Vermonters have learned the hard way not to get their hopes up about spring. The season here is long and cruel. Any stretch of warm, sunny weather will not be followed by more of the same, as it might be in other parts of the country, places where spring means green grass, flowers and confidently putting away one’s winter clothes.
In Vermont, warm days in early spring are just a tease of what is still months away. Between winter and actual spring, some Vermonters have lightheartedly identified five mini-seasons — “fool’s spring,” so named because it is soon followed by “second winter,” then “spring of deception,” “third winter” and finally “mud season.”
Thus it has apparently always been. A letter printed in the Vermont Gazette in February 1791 — a month before the state joined the Union — complained about the coming months during which Vermonters could do little. “(W)e cannot perform journeys by reason of the depth of the mud, our fields are not arable, sled(d)ing is at an end, and our grain is threshed: in a word there seems to be an interregnum of all business,” lamented the writer, who signed the letter with the pen name “Clergyman.” (Pseudonyms were frequently used in newspapers of the period for a variety of reasons, including trying to keep the focus on a writer’s ideas rather than their identity.)
During this pause, no work could be done, “save that of making sugar.” The writer was referring to maple sugar, the granular sweetener produced by cooking down maple syrup. At the time, maple sugar was more popular than syrup because it was easier to store and had a longer shelf life.
Clergyman’s letter was an impassioned plea — supported by economic and ethical arguments — for Vermonters to take up sugar making on an industry scale. The letter was timely, arriving as it did at the start of a national movement to promote domestic sugar production in the United States, which helped produce a maple sugar bubble.
European settlers in the Northeast had learned how to sugar from the indigenous population, who for untold ages had been tapping maple trees and boiling down the sap to distill its sugary goodness. But when Clergyman wrote his letter, most Vermonters who made maple sugar only produced enough to meet their own families’ needs. It was a wasted opportunity, he argued. “It is evident, at this time especially, that peculiar exertions ought to be made for the furtherance of the sugar manufactory,” he wrote.
Most people bought their sugar from the Caribbean. But a variety of factors — hurricanes, earthquakes and uprisings by the enslaved people who made the sugar — had recently restricted the supply and caused the price to double.
Clergyman considered sugar making an act of patriotism, since it produced goods in America and kept money in the nation’s economy rather than sending it to one of the European countries operating sugar plantations in the Caribbean. “(T)he old proverb forever holds true that a penny saved is as good as a penny earnt,” he added.
Clergyman hated that friends would sometimes apologize for serving homemade maple sugar: “It gives me pain, it destroys all the pleasure of the visit, when I set down at the teatable of a friend to hear the too common complaint, Oh we are poor folks, we have nothing to give you but homemade sugar.” As if maple sugar were inferior to imported cane sugar.
Worse still was when a friend would serve him imported sugar with pride. “(I)t gives me still greater pain when I sit down to a friend’s table, furnished with loaf-sugar [as Caribbean sugar was called], which I have no reason to doubt was the purchase of a drained purse, perhaps of the last shilling.”
Clergymen proposed a radical shift in how Vermont farms operated each spring: “Now suppose every husbandman in this state, at this leisurely time, should exert himself with all his labourers equally the same as he does in haying and harvesting, what would be the event?”
Answering his own question, Clergyman wrote: “Why this state, at a moderate calculation, would be four thousand pounds richer this present season!” It would be “commendable” for farmers to “take time by the foretop” — i.e. hurry — and buy more equipment to make more sugar.
It would be better for farmers to work within the local economy rather than engage in more distant trade. “Would it not be more commendable than to send their grain after rum, sugar and foreign molasses, with many other frivolous articles, which are purchased only because they are foreign. It is a lamentable consideration, that so many of our good citizens have such an itching desire, such an insatiable thirst after foreign and imported goods.”
New York State had recently appointed a committee to “enquire into the manufactory from the juice of the maple tree,” he wrote. If New York could see the value of locally made sugar, Clergyman asked, “Shall we then who are citizens of Vermont, who live in the very bowels of that kind of sweetness, be inactive? Shall we resemble the fool who has a price put into his hands but no heart to improve it; let us rather… now, in the dead of winter, exert ourselves in preparing our sap and store troughs. In this manufactory we neither rob nor injure any man, we only take what bountiful nature liberally bestows.”
Only at the very end of his letter, once he had made his long and strenuous economic argument for maple sugaring, did Clergyman mention the ethical reason for doing so.
“Another consideration may be mentioned, viz. that by stopping the importation of sugar from the West (I)ndies, we shall diminish the plea of necessity for enslaving the natives of Africa; by which we shall gratify the feelings of benevolence, and render essential service to the cause of freedom,” he wrote.
This anti-slavery argument was the main motivation behind the national movement. Given his chosen pen name, this might also have been the principal reason for Clergyman to write his letter. He might have wanted to leave the ethical argument until after he had, hopefully, won readers over with his assertion that maple would benefit them and their state financially.
Sugar had recently become a political tool. Antislavery activists in England organized a boycott of Caribbean sugar in 1788 to drive down the cost of sugar, thereby making the slave trade less profitable.
Prominent Americans took up the cause, some noting that, unlike the British, their countrymen had a ready substitute for boycotted sugar. William Cooper, founder of Cooperstown, New York, and father of novelist James Fennimore Cooper, started a maple sugar business in 1789 and became a leading proponent of creating large-scale maple operations. That same year, Declaration of Independence signer Dr. Benjamin Rush founded the Society for Promoting the Manufacturer of Sugar from the Sugar Maple Tree. Rush extolled the virtues of maple sugar in a letter to Thomas Jefferson, then U.S. secretary of state, arguing that it would free the country from the need to import slave-produced sugar. Indeed, Rush wrote, the country might even create a maple sugar surplus to export. The anti-slavery argument resonated with Jefferson, although Jefferson’s deeds often fell short of his ideals: he himself continued to enslave hundreds on his Virginia properties.
Americans could soon even read about the moral virtue of maple trees and the sugar they yielded in a poem by diplomat David Humphreys, which included the lines: “Bleed on, blest tree! and as thy sweet blood runs,/ Bestow fond hope on Afric’s sable Sons.”
Four months after Clergyman’s letter appeared, two future presidents, Jefferson and then-Congressman James Madison, were visiting Vermont as part of a tour of New England and New York. At a dinner in Bennington, Jefferson spoke of the benefit that the new state’s abundant maple trees could bring to the young nation, freeing it from dependence on foreign sugar, then one of America’s largest imports.
News broke during Jefferson’s tour that a Dutch company had bought up land in Vermont to establish a major maple sugar operation. The scheme ultimately failed, however, apparently because Vermonters wanted to work for themselves, not a foreign company.
When he returned to Monticello, Jefferson had a grove of maple trees planted, not realizing that the Virginia climate was ill-suited for making maple sugar. He encouraged Americans to have their own maple groves to provide a ready supply of sugar.
That’s a sentiment that Clergyman would have shared. “For my single self,” he wrote in his letter to the Gazette, “I feel prouder to tell my friends, around my board, this is sugar of my own making, and with more pleasure I present them with the bowl thus filled, than with the most refined loaf-sugar.”
MARION — Former Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody probably committed a felony crime when he told a witness to delete text messages they exchanged before, during and after he led raids on a newspaper office and the publisher’s home, a district judge ruled Wednesday.
