Locally Grown

Northfield Chamber of Commerce Retail Committee members Abby Erickson (By All Means Graphics) and Nicole Maloney (Sweet Pea’s Loft / Toys and Treats) joined us for the first half of our show to rev up excitement about Crazy Daze. (Alas, I neglected to take a photo so I’ve stolen these mugshots from elsewhere.)

The rest of the time, we discussed some of our recent pet issues that help make Northfield the crazy city that it is these days.

Click play to listen. 30 minutes. You can also subscribe to the podcast feed, or subscribe directly with iTunes. Our radio show/podcast, Locally Grown, usually airs Wednesdays at 5:30 PM on KYMN 1080 AM.

Our guest today: Representative Journalist Bonnie Obremski (that links to her bio page here on LG), the reporter for the Northfield Representative Journalist project (new page here on LG for RepJ).

We talked with her about her background, including why she dissed Northfield and its colleges in favor of attending some rinky-dink school out east that Ross seems to favor for some reason.

Yes, we spent a few minutes on the RepJ project, too.

Click play to listen. 30 minutes. You can also subscribe to the podcast feed, or subscribe directly with iTunes. Our radio show/podcast, Locally Grown, usually airs Wednesdays at 5:30 PM on KYMN 1080 AM.

 
It was just us’ns yesterday, talking about city council filings, the stalemate between the mayor and council over board and commission appointments, Hwy 19 and regional transportation, the comp plan, the CIP, plus the usual fluff.

Click play to listen. 30 minutes. You can also subscribe to the podcast feed, or subscribe directly with iTunes. Our radio show/podcast, Locally Grown, usually airs Wednesdays at 5:30 PM on KYMN 1080 AM.

We celebrated the 100th podcast episode of Locally Grown today with a cookie and a candle (okay, a match) and then later, ceremoniously crumbled it over a beer. Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Freakin’-Dah, eh?

We then launched into a discussion about who’s running and who ain’t for City Council, Mayor, School Board, and County Board.

Click play to listen. 30 minutes. You can also subscribe to the podcast feed, or subscribe directly with iTunes. Our radio show/podcast, Locally Grown, usually airs Wednesdays at 5:30 PM on KYMN 1080 AM.

Kathleen ‘Mac’ McBride, the City of Northfield’s EOF (Empress of Finance) was our guest this week. (She’s also known as the city’s Finance Director).

We mainly talked about the city’s Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) that’s currently in draft form, awaiting further input from citizens.

Mac sent us her CIP PowerPoint presentation from the 6/2 public hearing and alerted us to the CIP docs on the City’s website. (See links to many Northfield-related documents on the Locally Grown Documents page.)

• Left: CIP draft (PDF)
• Center: CIP Powerpoint presentation (PDF)
• Right: CIP citizen comment form (PDF)

Here’s another way to view her CIP Powerpoint presentation. Click on any page and you’ll be taken to a larger Flash version of the document.

And here’s the audio of the podcast:

Click play to listen. 30 minutes. You can also subscribe to the podcast feed, or subscribe directly with iTunes. Our radio show/podcast, Locally Grown, usually airs Wednesdays at 5:30 PM on KYMN 1080 AM.

As for citizen input on the CIP, feel free to ask questions and comment here.

My guest (Ross and Tracy abandoned me) today: the soon-to-be-former pastor of the Northfield United Methodist Church, Clay Oglesbee. He’s been promoted to junior emperor District Superintendent of the MN Methodist southeast MN region.

Clay’s last supper sermon is Sunday morning with a wingding of some sort afterwards. He and his wife Mary Lynn will soon be moving to Cannon Falls. 

We discussed Northfield’s drug problem, the encroachment of kids’ organized activities on family life, and Christian oppression of atheists.

Click play to listen. 30 minutes. You can also subscribe to the podcast feed, or subscribe directly with iTunes.

Our radio show/podcast, Locally Grown, usually airs Wednesdays at 5:30 PM on KYMN 1080 AM.

Our guest today was Randy Jennings, local citizen, long time Northfielder, and eloquent critic of Locally Grown. We mostly discussed his criticism of the recent controversial blog posts and comment threads about the 6/2 Council meeting and the CVB’s performance, with an occasional tangent about citizen journalism.

The Twins broadcast bumped us from our normal 5:30pm air time on KYMN and we used that as an excuse to do a full-hour show. (I have no idea when KYMN news director Jeff Johnson plans to air the show but probably sometime after 2 am, just to be safe.)

Later in the show we were joined by two Carleton College grads who were instrumental in the formation of Locally Grown’s radio show/podcast, Morgan Weiland and Cameron Nordholm. (We think of them as the parents of our show.) Morgan was KRLX news director and Cameron was KRLX station manager during the 2005-06 school year. Morgan is now a reporter in the health care division of BNA in Washington DC. Cameron is a digital producer with PBS Interactive in Arlington, VA.

Tracy and I (Ross headed out to celebrate his 25th wedding anniversary) took them out for a drink at the Cow after the show to try to explain why we’ve fallen so far down since they left town.

Click play to listen. 1 hour, 2 minutes. You can also subscribe to the podcast feed, or subscribe directly with iTunes.

Our radio show/podcast, Locally Grown, usually airs Wednesdays at 5:30 PM on KYMN 1080 AM.

As usual when we don’t have a guest, we’re more than a little scattered, and today was no exception.

We did the usual community fluff up front, followed by some chat about the NDDC forum on tourism (Ross and I both attended) and that’s the topic that prompted the photo on the left of Ross and Tracy outside KYMN studios, holding up the June issue of the NEG with the cover of Over and Back on the front, holding it in front of the Over and Back poster on the KYMN window.

