Minnesota Governor Tim Walz visits the Iron Range to highlight Investments in Workforce Development

There are so many communities that are looking to invest and build up their communities on the range. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz visited Hibbing and Chisholm and highlighted investments in workforce development throughout the state.

“I think it’s important for us to come here, me personally, to be on the ground, to hear it, to see what some of these challenges are, but more importantly, to tell the story to the rest of Minnesota. It was this community that said we need this. It was their mayor and their city council and their citizens; and told these legislators who came there and I said, what you’re saying, it will do it, and that’s that. We’ll do it together,” Gov. Tim Walz (DFL-Minnesota) expressed.

His late morning Tripp took him to the new construction site of the public safety building in Chisholm. Their current one is downtown, and the emergency services have outgrown the building, as Mayor Adam Lantz shared the need to have this new building.

“Our police department is right behind our fire department. So when we start our apparatus on the fire side, the exhaust goes right into their offices, and they sometimes are forced to leave the building. We are not A.D.A. complaint where we are right now. So updating that is just a huge need. Our building that we’re currently in was built for 1906 standards, horse and carriage, and it’s not adequate for what we have today.”

Mayor Lantz mentioned that the city got a large amount of funding from the state to help build a brand-new public safety building. “It is running about $11.9 million. And with state and federal contributions, it’s only 1.9 million on the taxpayers of Chisholm. For the last infrastructure bill, we had $3 million come through at the last minute, through Representative Lislegard, and we definitely fought for that. We also had $1.9 million come in federally and $3 million come in 2022.”

Right now, all of the emergency personnel are in different buildings and with this new structure, will house all their public safety operations.

“It opens up different units. Sometimes we have firefighters in EMT. We have an EMT that our firefighters, not all are crossed right here, but it gives a nice locally centralized place for everyone to respond out of. It gives everybody an up-to-date facility with proper ventilation and proper, you know, needs for our community,” Mayor Lantz.

Governor Walz made a stop earlier in Hibbing to also highlight the workforce at the Detroit Diesel.