But Cody won’t be tried for the raids, which Marion County Record editor-publisher Eric Meyer says is the real crime.
A two-hour preliminary hearing revealed new details about the texts that Cody exchanged with Kari Newell, whose drunk driving record and request for a liquor license at her restaurant ignited an international drama two years ago. Newell took the stand and testified that Cody told her during a phone call to delete text messages between the two of them so that people wouldn’t get the wrong idea about whether they were romantically involved.
“Chief Cody had stated that he felt it would be in my best interest to delete those,” Newell said.
About six weeks after the raids, Newell texted Cody to say she was concerned about having deleted their earlier messages, she said. Cody replied that she was being paranoid.
Their exchange coincided with widespread scrutiny of the police raids in August 2023 of the newspaper office in flagrant disregard for the First Amendment and legal protections for journalists. Kansas Reflector first reported on the chilling raids.
Cody, working in coordination with the sheriff’s office, county attorney and Kansas Bureau of Investigation, had investigated whether Meyer and reporter Phyllis Zorn committed identity theft and other crimes by looking up Newell’s driving record in a public online database. A magistrate judge, ignoring the absence of evidence and state law, authorized the police raids of the newspaper office, Meyer’s home, and the home of city Councilwoman Ruth Herbel. Meyer’s 98-year-old mother died in distress a day later.
Police exceeded the scope of the search warrants by seizing reporters’ personal cellphones, work computers, and other equipment. Video showed Cody reviewing a reporter’s file on allegations that had been made against him.
At the KBI’s request, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation conducted a yearlong inquiry into whether Cody or anyone else had committed a crime. Special prosecutors Marc Bennett, of Sedgwick County, and Barry Wilkerson, of Riley County, cleared all law enforcement of any wrongdoing in carrying out the raids, which spawned five ongoing federal lawsuits.
However, CBI special agent John Zamora learned from talking to Newell that she had deleted text messages at his request, spanning a period of one week before to one week after the raids.
The prosecutors presented an exhibit at Wednesday’s preliminary hearing that totaled 31 pages of text messages, including one where Cody said he was working with a publisher to write a book about the experience.
Zamora testified that he interviewed Newell in person in December 2023.
“Just tell me what’s happening,” he recalled telling her. “What’s going on here?”
Newell told him she agreed to delete texts, at Cody’s request, because she was worried that her now ex-husband would accuse her of having an affair with Cody, Zamora said.
Wilkerson asked Zamora, who has 30 years of law enforcement experience, if he had ever directed a witness to delete messages or documents.
“No,” Zamora said.
After talking to Newell, Zamora said, he obtained the deleted text messages from Jennifer Hill, the attorney who is defending the city and county from federal lawsuits over the raid. Cody, who had given her his cellphone, had not deleted the text messages himself.
Cody’s attorney, Sal Intagliata, of Wichita, cross-examined Zamora about his investigation. According to Intagliata, the special agent told Hill that he was just trying to “check all the boxes.” Zamora said he didn’t remember making the comment.
When Newell took the stand, she said she has had no communication with Cody since leaving town amid the controversy two years ago.
Zorn and Meyer sat front and center in the courtroom, with Zorn tightlipped and taking notes and Meyer in an incredulous slouch, newspaper tucked in his pants pocket.
Cody, who now lives in Hawaii, appeared by Zoom. He sat expressionless with his chin on his hand for most of the hearing.
District Judge Ryan Rosauer rejected Intagliata’s argument that it was “a legal impossibility” to blame Cody for deleting texts that he ultimately turned over himself. The judge found probable cause that Cody had committed the low-level felony crime of interfering with the judicial process by inducing a witness to withhold information in a criminal investigation.
Cody entered a not guilty plea, and Rosauer scheduled a trial for February.
If convicted, because he has no criminal history, Cody’s sentence would be presumptive probation.
In an interview after the hearing, Meyer said he was worried about the “big picture.”
“None of this has anything to do with the crime,” Meyer said, referring to the raids on his newsroom and home.
“This is not even about the case,” Meyer said. “This is about what he did after the case.”
He also said he was concerned that Cody was being made a scapegoat for the raids, despite the widespread involvement of other people and law enforcement agencies.
“We still want some statement, an official judgment of the court, that this was wrong, so that no one can use this excuse anymore that, ‘Oh, we aren’t sure that it’s illegal to raid newsrooms, and because we’re not completely sure, we can still do it,’ which seems like a stupid excuse to me,” Meyer said.
The nation’s high court cleared the way Friday for cities and counties to outlaw sleeping outdoors in public places, igniting fear it will lead to more homelessness in Washington.
“It’s a very, very, very bad decision for people experiencing homelessness. This says they can be punished for the mere act of trying to survive without shelter,” said Michele Thomas, director of policy advocacy for the Washington Low Income Housing Alliance.
“We’ll see how this plays out in Washington state. We are calling on lawmakers in cities and counties to not arrest or punish people, or issue fines,” she said. This decision,coupled with the looming potential of cuts to homeless services if current funding levels are not maintained, could lead to more people experiencing homelessness and that “would be devastating
But Camas City Councilmember Leslie Lewallen praised the court’s ruling in the so-called Grants Pass case as a win for local control.
“Every day, people in southwest Washington are on the front lines working with the homeless community and know that there is not a one-size-fits-all solution,” said Lewallen, a Republican candidate in the 3rd Congressional District. “The Supreme Court’s decision rightly returns power to our local governments and gives them the authority that they need to help homeless individuals.”
The ability to limit sleeping outdoors is seen by local and state governments as one tool to confront a proliferation of unsheltered people putting out sleeping bags on sidewalks, tents in alleyways and encampments in parks and open spaces.
A 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in 2018 in the case Martin v. City of Boise set some ground rules. Local governments could not punish individuals for camping if there were no emergency shelter beds available. The 9th Circuit judges ruled it would be cruel and unusual punishment to do so. But if a person is offered shelter and refuses to accept it, then they could be cited or arrested, per the decision.
In Grants Pass v. Johnson, the Oregon city’s law that barred sleeping in public places was challenged because the city lacked available shelter capacity.
After the Martin decision, several Washington cities crafted ordinances compelling homeless individuals to accept housing, even if it’s miles away, to avoid punishment. They put them on hold pending the outcome of the Grants Pass case.
“This decision, while not surprising, is a horrible decision,” said Rep. Strom Peterson, D-Edmonds, chair of the House Housing Committee. “The idea of arresting somebody just trying to survive is contrary to what we should be doing. It won’t do anything about homelessness. If anything it will exacerbate the problem.”
Sen. Patty Kuderer, D-Bellevue, who leads the Senate Housing Committee, said the decision “pulls us backward rather than help us move forward.”
“Justice Sotamayor put it best. We can balance between the needs of local governments and the dignity of our most vulnerable. The decision focuses on the needs of local
governments and leaves the most vulnerable with the impossible choice of either stay awake or be arrested,” Kuderer said, referring to a dissent by Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
Easing homelessness will require controlling rent costs, increasing affordable housing and boosting funding of support services for those without a home, Peterson, Thomas and Kuderer said.
In that pursuit, legislation calling for a cap on rent increases and a new graduated real estate excise tax, both of which failed in this year’s state legislative session, are likely to be revived in 2025, Peterson said.
