Who or what is putting the last nail in the coffin of Albert Lea? Is it our city fathers who have not allowed interested businesses to come here? Many, many years ago, IBM wanted to locate here, but did that happen? No, and not that many years ago, Cabelas wanted to locate here. Did that happen? No. Those are only two of many different, successful businesses that wanted to locate here at the intersection of two major freeways. I have been asked by my children (now grown) for many years why Albert Lea has not gotten larger. My answer used to be “Well, there is a good old boy system here and they do not want the competition.” But as my daughter pointed out, “By now, aren’t they all dead?” Almost all of them are. So now I don’t have an answer. We hear so often about the beauty of our city and our lakes — what an awesome resort town this should be. Well, how many years have we owned the dredge and how many times has it been used, that would be none! That entity also has no oversight, but lots of tax money to it. Just get it done!

Now we are also faced with the potential closing basically of our hospital. I, like many others, was born at the old Naeve Hospital, and both of our children were born in the new hospital before Mayo took over. I do remember thinking when Mayo came in and told us about the wonderful cancer center we’re to become, how great this would be finally for our city. What again happened to that? Now we have become a lowly stepsister to Rochester and Austin. No one can make me believe Hormel’s very generous contributions to the medical center in Austin does not have an effect on all of this. I discovered after the Thursday evening meeting that even though Dr. Ciota said Hormel had no impact on this decision, that Dr. Ciota, the CEO of both hospitals, sits on the board of directors of the Hormel Foundation that donates to Austin hospital.

It seems we are having a hard time right now attracting businesses to our beautiful city, so what happens when we no longer have a hospital here for employees of any new business? How do we say, “Well, you only have to drive 23 miles for your baby delivery, surgery or any ICU needs.” Do you really think that will entice a business to locate here? Our population has decreased 2.9 percent since 2000 — how fast do you think it will go down if this goes through? Remember when we were told a brand-new high school will draw families to our area? Again our graduation rate has steadily fallen since that time, with less that 200 graduates this year. When we graduated in 1969, we had over 550 in our class. I realize we can’t turn the clock back, but we as a very committed and very caring community need to come together to do whatever we can to stop this tragedy from happening to our city. Otherwise we will be having a very sad funeral for Albert Lea.

Andrea Jensen

Albert Lea