By Teri Knight, News Director
Whatever decision is made from the State regarding Public Schools start of the 2020/21 school year, Northfield Schools Superintendent Dr. Matt Hillmann said, “we know that there’s going to be some folks who are going to be disappointed, who wish we would’ve had the other option and I want to remind people, this is still a pandemic”. The decisions the State or County makes will be based on public health. As for school activities, Hillmann believes the State High School League will make their decisions after the Governor and the Departments of Health and Education make their decisions. They’ve identified three risk categories for sports, high, medium and low. Hillmann didn’t want to comment on which sports those would be. Extra curricular
activities, he said, are extremely important, especially in High School, adding, “I want families to know we know the importance and value of extra curricular and athletics very much. Again, we’re going to have to make some of those decisions based on the public health”. Hillmann’s full interview is HERE.
New painted bikes lanes can be confusing
KYMN’s Jeff Johnson asked Northfield Police Chief Monte Nelson this morning, “do bicyclists have to obey the same laws as a motorist?”. His answer, “yes”. New bike lanes were painted on the east side of town in the last month. Nelson said it can be confusing to drivers as they pull into the driving lane with the 2-way bike lanes on one side of the road, he added, “that pushes the driving lane over and narrows it some depending on which street we’re talking about”. It’s clear where the bike lanes are, he said, “if you see areas that have been painted with the big green and white hash marks, those are painted at points of conflict, like at intersections, to draw attention to where the bike lane is”. If you’re in a vehicle and are turning into a driveway, you must yield to the bicyclist. The areas include 4th St. E., College St. from 1st to 3rd and W. 8th St. near Wells Fargo.
The stretch on College Street between 1st and 3rd allows for no on-street parking. That’s a problem for a long time elderly resident as she shares a driveway with her neighbor. With no parking, any visitors or service people have to park a block away.
Nfld begins budget process
It’s budget time for cities. The Northfield Council began their higher level discussions this week as they start the process. Administrator Ben Martig said one piece of good news was their debt service is only expected to grow by 2%. This is good news in terms of levying property taxes. The City is tracking possible cuts to government aid due to the pandemic. They recieve about 23% of their General Operating Funds from Local Government Aid (LGA). If they got a 10% cut in aid, that translates to about $300,000. The City of Northfield’s General Fund budget is $14 million a year so they will be doing some What If scenarios. Sixty percent of expenditures is city personnel costs. The City’s starting with a healthy fund balance as demonstrated by the audit report and the low interest rate they received on the 2020 street projects. Martig’s full interview is on kymnradio.net.
Put Webster back together
After redistricting, Webster Township and the City of Webster were split into two different Congressional Districts. Commissioner Galen Malecha explained, “which means that they have to have two different polling lines, two different sets of equipment for voting and it ends up costing them a lot more money”. So the Board of Commissioners recently passed a resolution on behalf of Webster Township asking the State committee in charge of redistricting to consider putting them back into the same District when, after the Census is complete, the state is redistricted. There are only about 1200 residents between the two.