Rep. Andrew Barkis, R-Olympia, a member of the Housing Committee, said the ruling is “a good thing.” Civic leaders felt the Martin decision hampered their ability to respond in an appropriate or timely manner when new encampments form, he said.
“I think cities should have all the tools at their disposal to be able to address this crisis,” he said. “We’ll see how it plays out here over time.”
Pouring more money into homeless programs and imposing caps on rent hikes aren’t the answer, he said. Nor is locking up those sleeping outdoors. Better to beef up detox programs and mental health services because that’s what many of those individuals need, he said.
“I don’t believe we’ve done enough on this issue,” he said. “Obviously we’ve spent hundreds of millions of dollars on services and the problem remains the same.”
State lawmakers have directed roughly $5 billion to expand housing and prevent homelessness since 2013, with more than $4 billion of the total allotted in the past two state budgets.
“It’s not like we’re not getting people out of homelessness,” Kuderer said. “People are falling into homelessness at a much faster rate than we can get them out of it. This is a solvable problem. This decision doesn’t help us solve it.”
ORLANDO, Fla. — On a sticky Sunday afternoon in late May, Mark Wendell ambled through Loch Haven Park, a mossy, oak-covered green space wedged between a trio of lakes and the Orlando Science Center.
Among the two dozen food and vendor tents lining the sidewalks at the Orlando Fringe theater and arts festival was People Power for Florida’s table, cluttered with voter registration forms, stickers and about 50 mismatched pens.
As Wendell, wearing flip-flops and a baseball cap, walked by, he noticed the civic engagement group’s purple “Register to Vote” sign.
“Are you registered to vote?” asked Roxanne Perret, one of the four organizers at the white tent, holding a clipboard and raising her voice over a nearby funk band.
“I am,” he said, “but in another state. I just moved here.”
After Wendell, 62, finished filling out the form, Perret recited a well-rehearsed disclaimer: She would turn in the paper to Orange County’s supervisor of elections within 10 days. He should get his new voter ID in the mail within 30 days.
Perret also handed him a slip of paper with her name and her group’s state registration number — an official receipt that is now required by law.
Without it, the organization could have been liable for hundreds of dollars in legal penalties under a law that Florida passed last year.
Republican lawmakers here and in Alabama, Georgia, Kansas, Missouri, Montana and Texas have enacted a variety of voter registration laws over the past four years. The measures add new requirements around registering and communicating with voters and threaten hefty penalties for violations.
The stated goal of the new laws is to prevent fraud, but some voting rights groups contend their real purpose is to dampen participation by likely Democratic voters.
“It’s a huge chilling effect on the organizations who are doing this work, and on voters,” said Jonathan Diaz, director of voting advocacy and partnerships at the Washington, D.C.-based Campaign Legal Center, which has led lawsuits on behalf of the League of Women Voters chapters and other groups in Florida, Alabama and Missouri.
Diaz thinks the recent state restrictions are a response to robust registration efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic, which contributed to one of the highest turnouts in a presidential election in decades.
For a century, third-party voter registration groups have been a mainstay in broadening participation in the American political system, seeking out potential voters at festivals, parades or outside grocery stores. These efforts date back to the women’s suffrage movement, and many groups played a pivotal role during the Civil Rights Movement.
Over the past five years, more than 350 groups have signed up as third-party voter registration organizations with the Florida Division of Elections, including county political parties, individual residents, candidates, and religious and social groups.
Many whose focus is on young people or historically marginalized communities say they’ve had to change their operations to avoid fines or felony charges. Some have stopped registration drives altogether.
However, not every grassroots group finds the state law burdensome.
Seeing a gap in registration efforts for Republican voters, Barbara Casanova last year launched Citizens First, a Miami-based nonprofit that also helps people run for office.
The state law means extra costs for printing receipts, and she has some concerns about vague language in the statute, but her father — the highest-ranking Cuban American in President Ronald Reagan’s administration, according to her biography — always told her the GOP had two missions: Grow the party and get good people elected.
“It’s one of the prices we pay to be able to carry out our civic duty,” said Casanova, who serves as Citizens First’s president. “I think it’s worthwhile.”
‘Those fees can stack up’
Under the Florida law, third-party voter registration groups that employ noncitizen volunteers are subject to a $50,000 fine for each one — even those with green cards. They also are barred from using volunteers with certain felony convictions on elections-related charges, or for crimes such as fraud, forgery or perjury.
The state can fine groups as much as $2,500 for each voter registration application that is turned in late. There are fines for turning in forms to the incorrect county. Total annual fines could reach $250,000 per organization. It also is a felony to hold on to registrants’ personal information for future outreach or other purposes.
Last month, a federal judge ruled it was unconstitutional for Florida to ban noncitizens from registering people to vote — finding the effort discriminated against Latino outreach — and blocked the state from enforcing the ban. Still, voter registration groups remain under immense pressure, said Democratic state Rep. Anna V. Eskamani, the founder of People Power for Florida.
“Those fees can stack up a lot more aggressively and just bankrupt your organization,” Eskamani said in an interview a week before the Orlando event.
Last year, the state fined her group $2,000 for missing a registration deadline to turn forms in for the August primary. But Eskamani called the fines “silly,” arguing those voters weren’t planning on voting until November. The state also fined People Power for Florida $3,000 for filing forms with the wrong county; the group said the state had made a mistake, and the fine was rescinded.
“Every day, I’m bracing for some sort of incorrect and burdensome fine,” Eskamani said.
Other Florida-based groups have had to reconsider whether it’s worth the fines or possible criminal penalties to conduct voter registration drives anymore.
The nonpartisan League of Women Voters of Florida, for example, decided last year to stop registering voters using paper applications for the first time since the organization began such efforts a century ago.
To avoid legal liability, the league instead directs potential voters to scan a QR code with a smartphone and register on their own. The league has spent thousands of dollars on mobile hot spots so festivalgoers can use the internet at the league’s booths.
“All of these penalties and prohibitions and difficulties and threats to us have just been extremely painful,” said Cecile Scoon, the Florida league’s co-president. “Under the latest set of laws, which are just so ruinous and prohibitive, we’ve had to protect our members and protect the league.”
The state’s new cap, now raised to a quarter of a million dollars in maximum yearly fines, is basically the group’s annual budget, she said.
For 70% of the 110 or so small, grassroots organizations in the state receiving resources and training from the national advocacy group Black Voters Matter, the new law has pushed them to stop voter registration drives, said Jamil Davis, the nonprofit’s Florida state organizing manager. He said the law is working as intended.
“People who support this bill think, ‘We get enough Black and brown voters out of the way for this election, it gives us a better opportunity to continue being in the seats that we’re currently in,’” Davis said.
He pointed to a 2021 report from Daniel Smith, a professor of political science at the University of Florida, which showed that Black and Latino Floridians are five times more likely than white residents to register to vote through a third-party voter registration organization.
Overall, more than 760,000 Floridians had registered to vote through these groups, according to the report. Smith, the chair of the university’s political science department, wrote it on behalf of voting rights groups during a court case over a separate bill Florida Republicans passed in 2021. That law added fines for returning forms late to election offices.
Behind the GOP effort
Republican lawmakers argued that Florida’s 2023 law was necessary to protect voters who trust outside groups to safeguard their personal information and submit their applications on time.
