I was in Duluth this weekend for the MN Voices Online Unconference (I blogged it here) and had the opportunity to meet Danna MacKenzie, the Cook County information systems director in Grand Marais. She was featured in a Strib article a couple of weeks ago about MN communities who are “lining up for part of the $7.2 billion in federal recovery money designated for broadband projects.” Northfield is about to follow suit, as at Monday’s Council meeting, Northfield’s IT Director Melissa Reeder will ask the Council to appoint a workgroup to pursue a federal stimulus grant application for a Fiber to the Premise (FTTP) project. (continued)
We spent the first half of this week’s show discussing the flood of charges from area prosecutors aimed at 1) a group of eight alleged heroin dealers; 2) Mayor Lee Lansing, and 3) Victor Summa.
The November 6 open house will provide an informative, interactive opportunity for residents to learn more about fiber optics; what the technology can do for an individual, family, business or community; alternative methods of financing the infrastructure; and ownership and service provider scenarios.
In today’s Star Tribune, there is an article about the City of Monticello’s efforts to make itself one of the most wired communities in the country. Apparently, the effort has been complicated by a lawsuit.
According to the city’s attorney, when Monticello asked TDS Telecom to provide fiber-optic connections to every home and business in the community as a means of stimulating economic development and increasing the quality of life, the company refused. The city then held a referendum in which about 75 percent of the voters approved spending $25 million in revenue bonds to create a city-owned system.
TDS filed its lawsuit the day before the revenue bonds were to be issued. The company claims that it was willing to work with the city, but couldn’t come to terms. The lawsuit contends that municipalities shouldn’t be allowed to use revenue bonds to create fiber-optic infrastructure.
There have been several conversations, by both public and private entities, in Northfield over the past few years about making Northfield one of the most wired communities in the world. If I recall correctly, then Council and EDA member Dixon Bond suggested that it could be considered like any other utility, and provided publicly or privately.
It appears, at least to me, that no group stepped up to provide leadership in the effort. Perhaps now we’ll have to wait for the lawsuit to be settled.
We started yammering about the need for Northfield to belly up to the fiber optic bar back in April of 2006 on podcast #15. Since then, we’ve blogged it many times (do a LoGroNo fiber search), often in frustration.
Economic Development Manager Charlene Coulombe-Fiore and the EDA facilitated a field trip to Chaska, MN to talk with their City Administrator and other staff in charge of planning and development. Riding in a Care-Tenders van packed to maximum capacity were EDA members Rick Estenson, Dave Van Wylen, Victor Summa, Marty Benson; City Councilors Jim Pokorney and Scott Davis; Planning Commission members Ron Griffith and myself; and City staff Brian O’Connell, Joel Walinski, Charlene Coulombe-Fiore plus Kathy Felbrugge from the Northfield Chamber. Charlene prepared a comparison of the two communities, based on demographic and economic data, for our review before the trip.
There are many similarities between Northfield and Chaska in terms of size, history, relationship to the metro area, and other factors, as the above comparison demonstrates. There are significant differences, too, but I was interested in having the discussion because Chaska has managed to keep a consistent vision and approach to both planning and economic development for more than a decade, and it shows. Continue reading Learning From Other Communities
He sent me this picture of an installer named Charlie from Jaguar Communications wiring up his no longer ‘secret underground bunker’ last week at his house on Circle Lake. He’s getting the whole package: phone, TV, and internet access. I blogged about local fiber infrasructure and Jaguar Communications last August and April.
In September, the Northfield News ran a story, City gets grant to study fiber optics, about the City of Northfield receiving a $25K matching grant from the Blandin Foundation “to conduct what Information Technology Director Melissa Reeder termed an open network feasibility study… A request for bids will likely go out this fall and take four to six weeks to return.”
Anyone have an update? A search on the city’s web site for the word ‘fiber’ turns up nothing, and I couldn’t find anything on the EDA portion of the site.
