By Logan Wells, News Director | Logan@kymnradio.net
The Northfield City Council meets for a work session meeting. Three items are up for discussion tonight. The first discussion item concerns the city’s strategic plan, which is a three-year plan that establishes the most immediate goals for the City Council and City Staff.
In April, the Council met for a full day to discuss and set four strategic priorities which are:
- Improve Financial Strength – Ensuring long-term fiscal sustainability through prudent budgeting, diversified revenue, and responsible financial management.
- Increase Housing Availability – Expanding housing options to meet the needs of current and future residents across all income levels.
- Achieve Infrastructure Sustainability – Maintaining and modernizing the City’s physical assets, including streets, utilities, and public facilities, through strategic investments.
- Enhance Service Delivery – Improving the efficiency, accessibility, and responsiveness of city services to better meet the needs of the community.
The proposed draft of the City’s Strategic Plan can be viewed in a PDF version here.
After that, the city staff created Key Outcome Indicators (KOIs) and performance targets for the strategic plan. At tonight’s meeting, the Council can make recommendations and edits to the document before it goes to final approval later this month.
Next on the agenda is a review of the Art Allowance, also known as the 1% for the arts. Currently, in Northfield, every city project must dedicate 1% of its construction funds to public art installation. Several points have been raised by different councilors, asking if this was the most effective policy, with Councilors Chad Beumeer and Peter Dahlen favoring a cap on the allowance, however, Mayor Erica Zweifel indicated that she believed the art allowance would continue in some form:
“And I was listening last night and I heard the goals are reduce the tax implications on large projects we’ve had a couple of really large projects coming at us…This policy is highly valued by the Community, and no one said they wanted to do away with the policy. I didn’t hear that at all from the dais.” -Northfield Mayor Erica Zweifel on the KYMN Morning Show
The meeting will conclude with a discussion of potential projects the city could request state aid in for 2026.
At work session meetings, no votes are taken by the council, instead, there will be longer presentations and discussions scheduled. Furthermore, since the meeting is a work session, no public comments will be taken at the meeting. However, you can contact your councils via email or the eComment option. You can email the council by clicking here.
To view the agenda, go to northfieldmn.gov and click the “Agenda & Minutes” button in the middle of the home page. From there, find tonight’s meeting date to watch the recording, as well as a copy of the agenda and other meeting documents.
Tonights meeting starts at 6pm in the Council Chambers of the Northfield City Hall
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