Township elections generally aren’t that exciting. Incumbents are rarely challenged, and there aren’t usually write-in candidates mounting serious campaigns.

That’s not the case this year in May and West Lakeland townships.

In May Township, Mark Diessner, former vice president of the Square Lake Association and a vocal critic of Minnesota Catholic Youth Partnership’s plans to open a summer camp in Wilder Forest, filed to run against Town Board Supervisor Steve Magner, who has served on the board since 2021.

In West Lakeland Township, Chairman Dave Schultz decided late last year not to run for re-election after 15 years on the board, but did not make an official announcement; he later told the Pioneer Press that recent negative campaigns were the reason for his departure. One candidate, Vince Anderson, filed to run and his name appears on the ballot while Rachel Dana has mounted a write-in campaign.

The election is Tuesday. The four other Washington County townships — Baytown, Denmark, Grey Cloud Island and Stillwater — switched to holding elections on the first Tuesday in November, to coincide with the general election.

All of the townships will hold their annual meetings on Tuesday night.

May Township

Mark Diessner, 59, was one of many residents who started attending township board meetings after the Minnesota Catholic Youth Partnership announced plans to purchase Wilder Forest for a summer camp. Diessner and the Square Lake Association fought against the plan.

Mark Diessner (Courtesy of the candidate)

“During that experience, I saw that there were people on the board who didn’t appear to be listening to the residents,” Diessner said. “There was a tremendous amount of turnout to each one of those meetings and very passionate conversations, and I just felt like some of the board members weren’t listening, and they weren’t representing the constituents. I got the feeling that (Magner) was quoting chapter-and-verse from a code book and not really listening to the people he represents. That was an eye-opening experience for me. I think I could do a better job.”

Diessner grew up in Afton and has lived in May Township since 2015. He and his wife, Ashley, have three children. He is the co-owner of Total Mechanical Services Inc., a St. Paul Park-based commercial and industrial mechanical contracting company that specializes in large-scale water treatment, HVAC services and ice arenas. The Diessners also own the Aesthetiq Institute and Med Spa in Oakdale.

One of the main issues facing the township is what will happen with three large parcels — each more than 100 acres — that are currently for sale in the eastern part of the township. “People live in May because they want the rural small-town lifestyle,” he said. “I live in May for that reason. I would like for it to continue to have the rural character that it has. The town board plays a key role in ensuring that the future use of these parcels is consistent with the character of our area.”

At the same time, he said, the town board needs to protect the interest of the landowners to realize the value of their property.

“It’s important that the landowners can be made whole if they want to sell their property and make a profit,” he said. “Like everything, there is a balancing act to that. You need to find that sweet spot where everybody is happy.”

For more information, go to markformay.org.

Steve Magner, 58, served on the township’s planning commission for 17 years before being elected to the town board.

Supervisor Steve Magner, second from left, speaks during a meeting of the May Township board of supervisors at the May Town Hall on Tuesday, Nov. 22, 2022. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Magner said he is running for re-election because he still has things he wants to accomplish. “There are still some zoning changes that I would like to get done,” he said. “I want to keep taxes low. We’re trying to put a lid on how much we spend on the levy. Costs keep going up; costs for maintaining the roads keep going up.”

Magner said he pushed to keep this year’s levy increase capped at 5 percent. An original proposal was for more, but Magner said he couldn’t support that “because I know a lot of folks who live on fixed incomes.”

“I’m not going to be the guy – like in other bedroom communities or tourist communities – that forces them out because they can’t afford the house that they lived in their whole life, because the taxes were out of control,” he said. “I’m not doing that.”

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Magner grew up in St. Paul and is the code-enforcement manager for St. Paul. “I do believe that having 30-plus years of big government gives me insight,” he said. “I have a pretty wide band of understanding of how municipalities work, and the problems that face them.”

Magner and his wife, Lora, have four children. He said he likes being the go-to person when an issue arises in the township. He plows the Town Hall and septic field. “When we get the call at midnight about the tree that blows down, it’s usually me who is going to go out there first and triage it,” he said.

