AM.MN: Young men in cars versus strip mall, golf course

A St. Cloud golf course and a Shoreview strip mall had run-ins with cars early Sunday and came out the losers — a term that could also apply to the drivers. Just before 5.a.m., a burning minibike and two burgled homes led police to the St. Cloud Country Club, where two men in their late teens had done $100,000 in damage, mostly to the first and ninth greens. About an hour earlier, a 19-year-old driver went airborne then crashed into Bill’s Grocery and Tobacco at Midland Plaza, busting a water main that flooded both Bill’s and Ronnally’s Pizza.

Elsewhere in Minnesota news this morning …

ITASCA COUNTY: Staff decimated. Forty of 400 jobs are going unfilled and employees are taking unpaid furloughs to save the county $600,000 after state cuts of $1.2 million that levy limits won’t let local government make up via property taxes. [Grand Rapids Herald-Review]

CROOKSTON: New Zamboni will run on gas. The civic center’s new ice resurfacer won’t run hot like the current propane-powered machine or stink up the joint like the last Zamboni with a gas engine, which “burned nastily.” [Crookston Times]

INTERNATIONAL FALLS: ‘Chico’ can smell ecstasy. The border crossing’s first K-9 team includes a German Shepard who sniffs out marijuana, hashish, cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and ecstasy. [Associated Press from the International Falls Daily Journal]

DELANO: ‘Mr. Loopy’ is on a natural high. His real name is Shoutz (“as in loud mouth”), but the 14 outlets in his statewide chain, including the local flagship, are called Loopy’s Dollar Stores. [Delanon Herald Journal]

AKELEY: Council okays pet pig. After a narrow 3-2 vote, Tilly the pot-bellied pig can stay — and may even appear at Paul Bunyan Days. (The statue of the giant, kneeling lumberjack needs repairs, by the way.) [Morris Sun Tribune]

WORTHINGTON: Guv candidate regales regatta. Matt Entenza, DFL candidate for governor, told the crowd at the 10th annual Windsurfing Regatta and Unvarnished Music Festival on Lake Okabena that his grandfather, a Civil War hero in family lore, was actually written up as “not a very good soldier” by his Union Army superiors. [Worthington Daily Globe]