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“Pipedream,” according to the American Heritage
Dictionary, is “A wishful, fantastic notion or hope (from the fantasies
induced by smoking a pipe of opium).” I’m certainly not
insinuating anyone who comes up with a novel idea, referred to as
a pipedream, did so by smoking poppy dust. But an article that
appeared in the Houston County News and also in its parent newspaper,
the La Crosse Tribune definitely seems to be a bunch of poppy cock, in
my humble opinion.
In an article entitled “Could the Houston County Courthouse ever move
from Caledonia to somewhere in La Crescent,” Houston County
Commissioner Larry Graf and La Crescent Mayor Mike Poellinger discuss
the possibility of moving the county seat from Caledonia to La
Crescent. The age-old rivalry between the two largest municipalities in
Houston County fired up last year when the Caledonia City Council
denied several variance requests made by Houston County that were
needed to locate a new criminal justice center (CJC) in downtown
Caledonia.
The “I’ll take my ball home then!” mentality started cropping up, as I
heard more than one person reply “if they don’t want it in Caledonia,
we’ll put it in ______.” (You fill in the blank. I heard La Crescent,
Spring Grove, Houston, Hokah, and Eitzen mentioned.)
The dream of moving the county seat from Caledonia to La Crescent isn’t
anything new. According to Poellinger, the idea was included in the
Apple Capital’s comprehensive plan that was approved by the city
council in 1999.
Both Graf and Poellinger feel a county seat in the most densely
populated part of the county would not only make sense, but serve the
entire county’s citizenry well. “Most of the development, and much of
the population, is in four or five cities and townships in the
northeast portion of the county. The city of La Crescent and La
Crescent Township alone account for 7,800 of the county’s 20,000
residents,” the article stated.
The article added that there hasn’t been any formal discussion at La
Crescent City Hall about the move, but Poellinger said if there were
any interest on the county’s part, La Crescent would certainly be
interested in fulfilling the county’s wishes.
Having served as the editor of the Houston County News for a year,
where one of my beats was covering the La Crescent City Council, I can
attest that Mike Poellinger is a very level-headed man. As mayor of La
Crescent, he, like most La Crescent residents, would love to have the
county seat moved to their fair city.
Like Poellinger, Larry Graf is the type of person who thinks things
out, and doesn’t seem to make knee-jerk decisions. And like Poellinger,
Graf represents the residents of La Crescent and has their best
interests in mind.
I’ve got a large highway map of Houston County on my office wall. I
just took a highlighter marker and drew a line from the northeast
corner of the county to the southwest corner. Then, I drew a second
line from the northwest corner of the county to the southeast corner.
The two lines intersection one mile north of Caledonia where Klug Drive
and Highway 76 meet.
Caledonia, which has been the county seat for the past 150 years, is
situated one mile south of the geographical center of the county. You
can’t get much more centrally-located than that. La Crescent, on the
other hand, is situated so far in the extreme northeast corner of the
county, part of the city is in Winona County!!!!
Minnesota is celebrating its sesquicentennial (150th birthday) this
year. During that period of time, there has never been a county seat
moved from one city to another. According to the information I
received, it would take 60 percent of the county residents who
registered to vote in the 2006 election to sign a petition to bring the
question of moving the county seat to a referendum vote.
Many in Houston County feel ponying up $15 to $18 million just to build
the CJC would be tough to swallow. What do you think the price tag
would be if the entire county seat was moved to another city? I doubt
if $30 million would cover it. So how many county residents would be in
favor of shelling out that kind of change just to spite the Caledonia
City Council and the residents here who were against the
84,000-square-foot facility being located downtown?
Because many folks were discussing the idea of moving the county seat
to La Crescent, including placing reader blogs on the newspaper’s
website, Houston County News editor Ryan Henry did what any good
journalist would do and interviewed the mayor and county commissioner.
I thought he did a good job. It was a good story.
It was interesting, however, how many people have come up to me in the
past week and said, “hey Charlie, are you going to write something in
the Argus about the county seat moving to La Crescent?” Like many good
“stories,” this “what-if” article has been passed on from one person to
another and is now considered by a growing number of residents as a
done deal.
I may be going out on a limb here, but the chances of the county seat
being moved out of Caledonia are about as good as me suddenly sprouting
a full head of hair and combing it back like
Elvis!!!
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