranging from breweries to area businesses and everything in between. All in all, the Best Of Contest (in all markets) saw 28,920 nominations for the ballot in 2023 compared to 14,744 in 2022, an increase of 96%. In 2023, 332,539 votes were cast compared to 294,616 in 2022, an increase of 12.8%. Rising to the top in the Best Place to Work category for the Quad contest is Heartland Credit Union, while Associated Eye Care took top spot in The Citizen contest.
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The Best of the Press
2023
Hugo Fire hosts open house The Hugo Fire Department (HFD) will host an open house from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 7. The event will include a Kids Fun Run at noon. There will be visits from the Washington County Sheriff’s Office, M Health Ambulance and the Department of Natural Resources. Enter a fire prevention poster contest as well as a raffle for a birthday party, which includes riding to school in a HFD engine.
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT EATING & DRINKING HEALTH & FITNESS LOCAL SERVICES
New tax district for Centerville Lake? CENTERVILLE — Around the new year, residents/taxpayers who live along Centerville Lake will have the opportunity to weigh in on a proposal to establish a water management district. Rice Creek Watershed District (RCWD) Lake and Stream Program Manager Matt Kocian explained that the watershed district, along with the Centerville Lake Association (CLA), have been talking about water quality issues on Centerville Lake for the
past couple of years, as conditions continue to deteriorate. “(According to our) water quality monitoring data, things have been getting a bit worse over the past couple of years,” Kocain said. “That’s concerning to us, obviously, it’s concerning to the residents who live on Centerville Lake, the Centerville Lake Association, Anoka County Parks and everybody who uses the Rice Creek Regional Park there.” The main problem is algae blooms, which are driven by excess nutrients in the water, primarily phosphorus. The beach at the adjacent Rice Creek Chain of Lakes regional park is regularly
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closed due to health concerns from blue-green algae. “We want to get an (alum) treatment because it is so bad. It’s not safe for dogs, it’s not safe for kids,” said CLA President Barry Stoffel. Kocian said that RCWD has performed several diagnostic studies to try to determine where the excess phosphorus is coming from. “These studies are saying that a good portion of the excess phosphorus is just being recycled inside the lake. So, the sediments or the mud at the bottom of the
The results are in for the 2023 Best of the press contest. See the winners tab inside.
SEE TAX DISTRICT, PAGE 11
SEE BEST PLACE TO WORK, PAGE 3
As voted by The Citizen readers and surrounding area residents
and the
Winners are... 2023
of the
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