We’d been using Charter at home for a few years but I wanted faster upload speeds at an affordable rate. So when we were getting ready to move, I ordered the 6.0 MBps down/3.0 MBps up basic residential service from NorthfieldWiFi ($49.99/mo). When Peter Seebach (who purchased our house) heard about the faster options, he also ordered it. I took the photos below a few weeks ago as we were getting ready to move. Click to enlarge.
Nate Lyon is the owner of NorthfieldWiFi. He and his wife Tabitha Lyon (both on ladder in left photo) moved to town a couple years ago when she was transferred to the local Target store. They bought a house (we’re now neighbors across the pond) and Nate started his business. He now has hundreds of residential and business customers.
The photos above show how unobtrusive the installation is. A small dish on the roof, a black cable tucked out of sight whenever possible, a small ‘modem’ inside the premise.
What the photos don’t show is the great service. The installation on our former house was tricky since the roof is high and steep. In a mixup with Peter over the meaning of the phrase “install in Griff’s office,” Nate cheerfully did a complete reinstall a week later to move the location of the cable coming into the house from the second floor to the first floor. And on the townhouse where we’re living, a squirrel chewed through the cable in the first week and he did a rerouting/repair of our connection. Through it all, he’s been extremely quick to respond via both phone and email. No full disclosure needed, as he’s not a blogger (yet!) and hasn’t told me of any IPO planned.
Yesterday the EDA/City Fiberoptic Task Force met to plan their application for a technology grant from the Blandin Foundation. At the last City Council meeting, the council OK'd matching funds if the City is awarded the grant. The grant's purpose is to fund feasibility studies for deploying open networks (defined as those which "enable multiple, competitive retail providers to use the same network by purchasing access from a wholesale network owner and manager").
While the outcome of both the grant app and the study results are unknown, this is a very positive step for Northfield. Community Development Directory Brian O’Connell, who is not known to be particularly geeky, is a seasoned pro who "gets" why fiberoptic cables are significant for Northfield, and might be more accurately understood as infrastructure rather than as amenity. On a practical level, figures provided to the Task Force indicate that for many businesses in town, the cost for business-level high-speed internet is roughly 30% higher in Northfield for roughly 30% lower speeds/bandwidth compared to the metro area.
Obviously this puts Northfield's businesses at a competitive disadvantage if they rely on the internet for anything other than email and consumer web surfing.
For the long-term view, there are reams of data describing the woeful condition of US broadband compared to all other developed countries, and even many developing ones.
It’s not quite “fiber-to-Griff’s-condo”, but at least the City is moving.
I saw this utility tent across from the library last week and opened the flap. Inside was Steve Poole, one of the employees of the the St. Olaf Telephone Company. (Photo is hazy because I took it through a screened window.) Steve was working on the colleges’ fiber optic cable that runs right down Washington St., from Carleton on its way to St. Olaf. He said the Internet2 connection to the library was ready to be lit. They were just waiting for TPTB to give the go-ahead.
I asked him what he knew about Jaguar Communictions and their plans for FTTP as I’d heard a reliable rumor last week that homeowners in the Circle Lake area were being told that they’d be able to get fiber to their homes later this year. (Jaguar got a $4.6 million USDA Rural Development Loan last year to provide “…varying degrees of voice, data, and video broadband service to more than six thousand residential and business customers” in 8 southern MN counties, including Rice. More info here.) Steve said they’d be deploying it in both Dundas and Northfield soon but as far as he knew, it was strictly residential, whereas the St. Olaf Telephone Company was strictly business.
Now what we need is a Northfield blog/web page/site to keep track of all the fiber and ultra high-speed broadband developments in the area. Anyone? Anyone? Anyone?
I saw this article in the Sunday Strib: In a hurry for ultrafast Internet: Eagan sees radically accelerated access speeds as an economic development tool, and it’s looking for a company willing to provide it. And this quote:
We want to future-proof the city so economic development can continue 20 years down the road,” said Jim Moeller, a member of the city’s Technology Working Group, an advisory panel of the city’s top tech minds created to improve Eagan’s technology policy and improve its competitiveness.
