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Duluth in ‘near-crisis’ with child care shortage, task force says

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DULUTH — A child care task force convened a year ago by former Mayor Emily Larson unveiled its recommendations at a news conference Tuesday, to address what the group deemed a “near-crisis.”

Three child care centers here will close this year and four closed last year, with only one center opening. The task force report says the city has just slightly over 3,000 child care slots but 4,200 kids who are six or under with parents who are part of the workforce. Of what’s available, nearly 30% don’t take infants.

“There are no fast or easy answers,” for a profession that needs to be elevated in importance, said April Westman, owner of Aunty’s Child Care in eastern Duluth.

“Even through a broken and unsustainable model, child care has long survived due mainly to women doing invisible work for less money, less respect and less trust than they deserve,” she said.

Other problems include low wages, licensing and regulation barriers, staff-to-child ratios, facility standards and educational qualifications. Without adequate staff, facilities can’t operate, providers said, and many are lost to higher wages elsewhere.

The problems mean parents are pulling out of the workforce or choosing to live elsewhere, Duluth Area Chamber of Commerce President Matt Baumgartner said.

The task force, led by Northspan’s Elissa Hansen and the Northland Foundation’s Tony Sertich, recommends that the city create a marketing campaign that prioritizes the child care sector as critical to the economy; fully fund or expand a child care training program; and advocate for policies that help with development of new facilities for centers and for grants and assistance to lessen the burden on providers and parents.

Mayor Roger Reinert said that even those not personally impacted by the issue should care, because future growth depends on an inviting work environment for families.



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Joe Selvaggio, a social change agent who started and led Project for Pride in Living

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With the support of several local businesspeople, Selvaggio started Advocate Services, Inc. to lobby for civil rights and equal housing and protest the Vietnam War. About 100 people sent Selvaggio $2 to $25 a month to cover his work and living expenses.

After a speech in 1971 at St. Joan of Arc Church in Minneapolis, he met Ted Pouliot, who operated an artificial flower and interior design business. They developed the idea of rehabbing deteriorating homes in the inner city, which evolved into PPL.

Two years after Selvaggio divorced Yeager, he married Rosario Escanan, a Filipino human rights activist who he helped immigrate to the U.S. at a time when the Philippines was under martial law. “Two of my friends disappeared and I assumed they were killed,” said Escanan.

Selvaggio founded the One Percent Club to recruit wealthy Minnesotans to pledge 1% of their annual income to charities of their choice. He helped Steve Rothschild start Twin Cities R!SE, an antipoverty program, in 1993, and he started MicroGrants, a nonprofit that makes small grants to low-income “people of potential,” in 2008.

Rothschild, a retired General Mills executive vice president, said Selvaggio “saw needs that weren’t being addressed and he did something about it.”

Selvaggio suffered from several age-related ailments and had recently decided to stop eating, drinking and taking medications “in an effort to go out on his own terms,” said his son, Sam, of Minneapolis.



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State IDs police and deputies who shot man in 15-hour western rural Minnesota standoff

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Eight members of law enforcement fired their weapons at Kasey Paul Willander, 27, during a 15-hour standoff in rural western Minnesota, state authorities said Thursday.

The Bureau of Criminal Apprehension identified Willander as the man shot by deputies and police during a siege that began Saturday near Clarkfield, Minn., 15 miles south of Montevideo.

The bureau also named the men who shot at Willander, and will review body camera footage as part of an investigation into the use of force by law enforcement, the statement said.

Willander is hospitalized in stable condition at HCMC and is expected to survive, the statement said. No one else was injured during the incident.

He left before deputies arrived, but law enforcement said it received a call two hours later that he was hiding in the woods with a rifle near another relative’s home. These relatives were forced to barricade themselves in their home. As deputies evacuated them, Willander pointed a long gun in their direction, the warrant said. He is prohibited from possessing firearms after pleading guilty to third-degree criminal sexual conduct, a felony, in 2015.

A standoff ensued as police SWAT teams surrounded the home, the Yellow Medicine County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement Monday. Willander is accused of shooting at the officers multiple times, and SWAT team members struck him at least twice before the standoff ended at 6:17 a.m. on Sunday.

Two deputies are said to have discharged their firearms and are on critical incident leave — a standard practice for officers involved in BCA use-of-force investigations.



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Before Peggy Flanagan, there was Marlene M. Johnson, whose memoir is about being lieutenant governor

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Since this is an election cycle of firsts — first Black woman to head a major party ticket, first time a Minnesota governor is on the ballot as a veep candidate (Humphrey and Mondale were U.S. Senators) — I looked forward to reading about another: Minnesota’s first woman lieutenant governor.

Marlene M. Johnson, 78, served as DFL Gov. Rudy Perpich’s second-in-command for two terms, from 1983-91. Her book, “Rise to the Challenge: A Memoir of Politics, Leadership, and Love,” starts with her political career, then pivots to her role as a caregiver after her husband suffered a traumatic brain injury.

First the politics, starting with a Minnesota history refresher: the late Perpich, an Iron Range DFLer opposed to abortion rights, was elected lieutenant governor in 1970, re-elected four years later on a ticket with Wendell Anderson. When Walter Mondale became V.P., Anderson was appointed to the Senate and Perpich became governor. He served one term, lost the next, then challenged the party’s endorsed candidate to win again. That detail is significant since it may have hindered Johnson’s ability to run for other offices later — some DFLers didn’t forget that her ticket bucked the party.

When Perpich picked Johnson as his running mate, she said there was evidence that “the political establishment was not ready for a female lieutenant governor candidate.” Yet the ticket prevailed, and Perpich tasked her with leading the governor’s appointments, aiming to bring in more women and people of color, and expanding tourism.

Political junkies will be interested in that section of the book, including the prominent people she mentions. Johnson met Mondale as a high school student, helped longtime legislator Linda Berglin win her first race and met a young Joe Biden while campaigning for a congressional candidate in 1976.

Johnson was single when she was first elected, a workaholic who surrounded herself with friends and family for support. In her first year in office, she met a Swedish businessman, Peter Frankel, during a meeting about creating a “sister state relationship” between Minnesota and Sweden’s Kronoberg County. The two began a long-distance relationship that turned into a transatlantic marriage, even after she left public office and moved to D.C. to run a nonprofit for international educators.

The logistics of making that work, with two homes in two countries, is fascinating. Then in 2010, Peter fell down the stairs, and the last third of the book focuses on his convalescence in Sweden. Also interesting — but maybe less so for readers who pick up the book expecting a political memoir.

cover of Rise to the Challenge features the title on a red background

Rise to the Challenge (U of Minn Press)

The book is organized thematically, not chronologically, so the narrative jumps around and there’s repetition in some chapters. And Johnson’s writing is a bit dry — she said she journaled her whole life and parts of it read that way, listing who came to visit and places they traveled.



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