Kiffi, what I meant in my comment about Northfield being in a better position to maintain a greenbelt is simply that Northfield as a city has more regulatory tools available than a township does if the political will exists to do so. I’m just point that out, but I’m not holding my breath.

Meanwhile, a local immigrant populace moves in and does fairly well, relatively speaking. This causes resentment.

It would be a challenging position, surely, and the city administrator would likely think our concerns and passionate actions over things like annexing a few hundred acres or supporting a local business were, well, trivial. Perhaps Mr. Roder would enjoy and succeed at working on serious, challenging matters everyday rather than dealing with piddly shit all day.

On the other hand, maybe the greater challenge is to work in our setting, where you are continuously questioned and daily held accountable by the local, active community. It may be hard to keep things in check here without a singularity of culture, with an active constituency. Maybe that’s why our city government has broken down. Because you can’t please everyone all the time and you need to say NO and move on. Annex the darned land already! Do something! I am tired of focus groups and consultants and endless discussion. A timeline should be established, and when the end is reached VOTE! Instead of tabling action items to allow for more input, more questions, when everything has already been said, take action. Someone will always be unhappy, but you can’t capitulate to everyone all the time, or nothing will ever get done. Seven new potential liquor store sites again?!? This is, what, the fourth round of consultants? Build the darned thing already, how much more money are we going to spend hemming and hawing?

Thank you, Bruce, for “getting it”. I have to say that most people involved in this post, and I dare say, the entire “process” are so mired in the minutia of council meetings, who said what, the in’s and out’s of plans and insider gossip that the big picture is being lost.

Bruce explained it perfectly. This is about trying to do a little better than we’ve gotten in America up to this point as far as sustainability is concerned. We are entering an age when it will no longer be feasible to not consider the consequences to the landscape (and the vital nutrients it supplies) in our business development decisions. Many people don’t want to wake up to the fact that our resources are being rapidly depleted. And, while this tract of farmland is relatively small when you think in regional terms, this is happening EVERYWHERE EVERY DAY and farmland and open spaces are disappearing.

Northfield can and should take the opportunity to be a leader in sustainable development instead of the same old tired model that is getting us more of what we’ve got: spoiled wetlands, contaminated water, disappearing green space and roads roads roads. Let’s embrace a 21st century model of development that supports the needs of everyone and doesn’t destroy green spaces, wetlands and viable farmland.

In addition, my point about decreasing property values wasn’t about decreasing property values! It was about how this decision has tremendous ripple affects for many, many people other than these three landowners and their immediate neighbors, and that we must consider ALL of the consequences.

Information on pooling, biking, and walking, as well as free coffee from Goodbye Blue Monday, and treats from Just Food will be available.

Randy Rosvold, from Metro Commuter Services will be available to answer all of your vanpooling and ridesharing questions.

This event is being sponsored by the Non-motorized Transportation Task Force, as well as ReNew Northfield.

Stop down and see us this morning!

Less than four months in business, the Final Course Cafe is closing.

Owner Dean Sorenmann confirmed on Thursday that his business, co-owned with his wife, Rose, will close sometime in the near future, though a specific date has not been set.

“(The close) will be permanent,” Sorenmann said. “The reasons are purely business-related.”

It is really too bad. It was a nice place, with great treats, coffee and ice cream.

I loved going there, but when the hours shifted (especially on Sunday mornings), it just didn’t work out. We would already be at work by the 7 AM open, and at church by the 11 AM open on Sundays. We would stop in for the occasional ice cream, but the new hours were difficult.

I am sorry to see them close. It was a tough location, especially for pedestrian traffic.

Good luck to Dean and Rose.

When we moved here 12 years ago, we looked at the house the other George family was selling at the time. Of seven members in each family, there were five common first names. We decided the post office would never figure that one out, so we purchased a different house.

Back to the Native American theme, your wording is excellent. I always appreciate someone who can express their thoughts well in writing. Actually, there were four main languages used in the wars, Navajo, Cherokee, Choctaw and Comanche. Then, there were the different dialects within each language. What a simple, magnificent way to communicate secrets over the not so secret airways. I think it is an excellent example of how cooperation between people groups can accomplish a common goal. I hope we have not lost sight of that in our current times.

Larry: you are correct in saying that the ultimate authority lies with the council vote/ decision, and therefor the council (IMHO) should not worry about what initiatives the B&Cs want to present, as they (Council) will either support or deny support.

