A controversial proposal to open a cannabis retail location near the St. Croix Valley Recreation Center in Stillwater goes before the city’s planning commission on Wednesday night.

Nicholas Benson, the owner of the building that houses Brine’s Market at 1754 Washington Ave., has applied for a conditional-use permit to open a licensed adult-use recreational cannabis retail business at that site.

The proposal has upset residents and business owners because of its proximity to the recreation center, The LumberYard Hockey Sports Center and Curio Dance & School.

Lee Erickson, general manager and co-owner of The LumberYard, said he emailed every family on the business’s email list about the proposal and asked them to attend the public hearing. “This is 150 feet from our building,” he wrote. “In our one-block radius is the St. Croix Rec Center, ETS, Curio Dance School and the LumberYard that have thousands of youths using this area. We believe this violates the intent of the city code to distance youth from adult-oriented businesses.”

The proposal is one of three for cannabis retail locations in the city before the planning commission on Wednesday evening. The other two sites are Mango Cannabis, proposed for the former Devil’s Advocate restaurant at 14200 60th St. N., and Hash Browns LLC at Valley Ridge Mall at 1360 Frontage Road W., said Jason Zimmerman, the city’s community development director.

The Stillwater City Council in June approved plans for another cannabis retail location, Silver Therapeutics at 1778 Greeley St. S., but they do not have their license from the state so they cannot open yet, Zimmerman said.

Restrictions and limits

In accordance with state law and city ordinance, Stillwater, population 19,200, is allowed to issue one cannabis business registration per 12,500 residents, as determined by the most recent state demographer’s estimate. The cap on registrations does not apply to a medical cannabis combination business or a lower-potency hemp edible retailer.

The Stillwater City Council on Oct. 7 increased the cap on the number of cannabis retail locations allowed in the city from one to three, Zimmerman said, and there are four parties – as of Wednesday – interested in those three spots.

“There is a lot of interest and a lot of people pursuing applications, and there is a fairly limited area where they can even locate and the council did not want to be picking and choosing,” he said. “They would rather have it open enough to allow the market to decide.”

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The city requires a 1,000-foot separation between retail cannabis dispensaries, including lower potency businesses, Zimmerman said. Other restrictions: they must be 500 feet from any residential treatment facility, 500 feet from a park attraction and 200 feet from any residential use, he said.

The LumberYard and Curio Dance School do not qualify as operations included in the buffer of a cannabis retail operation, he said.

“We are not allowed by state statute to not approve cannabis retail because of their proximity to those sorts of operations,” Zimmerman said. “A private sports club isn’t something that can limit it. Same thing with the dance studio. While people are upset about that, it’s not something that we can legally limit the location of. State statute is very clear about what you can and can’t set your regulations around. Unfortunately for some, the hockey center and the dance studio, that’s not something that we can rule out the retail just because they’re across the street from these locations.”

Recreation center

Erickson argues that the sheer number of children who come to the area for sports and dance should be a factor.

“This one-block radius is probably the biggest hub for youth activities in all of Stillwater,” he said. “Even though we’re not officially a city park or officially a public school, you can’t find any place with more youth wandering around and coming in and training and skating and training for baseball and dance.”

The LumberYard focuses on hockey, but the company leases its space to Stillwater Baseball, Stillwater Youth Hockey, Mahtomedi Youth Hockey, Forest Lake Youth Hockey, ETS Performance and ReadReact Hockey, he said.

“In the summertime, we run our camps and clinics, and we have thousands of kids coming through here at our location,” he said. “Probably 90 percent of our users are kids, basically from kindergarten to eighth grade.”

Erickson said he thinks the St. Croix Valley Recreation Center, which is owned by the city of Stillwater, should qualify as a public park, which would trigger a buffer requirement.

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“It’s not all inside rec activities,” he said. “In the wintertime, they make a huge outdoor ice skating rink on a flat area right outside the doors, and they have an outdoor warming house, and they use that outdoor area in the summer for training. You see kids out there, you know, getting run through different agility type stuff. And so it’s year-round use outdoors. That certainly seems like it would fit the classification of a public park as far as I’m concerned.”

Zimmerman said the city attorney and the Stillwater City Council will likely be asked to weigh in on the matter of the St. Croix Valley Recreation Center.

