The “Friday Memo,” written by Northfield City Administrator Joel Walinski, department heads, and other City employees, summarizes the staff activities for the week. The Friday memos are published and archived…
Locally Grown (LoGro) Northfield Posts
Friends and family of Rob Schanilec gave him a surprise birthday party at Chapati last night. Rob owns By All Means Graphics and publishes, among other things, the Northfield Entertainment…
I noticed last night that the Contented Cow put up signs pointing to the ‘secret’ public restrooms at the Archer House. Suffering from Hypopistoferone syndrome, I took the opportunity to…
The City of Dundas is hosting its community festival, Celebrate Dundas, (PDF poster) this weekend. See this Northfield.org blog post by Leah Rich for more details.
I caught part of it last year. See my album of 18 photos of some of the downtown activities on Saturday, the large slideshow, or this small slideshow:
I wrote to Shepherd’s Way Farms’ Jodi Olsen Read a couple of weeks ago, asking about the financial status of the farm as this January, 2010 article in Heavy Table…
There are several ways to get Locally Grown content. Feeds Main RSS feed (blog posts) Comments RSS feed Podcast feed (or subscribe through iTunes) Twice weekly updates of blog headlines…
@Ross Currier, my Locally Grown co-host, tweeted on Monday, “As citizens increasingly challenge politics as usual, is it no longer left vs. right, nor faith vs. reason, but individual vs. institution?”
Then Steve Clift @democracy retweeted this from @72prufrocks today, a report titled Listen, Participate, Transform: A social media framework for local government from the UK-based Young Foundation. It’s part of their Local 2.0 project (see the Local 2.0 Blog here), funded by the Department of Communities and Local Government.
The report’s emphasis on the importance of public officials building relationships with citizens, using social media in part, is encouraging and is the best writing I’ve seen thus far on the topic.
In Northfield, this is more than a little timely because:
- Significant budget cuts have to be made soon and the process is receiving some criticism
- Citizens are being asked to support a referendum for new police and fire facilities
- The Northfield City Council has a goal of improving communication with staff, citizen advisory groups and community
From the report’s introduction:
I got this email from Sandy Vesledahl recently. She and Kathy Jasnoch have been using their Locally Grown membership to post regular updates about Prairie’s Edge Humane Society (PEHS) to our membership sideblog… and just as important, engaging with people in conversation attached to their own blog posts:
Hey Griff – Something you might be interested in…I was looking at a report yesterday at the Humane Society that shows where the hits on our website are originating from and something like 35% of them are coming from Locally Grown. (continued)
Ross and pals (New Moon Band) performed at the Contented Cow last night, the opening night of JuneBug 2010 that continues through Saturday. The Cow has added a protective canopy…