December 3, 2012

922 percent tax increase? Really?

I moved to Duluth 18 months ago to take a great job with a great company and raise my family in a great city. I bought a modest house that sits on three very small lots within the city limits of Duluth. (My three lots would equal one “Hermantown” sized lot).

Well, the city raised the property tax on the two vacant lots by 922.2 percent! I now have to come up with an extra $752.26 per year in taxes.

Now I know why everyone kept telling me not to buy within the city limits of Duluth! Between the insane tax increase and the bizarre school redistricting red plan nonsense, I would have been better off in one of the surrounding suburbs.

Thanks. Rant over.

Duluth Pipe-smoking Trend

While my data collection process might be flawed (data gained mostly by conformation bias) there sure seems to be a recent uptick in Duluth pipe smokers.

I am talking about the briar pipe, burley and latakia type of pipe smoker not the glass and green type. While pipes are a distant third to cigs and cigars, I have run into 6-8 pipe smokers just in the past two months and many more over the past year. Usually 35-45 types, all who appear to have penises.

While this might be borderline PDD topic material I am interested if anyone else noticed or is paying attention. Duluth in general has been a pretty bare place for pipe tobacco since the shop on First Avenue West shut down. Buttes in West Duluth is the only shop that sorta has real pipe tobacco that I know of. Maybe add it to your business plan to make a buck or two.

Any smokers the way of the briar out there in PDD land?

This week: nutcracker, nutcracker and nutcracker

  

Here’s a sampling of what you have to look forward to this week on the PDD Calendar.

Today you can hit two art openings (Tom Rauschenfels and the Duluth Entrepreneur Fund) at the Zeitgeist.

If you type in “Nutcracker” into the PDD Calendar search engine you are going to get three different events. The traditional seasonal ballet is being performed this weekend by the Minnesota Ballet at the DECC and by the Reif Dancers at the Myles Reif Center in Grand Rapids. Further, Renegade Theater Company is producing a theatrical production of the story featuring battle over ballet.

Katie McMahon returns to Mitchell Auditorium with her Celtic Christmas show on Friday.

Rubber Chicken Theater offers up its annual sketch comedy revue A Flood of Christmas Cheer, or, What Seal is This? at the Fitger’s Spirit of the North Theater starting Friday and running through New Year’s Eve.

The 10th Annual Rock and Roll Kamikaze, in which bands are formed randomly and each get a 15 minute set, returns to the Pizza Lucé stage on Saturday.

Step back in time with the 1943 USO Canteen Show at the Douglas County Historical Society this Saturday and Sunday.

And don’t forget our Christmas tag which you can click on to find all such happenings on the calendar.

So what are you doing this week? Can we tag along? Any upcoming events that you want to promote? Let us know!

Upper Chester: Not so fast there people!

Duluth took a beating this past year. But thanks to everyone pulling together we’ve made a remarkable comeback. For proof, you don’t have to look any further than Chester Park. Thanks to the indefatigable Dan Proctor and others the Lower Chester trails are probably in better shape than they were before the floods of June, and that’s saying a lot considering the scope of the mudflows and washouts that ravaged pretty much every inch of the ravine.

Upper Chester, however, is another story. Despite good intentions, there’s been a lot of jumping the gun to clean up or improve things that one could make the argument has ended up doing more harm than good. I’m not going to run down the list, but the latest chapter seems to have taken place largely under the radar, and I think it deserves a public airing.
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Upper Chester: Not so fast there people!Read more

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