“Is that a park or is that an indoor facility? How do they want to interpret it?” he said. “It’s possible that that may qualify as a buffer. We have said no, because it’s an indoor facility. It’s not your traditional outdoor playground, but the council and city attorney will probably have to weigh in on that when it gets to the council.”

The matter is expected to go to council on Nov. 5.

Rochester Mayo finished off a three-peat as state champions — first two at the Class 2A level — Wednesday evening with a 5-2 win against Minnetonka to complete a perfect season at 23-0.

Rochester Mayo’s boast two of the top-five singles players in the state in juniors, Malea Diehn (No. 1 singles) and Aoife Loftus (No. 2 singles). The duo led the way in an all-encompassing triumph for the Spartans at the Baseline Tennis Center in Minneapolis.

Diehn and Loftus won their first sets 6-1 against Skippers senior Tessa Trivedi and junior Bella Starkman, respectively.

Loftus polished off a commanding 6-1, 6-0 win to hand the Spartans the first match of the first-ever Class 3A state championship. Diehn followed in Loftus’ footsteps, knocking off Trivedi in straight sets and only allowing one point overall. A strong 2-0 Rochester Mayo lead after two completed matches as the Spartans searched for their third consecutive state title.

Moments later, Minnetonka made it 2-1 as junior Sofia Jalil and senior Lucy Prondzinski (No. 2 doubles) topped Mayo’s pairing of junior Isla Huebner and eighth grader Emily Loftus 6-2, 6-2.

Minnetonka’s No. 1 doubles pairing of senior Martina Francisco and junior Ariya Hook, and No. 2 doubles grouping of junior Sofia Jalil and senior Lucy Prondzinski nabbed the first sets of their matches.

Mayo snatched an all-important first set in No. 4 singles, 6-4, via junior Eliana Elder. The Skippers won the No. 4 singles spot in the lineup in the regular-season matchup in which they were the only team that won three individual matches during a meeting with Mayo this season.

Elder took Set 2 6-1, which clinched the match against seventh grader Emily Leviton, a victory that gave Mayo a glimpse of their third crown in three years.

The match that clinched the title for the Spartans came from freshmen Eden Bendel and Annabelle Camp (No. 3 doubles). The pairing defeated Tonka seniors Alisa Ivanov and Allison Britzius, 6-3, 6-2 to give Mayo a 4-1 lead.

The Spartans were not done racking up victories as senior Ana Medina (No. 3 singles) would go on to beat Skippers’ sophomore Alyssa Ren.

Francisco and Hook defeated Mayo sophomore Grace Pickering and junior Ella Brinkman in three sets, ending the state championship.

Mayo’s 5-2 conquest clinched their third crown in as many years as the Spartans’ dynasty continued to make its mark in the history books.

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The Twin Cities Jewish Film Festival, an annual event now in its 31st year, begins Oct. 23 and runs through Nov. 2.

Most screenings take place at the Minnesota Jewish Community Center’s Sabes Center in St. Louis Park and the Capp Center in St. Paul, but screenings are also scheduled at other venues around Minneapolis including the Riverview Theater, the Main Cinema and the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Tickets and showtimes are available at tcjff.eventive.org.

In total, the festival encompasses 47 films telling a range of fictional and true stories. A couple, like Minnesota-born Joy Sela’s debut documentary “The Other,” respond to ongoing conflicts in Israel and Palestinian territories. Many others focus on the wide range of the global Jewish experience, including a biopic on gay Jewish Beatles manager Brian Epstein; a modern Hungarian family drama called “All About the Levkoviches”; and “Days Between Rest,” a documentary short focusing on Grammy-nominated Ugandan Jewish singer Rachel Namadosi. On Halloween, there’s a block of horror shorts, including some in Yiddish.

Alongside Sela, other Minnesota artists and projects are well represented, too. The festival’s lineup includes local filmmaker Michael Greenberg’s short film “The Combination”; “The True Story of Tamara de Lempicka & the Art of Survival,” a documentary inspired by a play written by Minnesota playwright Carson Kreitzer; and a brief preview of “Milkweed,” billed as the first feature-length animation created here that’s slated for completion in 2027.

