Constructing a new facility for the Birchdale Fire Department is good use of Consolidate-Conservation funds.
The Koochiching County Board Tuesday, with approval from the county’s Con-Con Committee, agreed to use up to $175,000 from a portion of the sale of timber on the lands and from payment-in-lieu of taxes the state pays to the county on the state-owned Con-Con lands in the area.
Con-Con lands, managed by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, were established more than a century ago when several counties in the state issued bonds to pay the cost of ditching millions of wet acres to drain the land for agriculture use. Many of the acres were sold to private owners, but not all these lands were developed into successful farms. That, combined with the Depression, caused many landowners to default on their property taxes, which put counties at risk of defaulting on the ditch bonds.
The state interceded, paying off the bonds in exchange for full ownership of the lands, according to the DNR’s website.
The moniker of the lands comes from when the state “consolidated” the income from the lands into one fund. Originally Con-Con lands made up about 1.9 million acres in seven counties, including Koochiching.
Con-Con lands are open to the public and provide income to Koochiching County. It makes sense to use money we gain from these lands to fortify the fire fighting resources in the area.
Kudos to members of the Birchdale Fire Department for seeing a need to improve such an important and valuable resource for their community. And even more credit should go to the department for doing research to find the best way to go about making these improvements.
