1. education
2. school

Gala of Giving, Page 2
• Eagle Scout, Page 3 • Letters to Santa, Section C
Paynesville
Salem Christmas,
Page 5
Press
www.paynesvillearea.com
Wednesday, December 24, 2014
Olympic Tutor,
Page 7B
Volume 128, No. 51
SCHOOL BOARD
CITY COUNCIL
District levy to rise
24 percent in 2015
Council agrees
to delay booster
station project
Early start in 2015?
Additional
space still
needed
for liquor
store
With Question #1
passing, district’s
2015 levy raises
from preliminary
By Michael Jacobson
With the approval of
Question #1 by district voters
in November, the Paynesville
Area School District’s 2015
levy will now increase 24.65
percent. In the preliminary
estimates, before Question #1
passed in November, the levy
was slated to increase by just
1.99 percent.
Question #1 included $2.03
million in bonds for building
repairs and maintenance, as
well as $240,000 per year for
the technology levy.
The school levy was
approved at $2.184 million, up
$431,913 from 2014, when it
was $1.752 million. The 2015
levy, pre-referendum, would
only have increased $34,930.
The general fund levy will
increase $333,850, up 36.6 percent, including $240,000 for the
new technology levy. The debt
service levy will increase
$93,302, up 12.2 percent. And
the Community Education
levy will increase $4,761, up 6.2
percent, totalling a $431,913
levy increase.
•Huot discussed with the
board the late starting date for
school in 2015-16. By state law,
school cannot start until after
Labor Day, which falls on
Monday, Sept. 7, next year, the
latest possible, meaning
school would start on Tuesday,
Sept. 8.
It is not likely that state law
will change to allow schools to
start before Labor Day, said
Huot, but the district could
seek an individual exemption.
Huot plans to put together two
calendars for 2015-16, one with
school starting before Labor
Day and the other after.
It would be nice, said Huot,
to have three or four days of
school before Labor Day, so
students don’t have to go to
school until mid June. While
he realizes some businesses
would be affected by an early
start, he would like to get
input from staff and the community about starting school
early in September 2015.
Student Advisory
•The board heard from students who attended WE Day
and from the middle school
and high school principal’s
advisory councils.
A dozen PHS students
attended WE Day at the Xcel
Energy Center in St. Paul in
SCHOOL – see page 5
Magnan crowned
Arabian horse queen
Horse association
sponsors royalty
program, where
Josie Magnan will
reign as queen
By Ellarry Prentice
Josie Magnan is looking forward to making another scrapbook of her year as a royalty
member…this time as queen.
A 2011 PAHS graduate,
Magnan was crowned the 2015
Queen of the Northern
Minnesota Arabian Horse
Association on Saturday, Dec.
6, in Sauk Centre. In a new
royalty program sponsored by
the association, she had
reigned as the 2014 Junior
Queen.
In its second year, the breed
association’s royalty program
also crowned a junior queen, a
princess, and a sweetheart to
serve as ambassadors in the
coming year.
“I am super excited to be
queen,” said Magnan. “I am
super excited to see how this
year goes with the royalty, and
I have no doubt it will be so
much fun,” she added.
As queen, Magnan will
write articles for the club’s
newsletters; will solicit sponsorships for the club’s community show in Litchfield in
June; will participate in a royalty ride at one of the shows;
and will volunteer at shows by
passing out ribbons, answering questions, helping with
the gates, and being available
to help guests and participants with anything they may
need. She has set a personal
goal of collecting $300 in sponsorships for the community
show.
A lifelong equine enthusiast, Magnan is a second-year
member of the Northern
Josie Magnan of Paynesville
is the new 2015 Northern
Minnesota Arabian Horse
Association Queen.
Minnesota Arabian Horse
Association. She has been
showing horses at events hosted by the association for several years.
Magnan was introduced to
the Northern Minnesota
Arabian Horse Association by
her cousin, Jaime Liestman,
and her aunt, Jean Liestman.
Ever since she watched
Jaime reign as queen for
another breed and represent
its association, Magnan said
she knew she wanted to do the
same.
