Staff photo Fritz Busch Lillian Stimpert of Sleepy Eye, right, donates two framed, Sleepy Eye Milling Co. flour barrel labels to the City of Sleepy Eye at its Tuesday city council meeting. Sleepy Eye Mayor Joann Schmidt is pictured at left.

SLEEPY EYE — The Sleepy Eye City Council accepted a donation of two framed, Sleepy Eye Milling Co. flour barrel labels from Lillian Stimpert Tuesday.

“All of you know (her husband) Merton Arnold ‘Bud’ (Stimpert). Bud was a collector of many things,” she told the city council. “I decided to give these to you because I don’t know what else to do with them. It’s often been said the mill made Sleepy Eye famous because they made excellent flour that won awards. A lot of that is attributed to the farmers who grew the wheat that made the flour.”

She said one of the questions she often heard working at the Sleepy Eye Depot Museum was ‘how come there are two Chief Sleepy Eyes?’

“I said no, there is only one. This Chief Sleepy Eye (on the flour barrel labels) is the mill chief. The chief with two (large) feathers is Ishtakhaba (also known as Chief Sleepy Eyes),” said Stimpert. “When the flour barrels were complete, these labels were put on top. The labels sold for a lot of money at Old Sleepy Eye Collector’s Club annual conventions. Some people were very anxious to buy all the Sleepy Eye stuff they could get their hands on.”

The four barrell labels were the only donations. The city council accepted three donations from the Sleepy Eye Sportsmen’s Club– $1,305 for a Sleepy Eye Fire Department wet suit, $1,199 to Sleepy Eye Ambulance for a full body splint and $250 for fireworks. A $300 donation from Duncan McGreggor was accepted for the Dyckman Library.

The city council approved updating parking fines to $40 and $80 for snow removal.

Fees for picking up and placing animals in confinement were updated to $20, $20 for a second day of boarding and $50 for any additional days of maintenance and boarding.

Councilor Gary Windschitl called for the first reading of a zoning change request from Chuck Hauser to rezone Lots 11 and 12, Block 2, Nelson’s Second Addition from residential to business industrial for storage units where the former Del Monte Corp. parking lot was located.