John McLoone

It’s been a tough year on the Prescott American Legion Post.

The Legion’s famous chicken fry events have been cancelled in the last year, and that’s the main source of income for the Prescott Post, which is also actively seeking new members.

“They’re having some trouble with everything going on this year,” City Administrator Jayne Brand said at Monday night’s City Council meeting.

At the meeting, the council gave its blessing to an event being scheduled to help the Legion set for May 1 being organized by Dean Markuson of Hastings. He’s proposing to have the Freedom Flight balloon tethered in Prescott. It will remain tethered but residents will be able to go up in the balloon, weather permitting.

Also, a gofundme account has been set up for the community to make donations to help out the American Legion Post. Log onto gofundme. com and search “Prescott American Legion Post 61” and it will take you to the page started by Luke Niederstadt. The page’s goal is to bring in $10,000 for the Legion Post.

Money from the weekly chicken dinners kept the Post active and helped fund many other community groups. The Prescott American Legion was founded in 1918.

Jerry Klasen of the Legion sent a plea to members to see if they know a voter who would be interested in joining Post 61 and if the recipients are interested in helping with Legion activities.

“Based on the responses we get, they will have an impact on selling the Legion building and grounds or kept and revitalize it after COVID,” Klasen wrote.

The Prescott American Legion Post 61 building is at 710 Pearl St. the latter being the fund balance “per capita” for Maiden Rock. As a perennial reminder then, “per capita” figures, while dazzling, can also deceive from a statistical standpoint. Bigger, does not always mean more.

Moving on to the Village of Bay City meanwhile, the per capita fund balance for 2018 stood at $558 per person, or 87.5 percent of village Net Operating Spending.

For Ellsworth, meanwhile, the 2018 fund balance figure was $495 per person, representing 70.3 percent of Net Operating Spending in the Village when taken as a whole.

For Spring Valley the numbers were $335 per person and 53.6 percent of village spending. Finally for Plum City, the 2018 fund balance breakdown came out to $0 per capita and zero percent of Net Operating Spending. As stated above, the fund balance should not be understood as money sitting in a bank, not lack thereof.

Tracking back to individual income per 2018 tax return, meanwhile, and things remained similar to prior years for Prescott, River Falls and Ellsworth, with proximity to the Twin Cities job market resulting in a higher average salary overall.

At the same time, Maiden Rock edged out Ellsworth with an average income of $60,000 to $57,000 for Ellsworth, and no clear pattern was discernable for communities located nearer to Lake Pepin (Plum City and Bay City, respectively) over else those located closer in relative terms to either Highway 29 or Interstate 94 (Spring Valley and Elmwood, respectively). That said, group averages are one thing, and individual outcomes quite another. No matter where in Pierce County you might call home then, take pride and make the most of it, helping to improve the good of all.