“Every cycle … there’s additional issues that arise with these organizations, which is prompting the additional need for enhanced measures of protection,” Republican state Sen. Danny Burgess, who chairs the Ethics and Elections Committee, told a local NBC affiliate in south Florida in April 2023, after he and his colleagues passed the measure.
Officials in the office of Florida Republican Secretary of State Cord Byrd declined an interview request, and instead pointed to its January report describing problems that “have plagued the state for years.” The report outlines how groups have at times altered political parties on registration forms without consent, registered dead or fake people, or forged application dates to avoid fines.
In April 2023, after the law passed, Byrd announced $34,400 in fines against Hard Knocks Strategies, a Democratic political strategy firm and third-party voter registration organization. Byrd said the firm showed “blatant disregard” for state laws by failing to return voter registration applications on time or to the correct county. The fines coincided with criminal charges against several members of the group on suspicion of turning in fraudulent applications, which have led to prison sentences.
Republicans in other states have cited similar fraud concerns when enacting voter drive restrictions.
In March, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, signed into law a measure that in part makes it illegal for groups to pre-fill a voter’s name or other information on an absentee ballot application. It also is a felony subject to 10 years in prison for someone to be paid by a group to assist voters with absentee ballot applications.
The Campaign Legal Center, along with the League of Women Voters of Alabama and a coalition of other voting rights and disability access groups, sued the state in April to block the law, arguing that it targets Black political engagement. The center also has argued that instances of bad actors submitting faulty forms are rare and have not led to many ineligible voters being registered.
Missouri Republicans in 2022 passed legislation that made it illegal for people to be paid to register voters. The legislation also required any person helping more than 10 residents with their voter registrations to register with the secretary of state.
However, a Cole County Circuit Court judge blocked parts of the law later that year, putting them on hold until the trial, which is set to start in August. The Campaign Legal Center represented the League of Women Voters of Missouri and the NAACP of Missouri in that suit.
‘This is definitely new’
Back at Orlando’s Loch Haven Park, organizers and volunteers with People Power for Florida scanned the lawn full of Adirondack chairs and yard games. The smoky smell of a nearby BBQ pit filled the humid air.
“Hey there, are you registered to vote?” Allison Minnerly, the group’s communications director, asked passersby. “Is your address up to date?” “Do you need help requesting a mail ballot?”
The crowd seemed politically engaged — volunteers only snagged a handful of takers, including local resident Crissie Auguste, 28, who updated the address on her voter registration.
“My parents are telling me I finally need to change my address,” she told Minnerly, signing the form as she clasped an umbrella under the other arm to block the intense sun.
The group updated several other registrations and talked through questions people asked about upcoming elections. They handed out dozens of purple-and-pink pamphlets and stickers.
The registration drive at the festival also gave the group a chance to train new volunteers.
Earlier in the day, Minnerly walked Jackie Stealey through an affidavit, asking her to sign that she attests under penalty of perjury that she is not a felon and is a U.S. citizen. The federal court had just ruled the latter requirement unconstitutional, but the organization had not discussed it with their legal team yet.
The new restrictions have made it difficult to recruit volunteers — not everyone is comfortable giving their personal information to people they help register to vote, Minnerly said. The restrictions also mean it takes more time to train new volunteers.
“This is definitely new,” she said. “We have to do a lot more to not expose ourselves to increased risk.”
Grand Marais is a quiet outpost on Lake Superior’s North Shore, set among boreal forest in the easternmost corner of Minnesota. The town of roughly 1,300 is home to a mix of artists and outdoor enthusiasts, working-class people and professionals, liberals and diehard Trump supporters. In the summer, Grand Marais’s art galleries, shops, and restaurants swell with tourists drawn to what the website Budget Travel once dubbed “America’s Coolest Small Town.” The wait for a table at the Angry Trout Café, which serves locally sourced cuisine in an old fishing shanty, can run to more than an hour. When summer is over, the town retreats into itself again, which suits full-time residents just fine. “Even though we’re a tourism economy, most of us live a life where we just don’t want to be bothered,” said Steve Fernlund, who published the Cook County News Herald in the 1990s and now writes a weekly column for The North Shore Journal. “I’m at the end of a road, and I’ve got 12 acres of land. My closest neighbors are probably about 600 feet away through the woods. So, you know, we appreciate being hermits.”
Yet privacy only extends so far here. Gossip travels fast while having breakfast at the South of the Border café, or in chance encounters along Wisconsin Street. Everybody knows everybody else’s business—or thinks they do. “Even though there are differences of opinion—we have an eclectic collection of opinions—this is a close-knit community,” said Dennis Waldrop, who manages the Cook County Historical Museum. “Anything that happens here is discussed extensively.”
The residents of Grand Marais have had a lot to discuss in recent years. A suspicious fire that destroyed the historic Lutsen Lodge. The suicide of their neighbor Mark Pavelich, a star on the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team that defeated the Soviet Union. Plans for the 40 acres near town owned by convicted sex offender Warren Jeff’s fundamentalist clan. All those events stirred plenty of talk.
But nothing has captivated local conversation quite like what happened between Larry Scully and Levi Axtell in March 2023. A shocking act of violence attracted international attention and split the town over questions of truth and justice. Grand Marais is still trying to piece itself back together.
Every small town has its cast of offbeat characters. Larry Scully was one of Grand Marais’s. Larry, who was 77 in 2023, dwelled on the fringe of town, where Fifth Street meets Highway 61, and on the fringe of reality. His two-bedroom house, which used to belong to his parents, was crowded with items he’d hoarded over the years. The mess spilled into his front yard, which was cluttered with satellite dishes, a statue of the Virgin Mary, and a wood-frame sign advertising “antler bone art.” The sign was decorated with several of Larry’s scrimshaw carvings, which he hawked at art fairs. In addition to carving, he’d tried his hand at an array of other pursuits: refurbishing broken electronics, selling solar-powered generators that could run home appliances in the event of an emergency, and even fashioning leather lingerie that he peddled to women. Larry had had no stable career to speak of since he arrived in town in the early 1980s.
Larry was a conspiracy theorist. On his Facebook page, he posted videos and articles declaring that the federal government controlled the weather, that Sandy Hook was a hoax, that Timothy McVeigh was a “CIA patsy,” that the totalitarian New World Order was real. Around Grand Marais, Larry was also known to be exceedingly religious. He attended Mass on Saturday evenings at St. John’s Catholic Church, always sitting in the front row, and he believed that the statues there cried actual tears—sometimes of blood. He carried a lock of hair that he said once belonged to Father Mark Hollenhorst, a priest at St. John’s who died in 1993, in a leather pouch around his neck; he claimed that it could effect miraculous cures.
Larry referred to himself as a prophet and would often appear around town dressed in a cloak and sandals and carrying a wooden staff. He once showed up on the courthouse steps for the National Day of Prayer clad all in black, his head covered by a medieval-type chainmail hood, and fell to his knees screaming. Another time he berated a group of gay people who’d gathered in downtown Grand Marais, shouting through a bullhorn that God didn’t approve of them.
Many locals found Larry’s zeal exhausting. “When I’d see him, I’d know I was going to be there for a long time, because he’d go on and on,” said Laura Laky, a Grand Marais resident. “He’d talk about the end-times, the Book of Revelation, Christ coming again.”
