Marshall City Administrator Sharon Hanson and Tall Grass Liquor manager Eric Luther answered questions about municipal liquor stores, during a session of Marshall’s first Citizens Academy. The seven-week program gave members of the public a closer look at different Marshall city services and operations.

MARSHALL — There’s a lot going on in Marshall. But not everyone gets to see the things that help keep the city running, from emergency services to the municipal water and wastewater plants.

This spring, a group of community members got a chance to peek behind the scenes, at Marshall’s first Citizens Academy. The seven-week program focused on topics like Marshall’s utilities, law enforcement and more.

“You just get to learn a lot more of what goes on to run the city,” said Larry Jacob, one of the area residents who took part in the Citizens Academy. Jacob said there were a lot of things that people sometimes take for granted.

The Citizens Academy got its start in a course offered as part of Gold College at Southwest Minnesota State University, said Marshall City Administrator Sharon Hanson.

After doing the course at Gold College for two years, “We wanted to open it up to the greater community,” Hanson said. “City staff have really enjoyed doing this.”

Hanson said the Academy started out with a group of 12 students. The small group made it easier to tour different city facilities, she said.

The Citizens Academy included some discussion sessions at City Hall, where the class got to talk with different Marshall city employees and officials. There were also field trips to visit the Marshall Fire Department, the city water treatment plant, and the Minnesota Emergency Response and Industrial Training (MERIT) Center.

Learning about the MERIT Center was interesting, said students Katie Medford and Sariah Cheadle.

“I’ve driven past it,” Medford said, but she didn’t know what went on there before the tour. She said it was interesting to learn that the facility is one of only a few in Minnesota and the Dakotas that offer services like driver, firefighter and law enforcement training.

“I actually got to do the use-of-force training (simulator),” Cheadle said. The virtual simulator had a wide variety of different scenarios where law enforcement officers could try in real time to deescalate a situation, or decide whether to use a firearm.

On Monday, part of the Academy’s final meetup included a Q&A session with Eric Luther, manager of Tall Grass Liquor, Marshall’s municipal liquor store. Several people had questions about how Tall Grass handled the sale of THC edibles after Minnesota legalized them. Brienna Deutz asked what gave cities like Marshall the authority to control liquor sales.

Hanson said Marshall has had a city-owned liquor store since 1935. After the end of Prohibition, Minnesota gave cities the ability to establish municipal liquor stores. The measure allowed local communities to regulate the sale and consumption of alcohol to some extent, she said.

“And it goes in perpetuity?” Deutz asked.

Hanson said the city could give up having a municipal liquor store, with action from the city council. “It would be a challenging decision,” she said. The city would need to do a business and financial analysis. Profits from Tall Grass Liquor go toward a variety of city projects.

Students at the Citizens Academy said they got interested in the program, because they wanted to learn more about how the city runs. Cheadle said she wanted to have a better understanding of topics related to city government.

“It helps with political conversations,” she said of her experiences at the Academy. “Going to the police one in particular was really good.”

Laurel Johnson said she was interested in the Citizens Academy because she wasn’t originally from Marshall, and hadn’t had a chance to learn a lot about how the city runs.

“This was a really good informational opportunity,” she said. “There were wonderful presenters.”

Johnson said she’d even be interested in attending a Citizens Academy program a second time, to absorb more information. “You don’t pick up enough,” she said.