Star Tribune
An endless winter cycle leads to potholes that are deeper, wider and more resistant to being fixed
On St. Paul’s Shepard Road, which carries 15,000 vehicles a day between Hwy. 5 and Interstate 35E, the potholes have won.
Rather than futilely continuing to patch and patch again, only to have freezing snowmelt and rainwater pop it all out, officials this week installed orange “rough roads” signs and lowered the posted speed limit to 35, down from 50 mph.
“It is frustrating for motorists and our staff alike,” St. Paul Public Works Director Sean Kershaw said. “Our street maintenance crews have been patching this section repeatedly, all winter long. They will patch it one day, and the next day they are back in the same spot because the plowing has knocked everything loose or the patch has already crumbled to gravel due to the underlying conditions of the road.”
The reality across much of the metro area is that these last weeks of winter with heavy snows, followed by warming, followed by rain, then freezing again are creating potholes that are not only deeper and wider but also more resistant to treatment. From alleys to long stretches of major thoroughfares in Bloomington, Minneapolis and St. Paul, Star Tribune readers on Twitter reported not just problem potholes here and there Friday but blocks-long stretches of potholes.
Part of the problem can be attributed to timing, said Lisa Hiebert, a spokeswoman for St. Paul Public Works. It’s still too cold for St. Paul to fire up its hot-mix asphalt plant, which usually happens in April, and the cold mix used for winter patching won’t take hold.
“It’s kind of like taking Oreo crumbs and trying to spread frosting on it,” Hiebert said. “It’s not going to hold together.”
Brittany Norberg and her husband live on W. Jessamine Avenue in St. Paul, not far from the border with Falcon Heights. “We drive extremely slow, like 2 miles per hour,” she said because the potholes are so bad on a two-block stretch of her street.
But not everyone does, Norberg said.
“Some people get behind someone going that slow and they get angry and whip past,” she said. “Then they hit the potholes, and they’re hitting them hard.”
At Capitol City Station on Shepard Road, owner Todd Knudten and area resident Robert Orth shared their frustrations with the chronically poor conditions of the road and its seemingly unbeatable potholes.
“Every year, they fill them with asphalt, but it’s like putting a Band-Aid on cancer,” Orth said. “It’s dangerous.”
Knudten said that despite Shepard Road being heavily used, “It doesn’t seem this road is a priority. “
He said the only way St. Paul will be able to get ahead on Shepard is to completely rebuild the roadway. Patching isn’t enough.
“Why isn’t the problem solved? It’s not rocket science,” he said. “All of the stuff they’re throwing in the holes now is popping out of the hole in about an hour.”
On that point, he appears to have an ally in Kershaw. But despite the Public Works director saying the same things that previous Public Works directors have said — that many of the city’s roads need a complete rebuild — officials acknowledge it’s unlikely to happen anytime soon.
The money just isn’t there. In fact, the city’s street reconstruction budget is now on a 124-year cycle.
In December, St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter with City Council support proposed adding a 1% sales tax to goods and services sold in St. Paul to improve the capital city’s notoriously bad roads and aging park facilities. That increase over 20 years would infuse nearly $1 billion into the city’s capital budget — with $738 million going to rebuilding and improving roads. But the city first must convince state lawmakers, then voters.
According to a 2019 study by Public Works, without additional funding, city-owned arterial and collector streets will drop to “very poor” condition from the current condition of “fair to poor” in the next 20 years.
The alarm has been sounded before. In 2014, John Maczko, then-St. Paul city engineer, said the city, county and state needed to pump more money into rebuilding St. Paul’s 900 miles of roads or the bone-jarring potholes would continue.
At the time, Maczko said St. Paul needed another $20 million a year over its road rebuilding budget of $12.5 million to get all its streets to a passing grade. Hiebert said the gap now is more like $30 million per year.
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Star Tribune
St. Paul planning commission to discuss a potential citywide ban of new fast food drive-thrus
Twin Cities franchisees and business advocacy groups have already voiced their concerns about the potential drive-thru restrictions to the planning commission.
Over 80% of Taco Bell transactions in St. Paul are done via drive-thru windows, according to Zach Zelickson, vice president of Marvin Development, which develops Taco Bell restaurants for Border Foods. A ban on new drive-thrus could limit what can be done with existing restaurants and make customers travel to locations outside the city, he said. In 2022, Border Foods opened a futuristic Taco Bell Defy location with four drive-thru lanes in Brooklyn Park.
“We believe that drive-thrus play a vital role in serving the needs of our communities across Minnesota,” Angie Whitcomb, CEO of Hospitality Minnesota, which represents the state’s hospitality businesses, said in a statement. Drive-thrus provide convenience for busy customers and contribute to the safety of fast food workers, particularly duing late-night hours, she said.
Drive-thrus have been synonymous with America’s fast-food culture since the concept became mainstream in the 1970s. During the pandemic, drive-thrus became even more important, allowing consumers to grab food while COVID-19 restrictions shut down many restaurant dining rooms.
Besides traditional fast food operations, other fast casual restaurants such as Chipotle have begun to add drive-thru lanes.
According to a study released last month by the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, drive-thrus are critical for many businesses. Average monthly visits to studied stores with drive-thrus were down a little more than 4% in December 2022 (post-pandemic) compared to December 2019 (pre-pandemic). However, traffic at stores without drive-thrus declined about 48%.
“[The most pressing issues] are everything from gentrification to community policing to climate change,” he told the Star Tribune. “MCAD’s role is: How do we begin addressing the most critical issues of our time? Frankly that’s got to be part of the work we do in educating the next generation of cultural leaders.”
MCAD’s Board Search Committee will begin a national search for the next president, working with executive search firm Isaacson, Miller, along with the MCAD community.
“We thank President Sethi for his dedication for the past five years, as he led the college through the challenges of COVID, acquired a new building for much-needed student housing, reimagined the campus of the future, and advocated for greater access to an art-and-design education,” said Board Co-Chairs Chris Barry and M.E. Kirwan in a joint statement.
Sethi is the 19th president in MCAD’s 139-year history, previously serving for four years as inaugural director of George Washington University’s Corcoran School of the Arts & Design, and previously holding leadership positions at Santa Fe Art Institute, Memphis College of Art and California College of the Arts.
The medical center is owned by a local nonprofit, but operated by Duluth-based Essentia under an affiliation agreement that dates back to 2009.
With the ruling announced Wednesday, Essentia Health says it will continue to operate the hospital, clinic, assisted-living and long-term care facilities in Fosston, plus clinics in Bagley and Oklee.
“Now that the arbitration process is over, Essentia is focused on the opportunity to engage our patients, colleagues and the community in building a shared vision for the future of health care in Fosston,” said Dr. Stefanie Gefroh, interim president of Essentia Health’s West Market, in a statement.
Arbitrators were asked to rule on whether Essentia eliminated a “core” service by discontinuing deliveries, since the city of Fosston would then have the right to terminate the affiliation agreement. But the panel in a 2-1 vote concluded that labor and delivery is just one aspect of obstetrics (OB).
“OB is a ‘core’ service under the agreement, encompassing labor and delivery as part of comprehensive care for pregnant women,” the ruling states. “Simply put, while the delivery of the baby is an essential component, it is not the sole care provided to a pregnant woman.”
Fosston officials, including the town’s mayor, were involved in the arbitration because the city has a legal connection to the nonprofit owner of the medical center, which historically was a municipal hospital.
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