We here at Locally Grown have been yapping about this for a year. Our Feb. 26 and April 28, 2006 podcasts were about it. We’ve blogged about fiber several times. The big public input forum on the Comprehensive Plan is this Tuesday, April 3, from 7 to 9 p.m. at the Northfield Armory (6th and Division Streets). Can everyone remember to put it on your small group butcher paper’s list of what’s needed, puhleeeeeease?
My colleagues, Tracy “Queen of the Dark Fiber” Davis and Griff “Ultra High-Speed to my Condo” Wigley, have been suggesting, loudly and vigorously, for sometime that the key to economic development in Northfield is high-speed internet access. Northfield has the potential for this high-tech utility they say, and we only need to harness the potential in order to lure the companies, and jobs, of the future to our community.
Based on an article in the March 7th Wall Street Journal, there might be another important feature in our potential utility infrastructure that we should harness in order to lure future economic development.
According to “One Tiny Town Becomes Internet Age Power Point”, Microsoft, Yahoo and Intuit are building new computer-data centers in Quincy, Washington. The quality of life of an area with unspoiled natural beauty is one attraction, as is the availability of reasonably priced housing, and the community, thanks to a state program, is making a $100 million investment in a fiber network that certainly is important to these businesses. However, the biggest draw was the two municipally owned dams that generate electricity for the town.
Now, Northfield is further from Seattle than Quincy, and the Cannon River is not quite the Columbia River, but would it be possible to generate sufficient energy to power a “micro business park” on the west side of downtown?
During this week’s show, Ross, Tracy and I touch on miscellaneous Northfield-related issues, including the fiber task force, the Comprehensive Plan, and school district class sizes at the elementary level.
We also got a phone call after the show ended, which just shocked us. (Click photo to enlarge.) Details on that news forthcoming.
We seek your comments and suggestions. Attach a comment to this blog post, use the Contact Us page to send us email, or submit an audio comment. See the show archives for audio of other episodes.
We seek your comments and suggestions. Attach a comment to this blog post, use the Contact Us page to send us email, or submit an audio comment. See the show archives for audio of other episodes.
Our home cable modem died over the weekend and when Robbie stopped at Charter’s office in Lakeville today to get it replaced, she was told that we could upgrade from 5 Mbps to 10 Mbps service for our internet connection. Better yet, especially for content producers like me, upload speeds double from 512 KB to 1.0 Mbps when you upgrade.
Did I upgrade? Is the bear Catholic? Does the Pope do it in the woods?
Of course, this is only 1/10th of the speed that I need, want and deserve since there is a fiber optic river of pure economic gold running through town.So let’s start the drumbeat for FTTx:
At this morning’s EDA meeting at City Hall, members had this item on their agenda (see page 6 of the packet pdf on the Sept. 28 meeting page): “The EDA will review the draft agenda and purpose of the fiber network task force meeting.” Carleton’s Joel Cooper was invited to the table to give an overview. And I was allowed to contribute a couple of comments. I reiterated the points I made in my Lack of fiber in Northfield’s economic diet blog post about this two weeks ago about “Attracting and retaining talent,” especially college students who’ve graduated; and the City of Burnsville’s push for fiber as a means of supporting/developing their medical technology industry. So I’m thrilled with this development and delighted that Locally Grown’s own Tracy Davis is leading the initial charge. You rock, Tracy!
L to R in the photo (click to enlarge): Tracy Davis, Dixon Bond, Joel Cooper, Rick Estenson, Mark Moors, Galen Malecha, Deanna Kuennen.
I know that the City set up a Task Force to look into this, and other communication technologies topics. I’m wondering if anyone can update us on their progress.
I wonder, too. The City Council created a community media task force in May of 2005 and put Councillor Scott Davis in charge of it.
It was to have delivered its report by Oct. 31, 2005. See this blog post I wrote for N.org which includes the full text of the final motion.
We briefly mentioned on our Feb. 10 show that the task force had met once recently but I don’t remember any other discussion about it.
I’m wondering:
What have been all the reasons for the delay in the report? Have those reasons been documented and reported to the Council?
Who’s on the committee?
When and where does the task force meet?
Where on the City’s website are the minutes of the task force?
How much of the $20,000 budget has been spent and for what?
