Star Tribune
Through floods and tornado, mayor led Granite Falls for more than 25 years
People said it might have been one of the scariest days ever in western Minnesota.
At dawn on April 6, 1997, the Minnesota River was in full flood, threatening thousands of people who lived along its banks. The exhausting work of trying to hold back the river using pumps, levees and sandbags was made even worse by a daylong blizzard.
In the middle of it all was David Smiglewksi, the new mayor of a small town called Granite Falls, situated at a scenic bend in the river.
“I still don’t know how some of the things we did managed to work,” Smiglewski told the Star Tribune for a story one year after the flood struck two dozen homes and businesses in town.
“In some ways, it was like theater, watching it unfold, not knowing what would happen. The whole thing seemed like it couldn’t possibly be happening.”
Within a span of about five years, Smiglewski found himself leading the town again through two other disasters — first a powerful tornado and then another major flood. The ensuing recovery efforts shaped his legacy as the mayor of Granite Falls for more than a quarter century.
Smiglewski’s community work was wide-ranging. He led a group supporting the nearby state park, served on the board for a local addiction treatment center and volunteered with the local Kiwanis Club for shifts at a downtown popcorn stand.
Smiglewski, 70, was still in office Sept. 22 when he died in a Washington, D.C., hospital after food lodged in his airway during an evening meal. The City Council’s vice president will serve out the mayor’s term.
“During times of disasters … it takes a leader who can deal with the immediate situation but also look to, ‘How are we going to recover from this?’ ” said Bob Byrnes, a longtime friend and mayor in the nearby town of Marshall. “That’s really the lasting legacy that Dave made, in that following the floods — as well as following the tornado — he really worked hard to give assistance and gain assistance.”
Smiglewski was born in Granite Falls. After graduating from the local high school, he studied for three years at the University of Minnesota before returning to town for a job on the railroad.
Smiglewski laid ties and track and did repairs before working as a track inspector, said his son Cody Smiglewski of Minneapolis. The job included responding to derailments in the middle of the night.
In 1979, Smiglewski was elected to city council. He served more than 16 years before stepping in when the town’s mayor died in 1996.
He shifted careers in 2004, becoming publisher of the Advocate Tribune, a weekly newspaper in Granite Falls.
As mayor, Smiglewski led a flood mitigation project in Granite Falls that required relocating City Hall and removing more than 50 homes and businesses from the flood plain. Key to the effort, Byrnes said, was figuring out how to draw support from public officials and federal agencies.
In time, Smiglewski became known statewide as an advocate for cities and towns through his leadership roles with prominent groups working at the state Capitol.
Smiglewski had two stints on the board of directors at the League of Minnesota Cities, receiving the group’s C.C. Ludwig Award in 2020, citing his vision, statesmanship and unwavering commitment to the public good. He served several years as a board member at the Coalition of Greater Minnesota Cities and was president in 2017-18.
“Dave was the consummate people person who believed in the power of conversation,” said Luke Fischer, executive director of the League of Minnesota Cities. “His focus on finding the things folks in Greater Minnesota have in common with the metro area made local government stronger across our state.”
In 2016, Smiglewski won a Bush Fellowship, which allowed him to finish his bachelor’s degree and study methods for promoting civic engagement. Throughout his career, Byrnes said, Smiglewski pushed for improvements to the transportation system throughout southwestern Minnesota — a cause that took him to Washington, D.C., last month along with other regional officials to lobby for highway funding.
Smiglewski kept working after being diagnosed about six years ago with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, the condition also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. The case was unusual, his son said, for developing very slowly — it hadn’t yet brought the disabling consequences that Smiglewski saw come quickly for a friend who was diagnosed at roughly the same time.
“His many friends across the state were drawn to Dave’s warmth and indefatigable optimism, which he maintained even after his diagnosis with ALS,” said Bradley Peterson, executive director of the Coalition of Greater Minnesota Cities.
The ailment did slow Smiglewski’s speech, which he found frustrating at times given his love for public speaking and talking with people. Even so, when a Star Tribune reporter came to town in 2022 for a podcast episode about a historical marker claiming the Granite Falls area is home to the “World’s Oldest Rock,” Smiglewski arranged a meetup at a local bar where he and others offered commentary.
“There was something about the town and its history and its natural beauty that captivated him,” said Cody Smiglewski. “He loved to be involved. Community engagement and discourse was really central to his way of being.”
Along with his son Cody, Smiglewski’s survivors include his wife, Cindy; daughter Laurel Christianson of Granite Falls and son Seth Smiglewski of St. Paul. A funeral is being planned for later this month.
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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