Holiday gallery / 8
A rolling display. The Stockton winner in the Winona Parks and Rec display contest features a tasteful cascading sequence of holiday images on a peppermint cane-framed garage door. At the Locust Lane cul-de-sac on the East End off U.S. Highway 14. Image: Steve Lunde
Earlier: Holiday gallery / 7
Dahl buys four Up North car dealerships
LACROSSE, Wis. – Dahl Automotive, the dominant dealership in LaCrosse and also Winona, has bought four dealerships from Wausau-based Kocourek in north-central Wisconsin. The dealerships are in Rhinelander and Stevens Point. Terms were not announced. Andrew Dahl, president of Dahl Automotive, said the acquisitions bring the company to 10 dealerships in Minnesota and Wisconsin, representing 13 brands with 525 employees.
Dahl brands
> Onalaska: Chrysler, Dodge, Ford, Honda, Jeep, Lincoln, Ram.
> LaCrosse: Ford, Hyundai, Lincoln, Mazda, Suburu.
>Rhinelander: Chrysler, Dodge, Honda, Jeep, Ram.
> Stevens Point: Chrysler, Dodge, Honda, Jeep, Ram,
>Winona: Buick, Chevrolet, GMC, Toyota
Crop lost in Stewartville corn crib fire
Crib barn afire. Two Stewartville tanker trucks and a third unit suppressed a fire in a corn crib outside of town. This was about 10:30 Christmas morning. Cause of fire: Not immediately determined. No injuries. Image: Stewartville Fire Department
Holiday greetings
Image: Steve Lunde
Roasted perfectly.
May your day be perfect with family and friends as we all celebrate renewed hope for peace and kindness.
From your friends at the Winona Journal
Kwik Trip major growth ahead: More and more stores
LACROSSE, Wis. – The Kwik Trip convenience store chain already at 860 sites in six states, plans to build 90 more stores, perhaps 150, in the next three years. The chain had not planned to make the announcement but a Wisconsin state agency let the cat out of the bag. The state secretary for economic development in Madison, Missy Hughes, issued a statement last week that Kwik Trip had been awarded additional $15 million in tax credits to expand. A Kwik Trip spokesperson at corporate headquarters in La Crosse, Ben Leibl, acknowledged that the company was caught unawares Hughes’ announcement but confirmed the award and said plans include 30 to 50 stores a year through 2027. Specific sites will be announced as time goes on, Leibl said. Also, he said, there will be expansion at dairy, commissary and bakery facilities in La Crosse and 500 new jobs. Expansion will be a $150 million investment, the Leibl said.
Earlier: Ford dealership to expand Winona acreage
Earlier: Kwik Trip buys upscale Onalaska office address
Earlier: Kwik Trip marches west into South Dakota
Earlier: USA Today poll: Kwik Trip tops again
Holiday gallery / 7
Blowing up Santa. Inflatable displays, limp and lifeless during day, take on a full and robust life and color after dark when the fan is turned on. This on East Second Street in Winona. Image: Steve Lunde
Earlier: Holiday gallery / 6
House fire on Winona East End: Everyone got out
Ladder crew attacks from above. The fire was in the 400 block of densely packed Mankato Avenue. Image: Winona Fire Department
Closely packed neighboring structures saved
WINONA, Minn. – A two-story house on Mankato Avenue was severely damaged by fire and smoke on Christmas Eve. The occupants escaped without injury before firefighters arrived from the East End stationhouse. There was also heat and water damage. The fire call was about 1 0 p.m. The cause was not immediately determined.
Salvation Army: $239,000 to Rochester red kettles
ROCHESTER, Minn. – More than $239,000 came in during the final two days of the Salvation Army’s Red Kettle fundraising project in Rochester. The surge in part was public sympathy after a pair of thieves stole a red kettle at Apache Mall. Also: Mayo clinic offered $100,000 in a match gift. The Mayo donation was earmarked for the Salvation Army’s Good Samaritan Health Clinic. The cliic provides emergency medical, dental and pharmaceutical services to uninsured and under-insured people.
Gas prices down $1.50 from high
Good news at the pump. Gas well below $3 a gallon. to head further down. Image: Steve Lunde
Lowest this side of St. Charles: At Stockton
WINONA, Minn. – Gasoline prices are their lowest in 1-1/2 years, led in central Winona County by $2.77 at the Clark Pump House in Stockton. Kwik Trips and most other stations in the county are at $2.89. The usual area price leaders in St. Charles, straddling the Olmsted-Winona county line, are $2.69. These prices are 38% less than in June 2022, when the national average passed $5. Even then the price was significantly lower than in many countries Experts say the downward U.S. trend to continue because a warmer winter brought on by an El Nino weather pattern will reduce demand for petroleum overall.
