Courtesy of www.ci.northfield.mn.us

Melissa Reeder, Northfield’s Information Technology Department manager, has set a goal to begin uploading streaming videos of the City Council meetings to the Internet in 2010, so long as there is money in the budget for the $8,000-$10,000 upgrade.

With streaming videos, image files flow to a video player on a Web site in a continuous stream and play when they arrive. Before streaming technology, a Web user would have to download an entire file before watching a video, which could take a long time. Reeder referenced Burnsville’s Web site as an example of a nearby community that uses streaming video.

Using streaming video on the Northfield’s Web site is one of several goals Reeder is striving to meet in order to improve city services and increase organization of the city’s files.

Melissa Reeder

“Thank goodness the city clerk has been here for as long as she has, otherwise it would be very hard to search for information in our files,” Reeder said, laughing.

Part of the technology upgrade would include digitizing more of the city’s documents and entering them into a new system that makes finding, using and sharing the documents easier.

With streaming videos, Reeder said, the system would allow viewers to use a “clickable” agenda. The user would click the agenda item and the video would instantly begin to play at the appropriate spot.

Before she can upload streaming videos, Reeder needs to help the city change its agreement with PC Solutions Inc., which hosts the city’s Web site, or find a new company to be the host. The current agreement with the Twin Cities-based PC Solutions does not allow streaming videos to appear on the site, she said. The contract can be changed or ended at any time.

In addition to adding features to the city’s Web site, Reeder said she would hope the council would approve a redesign of the entire site. The current site launched in 2005 and has been revised slightly over the years. There are some things that cannot be adjusted without a complete overhaul, however.

“There site we have now is very narrow, so there’s a lot of real estate for information on either side,” Reeder said, referring to the fact that most of the Web site’s content fills the space in the middle of a Web browser window but doesn’t stretch into the side margins.

Reeder is planning on calling other cities nearby to find out how much those governments paid for their Web sites. She is unsure how much Northfield would likely spend. She said she believed money from the cable television franchise fee revenues could help pay for streaming video upgrade. Franchise fee revenue can fund any public expense, but usually funds communications-related expenses. Money from the general fund would likely pay for the document-sharing technology, she said.

Northfield’s public access television station, which airs the City Council meetings, received $30,000 in franchise fee revenue in 2007. In that year, the city collected $183,034 total from franchise fees. Reeder said money would likely continue to go toward the public access station to fund governmental programming even if videos of the meeting are available on the city’s Web site.

“We like to get the information out there using as many different means as possible,” Reeder said.

Next step: How will the City Council tap into the Cable TV Fund, which has about $766,000, in 2009?

I surprised Mayor Mary Rossing in her store Present Perfect this morning with my video camera. I mostly asked her questions that had to do with Monday night’s City Council meeting, which you can read a bit about here. We touched upon her changes in meeting procedure, her tactics on facilitating meetings and her outlook on information exchange in Northfield and on the financial health of the city’s businesses.

*Note 1/7 8:45 a.m.: To clarify, Mary told me over the phone that I could interview her at the store and when I got to the store and asked if I could videotape our interview she gave me her permission. Mary has always been very accessible and I appreciated her willingness to once again speak to me with the camera rolling.

Mayor Mary Rossing’s First Day from Bonnie Obremski on Vimeo.

Note: This is a story in progress. You might want to join the existing conversation on this topic. I’m excited to read about what people have to say! Please email me directly at RepJNorthfield@gmail.com if you would rather not post publicly.

Paul Hager, president and founder of Northfield’s public access television station (NTV), emailed me last week with some more information about the city government’s financial relationship with his non-profit organization. The full text of his email is below, with a comment in brackets from me.

“Maren Swanson, the city attorney, heard of a law change that disallowed a city from having a contract to fund a non-profit, but a city could contract for services from a non-profit. There is a difference. The law must have been passed in 2002 or 2003, Maren could tell you those details.”

[Swanson has told me in the past that she does not answer questions from the general public unless a member of Northfield's city government staff asks her to respond. Members of the city's staff told me the details of financial dealings between the city government and NTV could be found in in the city's files.

I submitted a written request to see any NTV-related documents having to do with contracts or finances. Only one of the documents seemed to refer to the law Hager mentions. That document, dated July 21, 2003, is titled "Resolution 2003-211: A Resolution by the Mayor and the City Council of the City of Northfield, Minnesota, relating to agreement with NTV 26."

The part of the resolution that references a state law reads "It is important that the legal status of NTV 26 as an independent non-profit corporation be confirmed before August 1, 2003, so that it is clear that NTV 26 and the city are not required to comply with the requirements of Minn. Stat. 465.719, which might otherwise apply."

I still have to find out from Hager if he met that confirmation deadline. I could not find "NTV" or "Northfield Television" on the non-profit listings on the Minnesota Secretary of State's Web site.

The resolution shows the City Council unanimously approved an interim financial agreement between the city and NTV in 2003. The interim agreement read "NTV 26 will continue to provide services to the City and the community as it has recently been providing, without further compensation from the City." NTV had typically received anywhere from about $10,000 to $85,000 in the previous 17 years.

The resolution also states city government staff would work toward negotiating "the terms of an on-going contract with NTV" and present it to the council by Oct. 31. The staff requested multiple deadline extensions and the council did not approve any significant changes to the interim agreement until 2005, when NTV's money reserves began to run out. NTV received $3,000 at that time.]

“We had the option to dissolve NTV, become part of the city, or contract for services, which is what we did. By mutual agreement, NTV and the city terminated our agreement (in 2003) to provide public access services and agreed to a new contract (in 2005) to provide access services as an independent contractor.”

“Starting in 1985, our funding had always been somewhat secure, but the possibility remained that the funding by the cable company could evaporate overnight and the city could direct the franchise fee to other purposes and public access would go dark. So I saved money and built up a reserve to fund operations in the event of a funding failure. I built a reserve large enough to buy us time to operate the channel for up to a year during which we would either reorganize or find a new funding source.”