Is the task force suited to study the wi-fi infrastructure issues facing the city? Burnsville, Mpls, St. Paul and now Eden Prairie have all recently launched such task forces. The issues are complex and many. And it’s not just wifi. Wimax and FTTH/FTTP (fiber to the home/premises) need to be examined, too.
What’s the status of the roughly $500k that was sitting in the cable TV fund? The City’s new $60,000+ website was funded from it. I seem to remember that the Council authorized a temporary loan from that fund to pay for something else.
What’s the status of funding for NTV, the “non-profit organization operating the public, education, and government cable access“?
Back in April, we did a show on Northfield’s ultra high-speed broadband infrastructure with guest, Joel Cooper, Carleton’s Director of Information Technology Services. I think we should do another one, as municipal constipation may be setting in.
Preparing for increased convergence of technology and media, Century College in White Bear Lake opened a new technology center featuring lightning-fast connections… He said the school developed the Kopp Center over the past five years with the idea that television will eventually be Internet-based and that as the Internet expands there will be more desktop video, more Internet TV, more bi-directional education, and so on.
sBurnsville wants to make sure inadequate, high-cost Internet doesn’t slow growth, said Council Member Dan Gustafson. “We’re very focused on the medical technologies in Burnsville, and fiber is going to be very important for that industry.”
Apple announced its TV/movie distribution service this week (BW article) following a similar Amazon announcement recently.
So what does all this mean? I think it means that the City of Northfield should examine more closely how ultra high-speed broadband infrastructure can help it achieve two of the three main strategies that are laid out in the recently approved 2006 economic development plan:
1) Diversifying Northfield’s economic base The targeted industries include medical: “Healthcare/medical. Industry activities range from direct patient care to diagnostic services to medical research.” If Burnsville sees the need for fiber for its medical technology industry, shouldn’t Northfield?
3) Attracting and retaining talent Isn’t it likely that the college students we want to retain and others we want to attract would be enticed in part by the benefits offered by our fiber infrastructure? In the Dallas suburb of Keller, in Tampa, and in Huntington Beach, California, Verizon is rolling outFTTP (fiber-to-the-premises) for local customers “… as it can make applications like video chat and conferencing, digital movie downloads, and interactive multi-player games a part of their daily lives.” See Verizon’s FIOS website for more.
It’s time Northfield got serious about these developments. (Blandin is having a conference in October: Next Generation Broadband. City officials should attend.) Nothing has happened with city-wide wi-fi since the NDDC held a forum on it many months ago and I fear nothing is going to happen with fiber. (Yes, I’d like to see fiber brought to Northfield Crossing since I’m going to be living there next spring. Plus, I think it would help them sell more condos in this current real estate downturn.)
I plan to visit an upcoming EDA meeting and make my sentiments known. In the meantime, make your sentiments about this issue known by attaching comments here.
Issues covered in episode #15 of Locally Grown, recorded Friday (April 28): Northfield’s ultra high-speed broadband infrastructure with guest, Joel Cooper, Carleton’s Director of Information Technology Services.
Last year, the colleges brought fiber to their campuses for Internet2. The conduit containing the fiber winds its way through the middle of downtown. Could this infrastructure be made available to businesses, insititutions and residents to purchase, thereby providing Northfield with an economic development opportunity that’s rare for a town its size?
Click the play button to listen (30 minutes), or download the MP3 File, or subscribe to the feed, or subscribe with iTunes. Join the ISSUES discussion list to continue the conversation on these and other issues. Attach a comment to give us feedback. See the Locally Grown page for previous episodes and more on the show.
Peter Seebach (Seebs): California in general has very high rates of “drug use”. And frankly, there is no place in the US that can be meaningfully called “very accepting” to gays. More accepting than others, sure. Why, I...
David Henson: Peter, you have the Internet you do the research. Use San Francisco as a baseline (an accepting place) – gays there have very high rates of depression and drug use.
Peter Seebach (Seebs): Those are fascinating beliefs, but conveniently for us, the research has already been done, and they’re wrong. Legalizing gay marriage has no effect on the observed incidence of homosexuality, and the concept of...