Holiday gallery / 6
Garlands and banners. For now the Main Street gateway to Levee Park lacks the farmers market delightful mingling of warmer seasons, but the municipal park-meisters share the holiday spirit with those who venture to seasonal activities along the river. The farmers market will be back in May For the winter it’s indoors at the East End Rec Center, 210 Zumbro Street, on the East End.
Earlier: Holiday gallery / 6
Night and day. Images: Steve Lunde
Merchants Bank food drive raises 11 tons
WINONA, Minn. – The 10 Days of Giving food drive sponsored by Merchants Bank collected more than 22,000 pounds of food for Winona Volunteer Services This was the 35th year for the Christmas food drive. The project also received $119,000 in cash.
Dover man gravely hurt when vehicle overturns
CHATFIELD, Minn. – A Dover driver was injured critically when his vehicle overturned near a rural intersection north of Chatfield. Deputies said the driver, whose name was not released immediately, was in his 20s. He was either ejected or crawled 150 feet from he vehicle, deputies said. He was taken 20 miles to a Rochester hospital. The accident was about 3 a.m. near Olmsted County Road 30 and 180th Avenue Southeast. He was alone in the vehicle.
News summary at week’s end: December 23, 2023
POLITICS: Murky GOP-linked mailer demonizes Pelowski
SCHOOLS: Teen on school gun threats: “Yes, I did it”
TRAGEDY: Crisis negotiations preceded Latsch Park fatal fall
CRIME: Perverse mischief: A body hanging atop Elba tower
GOVERNANCE: Wisconsin GOP ponders high risk move on abortion
GOVERNANCE: Daleys back in court to triple Lewiston dairy herd
Pets lost in rural Sparta house fire
Kitchen eyed as source. Damage extensive. Image: Sparta Fire Department
Owners tried in vain to free cats, dogs
SPARTA, Wis. – Three cats and two digs trapped inside a burning house died in the fire. The owners had returned home about 5:20 p.m. and discovered the fire. They tried to get in to free the pets but were unsuccessful. No humans were injured. Fire Chief Mike Arnold said the rural house, at 21457 Kapok Road, was pretty much gone when his crews arrived. Firefighters spent the 5-1/2 hours extinguishing the fire. Arnold said that the fire started in the kitchen but that the cause remained under investigation, Damage was heavy from fire, smoke and water.
Murky GOP-linked mailer demonizes Pelowski
WINONA Minn. – A shadowy Republican front organization has flooded Winona mailboxes with slick oversize postcards that attack 18-term State Representative Gene Pelowski for “a spending spree.” The mailer is loaded with half-truths and misrepresentations and attempts to demonize Pelowski. The mailer calls Pelowski a “far-left politician.”
On state spending
The mailer’s sponsor, which calls itself “Renew Minnesota,” accuses Pelowski of raising taxes to fund a 40% increase in state spending. Nobody outside of Renew Minnesota is quite sure where the organization’s 40% claim came from. The Legislature, to be sure, increased 2024 general-fund spending by 29% — but not by 40%. The mailer doesn’t address the better question for intelligent discourse: Did new spending go to priorities that the public endorses. Such needs to be the fulcrum of discussion in a democracy – not incendiary charges that flow from an unsupportable premise that any government spending is necessarily excessive.
Pelowski. First elected from Winona in 1983. A retired high school political science teacher.
Heart-string rhetoric
The mailer attempts to portray Pelowski as unfriendly to ordinary people and especially the poor. Dark imagery shows a forlorn, apparently financially desperate single mom and her pre-school daughter. The increases, says the mailer, “are hurting every Minnesota, especially middle-class families.” There is irony in that the mother and daughter image is from a stockpile of images from a global aggregator that sells whatever-mood-you want pictures. Nether mother nor the little girl is from Minnesota.
Pelowski response
Asked about increased spending by the Democrat-controlled Legislature, Pelowski noted that new 2024 general fund spending was not funded by new taxes. “Rather,” he said, “the vast majority of increased spending is one-time and is funded by dramatically higher-than-anticipated revenue collections and the massive surplus projected for the current biennium.”
Nixon-esque dirty trick. The mailers encourage readers to check out a website whose domain name appears to be Pelowski’s own site. It’s fake.
.
A fair question regarding the surplus, a record $17 billion, would be what to do with so much money. The Legislature voted to return most of the surplus to ordinary taxpayers. Families with less than $150,000 taxable income were mailed a check for $1,000. The Renew Minnesota mailer doesn’t mention that Republicans had opposed the rebates and instead favored jiggering tax tables into the future to benefit corporations and rich people.