And then we ended the show with our reactions to what we heard about (since none of us attended) the Monday night Northfield City Council meeting, including items on the agenda.

Click play to listen. 30 minutes. You can also subscribe to the podcast feed, or subscribe directly with iTunes.

Our radio show/podcast, Locally Grown, usually airs Wednesdays at 5:30 PM on KYMN 1080 AM.

Jane McWilliams, former Northfield School Board member, Board Member for Nothfield Citizens Online (NCO), and Northfield City Council Observer for the League of Women Voters, was our guest this week. Or I should say, Ross’ guest, as he handled this week’s show completely by himself. Tracy was out dealing carpets and I was out dealing blood.

Click play to listen. 30 minutes. You can also subscribe to the podcast feed, or subscribe directly with iTunes.

Our radio show/podcast, Locally Grown, usually airs Wednesdays at 5:30 PM on KYMN 1080 AM.

 
After wasting way too much time on fluff at the start of today’s show, we finally got around to ranting about all things city-related: Al Roder, the Planning Commission, the Comp Plan, annexations, citizen engagement. Whew.

Click play to listen. 30 minutes. You can also subscribe to the podcast feed, or subscribe directly with iTunes.

Our radio show/podcast, Locally Grown, usually airs Wednesdays at 5:30 PM on KYMN 1080 AM.

Charter Commissioner and former Planning Commissioner Betsey Buckheit was our guest this week, discussing the proposed annexation of land near the hospital for a business park.

Yes, we asked her to announce her decision on whether she’s running for Mayor but she threw away the opportunity and remains undecided.

I’ve turned off comments for this post (but not trackbacks/pingbacks). Continue the discussion (now at 74 comments) on Ross’ blog post, Thoughts on Annexation in the Northwest.

Click play to listen. 30 minutes. You can also subscribe to the podcast feed, or subscribe directly with iTunes.

Our radio show/podcast, Locally Grown, usually airs Wednesdays at 5:30 PM on KYMN 1080 AM.

Ross’ post on Tuesday, Highlighting Other Local Blogs (in which he managed to highlight only one), prompted us to do a show on the local civic-oriented bloggers whose feeds we currently aggregate on our right sidebar.

It also prompted us to move up the aggregator widget, as well as shrink the number of/character count of the comments displayed at the top of the sidebar so as to give the bloggers more prominent sidebar real-estate. Let us know (comment here or Contact Us) what you think about these changes.

Bloggers featured in the podcast:

• Bruce Anderson, member, City of Northfield Non-motorized task force; Principal, Sustainable Community Solutions
• David Bly, Minnesota State Representative, 25B
• Ross Currier, Executive Director, Northfield Downtown Development Corporation And Northfield Planning Commissioner
• Kevin Dahle, MN State Senator, District 25
• Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin, Director, Latino Enterprise Center
• Bruce Morlan, Dundas/Bridgewater Township Planning Commissioner; moderator, Politics and a Pint
• Bill Ostrem, member, City of Northfield Non-motorized task force; Northern Letter (blog)

And see the Locally Grown Local Civic Blogosphere page for an updated list of local civic-oriented blogs. Let us know (comment here or Contact Us) if I’m missing any.

Click play to listen. 30 minutes. You can also subscribe to the podcast feed, or subscribe directly with iTunes.

Our radio show/podcast, Locally Grown, usually airs Wednesdays at 5:30 PM on KYMN 1080 AM.

As reported last night in a comment to our blog by John Thomas, Northfield Police Captain Mark Taylor was named our new police chief by approval of the City Council. (Right photo courtesy of Scott Davis, Stone Cottage Photo, at the 3/27 forum at the Grand.)

It’s not quite formalized yet, however. See the Northfield News story for details.

Mark has agreed to appear on our radio show/podcast this week, which we’re recording today at 2 PM.

If you have questions that you’d like us to consider asking Mark, attach a comment here before 1:30 PM today (Tues).

 10:15 PM update: The podcast is now available.  And as you’ll hear, his appointment was made official today, as any further testing was waived.

Click play to listen. 30 minutes. You can also subscribe to the podcast feed, or subscribe directly with iTunes.

Our radio show/podcast, Locally Grown, usually airs Wednesdays at 5:30 PM on KYMN 1080 AM .

Our guest this week: proprietor of Present Perfect, Mary Rossing, President of the NDDC board of directors and Board member of the Northfield Area Chamber of Commerce.

We touched on many of the issues that have been discussed in the comment thread (90+ comments to-date) attached to the blog post, Outgoing Chamber president David Ludescher: frustrated but hopeful.

I’ve left comments enabled on that post, but I’d like to shift the discussion about CoC (Chamber of Commerce) and CVB (Convention and Visitors Bureau) issues here.

Click play to listen. 30 minutes. You can also subscribe to the podcast feed, or subscribe directly with iTunes.

Our radio show/podcast, Locally Grown, usually airs Wednesdays at 5:30 PM on KYMN 1080 AM.

We rejected dozens of guests who pleaded to be on our show this week, as we really needed to hear ourselves talking about ourselves.

We also wedged in some discussion about A) who might run for mayor/council; B) the police chief candidates/hiring process; and C) the profession of journalism/business of newspapers.

Click play to listen. 30 minutes. You can also subscribe to the podcast feed, or subscribe directly with iTunes.

Our radio show/podcast, Locally Grown, usually airs Wednesdays at 5:30 PM on KYMN 1080 AM.

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