By Teri Knight, News Director
Early Primary results show that David Ludescher will run against Northfield Mayor Rhonda Pownell in November. Pownell received 70.43% to Ludescher’s 23.26% vote. Jon Denison came in at 6.31%. In the District One race for Rice County Commissioner, a challenger, Jim Purfeerst with 48.48%, received twice as many votes as incumbent Jake Gillen with 23.51%. Bill McDonald and Joe Adamek came in with 16 and 12 percent respectively. Purfeerst responded to our Election questionnaire HERE. (You’ll also find information on Ludescher and Pownell in the Mayor section) In District 5, another incumbent faced two challengers, Jeff Dokken received 63.15% of the vote. He’ll take on Kim Halvorson who received 21.53% to Kurt
Wolf’s 15.31%. Due to the number of absentee ballots, municipalities have until Thursday to get them counted, final numbers will not be ready until Thursday afternoon. Absentee ballots must be postmarked by August 11th to be counted.
Nfld District plans to meet with each family during the week of Sept. 8th
They plan to meet with every family before school starts. Northfield Schools Superintendent Dr. Matt Hillmann said, “the Board did approve a formal calendar change to allow us to use, what would have been the first week of school, the 8th, 9th, 10th and 11th, so that we can work to meet with every single family before the school year starts. We’ll be able to hear how the pandemic has affected them and their children. When we know what’s going on in the kid’s life we can serve them much better”. They’re also going to teach families about the scenarios and what will happen if they have to shift models. An announcement on what the model will look like to start with, will come on Monday late afternoon. Much of the decision, of course, depends on the number of covid-19 cases in Rice County. Hillmann said, “the learning model can change. We wanted to wait until the 17th to try to have the best data that we can but we know that some people would have liked it earlier, we know some people would say wait a couple of weeks so we know how it continues to progress”. The expectation is that there will be changes to the model during the school year. He’s asking, once again, for the community’s patience and flexibility, adding that he realizes this is difficult. His full interview is HERE.
Musical Portraits of Northfield
Louis and Dan and the Invisible Band started up two years ago. Louis Epstein is a Professor of Music at St. Olaf, Daniel Groll is a Professor of Philosophy at Carleton. In their band are a number of “invisible” musicians. The NDDC awarded them with the 2nd project made possible by an Artists on Main Street grant. Epstein explains Musical Portraits of Northfield came from their idea of creating a sonic presence for the City, “we proposed to write a series of short songs about different places downtown, different businesses, different public spaces, different landmarks. And we’re going to record those songs, we’re going to make music videos of us singing those songs and we’re going to have links available, either in the form of a QR code or weblink, so that people who are walking around town can actually use their phone to listen to the songs that we recorded and watch the music videos that we made about those places”. They’ll consult Northfielders, “we’re especially going to consult with kids in Northfield. So we’re thinking elementary school kids and their families. We’re going to ask them all where do they like to hang out downtown, what do they like about it and what do they think is going to happen to those places in the future because the theme of this year’s Artists on Main Street grant competition was visions of Northfield’s future”. The call to the community will go out mid to late September with an expected to finished product in May of 2021. His full interview is HERE. And we also, of course, spoke with Geri Thelen, the glass artist who won the 1st project with her design of a metal tree with multi-colored glass hearts. One of which is in our studio window on Division Street. Her interview on finding the heart of Northfield is HERE. Main Street grant 2020
