Tink Larson Field

THUMBS DOWN: New Ulm has always been a baseball town, and has long had a warm spot in its heart for Johnson Park, where so much great baseball has been played over the past 75+ years. So we can truly sympathize with Waseca, where a fire this week destroyed the grandstand and clubhouse at Tink Larson Field, Waseca’s home of local baseball.

We know the folks in Waseca are planning to set up temporary seating for baseball games this season, and we hope it won’t be long before the facilities at the field are rebuilt.

Town team baseball has a long and happy history in Minnesota, and we need places like Tink Larson Field to hold the memories and create more.

Thanks for the nod

THUMBS UP: We’re not exactly sure how much value there is in the wave of rankings put out by various high-tech financial consulting firms with funny names like Smart Assets or Nerd Wallet. They crunch a bunch of statistics and send out a mass of press releases saying “(Your city name here) ranks seventh in dog bite insurance claims,” or something like that. Their goal seems to be to get their company name in as many papers as possible.

This week Smart Assets (yes, that is their name) informed us that Brown County ranks fourth in the state in “bang for your buck” when it comes to property taxes. We’re not sure what that means, exactly, but we think it means the county manages to operate without levying a lot of property taxes.

At any rate, it’s nice to know. Thanks, Smart Assets.

Career Expo

THUMBS UP: The Ninth Annual Career Expo was held this week. It’s an event with the laudable goal of letting high school sophomores, who may be starting to think about what they will be doing in the future, know that there are career possibilities here in New Ulm.

All too often, our local students graduate high school and head to college, and when they focus on their future they think it has to lie somewhere else far from New Ulm.

The 53 local businesses that participated let the students know, however, that they can come home to a good, satisfying career.

Congratulations to all the organizers, including the New Ulm Area Chamber of Commerce, the New Ulm Economic Development Commission, Junior Achievement and the New Ulm Personnel Association.