Marie Johnson
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Marie Johnson joined the Perham Focus more than five years ago, and has since worn many hats as writer, editor and page designer. She lives in rural Frazee with her husband, Dan, their one-year-old son, Simon, and their yellow lab, Louisa.
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A Perham graduate is cooking up a plan to bring a bakery back to Main Street. Candice Saltzman, who recently moved back to town with her husband and their two...
Another affordable housing development underway in Perham: New 39-lot modular home site in the works
Less than two weeks after approving a plan to build affordable rental units near Barrel O’ Fun, Perham City Councilors have gotten on board with yet another new affordable housing development. This time, plans call not for rental units, but a grouping of new, privately owned modular homes. Called “Victory Estates,” the development will be located on the southeast side of Perham, just east of the fairgrounds and north of Coney Street, on about 13 acres of currently vacant land.
Editor’s note: This is the third in a weekly series of feature stories about the temporary seasonal foreign workers at Barrel O’ Fun. Alvin Laguardia married young and has been job-hopping ever since, he says, “just to survive.” The 36-year-old was born and raised in Batangas City, a coastal city of about 300,000 people in the Luzon region of the Phillipines.
An 83-year-old Bluffton woman was awakened just after midnight on Friday after someone shot at her home. Agnes Geiser told the Otter Tail County Sheriff’s Office that a window of her house was broken. She had been sleeping in the next room when she heard the glass break.
Perham’s in-the-works capital improvement plan continues to be rearranged in an attempt to balance the city’s needs with the high cost of meeting those needs. City leaders learned at a meeting last week that if the plan were to move ahead as currently drafted, project costs would cause tax levies to spike.
See this week's Perham Focus for a special 4-page pull-out section containing additional articles and pictures on the past, present and future of the PACC. When the Perham Area Community Center opened its doors to the public for the first time on April 29, 1989, the excitement in the air was palpable. The community had spent the previous five years planning and fundraising for the new center, and then another year waiting for construction to be completed.
Editor’s note: This is the second in a weekly series of feature stories about the temporary seasonal foreign workers at Barrel O’ Fun. For Volodymyr Dredun, the first two weeks...
Perham has gotten creative in its effort to bring more affordable housing to town. By using a never-before-tried tax abatement strategy, the city has rolled out the welcome mat for a new rental housing development by Grow Perham, LLC. The development will feature efficiency apartments, at least 40 percent of which must be occupied by individuals who meet income restrictions.
Editor’s note: This is the first in a weekly series of feature stories about the temporary seasonal foreign workers at Barrel O’ Fun. Every day, at least one person asks Valentyna Savchenko, “How are you?” That may seem like a small thing, but it’s new to her, and she appreciates it. “I like the people here,” she says. “Everybody’s friendly, everybody smiles. Especially when we first came here, everybody met us with such love.
Arvig hosted a meeting of the Governor’s Task Force on Broadband last week, giving task force members a chance to learn more about the Perham-based telecommunications company and issues that affect broadband coverage in rural areas. The task force was established by Gov. Mark Dayton in 2011. Its 15 members are charged with expanding broadband access in Minnesota, with a goal of equipping all individuals and businesses with high-speed Internet no later than 2015.
