Mayor Rhonda Pownell said the city is still accepting applications for, and is encouraging all interested parties to consider joining, one of the
many municipal boards or commissions.
A cursory glance at the Boards and Commissions page on the city website showed dozens of positions with expiring terms or boards with vacant seats, including the Housing & Redevelopment Authority, the Northfield Alliance for Substance Abused and Prevention, and the Human Rights Commission.
Members participate in advisory, regulatory, governance and oversight activities in a wide variety of fields. While some are purely advisory positions, others like the Planning Commission and the Heritage and Preservation Commission have quasi-judicial roles to fill from time to time in issuing building permits and certificates. A statement issued by the city said more than 145 community members annually provide valuable leadership to the City through their participation on these groups and special study committees.
The statement went on to say that the City Council is committed to appointing members who reflect and represent diverse segments of the community.
The mayor said there are plenty of spots for people with varying interests to fill.
“If you want to participate and help us form and shape and ensure that our community continues to improve and takes advantage of opportunities that are still before us, we’re still accepting applications to our boards and commissions. So, if you’re on the fence out there and you want to get involved, there are a lot of different opportunities.”
Candidates to the boards are appointed by Mayor Pownell with confirmation by the council. The mayor typically meets with candidates one-on-one as she seeks to fill the appointments.
“Often times we have more applicants than we have positions to fill,” she said, “but I can’t even consider you if you don’t apply. So please submit an application.”
Additional information and applications may be obtained at the Administration Office in City Hall, or on the boards and commissions pages on the City of Northfield website, where an application may be filled out and filed online.
Completed board and commission applications may be turned in throughout the year.
Jeff Johnson’s full conversation with Northfield Mayor Rhonda Pownell and Community Development Director Jake Reilly can be heard here
Fossum sees new Public Safety Center’s ‘Great Benefit’
On Tuesday, the Rice County Board of Commissioners broke ground on the new Public Safety Center. 
The center is the result of a three-year-long planning process and is being built on part of the 109 acres bought from Faribault Foods. The rest of the land will be used for a Faribault city park, housing and other development projects.
The Public Safety Center will house the new county jail and offices for the Rice County Sheriff’s Department. It became clear in 2019 that the county may need to build a new jail when the Minnesota Department of Corrections said it was downgrading Rice County’s main jail to a 90-day facility effective Nov. 1, 2019. The department cited a lack of required programming and recreational space. According to 2019 estimates, the downgrade in classification would cost $500,000 annually to house and transport inmates from out-of-county jails to the Rice County courthouse and back. An estimate in 2021 raised that figure to $1 million.
The new jail will have 76 beds and 10 times the recreational and programming space of the current facility which will include a large open area, a room for equipment, a computer lab and classrooms.
Rice County Attorney John Fossum called the new jail a needed project. Not building the jail, he said, would have required people being held for serious crimes pre-trial to be transported to and from the county courthouse and another county, which he argued would have been costly in terms of money and manpower and posed potential public safety risks.
“The couple of murder cases that we have pending at the moment, those guys will be in jail for more than 90 days. And the idea of moving them out to somewhere else and transporting them back for hearings puts everybody at risk and creates an unnecessary cost. So being able to have those people housed in the county and supervised in the county is of great benefit.”
Both the current Sheriff Jesse Thomas and former Sheriff Troy Dunn have been strong advocates for the project and have also advocated for housing the Sheriff’s offices in the same building.
The Public Safety Center will be located off of Highway 3 on the northern edge of Faribault and is expected to be completed in the fall of 2024.
Jeff Johnson’s full conversation with Rice County Attorney John Fossum can be heard here
‘Summering’ written by Ben Percy premiers at local cinema
Last night the Cannon Valley Cinema in Dundas hosted the local premier of the coming-of-age film Summering, co-written by James Ponsoldt and Northfield writer Benjamin Percy.
Summering is about four girls on the last weekend of summer before they begin middle school.
For Percy, the feel of the film is inspired by his young daughter who has always been determined to have girls as the protagonists of stories. When she was 11, the same age as the characters in Summering, she even wrote a version of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit called The Girl Hobbit.
Summering is also in some ways a gender-bent version of a classic story. Part of the plot mirrors the film Stand by Me, but this time it’s young girls who stumble across a body in the woods triggering a coming-of-age adventure. Percy points out that traditionally in crime stories a male detective discovers a woman’s body and in solving her murder he learns something about himself. Percy and Ponsoldt wanted to turn that idea on its head.
For Percy, at its heart the film is about complex women and girls who grow and change together.
“Seeing these girls, but also their mothers because it’s just as much about the mothers, seeing that the story is yes, about the story mechanics, but really in the end it’s about self-realization and self-knowledge and the change, the emotional transformation that they go through over the course of this weekend, that’s the thing that really shines across.”
Percy and Ponsoldt intentionally created a film for all ages to relate to and enjoy. The story focuses on not only the four main girls, but also their mothers. Percy said, “there’s a multi-generational fluidity to it” and he hopes the movie will provide an opportunity for families to have conversations about growing up and what young people and adults can each learn from each other.
The film is out in theaters and is showing at Cannon Valley Cinema in Dundas.
Jeff Johnson’s full conversation with Ben Percy can be heard here
Rich Larson is the KYMN News Director. Contact him at rich@kymnradio.net
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