All these separations are quite clearly made in the orientation manual for elected officials. In the ten years I’ve been attending council meetings , I have never before heard this come up as a area of concern.

Perusing Commission minutes looking for perceived possible improprieties does not seem to be a wise use of a council person’s time. I would agree with the Mayor and Arnie Nelson that the independence of these citizen Boards and Commissions is important to encourage, as a source of ideas which the council might wish to consider.

Council and Staff have their hands full with the everyday needs of running the city, and could actually spend a lot more time on policy discussions. The citizen Bs&Cs have generally been considered to be a valuable resource.

After all, having the aye or nay vote is pretty much the final word; why discourage thoughtful behavior? To do so sends the wrong message. There have been times when it has been very difficult to get enough people willing to volunteer for these important advisory positions. Let’s not discourage public input, especially when the council can always choose to not accept it.

Talking about controls, when you already have the ultimate power of the vote, is not a principle straight out of the “Age of Enlightenment”.

This is not just about the loss of 530 (or 440, or 335) acres of farm land in Greenvale Township. This is about sprawl development and continual loss of prime farmland every minute to development in the U.S. (see, for example, “2 Farm Acres Lost per Minute, Study Says“). (This has perhaps slowed down as a result of the housing market being in the doldrums, but it has been and remains a huge issue.) It’s about what Northfield values, and how we grow as a community. Just about every one of the community values embodied in the City Council-endorsed Land Use Principles would be compromised by the kind of development envisioned for the land included in this annexation request. Are the councilors bobos, or inattentive?  They did endorse these principles, and they are our elected representatives.

While the actions of Northfield are inconsequential in the global sense, I do think we have a moral obligation to think globally and act locally (as much as you might care to deride such a principle).
Yes, by all means let’s create decent jobs locally and develop a sustainable (economically, environmentally and socially) community. Let’s do it in a better way than this annexation offers.

 You may disagree totally with any and all of these conclusions. That is your right, and I don’t care to (and will not) debate all of these issues ad nauseum here on Locally Grown. I have a life to get on with.

In Northfield Government, we have a defined city limit and only those who live within the city are eligeable to vote on any issues the city faces. What I feel is happening in Northfield City Government is that anyone who comes before the Council and various Boards and Commissions with opinions and letters to the editor or various blogs on the internet are not required to state their voting jurisdication. When many of those non-voters-in-Northfield “stuff the ballot box” with opinions for the Boards and Commissions - and the Boards and Commissions begin to take the opinions as authentic Northfield majority feelings, then the City Council has to step in and make the correct decisions based on the feelings of the electorate.

While the opinions of the townships, Dundas, Lonsdale, Webster, Union Lake and Dennison might be useful to the Northfield Area Chamber of Commerce, they do not belong in the decision process for the Boards and Commissions - who also must be voting citizens of the Northfield City Limits.

So, while the Boards and Commissions may offer some good suggestions to the Council, I want my elected Council to make decisions based on his or her electorate base.

It is very difficult to try and discuss a city employee, or any person, with whom you have widely differing worldviews, in a public forum such as this.
But when it is an important employee of the city, one who has the capability to lead a “willing” council into …well, I must admit I’d have to think longer about how I’d want to characterize that.

The atmosphere in City Hall is so depressing; surely most people know someone with connections to employees that can verify this. It used to be a fun stop on your “small town” errands; the support staff are helpful and friendly. It made you feel good about where you live , just dropping off your water bill!

That’s all very different now; the atmosphere is so changed,and no amount of physical renovation to the building will change it.

Anyone who has looked at Denison Iowa is criticized, as I think you did unfairly, in your comment above, Curt. No one was “digging up dirt”, at least Victor and I were not; we were trying to evaluate the comments put forward in a book by a Pulitzer Prize winning author. If you have no personal observations of the behaviors at the council, toward citizens or the mayor; if you only know what you read in the paper, then you cannot even approach a full circle of vision. Just look at the wording re: the Goodhue county’s investigations in the Roder article on the paper’s website.

The employees at City hall, are by extension of principle, the community’s employees. We are the community; we have a right, you might even say a responsibility, to evaluate the needs of the community, and the efficacy of the employees in filling those needs.

I’ve been a municipal employee; if you don’t like being in that sector the
n you should get into the private sector where your responsibility is NOT to the citizens of a community (Only to the morality of being a citizen of the world.)

