By Teri Knight, News Director
A community came together (safely). Neighbors and former co-workers gathered on Woodley St. near Sunset this morning to show their support for Barb Barlau. She was diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer in January and today is her last radiation treatment at Allina Health’s Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis. Barb was the Manager of the Allina Health Northfield Clinic for many years and Mark, her husband, served as a police officer and private detective for the city of Northfield. He’s now retired. Since no one could be there to witness her ringing the bell for her last treatment, neighbor Sue Rodman organized a gathering to support Barb as they headed out to Mayo this morning. She said, “but we celebrated
today and we rang our bell”. Not everyone was happy about the gathering. KYMN received a complaint call. Rodman said, “everybody was notified that we needed to maintain a six foot distance We were outside and a sunshiny day. Nobody gave a hug. Nobody got too close. We all brought our own personal bells to ring”. She added, “The police officers also came and escorted and cheered. All the neighbors the friends and family from the whole Twin Cities area came on down in dog on it we rang that cancer belt and celebrated two wonderful lives”. A showing of support helps uplift everyone in the community. Sue’s full interview:
Lippert discusses emergency legislation due to Covid-19
Rep. Todd Lippert held a virtual town hall meeting on Saturday on Facebook. He reported that last Thursday legislators, “passed 330 million dollars in additional assistance to allow the state to respond to Cova 19. And this is an addition to $200 million and we passed earlier to make sure that we were providing support for our healthcare system”. In addition, they passed a bill for $21 million for the MN Dept. of Health. He said, “we directed $30 million in one time childcare grants to child care providers to keep them going right now. We also approved $26 million in grants for agencies and those that are working with the homeless”. $9 million is for food shelves. As for small business assistance, they approved $10 million. Lippert said, “The State of Minnesota has put in place a state emergency loan program. And you can access this by going to the deed website of impairment of Employment and Economic Development”. The loan is designed to get cash to businesses as quickly as possible before the federal measures approved can be accessed. 50% of those dollars you receive will be forgiven, the remaining is at 0% interest. We have all these links on our website under our Covid resource page that you see at the top of our website. Click on the red box. Lippert’s full town hall meeting is on our website.
Draheim explains where some of those $ are going
District 20 Senator Rich Draheim explained some of the healthcare dollars for housing. He said, “Some of the doctors aren’t going back home, they’re going to a hotel. So we’re funding that”. The Native American tribes are getting $11 million, one for each tribe in Minnesota. Draheim added, “most of the pots of money at what we would call a clawback clause where it will come back into the general fund if not spent”. There are reporting requirements for most of those pots of dollars, “There’s also a kind of a commission that is set up of five Senate members and five House members to help with the process”. He said there are some uncertainties in promises being made. His full interview is online.
MNSure special open enrollment
MNSure has opened up a 30-day special enrollment period (SEP) for qualified individuals who are currently without insurance from now through April 21. It will allow uninsured individuals to enroll in health insurance coverage through MNsure.org.
Change in applying for Unemployment Ins.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Minnesota’s Unemployment Insurance team members are processing more applications for unemployment benefits than ever before. To ensure our system can handle the increased activity we are experiencing, we are asking that *new* unemployment insurance applicants apply online on an assigned day, based on your social security number (SSN). That information is on our website. Click on the red box.
