BLAINE, Minn. – (April 23, 2015) – The doors of Blaine City Hall are open everyday to residents but this week the city staff worked to put on an inviting and engaging event for all ages. As a part of the city’s year long celebration of its 50th anniversary the first true open house was held at city hall since the building first opened in 2004.
The event was well received by those in attendance. “Well for the kids it’s a dress up as a police officer or firefighter and to have ice cream. The adults are really enjoying the information we have to hand out and we’re teaching them about government in a fun way. The voting’s been popular, to meet the mayor and our chiefs and to get a lot of safety information we have and of course the most popular thing is touring the police department,” said Blaine recreation manager Shari Kunza. Another popular part of the event was the fire sprinkler demo trailer where firefighters gave a real life demonstration of the difference having a residential sprinkler system can make.
With Blaine growing so quickly as a community in the last decade, events like this are important to help bring residents together. “When I first started in Blaine we had a community of about 40,000 people. It was more of a small town. Now we are about 65,000 people and when you have a city that large it’s easy to get lost in the city and it’s easy to feel disconnected so we wanted to have events where we connect people to their government, people to their city. The neighborhoods are pretty spread out. They’re not an inner city neighborhood where it’s a cohesive group so we’re really trying to build community, get neighbors to know each other,” said Kunza.
Four students, who won a city wide essay contest, shared their reflections on Blaine and also looked into the future to imagine where Blaine will be 25 years from now. The students essays spoke about the diversity, economy, and benefits of being a Blaine citizen. The city is not done celebrating the 50th anniversary, actually the are really just getting started. “We are about halfway through our celebration. Our next event after this is World Fest. We’ll have a booth out at World Fest and there will be a selfie station there with hats from around the world. So that’s what the 50th anniversary committee will sponsor. We will also continue it with our Blaine wetlands sanctuary opening that will be on May 30, then we’ll continue through the summer. We’re going to have our presence at the Blaine festival, we’re sponsoring the civic tent,” said Kunza.
And that’s not all. “We have about 63 parks in Blaine and we’re going to do a 50 park challenge where we’re going to ask you a question about a park and you’ve got to figure out which park it is and we’ll have cash prizes for the winners. We’re also going to have an event we are working on for Aug. 11. It’s going to be a picnic/concert out at Aquatore Park, keeping it as low cost or free if we can, bringing back the 1960s and bringing back some 1960s games and some music and some food,” said Kunza.
Residents of Blaine and surrounding communities are always welcome to drop in at city hall to learn more about how the community operates, but just don’t expect free ice cream every time you stop by. For more information on upcoming events click here or here.
