By Teri Knight, News Director
CORRECTION on this story. From City Engineer Dave Bennett:
I saw your story online about the Maple Brook Townhome project and wanted to clarify. The increase in City participation went up by $18,000. The City agreed to pay $58,000 originally and it went up to $76,000.
“The extension of the utilities is a city responsibility and the projected cost was $18,000. Turned out to be over $76,000.”
In July of last year, the City of Northfield entered into a development agreement with Maple Brook, LLC for a 24-unit multifamily rental housing townhome project. As part of the project, Maple Street public improvements were included with the extension of street and utilities, sanitary sewer and watermain. However, when construction began, Administrator Martig said, “the sewer system from our city records is shown in our plans is not where we thought they were actually identified so there was some issues as it related to documentation on where the final lines ended up getting landed from the last project. So with that the developer had to do additional dewatering and extend it quite a bit further and deeper than they were expecting”. The extension of the utilities is a city
responsibility and the projected cost was $58,000. Turned out to be over $76,000. The council was asked to approve an amendment to reimburse the construction company for the costs. C. DeLong asked that this item be moved from the Consent Agenda, where items are not explained in open meetings, to the Regular Agenda. Noting that there was an 80 ft. difference he asked staff if there was any recourse from the engineer of the original project. The short answer was no. DeLong moved the amendment forward and the vote was unanimously approved. For further information click HERE on the City’s website.
Rep. Lippert bills looking to aid Caregivers of Alzheimer’s patients
District 20b Representative Todd Lippert is on numerous committees including the Labor Committee, Environment and Natural Resources policy, State Government and Finances and Agriculture and he’s also the Vice Chair of the Long Term Care Committee. Committee work takes place through about the end of March. Lippert has two bills up on long term care coming up on Monday. These came from a roundtable on Alzheimer’s early last summer at the Northfield Hospital. Lippert commented on KYMN this morning, “what was particularly powerful was when some of the caregivers spoke. As one started speaking and telling her story, she simply burst into tears just because caregiving for someone with Alzheimer’s is extremely taxing physically and emotionally”. The bills add support for Caregivers, he explains, “one is providing family caregiving grants, there’s some money at the Board of Aging that’s available and there’s another bill for respite care for Alzheimer’s in particular”. This gives caregivers a break. One of the bills has already gone to the Senate floor, the other has appropriation attached so it will go to Health and Human Services first.
HFC opens Care Hub – Open House today
HealthFinders Collaborative (HFC) invites the community to a grand opening event to celebrate its new community-based holistic healthcare and wellness hub. The Care Hub, located at 1415 Town Square Lane in Faribault, is designed to connect its patients to community resources focusing on nutrition, diabetes, goal setting, various physical exercise activities, and home visits. The event will be held today from 4 to 6 p.m with a brief program at 5:15 p.m. and self-guided tours of the nearly 9,000-square-foot space. This new location allows HFC to serve thousands more patients and operate their unique community-based holistic healthcare model under one roof.
Play ball – sign ’em up!
Ready to play ball? Maybe not quite yet but signing up for Youth Baseball is in full swing. President of Northfield Youth Baseball Association, Daniel Hollerung, said now’s the time to sign your kids up for both travel and inhouse. He said, “we’re trying to narrow in on those players that want to travel, those are 10 through 15, so 4th through 9th grade and we want them to be able to sign up before Feb. 29th and then in-house extends a couple weeks”. T-ball is offered to kids starting at age 5, then it’s a “coach pitch” mentality which is just getting the ball over the plate. Then it’s machine pitch for 2nd and 3rd graders for a “fuller experience”. From 4th to 5th graders it’s “kid pitch – that’s a whole different game”. You can learn much more by listening to the full interview HERE and also as northfieldyouthbaseball.com for registration and more information. (you can also click on the ad on our website)
Cheer on Raider Girls Gymnastics as they head to STATE!
The Raider Gymnastics Team made it to state! Let’s wish them well as they head to the state tournament on Friday. The Northfield Fire Department will escort the team from the High School at 1:00 pm today and parade north on Division.
