In a letter sent to the members of the Northfield Area Chamber of Commerce yesterday, Chamber President Lisa Peterson announced that she
will be stepping down next month.
Peterson has accepted the position of Marketing Services Director for the Blaine based Twin Cities Gateway Visitor’s Bureau, which is a group of ten communities adjacent to the Northern borders of Minneapolis and St. Paul. In her letter she called the move “bittersweet,” and said she is looking forward to challenging herself and growing professionally as she builds connections with the Gateway partners.
Peterson was named President of the Chamber in 2019. Before that she ran the Convention and Visitors Bureau after joining in 2015.
“It has been my honor and privilege to be able to serve Northfield and the surrounding area as the chamber president,” she wrote. “It has been a genuinely exciting opportunity to support the business community and help plan some of the best events in Southern Minnesota. I am proud of the work we have done together and how we have grown the chamber over the past few years.”
She said, as much of her work can be done remotely, she intends to remain in Northfield and continue her involvement in the community in other ways.
Peterson’s last day with the Chamber will be April 15th.
School budget prioritization moves to next phase
As the Northfield School District works to cut a substantial amount of money from its budget over the next two years,
Superintendent of Schools Dr. Matt Hillmann said the process is ready to move into the next phase.
The number of students attending school in the district is projected to decline by about 400 students over the next 8 years. The district receives about 70% of its funding from the state, and the amount it receives is based on the number of its students. If the student body shrinks by 400 students, that will translate to $4.5 million less in funding.
Another issue, Dr. Hillmann said, is chronic underfunding. Over the last thirty years, the annual increases to the basic formula that determines how much a district will receive, has not kept up with inflation. Among the issues the district is wrestling with is the Special Education program. Hillmann has said many times it is a “moral imperative” that every school district offers special education for those who need it. Beyond that, the state requires special education programs for every district. However, with that requirement is a stipulation for funding that the state has never met. Therefore, Hillmann said, the Northfield School District pays about $5 million from its general fund. If the state were to make good on the funding that was promised, he said, that would go a long way.
“The total cost to fund [Special Education in Minnesota] to the legislature this year would be $781 million. They have ten times more than that in the budget surplus alone. If people want to do something to help the school budget, call your legislators and say ‘Please make sure that you fund the Special Education Cross Subsidy.’”
Hillmann said the district wants to make the cuts to the budget as soon as possible, so they will be sustainable over the next few years. The process is moving forward, with three groups of district stakeholders having evaluated the elementary expenditures, the district services expenditures, and the third group finishing up with the secondary level expenditures. After their recommendations are made, the school board will take over with a work session on April 5th. The new Budget Plan will be formally introduced at a school board meeting on either April 11th or April 25th. This will be followed by a public forum, and the plan will be voted on in early May.
“These are excruciating decisions,” Hillmann said, “because everything is valuable. We would not have a program if it didn’t have value to people in the community. We just can’t afford all the things that people would like, moving forward.”
Free market Paid Family Leave bill would help employers get ‘creative’
The debate over paid family leave has been one of the longest lasting debates in American politics. The idea of a government guaranteed amount of time after the arrival of a child or to care for a family member has often been championed by Democrats as a key issue in their platform.
Last week, however, it was a Republican Senator introducing a bill into the legislature that would allow for paid family leave, but without getting the government involved.
Senator Rich Draheim said Senator Julia Coleman, the author of the bill, recently became the mother of twins, and is very passionate about employers offering their employees time off without fearing for their job while they are gone.
Coleman’s plan would allow employers to offer a paid family leave insurance plan as a part of their benefits package. Draheim likened the idea to ala carte supplemental insurance like that offered by AFLAC. The attraction to it for him, he said, is that this would be a free-market initiative offered by private insurance companies, and not another government program.
“As the job market tightens up, employers are going to have to get more creative on how to retain employees. And we feel – let’s let the employers who want to, offer something. And then our incentive for employers to offer this to their employees would be a tax incentive.”
The tax incentives would go to small businesses, offering $3,000 per enrolled employee for companies that employ fewer than fifty people.
A DFL proposal that would offer up to twelve weeks of paid family leave through a government program that would be paid into by both employers and employees has languished in the state legislature for at least three years.
Coleman’s bill is currently being considered in committee in the senate. A similar bill is being considered in the House as well.
Jeff Johnson’s full conversation with Senator Rich Draheim can be heard here
Rich Larson is the KYMN News Director. Contact him at rich@kymnradio.net
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