Magner said he knows that some residents were not happy with how he voted on issues regarding Wilder Forest and Warner Nature Center. “I have my detractors and people who don’t like my decisions, but I am a big believer that you are a steward of the public dollars,” he said. “These dollars have to be spent for the better good of the community, so we have to define that. That means I’m sometimes making decisions that some people do not like.”

West Lakeland Township

Vince Anderson, 77, is running on a platform that includes “a clearly defined comprehensive road plan for bonding,” he said.

Vince Anderson (Courtesy of the candidate)

“They are trying to pay cash for everything, and that’s not how you do it,” he said. “You can’t let it go forever, and then say, ‘Oh, we’re just going to save for it.’ You’ll never get them done. We need prudent management of road projects and town spending without extravagance. We do not need to waste money on a town hall addition.”

If elected, Anderson said he plans to push the town board to adopt even-year, November elections – like most of other townships in Washington County, he said. The switch would mean an increase in voter turnout and cost savings, he said.

Anderson, a former Stillwater Township board member and former vice president of the Carnelian-Marine Watershed District, has a long history with the township. Three years ago, he requested an opinion from the commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Administration about town board votes and meeting locations. The board was found to have violated the state’s open-meeting law, according to an advisory opinion issued in January 2021.

Anderson, who has three children and five grandchildren, moved to West Lakeland Township in 1999. He worked in systems management for most of his career at First Bank System (now U.S. Bank), Toro, National Car Rental and others. He retired in 2002 in financial management from Structural Wood in St. Paul.

For more information, go to vja2024.com.

Rachel Dana, 40, has lived in West Lakeland Township since 2017. She has served on the planning commission since 2021 and said she was tapped to mount a write-in campaign after residents realized Schultz had decided not to run for re-election.

Rachel Dana (Courtesy of the candidate)

“I never would have run against Dave,” she said. “Unfortunately, when I was informed (he wasn’t running), the filing window for candidacy was closed. When only Vince was running, I thought it was a public service to put my name in. … I reserved my website domain last July, so it was definitely in my future; I just didn’t think the timing would come so soon.”

Dana, who also serves on the township’s building committee, is a director of construction for Ryan Cos. in Minneapolis, where she leads the company’s national retail construction team. She said her real estate career helps with all of the issues facing the township: “roads, development, annexation, all these things an urban township is faced with.”

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The township’s biggest budget item is its roads, she said, and township residents on Tuesday night will discuss whether to bond for them. “Right now we’re faced with a bonding decision,” she said. “We all agree on the fundamentals: Our roads need to be fixed.”

Dana said she would support bonding for road repairs as long as it doesn’t “burden our residents with excessive costs.”

If elected, Dana said she would work on improving communication between residents and the township. “If the average resident is informed, the town board can make better decisions,” she said.

Dana is married to Tyler Christensen; she has three stepdaughters and twin daughters.

For more information, go to racheldanaforwestlakeland.com.

America’s employers delivered another healthy month of hiring in February, adding a surprising 275,000 jobs and again showcasing the U.S. economy’s resilience in the face of high interest rates.

Last month’s job growth marked an increase from a revised gain of 229,000 jobs in January. At the same time, the unemployment rate ticked up two-tenths of a point in February to 3.9%. Though that was the highest rate in two years, it is still low by historic standards. And it marked the 25th straight month in which joblessness has remained below 4% — the longest such streak since the 1960s.

Yet despite sharply lower inflation, a healthy job market and a record-high stock market, many Americans say they are unhappy with the state of the economy — a sentiment that is sure to weigh on President Joe Biden’s bid for re-election. Many voters blame Biden for the surge in consumer prices that began in 2021.

Though inflationary pressures have significantly eased, average prices remain about 17% above where they stood three years ago.

Friday’s report drastically revised down the government’s estimate of hiring in December and January from what had been blockbuster increases to still-solid gains. The report also gave the inflation fighters at the Federal Reserve what could be a dose of encouraging news: Average hourly wages rose just 0.1% from January, the smallest monthly gain in more than two years, and 4.3% from a year earlier, less than expected. Average pay growth has been exceeding inflation for more than year, but when it rises too fast it can feed inflation.