Other people were scared of Larry. Rumors that he abused children circulated around Grand Marais for years. People whispered about him watching kids from his parked car. There were claims that he’d videotaped girls’ volleyball games and children at Sven and Ole’s, the local pizzeria. A member of the nearby Chippewa tribe told me that Larry had been banned from the Grand Portage powwow after parents complained about him passing out candy to their children.
Larry once approached a man named Gary Nesgoda at a gas station and asked if he had kids. When Nesgoda said that he did, Larry showed him pictures of a fairy garden he’d built behind his house. There were miniature staircases and doors, and little figurines set amid tree roots. Larry insisted that Nesgoda, who had recently moved to Grand Marais, should bring his kids over to see it. “Everything he was telling me sounded pretty neat,” Nesgoda told me. Then, in the gas station parking lot, someone who’d overheard the conversation stopped Nesgoda. “Do not bring your children over there,” they warned.
This was a common theme. “Larry was the boogeyman,” said Brian Larsen, editor and publisher of the Cook County News Herald, who is a father of four children. “You’d tell your kids to stay the heck away from him.”
In 2014, Larry decided to run for mayor of Grand Marais. In a candidate forum broadcast on WTIP, a community radio station, he ranted about Christianity. “We can’t sit by and let our government stop us from having the Bible in the military, taking out the crucifixes, taking out the Ten Commandments in our federal buildings and establishments,” he said. Then, just before election day, the Cook County News Herald ran a front-page article that seemed to confirm the longstanding speculation about Larry. The piece detailed his criminal conviction for the sexual assault of a six-year-old girl.
Before he became an object of fear and fascination in Grand Marais, Larry was married—twice. For a time he lived with his second wife, Sheila, in Ramsey, about 25 miles outside Minneapolis. On Ash Wednesday in 1979, Sheila went to evening Mass and then to bowl in her weekly league, leaving Larry home alone with their five children: three young boys from his first marriage and six-year-old twins, a boy and a girl, from hers. While the other children slept, according to police and court records, Larry invited his stepdaughter into his bedroom.
The little girl later told a police investigator that he showed her “pictures of naked people,” touched her “potty area” with a vibrator, then stuck his tongue and finger into her vagina. She said it wasn’t the only time he’d touched her, and that he’d warned her not to tell anyone, but she went to her mother anyway. Sheila reported the incident to child welfare services, who notified law enforcement. She told the police investigator that her husband had also recently become violent and suicidal.
The police arrested Larry. In a recorded statement with investigators, he admitted that he’d had sexual contact with his stepdaughter on two Wednesday evenings while his wife was bowling. A psychiatrist determined that he was competent to stand trial, finding no evidence of “any kind of psychiatric disorder.” Rather than face a jury, Larry confessed to second-degree criminal sexual conduct, and the prosecution recommended a sentence of five years. Two court psychologists submitted reports indicating that Larry wasn’t open to receiving treatment. At an October 1979 hearing, the judge urged Larry to reconsider. “Take whatever treatment is available to you,” the judge said, “because this type of conduct, of course, is just wholly unacceptable.”
Larry was incarcerated in Minnesota’s Stillwater prison, and in records from his time there, there’s no mention of him receiving counseling or treatment, though he did join a Bible study. Soon, changes to the state’s sentencing guidelines allowed Larry to seek early release. Since the state did not provide evidence that doing so would “present a danger to the public,” the court approved Larry’s request. He left prison on January 19, 1982, after serving a little more than two years for his crime.
In those days, there was no sex offender registry in Minnesota, or in most states. Larry was at liberty to go where he liked. Sheila had divorced him by then, and his three sons were living with their mother. Larry, who was 36 at the time, hitchhiked to Grand Marais to move in with his parents.
Three decades later, Larry lost the town’s mayoral election, 345 votes to 42. Many locals were surprised that he’d gotten any votes at all, especially after the story broke about his criminal record. “Forty-something people voted for him,” said Amber Waldrop, who lived down the street from Larry. “They knew about this guy. For anybody to even think that someone like that should become mayor of this town is sickening.”
Some of those votes came from Larry’s friends, many of whom shared his belief in conspiracy theories. Perhaps it’s no surprise that they also believed what Larry told them: that the accusations against him were made up, that his ex-wife had encouraged her daughter to lie to the police, that he only took the plea deal to avoid a long prison sentence.
Larry’s friends knew that he tended to hijack conversations and go on at length about topics ranging from the Rapture to homeopathic cures, and that he engaged strangers in ways many people found uncomfortable. But being an oddball, they said, isn’t a crime. Some of his friends thought Larry was on the autism spectrum, which made it hard for him to read social cues and show empathy. “This man has been persecuted all of his life,” said Bob Stangler, a Vietnam veteran who knew Larry for years. “The citizens of the area have labeled him a pervert, and he’s not a pervert at all. He’s a genius with Asperger’s who’s overcaring of people.”
A woman I’ll call Carol, who asked that her real name not be used, said she was so close with Larry that she spoke to him almost daily for 12 years. She knew him to visit sick people, distribute food to the needy, and take care of his ailing mother, who died in 2013. At her memorial service, Larry displayed his mother’s ashes in a cookie jar resembling the Star Wars character R2-D2, saying that it was what she wanted. (His father passed away in 1997.) “As long as I’ve known him, he never hurt anybody,” Carol told me.
She knows that hers is a minority opinion, that for many people in town Larry was foremost a convicted sex offender. “You can never get rid of that label,” she said.
Once they learned about his 1979 conviction, many parents in Grand Marais were more worried than ever that Larry posed a threat to their children. It’s a common enough fear. On the far right, popular conspiracy theories such as QAnon decry a global cabal of child molesters, but even among the general population, concern about the danger posed by pedophiles is widespread. In a Lynn University poll, 75 percent of roughly 200 Florida adults said they believed that sex offenders would reoffend. Yet according to a meta-study conducted by researchers at Public Safety Canada in 2004, one of the most comprehensive available, only 23 percent of people convicted of child sexual abuse were charged or convicted of a similar crime within the next 15 years. (The study’s authors concede that many victims never come forward.) In interviews for this story, researchers noted that recidivism rates have declined even more in recent years.
No one came forward to accuse Larry of more recent abuse after his 1979 conviction. Still, perception alone was enough to put many Grand Marais parents on edge. For one young man, that concern became an obsession.
If you were passing through Grand Marais a few years back and stopped for gas at the Holiday station on the corner of Broadway and Highway 61, you might have met a stocky cashier with a round, friendly face. While making change, he might have told you one of his homespun puns or signature dad jokes: Why does Paul Bunyan trip in the woods? Because he’s always felling.
That cashier was Levi Axtell. He was raised by his parents, Denise and Treg, in Hovland, a small community located 18 miles from Grand Marais. The Axtells were devout Christians and widely respected in Grand Marais, where they both worked. Denise was a nurse, Treg a physical therapist. The couple had three children: daughters Karlee and Katrina, and Levi, the youngest.
Levi grew up in a picturesque log cabin in a clearing among birch and pine trees. The woods were his playground. He spent hours there as a child, often with his friend and neighbor Cedar Adams. They roasted marshmallows over campfires, tried to catch fish barehanded, and played make-believe, running through the trees as if an attacker were pursuing them.