“With a new franchise agreement with Charter Communications and a new agreement with NTV, the city wanted to come up with a new idea for public access. Until that idea was in place, NTV would spend its reserve and not receive any funding from the city. All PEG and franchise fees would go into the city’s cable account.  (See more information about franchise fees and fees for programming for education and government).”

“Susan Hoyt, then city administrator, proposed a new model for access: Hiring a new “cheerleader” of public access to encourage people to produce programming. Susan also contacted the public schools to see if they (the school system) would be interested in taking over public access, but the schools declined.  Susan left her position at the city and the city did not come up with a new idea for access.”

“I submitted my proposal to the City in October 2005.  The council asked Scott Davis to convene a committee (task force) to address the issue of public access, media and my proposal. The history of that committee is documented, I believe, but the item of note for this discussion is that the future of public access was not resolved in the meetings of the committee.”

Discussions among LocallyGrownNorthfield.org visitors blossom and fade, to resurface another time or never again. Representative Journalism Project stories have had a similar cycle so far, but I’d like to insert a step when conversation about a topic begins to slow.

The goal of the step is to combine reader input and reported information into a single piece of writing. That way, a person can better see how the community and I worked together. I’m still figuring out what a final presentation of material would look like and how to make it as useful as possible, and I’m open to ideas from readers.

The latest online discussions surrounding a proposed new municipal liquor store subsided about three weeks ago (There are three discussion threads. “Gleason offers land…” has had the most activity, followed by “EDA talks about trust…” and “Two EDA members score…“).

The subject of whether and where to build a new liquor store is one that has surged intermittently among Northfielders since about 2005. In 2005, the City Council was considering renovating or moving the existing liquor store on the corner of Water and Fifth streets.

In August, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issued two citations to the city after inspecting the store. Those citations indicated an electrical panel was too difficult for workers to access and that the stairway connecting the main floor to a storage room below was dangerous.

A lengthy delay

The existing City Council appears to favor building a new liquor store, but the council has struggled to decide where to build one. The decision was significantly delayed in 2007 when council members suspected Mayor J. Lee Lansing had pushed too hard in favor of putting the store in his son’s building at the south end of the downtown’s main drag. That building was one the family had operated as a hardware store for more than 30 years.

Lansing has denied any wrongdoing. Even so, the City Council voted in December 2007 to ask Lansing to resign, but Lansing refused to step down or relinquish the key to his office in city hall. The mayor and the council continued to work together, but the council had the lock changed on the mayor’s office door to prevent him from working there, and tension mounted.

In April, the Lansing family’s hardware store closed, partly as a result of a separate legal matter, according to an article published in the Northfield News. David Lansing, the mayor’s son, had to move the store as “part of a settlement of a 2006 lawsuit that centered around the hardware store building,” according to the article.

In October, the results of an investigation by Steve Betcher, the Goodhue County attorney, caused the mayor to face five charges of misconduct and two of maintaining a conflict of interest while in office.

In January, new City Council members Betsey Buckheit (Ward 2), Rhonda Pownell (At Large, two-year seat) and Erica Zweifel (Ward 3) will fill three of the council’s six seats, to replace, respectively, Scott Davis, Noah Cashman and Arnie Nelson. Mary Rossing will be the new mayor. The looming turnover has caused some people to believe that decisions about the liquor store should fall to the new council. Other people believe the existing council will be able to make a sound decision by year’s end Jan.4*. Others still are discontented that the council is no longer considering repairing the old store, or getting out of the liquor business altogether.

A new approach

In November, members of the city’s staff attempted to come up with a way to help the City Council decide where to build a new liquor store. They asked City Council to come up with basic criteria. The city staff added a few more requirements to the list and then asked property owners to submit proposals. In December, the council began to consider five proposals that fell into the boundaries of the requests, and stopped considering two proposals that fell beyond those boundaries.

The new owners of the former Lansing hardware store on 618 Division St., who do business as the New Division Development Company, submitted one of the proposals the council is currently considering. In addition, the council is considering a proposal submitted by Mendota Homes, which would build a new liquor store on the same property as The Crossing residential building, owned by Mendota. That proposed site is on the southeast corner of Second Street and State Highway 3. The Q-Block Partners is another corporation that submitted a proposal. The partners would build a store on a property across the street from The Crossing. The Northfield Development Company is proposing to develop a parcel on 500 Water St. into a new store. That property contains the Just Food cooperative grocery store. Daryl Knudsen proposed to build a store at 717 South Water St., where a multiple-family house stands now.

Despite the attempt to aid the council in its decision-making, the request for proposals process the spurred another wave of suspicion over whether someone in the city’s government was trying to be sneaky. Complications began when the city staff devised a score sheet in order to rate how closely each proposal met basic criteria.

Four different groups of people, which staff identified as important players in the proposed new liquor store development, filled out the score sheets. Those groups were: Victor Summa and Steve Engler of the Economic Development Authority’s Infill Committee; city staff, represented by Joel Walinski, interim city administrator, Brian O’Connell, community development director and Steve DeLong, liquor store manager; Northfield Enterprise Center representatives; and Donnelly Development representatives.

Northfielders debated the selection of people, the criteria on the score sheet and the ethics of rating the proposals before giving them to City Council. There was also debate over what parts of the proposals were private and what information could be revealed to the public.

The city staff released the score sheet, with the names of the each of the seven property owners who submitted proposals, in November. Walinski asked one of the city’s attorneys to look up state laws on confidential information regarding requests for proposals. He then publicly posted a memo containing information about the law.

Further complication

Perhaps the most significant debate occurred when Walinski said there were seven proposals and then Summa and Engler said that they had filled out score sheets for only five proposals when it had come time to rate the documents. On Nov. 20, Summa and Engler said city staff did not have score sheets for two of the proposals that had not met the minimum requirements in the request for proposals. Summa and Engler said they did not see the two eliminated proposals.

