Mayor Rhonda Pownell will deliver her annual State of the City Address tonight. The mayor’s address will be a distillation of information brought together from the various city departments and presented through the mayor’s prioritized lens, but the State of the City has become much more than a speech given by Mayor Pownell. It will 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.
The program will feature live music, and brief video presentations on this year’s honorees. Every year, the event honors the recipients of the Northfield Human Rights Award, the Ethical Leadership Award, the Board and Commission Excellence Award, the Employee Excellence Award, and the Living Treasure Award.
The 2024 State of the City Address will be held this evening at 6:30pm in the Krakum Performance Hall of the Weitz Center for Creativity on the campus of Carleton College. ASL and Spanish interpreters will be available. Refreshments will be served after the address during an artist’s reception held for Living Treasure Award winner Judy Saye-Willis.
A recording of the event will be available in English and Spanish on Northfield Public Broadcasting channels 180 and 187 and on the city’s YouTube Channel throughout the year.
The event tonight is free and open to the public.
District High School construction plan would be ‘phased’
Last week the Northfield School Board approved a motion directing the district staff to create a referendum for the November ballot that ask voters for approval of a project that would create a new classroom building for the Northfield High School, and tear down four of the high school’s wings.
One of the questions being asked about the plan is where will the students attend class if the D, M, S and H Wings are torn down?
Northfield Superintendent of Schools Dr. Matt Hillmann said the plan would be for the new classroom facility to be built first. Once that is complete and operational, then the other areas will be torn down. Renovations to areas like the gym, the cafeteria and the V Wing would be done over the summer.
Hillmann acknowledged that there will be construction impact on the students and staff should the voters approve the referendum, but the district has handled situations like this in the past, and they know how to do this.
“They call that phasing in the industry. We’re working with partners that have done phasing very well. In fact, we have great experience with it because if you think about it, both Bridgewater Elementary and Spring Creek Elementary had the same exact kind of thing, albeit on a smaller scale. Students kept going to school while we were constructing the new office at Bridgewater. And then we renovated the former office space after that was completed. At Spring Creek, we constructed the new cafeteria while students were in school and then renovated the other spaces during the summer.”
Hillmann said about 102,000 square feet of the facility would be torn down, and 120,000 square feet would be constructed in the plan. But he said one of the hidden benefits would be in the better use of space. Right now, the high school is a sprawling facility that has what he called “wasted space” in necessary hallways, simply because the students and teachers need to get around. The new facility, even with more square footage, would also have a more compact footprint.
Hillmann acknowledged that there is no guarantee the referendum will pass, and he was quick to remind people that the public must approve construction of a public school. But, he said, he is allowing himself to think about the positive impact a new, modern facility could bring to an already exceptional school district.
“It is about the classroom spaces. It’s about the entire experience. And then of course, really, the where the magic happens is that mixing of a quality facility with the amazing programs that we have, I am so excited, should the voters choose to approve this, to see what our teachers and students will do in the future.”
A new plan to help district voters see and understand what they will be asked to approve will be rolled out shortly. Election Day is November 5th.
County expects Safety Center to be ready for possession this summer, operational late fall
The new Rice County Safety Center, which will house both the Rice County Sheriff’s Department and the Rice County Jail, is in the final stages of construction. Rice County Sheriff Jesse Thomas said the carpeting is about to be installed in the office spaces, furniture will be moved in starting in May, and the county will take full possession of the building sometime in July.
That, according to Sheriff Thomas, is when the real work will start.
Moving an entire law enforcement department, to say nothing of the incarcerated individuals in the jail, is not an easy or quick process. Thomas said it must be done meticulously, carefully and with great attention to detail. The moving of staff offices and basic office equipment will be helped along by the Rice County facilities department, but most of the process will have to be handled in-house.
Files have to be handled carefully, as does the department’s equipment that is used for law enforcement. The handling of evidence will require a well-placed system that Thomas said has to be thought through completely before it can begin.
“Evidence will be a big move. We’ll have to log everything out of our current location and transport it. You can’t just throw everything in the back of your car and transport it to the new site. [Once it arrives,] you have to log it all back in through the new system. It takes a lot of time and we’ve been working on what that procedure is and what that looks like in our world.”
Once everything is in place, he said, then the County Detainees can be moved. Thomas said that will be the most difficult challenge in the entire process.
“On our side, the biggest obstacle is moving our inmates, or detainees, into the new facility. The Department of Corrections has a lot of criteria, so we have to make sure we dot all our I’s and cross all our T’s. They will have to sign off on the building before we can start moving people.”
Thomas said the careful process is necessary for obvious reasons, but the care they take will be worth it when it is finished. The Rice County Safety Center is expected to be running and fully operational, he said, by November.
Jeff Johnson’s full conversation with Rice County Sheriff Jesse Thomas can be heard here
KYMN News 3/19/24
Rich Larson is the KYMN News Director. Contact him at rich@kymnradio.net
