The Northfield City Council, last week, heard from IT Director Kurt Wolf,regarding a Cable Access PEG Fee Increase for users. Administrator Ben Martig said the City charges to be in the City’s public right-of-ways. He said there’s a 5{b5761be34e80a16b6d0e4dabc1869c131a263f96a745c82bebdd3b8a4330bfa9} general revenue fee and also a PEG fee which, “basically goes to equipment needs and upgrades that are necessary to provide a community access channel”. Those are channels 180 and 187. Right now, subscribers are paying 75 cents a month. Council will vote tonight on whether to increase that to a dollar a month which would provide an additional $10,000 to spend on Northfield’s public access television equipment.
In addition, the City’s contract with Spectrum is coming to an end after 15 years. The Council wants to extend the contract to give them time to renegotiate an agreement. This item is on Council’s Consent agenda. Another item on their consent agenda is Mayor Pownell’s appointments to a new Advisory Committee regarding the land in the northwest area of Northfield. There are no names listed in the public information, however, the idea is to have 5 to 7 members that would include the mayor, a council liaison, Commission members and stakeholders. On the regular agenda is approval of the Fire Station Expansion and Remodel Plans and review of the development agreement with Yanik companies on the Senior Housing project. Pownell and Martig will be in studio at 7:20 tomorrow morning with a full recap.
SLIFE offers opportunity
The Northfield School Board, last week, approved a one class period increase at the High School for an English language learners instructor. Superintendent Dr. Matt Hillmann explains the acronym, SLIFE, “Students with Limited and Interrupted Formal. These are cases where we may have some students who, for whatever circumstances, they were new to our Country, new to our District”. While there aren’t many of these students teachers did note some struggling with, not only English, but mathematics. This will provide some specialized instruction. Overall, said it’s a minor budget adjustment but a major help for the student.
Main Street goes to the chickens
Main Street Project in Northfield continues developing an alternative food system for sustainable agriculture. And now they’re going to the chickens. The CSA (community supported agriculture) program is offering shares of locally raised chickens. COO Julie Ristau said they’ll offer a “meat share” of 6 chickens for $100, that’s considered a half share. You can also purchase a full share of 12 chickens because they’ll have 2 flocks. That money helps support the Latino farmers that they trained last Fall. This will, “support their purchase of chickens, their continued training and actually being able to grow those chickens and sell them. So we’re very excited about this real connection. It’s a connection of actual folks who are learning and want to do more”. Their goal is to bring in a 100 shares which will support 2 families that have been trained and will be operating their own coops. There’s much more information on their website, mainstreetproject.org/csa . Ristau’s full interview