Sela, whose father is Israeli and mother is American, began filming “The Other” in 2017, not expecting that it would become a documentary. Originally, through a nonprofit she founded, she was doing performance art-style interventions aimed at bringing opposing viewpoints in conversation with one another, but when she brought the work to Israel, she quickly realized people were eager to tell stories that went beyond her initial project’s scope. So she began listening, and recording.

Growing up, Sela said, she did not have much contact with Palestinian people or perspectives, but these initial recordings sparked a multiyear journey through Israel, the West Bank and her own sense of “the other.” The ultimate film focuses on personal stories of people like Ahmed Helou from the Gaza Strip and Maoz Inon from Israel who, despite trauma — more than 60 members of Helou’s family in Gaza have been killed; Inon’s parents were both killed during Hamas attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 — are building these bridges across communities.

For Sela herself, “it took many years to confront the conditioning that comes from growing up on one of these sides and consider how that shaped my understanding,” she said. “The people (in the film) who are doing this courageous work coming into relationship with each other, they’re coming from living in occupation or unequal systems, or from having lost a child, or having experienced or enacted violence and chosen nonviolence now. These are very complicated and difficult, extreme things to go through, but sometimes they bring about the most powerful transformation.”

Sela continued filming through 2024, including following up with all her interviewees amid the current Israel-Hamas war that began Oct. 7, 2023. Since that day, when Hamas also captured approximately 250 Israeli hostages, tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza have been killed or displaced, sparking worldwide protests. Approximately 67,000 Palestinians and approximately 1,200 Israelis have been killed since Oct. 7, according to United Nations figures.

In such a tense environment, asking people — especially Palestinian women — to share vulnerable stories on camera is not easy, Sela said. She’s built up deep trust over more than half a decade and has worked with her interview subjects to ensure the documentary portrays them authentically without putting them in additional danger, she said.

“We just hope it’s a way to start rehumanizing the conversation and hopefully engaging people in ways we can be constructive together,” she said.

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The last time a school board member in Forest Lake resigned midterm was in February 2003 when Rebecca Otto stepped down after being elected to the Minnesota House.

The board accepted her resignation on March 3, 2003, and then placed an ad in the Forest Lake Times, for three consecutive weeks, asking for résumés from interested applicants. They held a special meeting on April 21, 2003, and interviewed three candidates. Rob Raphael was appointed to fill the remainder of Otto’s term. He took office on May 5, 2003.

The Forest Lake Area School Board plans to follow a different process this time around.

School board member Luke Hagglund, whose term expires on Jan. 4, 2027, has announced plans to resign at 11:59 p.m. Thursday — right after this week’s school board meeting. Hagglund said Tuesday that he is resigning due to “personal reasons.”

By law, Hagglund’s seat must be filled by appointment and then put up for a vote at the next school board election.

According to the agenda for Thursday’s board meeting, the board plans to vote on a resolution appointing Forest Lake resident Scot Doboszenski to fill the remainder of Hagglund’s term. Hagglund said he plans to vote on Doboszenski’s appointment.

“I am a voting member (of the board) up until the time of my resignation,” he said.

The Forest Lake school board, which is split 4-3, has drawn attention because of its recent debates over whether to remove a dress code ban on swastikas, the KKK and the Confederate flag. The board also has urged the state education department and the state governing body for high school athletics to comply with a Trump administration demand to bar transgender athletes from girls sports.

Timing question

An attorney for Education Minnesota and the Forest Lake Education Association is questioning whether Hagglund can legally vote for his own replacement.

State law says that “any vacancy must be filled by board appointment at a regular or special meeting.”

“However, before member Hagglund’s resignation becomes effective, the board will vote on an appointment to fill his vacancy that does not yet exist,” attorney Jonathan Reiner wrote in a letter to School Board Chairman Curt Rebelein on Wednesday. “Further, Hagglund himself could vote on the appointment to fill his vacancy. Voting on an appointment that does not exist and allowing Hagglund to vote on his successor violates the law. … Only remaining members of the board may vote to fill the vacancy.”

If the board “violates the law,” Reiner wrote, the Forest Lake Education Association has authorized Education Minnesota to file a writ of mandamus in Washington County District Court “to order the board to comply with the relevant law and to pursue any other available legal remedies.”

