COOK- U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar was in Cook on Wednesday, July 3, to view damage from the recent flood and to lend her encouragement and support for recovery efforts.
Joined by Cook City Council members, Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Commissioner Ida Rukavina, relief agency representatives and others, Klobuchar took a walking tour of the damage in the downtown area, stopping at the Cook Public Library, the Montana Café, and the Comet Theater.
Klobuchar was clearly moved as she learned how the flood has not only damaged businesses but has also affected the social fabric of the community.
“They’re kind of missing and lost without us,” library director Crystal Whitney told Klobuchar.
The senator heard a similar message from Megan and Corey Strong at the Montana Café, where they stood between upheaved ripples in the old wooden floor. And while the building was cleared for re-entry after an engineer’s inspection earlier in the week, the extent of the damage could be far too costly to repair without significant support, the Strongs said.
“I was just stunned by how much damage there is and how much this really is the heart of the community,” Klobuchar told the Timberjay.
Throughout her visit, Klobuchar emphasized that a full recovery effort would take the combined resources of federal, state, and local resources. She described how the recent federal disaster declaration would aid the City of Cook in dealing with damage to publicly owned facilities.
“(The disaster assistance) has been declared for 22 counties, including St. Louis, and that’s for public infrastructure,” she said. “It makes it easier because no one has to go pass a bill or anything. Once you meet the threshold, that means that 75 percent of federal money is used and then 25 percent of state (to cover the costs). The library will get repaired because that is public infrastructure, so that’s great.”
The path to getting assistance for homeowners and businesses is more complex, she said.
“The next thing we’re going to look at is the individuals, and then there are small business loans,” Klobuchar said. “We’re telling everyone don’t forget the basements, make a report to the county and get all that information in so we can show that an inordinate number of people’s homes were affected. That helps us to get the funding to help with that. If we can’t show that, the federal government, except for massive destruction, normally doesn’t give the grants on individual homes that the state does sometimes. We’ve got to show massive, massive damage in one place.”
“What I’m most worried about is that we’ve got to bring these businesses back,” Klobuchar continued. “It’s not just loans, we’ve got to look for grants and other things. We’ve seen Madelia come back in southern Minnesota, we’ve seen places come back. That takes a combination of loans, grants, nonprofits, state, local, and federal and it’s complex. I’m glad Ida Rukavina was here from the IRRRB because we’re going to have to put together everything we can to keep these businesses running.”
Klobuchar praised the community’s response to the flood so far as she commented on the way forward.
“The volunteers, the community has just been tremendous,” she said. “Now we’ve basically quilt-stiched together this funding. We will save the public infrastructure. Homes will get redone and recover, of course with a lot of personal angst. But if we don’t have some of these businesses, that’s the heart of Cook.”