Star Tribune
Edina Historical Society seeks $100,000 in city funding
The Edina Historical Society is seeking $100,000 in city funding as it aims to revamp its programming to become more relevant to the community.
“When we went to the city, we knew that we kind of have to go big,” said Sarah Solsvig, president of the society’s board. “We want to better serve the needs of the community and want to grow some of the areas that we think need a little bit more attention.”
To land the funding — five times the amount the organization now receives — society leaders will need to convince council members who also are weighing requests from various city departments and trying to settle on a budget for next year. Some of them want the society to make stronger commitments to telling a more diverse set of stories before they will guarantee funding, promises society leaders say they’re willing to make.
Council Member Julie Risser said she respects the society’s work “but I feel like, at the moment, the way things are being messaged, it really doesn’t meet the standards that should be in place for 2024.”
Among other things, she wants to see a greater commitment to telling the stories of Black pioneers who also had a significant presence in the area. And she asked whether it might be time to add a council member to the group’s board.
The Edina Historical Society was founded in 1969 and runs a museum, the Cahill School, which was built in 1864 and was a fixture in the local Irish community, and the Minnehaha Grange Hall, which was built by farmers years later and served as a community meeting place.
Interim executive director Mary Agnes Ratelle walks through The Grange at the Edina Historical Society. (Renée Jones Schneider)
The society hosts field trips, trick-or-treating and events focusing on topics like the fashions of World War II. Like other historical societies, it has been challenged in recent years by dwindling school budgets and cultural changes that have made it tougher to find volunteers or part-time workers.
Risser noted Edina leaders will have to weigh the historical society’s request against those from city departments. She noted that the police asked for $80,000 to obtain night vision goggles, an amount that would be equivalent to the increase the society is seeking.
CONYERS, Ga. — Some residents east of Atlanta were evacuated while others were told to shelter in place to avoid contact with a chemical plume after a fire at a chemical plant.
Rockdale County Fire Chief Marian McDaniel told reporters that a sprinkler head malfunctioned around 5 a.m. Sunday at the BioLab plant in Conyers. That caused water to mix with a water-reactive chemical, which produced a plume of chemicals. The chief said she wasn’t sure what chemicals were included.
A small roof fire was initially contained, but reignited Sunday afternoon, Sheriff Eric Levett said in a video posted on Facebook as gray smoke billowed into the sky behind him. He said authorities were trying to get the fire under control and urged people to stay away from the area.
People in the northern part of Rockdale County were ordered to evacuate and others were told to shelter in place with windows and doors closed. Sheriff’s office spokesperson Christine Nesbitt did not know the number of people evacuated.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency and the Georgia Environmental Protection Division were both on site, county Emergency Management Director Sharon Webb said. The agencies are monitoring the air ”to give us more of an idea of what the plume consists of.”
McDaniel said crews were working on removing the chemical from the building, away from the water source. Once the product is contained, the situation will be assessed and officials will let residents know whether it is safe to return to their homes, she said.
An evacuation center was opened at Wolverine Gym in Covington.
Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, running for the Senate as a moderate Republican, brought up Trump’s false claims that Harris, the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, had previously downplayed her Black heritage. Harris attended Howard University, a historically Black college, and has identified as both Black and South Asian consistently throughout her political career.
”I’ve already called him out when he had the one interview where he was questioning her racial identity, and now he’s questioning her mental competence,” Hogan told CBS’ ”Face the Nation.” ”And I think that’s insulting not only to the vice president but to people who actually do have mental disabilities.”
If elected, Harris would be the first woman, Black woman and person of South Asian descent to be president. She has not commented on Trump’s recent attacks but has said when asked about other comments that it was the ” same old show. The same tired playbook we’ve heard for years with no plan on on how he would address the needs of the American people.”
Trump was holding a rally Sunday in Erie, Pennsylvania, and some of the supporters showing up for his speech said he often makes offensive remarks. Still, they support his proposals to restrict immigration and said he would have a better handle on the economy.
”He says what’s on his mind, and again, sometimes how he says it isn’t appropriate,” said Jeffrey Balogh, 56, who attended the rally with two friends. ”But he did the job. He did very well at it.”
Tamara Molnar said she thinks Trump is very strong on immigration. As for his insults, Molnar said: ”I think everybody has to have some decorum when speaking about other candidates, and I don’t think either side is necessarily innocent on that. There’s a lot of slinging both ways.”
But most concerns about crime are more local.
Moe, the Blaine Republican, said he hears from residents worried about feeling safe at Northtown Mall, especially in the days and weeks after gunfire led to a lockdown. People want to make sure local police departments have adequate staffing, he said, even if there is not much crime in Blaine.
Lucia Wrobleski, a DFLer running against Republican Wayne Johnson for House District 41A, which includes Lake Elmo and Afton and stretches to the St. Croix River, said she also hears worries about crime — something she’s particularly attuned to, she said, as a former St. Paul police officer.
“Our district is generally safe, but I do hear it at the doors,” she said. People worry about property crime in the fast-growing district, and they think about gun violence too, she said, with the February killing of two police officers and a firefighter-paramedic in Burnsville still on residents’ minds.
Jungling said he hears concerns from north metro residents about their safety when they visit Minneapolis and, in their own neighborhoods, property crimes such as catalytic converter thefts or thefts of purebred dogs, as was the case when a valuable French Bulldog puppy was stolen from the porch of a Maplewood home.
But overall, Jungling said, local and state-level issues are of much greater concern than the national political discourse.