I wish anyone well who hopes to live and work in a community that fits their values. I’m not so sure who would want to fit with Norfolk, Nebraska, as Britt describes it … doesn’t sound like home to me.

Back in 2004, I had the opportunity to work with an esteemed “Blue Ribbon Panel” of risk management and governance professionals who went through existing governance documents and gleaned seven common principles that were common those documents. I cited one of them above (Clear Accountability).

To address one question above, professional adminstration plays a highly important role in a sound governance framework. In fact, the first of the seven common governance principles is that an organization must have a Sufficiency of Key Competencies.

In short, this means that the organization needs to have the technically, and administratively, talented people in place to carry out the realization of the organization’s vision.

Because the composition of the Council and the Mayor will change with regularity, you can’t expect these technical skills to be present with consistency among the elected officials. So, in a government, you employ such talents on staff. In business, the parallel is the essential hand-off from the Board of Directors and those who run the company. But, in the case of government, it is the hand-off from the Mayor/Council to the staff, who are led by an Administrator.

This is the part that gets tricky. For all to work well, you need a Mayor who can establish a vision, with effective advice and consent, or lack of override, from the Council, that the staff then works to realize. You need an Administrator that understands that their job is to organize and manage staff to achieve those goals, not to set different goals.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the number two common governance principle identified by the group I mentioned above is that the organization must also have Sufficiency of Resources and Process.

In short, this means that an organization’s budget needs to provide sufficient funding, technology, staffing, etc. and its operations need to provide sufficient process (gathering feedback, checks and balances, review) to enable it to achieve the organization’s vision. It’s fine to have a great vision, but if you don’t have the money or the talent to realize it, the effort bound to disappoint.

None of these three principles clearly argue for a Strong Mayor over a Manager. At this point, though, I would like to keep my comments focused on what elements need to be in place for “good governance” to be possible. Three of those are discussed above. I still promise to elaborate further, later, on why I think that the Strong Mayor is preferred to the City Manager in this model.

And right across the river from the Key? our zoning is bad, but not THAT bad!

Please take me off the list… Thank you very much!

Why do you feel that if, as Ron G. says, the Land use Chapter of the New Comp Plan “is totally inadequate to deal with these needs” (sic) ?

I would feel a lot better if one of the Plan commissioners would ask Mr. O’Connell about the conflicting issues of old/new compplan… the council has said that the owners of the land must say that any development would comply with the NEW plan; Mr. O’Connelll said most emphatically it is being done under the OLD plan.

Sounds like a conflict to me …

Will Mr. O’Connell tell the council that they cannot “deal” with the NEW plan, as it is happening under the OLD plan; he did not do that at the meeting last July when the council agreed to look at this under their specific limiting language that they attached to the motion.

Too many conflicting “facts”…

Colleen HP, I sure hope Rick Estenson, pres. of the EDA, is paying attention to this thread. Having just done the Full Monty routine (photo here) with me and Ross, one would think so.

Colleen B, I’m delighted to have the owner of Fantasy Gifts here. The Northfield Chamber has a web page of business sites available. Two that I’m aware of downtown:

• Victor and Kiffi Summa own a building in the heart of downtown between 3rd and 4th on Division. Carleton College has a bookstore in one of their retail spaces called River City Books. The other is empty/available.
• The Northfield Historical Society just lost a retail space tennant in their building, right on Bridge Square. Contact Exec. Director Hayes Scriven.
  

In the interest of walking a mile in Mr. Roder’s shoes, how do you think he would describe his experiences in Northfield?

I don’t know Mr. Roder. I claim no special knowledge in the controversies surrounding Mr. Roder. But I’ve heard the rumors about his alleged misdeeds. I’m guessing we’ve all heard the rumors. He is the apparent subject of an investigation by the impossibly glacial Goodhue County Attorney. He’s had citizens from Northfield travel to the last place he was employed trying to dig up any kind of dirt they could on him. I’m thinking the feeling in Northfield is that Mr. Roder must be guilty of something, if only they could come up with something.

I’m guessing that if Mr. Roder wrote about Northfield from his perspective, it would be just as depressing as Britt’s description of Norfolk.

If that amount is correct, you would think that the city would put in preventative measures, such as a security camera.

How about a Wireless WI-FI camera…oh yea, wait, no city wide wi-fi yet… nevermind.

A “high quality sex shop” really keeps the customers coming, and they still respect themselves when they get the credit card statement.