Allen selected as Ward 1 appointee
During Tuesday’s Special City Council meeting Sean Allen was chosen to fill Suzie Nakasian’s First Ward seat on the Council for the last six
months of her term.
Allen grew up in Northfield and attended St. Olaf College before serving in the Peace Corps in Paraguay where he learned to speak fluent Spanish. Immediately after the Peace Corps, he served as the Chair of the Northfield Planning Commission. Allen then built a career in non-profit work in Rochester and has served as Executive and Assistant Director of multiple non-profits focused on community development and affordable housing. He has also been a high school track coach for 27 years and plans to pivot his career fully to education.
Allen said that experience in development in a different community will serve him well on the council and allow him to bring a new perspective to council work.
Allen said he’s excited to serve Northfield again in this limited timeframe and he’s not interested in running as a write-in candidate when his six months are up. Kathleen Holmes is running unopposed for the Ward 1 position and will most likely take over from Allen in January of 2023.
The City Council interviewed two candidates last night, Allen and Geoffrey Wheeler. Originally from Wisconsin, Wheeler is a ten-year resident of Minnesota with many years of local and state planning and zoning experience in Wisconsin.
Mayor Rhonda Pownell said she was impressed by the quality of both candidates.
“We had some amazing people step up to offer to fill in for a very short time period. Finding highly qualified people within a very small area of the community, that are willing to just step seamlessly into a role, and know and understand what they’re doing, it takes a long time. If you’ve never been involved in city government, there’s just a lot to learn and stepping in at a time when we’re in the intense budget season [is difficult]. Both people that interviewed for the position were highly qualified.”
Allen will be sworn in as a City Council Member of the First Ward shortly before the City Council work session next Tuesday.
District could be looking at more financial problems
The Northfield School Board was given some troubling news on the future of the district’s financial state during their meeting on Monday
night.
Normally, the district does one financial forecast each year in January. However, Director of Finance Val Mertesdorf decided, because the numbers at the end of the school year were not what she was expecting to see, that another look at the district’s finances would be in order. What she found was higher costs, and less revenue in the coming years than had been anticipated.
Northfield Superintendent of Schools Dr. Matt Hillmann said the declining enrollment that had been anticipated over the next 8-10 years is happening quicker than anticipated. It’s a matter, he said, of simple math. The incoming kindergarten classes are smaller than the outgoing senior classes. Fewer students translates to less revenue from the state.
Compounding the problem is inflation, which remains at a 40-year high. Hillmann said a good example of the problem is in the money spent on fuel for school busses. The current contract with Benjamin Bus states that the company will pay for fuel up to $2.75 a gallon, which Hillmann said, when the contract was negotiated, was a perfectly satisfactory agreement. However, with fuel costs hovering somewhere around $4.75 a gallon, the district wound up paying $12,000 more in fuel than had been budgeted.
He said natural gas costs are an even bigger hit.
“In this past fiscal year, we spent a full $200,000 more – going from $174,000 to around $372,000 on natural gas alone. So, the school district paid almost $200,000 more in this last school year than it did the year before in terms of natural gas use.”
Coming on the heels of a year spent looking for ways to trim $4.5 million from the budget, the news is particularly unwelcome. However, Hillmann said the district is still in very good shape, and will, in fact, be able to keep the planned 14% of its budget in reserve in 2022.
Superintendent Hillmann has frequently pointed to what he calls “chronic underfunding” of public education by the State of Minnesota. He has also spoken frequently of the tradition of responsible fiscal management by the district. He said depending on what happens in the near future and what action – or lack thereof – is taken by the legislature next year, things could once again get “precipitous” for the district.
Pet cremation services now available in Northfield
Bierman Funeral Home & Crematory is now offering pet memorial and cremation services under the program name Homeward Bound. 
Bierman’s new pet crematory has been open for several weeks now. Unlike some other pet cremation services, only individual cremations are performed in order to “offer a more dignified service,” said Funeral Director Bryce Beckstrand.
This is the first service of its kind in Northfield and for Funeral Director Preston Eidenschink, providing that local and more personal service can make a big difference to families. Bierman offers free transportation to retrieve a pet’s body from local veterinary clinics. And for a transportation fee, pets can also be retrieved from the owner’s home or other locations.
Beckstrand added that Bierman also provides a prompter service than other non-local pet crematories, and that families can expect to receive their pet’s ashes in just 24 hours.
Cremation is not the only service available for pet-owners. Pet-owners can post an obituary for their pet online or receive a keepsake like a lock of their pet’s fur or a clay paw print to help memorialize their pet.
For Eidenschink, providing this service to pet-owners is personal.
“My experience is that I’ve dealt with the loss of pets. I know the emotional impact of it and on my calendar, I have the date of death of my dogs; it’s that important to me. We just carry that through to the families from just our experience in going through a loss.”
To find more information, visit homewardboundpetcremation.com.
Rich Larson’s full conversation with Bryce Beckstrand and Preston Eidenschink can be heard here
Rich Larson is the KYMN News Director. Contact him at rich@kymnradio.net
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