HometownSource Blogs

by Larry Werner
Thisweek Newspapers
A woman named Anita called on Monday morning to say she is ashamed to be a resident of Lakeville after seeing news reports of the John McCain rally Friday at South High School.
She had read in our newspaper and seen TV reports about a woman who said she didn’t trust Barack Obama because he’s “an Arab.”
Anita also was angered and embarrassed by other incidents the media reported from the town meeting McCain held with about 2,000 folks who got tickets in return for promises to do volunteer work for the Republican presidential candidate. Among the other incidents that angered her were reports that McCain’s comments concerning his respect for Obama were greeted with boos.
Similar comments criticizing Lakeville people were appended to the story of the event written by our Lakeville editor, Derrick Williams.

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    It was quite a drama onstage at the Lakeville Area Arts Center Sunday afternoon. Before a full house, a cast of characters that included past and present mayors had the audience in tears.
     At the 50th wedding anniversary party of former Mayor Duane Zaun and his wife, Mary, Lakeville Mayor Holly Dahl read a proclamation naming the arts center’s performance space the “Duane Zaun Performing Arts Theater.”
    Zaun, who convinced the City Council to buy the old All Saints Catholic Church for conversion to an arts center when he was mayor, was overcome with emotion, as was Dahl, when the proclamation was read.
    A few days earlier, a primary election in Burnsville yielded a more  mixed reaction to the commitment by that city’s mayor to build the Burnsville Performing Arts Center (PAC), which is now under construction. Jerry Willenburg, a critic of the PAC in Burnsville, actually got more votes in the Sept. 9 primary than  incumbent Mayor Elizabeth Kautz. He is running as a candidate who believes the city shouldn’t be building the $20 million facility. Read more »

When I moved to Lakeville in the spring of 1999 from the other side of the Minnesota River, I was impressed by the well-run, growing city, but disappointed that my new town lacked some basic amenities that communities need to be complete communities. I am delighted to report that times in Lakeville have changed for the better.One of the glaring gaps in Lakeville life is transit for those who can’t drive, can’t afford to drive or who prefer buses or trains to cars. Another gap has been a place where seniors can live once they need medical monitoring or more intensive health services.

In other words, the city needed services that would have allowed my mother-in-law to remain more independent and in Lakeville during her last few years.

If you’ve been around Lakeville for a while, you probably ran into my mother-in-law somewhere. Helen Zweber, widow of LeRoy Zweber, got involved in every activity that came her way. Once she and LeRoy gave up dairy farming in Credit River Township, Helen became one of the first female real estate brokers in the state. When she wasn’t selling land and houses, she was active in the garden club, the Lady Lions, the Senior Center or meeting friends at the VFW’s Friday night fish fry. The summer before a stroke slowed her down, she had a glorious ride in the Pan-O-Prog parade in a golf cart with her second husband, Bob White, whom she married several years after LeRoy died.

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Those of you who have paid attention know I like calling south of the river and Dakota County, in particular, “the third city.” There’s Minneapolis. There’s St. Paul. And there’s the third city separated from the Twin Cities by a river that is wide — culturally, if not physically. People who live down here like staying down here to do their working, shopping and playing.

Burnsville Center has thrived while other regional malls have struggled because it’s the only mall south of the river. Communities, such as Lakeville, Burnsville and Rosemount are building arts centers so folks don’t have to drive north of the river for plays and concerts. Last week, two of our writers, Jeff Achen and Jason Olson, wrote about another development that has the potential for solidifying Dakota County’s claim as the metro’s third city with Burnsville as its core. Some developers are proposing a new baseball stadium in Burnsville for an expansion minor-league team that would resurrect the name “Millers.” The old Minneapolis Millers, started in 1884, played at the old Nicollet Park in Minneapolis and then Met Stadium in Bloomington, where they played their last game in 1955.

The $27 million open-air stadium would be on an old dump at the northwest corner of I-35W and Burnsville Parkway.

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It’s tempting to suggest there’s irony in the fact that Wendy Wulff, a member of the Lakeville City Council, has spent the last three years fighting Minneapolis City Hall. But it was a successful fight with Lakeville city government over the placement of a Kwik Trip too close to her house that thrust Wulff into public life several years ago.