After Summa and Engler said they had scored only five proposals, Walinski said he could not comment on whether two more proposals had, in fact, been ruled out. That information, he said, was confidential. He added that he believed he had made it clear to Summa and Engler that any information about what they did during the scoring session was confidential.

Walinski’s remarks implied Summa and Engler had breached confidentiality. Still Summa, a retired documentary filmmaker and local political activist, and Engler, a former state senator, said they had not known the number of proposals was confidential, especially since city staff had released some information about the number of proposals and property owners previously.

The debate over the information Summa and Engler shared even seeped over to the Northfield News’ Web site. Jaci Smith, managing editor, responded to Summa’s written note of self-defense, which he posted on LocallyGrownNorthfield.org.

“It seemed to me he violated the intent if not the actual rules of the process,” Smith wrote.

Walinski has since twice refused to publicly clarify why Summa and Engler scored only five of the proposals and whether Summa and Engler breached confidentiality. Instead, Walinski said he would rather focus on the primary goal, which is to help the City Council make a decision about the liquor store.

A side discussion

While discussion about the matter unfolded online, James Gleason, one of the owners of the proposals that didn’t made the cut, came forward to reveal why he believed his family’s idea had been removed from consideration. The property was too far beyond the downtown area that City Council and city staff identified as the prime location for a new liquor store. Gleason argued that the council might not have been wise in eliminating his proposal because he offered the valuable commercial land across from the Target store for just $1. The information fueled a side debate between those who agreed with Gleason and those who suspected the motives behind his offer.

Have we learned?

I began reporting this story after attending an Economic Development Authority meeting during which the issue of the liquor store arose. I was shocked at how quickly suspicion seemed to grow among elected officials, members of city staff and Northfield residents.

I talked with people about what I observed. Some told me “Well, that’s just Northfield” or “Well, that’s just city government.” Some people pointed fingers at groups or individuals. Some blamed the infighting the City Council has experienced of late.

*Corrections indicated with a strike-through of the mistake and replacement text.

• What does this latest development in the plan to build a new liquor store say about Northfield as a community?
• Is there anything we can learn from these discussions?
• How could what we learn help us in the future?
• What is the most important question that has emerged from our discussions and have we answered it?

Note: This is a story in progress. Please see my bulleted questions in green and help me move the story forward. I would like commenters to write the question(s) they are addressing into their post. You might want to join the existing conversation on this topic. I’m excited to read about what people have to say! Please email me directly at RepJNorthfield@gmail.com if you would rather not post publicly.

Three leaders of public access stations in other communities talked to me about what their jobs are like on Friday and I hope the information will reveal some possible ideas for Northfield Television (NTV).

Little Falls is about an hour-and-a-half drive northwest of Northfield and has less than half Northfield’s population. Northfield has nearly 20,000 people, according to city-data.com. Burnsville and Eagan are suburbs of the Twin Cities, about a 40-minute drive north of Northfield, and have a combined population of about 130,000. Chapel Hill, home to the University of North Carolina, has a population of about 50,000. The Little Falls public access station is a for-profit company, the city governments of Burnsville and Eagan run their station and the Chapel Hill station is a non-profit.

Of the three stations, the one in Little Falls operates on the smallest budget—about $90,000 a year, which is money that comes mainly from the cable company’s franchise-fee payments to the city government. Governments can use franchise fee revenues for any public purpose. The 2,800 cable subscribers in Little Falls pay that fee. NTV receives just $30,000 in franchise-fee revenue yearly. I am asking Charter Communications, Northfield’s cable provider, to let me know how many subscribers are in Northfield. Each of the stations is 23 years old and operates two channels.

The $90,000 is still a “shoe-string” budget, Abraham said. He buys used camera equipment on eBay.com and builds his own television sets. The station now has four cameras that stay in the studio and three that members of the public may borrow. NTV has one camcorder to lend. Hager said his station’s camera is used less and less because many people own their own camcorders now.

The Little Falls station has begun to attract more and more participants since Abraham extended an invitation for people to record their own monthly, half-hour show at the station. The mayor, local sports analysts and senior citizens telling stories about the past are the most popular.

Burnsville and Eagan governments consistently disagreed about the management of the station, Hotchkiss said. So, as of this week, the station is splitting to give each city its own programming. That programming, however, is not the kind Hotchkiss would like to see on the station. The government-approved shows can seem one-sided, with documentaries about street-side curbs and bituminous concrete, Hotchkiss said, laughing.

Hotchkiss said he believed the ideal management could be if a cable company franchised with the state instead of individual cities and towns. That model already exists in some states. Hotchkiss believes it would reduce the conflict of interest he sees with government or local cable company management. In addition, he said the fees a cable company pays to support educational and government programming (PEG) should go directly to the public access station instead of routing through the government as it does now.

As for advice that NTV could possibly use, Hotchkiss said he believed it’s important for public access stations to network with other stations through organizations such as the Alliance for Community Media or the Minnesota Cable Communications Association. He also said a station should have plenty of shows that are consistently popular with viewers such as children’s concerts and high school sports in order to “sell” local-government and nationally produced public programming.

In North Carolina, a cable company now franchises at a state level, but Johnston said that has only resulted in less funding for his Chapel Hill station. His budget is $123,000 and he employs two full-time staff members and several part-time workers.

Johnston said that as a result, he has had to find ways to raise additional revenue by charging service and member fees and selling advertisements. He also barters with local businesses by exchanging advertising space on television for, as an example, food for volunteers.

Johnston also collaborates with other non-profits to work toward common educational goals. For example, the station partnered with an arts center to offer classes in media arts. That kind of teamwork has been especially helpful, he said, in gaining the support of local government officials.

Update 12/20 4 p.m.: I corrected several grammatical errors in the story, removing the word “moved” from the first sentence and removing some extra words from the paragraph third from the bottom.

Update 12/22 3 p.m.: Griff Wigley filled me in on the following info: While Northfield’s official 2000 census is 17,000 and recent estimates place it near 20,000, that includes the 5,000+ college students. So for this NTV story, I think a population estimate of 13,000 is more relevant for comparing us to other cities since none of the college students are potential cable subscribers.

