The Northfield School Board held its final meeting of 2021 on Monday night, and among the many items discussed during the meeting was a
draft of a plan to end the Covid-19 safety protocols that the school district has had in place since the beginning of the school year. According to Northfield Schools Superintendent Matt Hillmann, the fact that students ages 5-11 are now able to be vaccinated means that the district can begin to map out the criteria necessary to start looking at relaxing those regulations.
The first thing the district will look at is the Influenza-Like Illness Rate, which measures the percentage of students and school staff who are experiencing symptoms that mirror Covid or Influenza. The percentage must be below 5% in any given building, and Hillmann said that has never been an issue this year.
The next thing to evaluate is the district’s Immunity Rate. Hillmann said the plan offers a chart that measures the percentage of staff and students who have been vaccinated, as well as the number of students who have contracted the Covid-19 virus in the last 90 days.
They can then look at the county case rate, which measures the number of new positive cases in Rice County per 100,000 people. The numbers on the immunity chart, Hillmann said, will decide where the county case rate needs to be in order for the district to look at relaxing the protocols.
“So, the concept is the higher that we have immunity in our school system, the greater number of cases we could allow in that 7-day case rate at the county level. [And that is] because our local population would be more protected. It uses the immunity rate within the system to inform what we could allow the transmission rate to be.”
Dr. Hillmann was quick to say that presenting the draft of a plan does not mean the impending end of the safety protocols, pointing out that the current rate of new cases is nearly as high as it has ever been. However, he said, it is important to acknowledge the difficulties masking and quarantines can cause for students, families, and staff. He said the district prioritizes communication, and they want to be as transparent as possible when discussing safety in the schools.
Council digs into Bridge Square project
The Northfield City Council met last night for a combination regular meeting and work session.
After approving a three item consent agenda, the conversation quickly turned to the proposed reconstruction of Bridge Square.
Designers Bruce Jacobson and Bob Close prefaced the discussion by acknowledging that parking in Downtown Northfield is at a premium, and there is a strong need for a comprehensive District Parking Feasibility Study. And public restrooms must be a part of the conversation as well, but where they would be located and what form they would take is a decision the city must make outside of a Bridge Square design.
Jacobson and Close have had a series of meetings with several city commissions and civic organizations, all of whom are Bridge Square stakeholders, and the input from those meetings was shared with the council. Several options were discussed for the project from the amount of green space the area should contain to the closing of Water Street and the design of the resulting area. The Sheldahl Fountain and the Civil War Memorial also garnered a lot of attention. There were suggestions with what to do with them that ranged from moving them to nearly every single area of the square to leaving them where they are. In the end, the council asked for creative ideas from the designers.
Jacobson and Close now must distill the input and direction they have received from the council and will present a more refined design plan early in 2022.
Dundas puts an eye toward business development
And the Dundas City Council met on Monday night, and approved the city budget for 2022, along with an 11.9% increase in city property
taxes. Dundas City Administrator Jenelle Teppen said the increase is the result of the work being done by the newly revived Dundas Economic Development Authority. The city has been growing over the last few years, and now it is planning to take a larger step by offering assistance to the business community and fostering further economic expansion and improvement.
The first thing the city intends to do is to reach out to every business within the Dundas city limits to gather as much information as possible. Teppen said the survey going out will ask in detail about that business’ plans for future growth, if any, and how the city might be helpful in assisting those plans. They have also begun a mapping project that will show every property in the city available for development, the state of that property, and what utilities the city could bring to those areas to foster that development. Finally, she said, they are looking at property to create an industrial business incubator park. Property for the project has been found, and the city is now determining if the price of the land and the infrastructure that would be necessary for the project is cost effective.
Teppen said all these projects, both great and small are lending optimism that Dundas is poised for a particularly good year in 2022.
“We have some kind of smaller projects in the hopper right now, and some larger ones on the horizon that are development specific. And of course, we still have the property next to city hall. There’s a lot to look forward to.”
Finally, she said the City Council voted to cancel the meeting scheduled for December 27th, as there would be so many councilors absent that they would not be able to form a quorum. The next Dundas City Council meeting, then, is set for January 10th.
Jeff Johnson’s full conversation with Dundas City Administrator Jenelle Teppen can be heard here
Rich Larson is the KYMN News Director. Contact him at rich@kymnradio.net
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