Her activism prompted the city to name her a member of the Lakeville Planning Commission.

Finding that she had a knack for public policy and governing, the freelance Web site designer served on the Planning Commission, ran successfully for city council a few times and is frequently mentioned about town as a candidate for mayor. Up to her ears in duties related to her home-based business, her city-council job and the challenges of raising three boys, she found herself returning to her role as activist when her husband, Dan, was injured in a traumatic accident.

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Maybe Apple Valley isn’t meant to have a walkable downtown, where people can live, work, play and shop without getting into cars. Maybe the big-box intersection of 42 and Cedar is all the downtown that city and its residents want. Or maybe building a more traditional downtown in a classic car-oriented suburb just takes a little longer than advocates for such projects would like. Read more »

A spate of ugly crimes in our Dakota County communities has me thinking about the criticism we always get at the paper: All you write about is the bad news. I’ve been in this business for almost 40 years and the accusation is a constant wherever I happen to be plying the craft of telling the stories of my community.

Years ago, Icame to understand that the complaint has to do with the fact that people remember the bad-news stories more than they remember theheart-warming stories of people living life properly. At least 90 percent of what we put into our papers is good news or at least neutral facts about community life. But it’s the bad and theugly, not the good, that sticks in readers’ minds. Read more »

On my way to a town meeting Tuesday night at Lakeville City Hall, I stopped at the Cenex station and filled up my Taurus. It cost me $47.

At the meeting, Lakeville City Administrator Steve Mielke disclosed that for about $36 in property taxes on my Lakeville condo and similar “average-priced homes”

I had the pleasure Wednesday evening to moderate a candidate forum at the Legends Golf Course in Credit River Township. Wednesday, as you might recall, was before winter returned. It was perhaps the most beautiful day so far this year. But the great weather didn’t keep about 100 Credit River residents from spending two hours inside a meeting room.

They were there to hear from three men who are runningfor two openings on the township board of supervisors. There’s been controversy in Credit River over a number of issues, including whether enough is being done to prepare for possible incorporation into a city and to fend off anexation by nearby cities, such as Savage. I’m told some recent meetings have been heated, but Wednesday’s gathering, sponsored by a group called Credit River Citizens for Change, was the epitome ofMInnesota Polite and Minnesota Involved.Behind the questions were feelings that have grown strong, but they were asked respectfully, and the three candidatesanswered without criticizing each other. Read more »

As I write this, it’s Friday afternoon, and I’m thinking about the efforts being made in Dakota County to create and revitalize downtowns.

Friday has no particular significance to you, perhaps, but as I try to tap into the source of my warm feelings about small-town downtowns, I think of Friday afternoons when I was a child. And I want those kind of Friday afternoons for those of you who live in such places as Burnsville, Rosemount, Eagan, Farmington, Apple Valley and Lakeville. I want the opportunity for mothers to take their children to places where there’s shopping,foodand, most important, a town center where our neighbors have gathered for the same reasons. Read more »

Everytime I stop at JoJo’s Rise & Wine in downtown Burnsville, or stop at Jensen’s Caf� for my BLT salad, I can’t help but check on the progress being made on the Burnsville Performing Arts Center and think about the role the arts are playing in our south-of-the-river communities. We’ve got an industry growing in the cities where Thisweek covers the news of government, schools, community life and culture.

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I am of the generation that believes a cup of coffee doesn’t taste quite right without a newspaper in hand. The feel of newsprint is something I came by honestly, having been raised by parents whose day wasn’t complete until they caught up on the news and sports in the local paper.

I tried to raise my children that way, but I failed and have accepted the reality that none of my three children will ever spend much time with a newspaper. But they are extremely adept at getting their news from many websites, downloading their music from the Web, watching videos on the screens of laptops tethered to You Tube or other places in cyberspace and on-line chatting with friends around the world. What we have here, dear readers, is a generation gap that is challenging companies such as Thisweek to provide the news and information through many channels and formats “