The St. James Agriculture/Business committee is pleased to announce that two seniors have been awarded the Agriculture Future of America Scholarship this year. Tanner Olson-St. James High School and Wade Wassman-Moun tain Lake High School. Each student received an academic scholarship of $ 3,200.00 and attended a leadership conference with a value of $ 1,250.00. Since 2003 the Ag/Business Committee has raised over $ 51,000.00 which was matched by Agriculture Future of America for 23 senior students living in Watonwan County. The funds raised locally are generous donations from over thirty area business which are located in Watonwan and Cottonwood County.

On Thursday, June 2 the City of St. James and Adam Jacobs from Bolton & Menk held a neighborhood meeting for community members to come and ask questions about the Safe Route to School project. City officials and council members were in attendance to help answer any questions that were asked.

The St. James Charter Commission held a listening session on Monday, June 6th from 2:00 pm to 4:00 pm and from 6:30pm to 7:30pm at the Community Building. The Commission basically updated sections of the current Charter which was last revised on April 3, 1998. Spelling errors were corrected and titles of city staff were updated. The filing fee for applying for city elected offices was raised from $5.00 to $ 25.00. Responsibilities for various functions were clarified based on how is currently doing the function. A section in the franchise section was deleted as it was not relevant. Three major changes were made to the charter – The mayor will no longer be in charge of the Police Department, any real property gifts given to the city will require the city manager to do a cost study to see if there would be a negative impact to the city by accepting the gift and any real property sale of city property will also require a cost study to be done by the city manager prior to the sale of real property. Public comments will be accepted until June 17, 2022. A copy of the changes and the full draft charter are available at the Chamber of Commerce office. Charter commission members are Linda Buller, Paul Harris, Michael Banks, Sarahi Showalter and Joe McCabe. The residents will have an opportunity to approve the charter as it will be on the ballot on November 8, 2022.