A motorcyclist was airlifted Saturday night after a van failed to yield at the intersection of Hwy 19 and hwy 3 in Northfield. Both riders, a man and woman were ejected from the motorcycle. The passenger suffered minor injuries but the driver was airlifted from Northfield Hospital. No other details were released at this time, but the driver of the van was cited for “Failure to Yield”.
Nfld EDA to host Micropolitan summit June 7th
The Northfield EDA will be hosting a Micropolitan Summit in June. Staff is putting the agenda together. Chair Todd Bornhauser commented that the “biggest thing they thought about was bringing in individual businesses to talk about their success stories and why they wanted to locate here”. The idea of the Micropolitan Summit is to attract economic development to the City by showcasing Northfield’s unique qualities and opportunities including commercial and residential properties. They’ve partnered with the HRA. Community Development Director Chris Heineman said they’ll have a panel presentation that will focus on “workforce housing” both multi and single family housing. Part of the summit will also include amenities. Brief presentations by the CVB and Northfield Arts Guild. The date is set for Wednesday, June 7th.
Nfld School’s will add 2 FTE positions
The Northfield School board last week approved the addition of two Full time positions. One is a 7th grade health teacher. Right now health is taught in 6th and 8th grades. Superintendent Dr. Matt Hillmann said that by being able to spread those classes over 3 grades, they’ll be able to also focus more on social/emotional learning. It will also allow them to better address the World’s Best Workforce and Northfield Promises benchmark of career and college readiness. The other position is for their “Contingency Fund”. This is to address class size issues. This person will go where needed. That means the District will have 4 contingency FTE positions.
County Health Rankings put Dakota over Rice by a long shot
Rice County ranks 32 out of 87 Minnesota counties in an overall health ranking. Breaking it down the County came in 20th for length of life but 54th in quality of life. Dakota County came in 12th overall with length of life at 10 and quality of life at 27th. The County Health Rankings measure the health of nearly all counties in the nation and rank them within states. The Rankings are compiled using county-level measures from a variety of national and state data sources. These measures are standardized and combined using scientifically-informed weights. Health behaviors and social & economic factors are measured as well. I have a link to the full report on kymn.net.
Mainstreets vying for $25k
Downtown Northfield has been entered in a national contest to be America’s Main Street. The goal of the America’s Main Streets contest is to help promote the importance and strong economic benefits of these Main Streets and the small businesses that help them thrive.The winner will take home $25,000 for downtown improvements. You can vote each day between now and April 24. Go to mainstreetcontest.com, click on Nominees. There are nearly 200 cities around the country nominated. Including Northfield, Kenyon (twice), Shakopee, Albert Lea and a few more.
