December 7, 2008 – 11:33 am
Thanks to a sharp-eyed reader for alerting me to this Dec 2 Stillwater Gazette story: Things get ugly in Lake Elmo; shouting match prematurely ends Monday night’s city council meeting
For the second time is as many meetings, it took a motion to adjourn to break up a shouting match between Lake Elmo City Council [...]
December 6, 2008 – 7:40 am
Kathy Cooper, Rice County Safe Communities, alerted me to the new DWI task force, called the MOD-Squad (“Modifying Driving Behavior”).
Griff, as you probably remember from last year, Rice County was number 11 of the top 15 deadliest counties for alcohol-related deaths and injuries. Unfortunately, we are on the list again… There will be a briefing [...]
December 4, 2008 – 7:41 am
Kathleen ‘Mac’ McBride, the City of Northfield’s Finance Director, presented a draft of the 2009 budget at a public hearing during Monday’s Council meeting. She emailed me her Budget Handout (one page PDF) as well as her Powerpoint presentation of the budget (25 page PDF).
See the Nfld News article titled Hearing on [...]
December 4, 2008 – 6:57 am
It was just us co-hosts yesterday, wasting valuable airtime on community fluff before launching into arguments about Tracy’s neighborhood association blog post, followed by a (um) very polite discussion (again) about the liquor store land proposals.
Click play to listen. 30 minutes. You can also subscribe to the podcast feed, or subscribe directly with iTunes.
Our radio [...]
December 2, 2008 – 8:35 am
(Update log 12/2 11:30 a.m.) One Northfield resident is concerned the City Council could dismiss a good opportunity for a new liquor store location because it would lie beyond the area specified in September’s request for proposals.
Virginia Gleason of Oak Street proposed to sell the city a nearly 50,000-square-foot vacant lot across from Target on [...]
December 1, 2008 – 7:51 am
Evidently with the Thanksgiving Holiday weekend, no Friday Memo was published last week by City Hall/Joel Walinski.
I got a City Commons monthly newsletter in the mail recently but I don’t see the Nov. issue online in the listing of 2008 What’s New documents. [Sigh]
NOTE! There’s a City Council meeting tonight.
November 28, 2008 – 7:27 pm
Our guest this week: Erica Zweifel, new Councilor for the City of Northfield in Ward 3. Tracy was out of town.
Besides grilling her on her recent junket to Switzerland, we talked city issues: the liquor store, the CIP, the all-female gathering at Tracy’s, and miscellaneous fluff.
Click play to listen. 30 minutes. You can [...]
November 25, 2008 – 8:49 am
A year ago, the first Wayfinding sign appeared on 4th St. between Division and Washington. Then it disappeared for a while, coming back in early October.
Left: Now it’s moved to the intersection of 4th and Division on Bridge Square, next to Community Resource Bank’s downtown location. Where will it be next?
Right: there’s a [...]
November 24, 2008 – 4:20 pm
City officials have ordered David Lansing to dismantle a structure that houses Christmas trees on the Division Street property where his family operates a decorative plant-selling business.
Dan Olson, staff liaison to the Planning Commission, said in an email on Monday that David Lansing had a permit for outdoor sales and for a temporary greenhouse-type structure [...]
November 24, 2008 – 8:27 am
The Friday Memo, written by interim Northfield City Administrator Joel Walinski and many of the department directors, managers, and supervisors, summarizes many of the staff activities for the week.
Although it’s directed to the mayor and city council, it’s helpful for citizens to see what’s going, too. The Friday memos are published and archived [...]
November 23, 2008 – 11:55 am
Logan Nash, a student in Doug McGill’s journalism class at Carleton College, has written a piece titled In the Obama-Era, Plans Revive for a Northfield-Twin Cities Rail Line (PDF - full text below).
See the Dan Patch commuter rail line/corridor web page on MNDOT’s site for more info, as well as the Northstar [...]
November 21, 2008 – 3:12 pm
Victor Summa and Steve Engler, members of the Northfield Economic Development Authority (EDA), reviewed five municipal liquor store proposals at 3 p.m. on Thursday and scored them on 28 criteria, which were devised by City Council and city staff.
Click play to listen to the EDA’s discussion on the liquor store proposals. 23 minutes.
Jody Gunderson, the [...]
November 20, 2008 – 2:22 pm
Greenvale Township’s supervisors and Northfield city officials drew closer to reaching an agreement at the end of a fifth annexation negotiation meeting at the township hall on Tuesday night.
“I think we’re looking at a win-win,” Brian O’Connell, Northfield’s community development director, said after the meeting.
O’Connell and Joel Walinski, Northfield’s interim city administrator, offered a [...]
Locally Grown has been chosen to test an innovative project called Representative Journalism (RepJ). Bonnie Obremski is the RepJ reporter/journalist currently assigned to Northfield.
RepJ stories by Bonnie Obremski