Ramstad: Readers sound off on housing, immigration and Minnesota’s logging industry

Two weeks ago, I wrote positively about bills in the Minnesota Legislature that would diminish local zoning power, saying they would help with overall affordability of housing in the state. Last week, I wrote that Minnesota isn’t seeing as many migrant workers coming up from the nation’s southern border as Minnesotans may think.

Given the constant news and noise about immigration, I thought last week’s column would generate more reaction from readers. Instead, I heard from more of you about the legislative proposals and their potential effects on home values and local rights.

“So for the issue of housing affordability your answer is to increase the power of the state government over local control,” Dale Probasco of Pine River wrote in an e-mail. “Keeping politics at the local level is what is best, not giving away the rights of individuals.”

After I contacted him, he elaborated by writing, “I am not opposed, or know of many communities that are opposed, to high-density or low-income housing. Just leave it to the local communities of when, where and how much. I get really concerned about big government regardless of who is in power.”

Mark Lanterman, a Minneapolis technology executive who also chairs the planning commission in suburban Corcoran, wrote, “The proposed legislation, while well-intentioned in its aim to address the housing crisis, overlooks the value of localized decision-making and the nuanced understanding of community members who are directly impacted by these decisions.”

Backers of the zoning bills are indeed placing the rights of individuals over those of neighbors and their local governments. It’s a tradeoff, but I think it has to be made given where we are with housing as a state. Too many localities have stopped changes in single-family neighborhoods that would add to housing supply.

Rep. Michael Howard, DFL-Richfield and chair of the Housing Committee in the Minnesota House, said, “This bill is trying to give more choice and more freedom to Minnesotans to decide where they can find a home. To the extent there’s a balance [between homeowners and local officials], we’re way out of balance.”

On that immigration column, I had no one challenge my portrayal of how slow-growing Minnesota is even as the nation contends with the huge surge of undocumented migrants. Several people wrote or called to say they opposed immigration as a means to solve Minnesota’s labor scarcity and slow population growth.

“Perhaps a more useful tack on improving our Minnesota economy is to lower taxes for businesses and residents, to stem the flow of those leaving the state in droves,” Jody McIlrath of Frontenac wrote.

Last month, I wrote about the tension growing in Minnesota’s property insurance market, with severe storms and escalating repair costs leading insurers to sharply raise premiums or limit coverage. Jeff Luxford of White Bear Lake wrote to say that the way insurers use the National Weather Service’s description of a “major hail event” differs from how ordinary people would.

The National Weather Service count of 347 major hail events in 2022, which I used, reflects any local storm report with hail of more than 1 inch in diameter. Luxford pointed out that likely represents a much smaller number of storms hitting multiple places. “Hail isn’t becoming more common or more severe locally,” he wrote. National Weather Service data bears that out.

After I wrote about the abbreviated logging season for Minnesota’s timber industry, retired DNR forester Craig Sterle of Barnum wrote to say he believes this warm winter was an extreme version of the variability that’s been emerging for years. “The reality is, in the not too distant future, most of our lowland timber stands will routinely no longer freeze hard enough to be operable with today’s logging equipment,” Sterle wrote, adding he couldn’t imagine a cost-effective alternative coming along. “The bottom line: Loggers, the wood industry, the agencies, the Permanent School Trust are all going to have to settle for a smaller piece of pie.”

I was pleased to hear from several readers who enjoyed a book I referenced in early January, “Uncertain: The Wisdom and Wonder of Being Unsure.” Dan Berg of Minneapolis, who said he became an advocate for patient safety after the death of his teenage daughter from a misdiagnosis two decades ago, initially wrote to say he wanted to read the book after my account of author Maggie Jackson’s exploration of how the pursuit of certainty can be hurtful. More recently, he wrote to say that Jackson “opened my eyes to cognitive processes that I might not have seen as examples of uncertainty, but clearly are.”

The most entertaining reader feedback so far this year came in the comments section of my column about entrepreneur Mitch Vestal’s ice-block solution. A handful of readers debated my characterization of the winter of 2022-23 as “one of the worst” for snowfall. I should have said “best,” one commenter wrote. That led to several replies that ended with someone writing, “I’ll take an average year.”

A Sunday morning talk radio host told me I apologize too often in these reader-reaction columns. So I won’t say “I’m sorry” for going three months since my last one. I’ll just promise to write them more frequently.

Finally, two updates.

In Long Prairie, the central Minnesota town where there’s been a debate over workforce housing, the meatpacking firm that is the town’s biggest employer and its development partner told city leaders they will go ahead with construction of a 60-unit apartment complex even without tax incentives.

And I noticed recently that Ellingson Motorcars in Rogers, the big showroom of antique vehicles I visited last fall, had a Batmobile from the 1960s TV show “Batman” in its display window. It’s a custom replica built atop the chassis of a 1978 Lincoln Town Car and priced at $300,000. Owner Scott Ellingson said his crew spent a month fixing it up. “We got the exhaust flame to shoot just right,” he said.