David Henson: John, I understand sexuality to be a continuum and not a hard and discrete fact. I earnestly believe that if gay marriage is approved many more people will experiment with gay sex and some numbers will get AIDS (and depression and...
Peter Seebach (Seebs): Kiffi, I am not sure that is fair. As long as peoples’ condemnation does not translate into hostile action, I am of the general opinion that people have a right to condemn behaviors they disapprove of, whether or not...
Griff Wigley: Good turnout last night for the Cannon Valley Mountain Bike Team meeting at the high school. I’ve blogged a summary with the ppt presentations.
Griff Wigley: Jordan Osterman, the new Sports Editor for the Northfield News, scooped me on Saturday. I’m glad! Northfield high school mountain bike team forming As a club sport, mountain biking would have no official affiliation with either...
Griff Wigley: Good suggestion, Curt. I’ll do that for next week’s blurb. I have been verbally emphasizing the importance of having girls on the team, especially since their points on race days count more than boys’ points. Other...
Curt Benson: Hey Griff, I wonder if you shouldn’t put a bit more emphasis on the idea that you’re recruiting both boys and girls for this team. And that the scores for both the boys and girls make up a team score. I think that in the...
Griff Wigley: It should be noted that this team does not yet exist! So this meeting is for those student-athletes (and their parents) who might be interested in joining this new team.
Griff Wigley: Suzy Rook has a sidebar to today’s Nfld News update on last night’s Council meeting. Excerpt: The city administrator and finance director say they have asked for the information on several occasions, including last month...
john george: Living where we do, it is only a few blocks walk to North Street and a grand view of the sunsets. Also, with our neighbors’ mature white pines & spruce, our covered deck affords outdoor enjoyment with a fair amount of...
Griff Wigley: Props to the newspaper and Suzy Rook for mentioning LoGro twice in the story: Fire Department officials, including Fire Chief Gerry Franek, did not respond to several requests from the News for association financial records or...
Griff Wigley: Posted to Northfield News at 1pm: Ethical questions arise over Northfield Fire Relief Association expenses Donations made to Northfield Fire Relief Association aren’t public dollars, but that hasn’t extinguished city...
Griff Wigley: Curt/Robert, There’s a summary of the Rescue Squad on Page 21 of the 2009 NFD report to the City. It doesn’t mention that there’s a Rescue Squad Association. The last paragraph states: The Northfield Rescue Squad is...
Robert Palmquist: If Hvistendahl’s motivation was to keep the financials from getting known, his submitting a memo like that just really backfired. I agree, why would these financials be such a secret??? And why did the NRSA hire a lawyer to...
Curt Benson: So Hvistendahl has found another place to wet his beak. You ask a good question, “Why is it important that the City not know the Northfield Rescue Squad Association financials?”
Jim Haas: Happens to me a lot. So much that my lovely wife had to coin a term for it: she says I have datelexia.
norman butler: Since coming to my adopted country 16 years ago I have observed, amongst other things, that not putting the day with the date is both common and peculiar to Northfield (MN? USA?).
John Thomas: Just a reminder, advance tickets for Girls Night Out 2012 can be purchased on The Grand’s website at http://www.thegrandnorthfield. com/public-events. Your tickets will then be available at a special “Will Call” at...
Liz Reppe: This is a great place to buy plants! Jeni is very knowledgeable and they are both really helpful. You get great service and plant expertise, but the prices are not higher than other places in town.
bill metz: While most of how Jake is being remembered revolves around, and rightly so, his great and wonderful talent as an artist and teacher and the works of sculpture he has left for our and the next generations enjoyment, I have had the...
Ross Currier: It was an honor for me and the NDDC to work with Jake. His pieces of sculpture in our community send a powerful visual message that Northfield is an Art Town. I still marvel at his clever and creative approach to building social and...
paul krause: The memorial service will be held at 11am. Doors to the Chapel will open at 10am for a chance to visit with family members and friends to share memories of our dear friend. Anyone who would like to view the documentary Harvest (which...
kiffi summa: Come on, Griff… you say you’re “more than a little clueless about about investments” but you “just happened to notice”… and from what you said, were reading analytically, etc etc… Once...
