Rice County gets kudos for safe driving
Over the Thanksgiving holiday, Rice County Sheriff Troy Dunn, said they only had 1 DWI arrest. He said “it’s great”. In the past they’ve had 3 or 4 in a night. Extra DWI enforcement is in place through December 30th. Dunn reminds everyone that there were 2 head on collisions recently, neither involved alcohol but two people are dead. It’s important to stay alert always and that can mean watching the other drivers who may be texting, facebooking, phoning or otherwise distracted.
Nfld Council holds hearings on levies and much more
The Northfield Council meets tonight after a few weeks off. It’s a full agenda with 13 separate items on the Consent Agenda. Those could all be approved at once unless a council member requests they be moved to the Regular agenda for discussion. There will be Public Hearings on the HRA, EDA and City levies as well as Capital Equipment, Capital Improvement and Budget for 2017. Council is to consider a loan to Presidential Commons TIF district of $15,000 to be taken from TIF 4. The Presidential Commons project was for 84 townhomes, 75 of the units were to be made into affordable housing with income limits for the buyers. The district is not producing enough revenue to cover its bond payments. This has been going on for several years. Council will hold a couple of discussions and then close the meeting to talk about property acquisition for the Mill Towns Trail. Mayor Dana Graham will be back in studio tomorrow morning at 7:20 with a full recap.
NH&C earns Excellence Award and rolls out new logo
Northfield Hospital & Clinics is one of just four small hospitals in the U.S. that earned a 2016 Excellence Award from National Research Corp. for excellence in in-patient experience. President and CEO Steve Underdahl said it’s really is quite an honor, “and in hospitals in our category there were 2 that won some sort of best practice, and then there were 2 that really had substantial movement in their metrics and we were one of those 2 hospitals”. Underdahl says they spend a lot of time creating a patient-centric facility so getting acknowledgement from an objective outside measurement is very gratifying. NH&C is also in the process of incrementally rolling out their new logo. Underdahl said, “so the goal is really to have a common look at a common set of brand identity for all of the things that are related to Northfield Hospital and Clinics”. Brand identity has been a bit elusive as they have differing names on their clinics and other facilities. This will help tie all the entities together as they use it on their marketing materials, stationery and signage.
NHS and NAG team up for community project
The Northfield Historical Society and the Northfield Arts Guild are collaborating on a joint public art exhibition titled, “The Brighter Other Side.” Starting today through December 23rd , all members of the Northfield area community are welcomed and encouraged to make and submit a small piece of artwork that will be displayed mid-January through the end of February in various spaces around town. The project involves one side of the paper depicting a person’s history, the other side shows their vision of the future in color. We’ll hear more from Alyssa Herzog-Melby and Hayes Scriven next week as they talk about what sparked the project and more details.
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