NDDC gets funding
Council voted on the Northfield Downtown Development Corporation consulting contract this week. City Administrator Ben Martig said the general scope of services changed. He said, “the agreement’s similar but different from the past. I would say that the general scope of services changed in a way that does focus on trying to better align our community resources so there’s not duplication going on”. In other words more communication with the Chamber of Commerce and the CVB
related to community calendars, marketing materials and other areas. The NDDC is also looking at a more formal process with a national organization and how they could become more self sufficient. Martig says they’ll be making a concerted effort to also get the EDA more involved with the group. In what’s been a standard 4/3 vote, Council chose to put $17,500 into the 2017 budget for the NDDC. Graham, DeLong and Ludescher voted no. They’ve consistently voted against giving funds to the organization as they believe there’s been no real measurable benefit for some time. The organization is currently looking for a new Executive Director since the exit of Scot Covey.
Martig “exceeds expectations”
Northfield City Council wants the new Administrator to stick around. They held his 6 month review in closed session Tuesday night. Mayor Graham said in the open meeting that Ben Martig exceeded expectations and they bumped his salary to $129,261. He’s feeling good about it! He said there are new opportunities ahead. They’ll be spending time and energy on a workplan/strategic plan with the new council, transitioning some of the governance. They may look at changing some things or not. Martig’s also been spending time doing a lot of ground work with economic development.
Life Plan is focus of ALC and Community Services exemplifies partnership
Northfield’s Area Learning Center and Community Services presented their Improvement Plans to the School Board this week. Superintendent Dr. Matt Hillmann said one of the ALC’s top priorities is attendance which begets academic improvement. A key area of focus is making sure they have a Life Plan for after high school – it helps kids detail a plan for college or military or whatever. Hillmann says this gives the kids a positive narrative and helps them visualize success. The Community Services division focuses on early learning programs and recreation. Hillmann said the numbers show 40,000 people participated in some kind of community educational opportunity and around 120,000 accessed the facilities. He said those are impressive numbers. The Community service division exemplifies the district’s commitment to working with the Community with the variety of opportunities for learning and recreation.
GiveMN will pay processing fee while site was down – Nfld Middle School gets golden ticket
The GiveMN site, once again, crashed on Give to the Max Day. Users were sent to a back up site that wouldn’t allow them to pay the process fee of 6.9{b5761be34e80a16b6d0e4dabc1869c131a263f96a745c82bebdd3b8a4330bfa9}. GiveMN announced that they will pay the fee themselves for the time from 8:15am to 3:45pm wherein $3.5 mil was raised. They also added $50,000 for golden tickets. The Northfield Middle School won a $1,000 ticket. Prairies Edge Humane Society’s Sandy Vesledahl reports they raised nearly $12,000. She said some folks didn’t trust the site, she said, and gave them cash at the Spayghetti dinner last night, which was well attended. Overall, Minnesotans gave over $20 million to non-profits yesterday.
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