*I indicate corrections with a strikethrough mark through the mistake, followed by the correct text.

Greenvale Township meeting on 12/16 from Bonnie Obremski on Vimeo

Brian O’Connell, Northfield community development director, and Joel Walinski, interim city administrator, discussed the remaining details of a proposed annexation agreement with Greenvale Township’s three supervisors for more than an hour on Tuesday night.

In the accompanying video, O’Connell and Walinski are on the left side of the table. Township supervisors Robert Winter, Bernard Budin and Chairman Richard Moore are on the right (Moore is the furthest in the background). The woman at the end of the table is Edith Nelson, the township’s secretary.

The annexation agreement, among other things, indicates how much Northfield would reimburse Greenvale for the property taxes the township will lose when 530 acres of undeveloped farmland goes onto the city’s tax rolls. Northfield is annexing the land to attract industrial developers.

The discussion led to two clarifications in the draft of the agreement. Walinski said he will release a copy of the final draft of the annexation agreement in his memo on Friday. The first clarification, which is shown in the video, addresses Greenvale’s request to prohibit Northfield from annexing any more of the township’s land for a period of five years following the current annexation deal.

O’Connell and Walinski said, in order to keep with the goals of Northfield’s comprehensive plan, they would not prohibit annexation across the next five years, but agreed to a restriction that Greenvale landowners who petition the city for annexation within that period must get written consent from the owners of every neighboring property.

The next clarification had to do with how Northfield will calculate its tax reimbursement payment to Greenvale. The proposed payment plan would reimburse Greenvale in the amount of about $3,854 a year for five years. That figure is the amount of money Greenvale currently collects in taxes on the property. According to the agreement, the reimbursement amount would change year-to-year as the property tax rate changes. In the sixth year, Northfield would pay a “balloon payment” that would equal 20 more years of annual payments. In all, Northfield would pay Greenvale about $96,362, using today’s property tax rate figure.

At Tuesday’s meeting, O’Connell and Walinski said the city would calculate the balloon payment by using a tax rate figure equal to the average of tax rates in the previous five years.

At the end of the meeting, the Northfield and Greenvale representatives agreed to allow their respective lawyers to look at the final draft of the agreement before signing the document. Three Greenvale residents attending the meeting said they were not completely satisfied with the way their supervisors negotiated the annexation agreement. The next meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, Jan. 19 in the Township Hall on Guam Avenue.

Note: This is a story in progress. Please see my bulleted questions in green and help me move the story forward. I would like commenters to write the question(s) they are addressing into their post. You might want to join the existing conversation on this topic. I’m excited to read about what people have to say! Please email me directly at RepJNorthfield@gmail.com if you would rather not post publicly.

Submitted photo

The executive director of the Saint Paul public access network is interested in helping its Northfield counterpart thrive.

“With the number of people who care about the city, and with the educational resources available, you’ve got a lot of potential for doing good work,” Mike Wassenaar, of the Saint Paul Neighborhood Network, told me on Tuesday.

Wassenaar said he learned Northfield Television (NTV) is operating on a bare-bones budget by reading the article about the matter posted on LocallyGrownNorthfield.org. Wassenaar is an individual member of the Alliance for Community Media and he volunteers some of his time to help other public access stations around the nation.

Wassenaar said he wanted to talk to Paul Hager, NTV’s founder and president, and come up with a few ways to improve the station, with or without additional funding

After I talked to Wassenaar, I called Hager, who said he would be willing to speak with Wassenaar about those ideas. Hager agreed that Wassenaar’s offer to help seemed like good news.

As one way to attract more people to visit the station, Wassenaar said he might be able to connect NTV with larger stations in the city suburbs that could donate equipment. Wassenaar said NTV might develop its presence in places around Northfield where people regularly visit to participate in community events, such as a recreational center or at Saint Olaf or Carleton colleges.

In one of our earlier conversations, Hager said it could be difficult asking cable TV customers for more money than they are already paying in subscriber fees to support the station.

Wassenaar said the larger community, not just cable viewers, directly benefit from the services his network provides, however. For example, he said, the network once produced a show about a local clinic, and then gave a copy of the show to the clinic to use as an educational tool. He said the network also provides youth programming.

As another funding source, Wassenaar said, the network has sought grants from other organizations.

• I wonder what organizations or individuals would consider becoming members of NTV?

Wassenaar said he would also be willing to help inform government officials and the general public about what a well-supported public access station can offer to a community.

• What would it take for NTV to thrive in Northfield?

Note 12/17 9:45 a.m.: I corrected the spelling of the word “network” at the bottom of the thirteenth paragraph.

The Representative Journalism Project is nearing its five-month anniversary and my collaborators and I could not thank the people of Northfield enough for all the support they have offered so far.

We’re hoping those supporters might chime in now and let us know what parts of the project seem to be working and what parts still need refinement.

One change I am determined to make this week is in how I introduce stories, document their development and finally present them to readers. I would like to gather more input from a wider spectrum of people, and do more to show them my reporting and writing process, before I produce a finished piece of work.

Now, when I put up a part of a story to introduce a topic, I would like to see readers help me put together the next part of that story for the following day, and so on until finally, I write a feature-length article that one might see in a magazine or newspaper.

In the evolution phase of story development, I want to be more informal about presenting the information I update day-to-day. I want people to know more about how and when I got the information, and what thoughts ran through my head as I received it.

I hope the increased transparency and opportunity for public participation will improve the quality of my stories and distinguish Representative Journalism as a truly different and valuable way for a community to learn about itself.

Please answer the questions below to help us know how we’re doing. If you prefer, email your responses to RepJNorthfield@gmail.com. Thank you!

• What parts of the Representative Journalism Project do you value? What parts don’t work?
• How can we further refine the project into something Northfield citizens value more?
• How could Representative Journalism support itself financially in a community?
  

Note: This is a story in progress. Please see my bulleted questions in green and help me move the story forward. I would like commenters to write the question(s) they are addressing into their post. I’m excited to read about what people have to say! Please email me directly at RepJNorthfield@gmail.com if you would rather not post publicly.