The latest figures reflected the job market’s sustained ability to withstand the 11 rate hikes the Fed imposed in its drive against inflation, which made borrowing much costlier for households and businesses. Employers have continued to hire briskly to meet steady demand from consumers across the economy.

The February figures will likely make Fed officials more comfortable about cutting rates sometime in the coming months. With December and January job gains revised sharply down, wage growth easing and the unemployment rate up, the Fed’s policymakers aren’t likely to worry about an overheating economy. Most economists and Wall Street traders expect the first rate cut to come in June. The Fed stopped raising rates in July and has signaled that it envisions three rate cuts this year.

The unemployment rate rose last month in part because more people began looking for a job and didn’t immediately find one. The Fed will be reassured by the influx of job seekers, which typically makes it easier for businesses to fill jobs without having to significantly raise pay.

Gus Faucher, chief economist at PNC Financial Services, said he was impressed by the breadth of hiring last month: Among industries, health care companies added 67,000 jobs, government at all levels 52,000, restaurants and bars 42,000, construction companies 23,000 and retailers 19,000.

By contrast, factories cut 4,000 jobs. And financial companies, including banks, insurers and real estate firms, added just 1,000.

When the Fed began aggressively raising rates in March 2022 to fight the worst bout of inflation in four decades, a painful recession was widely predicted, with waves of layoffs and high unemployment. The Fed boosted its benchmark rate to the highest level in more than two decades.

Inflation has eased, more or less steadily, in response: Consumer prices in January were up just 3.1% from a year earlier — way down from a year-over-year peak of 9.1% in 2022 and edging closer to the Fed’s 2% target. Unemployment is still low. And no recession is in sight.

The combination of easing inflation and sturdy hiring is raising hopes that the Fed can achieve a so-called “soft landing” by taming inflation without causing a recession — a scenario consistent with Friday’s numbers.

Faucher said he expects average monthly job growth to decelerate to around 150,000 and for the unemployment rate to rise to slightly above 4% by year’s end. A cooling labor market, he suggested, will allow the Fed to start cutting rates this spring.

Many Americans are exhibiting confidence in the economy through their actions: Consumers, whose average wages have outpaced inflation over the past year and who socked away money during the pandemic, have continued to spend and drive economic growth. The economy’s gross domestic product — the total output of goods and services — grew by a solid 2.5% last year, up from 1.9% in 2022. And employers keep hiring.

In the meantime, the job market’s modest slowdown is happening so far in perhaps the least painful way: Companies are posting slightly fewer job openings rather than laying people off. The number of Americans filing for weekly unemployment benefits — a rough proxy for the number of layoffs — has remained low, suggesting that most workers enjoy solid job security.

Wage growth still remains slightly high from the Fed’s perspective. Some economists argue, though, that pay increases don’t need to drop so much: A surge in productivity that started last year — as companies invested in machines and used their workers more efficiently — means that employers can pay more and still reap profits without raising prices.

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By MOHAMED JAHJOUH, JACK JEFFERY and LEE KEATH (Associated Press)

RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — It’s not just Israeli bombs that have killed children in war-ravaged Gaza — now some are dying of hunger.

Officials have been warning for months that Israel’s siege and offensive were pushing the Palestinian territory into famine.

Hunger is most acute in northern Gaza, which has been isolated by Israeli forces and has suffered long cutoffs of food supplies. At least 20 people have died from malnutrition and dehydration at the north’s Kamal Adwan and Shifa hospitals, according to the Health Ministry. Most of the dead are children — including ones as old as 15 — as well as a 72-year-old man.

Particularly vulnerable children are also beginning to succumb in the south, where access to aid is more regular.

At the Emirati Hospital in Rafah, 16 premature babies have died of malnutrition-related causes over the past five weeks, one of the senior doctors told The Associated Press.

“The child deaths we feared are here,” Adele Khodr, UNICEF’s Middle East chief, said in a statement earlier this week.

Israel’s bombardment and ground assaults have already wreaked a high toll among children, who along with women make up nearly three-quarters of the more than 30,800 Palestinians killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

Malnutrition is generally slow to bring death, striking children and the elderly first. Other factors can play a role. Underfed mothers have difficulty breastfeeding children. Diarrheal diseases, rampant in Gaza due to lack of clean water and sanitation, leave many unable to retain any of the calories they ingest, said Anuradha Narayan, a UNICEF child nutrition expert. Malnutrition weakens immune systems, sometimes leading to death from other diseases.

