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Photo by Ryan HowardAn overflow crowd watched the Forest Lake City Council’s Feb. 13 meeting from a city hall hallway as residents and the council discussed the city’s contract law enforcement evaluation process.
The Forest Lake City Council chamber overflowed again Feb. 13 as the body discussed and approved its contract law enforcement evaluation guiding principles.
The principles were passed more or less as discussed at the council’s Feb. 6 work session. They include tenets on public engagement and weighing the possibility of contracting with the Washington County Sheriff’s Office for law enforcement on the basis of service delivery and budget impact comparisons with the Forest Lake Police Department.broadstreet.zone(48036);
The changes that were made included the addition of more aspects of law enforcement to the list of what will be benchmarked and the addition of a council intention to conduct a statistically valid poll of residents regarding the evaluation once the city receives

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Amy Doeun
Linwood Reporter
At the Jan. 24, meeting of the Linwood Town Board, Supervisor Ed Kramer said: “Today at 2, the new van rolled in. (Planning Commissioner) Joe Dolphy searched for two weeks and had pretty much given up on finding one in our price range, and he found one in Oklahoma.”broadstreet.zone(48036);
The township had received $30,000 in funds from an Anoka County Community Development Block Grant to pay for a van for transportation to the senior center and related activities.
“They wanted $32,000 for it, but he gave them a sob story about the township, and he got it for $30,000,” Kramer said.
The van is a 2012 Chrysler Town and Country.
“All electrical, the ramp comes out so nice,” Kramer added.
The van has 54,000 miles on it, and Kramer thinks it would be a good idea to undercoat it because it comes from a part of the country where the roads aren’t regularly

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Greg Galler
Guest Columnist
It’s the day of the big game. Your team is playing its biggest rival for the championship. You’re confident and excited. But before the game starts, the officials announce that they will favor the other team to guarantee that it wins. Could you even imagine such a thing happening? Does that sound fair? How much would that upset you?broadstreet.zone(48036);
You may be surprised to learn that in some parts of the world, judicial systems openly behave in that very way.
Last week, one of the metro papers ran a short article quoting the head of China’s Supreme People’s Court stating that the idea of an independent judiciary is an “erroneous Western ideal.” He further instructed China’s judges to “draw your swords” against words or actions that run counter to the dictates of China’s Communist Party. In our analogy, that is functionally the same as sports officials saying that they will

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