Nathan Bowe

The new 5,000-foot buffer is 10 times as restrictive as the 500 lineal feet between shops agreed on by the council at an October work session.

The tax hike could have been worse: The city transferred $690,000 from its liquor store profits, and another $661,000 from its electrical utility, and it would take a 17% levy hike to replace that.

“We are devastated and thankful at the same time,” said Annalee Tumberg. “We lost everything, but we still have each other.”

In a training scenario, a passenger train collided with an oil train in DL, and "multiple train cars flipped over, several off the tracks, with multiple explosions and a very large ongoing fire.”

“She takes the lead, researches it and keeps Becker County moving forward on those items,” said Board Chairman John Okeson, who talked about the performance review at Tuesday’s meeting.

Commissioners sparred over residential lot sizes and the need for more housing during the planning and zoning section of the County Board meeting on Tuesday, Dec. 17.

The amended feedlot ordinance as passed by the Planning Commission is short, but it does now include the requirement of at least one monitoring well per site to check for groundwater contamination.

“Any kind of cannabis (business) would need a conditional use permit,” Becker County Planning and Zoning Administrator Kyle Vareberg told the Planning Commission.

The pile driver that sends each piling a few inches lower with each stroke is no Tonka toy — it delivers around 35,000 foot-pounds of energy per blow.

The therapy dog comes in to help with “the hard cases, the really traumatic cases,” said Becker County Attorney Brian McDonald.