Israel largely shut off entry of food, water, medicine and other supplies after launching its assault on Gaza following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, in which terrorists killed some 1,200 people and took around 250 hostage. It has allowed only a trickle of aid trucks through two crossings in the south. Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada and the European Union.

Israel has blamed the burgeoning hunger in Gaza on U.N. agencies, saying they fail to distribute supplies piling up at Gaza crossings. UNRWA, the largest U.N. agency in Gaza, says Israel restricts some goods and imposes cumbersome inspections that slow entry.

Also, distribution within Gaza has been crippled, U.N. officials say convoys are regularly turned back by Israeli forces, the military often refuses safe passage amid fighting, and aid is snatched off trucks by hungry Palestinians on route to drop-off points.

With alarm growing, Israel bent to U.S. and international pressure, saying this week it will open crossings for aid directly into northern Gaza and allow sea shipments.

DESPERATION IN THE NORTH

Conditions in the north, largely under Israeli control for months, have become desperate. Entire districts of Gaza City and surrounding areas have been reduced to rubble by Israeli forces. Still, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians remain.

Meat, milk, vegetables and fruit are nearly impossible to find, according to several residents who spoke to the AP. The few items in shops are random and sold at hugely inflated prices — mainly nuts, snacks and spices. People have taken barrels of chocolate from bakeries and are selling tiny smears of it.

Most people eat a weed that crops up in empty lots, known as “khubaiza.” Fatima Shaheen, a 70-year-old who lives with her two sons and their children in northern Gaza, said boiled khubaiza is her main meal, and her family has also ground up food meant for rabbits to use as flour.

“We are dying for a piece of bread,” Shaheen said.

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Qamar Ahmed said his 18-month-old daughter, Mira, eats mostly boiled weeds. “There is no food that suits her age,” said Ahmed, a researcher with Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor and an economic journalist. His 70-year-old father gives his own food to Ahmed’s young son, Oleyan. “We try to make him eat and he refuses,” Ahmed said of his father.

Mahmoud Shalaby, who lives in the Jabaliya refugee camp, said he saw a man in the market give a bag of potato chips to his two sons and tell them to make it last for breakfast and lunch. “Everyone know I has lost weight,” said Shalaby, the senior program manager for the aid group Medical Aid for Palestinians in northern Gaza.

Dr. Husam Abu Safiya, the acting head of Kamal Adwan Hospital, told the AP his staff currently treats 300 to 400 children a day, and that 75% of them are suffering from malnutrition.

Recent airdrops of aid by the U.S. and other countries provide far lower amounts of aid than truck deliveries, which have become rare and sometimes dangerous. UNRWA says Israeli authorities haven’t allowed it to deliver supplies to the north since Jan. 23. The World Food Organization, which had paused deliveries because of safety concerns, said the military forced its first convoy to the north in two weeks to turn back Tuesday.

When the Israeli military organized a food delivery to Gaza City last week, troops guarding the convoy opened fire — on a perceived threat, the military says — as thousands of hungry Palestinians mobbed the trucks. Some 120 people were killed in the shooting, as well as by being trampled in the chaos.

WORSENING SOUTH

Yazan al-Kafarna, 10, died Monday after almost a week of unsuccessful treatment in Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah. Photos of the boy showed him extremely emaciated, with twig-like limbs and deep-sunk eyes in a face shriveled to his skull.

Al-Kafarna was born with cerebral palsy, a neurological condition that affects motor skills and can make swallowing and eating difficult. His parents said they struggled to find food he could eat, including soft fruits and eggs, since fleeing their home in the north.

He died due to extreme muscle wastage caused primarily by lack of food, according to Dr. Jabr al-Shair, head of the children’s emergency department at Abu Youssef Najjar Hospital.

