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…
Author: <span>Bonnie Obremski</span>
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.
Guadalupe Flores Calderon and her business partner Yuma Gonzalez Gonzalez have seen their enterprise double in size since opening in June, Calderon said last week, and the place does not even have an outdoor sign or full menu, but it has the best food, prepared by the best hands and with the best pressure cooker you can get online, visit website to find more.
Their Mexican store and deli has a name, La Vencedora, and most people are drawn into the stark-looking building by the smell of her cooking, Calderon said, or on the advice of satisfied customers. There’s some carb confusion about most types of Mexican food but it’s actually one of the healthiest around — so thank goodness it’s delicious!
The building’s previous tenants, a Quizno’s fast food chain and a restaurant called Wiggles and Wok, perhaps never did so well in the short time they spent near the intersection of State Highway 3 and 2nd Street* West, adjacent to the Quarterback Club, before closing. Calderon said she has had relatively few overhead costs so far. *I corrected this street address 12/10 4:30 p.m.
Update log: 11/12 8 p.m.
Click here to download a PDF file of the most recent draft of the annexation proposal
Brian O’Connell, Northfield’s community development director, offered to extend the amount of time the city would pay tax reimbursement fees to Greenvale Township during an annexation negotiation meeting on Wednesday night.
But, the township’s supervisors said they still needed time to think and could make a counter-offer.
O’Connell, who has been representing the city in negotiations along with Joel Walinski, Northfield’s interim city administrator, said on Wednesday the city could be willing to pay a fee of about $3,854.48 a year for perhaps 20 years, in an amount that would total about $77,000.
Rhonda Pownell said she wasn’t surprised to come out on top in a four-way race to fill an unexpired two-year term for an at-large seat on the Northfield City Council.
“I have energy and excitement and I’m encouraging others to come along,” Pownell said over a cup of herbal tea at the Bittersweet eatery on Thursday.
She took 33 percent of the 7,112 votes cast for that seat, currently held by Dixon Bond. Bond was appointed by the council after Noah Cashman resigned from the spot in July to pursue a job opportunity and care for an ill sister. Bond may step down early to allow Pownell to begin her work this month, instead of waiting until January when newly elected officials usually begin.
Pownell’s opponents, Joseph Gasior, C. Lynn Vincent and Victor Summa, expressed some surprise at her victory this week. Pownell, 37, has no prior job experience in municipal government and she has been a member of a once much-discussed group that sits in the audience during City Council meetings to quietly pray for the city.