Northfield Downtown Development Corporation

I think that it says something about Northfield when about forty citizens show up at 8 o’clock in the morning to hear a presentation on City Finances. As you can see by my lame photo, at this morning’s Monthly Downtown Forum, Kathleen McBride shined some light on this sometimes shadowy subject.

Mac began her presentation with a topic that has been at the top of some of our leaders’ agendas for some time, the Capital Improvement Plan. This is the City’s long-term investment plan, including, potentially, a new liquor store, a new city hall, a new library and a new safety center.

The group of attendees clearly put this topic in the context of on-going operating costs for the city when contemplating taking on additional debt to finance these potential projects. In response to questions and comments, Mac made it clear that she viewed capital improvement decisions as balancing the prioritization of a community’s critical needs with the citizens’ ability to take on a reasonable debt burden.

To put it in a really big picture, Northfield’s legal debt limit, based on a total market value of $1.18 billion, is about $23 million. Our community has traditionally been careful about taking on debt to finance big projects. In fact, Mac’s final slide showed that if the City was actually going to take on all of the above mentioned projects, through bonding alone, the annual cost of servicing our debt would rise from $800,000 to $2.8 million.

Mac’s presentation was quite informative and, helped out a few times with translations by Director of Operations Joel Walinski and Former Councilor Dixon Bond, generally quite accessible. Of particular interest to a number of people was the discussion of the Master Development Fund. I think that she had about four hours of information and only an hour and a half to share it. She offered to come back again in the not-too-distant future.

Perhaps we could touch on the City’s income and expenses in that session. I think that would be of interest too.

Thanks again to Mac for making herself available to downtown stakeholders!

City of Northfield Finance Department Manager Kathleen McBride will be the guest speaker at the NDDC’s December Downtown Forum. The Forum is Tuesday, December 4^th, 8 am in the Riverview Conference Room, lower level of the Archer House, 212 Division Street, in downtown Northfield.

Kathleen, or “Mac”, will give a brief overview of the City’s financial structure and processes and then take questions from the audience. It is a rare and valuable opportunity to learn about one of the more arcane areas of city government.

The NDDC is a non-partisan, non-profit community organization dedicated to the vitality of downtown Northfield. The event is free and open to the public. As always, coffee and cookies will be served.

For more information, contact Executive Director Ross Currier at 663-0319 or rcurrier@nddc.org.

This is a 90-page PDF of the Downtown Northfield Streetscape Framework Plan that was discussed at last week’s NDDC forum.

See Ross’ blog post here on the NDDC blog as well a blog post on our Locally Grown that discussed the issue.

You can view the document via the slideshow below, though it’s better to hop to the Slideshare website for the document and click the ‘Full’ button to view the slideshow with the full screen of your computer. You can also copy/paste the embed code in your own blog, or email it to others.

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Indeed, for the third year in a row, the college presidents had coffee and cookies with the downtown stakeholders.

Carleton President Rob Oden started things off by telling folks that there were a number of towns in Minnesota that wanted the college to locate in their community. It is his belief that the founders chose Northfield because of the town’s characteristic of citizen engagement.

Oden again reaffirmed the competitive leverage that Northfield’s sense of place continues to give to the college. It was the quality of life that recently helped the college win a global competition for a scarce Arabist.

He then moved to the theme for collaboration: sustainability. Carleton is installing 10 solar panels around the campus, built over the bike shelters. When added to the existing windmill, these panels will help Carleton generate about 50% of its energy needs.

I wonder if we could create a bike shelter downtown, perhaps with public restrooms as part of the structure, with the lights powered by a solar panel.

St. Olaf President David Anderson continued with the theme of sustainability. The recent hailstorm damaged all of the college’s slate roofs and the repair work is viewed as an opportunity for increased energy savings.

It will be interesting to see if the college learns some tricks for improving the energy efficiency of historic buildings.

Both presidents discussed their current big building projects. Carleton continues to move forward on the planning and design of the Old Middle School/Carleton Arts Center/Collabatory, while St. Olaf makes steady progress toward completing their impressive new Science Center.

When asked about bringing the college students and downtown stakeholders together, Oden suggested that there would be an opportunity for powerful cultural synergy between the Carleton Collabatory, the Carnegie Library and the Historic Grand, and Anderson said that students were always hungry for multi-generational activities.

The NDDC is certainly eager to support collaborative efforts to create such a downtown cultural district that appeals to people of all ages and serves all parts of the community.

Senator Tom Neuville and Representative David Bly went from a historic overview of the recent session to the next steps for addressing important issues at this morning’s Downtown Forum.

The two elected officials agreed that we’re not staying on top of required investments in Minnesota but disagreed on the best ways to pay for needed infrastructure and services.

Many of the questions and much of the discussion focused on transportation issues. Tom and David agreed that we’re not keeping up either with maintaining the old or building the new and that the challenge is increasing. Ideas for funding this work included the gas tax, toll roads or a congestion fee.

On the specific issue of Highway 19, we were advised to preserve the corridor, once determining where the road should be, and to communicate regularly with elected officials at all levels. The fact that the road is both on the District Line and the County Line makes progress more challenging and the fact that the Rochester District is in the roughest in the state make it more competitive. The legislators and the citizens committed to stepping up the pressure on this issue over the next few months.

City Councilor Scott Davis brought up Local Government Aid. He suggested that the volatility of the current system made predictability for budgeting almost impossible. The legislators agreed that the formula for calculating the aid should be more predictable to facilitate local budgeting for essential services and that the challenge was of finding such a formula while also assuring that there was some semblance of geographic equity.

Finally, NDDC Vice President Joe Grundhoefer brought up commercial real estate taxes. The taxes on his building have gone from $7,000 to $30,000 over the last 7 years. He wondered if there wasn’t something the state could do about real estate taxes in historic districts, where the maintenance of these cherished structures consumed a significant portion of the operating budgets. Tom and David agreed to meet with the NDDC E. R. Team and discuss possible ideas for addressing this challenge. One thought raised at the meeting was an income based approach to valuations within a historic district.

All agreed that it would take the participation of local building owners and local officials to make real progress on this issue. We committed to meet later this summer and sketch out some action steps that we can take together.