Star Tribune
Anoka County, Metro Transit squabble on Northstar funding rolls on
Anoka County and Metro Transit remain at odds over funding for the Northstar commuter rail line, and there appears to be no end in sight to the long-running disagreement.
The Anoka County Finance and Capital Improvements Committee recently denied Metro Transit’s request that the county pay $4.69 million to cover its share of 2023 operating expenses for the line, which runs from downtown Minneapolis to Big Lake and includes four stops in Anoka County.
The County Board took no action on the committee’s recommendation.
“We honestly need to get together and talk this through,” County Board Chair Matt Look said at the March 28 board meeting. “We have to determine what the best course of action is for this line. Is it buses? Is it increasing trips?”
Metro Transit and Anoka County have been battling over payments for the past three years. The county says it has been overbilled for service after ridership fell dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic and Metro Transit cut the number of weekday trips. The agency also eliminated weekend trips and special event trains, such as those for Vikings and Twins games.
With fewer trains running, the county contended it should pay less. The county successfully reduced its bill in 2020 from $6.1 million to $4.9 million when service cuts took effect. In 2021, Metro Transit asked for $2.97 million and the county paid $1.95 million. Last year, Metro Transit billed the county $4.55 million and the county paid the same $1.95 million, a document distributed to county commissioners showed.
The amount the county paid reflects a 77% reduction in service, Look said. He called the line “an underperforming asset.”
With fewer trains running and more people working from home, “the whole dynamic of what commuter rail looks like needs to be addressed now,” Look said. “There are lots of conversations being had, and this is one more that needs to happen before we approve an expenditure of this magnitude for a line that is not servicing our area. As policymakers, we have to take a hard look at this.”
From 2011 through 2019, Northstar carried between 2,200 and 3,300 weekday riders during the morning and evening peak commute hours of service. With the onset of the pandemic in 2020, ridership fell to just over 60 weekday rides in April 2020, according to the Metropolitan Council, which provides the service.
Passengers took 152,456 rides on Northstar in 2020. That sank to 50,433 in 2021 and ticked up to 77,000 last year, according to Metro Transit. The train provided about 21,000 rides during the first three months of 2023, the agency said.
In January, Metro Transit Finance Director Ed Petrie sent a letter to Anoka County Deputy Administrator Dee Guthman, who is also executive director of the county’s Regional Rail Authority, stating that the county’s payments for the the last half of 2022 were past due. The letter also said Metro Transit would not be able to increase service to four weekday trips in each direction each day or bring back special event trains without payment.
“We cannot plan for increased levels of weekday or special event services until we have assurances that Anoka County will provide timely payment for their proportionate share of Northstar operating costs,” the letter said.
Two other counties that cover Northstar operating expenses — Hennepin and Sherburne — have paid their bills, Metro Transit spokesman Drew Kerr said.
Anoka County Commissioner Jeff Reinert said the impasse is a “really unfortunate situation,” but in 2022 Northstar rides were subsidized at an estimated $150 per passenger, Met Council figures showed. By withholding payment, the county will save taxpayers $3 million this year, Reinert said.
“It is not working,” he said at the March 28 board meeting. “We do need to sit around and talk about how to solve the problem. Until that happens, we might be at a status quo situation.”
Met Council Chair Charlie Zelle met with the Anoka County Board this month, Kerr said. With no immediate resolution in sight, Metro Transit will continue to operate at reduced service levels, he said.
“We welcome continued discussion with Anoka County and all our Northstar funding partners,” Kerr said.
Twin Amur tigers born at Como Zoo in August now have names — Marisa and Maks.
Two long-time volunteers who have worked with zookeepers to care for and teach the public about the zoo’s big cats came up with the names, the first to be born at the St. Paul zoo in more than 40 years.
Marisa, a name that the volunteers found to mean “spirited and tenacious,” call that a perfect reflection of her personality. The name also carries special significance for the Como Zoo community, as it honors a retired zookeeper of the same name who was instrumental in the care of large cats during her 43 years at the zoo, Como Zoo and Conservatory Director Michelle Furrer said.
The male cub has been named Maks, which is associated with meanings like “the greatest” or “strength and leadership.” The volunteers felt this was an apt description of the male cub’s confident demeanor and growing sense of leadership, Furrer said.
“Marisa and Maks aren’t just names; they’re a fun reminder of the passion and care that keep us committed to protecting wildlife every day,” Furrer said.
The newborns and their first-time mother, 7-year-old Bernadette, remain off view to allow for more bonding time, zoo officials said. The cubs’ father, 11-year-old Tsar, has been a Como resident since February 2019 and remains on view.
Fewer than 500 Amur tigers — also known as Siberian tigers — remain in the wild as they face critical threats from habitat loss, poaching and human-wildlife conflict, the zoo said.
Much of the wood waste in the metro area is sent to a processing site near Pig’s Eye Lake in St. Paul, where it is stored before being burned to produce energy at the St. Paul Cogeneration plant downtown.
Cogeneration provides power to about half of downtown and was originally built to manage elm-tree waste in response to Dutch elm disease. The plant burns approximately 240,000 tons of wood each year, according to Michael Auger, senior vice president of District Energy in St. Paul.
Jim Calkins, a certified landscape horticulturalist who has been involved in discussions about the problem, said he thinks using wood for energy is the most logical solution.
“The issue is, we don’t have enough facilities to be able to handle that, at least in the Twin Cities,” Calkins said. “So there has to be dollars to support transportation to get the wood to those places, or in some cases, to upgrade some of those facilities such that they are able to burn wood.”
Plans are in place to convert Koda Energy in Shakopee to burn ash wood, which could potentially handle around 40,000 tons of wood waste, but that would take around two years to establish, according to Klapperich.
In some areas of the state, cities have resorted to burning excess wood waste because they felt they had no other option. Open burning wood releases a lot of carbon into the air, Klapperich said.
Weary from the rat race nature of practicing commercial law, Danielle Miller had long dreamed of starting a new professional life as a bookstore owner. When the Lincoln, Neb., resident saw a space at St. Paul’s Union Depot, she moved to make her dream a reality. She and her husband now call the Macalester-Groveland neighborhood home.
Eye On St. Paul recently visited with Miller in her sun-drenched store, Story Line Books, to talk about what spurred her to leave the law behind and lose herself in shelves of books. This interview was edited for length.
Q: So, you’ve opened a bookstore, in Lowertown. Are you a little crazy?
A: That’s been the reaction. There’s been a lot of “Really? Lowertown?” There’s been a lot of that. It’s a little unnerving.
Q: Why decide to just up and move to St. Paul?
A: We travel a lot; we travel all over the world. And we go to bookstores. We were here visiting [my husband’s] parents in Woodbury, and we drove down Randolph because we like to eat at Due Focacceria. And we saw this building that had “For Sale” on it. It was a 900-square-foot retail spot on the bottom and an apartment above. And I was like, that is the European bookstore dream, right? I looked it up online, but it got scooped up. A week later, I was looking again and this [Union Depot space] was the first post.
I was immediately in love. The next time we were up here, we made arrangements to come and see it. And I told my husband, “You should probably get a job in St Paul.”
Q: Back up a few steps. Why this compulsion to open a bookstore when you were a working attorney?
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