Jim Stadler called me earlier this month to say he’s got a problem with a neighbor. In this case, the neighbor was a tall ash tree with an ominous crack that could send one of its two main branches crashing into his yard. The tree grows on a property that was foreclosed on last year, so Stadler didn’t know who was responsible for it. Stadler said he couldn’t persuade the city to remove the menacing tree. Unlike the leaning tree of Fridley, whose ownership is still in question, this one was definitely on private property. So he called Whistleblower.

This week I traveled up to the 2000 block of Russell Avenue North, in Minneapolis’s Willard-Hay neighborhood, to see the arboreal menace for myself. It wasn’t hard to find.

(more…)

My story today about two Brooklyn Center widows’ outrage about the movement of their husbands’ headstones gave me a crash course in cemetery regulation in Minnesota. The Minnesota Department of Health’s Mortuary Science Section has these duties: “Licenses funeral homes, crematories, morticians, funeral directors and oversee cemetery regulation.” David Benke, the section manager, told me that his office wouldn’t get involved in questions of markers and monuments.

(more…)

My Sunday column described the frustration of Ted McCaslin of St. Paul, shown here in front of Xcel Energy’s Merriam Park Substation. He lives a block away, but the hum from its transformers bounces into his bedroom, interrupting his sleep. The sound in his yard doesn’t amount to enough decibels to violate the city’s noise ordinance. Still, McCaslin brought his story to Whistleblower after seeing an advertisement next to this blog from Xcel for its energy conservation web site: “Responsible by nature.”

Reader opinions are boiling over in the comments section of my story about Pat Bergstrom’s puppy, which she “relinquished” to her vet when she couldn’t afford the cost of care. A reader named Kenneth sent this e-mail in response.

“I don’t get it, what are the ‘whistleblower’ or ‘investigation’ aspects of this story?” he wrote.

It’s a question I hear often. Most Whistleblower tips come from people who feel they have experienced an injustice and don’t know where to turn to get results. In deciding whether to pursue a story, I look for several key elements, including whether the individual’s problem might address a broader issue. I recognize that the stories that are pitched by the tipster will always have another side and we make every effort to get all the sides of the story.

(more…)