Inspired by Jaime, Magnan
began showing horses and
pursuing royalty events as a
girl. In 2005, she joined the
Minnesota Pinto Horse
Association and began showing Liestman’s horses at its
events. And, in 2006, she was
crowned Junior Princess of
the Minnesota Pinto Horse
Association.
Magnan had a lot of fun during her reign as junior queen
of the Northern Minnesota
Arabian Horse Association
this past year. “I got my foot in
the door and saw how much I
loved being one of the people
that club members were able
to look up to and talk to if they
had questions,” she said.
In June, she was able to
show her own horse at the
club’s show in Litchfield. “It
MAGNAN – see page 2
By Ellarry Prentice
Photos from the Allie’s Wish Facebook page
Berkley Damhof (right) of Paynesville has been chosen as the 2015 recipient of Allie’s Wish,
a charity created in 2006 by 19-year-old Allie Kanyetzny (left), a current freshmen at the
College of Saint Benedict. Proceeds from the third annual Allie’s Wish Benefit Concert, which
will be held in Anoka on Saturday, Jan. 3, will go toward Berkley’s medical expenses.
Giving-focused charity was created
by a current freshmen at St. Ben’s
Berkley Damhof is 2015
recipient of Allie’s Wish
By Ellarry Prentice
Berkley Damhof has made a
new friend named Allie.
The four-year-old from
Paynesville, who was diagnosed with stage-four cancer
in August, has been chosen as
the 2015 recipient of Allie’s
Wish, a charity created by
Allie Kanyetzny, a freshmen at
the College of Saint Benedict.
The public is invited to join
in a night of music to help
spread the gift of giving to the
Damhof family at the third
annual Allie’s Wish Benefit
Concert in Anoka on Saturday,
Jan. 3. The concert – featuring
musical performances by five
Anoka High School students –
will be held at the Avant
Garden (215 East Main Street)
from 6 to 8 p.m. There is no
cover charge, but donations
will be accepted to help fund
Berkley’s medical expenses.
The goal of Allie’s Wish – a
charity that strives to help others in need and to celebrate
the gift of giving by inspiring
people to help others – is to
raise at least $5,000 for Berkley
in 2015. In addition to the concert, donations can also be
made online. A link to donate
is available on the Allie’s Wish
website at www.allieswish.org
under ‘Current Project.’
Berkley, the daughter of
Kandace and Duane Damhof
of Paynesville, was diagnosed
with stage-four, high-risk neuroblastoma on Aug. 13, 2014.
She has been receiving medical treatments at Children’s
Hospital in Minneapolis.
Allie Kanyetzny, a 19-yearold Anoka native who created
Allie’s Wish during her 10th
birthday weekend in 2006, met
Berkley for the first time on
Sunday, Dec. 14. “It was a great
night!” the undergraduate
nursing student posted on the
charity’s Facebook page. “I am
already in love with her!! I am
so excited to see what this year
holds for us!” she added.
After receiving an email
from a close friend of the
Damhofs, who read a feature
story about Allie’s Wish in the
Huffington Post and decided
to nominate Berkley for the
charity, Kanyetzny said she
“soon fell in love with Berkley
and her inspiring story,” writing on her website,“I knew I
had found my 2015 recipient.”
“We are very excited to start
this journey with Allie and to
make a new and long-lasting
friendship with her and to
have her be part of our family
also,” the Damhofs wrote on
their CaringBridge webpage.
About Allie’s Wish
As her tenth birthday
approached, Kanyetzny decided she didn’t want, nor need,
anything, according to information from her website.
She decided to celebrate by
giving away gifts rather than
receiving them, titling her
project ‘Allie’s Wish,’ which
would later inspire a charitable project and inform her
life’s mission of helping others in need, according to
Kanyetzny’s September feature in the Huffington Post.
“My family and I named
this wish of mine Allie’s Wish.
From then on, I dedicated my
birthdays to donating to others. Each year it got bigger,
received more publicity, and
knowledge from citizens all
over Minnesota,” Kanyetzny
wrote on her website.
