Star Tribune
Disadvantaged homeowners in Minneapolis get help paying for diseased tree removal
Some low-income property owners in Minneapolis who have been charged big bills for removing diseased trees from their lots will receive financial help, thanks to a $500,000 donation from the Margaret A. Cargill Fund of the Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation.
The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, which accepted the grant, will use three quarters of the money to retroactively pay assessed fees for trees afflicted with emerald ash borer that were removed. The money will cover the costs of the assessments between October 2022 and October 2023 on 169 homesteads in north Minneapolis and the Seward and Phillips neighborhoods. The board expects to use more funds as they receive more invoices for removed trees in future months.
Emerald ash borer has been killing ash trees throughout the city since it was discovered more than a decade ago, and the city has condemned about 16,000 trees during that period. Another 12,000 infested trees in low-income neighborhoods are expected to follow in the next five years.
Park Board commissioners have heard from community members that assessments have an inequitable effect on property owners in disadvantaged areas. People in those areas have fought for assistance, including retroactive aid.
The new funds follow $8 million awarded to the city several months ago by the U.S. Forest Service to remove trees on private property infested with emerald ash borer, which also focused on easing the burden on low-income property owners.
“We are so grateful for [the foundation fund] for stepping up and helping the Minneapolis community with this need,” Park Board Superintendent Al Bangoura said in a statement.
A need beyond what the funds will cover remain, and the Park Board says that it’s still seeking money for people whose trees were removed before 2022.
Amoke Kubat, 73, saw a man inspecting a large tree in her backyard a week after she moved into her newly purchased North Side home in 2021. He determined it was diseased and tagged it to be condemned although Kubat thought the tree appeared healthy, she said. Then the city condemned the tree in her front yard, too. Kubat received an assessment of more than $6,000 for the removal of the trees: one-third of which she paid, one-third that was covered through a grant from nonprofit Metro Blooms and one-third that is pending.
“I live with a fixed income of very little on Social Security retirement money,” said Kubat, an artist who looks for grants to support her work. “I’m house-poor, actually. I live basically one check to the other, so any kind of expense [like this] is pretty alarming.”
She’s one of many homeowners who won’t benefit from the recent grant monies because the retroactive date doesn’t go back to 2021.
“It’s not going to help us … I’m concerned about that,” Kubat said.
The Park Board plans to use another quarter of the funds to clear any private property tree removal assessments that become pending between Nov. 1 and the still unknown date that the Forest Service grant assistance starts.
The lead pastor of Lakes Area Vineyard Church in Detroit Lakes said that a missionary was killed in an act of violence Friday in Angola, Africa.
Beau Shroyer moved there in 2021 with his wife, Jackie, and five children. They were working with the missionary organization SIM USA, founded in 1893 in Charlotte, N.C. SIM USA president Randy Fairman shared in a message to the Lakes Area Vineyard congregation that the Shroyers were one of the first families to move to Angola after pandemic lockdowns eased.
Fairman said many details are still unknown about Shroyer’s death. He said he got a call Friday “informing me that Beau Shroyer was killed while serving Jesus in Angola and is now with his Savior.”
“It is my belief that from his vantage point, he can see how his family will be cared for, and it is not hard for him to trust our good Father,” Fairman wrote. “From our perspective and the perspective of Jackie and the kids, we now must trust Jesus in a season that we never imagined. We must trust Him without requiring Him to give us an understanding of why He allowed this. It is difficult and stretches our faith.”
Troy Easton, lead pastor of Lakes Area Vineyard Church, said in a message to congregants that “Moments like these create so many unanswerable questions for us and it adds to the pain to know that we may never understand why our Father has allowed something like this to happen.”
“As more details became available regarding what’s next for the family, what arrangements are being made to celebrate and honor Beau’s life, and practical ways you can love and serve them, we will be certain to share them with you.
Along with his wife, Shroyer, 44, a former Detroit Lakes police officer and real estate agent, leaves behind children Bella, Avery, Oakley, Iva and Eden.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
This year, its jump-scares and lore landed it on Forbes’ list of “7 of the World’s Scariest Haunted Houses” alongside a 160-room mansion in California filled with “occult oddities,” a house built on an old cemetery near Chicago, and a haunted theme park in New Zealand built on the grounds of an old psychiatric hospital. The Haunted Ship, as the Irvin is known in October, is open just one more night — from 6:30 to 10 p.m. on Halloween.
“But this isn’t just a manufactured scare factory,” according to Forbes’ scare scouts, who reportedly visited the ship and had the VIP experience — which includes controlling the dialogue of a disembodied skull as visitors stream past. “In 1964, a sailor died on the ship during a boiler room accident, prompting the Duluth Paranormal Society to investigate the ship. Employees have reported seeing unexplained shadows, hearing phantom footsteps, and had objects thrown at them while doing maintenance work.”
The pilot house of the William A. Irvin is covered in cobwebs during October, a stop on the VIP tour of the seasonal Haunted Ship. (Jana Hollingsworth / The Minnesota Star Tribune)
The tour twists through the ship’s nooks, crannies and areas specific to its life on the Great Lakes — like a few gruesome dining areas where bloodied limbs are scattered about. There are creepy clowns and Victorian-era beings who stare wordlessly. A sink runs with bloody-colored water and a skeleton sits in a muddied bathtub surrounded by its innards.
The VIP experience offers a chance to roam through the ship’s living quarters alongside an ethereal character in the role of Irvin’s second wife. She sashays through the space with tales from the past, then allows you entry into private spaces where a saw blade rests in a sink and a body meant for the morgue vibrates with electrical waves on a bed. It offers a chance to dip into the pilot house, where wheels and gears are draped in cobwebs, offset in the opposite direction by a fresh perspective on the Aerial Lift Bridge.
The view from the Haunted Ship offers a new perspective on the Aerial Lift Bridge. (Jana Hollingsworth / The Minnesota Star Tribune)
There are countless dark corners for jump scares, strobe lights and tight spaces with hidden exits. There is a place designed to trigger claustrophobia. And there are mind-bending questions: Is that a person in that chair or isn’t it? Who is making that growling-moaning sound? What is that smell?
The final question is answered at the exit of the ship, where there is a running tally of how many people haven’t been able to finish the tour (90 as of Friday night) and how many have wet their pants (35).
How many people have opted out of the Haunted Ship? (Jana Hollingsworth / The Minnesota Star Tribune)
Police said they will be releasing details Monday about the shooting death of a 23-year-old man last week in New Hope.
Carnell Mark Johnson Jr., of Bloomington, was shot in the chest Thursday in the 7300 block of Bass Lake Road and died that same day at North Memorial Health Hospital, the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office said.
A police official said more information will be released about the shooting later Monday. No arrests have been announced.
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Woman found “dazed and injured” after surviving snake bite and multiple days in the wilderness
LinkedIn senior editor Jessi Hempel on rising return-to-office mandates and what they mean