The City of Duluth’s Parks Maintenance Division will place clean, discarded wood chips for public use and pick up in bulk at the U-shaped driveway by Tony Emanuel Field at Woodland Park beginning Saturday.
The wood chips, which are an urban forestry byproduct and are untreated, are available on a first-come, first-served basis to anyone wishing to use them. If the pile depletes, parks maintenance staff will continue to refill them until the spring.
Duluth residents should not accept a budget narrative built only around the bad news. Transparency requires more than explaining the size of the shortfall. It requires identifying every option, every revenue decision and every pool of existing or reasonably anticipated financial capacity.
Early-term labor agreements, sluggish revenue growth and familiar levy politics have left City Hall confronting a projected $5.5 million deficit.
The city estimates its recently negotiated labor agreements will increase personnel costs by approximately $9.9 million over three years, according to the 2026 city budget. There is your deficit, dressed in a collective bargaining agreement and scheduled to arrive on time.
Houston uses an emergency telehealth program that allows selected 911 patients to speak remotely with a physician. In one reported year, 92% of the 6,008 people served by the program were directed to transportation other than a Houston Fire Department ambulance.
The exhibition will be UMD’s first meeting with the Under-18 team since Jan. 5, 2019, when Team USA defeated the Bulldogs 4-2 at Amsoil. Cole Caufield scored twice for the visitors, who outshot UMD 39-28.
The next challenge for AF1 will be converting its larger digital audience into sustained interest during the playoffs and offseason.
Sandelin's base pay and supplemental retirement contribution was $595,000 last season and $600,000 for 2026-27, before bonuses and other benefits. Financial terms were not disclosed for the new agreement, which adds three seasons and could take him through his 30th year with the school.
My projection is 9-2 overall and 9-1 in the NSIC, with losses at Slippery Rock and Wayne State. That record should place UMD in the conference championship fight and produce another NCAA playoff berth.
