DULUTH – The St. Louis County Board approved its cannabis ordinance during Tuesday’s meeting at the courthouse, with regulations in place for proximity to schools, number of potential retail spots and where it cannot be used publicly.

The ordinance, which goes in effect Jan. 1, covers the areas within this vast swath of northeastern Minnesota where St. Louis County is the planning and zoning authority. According to the ordinance, no retail businesses can set up within 1,000 feet of a school or 500 feet from a licensed daycare, residential treatment facility or public park. The county must approve registrations for one retailer per 12,500 residents. This caps out at three businesses in areas where St. Louis County, rather than a city like Duluth, is the zoning authority.

Cannabis is banned in public parks and government land and any indoor spaces where smoking is banned.

Of the seven commissioners, just Ashley Grimm, whose district is in the western part of Duluth, opposed it. Among her reasons: With a limit of three retail spaces, marijuana won’t be accessible for some people, and that number benefits larger corporations rather than “smaller shops that tend to be less predatory.”

“The largest concern for me,” she said during the meeting, “is the increase in pretextual stops that this could give people — that this could be used for when people are using marijuana in really isolated places, even.”

She cited the county’s definition of “public place,” which includes nearly a million acres of tax-forfeited land.

“It includes places where you would not be a public health concern to anyone,” Grimm said. “I want to make sure that we’re not starting to criminalize behavior that’s widely popularly considered non-criminal as well as behavior that’s not detrimental to public health.”

Board chair Keith Nelson said the ordinance was purposefully conservative, with the intent of offering room to adjust in the future. He described it as a “starting point” and advised that commissioners not pick it apart at this point. Commissioners used Brad the runaway sheep who freely roamed the North Shore for weeks as a metaphor: Getting away from the farm is easy, corralling him back home was not as easy.

DULUTH – There were 17,000 flight operations at the Duluth International Airport in September 2024 — setting a record for the busiest month on record, the Duluth Airport Authority announced earlier this week.

It was a fresh record to break: The previous high was from August 2024, but that was exceeded by 2,000 flights to set the new record. Airport executive director Tom Werner touted the importance of the space as a point of connection to the world — while also throwing in a pitch for the need to replace its aging control room.

“To sustain growth and ensure our facilities meet future demands, we need further assistance from both state and federal sources to replace our 70-year-old air traffic control tower,” Werner said in a news release.

The current tower was built in the mid-1950s and the DIA has described it as the third-oldest in the country and said it doesn’t meet Federal Aviation Administration standards for line-of-sight requirements. The airport authority received $10 million from the FAA as part of an Infrastructure and Jobs Act grant. It is looking to the state and the FAA for more, according to an earlier news release.

In addition to passenger flights, the Duluth International Airport is used for cargo operations, flight training, military operations, medical flights and test flights.

The Minnesota Court of Appeals has overturned the conviction of a man who received a 27-year sentence last year for a fatal shooting outside the Elks Club in north Minneapolis during a memorial vigil.

Deandre D. Turner, 41, was sentenced on Aug. 31, 2023, in Hennepin County District Court after a jury convicted him of second-degree intentional murder in connection with the killing of Andrew T. McGinley on June 30, 2021.

In its ruling last week, the Court of Appeals said Turner was denied a fair trial “due to evidentiary errors and multiple instances of prosecutorial misconduct.”

Specifically, the ruling pointed out, surveillance video that captured the shooting “is extremely poor; it was taken from an old video surveillance system. It is grainy, blurry and choppy. As a result, the shooter is identifiable mainly by the color of his clothing. … The video does not clearly show the shooter’s face.”

The ruling also said a witness who was questioned by police “did not offer Turner’s name … during this interview. Instead, at the sergeant’s suggestion, [he] agreed that Turner shot the victim.”

Police were unable to locate any other witnesses who said they saw the shot that killed McGinley, the ruling continued.

As for the misconduct of prosecutors during the trial, the appellate court cited the following: referring during closing arguments to witnesses who did not testify and insinuating to the jurors without evidence that Turner was in a gang and was under the influence of drugs at the gathering.

Department of Corrections records show Turner, who remains in custody, has more than 15 years yet to serve in prison, followed by supervised release until May 2049.