But Levi couldn’t outrun his demons. There was a history of addiction on Denise’s side of the family, and Levi seemed to have inherited a predisposition to substance abuse. At Cook County High School, he played football, ran track, and drank. Brad Wilson, a carpenter in Grand Marais who was a few years behind him in school, recalled Levi getting caught with liquor bottles in his locker and running from the cops.
Levi’s parents sent him to finish school in Duluth, but he was cited twice within two months for underage drinking. The first time was at Duluth East High School. On the morning of May 29, 2014, when a resource officer tried to restrain him, an inebriated Levi pulled away. The officer wrestled Levi to the ground, but he pushed himself up and army-crawled—with the officer on top of him—down the hallway, until he wore himself out. Levi spent two days in jail and was charged with disorderly conduct and obstructing the legal process with force. “I didn’t know it made the charges worse if you resisted arrest,” he later told Cedar Adams.
Not long after, a law enforcement officer stopped Levi as he walked along the shoulder of Interstate 35. The officer smelled booze on his breath, and Levi admitted that he’d been drinking. The officer cited him and let him go after Levi dumped out a container of alcohol he was carrying.
Three days later, Levi was given a year of probation for his disorderly conduct at Duluth East. (The obstruction charge was dropped.) A judge also ordered him to obtain a chemical-dependency assessment and follow any recommendations. Levi satisfied the terms of his probation, including a stint in treatment.
By 2015, Levi had started dating Anna Ross, who was from Duluth. Their daughter was born on June 17, 2016. Anna had just turned 19; Levi was 20. At first they didn’t live together—Anna stayed in Duluth, while Levi lived with his parents in Hovland. He adored his daughter and beamed when she was in his arms.
Despite the new light in his life, Levi remained burdened at times by darkness. About a year after his daughter’s birth, on the Sunday evening of Memorial Day weekend, Levi got drunk, taped a vacuum hose to the exhaust pipe of his car, ran the other end through the back window, and started the engine. When he texted Anna about what he’d done, she called the sheriff’s department. While she was on the phone with them, Levi called her, and she talked him into turning off the car. Deputies arrived at his home and transported Levi to the hospital. It appears that he received some psychiatric treatment after the incident; a year later he indicated in a court document that he’d been a patient in a mental hospital and had seen a psychiatrist.
Despite his troubles, Levi was by all accounts goofy and lovable. Christina Conroy, a friend who worked with Levi briefly at the Holiday station, described him as “a beautiful soul.” Cedar Adams said, “He’s the best person you’ll ever meet. He’s joyful.” Michael Farnum, another friend, told me, “Levi is very kind and caring. He’d give you the shirt off his back.” His mother, Denise, described Levi as “a sweet, thoughtful boy.” (Levi’s family otherwise declined to talk to me.)
People who knew him casually from encounters at Holiday or Grand Marais’s Whole Foods Co-op, where he also briefly worked, described Levi as personable and a hard worker. Pat Eliasen, the Cook County sheriff and a former assistant coach for the varsity football team at the local high school, coached Levi, who played nose tackle and offensive guard. “You’d tell Levi to do a technique or something and he would just go do it,” Eliasen told me. “You couldn’t find a better football player than that.”
A photo posted on Facebook in 2023 shows Levi with his daughter climbing on his shoulders. According to friends, she was his everything. He was often her primary caregiver while Anna completed a social work degree and later held down two jobs. In the winter, Levi built his daughter snow forts that were so solid he could light a campfire inside. He and his daughter cooked together, drew pictures, and took walks. “She’s his life,” Adams told me.
Levi could not bear the thought of anything bad happening to his little girl. Like any parent, he was on the lookout for any threat to his child. At some point, his attention came to rest squarely on Larry Scully.
PARK CITY, Utah — Park City officials will decide this week whether to approve a proposed consent agreement that would end years of litigation over a planned luxury home at 220 King Road by adopting a City Council resolution that replaces contested land-use decisions. If approved, the parties would seek dismissal of the pending cases and the project would move forward under the agreement’s terms, without a court ruling on whether the approvals complied with city code.
The agreement, scheduled for a City Council vote on Jan. 15, would resolve three pending Third District Court cases involving the project, owned by Pesky Porcupine LLC, an entity tied to Cloudflare founder Matthew Prince.
Prince is the founder and CEO of Cloudflare (NYSE: NET), a publicly traded technology company. According to Forbes, he is Utah’s richest resident, with an estimated net worth of $6.3 billion. Prince and his wife, Tatiana Prince, live in Park City and own The Park Record, a local newspaper. The couple are also up-and-coming civic donors, including a commitment of at least $20 million to Podium34, an Olympic fundraising initiative supporting Utah’s 2034 Winter Games.
This past December, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox introduced Prince during a fireside conversation at the Utah AI Summit as Cox referred to Prince as “a dear friend and Utahn,” and later called him “one of the most brilliant people I know.”
Background of the dispute
In February 2024, the Park City Planning Commission approved a plat amendment and multiple conditional use permits allowing demolition of two existing structures and construction of a single-family residence within the city’s historic district at 220 King Road. Neighbors Eric and Susan Hermann appealed the approvals.
In July 2024, the city’s Appeal Panel upheld the Planning Commission’s decision, finalizing the approvals. The Hermanns then filed petitions for judicial review in Third District Court, where the cases remain pending.
Separate disputes arose over the project’s Historic District Design Review. The Planning Director approved the design with conditions, but the Board of Adjustment later reversed portions of that approval. That decision led to additional litigation by both Prince’s company and the Hermanns, resulting in three related cases now consolidated in district court.
The proposed consent agreement
The Park City Council is scheduled to consider Resolution 03-2026 on Jan. 15, which would approve a consent agreement between the city and Pesky Porcupine LLC.
The draft consent agreement was posted publicly this week, marking the first time its full terms have been disclosed after being negotiated between attorneys for Pesky Porcupine LLC and Park City municipal legal staff.
According to the draft agreement and a legal memorandum from the city’s outside counsel, the agreement would:
Affirm the Planning Commission approvals upheld by the Appeal Panel.
Reinstate the Planning Director’s Historic District Design Review approval, with specified design modifications.
Require additional mitigation by the applicant, including expanded landscaping and road safety improvements.
Require Pesky Porcupine LLC to indemnify and defend the city against future legal challenges related to the agreement and associated development activity.
Resolve all three pending lawsuits, with the city and applicant jointly seeking dismissal on the basis that the agreement replaces the contested land-use decisions.
The consent agreement does not require a substantial redesign of the home; instead, it largely reinstates earlier approvals, with added mitigation measures but no significant changes to the home’s size, massing, height, or overall architectural design.
If adopted, the agreement would seek to end the litigation without a judge ruling on the legality of the prior approvals.
Legal authority and broader implications
The consent agreement relies on authority granted under Senate Bill 262, passed by the Utah Legislature in 2025. The law allows city councils to resolve land-use litigation through council-approved consent agreements while court cases are pending.
City attorneys have advised that the agreement would reduce litigation costs, resolve conflicting administrative decisions, and provide finality. In a Jan. 9, 2026 memorandum to council members, outside counsel wrote that city staff had “worked diligently to defeat multiple attempts to preempt city authority over the course of several state legislative sessions, successfully retaining local control and preserving the City’s historic design review authority.”
Mayor Ryan Dickey has made similar comments publicly. In an interview with KPCW, Dickey said the city has spent years defending its historic district authority at the Legislature.