In lieu of drafting a wish list
for herself for her birthday on
Dec. 4, from 2006 to 2010,
Kanyetzny collected toys, toiletries, and clothing from
friends and family and donated the items to a homeless
shelter in Minneapolis.
She continued the tradition
each year on her birthday,
until 2011, when she decided to
make an even bigger push for
donations, according to the
Huffington Post. She raised
$1,250, donating $500 to St.
Jude Children’s Research
Hospital, and used the remainder to make birthday baskets
for patients who spent most of
their days under the care of
Children’s Hospital.
As her 17th birthday
approached, Kanyetzny decided to restructure the donation
style of Allie’s Wish and has
Berkley Damhof
since focused on one recipient
each year. In 2013, she sponsored a two-year-old girl diagnosed with cerebral palsy, and
in 2014, she sponsored an eightyear-old boy with muscular
dystrophy. Berkley will be her
third individual recipient.
Kanyetzny says the charity
has grown as a part of her and
is officially what she lives for
and what she wants to spend
the rest of her life doing. “It
gives me the ability to not only
change lives, but inspire people to never give up on their
dreams. Allie’s Wish has
taught me so much about life
and has given me a fuller
understanding of who I am as
a person and what I stand for.”
She hopes to make her charity an official non-profit after
college and then to travel
around the world for a year
with it, feeding the hungry,
helping the ill and disabled,
and, most of all, spreading the
gift of giving, which remains
the basis of Allie’s Wish.
A New Milestone
On Friday, Dec. 5, the
Damhofs reached one of many
milestones on their journey:
Berkley finished her last of
five rounds of chemotherapy.
Her scans show that the treatments have eradicated cancer
in her bone marrow, which is
very exciting news for the
Damhof family.
The Damhofs plan to travel
to New York City in January
to have a surgeon operate to
remove a tumor around
Berkley’s lower spine.
After Berkley’s recovery,
the Damhofs plan to visit the
University of Minnesota for a
stem cell transplant. That process will involve a three-month
stay, with approximately a
month of inpatient treatment.
The Damhofs will then
return to Children’s Hospital
in Minneapolis to begin radiation. Once radiation is complete, they hope to begin antibody therapy.
Believing that more space
for inventory is needed, the
City of Paynesville continues
to research options for
expanding and/or relocating
its municipal liquor store.
At a work session on
Tuesday, Dec. 16, the
Paynesville City Council discussed the current needs of
the liquor store and possibilities for relocating it.
The city currently leases
commercial space for its
municipal liquor store in the
Teal’s Market complex on the
west end of town. The lease
expires in April 2016 and
could be renewed for a term
of five years, according to
liquor store manager Bill
Ludwig.
Ludwig has strived to
expand the storage capacity at
the store, though the current
space is becoming cramped,
hindering his ability to add
new inventory. Last summer,
he contacted Teal’s management to inquire about obtaining additional space. He
planned to contact management again to see if expansion opportunities are available.
During the remainder of
the current lease, Ludwig told
the council that he does plan
to make some improvements
to the current space, includCOUNCIL – see page 7
$1
Paynesville Press
211 Washburne Avenue, P.O.
Box 54, Paynesville, MN 56362
Phone: 320-243-3772
Fax: 320-243-4492
www.paynesvillearea.com
Copyright 2014 •
Two Sections
Index
Blotter
2
Gala of Giving
2
Celebration Schools
2
Eagle Scout
2
Sauk River Chain Study
3
Weather
3
Viewpoint
4
Notch Column
5
Salem Christmas
5
Notch Column
5
Chamber Bucks
6
Way Back When
6
Hangar Space
7
Lions Awards
7
Way Back When
7
Obituaries
8
Community Events
9
Under the Big Green Roof 9
Chamber Nominations 10
Entertainment
10-11
County Budget
11
Armistice Day Pictures
12
DNR News
12
Sports
1B, 3B, & 7B
Real Estate
2B
Classifieds
4B
Public Notices
4B-7B
Christmas Greeting Section C