10 years ago (2010)
•The city or Luverne is offering financial incentives to business owners who upgrade their facilities to be more energy efficient.
As part of its Bright Energy Solutions projects, the city is encouraging its commercial customers to save energy in areas such as heating and cooling systems and in retrofitting light fixtures.
City Administrator John Call said many of the city’s larger commercial and industrial customers (such as the ethanol plant and Papik Motors) have already taken advantage of programs and rebates to become more energy efficient.
Now the city is targeting smaller businesses.
“We have customers who could do it, but can’t afford it,” Call said. “This plan really isn’t costing the utility anything, but it helps the small business quite a bit.”
The city provides funds to cover upfront costs of facility improvements and floats the loan until energy savings pay off the debt.
25 years ago (1995)
•A projected 13-percent increase in the school levy settled over the Luverne School Board like a gloomy cloud Thursday. With the district’s Truth in Taxation hearing set for Dec. 4, Board members are seeking ways to lower the levy.
According to figures presented by financial officer Marlene Mann, the school portion of the levy for 1996-97 will be $2,267,944.01, which is $28,815.44 less than the maximum allowed by the state.
Factors affecting the sizeable increase include underlevy of $120,000 in 1995, so that the district had just a 5.51 percent increase for the year.
Levying the full amount in 1996 after a year of underlevying makes the increase look larger.
50 years ago (1970)
•Increased costs and the prospect of less aid from the state is reflected in an increase of about 8 per cent in the proposed school budget for 1970-71. The budget, adopted by the school board of District 670 calls for an estimated dollar increase of $138,778.73.
The board estimates the total disbursements for all funds during the year to be $1,685,397.84.
Of the increase, $104,319.73 is committed to contracted salary increases for all certificated and non-certificated personnel, which includes not only the teaching staff, but all school district employees.
75 years ago (1945)
•E. T. Corwin, who lives near Luverne, is featured in a story in the December issue of Capper’s Farmer entitled “Stretches House Capacity” which describes his poultry management methods.
Corwin hangs lights with bulbs recessed into fairly deep reflectors above the floor space where feeders and waterers are located, the story points out. Thus roosting space is in semi-darkness.
“I can look into the house at any time of the night and find part of the flock down at the feeders and waterers,” Mr. Corwin is quoted as saying,” and there is probably no time when all the hens are on the roost. Under this plan there isn’t so much crowding on the roosts and hens that are timid and bullied away from the feeders in the daytime can get their fill at night when the older hens are on the roost.”
100 years ago (1920)
•The Luverne Motor Truck Company has during the past year designed, developed and perfected a new model which they call the Luverne road graveler.
The truck has the regular six cylinder Luverne express chassis, with shorter wheel base than usual, and with the chassis frame back of the cab so designed that there are no cross-pieces or parts of any kind under the chassis, other than the rear axle and propeller shaft.
The body is of two yards capacity and has a hopper bottom. There are divisions running through the lower part of the body to form a housing for the rear axle and for the propeller shaft. This leaves four separate hoppers in the bathroom of the body. The extreme bottom of the body is 12 inches below the top of the chassis frame.
There are hinged bottoms on each of the four hoppers. All of these hinged bottoms are connected to rocker shafts mounted in the upper part of the body and these rocker shafts are in turn connected to a hand lever located in the cab at the drivers left.
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