Gasoline tax
The mailer talks about a 20% increase in gasoline taxes, which is misleading and out of context. Fact: The gas tax will increase 5.9 cents to 28.5 cents, all earmarked for road and bridge upkeep. The Minnesota tax compares to:
> California, 77.9 cents a gallon.
> Illinois, 66.5 cents.
> Pennsylvania, 62.2 cents.
True, some states are less. Alaska, for example, is 9 cents, the lowest in the nation.
Renew’s Democrat targets
The same mailer was sent to voters in eight House districts in which the Democrat incumbents had the narrowest victory margins in the 2022 election and presumably therefor would seem the most vulnerable for re-election in 2024. The mailers all were identical except names of the seven Democrats were custom-swapped for each district. So what the mailers alleged against one was also alleged against all. It was fill-in-the-blank boilerplate. Ditto. Ditto. The Renew Minnesota targets:
> Jeff Brand, House District 18A, St. Peter, whose 2022 election margin was 50.0%.
> Dave Lislegard, 7B, Aurora, 51.1%.
> Matt Norris, 32B, Blaine, 51.1%.
> Gene Pelowski, 25A, Winona, 55.5%.
> Lucy Rehm, 48B, Chanhassen, 51.1%.
> Zach Stephenson, 35A, Coon Rapids, 52.4%
> Brad Tabke, 54A, Shakopee, 51.8%.
> Dan Wolgamott, 14B, St. Cloud, 51.%
No Senate Democrats were attacked. Their four-year terms don’t expire until 2026.
Renew Minnesota profile
The mailers have no easily trackable source. Fine print in the mailer is vague. It says the mailer was prepared and paid for by Renew Minnesota, P.O. Box 26471, Minneapolis. But there’s no street address. The fine print also notes that Renew Minnesota is “an affiliated 527 independent expenditure committee” that “is not coordinated with or approved by any candidate nor is any candidate responsible for it.” None of this is a satisfactory explanation of the organization. Although Renew Minnesota is registered with the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board, as required by law, it isn’t required to document donors or financial backers on a timely basis – albeit an annual report is required in January. So who’s the money behind Renew Minnesota? It is known to be closely tied to a fairly new organization, the Minnesota PrivateBusiness Council, which disclosed last summer that t had raised about $700,000 in dues from member companies. The Council is headed by Jim Schulz, of Plymouth, a Republican who ran in 2022 for state attorney general and lost.
Holiday gallery / 5
All aglow. And a peppermint Christmas to you too. Opposite Saint Mary’s University off U.S. Highway 14 at Knopp Valley Drive. Image: Steve Lunde
Earlier: Holiday gallery / 4
Minnesota prep
Wisconsin prep
Basketball (boys): Blair-Taylor Wildcats 88, Independence Indees 61
Basketball (boys): Cochrane-Fountain City Pirates 68, Eleva-Strum Cardinals 41
Basketball (boys): Elk Mound Mounders 65, Galesville-Ettrick-Trempealeau Red Hawks 60
Teen on school gun threats: “Yes, I did it”
WINONA, Minn. – Police traced an online chatterbox threat to “shoot up” the Winona Middle School and then on to the high school to a 13-year-old girl. The girl was confronted at home about 11 a.m. and confessed, police said. Why did she do it? She told officers that she djdn’t want to go to school that day. No firearms were located. In conclusion, police said, the threats were not credible. The child was left in the care of a guardian. The threats were through the online platform Snapchat and spread contagiously among fellow students. Police said they traced the source of the messages through interviews and deduction. Meanwhile, investigators began drafting a recommendation to the county prosecutor for felony charges of terroristic threats.
Court: No more rigging Wisconsin election districts
MADISON, Wis. – The now liberal-conrolled Wisconsin Supreme Court threw out Republican-drawn legislative maps as tortuously jury-rigged to give Republicans an unfair advantage in the Legislature. The court ruled 4-3 to declare the maps unconstitutional. With assistance from outside experts, the court itself will draw new boundaries in time for the 2024 election. The court said it would back off if the Republican-controlled Legislature moves quickly to create satisfactory “remedial maps.” In the past decade Republicans have built large majorities in the Legislature under maps they drew based on 2010 census data. The court, then controlled by Republican justies, didn’t interfere. The new maps were based on the 2020 census.
Verbatim
Justice Jill Karofksy for the majority: “Because the current state legislative districts contain separate, detached territory and therefore violate the constitution’s contiguity requirements, we enjoin the Wisconsin Elections Commission from using the current legislative maps in future elections.”
Verbatim
Governor Tony Evers, a Democrat: “At long last, the jury-mandered maps Wisconsinites have endured for years might soon be history.”