“We’ve been in this three-year defense of our historic district,” Dickey said. “And you’ve seen us at the legislature fighting back on attempts to take away any sort of local control around the historic district. That defense has been successful and really hard. I mean, at times feeling like it was going to go away, and making the decision, hey, this is just the right thing. We have a house that doesn’t meet code, standing up for a process, standing up for the code.”
Dickey did not name specific individuals or projects when making the remarks. The memo did not attribute those legislative efforts to Prince personally, but acknowledged sustained state-level pressure affecting local land-use authority.
Concerns about state influence on local land-use decisions have surfaced elsewhere in Summit County, including approval of the Dakota Pacific development, where County Council Chair Roger Armstrong said the project moved forward under legislative pressure, stating, “If there wasn’t someone with a club standing behind Dakota Pacific saying ‘do it or else,’ we could get it right.”
Community opposition
The proposed agreement has drawn criticism from project opponents, including the Hermanns, who argue the matter should be decided by the courts rather than resolved by council action.
In a recent email circulated to TownLift, the Hermanns wrote that the district court is scheduled to hold a hearing later this month and that the case “must be heard before an impartial judge.” They characterized the proposed consent agreement as “an end run around the legal process” and urged the City Council to allow the litigation to proceed.
They also raised concerns about precedent, writing that “other wealthy people are watching and hoping this will be a precedent for their own grandiose plans in Old Town.”
City legal counsel says the consent agreement “does not create new precedent because a final approval by the City Council would be site-specific.”
Opposition has also taken the form of a public petition. A Change.org petition titled “Tell Park City to Make Billionaire Matthew Prince Follow the Same Rules as the Rest of Us” posted an update on Sunday Jan. 11 urging residents to attend upcoming meetings and speak out against approval of the consent agreement. The petition states that “this week is a turning point for Park City Old Town—and for whether the rule of law applies equally in our city.”
What is at stake
If the City Council approves the consent agreement, the lawsuits will be dismissed, the project will move forward under the agreement’s terms, and the court will not rule on the merits of the approvals.
If the council rejects the agreement, the litigation will continue, and a district court judge will determine whether the city’s prior land-use decisions complied with the law.
The City Council meeting is scheduled for Jan. 15, 2026, beginning at 5:30 p.m. at the Marsac Municipal Building, City Council Chambers, 445 Marsac Ave., and will be available via Zoom.
Tracy Harden stood outside her Chuck’s Dairy Bar in Rolling Fork, teary eyed, remembering not the EF-4 tornado that nearly wiped the town off the map two years before. Instead, she became emotional, “even after all this time,” she said, thinking of the overwhelming help people who’d come from all over selflessly offered.
“We’re back now, she said, smiling. “People have been so kind.”
“I stepped out of that cooler two years ago and saw everything, and I mean, everything was just… gone,” she said, her voice trailing off. “My God, I thought. What are we going to do now? But people came and were so giving. It’s remarkable, and such a blessing.”
“And to have another one come on almost the exact date the first came,” she said, shaking her head. “I got word from these young storm chasers I’d met. He told me they were tracking this one, and it looked like it was coming straight for us in Rolling Fork.”
“I got up and went outside.”
“And there it was!”
“I cannot tell you what went through me seeing that tornado form in the sky.”
The tornado that touched down in Rolling Fork last Sunday did minimal damage and claimed no lives.
Horns honk as people travel along U.S. 61. Harden smiles and waves.
She heads back into her restaurant after chatting with friends to resume grill duties as people, some local, some just passing through town, line up for burgers and ice cream treats.
Rolling Fork is mending, slowly. Although there is evidence of some rebuilding such as new homes under construction, many buildings like the library and post office remain boarded up and closed. A brutal reminder of that fateful evening two years ago.
Virginia Commonwealth University has one. So do the University of Richmond and the University of Virginia. St. Catherine’s, St. Christopher’s and Collegiate schools have one each. Harvard University has one big enough to buy 5,000 large private islands in the Caribbean.
What they all have in common is an endowment fund, which is “a collection of financial assets that a school can periodically pull from to cover an array of costs while intentionally growing funds over time,” according to U.S. News & World Report.
Endowment funds are financial staples for public and private colleges and private preparatory schools but are rarely used in funding public school systems. That’s about to change in Richmond, where two entrepreneurs, Michael Bor and Chris Bossola, have created The Endowment Project, a startup with the lofty goal “to eventually create a $65 million endowment for every public high school in the country,” Bor says.
Hitting that ambitious mark will take time, Bor admits, but The Endowment Project is already successful after launching in May 2023 with 12 pilot projects in Richmond-area schools.
The first high school, Douglas S. Freeman, has raised “almost $100,000 so far,” Bor says. The school used the funds to award two first-generation college scholarships, refurbish a concession stand and buy furniture for a flex learning room. “We have received some innovative, flexible furniture,” says Douglas S. Freeman Principal John Marshall. “We are transforming some common space inside the building into a 21st-century learning area.”
The goal for 2024, Bor says, “is to significantly expand and to ultimately include all of Virginia as our first test state. Education is the second-largest destination for philanthropy behind religion, but it all goes to colleges and private schools. Not many people currently give to public high schools.”
Inspiration
While public school endowments are rare, there are a few successful programs. Boston Latin School in Massachusetts, the country’s oldest school and largest of the Boston Public School System, has a $75 million endowment (see story below). The money is raised through the Boston Latin School Association, which is independent from the school. In 2018, Peter Kelly, president and CEO of the BLSA, led the Boston Latin School Prima Perpetua Campaign to $54 million, the largest known campaign on behalf of a single public school in U.S. history.
“It has really developed over the last 30 years,” Kelly says. “There was an ascendence of the notion of private philanthropy supporting public good.”
“It’s a really interesting idea,” Marshall says. “This model works for higher ed, so I think there is a model for that. I support anything that gives more funds to public education. There are a lot of public schools, and a lot of need in our schools, so anybody who is working to support public schools is someone I’m excited about.”
Bor, a graduate of Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, says his private school had a $1.5 billion endowment. “Teachers were supported. International programs were offered. It was a fantastic place.”
In 2021, when Bor and his then business partner Will Boland took their startup, CarLotz, public, Bor got a phone call from his old prep school seeking a donation. Boland, who went to Douglas S. Freeman, got no such call. “That started a conversation around fundraising in high schools and how it just doesn’t exist in the public system as it does in the private system,” Bor says. “I realized that there were no gifts because there was no infrastructure for it, no donor platform, no 501(c)(3), no annual report on what happened with your gift and what impact it made. We need to start by building the infrastructure to enable and encourage that level of giving.”
Two years later, Bor resigned from CarLotz and started The Endowment Project LLC with Chris Bossola, a fellow entrepreneur and founder of Need Supply Co., to build the infrastructure to make charitable giving to public high schools easy and focused while ensuring accountability.
Infrastructure
Since then, The Endowment Project has built the technological infrastructure to allow individual schools to set up their own funds, created a database of prospective donors, templated marketing campaigns and established an accountable and transparent way to disburse the funds.
“There is no real setting up that the school has to do,” Bor says. “Everything we are doing is — I don’t want to say independent of the school because we do need them to tell us how to spend the money — but we don’t really ask anything of the school, and that’s key for this model. We are not adding work to the principal or the administration, we don’t have a contract with the schools. We view our customer as the alumni and the school as the beneficiary.”