Claire Luger, a member of the Forest Lake Joint Coalition, a group founded to inform residents about policies at the school board level, said state statute is clear.

“A vacancy has to exist in order for it to be filled,” she said. “Given that Luke Hagglund’s vacancy won’t be effective until 11:59 on Thursday, there is no vacancy to fill, right? … The statute is pretty clear that the vacancy has to be a thing first.”

Luger said the addition of the agenda item — which was made public when it was published at 3 p.m. Monday — is “another example of this board’s lack of transparency and unwillingness to play by the rules.”

The Minnesota School Boards Association has a list of steps listed on its website as to the process to follow when there is a vacancy on a school board, Luger said. It includes a sample application form and sample questions to ask potential applicants.

“We pay a lot of money to the (MSBA) for their legal advice,” Luger said. “They have a process that is reflective of the statutes that we’ve got in Minnesota. We just want them to follow the rules.”

The last-minute agenda item means no one has had time to consider applying and the public hasn’t had time to learn about Doboszenski, Luger said. “There’s kind of a whiplash effect happening right now where it’s like, ‘Wait, can they do that? Nope. No they can’t. No, wait, what’s going on and why? And who is this guy?’”

Rich Elliot, president of the Forest Lake Education Association, said the lack of opportunity for public debate or input about Dobszenski’s appointment is concerning.

“This is someone who’s about to have significant input over our students’ education,” Elliot said. “Without any transparency or public input, this seems unnecessarily rushed.”

Retired colonel, businessman

Doboszenski’s appointment “shall be effective 30 days after the adoption of this resolution (Nov. 22, 2025) unless a valid petition to reject the appointee is timely filed and verified with the school district clerk,” the resolution states.

Rebelein said Tuesday that he did not expect Doboszenski’s appointment to be controversial. “He’s not a polarizing individual,” he said.

Doboszenski, a retired U.S. Army colonel, works as a licensed general contractor.

Curt Rebelein (Courtesy photo)

“He’s been working with the schools quite a bit, and he and I have talked a lot about him possibly running for school board,” Rebelein said. “It’s a position he’s been interested in for three or four years, something he’s been looking at really closely. He’s worked a lot one-on-one with independent students, helping them finish high school.”

Doboszenski emailed a release to the Pioneer Press on Wednesday morning announcing his intention to seek appointment to the school board.

“Doboszenski is a local business owner and retired Army colonel,” the release states. “He brings a wealth of experience in leadership, strategic planning and program management. He holds degrees in psychology, information management and national security and resource strategy.”

Said Doboszenski: “I believe in fostering collaboration between educators, families and the community so we can create a safe and nurturing environment where every student can thrive. I look forward to contributing my skills and vision to the board so we can accomplish our shared goals of engaging students and preparing them for the next chapter of life whether that be trades, college, military or immediate employment.”

More time

School board member Gail Theisen said she plans to ask Rebelein to switch the agenda item to the school board’s next main meeting, which is Nov. 6.

“That is the most-watched meeting,” she said. “School Board member Luke Hagglund’s replacement on the board could attend, be interviewed and the process would be more transparent to us and the public. Sharing texts and emails is not transparent, we need a better process.”

Theisen said she had talked with Doboszenski and told him that being appointed on Thursday would not be a favorable way to start his time on the board.

“Our community is watching everything that happens around the board table,” she said. “The board chair knows that this is not a good way to operate. He knows he should have transparency with our community and to not throw out surprises. It isn’t a good way to run our board actions.”

Rebelein said he had Superintendent Steve Massey check with the MSBA for their recommendations regarding a board member’s resignation. Among the options: the board can select somebody and appoint them, or the board can go through an application process, he said.

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“But the application process can be pretty long,” Rebelein said. “It can be arduous. You can end up without somebody in that position for several months. The way that it read, at least to me, was that we were better off having a short selection pool going through that list and then making a proposal to the board.”

If the board cannot come to a consensus on Thursday night, Rebelein said it could vote to go through a full application process.

“But, you know, it could be February or March before we have that position filled,” he said. “So it felt more appropriate just to go with (Doboszenski).”