Northfield Mayor Rhonda Pownell will celebrate what Northfield has accomplished this past year and the goals and aspirations that will be 
made priorities this upcoming year tonight, when she delivers her annual State of the City Address.
The event has evolved in recent years to become much more than a mayoral speech. While it will include information brought together from the various city departments, it will also include recognition of various award winners, and a celebration of things like the annual Mayor for a Day essay contest that runs every year in Northfield’s 4th and 5th grades. There will be live music performances, to highlight Northfield’s cultural aspects, and brief video presentations on the recipients of the Human Rights Award, the Ethical Leadership Award, the Board and Commission Excellence Award, the Employee Excellence Award, and the Living Treasure Award.
Mayor Pownell said in a statement that this is an event for all Northfielders, and not one to be missed. It will, she said, recognize the city’s challenges and showcase the passion that Northfielders share for our city.
The 2023 State of the City Address is tonight at 6:30 at Carleton College’s Weitz Center for Creativity in the Kracum Performance Hall.
NH+C has different solutions for staffing issues
Northfield Hospital + Clinics President and CEO Steve Underdahl said he and his staff are watching some pieces of legislation currently 
making their way through the Minnesota House of Representatives and Senate right now, because they could dramatically affect the way the organization will do business moving forward.
One of the lingering issues from the Covid-19 pandemic has been staffing problems in hospitals, particularly in nursing. Throughout the pandemic, nurses reported on the debilitatingly long hours they would have to work under extreme stress. The nursing strike that was narrowly avoided a few months ago in the Twin Cities and Duluth area was largely about staffing. Compounding the problem, Underdahl said, is the lack of ability to transfer patients to a long-term care facility because nursing homes are facing their own staff shortages. To that end, NH+C has been taking a detailed look at staffing on what he characterized as a “shift-by-shift” basis and is trying to properly staff for the types of patients in the hospital at that moment. Underdahl said a bill that is currently before the legislature would attempt to mandate certain staff levels and patient-to-nurse ratios, which he said is not the right solution to the issue. Adding the bureaucracy of supervising committees, processes and penalties, while having the best interests of the patients at heart, would be short-sighted.
“These sort of straight up math – you know the ratio has to be X number of patients to X number of nurses, as an example. It always sounds attractive, but it really sort of under appreciates the complexity of the problem.”
Another issue NH+C, along with every other health care facility in the country, has been grappling with is the rate of Medicaid Reimbursements. The problem has become so strong that many believe it is the single largest factor for staffing shortages. Underdahl said, it isn’t just about receiving enough money from the government to pay competitive wages. It’s about receiving enough money to stay in business.
“It’s not that they don’t pay us as much as we wish they would. They often don’t pay us as much as it costs to provide the service. The manufacturing analogy that I always use is if you made hammers for a living and it cost you $40 to make the hammer and then you were forced to sell it to the government for $18, you can’t make it up on volume.”
Underdahl said the issues are already causing NH+C to take a strategic look at the services they offer, and where they might have to cut costs if certain situations persist.
Believet looking for puppy foster homes
This Saturday, March 25th, Believet Canine Service Partners, an organization that trains service dogs and provides them to military 
veterans who suffer from service-related injuries or disabilities, will hold its annual fundraiser at the Northfield Ballroom.
Believet started 8 years ago, and so far, has trained 40 service dogs and paired them with a veteran. According to their website, the idea came from one of the founders, Sam Daly, who, while deployed as a civilian contractor with the Marine Corps in Afghanistan, saw the bond that developed between the explosive detecting dogs and the deployed soldiers. His sense that those dogs offered therapeutic relief led him to begin training dogs when he returned home.
Daly said service dogs can offer help with any disability from which a veteran suffers. Some help with a physical disability, like retrieving, and others are trained to help with PTSD symptoms like depression and anxiety and can even provide nightmare interruption. They also help to cut down on the number of medications a veteran must take each day.
Service dogs, he said, really are invaluable for all sorts of reasons.
“You know, our veterans are highly isolated. They’re in many ways fearful to leave their homes, which is sometimes hard to imagine that you have a trained warrior who is fearful to go to the grocery store. But frankly, they oftentimes don’t trust their own judgement, and so by having the dog along with them, it kind of diffuses the situation.”
Believet trains about 15 dogs a year. Daly said each dog trains for about 18 months before they are ready, and they are careful to pair the right dog with the right person, finding more active dogs for more active owners, and less active ones who aren’t as mobile.
They also operate a network of foster homes for the puppies. Daly said a dog isn’t ready to begin training until it is 6 months old, and because of that they need homes for the young ones until they come of age. But even when they are puppies, Daly said, there are things a foster family can do to help begin their training.
“We like to have our dogs go out and get a lot of experience and exposure in society because there are things that we cannot duplicate in the training room. We don’t train around cats, for example, we don’t train around small children and so when somebody fosters a puppy for us, they can expose them to things that we cannot.”
The Believet Spring Fundraiser will run from 5-10pm on Saturday. The free event will offer live music, a raffle, a live auction and a silent auction, along with speakers and testimonials about the work the organization has done. For more information visit believet.org.
Jeff Johnson’s full conversation with Sam Daly of Believet can be heard here
Rich Larson is the KYMN News Director. Contact him at rich@kymnradio.net
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