He continues, “We are building a database of where everyone went to high school and how to reach them today. It’s relatively difficult and expensive technology. We are also building a giving platform so when alumni find out about what we are doing, they are able to give online [and] with Apple Pay or Google Pay.”
A typical public high school has 400 graduates each year, Bor says. “Most people live about 60 years on average after they graduate, so there are about 24,000 graduates per school. Our systems today can probably figure out a third of those immediately, just through technology. We hope to get to half or more over time.”
Douglas Freeman has “a proud, supportive Freeman community and alumni, and strong alumni base,” Marshall says. “There are almost 70 years of history here. There are a lot of folks who have a lot of interest in making sure we continue a tradition that is really rich and impactful for a lot of years. We have an active [parent-teacher-student association], a very active, wonderful athletic booster program, and several other booster programs. If you have a student here, you might be part of our PTSA. If you have student athlete here, you might be part of our booster program.
The Endowment Project “is for trying to reach those alumni who live outside of the area, like California, or don’t have school-age kids but are still willing to give back,” he continues. “We have a lot of alumni out there, a lot of successful folks that [The Endowment Project] thought they could tap into to help support the school as it is now. Ultimately [The Endowment Project] is a separate organization who are making some donations to this school on behalf of the alumni who have donated to them. They were working with a group we weren’t readily accessing.”
A program that will sell city-owned vacant homes for $1 was approved Wednesday by the Baltimore Board of Estimates over objections from City Council President Nick Mosby who said the policy “deeply concerned” him.
The new pricing structure, which was approved by a vote of 4-1, would sell a small group of city-owned homes listed on the Buy Into Bmore website for rates starting at $1.
Mosby voted against the item. The Democratic council president proposed his own program to offer houses for $1 in 2021, but it stalled in committee in 2022.
Mosby pushed for a deferral of the new policy during the board’s previous meeting and maintained his objections Wednesday, arguing Mayor Brandon Scott’s administration had not done enough to spell out in writing guardrails to ensure city residents are given first rights to buy properties and not forced out when neighborhoods improve.
Mosby also said he wanted written protections to ensure sales would fit into a “whole block” approach of development that tackles vacancy for an entire area rather than a single property.
“If affordability and affordable home ownership and equity and all of the nice words we like to use are really at the core competency as it relates to property disposition, this is a really bad policy,” Mosby said. “This is a bad policy because it doesn’t protect or prioritize the rights of folks in these communities.”
City housing officials have insisted there are guardrails in place, including a 90-day window in which city residents will be given priority to buy properties if they want to renovate them and use them as their primary residence. The Department of Housing and Community Development also plans to offer a form for residents to fill out if they are interested in buying any vacant property, city-owned or otherwise. Alice Kennedy, the city’s housing commissioner, said the city will work with interested residents to prepare them financially to buy the house.
Kennedy said Wednesday that the pricing policy is part of the city’s property disposition strategy. There are other programs to help residents and developers financially when they buy properties to rehab.
“The affordability part comes in on the money side,” she said. “This is the disposition side.”
Vacant homes are a widespread problem in Baltimore, where more than 13,000 sit unoccupied. The new price structure, however, would apply to very few of those homes. Fewer than 1,000 of the city’s total vacant properties are city-owned. And not all of those are listed on the Buy Into Bmore website. City officials said Tuesday that just over 200 are currently in the program. Numerous others that could fit into existing redevelopment efforts in particular neighborhoods have been set aside, Kennedy told the board.
City housing officials told The Baltimore Sun that the new pricing structure will apply to vacant homes and lots in city neighborhoods with the most “stressed” housing markets, featuring lower sales prices, and higher rates of foreclosure and vacancy. For the most part, those lie in East and West Baltimore.
The $1 price point would be available only for individual buyers and community land trusts. Developers would have to pay $3,000, and so would large nonprofits with 51 or more employees. Nonprofits with fewer employees could pay $1,000.
The policy also would cover vacant lots, which would range in price from a dollar to $1,000, based on a similar structure.
The Scott administration’s plan, as well as Mosby’s former plan, evoke the city’s “dollar house” program of the 1970s, which offered homes for a dollar to residents willing to fix them up and live in them. That program included low-interest rate renovation loans for buyers. Scott’s approach does not.
Kennedy argued previously that the pricing is just one piece of a larger plan to deal with the thousands of vacant homes and lots in the city. Late last year, Scott unveiled a $3 billion plan that calls for a mix of public and private funding to be spent over 15 years to touch 35,000 homes. Included in that plan are down payment and closing cost assistance.
Nneka N’namdi, a Baltimore housing advocate, told the spending board Wednesday that she would support the fixed pricing policy if conditions are put in place that prioritize existing residents and bar slumlords and land speculators from participating. The city also needs to offer financial assistance to buyers to help them rehabilitate properties, she said.
“We support this model because it is simple. It is clear. It is transparent,” she said. “But we need it to be equitable.”
In response to N’namdi, Scott said the city will develop an anti-displacement and equity policy and create a public-facing tracking tool to publicize “whole block” development. Scott, a Democrat, also said quarterly reports will be made to the city council on the demographics of buyers, and an annual review will be conducted on the program’s effectiveness.
Mosby argued N’namdi’s demands were not being met by the city’s current policies that govern the $1 sales.
“We can’t afford — whether it’s 200 properties, 300 properties, 500 properties — not to ensure that the policy is in place,” he said.
In recent years, Frankfort Avenue in Louisville has seen a surge in Korean-owned businesses, sparking discussions about the possibility of it becoming a Koreatown. This area, particularly in the Clifton and Crescent Hill neighborhoods, has seen a blossoming of Korean food and culture, thanks in part to new residents and the success of establishments like Chef Edward Lee's Korean Steakhouse Nami.
Miki's Karaoke Bar & Korean Restaurant, opened by Miki Miller in 2023, offers karaoke and Korean cuisine. Miller, who moved to Louisville over 30 years ago, saw an opportunity to create a space for both fun and affordable dining, filling a gap in the neighborhood's offerings.
Similarly, Soo Young Cho, who lived in Seoul for nearly 30 years, opened KIWA in December 2023. Cho, with a background in architecture and a brief foray into real estate, found her passion in culinary arts. KIWA aims to showcase the nuanced diversity of Korean cuisine and culture, offering not just food but also art and craft workshops.
CM Chicken, a franchise established in South Korea, is another addition to Frankfort Avenue. Founded by husband and wife Viet Tran and Soyoung Chon, along with Tran's childhood friend San Luu and brother-in-law Quyen Pham, CM Chicken brings authentic Korean street food to Louisville, including Korean fried chicken, tteokbokki, and patbingsu.
Beyond Frankfort Avenue, Korean food has made a mark in Louisville, with establishments like Nami in Nulu and Top 1 Korean BBQ and Hotpot in the Highlands gaining popularity. Residents, including Marlie, a student at the Korean School of Louisville, have welcomed these new additions, appreciating the diverse culinary experiences they offer.
The growth of Korean businesses along Frankfort Avenue has not only enriched the neighborhood's culinary scene but also fostered a sense of community and cultural exchange. Whether it's through food, karaoke, or art, the Korean corridor is bringing a taste of Korea to Louisville, creating a vibrant and inclusive environment for all to enjoy.
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