Security tight at Winona school after gun threat
WINONA, Minn. – An online message purported that the Winona Middle School would be shot up. The school was alerted about 8:15 a.m. Police established a quick presence at the Homer Road campus as first busloads of students began arriving. Students were ushered inside and told to report directly to their assigned classrooms. The principal, Dave Anderson, cancelled outdoor activities. Parents were notified that absences would be excused if they kept children home. Jay Rasmussen, deputy police chief, said the threat had been making the rounds among Snapchat users overnight. A 13-yea-old boy told his mother about receiving the message from a 12-year-old who had received it from someone else. Whoever wrote the message originally was unclear, Rasmussen said. Police also established a presence across town at Winona High School. Meanwhile, investigators pursued security liaisons at Snapchat to trace the source. The original message not only threatened a shooting at the middle school but said that earlier shootings had been planned.
Verbatim
Snapchat threat: “I’m gonna shoot up Winona Middle School tomorrow. I already did three schools, I just didn’t get caught.”
Schools
> Winona Middle School: 1570 Homer Road. 650 students. Grade 5-8.
> Winona High School: 901 Gilmore Avenue 870 students. Grades 9-12.
Verbatim
School message to parents: “This morning, we were alerted to a threat made against the middle school and high school on social media. The Winona Police Department is also aware and is investigating the incident. We will be following our established safety protocols and begin the school day in a “Secure,” which means students will be inside their classrooms learning as usual. There will be no outside visitors allowed in the building, and students will not be allowed outside for any activities. The Winona Police Department will be present as the investigation continues. Your child will be safe at school; however, if you choose to keep your child at home, it will be an excused absence. We will provide any updates as they are available.”
Wisconsin GOP ponders high risk move on abortion
MADISON, Wis. – Republicans in the state Legislature are considering a referendum for voters to decide whether to keep government in the abortion control business. Robin Vos, the powerful Wisconsin House leader, confirmed GOP discussions about a referendum in a WKOW interview. Such a GOP initiative seems contrary to current political indicators, including polls and elections elsewhere, to make abortion a matter of a woman’s conscience — not government control. In Wisconsin a Dane judge ruled two weeks ago ruled that Wisconsin’s 1849 abortion ban did not apply to consensual medical abortions anymore. The decision upset Republicans, who in general favor abortion bans and restrictions. Further to GOP dismay, Governor Tony Evers, a Democrat, has promised to veto any abortion legislation. In the WKOW interview Vos said the referendum would allow government to ban late-pregnancy abortions but not all. Such a referendum, if passed by a majority of voters, would be veto-proof. The referendum, Vos said, could be on the April 2004 Wisconsin ballot. The referendum could be a high-risk move for GOP abortion opponents. A loss could be an impossible setback for their cause, say political observers.
Holiday gallery / 4
Nativity in white. With the grass still green in an unseasonably mild December, the silhouetted manger scene makes its own statement at Grace Presbyterian Church. At East Broadway and Franklin streets. Image: Steve Lunde
Earlier: Holiday gallery / 3
Crisis negotiations preceded Latsch Park fatal fall
MINNEISKA, Minn. – Deputes with a crisis a negotiator spent 90 minutes on an overlook at John Latch State Park trying to coax a woman not to jump. Then she either slipped or leaped into the night. This was about 10 p.m. at the bluff-top overlook. The overlook, which, intended for day-time hikers, has no lighting. The woman dropped 100 feet and probably died on impact, It was hours before emergency crews could reach the body. At dawn the body had not yet been recovered. The woman’s name was not released immediately because of difficulties contacting kin. The Winona County sheriff’s confirmed she was 33 years old. Winona authorities had been asked by Minneapolis police about 7:45 p.m. to check on the welfare of a woman whose phone had last pinged at Latsch Park on the Mississippi River in far northern Winna County. Deputes climbed steep trails through the dark and found the woman sitting on he edge of the overlook. Deputies and then acrisis negotiator engaged the woman in dialogue about 90 minutes before she disappeared over the edge. The body was recovered fter sunrise and taken to the regional medical examiner’s lab in Rochester.
Rescue teams
At the scene: Winona County Search Operations and Rescue team, Rollingstone fire and first responders, Minnesota City fire and first Responders, Winona Fire Department, Winona ambulance, Winona police K-9, Minnesota State Patrol Flight Division, Minnesota Department of Transportation, Winona County Dispatch, and Winona County Emergency Management.
Minnesota prep
Hockey (boys): Winona Winhawks 7, Albert Lea Tigers 1
Hockey (girls): Albert Lea Tigers 7, Winona Winhawks 0
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