Star Tribune
Three Rivers Park District board discusses offloading or moving Silverwood Park programming
Silverwood Park, on the shores Silver Lake in St. Anthony, features trails, an art gallery, sculpture installations and roughly 600 programs and events a year.
Most of the people who bask in its beauty are from Ramsey and Anoka Counties, data show.
So why should suburban Hennepin County residents continue to pay for it?
The Three Rivers Park Board, which owns and manages the park — and gets its tax funding largely from suburban Hennepin County communities — is debating the question.
Superintendent Boe Carlson said that as a regional park agency, Three Rivers owns properties located throughout the seven-county metro. But the board has debated where to spend park money over the last decade-or-so, as tax dollars have gotten harder to come by.
“It has been a challenge that the board has brought to us as staff to say you know, we want to look at how we’re allocating resources and really have a better idea of where we want to program,” Carlson said.
Silverwood, located in Ramsey County near the border of Hennepin, gets 45% of visits from Ramsey County residents, 22% from Anoka, 15% from Minneapolis and 12% from suburban Hennepin County, according to a Three Rivers visitor study. The study did not break down program participation by county of residence.
Three Rivers Park District, established by the Legislature in 1957, is supposed to “acquire, develop and maintain large park reserves and regional parks and trails for the citizens of suburban Hennepin County, the metro area and the State,” according to the park website. It purchased a former Salvation Army summer camp and opened Silverwood in 2009.
At an Oct. 19 meeting, several park board members pointed out that Hennepin County taxpayers are largely footing the bill for a park that few of them use.
Erin Kolb, elected to the Three Rivers Board in 2022 to represent the area including St. Anthony, said when she was on the city of Crystal parks board, said she often heard Three Rivers didn’t do enough in Hennepin County’s first-ring suburbs. With French Park in Plymouth and Elm Creek in Maple Grove, some suburban Hennepin County residents have the impression, she said, that Three Rivers caters to wealthier, white residents of the county.
Silverwood is “a lovely park that has fantastic, art-centered programming, and it should exist in the world,” Kolb said in an interview. “Really, the hyper-focused question is ‘should suburban Hennepin County residents pay for it?’ “
Other commissioners agreed.
“It really is outside our mission. As you look at the visitation that comes from our district, which is our primary area, it’s the lowest-visitation park we have from within our area,” Commissioner Marge Beard said.
But the agreement wasn’t unanimous. “Silverwood is the seventh most visited park in 2022 and to consider a ramp down is tough for me,” Commissioner Jesse Winkler said. He argued people don’t choose which park to visit based on which county it’s in, but rather based on parks’ features.
The Board decided to ask staff to prepare a report that explores options, and listed a range they’d like to see included, from doing nothing, a gradual redistribution of programs to other Three Rivers parks, getting Ramsey County or another party to subsidize the programs and potentially trying to get Ramsey County to buy the park. The board will discuss the options at a future meeting.
Ramsey County spokesperson Eve Onduru said in an email that Ramsey County hasn’t been approached about Silverwood Park and didn’t have additional information to provide.
Anna Sharratt said she is concerned that moving programming away from Silverwood would remove an access point to nature for many people who depend on it. Sharratt is the founder of the Free Forest School, which used to meet weekly at Silverwood Park.
She said she has long admired the range of programs staff have put on or been involved with, including Hiking Hijabie, a group of Muslim women and their kids getting outdoors, as well as programs for people with developmental disabilities.
“It’s not only a wonderful physical space, but they’re doing the work to connect members of our community who might otherwise face barriers to access,” Sharratt said.
Carlson said no decisions have been made.
“I realize Silverwood is a little unique because it is such a unique programming component [with] the artistic bend of it or twist of is different than what we do in other locations,” he said. “But this is one of those ongoing conversations we had with have with the board on how we’re going to go about providing programmatic services.”
Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan and her daughter were among the throngs Friday as President Joe Biden delivered the apology that many Indigenous Americans thought would never come.
“I think he really said the things that people have been waiting to hear for generations, acknowledged just the horror and trauma of literally having our children stolen from our communities,” said Flanagan, a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe. “It’s a powerful first step towards healing.”