Photo by Josh Rowan. A letter "N," once part of a downtown supermarket sign, now stands for "NTV" in the entryway of the station.

Paul Hager, who is NTV’s founder and president, told me on Thursday that Northfield Community Television (NTV), which is an independent public access station on Channel 12, is operating on a “lights-on” budget these days.

I asked Hager what “lights-on budget” meant. He replied, saying NTV receives $2,500 a month from the franchise-fee revenue sitting in the city’s Cable TV Fund. That amount, which totals $30,000 a year, is enough to pay rent, insurance, utility bills and a modest salary for him to produce some content and air some governmental meetings. He has no employees and about 10 volunteers who regularly produce content for the non-profit organization.

The station is on the second floor of 309 Division Street View Larger Map, which is under the relatively new ownership of JB Enterprises. Hager said he is optimistic the new owners will repair the building very soon. In the past two years, he said, the station has been uncomfortable to use because of heating and cooling problems. But, he said, most people now produce video at home and give him a digital file. The station houses the public access channel’s video equipment. Hager does not keep regular hours at the station, but the public can contact him via NTV’s Web site. Phone: 507-645-6917. Email: NTV@charter.net.

As an example of the kind of programming NTV airs daily, the schedule for Dec. 15 included:

• Northfield UMC Adult Forum: A Talk by Jay Walljasper
• I Cantanti 2003 Concert: A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols
• Twin City RNC Pre-emptive House Raids: What about the Bill of Rights? Produced by Andy Kornkven
• St. John’s Church Service
• Dennis Kucinich Rally at Carleton College on Feb. 21 2004

• I wondered why the city government isn’t allocating as much money to NTV as it used to.
  
• I also wondered what the general public thinks of NTV.
• What does the station bring to the community?
• Could NTV do more, even with its small budget?
• Should the community show more support for the station?
• Have other forms of information sharing, such as the Internet, replaced the need for public access television?

What is the Cable TV Fund?

Cable systems have offered access channels to the public since the 1970s so that people could make programs for others in their own communities, according to the Museum of Broadcast Communications Web site.

I first learned the basics of the Cable TV Fund by reading an article Jaci Smith, managing editor of the Northfield News, wrote on Nov. 28., which had the headline, “Cable fund holds wealth of possibilities.” Smith said city governments collect two kinds of fees from cable television companies and that money flows into the Cable TV Fund. The cable company serving Northfield is Charter Communications. There is currently about $766,000 in the Cable TV Fund.

One kind of fee is called a franchise fee. Time Warner Cable’s Web site gives a brief overview of the rules of the Cable Communications Policy Act of 1984.

“The franchise fee is intended to compensate a community for the cable operator’s use of the local rights-of-way, and to offset any costs associated with administering the local cable franchise,” the Web site reads.

A city government can use the franchise fees to pay for any public service. According to Smith’s article, cable companies pay Northfield about $100,000 a year in franchise fees.

In addition to franchise fees, cable companies also pay a fee that a city government can use only for purposes of public education and government (PEG) programming. Smith reported PEG fees total up to $15,000 a year.

Deb Little, the department manager for the City Clerk’s Office, said she could help me find out how much money in the Cable TV fund is from franchise fees and how much is from PEG fees by the end of the week.

Additionally, I asked what PEG fees are paying for now, if anything. Little said she would have to research that, too.

Kathleen McBride, Northfield’s Financial Director, said most recently, the city government used that money to install a new video recording system in the City Council’s chambers. The work on the nearly $100,000 equipment upgrade finished in 2007.

Why does NTV receive less funding than in the past?

The $30,000 NTV receives a year is less than half what the fund used to provide NTV in the 1990s, Hager told me. The station has been around since the 1985. I wondered about the dramatic decrease and how it had affected the quality of the station, if at all. I don’t own a television and so have never watched the station’s programming.

Scott Davis, a city council member who has worked to define the relationship between city government and the station in the past, told me on Friday that changes in state law led to the decrease in funds. Davis did not have time to explain further because I visited him in his photography studio on Bridge Square and he had a client waiting.

• I did not find a copy of the Minnesota statue online that could apply to the matter. So I am still searching for more information about how the law changed and how it affected contracts between the city government and NTV.

I did have time to ask Davis if there were any other reasons why the city government might have cut NTV’s funding, such as NTV not providing enough of a service in exchange for the money. Davis said that was not the reason.

Hager told me that all he knew about it was that, a few years ago, the cable company and city government did not renew a contract that outlined how much PEG fee and/or franchise fee revenue could go to NTV. For a time, NTV operated without a contract and ran on savings and the city government paid no funds to the station, Hager told me. In 2005, the City Council decided to allot the $30,000 a year in franchise fee revenue to keep the operation running.

Photo by Josh Rowan. Paul Hager stands in one of the station's studios on Monday.

Should we change how public access television works?

Hager had asked for more than renewed funding at that time, however.

He had come up with a four-page proposal to make dramatic changes in the way NTV worked.

The summary bullet points of his proposal are:

• The primary attraction of public access television has been erased by changes in technology. It is time to re-think the model for public access.
• We could capitalize on the digital technology revolution that has created a visual storyteller in every household that has a video camcorder.
• We can and should provide a modest financial incentive to spur production of community programming.
• We must create a higher level of visibility for public access and invite local institutions to take an active role in creating programming.

The proposal sounded to me like an interesting model, not wholly unlike the goals of the Representative Journalism project.

Davis said one of the reasons Hager’s proposal never went into action is because the City Council has a lot to do. When the council decided to renew some funding to the station, it considered the situation fixed for at least a little while, he said. Davis compared it to patching a crack in a window. The window still isn’t a good window, Davis said, but you can live with it.

In addition, Davis said Hager’s proposal relied a lot on individuals who would be willing to work as videographers in exchange for a small amount of grant money and there might not be enough people willing to perform such work.
I could see his point, but I’m wondering how many other people would feel the same way.