Griff Wigley: I’m more than a little clueless about investments but I noticed on page 14 in the April 24 Council packet that the Fire Relief Association has 85% of its pension portfolio in stocks. Isn’t that a bit risky/aggressive for...
Griff Wigley: Has there been any media reporting on the intergovernmental meeting in Bridgewater Township that was held on April 25 re: the Rural Fire Protection District and the City of Northfield?
Jim Mangan: I noticed this morning that a few of the newly planted trees along South Highway 3 have a pronounced lean. Could it be storm damage?
Ross Currier: It’s great that someone is enhancing the connection between downtown and uptown. I know they coordinated their work with MNDoT, City staff, and the Streetscape Task Force. Uh, raise your trowels in a toast to the Northfield...
Vicki Serreno: I wish I’d known – this is my neighborhood since I left Northfield in 2010. I’d have shown up to support them.
Kathie Galotti: My neighbor and sometimes babysitter Maggie Kennedy appears in this video as well! Go Maggie, and Cliff and Sophie and Parker and everyone else! Well done, guys!
Peter Seebach (Seebs): Heh, we had those when I was in college. Guess we’re making progress, they’re starting years earlier now!
Sandy Vesledahl: Thanks for blogging our garage sale Griff! We are at 2018 Jefferson Rd, Suite 1, thanks to the Jasnoch Family for allowing us to use the space. We will be there until 5:00 today and again from 8-2 on Saturday. We’ve had a...
Bright Spencer: I have an 8 year old dog that has not been neutered, has not reproduced and never been out unleashed except in our yard. It costs nothing to care for your pet properly.
Bright Spencer: To see this makes me so happy! Best of luck to you!
Peter Seebach (Seebs): For what it’s worth, I’m pretty happy with the whole process so far, although we found exciting new things out about the land development code, such as “the rules for calculating how tall a building is for...
Peter Seebach (Seebs): Not a hot tub, a swimming pool. One of those backyard pools you can get at k-mart, and the greenhouse is so we can use it a couple months earlier in spring and later in fall.
Arlen Malecha: I wish more establishments had outdoor seating & dining. Now that our offices (Coldwell Banker South Metro www.CBSouthMetro.com are downtown, I love to see people sitting and dining outside. It is fun to walk up and down...
Sean Hayford O'Leary: I would say the current configuration of Division Street makes me grateful not everyone is doing it. Sidewalk dining brings a lot of livelihood to the street — but I’ll admit that I’ve been occasionally...
Griff Wigley: Rebecca, there are several Northfield eating and drinking establishments that have outdoor dining with tables and chairs, serving alcohol, but not SIDEWALK dining. Downtown ones that come to mind: The Tavern, Chapati, The Cow, Froggy...
Rebecca Bliss: Timely post, Griff -I didn’t realize this. I was just commenting to my husband about how nice it would be to dine al fresco now that the weather is getting warmer. Guess this is another discovery for the new...
Patty Gallivan: MOST Northfield volunteers are waiting for someone who DARES boost a program with evidence of effectiveness to come forward with leadership to actually make a difference with students in our Northfield schools. Make sure to let us...
I was in Duluth this weekend for the MN Voices Online Unconference (I blogged it here) and had the opportunity to meet Danna MacKenzie, the Cook County information systems director in Grand Marais. She was featured in a Strib article a couple of weeks ago about MN communities who are “lining up for part of the $7.2 billion in federal recovery money designated for broadband projects.” Northfield is about to follow suit, as at Monday’s Council meeting, Northfield’s IT Director Melissa Reeder will ask the Council to appoint a workgroup to pursue a federal stimulus grant application for a Fiber to the Premise (FTTP) project. (continued)
We started yammering about the need for Northfield to belly up to the fiber optic bar back in 
Economic Development Manager Charlene Coulombe-Fiore and the EDA facilitated a field trip to 
Yesterday the EDA/City Fiberoptic Task Force met to plan their application for a 
Back in 
Apple announced its TV/movie distribution service this week (
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