The Northfield Police Department has put the long-expected first fully electric squad car into its general patrol fleet. 
Last week, the department took delivery of a new Ford Mustang Mach-E after long delays due to supply chain issues and having all of the necessary police equipment installed as well.
Northfield Chief of Police Mark Elliott said his department is keeping up with the city’s strategic plan, and the e-squad will do its part to reduce carbon emissions and generally be more climate conscious. But there are some challenges to operating an electric police car. Battery charging, he said, takes much longer than filling a gas tank, which can be problematic if the car is needed to transfer specific people to specific holding facilities.
“We don’t have a juvenile holding facility, if we have a need to house a juvenile in our community. We don’t have a detox center and we have to drive about 60 miles to get to any of those. So that’s 120 miles round trip. If you’re doing that at the end of a shift when you’ve already used a lot of battery life, that may be a challenge.”
The amount of electrically powered equipment in the squad car is a challenge fr battery life as well. Squad cars are outfitted with computers, camera systems, emergency lighting, and other items that will draw on the battery, which would only add to the shortened power supply. To that end, a second electrical system has been installed in the car to power the police equipment with a separate lithium-ion battery. That way, the standard battery will only be asked to power the things it is designed for – basic operation of the vehicle and climate control – while the police equipment will be powered regardless of the vehicle’s battery life.
There are other challenges as well, said Elliott, including the cold winter temperatures in Minnesota which can degrade a battery quicker than in other parts of the country. Because of all the unknowns, he said this vehicle will be used to evaluate the practicality of EV’s in the department’s fleet of squad cars.
“We don’t have any early returns on it right now. So far it seems to be okay. There aren’t any major issues that we’ve discovered, but our plan is to get a full two-year test on this. A variety of conditions, different times of the year, different types of police calls, that type of thing.”
The Chief also said the department currently has three hybrid vehicles in its fleet, which run on a combination of battery power and gasoline. He said those vehicles are operating quite well.
Jeff Johnson’s full conversation with Northfield Chief of Police Mark Elliott can be heard here
Pursell says education budget should reflect student voices
Governor Walz will formally propose his budget for the next biennium today. Walz, a former educator, has made children a priority in his budget, and because of that his budget offers large increases in state education funding. The plan would add 4 percent to the basic school funding formula this year and another 2 percent the following year. And it would automatically tie future spending increases to the inflation rate. It also calls for free meals for all students and would bolster spending for special education.
Representative Kristi Pursell sits on the House Education Finance Committee. She said the values of Walz’s budget match up with the way she and many other members of the committee see things, but there are additions that could be made to the budget proposal, and ideas that come directly from students.
Last week, her committee heard testimony from high school students across the state, and Pursell said it was an eye-opening experience for her.
“It’s just always so inspiring to hear from young people. They know what they need. They can reflect on their experience and the experience of their peers. So that was just really great because, I think a lot of times, we lose that voice and those are the people most impacted by the decisions that we’re making.”
Pursell said an increase to the basic formula, and tying it to inflation, is something she has heard about from superintendents in her district, and she likes the ideas of free meals. But among the issues the students discussed was what she called “Period Poverty.” Often times girls from lower income households will not attend school while they are menstruating, because they do not have access to the proper sanitary products. Pursell said they have passed a bill out of committee that will fund those products as a basic necessity, like breakfast and lunch. That bill, she said, came as a result of the student testimony her committee heard.
“We’ve heard testimony on the the Period Poverty Bill from a lot of students, and actually that’s where the legislation came from. There were students who knew that their classmates were missing schooldays and days of school – over the course of the school year. So, then this actually grows from student need.”
Walz’s budget proposal will soon be joined by proposals from House Republicans, House Democrats, Senate Republicans and Senate Democrats. The budget will be the focus of this session, as the current one expires at the end of June and will most likely not be passed until the very end of the legislative session.
Jeff Johnson’s full conversation with Representative Kristi Pursell can be heard here
Rich Larson is the KYMN News Director. Contact him at rich@kymnradio.net
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