For Immediate Release – January 29, 2021
Community Survey Released for Recreation Initiative
Hermantown, Minn. – The City of Hermantown has released a survey to garner community-wide input on a possible recreation initiative. The initiative’s three components would be funded, in part, through a half percent (.5%) increase in the City’s sales tax pending legislative approval and voter approval in a 2022 referendum.
The survey is found on the City’s website at www.hermantownmn.com/recreation-initiative and will be available through March 1.
The three components of the recreation initiative include the completion of the city-wide, accessible trail system, the re-imagining of Fichtner Park, and an addition to the existing hockey arena to provide another indoor sheet of ice.
The trail system would cross Hermantown from the schools and Essentia Wellness Center, through Stebner Park, along the new trunk sewer and eventually through Keene Creek Park and beyond. Fichtner Park would be enhanced to include a new configuration for the baseball and softball fields, potential turf for those fields, improved basketball and skatepark facilities, as well as greater accessibility and parking. The new arena addition would include an additional sheet of ice, allowing greater access for skaters of all ages, as demand outweighs supply at the current arena. Upgrades to accessibility, parking, and the outdoor rinks would also be included.
The belief is that the projects composing the initiative would help improve our region’s health outcomes and have a positive economic impact. In 2019, St. Louis County ranked in the bottom 15 percent of Minnesota counties for health outcomes.
The survey is an early step in a lengthy process to determine the desire of the community, as well as the feasibility of utilizing the sales tax increase as funding. Hermantown’s City Council recently passed a resolution to request state legislative approval to add the sales tax question to the 2022 ballot. Whether or not that permission is granted by the state legislature will not be known until later in 2021. The City passed a similar resolution in early 2020, but no decision was made by state lawmakers as the focus shifted to the COVID-19 global health pandemic.
###
For more information, contact: Joe Wicklund, Communications Director, City of Hermantown at [email protected] or 218.729.3614.