Star Tribune
New Prague will get new post office building
Dennis Dvorak has penned six editorials in the New Prague Times about the city’s need for an improved post office over the last 15 years, citing the current building’s cramped conditions, inconvenient drop-off mailbox location and lack of parking, especially for people with disabilities.
“I’ve just taken this as my issue,” he said, adding that the building has also closed multiple times in that period to deal with asbestos. “We deserve better.”
This week, there was good news for Dvorak and others — including U.S. Rep. Angie Craig — who have been pushing for a new post office in the small city south of the Twin Cities. The United States Postal Service said it will either build a new post office on another New Prague site or look for an existing building that’s more suitable than the current facility.
USPS is proposing a new location due to “a space deficiency” at its longtime location, a USPS news release said.
Officials are seeking a building within two miles that has 5,200 square feet and parking for at least 24 people, and taking comments on the proposed relocation for 45 days ending April 14, 2024.
“I can’t tell you what a huge development this is for the city of New Prague,” said Craig, who has worked to bring attention to the building’s deficiencies since 2019.
Craig said she held a listening session in 2022 in New Prague where officials and residents told her about the post office’s problems, adding that “this location has been just saddled and riddled with issues.”
The post office has no parking lot for the public or for people with disabilities. There’s street parking, but the spots designated “handicapped” are down the street instead of in front of the building. The drop-off mailbox is in an actual parking spot – and drivers have to reach across the passenger side of their vehicle to put mail in the mailbox.
The project’s estimated completion date is spring 2026, Craig said, and local residents will receive a post card about USPS’s plans.
Craig has also advocated for the USPS to improve mail service amid “persistent mail delays” across the south metro. In January, the inspection arm of the United States Postal Service said it will investigate delivery delays and other issues across the entire Minnesota and North Dakota postal district.
“I’m just overly excited,” said New Prague Mayor Duane Jirik. “It’s been a two-and-a-half year process.”
The post office has been in its current location for more than 100 years, Jirik said. It’s leased from an out-of-state company called American Postal Infrastructure.
Jirik said it’s likely they will have to build a new facility because finding a building in town that fits the bill will be hard: “I don’t think we have something big enough for them,” he said.
Scott County Commissioner Barb Brekke Weckman said the post office announcement is a testament to the collaboration and perseverance of Craig, Jirik and residents.
Anti-police brutality activists interrupted a Minneapolis City Council meeting Thursday to call for Police Chief Brian O’Hara’s firing, saying his department failed a Black man who begged police for help for months, to no avail, before he was finally shot in the neck by his white neighbor.
John Sawchak, 54, is charged with shooting Davis Moturi, 34, even though three warrants had been issued for his arrest in connection with threats to Moturi and other neighbors.
Activists showed up at the council meeting and asked for time to talk about the case. Instead, the council recessed and activists took the podium and castigated the city for failing Black people, even as state and federal officials are forcing the police department into court-sanctioned monitoring because of past civil rights violations.
Nekima Levy Armstrong, founder of the Racial Justice Network, said O’Hara needs to be held accountable.
“This is not the first time instance where the community has raised concerns about his poor judgment, poor leadership, blaming the community and excuses. It’s completely unacceptable for him to get away with it,” she said. “How many Black people’s doors have they kicked in for less?”
On Thursday the council voted to request the city auditor review the city’s involvement in and response to the matters between Moturi and Sawchak.
Mayor Jacob Frey released a statement in response saying he supports the council’s call for an independent review of the case, but O’Hara “will continue to be the Minneapolis police chief.”
Protesters also questioned why the public hadn’t heard from Community Safety Commissioner Toddrick Barnette, who called a news conference within hours to say he’s not going to fire O’Hara and the city leadership supports him.
A Girl Scout from Troop 58068 told the Woodbury City Council recently that they should allow backyard chickens in the city: They cheer people up, she said.
It turned out that chickens were on an upcoming agenda and, perhaps pushed a bit by the scout’s lobbying, the Woodbury City Council at their next meeting passed a new ordinance allowing for backyard hens.
The new ordinance went into effect on Oct. 23, the night of the council meeting, and will allow people who live on property zoned R-2, a “rural estate” district, to have backyard chickens. A typical city lot is zoned R-4 and those areas still cannot have chickens, the council said.
The city has received requests “here and there” for the last several years about backyard chickens, City Council Member Andrea Date said.
Backyard chickens come have home to roost — and never leave — in a host of other Minnesota cities that allow them, from Hopkins to Thief River Falls. It’s long been allowed in both St. Paul and Minneapolis, and new cities started approving backyard coops during the pandemic, when interest spiked.
In Woodbury, it wasn’t until the question was included on the city’s biannual survey that city staff knew how people felt. The survey found less support for chickens on a typical city lot — just 13% of respondents said they strongly approve of the idea while 43% percent strongly disapproved — but a majority approved of backyard chickens on lots of 1 acre or more.
The city’s rules until recently only allowed chickens on “rural estate” properties of five or more acres.
The new ordinance allows up to six hens, but no roosters, on property less than four acres that meets the zoning requirements. Larger properties can have an additional two chickens per acre above four acres. The ordinance also sets a height limit for chicken coops of 7 feet. No license or permit is required in Woodbury for backyard chickens.
Star Tribune
Anonymous donor pays overdue bill for Fergus Falls home where town’s first Black resident lived
A $10,000 overdue special assessment bill threatening tax forfeiture of a historic Fergus Falls home was paid off this week thanks to an anonymous donor.
Prince Albert Honeycutt lived at 612 Summit Avenue East, renamed Honeycutt Memorial Drive in 2021. Not only was Honeycutt the town’s first Black resident — settling there in 1872 from Tennessee — he was the state’s first Black professional baseball player, first Black firefighter and first Black mayoral candidate.
He was an early pioneer and prominent businessman who owned a barbershop in town. Missy Hermes, with the Otter Tail County Historical Society, said Honeycutt and his wife were likely the first Black people in Minnesota to testify in a capital murder trial of a man who was convicted and hanged in Fergus Falls.
“In other places, you would never have a Black person testifying against a white person, especially a woman, too, before women could vote even,” Hermes said. “Obviously he was respected enough.”
Nancy Ann and Prince Albert Honeycutt with their children inside the now-historic Honeycutt house in 1914. Photo from the collections of the Otter Tail County Historical Society.
When dozens of people from Kentucky moved to Fergus Falls in April 1898, known as “the first 85,” Honeycutt helped integrate them into the community.
He died in 1924 at age 71 and is buried in Oak Grove Cemetery in Fergus Falls.
Up until 2016, several owners lived in the Honeycutt home. But the city bought and sold the house to nonprofit Flowingbrook Ministry for $1 to take over the tax-exempt property and operate the ministry.
Ministry founder Lynette Higgins-Orr, who previously lived in Fergus Falls, moved to Florida several years ago and little activity has been going on in the historic home since. But she said there are plans to make it into a museum.
