The Northfield City Council had a presentation concerning the 2016 financials. Mayor Rhonda Pownell explained this is a yearly process that entails plenty of staff time to do “checks and balances”, giving them a picture of where the City is at as compared to other comparable cities. Some of the items they compared were the amount the City taxes per person, the level of the City’s debt. She said, “we’re right in line, sometimes below what are comparable cities are”. She said the City is in great
financial condition across the board. Administrator Ben Martig commented that Northfield’s revenues exceeded expenditures in all major funds. The general fund was up about $300k with health balances at 60{b5761be34e80a16b6d0e4dabc1869c131a263f96a745c82bebdd3b8a4330bfa9}. Martig added that ratios of assets and debt are in a good position. While the City has some aging infrastructure they’ve also invested in it.
NH&C will ask patients for input
Northfield Hospital and Clinics ‘Include Always’ is a purposeful approach to include the people they’re taking care of and their family members in decisions on how they build things, how they plan and how they react. President and CEO Steve Underdahl said that, “medicine by it’s very nature tends to be sort of paternal, lots of smart folks that this is what they do for a living and even when you try to do the right thing, sometimes it doesn’t occur to us to ask the person that we’re really trying to help, what do you want?”. He said they’re looking at creating a committee that includes those folks. They’ll use them to help make decisions about what we do at the Hospital and Medical Center. This has been done around the country to varying degrees. Underdahl said, while it may elicit some discomfort for the staff at first, it’s a brilliant way to get perspective.
Dundas development update
If you’ve driven down hwy 3 in Dundas you’ve seen the framing is up for the new Aldi’s store going in next to Firehouse Liquor. Dundas Administrator John McCarthy added, “there’s a lot of activity now at the old K-Mart building, they’re knocking out the floor for the theater, Behr’s still intends to be up and running in July, we just approved a comprehensive signage plan for the new building so, basically, it explains where people can put signs and how big they can be”. There will be some repaving down where the old garden center was, which will be parking. The theater is scheduled to open in October and MGM Liquor may be open July or August.
Gonna get gnarly in Mpls
Traffic in Minneapolis is about to get worse. There will be a weekend closure of EB 94 between 394 and 35W from 10 tomorrow night through 5 Monday morning. Detour signs will be posted and will use Hwys 100 and 62. This closure is happening during the PRIDE Festival in Loring Park. Crews will be setting up for restrictions in the Lowry Tunnel. Beginning Monday, all motorists will travel on the eastbound side of the tunnel while crews do repair work on the other side. There will be only 2 lanes in each direction with reduced widths and lower speed limits. This will last till early August then they’ll switch sides and traffic will use the WB side only through mid-September. There will also be several ramp closures. You’re encouraged to use 511mn.org for updates.