Davis said the new members of City Council and the new mayor might revisit the city’s relationship with NTV in the coming years, but the struggling economy might now present another obstacle to further funding or attention.

• At that, I wondered how many people might deem the station undeserving of any funds in the near future. In tough times, some people might think that $30,000 a year could be better spent on something else.

As a journalist, I shuddered at the thought of another of America’s independent, information-distribution services closing down. However, I also believe that those services do have to learn how to better compete for attention in order to survive.

I put in a request for data at city hall on Friday to take a look at all the contracts the city has had with NTV over the years. I plan to share that information here so we can better see what kind of service NTV has provided to Northfield over the years.

Should the city government control public access television?

Smith quoted McBride in her article about the Cable TV fund, saying, “McBride said she recommends using only part of the money so that if the city does decide to get into the public access broadcasting business it has the startup funds to do so,” Smith wrote.

I asked McBride via email to expand on what Smith reported.

McBride wrote, “It would be a Council decision - and while I’m not close to the process (at all!) - I do think there is interest in starting a public access function - where we would buy the equipment and hire a company or employees to run it.”

I haven’t heard any of the City Council’s discussions on the matter, but I’m confused about why the council would consider making city workers take on the public access station responsibilities. I imagine there could be cost savings but I’m not sure how. I wonder, too, if the city would cease to fund NTV altogether, and what would become of the station in that situation?

Hager pointed out that if the city government controlled the station, and someone produced something controversial, the government would then have control over when to air the program (perhaps during a time when no one would watch it). Right now, Hager has ultimate control of the programming schedule.

But are people producing content that challenges the government, or any other institution for that matter? Would they if Hager’s proposed model were adopted?

Update: 12/15 7 p.m: I forgot to put Kathleen McBride’s full name and title when I first referenced her in the story, so I fixed it.

Also, I wanted to note that you can still borrow a camcorder and tripod from NTV and use the station’s editing equipment to produce video content for the station.

I found this photograph of Peterson though an Internet search. When I visited him, he had a crew cut and his hair was blonder. He had no lip ring or earrings.

I visited Travis Roy “Roarke” Peterson, 19, of Northfield, in the Rice County jail at 8 a.m. on Thursday.

Peterson is facing one first-degree charge of selling heroin, two second-degree charges of selling and one count of possessing heroin.

Peterson said he probably could not say much about his case, and he kept that resolve throughout our conversation.

The Representative Journalism Project founded in Northfield, Minn. could see more nationwide support after project collaborators Bonnie Obremski and Bill Densmore facilitated a discussion about the initiative last week at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Mo. The noontime “Lunchstorm” session was a part of a three-day conference centered around another experimental project called Information Valet, which Densmore is working on at the university.

The video below is an edited version of the hour-long talk during which media professionals from around the nation and students from the university’s top-ranked journalism school grilled Obremski and Densmore about RepJ’s progress and future plans.

One of the only unanswered questions was how the RepJ project would gain financial support from community members who are willing to invest in the next generation of community journalism. However, the founders of the Banyan Project and Kachingle.com made some interesting suggestions.

Tom Stites of the Banyan Project suggested a co-op style funding method, or to simply “put out the tip jar” to see what would happen. Kachingle, founder Cynthia Typaldos explained, would be a way for Web site owners everywhere to easily solicit funds from fans. In essence, “Kachinglers” sign up to donate $5 per month toward the sites they would like to support most. To distribute some of the $5 to a site, the Kachingler pushes the Kachingle button installed on the site. Typaldos would like to launch Kachingle in January.

In the video, the questions asked appear in type at the bottom of the screen while Obremski and Densmore answer them.

Mizzou “Lunchstorm” discussion on Dec. 5, 2008 from Bonnie Obremski on Vimeo.

(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 State Highway 3 for just $1. Her son, James Gleason, also of Oak Street, helped his mother with the proposal and he said he wants the general public to know about the offer.

“Our family has been in Northfield forever and we made the offer because we’d just really like to get ‘er done,” James Gleason said on Monday.

The site, which has been for sale for about six years, does not appear to fulfill at least one of the minimum requirements set by the City Council and members of the city’s staff in September.

That requirement is that the property lie “in an area which is currently or proposed to be zoned C-1 or C-2 in the City of Northfield zoning code or located in a area zoned C3 within one quarter mile of an area zoned C-1 or C-2.” The property is zoned as C-3, which is a “gateway commercial district” and is nearly a mile* from the nearest C-2 district, which is the “downtown fringe district.” C-1 is the “downtown district.” (*I checked the zoning maps online again and it appears the site would actually be a little more than a mile from a C-2 district).

James Gleason said he learned by reading a Representative Journalism story online that officials began to consider five proposals via a scoring process two weeks ago and his was not among them. Gleason said city officials had yet to tell him whether his proposal had been rejected or to return his $1,000 “good faith” deposit.

Brian O’Connell, Northfield’s Community Development Director, said the City Council would still review Gleason’s proposal and that the proposal was still one of seven listed on a scoresheet that the council and staff designed to collect input from four knowledgeable groups of people.

The members of one of the groups, however, said on Monday that they scored only five proposals two weeks ago. Steve Engler and Victor Summa said Gleason’s proposal and another submitted by A.K. Kayoum were not on the list because staff members took them off. Engler and Summa represented the Economic Development Authority’s Infill Committee. Joel Walinski, interim city administrator, said he could not comment about how many proposals were on the scoresheets that Engler and Summa completed.

Gleason said he would not want to ask the City Council to make any decision that would result in a detriment to the city’s downtown. He said he believed building a new liquor store on the site his family proposed could be the most lucrative for the city.

Councilor Scott Davis, who represents the City Council at Economic Development Authority meetings along with Councilor James Pokorney, did not return a phone call or email message about the matter by Tuesday morning.

Update 12/2 11:30 a.m.: Griff Wigley uploaded a clearer version of the property map in the first comment below this story.