Hundreds of boarding schools operated in the 19th and 20th centuries, separating Indigenous children from their families and forcing them to assimilate to European ways. Many children were abused, and at least 973 died, according to a report from the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Other Minnesotans reacted similarly to Flanagan, saying they welcomed the apology but that additional action is needed to help Indigenous people move forward.
Anton Treuer, a professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University, wrote in a newsletter that the apology was “a welcome first step on the journey to healing.”
“There is no way to truly right historical injustices for the children buried at Carlisle, Haskell, and other schools, but these words set a new tone for the country and will help heal the anguish so many Natives have carried for so long,” Treuer wrote. “It gives me hope that we can come together to reconcile and heal our troubled nation.”
Sen. Mary Kunesh, DFL-New Brighton, the first Indigenous woman to serve in the state Senate, called Biden’s apology encouraging.
“This recognition of past wrongdoings is an important step towards healing relationships between the United States and the sovereign nations affected by these past systems,” Kunesh said in a statement. “This dark period of American history must be remembered and taught.”
“I have done everything in my power to remedy this situation, and it continues to get more and more violent by the day,” Moturi wrote. “There have been numerous times when I’ve seen Sawchak outside and contacted law enforcement, and there was no response. I am not confident in the pursuit of Sawchak given that Sawchak attacked me, MPD officers had John detained, and despite an HRO and multiple warrants — they still let him go.”
On Friday, five City Council members sent a letter to Mayor Jacob Frey and Police Chief Brian O’Hara expressing their “utter horror at MPD’s failure to protect a Minneapolis resident from a clear, persistent and amply reported threat posed by his neighbor.”
Council Members Andrea Jenkins, Elliott Payne, Aisha Chughtai, Jason Chavez and Robin Wonsley went on to allege that police had failed to submit reports to the County Attorney’s Office despite threats being made with weapons, and at times while Sawchak screamed racial slurs. Sawchak is white and Moturi is Black.
The council members also contend in their letter that the MPD told the County Attorney’s Office that police did not intend to execute the warrant for “reasons of officer safety.”
At a Friday afternoon news conference at MPD’s Fifth Precinct, O’Hara said police had been working to arrest Sawchak since at least April, but “no Minneapolis police officers have had in-person contact with that suspect since the victim in this case has been calling us.” The chief pointed out that Sawchak is mentally ill, has guns and refuses to cooperate “in the dozens of times that police officers have responded to the residence.”
O’Hara put aside the option to carry out “a high-risk warrant based on these factors [and] the likelihood of an armed, violent confrontation where we may have to use deadly force with the suspect.” The preference, he said, was to arrest Sawchak outside his home, but “in this case, this suspect is a recluse and does not come out of the house.”
ROCHESTER – The Federal Transit Administration has green-lighted an $85 million grant supporting the development of the city’s planned Link Bus Rapid Transit system.
The FTA formally announced the grant on Friday during a ceremonial check presentation outside of the Mayo Civic Center, one of the seven stops planned for the bus line. The federal grant will cover about 60% of the project’s estimated $143.4 million price tag, with the remaining funds coming from Destination Medical Center, the largest public-private development project in state history.
Set to go live in 2026, the 2.8-mile Link system will connect downtown Rochester, including Mayo Clinic’s campuses, with a proposed “transit village” that will include parking, hundreds of housing units and a public plaza. The bus line will be the first of its kind outside the Twin Cities — with service running every five minutes during peak hours.
“That means you may not even need to look at a schedule,” said Veronica Vanterpool, deputy administrator for the FTA. “You can just show up at your transit stop and expect the next bus to come in a short time. That is a game changer and a life-transformational experience in transit for those people who are using it and relying on it.”
The planned Second Street corridor is already one of the busiest roads in Rochester, carrying more than 21,800 vehicles a day, and city planners have talked for years about ways to reduce traffic congestion in the city’s downtown. Local officials estimate that the transit line, which will rely on a fleet of all-electric buses, will handle 11,000 riders on its first day of operation and save eight city blocks of parking.
Speaking to a crowd of about 100 people gathered on Friday, Sen. Amy Klobuchar said the project shows Rochester is thinking strategically about how it handles growth.
“If you just plan the business expansion, and you don’t have the workforce, you don’t have the child care, the housing or the transit, it’s not going to work very well as a lot of communities across the nation have found,” Klobuchar said.
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