Minnesota Mayors Association

I had the opportunity to attend the Minnesota Mayor annual conference this past weekend.  This year we meet in Perham Minnesota up by Ottertail. This years conference was well attended and you can see from the picture below, and I had the opportunity to speak with some Mayors from the our surrounding areas, large metro cities as well as some very small community Mayors.

2018 MMA Annual Meeting Attendees

The Mayor of Perham took us on a tour of a local creamery where we learned about cheese manufacturing and the various other milk products that are derived from milk. In today's market the cheese product is a secondary product when compared to the value of a high protein power that can be derived from dairy. We were told that just one process within the plant contained over two miles of stainless steel.

We also toured Barrow of Fun where we saw a potato chip manufacturing plant. This plant had some very interesting automation, including a vision inspection machine that could pick out one burnt chip in a bunch of 1000 chips and kick it into a scarp bucket. We also visited their new school construction project as well as a local craft brewery.

After our tours we came back and we had several break out sessions. We talked about lessons learned from 9-11 and we also talked about the value of CERT teams (Community Emergency Response Teams) incident command and the proper role of local policy makers. I came back with some ideas to start a conversation with Sheriff Rose and explore how Kasson and Mantorville can work together to have a plan ready for possible incidents that may come up.