The images below show the five sites the Economic Development Authority’s Infill Committee rated two weeks ago. The first shows a lot on Water Street with two buildings, the second shows a lot on the “Q-Block” and a lot on the property across the street from the “Q-Block” where The Crossing residential building lies, the third building is on Division Street, the final photo shows a residential lot on the southern end of Water Street (Note 12/2 12 p.m.: the final photo is of a residence built in a Downtown Fringe district).

Photo by Josh Rowan Students displayed "Elephant in the Room" in Buntrock Commons to draw attention to alcohol consumption on the "dry" campus.

“We have a pretty articulated policy that alcohol is not allowed on campus, and that applies to faculty and students,” Greg Kneser, vice president and dean of students, said last week, “That doesn’t mean everybody abides by it.”

Kneser said consequences for breaking the policy can range from the offender to pay $25 to complete a 90-minute program called “My Student Body” to expulsion, after multiple offenses. He said administrators also address a student’s behavior if Northfield residents or police catch him or her doing something inappropriate off campus.

Kneser said he does not believe the amount of problems associated with Saint Olaf students drinking on or off campus has changed in the 20 years he has worked at the school.

He guessed that the only change might exist in the attitude students and parents have about alcohol. They could be less conservative today, he said. So he believed there could be a greater percentage of underage students now who have at least tried alcohol.

The one requirement that seems to directly address “concern from some neighbors about the conduct of students living in residential neighborhoods,” reads, “Renters and Police must be given an answered phone number of the landlord that will be answered by a person able to address problems and complaints.”

Northfield Police Chief Mark Taylor compiled lists of of the number and nature of calls to Saint Olaf and Carleton College campuses that officers responded to in the past few months. According to the data tables, police responded to seven instances of drug “activity,” one instance of drunkenness, and one loud party between April and November at Carleton College and no apparently alcohol-related calls to St. Olaf in that same period of time.

Taylor said, however, that the numbers do not say how many calls involving college students police responded to at off-campus locations.

He said he would like to see the City Council support greater effort to regulate problems associated with late-night drunkenness among those students and others who imbibe and then create a public disturbance by making loud noise or destroying property.

Kneser said that, in his experience, there is a problem with the belief that a person can “drink responsibly” very easily. After two or three drinks, he said, a person’s judgment has already grown impaired. He also said, statistically, many students have a perception that their friends drink more than they do, and so a student will over-indulge to meet that perceived high expectation.

In the words of the student columnist, Julia Aaker, “We talked a lot about alcohol, a lot about what how much we consumed, but we never really communicated. I was drinking so much because I didn’t know how to communicate that I didn’t want to drink. Even if I had said, ‘I’m not going to drink tonight,’ my words would not have been understood.”

Police charts for Carleton College:

no_-_total_cad_calls_for_address-1

no_-_total_cad_calls_for_address-4

Charts for Saint Olaf:

no_-_total_cad_calls_for_address

no_-_total_cad_calls_for_address-2

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 at 600 Division St. from April until Sept. 30, 2008.

“The outdoor sales persisted after that date, and we worked with David and his father Mayor Lee Lansing, who was given power-of-attorney to discuss the matter with the city, to halt the sales and remove the temporary structure,” Olson said. “The Lansings halted the sales they had previously undertaken, but did not remove the temporary structure. The matter was turned over to the city’s prosecuting attorney, Tim Morisette. Mr. Morisette has given the Lansings until Wednesday to remove the structure.

The Mayor did not return a message to his cell phone by 4:30 p.m.

Update 11/24 6 p.m.: I added a comma after Mr. Olson’s title and the word “that” in the first sentence of the second paragraph to correct the sentence structure. I changed “Lansing’s” to “Lansings’” to correct the grammar. Mr. Olson wrote “Lansing’s” in his email response to me originally.

Update 11/25 1 p.m. I apologize for yet another grammatical mix-up! Lansings’ should be Lansings.

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 authority’s director, also scored the proposals. Last week, officials expected to score seven proposals, but two ultimately did not meet the requirements listed in the request for proposals document.

Late on Thursday, Engler said he found the scoring process much simpler than he anticipated. City Councilor James Pokorney said on Friday the score sheets are just one tool the City Council expects to use in making its decision about which proposal is best.

The four members of the Economic Development Authority met at 7:30 a.m. Thursday to talk about which members would fill out the score sheets. Originally, members Rick Estenson and Marty Benson had volunteered to fill out the sheets, since they are also members of an EDA subcommittee called the infill development committee.

However, the city’s attorney determined Estenson and Benson had a conflict of interest in the matter because each works for one of the city’s banks. Those banks have a financial interest in some of the proposed liquor store sites. The proposed locations are: 618 Division Street; the property containing The Crossing residential building off State Highway 3; the “Q-Block” off Highway 3; the southwest corner of Fifth and Water Streets; and 717 South Water Street.

Three other groups are expected to fill out score sheets. There is a city staff group comprising Joel Walinski, interim city administrator; Brian O’Connell, community development director; and Steve DeLong, liquor store manager. Donnelly Development representatives form a second group and Northfield Enterprise Center representatives form a third.

During the Economic Development Authority’s morning meeting, Engler and Summa asked some questions about the proposal scoring process.

Engler asked if there would be someone present during the scoring meeting who could answer any questions he had about the criteria. He said, for example, he had little knowledge of how to judge the quality of stormwater systems.

Gunderson said he believed Joel Walinski could attend the meeting and answer questions. Engler said later Walinski did not attend but DeLong did and he provided some information.

Estenson told Engler if he felt he could not give a good opinion on any particular item, he should simply not give an opinion.

Summa asked if Donnelly Development representatives and DeLong could also present conflicts of interest.

The request for proposals document reads: “The City of Northfield has retained Donnelly Development to provide real estate services throughout the municipal liquor store development process. Accordingly, please provide for a seller-paid fee equal to three percent of the purchase price of the land and/or a $4 per square foot fee on a lease of 10 years. For lease proposals greater or less than a 10-year term, please adjust on a prorated basis.”

