By Teri Knight, News Director
Friday is the first day of absentee voting and there are a lot of questions out there. Northfield City Clerk Deb Little is in charge of voting within the City. While Absentee voting is nothing new, Little said two-thirds of those who voted in the Primary voted absentee. That’s a significant increase and, she said, “we’re anticipating probably about the same for our November election”. There are multiple groups sending out applications for a ballot. Little says, “they are applications that would work to get an absentee ballot but what I tell people when they call me, they’re upset because they’ve already applied for an absentee ballot, they don’t understand why they continue to get all this information in the mail. We have no control over what gets sent out from nonprofit or political parties in that regard”. She added, “I just tell people use the actual absentee ballot application reply online versus continuing to get those in the mail. The county is seeing, because of that, duplicates and triplicates of applications from people and that takes people a great
deal of time to sort through that at the county level because you will only get one ballot from the county”. Early voting at City Hall starts Friday. You will be able to do that Monday through Friday from 8am to 4:15 through October 26th. If you aren’t registered to vote, do it now at the Library or online at the Secretary of State website. You must be registered to receive an absentee ballot. The United States Post Office is telling people to make sure they send their ballots at least 7 days in advance of the November election. Voter pre-registration is October 13th. Bring it in the envelopes you received and drop it off. Little said, “if you received it in the mail, we will get it to the appropriate county. We’re taking ballots there all the time from absentee voting anyway so we can take your ballot. If you’re bringing ballots back for other people we will make you sign a delivery log and show some ID. So your ballot you can just take it to absentee voting office 2nd floor training room at City Hall”. And that would be Rice County or Dakota county depending on which county you live in in Northfield. One piece of information floating out there is that you can walk your ballot into your polling location on Election Day. You cannot. There is more to her interview HERE including her thoughts on voter fraud. We plan to have her back on the air in early October.
A few “re-entry issues” on 1st Day of a pandemic School year
This is the first week of school for students in Northfield. After nearly 6 months, students are coming back either full time, a hybrid situation or some have chosen full time online. Superintendent Dr. Matt Hillmann noted, “yesterday was a day full of excitement and of course a few re-entry kinds of issues that people might expect”. Monday was also the first day of the opening of the new Greenvale Elementary, he said there were lots of smiles there. Hillmann praised Jenna Dardis of Benjamin Bus and her team for following the covid protocol and making it work. What’s been very helpful to keep buses at 50% is the number of parents driving their kids to school themselves. As with any first day of school, there are glitches, Hillmann said there will be continuous improvement in all aspects and monitoring of Social distancing in the halls. Hillmann remarked about teachers juggling online and in-class, “our teachers have put a tremendous amount of effort trying to find what’s the right balance, what’s the right mix for the working at home and the working at school. In some cases they’re having students zoom into the classroom and hear some of the things that are happening in the classroom in other cases they’re providing video instruction for the days that students are at home. And so, those pieces, I think, went fairly well”. For the first time ever, 14% of students are taking their classes fully online, Hillmann said, “a handful of kinds of start up issues. There was some frustration with certain things but we know that that will continue to evolve and get better. We are committed to continuous improvement and so there are some things that we will learn this week and next week that we will adjust as we move forward “. Hillmann said they’re not trying to create a substitute but a truly engaging online environment. There’s more to his interview HERE.
Citizen task force on police reform, presentations and preliminary levies
The Northfield City will discuss a resolution to establish a Citizen task force to provide feedback to the Police department on the policies. This item was moved from the Consent Agenda to the Regular agenda. As Chief Elliott works with Lexipol to review and revise their manual, he’s involved in this process as well to best serve the community. The group will consist of about a dozen diverse community members and will meet about 5 times from October to January to review policies, ask questions, and provide feedback which will be used to formulate the final policies that focus on police reform. Also tonight, there will be three presentations, including updates regarding the riverfront enhancement and strategic plans. Council will vote on the preliminary levies for the General budget, the HRA and the EDA. Meetings begin at 6pm and are streamed live on the city’s website. You can comment on any item online until 4 o’clock this afternoon through their website LINK. Administrator Martig and Mayor Pownell will be on the air tomorrow morning at 7:20 with a recap. City Council Supplemental Agenda Background Memo No. 1 for Septemeber 15 2020