On a recent day, around 80 malnourished children crowded the hospital’s wards. Aya al-Fayoume, a 19-year-old mother displaced to Rafah, had brought her 3-month-old daughter, Nisreen, who has lost vast amounts of weight over the winter months, sick with persistent diarrhea and vomiting. On her diet of mainly canned goods, al-Fayoume said she doesn’t produce enough breast milk for Nisreen.

“Everything I need is expensive or unavailable,” she said.

Fresh food supplies in Rafah have dwindled, while its population has swelled to more than 1 million with displaced residents. The main thing available are canned goods, often found in aid packages.

At Emirati Hospital, Dr. Ahmed al-Shair, deputy head of the nursery unit, said the recent deaths of premature babies was rooted in malnutrition among mothers. Malnourishment and extreme stress are both factors causing premature, underweight births, and doctors say anecdotally cases have risen during the war, though the U.N. does not have statistics.

Al-Shair said premature babies are treated for several days to improve their weight. But then they are released home, which is often a tent with not enough heat, with mothers too malnourished to breastfeed and milk difficult to obtain. Parents sometimes give newborns plain water instead, which is often unclean, causing diarrhea.

Within days, the babies “are brought back to us in a terrible state. Some were brought already dead,” al-Shair said. He said 14 babies at the hospital died in February and two more so far in March.

Currently, the hospital’s wards have 44 babies under 10 days old with weights as low as 2 kilograms (4 pounds), some on life support. Every incubator has at least three premature babies in it, raising the risk of infection. Al-Shair said he fears some will meet the same fate when returned home.

“We treat them now but God knows what the future will be,” he said.

Associated Press writers Sam Magdy and Sarah El Deeb in Cairo contributed to this report.

Follow AP’s war coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/israel-hamas-war

By LARRY NEUMEISTER (Associated Press)

NEW YORK (AP) — Former President Donald Trump has secured a bond sufficient to support an $83.3 million jury award granted to writer E. Jean Carroll during a January defamation trial stemming from rape claims she made against Trump, his lawyer said Friday as she notified the federal judge who oversaw the trial that an appeal was underway.

Attorney Alina Habba filed papers with the New York judge to show that Trump had secured a $91.6 million bond from the Federal Insurance Co. She simultaneously filed a notice of appeal to show Trump, the 2024 Republican presidential front-runner, is appealing the verdict to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The filings came a day after Judge Lewis A. Kaplan refused to delay a Monday deadline for posting a bond to ensure that the 80-year-old Carroll can collect the $83.3 million if it remains intact following appeals.

The posting of the bond was a necessary step to delay payment of the award until the 2nd Circuit can rule.

Trump is facing financial pressure to set aside money to cover both the judgment in the Carroll case and an even bigger one in a lawsuit in which he was found liable for lying about his wealth in financial statements given to banks.

A New York judge recently refused to halt collection of a $454 million civil fraud penalty while Trump appeals. He now has until March 25 to either pay up or buy a bond covering the full amount. In the meantime, interest on the judgment continues to mount, adding roughly $112,000 each day.

Trump’s lawyers have asked for that judgment to be stayed on appeal, warning he might need to sell some properties to cover the penalty.

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On Thursday, Kaplan wrote that any financial harm to Trump results from his slow response to the late-January verdict in the defamation case over statements he made about Carroll while he was president in 2019 after she claimed in a memoir that he raped her in spring 1996 in a midtown Manhattan luxury department store dressing room.

Trump vehemently denied the claims, saying that he didn’t know her and that the encounter at a Bergdorf Goodman store across the street from Trump Tower never took place.

A jury last May awarded Carroll $5 million after concluding that Trump sexually abused Carroll in the 1996 encounter, though it rejected Carroll’s rape claims, as rape was defined by New York state law. A portion of the award also stemmed from the jury’s finding that Trump defamed Carroll with statements he made in October 2022.

The January trial pertained solely to statements Trump made in 2019 while he was president. Kaplan instructed the jury that it must accept the findings of the jury last May and was only deciding how much, if anything, Trump owed Carroll for his 2019 statements.

Trump did not attend the May trial, but he testified briefly and regularly sat with defense lawyers at the January trial, though his behavior, including disparaging comments that a lawyer for Carroll said were loud enough for jurors to hear, prompted Kaplan to threaten to banish him from the courtroom.

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