Victor said DeLong could also conceivably be biased since he has to work in the new liquor store. Gunderson said Walinski could have an answer to that question. However, Walinski was out of his office.

On Friday, O’Connell said staff did not ask the city’s attorney if Donnelly and DeLong could present a conflict.

“We did not see it as a problem,” he said. “The fee paid to Donnellly is to help us negotiate with the developer after we select who it is we want to go with. We’re going to do decide on a particular development project based on our criteria. As for Steve DeLong, he’s a salaried professional and he’s not going to be paid more or less based on the site we select.”

Update 12/12 1 p.m.: Here is the Request for Proposals document in PDF file format, city-liq-rfp-final-9-24-08-with-changes-1

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.

O’Connell and Joel Walinski, Northfield’s interim city administrator, offered a new payment plan to reimburse Greenvale for the property taxes it will lose when 530 acres of undeveloped farmland goes onto the city’s tax rolls. Northfield would like to attract industrial developers to the site.

The proposed payment plan would reimburse Greenvale in the amount of about $3,854 a year for five years. That figure is the amount of money Greenvale currently collects in taxes on the property. In the sixth year, Northfield would pay a “balloon payment” that would equal about 20 more years of annual payments. In all, Northfield would pay Greenvale about $96,362, using today’s property tax rate figure.

That amount is significantly higher than the $7,708 figure O’Connell and Walinski presented at first, which would have met the state minimum requirement of reimbursing a township for two years.

Greenvale’s three supervisors appeared happy with the offer, but said they would have to investigate if the township would be allowed by law to accept such a large lump sum of money. They also were unsure if they would be able to invest the money as they pleased.
“We might be required to use it to lower taxes,” Supervisor Robert Winter said.

O’Connell and Walinski said they would compose a new draft of the agreement while the township found out about its ability to receive large payments. Walinski said he hoped to see the annexation process complete in February. City Council will have final say on the terms of the agreement.

Northfield Mayor Joseph Lee Lansing will attend his omnibus hearing on Dec. 17 at 1:30 p.m. in Rice County District Court in Faribault. District Court Judge Warren E. Litynski set the date Wednesday afternoon after an arraignment that lasted about 10 minutes. The mayor is facing five charges of misconduct by a public official and two charges of conflict of interest by a public official. Lansing, casually dressed in jeans and a sweater, appeared in good spirits during his arraignment hearing, and chatted with people before and afterward. His attorney is Tom Dunnwald.

Main Street Moravian Church meeting on drug use in Northfield from Bonnie Obremski on Vimeo.

Note: This is an edited video of the question and answer portion of Sunday’s meeting at the Main Street Moravian Church. I edited out images of the undercover sheriff’s deputy and any audience member. I also shortened the length of some questions and stretches of silence. For a complete, audio-only recording of the meeting, follow this link.

Questions remaining:

Are the people of Northfield doing enough to help get drug users through recovery?

Why did this problem blossom in Northfield in particular?

Where does Northfield stand on a time line stretching between “higher amount of drug users” to “very few drug users?” When does that time line begin? When might it end?

An Iraqi child participates in the War Kids Relief project

A Minnesota-based non-profit is spending the next few months partnering children in New York City, Washington D.C., and Northfield with children in Iraq in an effort to build closer ties between the nations.

“We thought about Minneapolis, but decided on Northfield,” said Pam Middleton, executive director of War Kids Relief, which is a program of the Children’s Culture Connection non-profit.

Middleton will help select about two dozen eighth- and ninth-grade students across Northfield to participate. Each child needs to submit an application in school to be considered.

“Northfield is Middle America, but it’s also a special place. The citizens here are so engaged,” she said.

The children Middleton helps select will attend at least three afternoon gatherings in January, February and March at the Northfield Public Library. There, War Kids Relief organizers will help each Northfield teen begin a pen-pal kind of relationship with an Iraqi child. The youth will exchange letters, artwork and videos. The Northfield children will learn about Iraqi culture by hearing stories, playing Iraqi games and eating samples of the region’s food.

Photo by Josh Rowan From left: Dina Fesler, president and founder of Children Culture Connection; Sandra Hakim; Pam Middleton; and Charles London, author of One Day the Soldiers Came: Voices of Children in War, pose at the War Kids Relief program kickoff event last week.

The mission of Children’s Culture Connection is to “help U.S. kids develop an appreciation for other cultures, to foster cultural awareness within our own multiracial communities and to raise money and awareness to help at-risk children throughout the world,” according to the organization’s Web site.

Examples of the artwork and writing of the participating Iraqi children are hanging in the James Gang Hideaway Coffeehouse and Winebar on Division Street. The first War Kids Relief library meeting is scheduled for Saturday, Jan. 10 from 12:30 to 2:30 p.m.

Update 11/18 11:30 a.m.: I edited a few grammatical errors this moring and took out the phrase “warring nations” in reference to the U.S. and Iraq.

A discussion about the role of Northfield’s City Council versus the city’s paid staff in decision-making emerged during the Economic Development Authority meeting on Thursday morning.

The topic came up when the board members addressed the process of building a new municipal liquor store to replace the old one on Fifth Street.

“This is a political hot potato,” Steve Engler, who joined the development authority in September, said after the meeting. “I was trying to clarify who was making decisions.”

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has told the city the liquor store cannot continue to operate without significant renovation. Facing an ultimatum, the council decided in August that constructing a new store would probably be more cost-effective than making repairs. So, it asked city staff to issue a request for proposals for a new store.

In the past, controversy surrounded the decision to build anew when Mayor Lee Lansing allegedly attempted to convince the council to approve construction at a location that could have resulted in his financial benefit.

“You said this is politically charged; it shouldn’t be, it’s a liquor store,” James Pokorney, city councilor, told Engler at the meeting.

Pokorney added later that the decision might have been political at one time if the mayor had indeed done something inappropriate, but it should not be any longer.

Joel Walinski, interim city administrator, told the members of the development authority about the status of the decision to build a new liquor store. The city’s