Safety Center Task Force recommendations due soon

In City Administrator Joel Walinski’s Friday Memo last week, he noted that the “Safety Center Task Force toured several public facilities last week.”  Recommendations from the Task Force (members listed below) are expected to come before the city council in April or May 2009. Financing and location are not the only issues; size and the pros and cons for separate facilities for police and fire have to be looked at, too. So let the discussion begin. Meanwhile, allow me to grumble about the City’s use of their web site for the Safety Center Task Force. (continued)

There are two Safety Center Task Force pages on the City’s web site: this one has a schedule of meetings; this one has agendas; both have links to the Jan. 12 Space Needs Analysis Report (23 page PDF of a Powerpoint, linked to two different PDF’s here and here).

Neither Task Force page has a list of members. For that, one has to search Google (the city’s search tool won’t find it) and the minutes of the Feb. 2 Council meeting lists the names approved by the Council. More helpful was the Nfld News article on Feb. 4, 2009: 11 named to Safety Center Task Force. See also their Jan. 30, 2009 article: City OKS forming safety center task force.

For convenience, here are the Safety Center Task Force members, thanks to Suzi Rook’s Northfield News article:

councilors Jon Denison and Kris Vohs, Police Chief Mark Taylor, Fire Chief Gerry Franek, Planning Commission member Greg Colby, Jerry Anderson (member of the Northfield Rural Fire Association and former Northfield mayor), Andy Yurek (director of Northfield Ambulance Service), Ray Cox (former state representative, school board member and owner, Northfield Construction Company), David Hvistendahl (attorney and businessman with knowledge of building reuse), Fred Rogers (vice president and treasurer, Carleton College) and Janelle Teppen (Northfield resident, assistant city administrator, city of Inver Grove Heights, and staff liaison to its safety center task force).