Here's the City of Northfield's Mar. 05 edition (large PDF) of The City Commons, their monthly newsletter that gets mailed out to residents with the utility bills.

Among the items in the newsletter:

- Agreement spurs on Riverfront Redevelopment Project
- Village within our village has great potential
- Looking for a good book?
- Over the river we go
- Libray offers spring break fun

Thanks to Marin Amundson-Graham at A+Communications and Brent Kivell at Kivell Design for their help in getting it to me. They produce/publish the newsletter for the City.

Meg Otten (L), the new Chair of the Friends of Mill Towns Trail board, with Kate Larson, Trail Planner for the MN DNR's Trails and Waterways division at yesterday's open house at City Hall.

See ten more photos in the album.

On Saturday, March 19, the Northfield People for Peace and Goodwill (PPG), along with members from the Red Wing Alliance for Peace, held a two hour vigil on Bridge Square. According to Sharon Gates-Hull, "The second anniversary of the US war in Iraq was the reason for Northfield's People for Peace and Goodwill to extend their weekly vigil from 15 minutes to two hours."

Some organizers held up a 70-foot paper banner with the names of fallen US soldiers listed. Participants also led others in songs, readings, and the sharing of personal thoughts and experiences.

The DNR is holding an open house for the Mill Towns State Trail today, 4-7 pm at Northfield City Hall, part of the public comment period now through April. "A draft master plan for the Mill Towns State Trail has been developed by the Department of Natural Resources, Trails and Waterways Division in cooperation with the Mill Towns Trail Friends Group and Mill Towns Trail Joint Powers Board."

See the DNR's site for the trail, with all the PDFs. The master plan is a huge, 100 page PDF so beware. I've snipped a zoomed-in image of the proposed route through Northfield from p. 31. Click for a larger view. The blue "M" on the map is the proposed site of the trail head. See HF0085 for the status of the $4 million dollars of bonding in House and SF0131 in the Senate.

Howard Merriam, Director Resource & Park Planning for the City of Northfield, sent me a PDF of the City's "Hit the Streets" sign that will appear "on Bridge Square in the next couple of weeks." Click the image for a larger view. Coming soon: drinking fountains, benches, planters and painted trash cans downtown. And in April, a task force begins meeting re: a streetscape and wayfinding plan. So take this mini-poll and we'll let Howard know the results. (A blogger hats-off to Lewisham City Councillor (UK) Andrew Brown for the tip on using this mini-poll tool.)

What's your reaction to the "Hit the Streets" plan thus far?
A ten! It's a great plan for downtown.Not half bad. A 7.5.Hmmm. Not sure.It's more than half bad. A 2.5.It sucks. A big zero.

Free polls from Pollhost.com

Reporter Michelle Kubitz has a story on the reopening of The Ole Store in today's Northfield News titled Return of the famous Ole Roll. "Local businessman Kevin Green closed a deal last week with his brother-in-law Bob Stangler to buy the Northfield landmark."

A group of Carleton College students are publishing a blog-like Sustainable Spring Break Journal as they visit the White Earth and Pine Ridge Indian reservations over spring break. See the reports and dozens of photos by Elizabeth Gray '08, Ryan Imhoff '08, Paloma Barhaugh-Bordas '07, Peggy Moyer '07, Dave Holman '06, Chris Petit '05, and Dana Kraus '06.

Artspace representatives Kelley Lindquist and Andrew Commers met with the joint NDDC/NAG Arts, Recreation & Culture Committee today to discuss the Artspace's position on the re-use of the old Northfield Middle School since Carleton's announcement last week.

See NDDC Executive Director Ross Currier's blog post on the meeting. "... Lindquist was clear that Artspace has not walked away from the project. Artspace was under the impression that their development agreement was going to be cancelled ..."

The RSS feed of the most recent headlines from Jim Pokorney's weblog posts are now listed on the right side of the N.org home page along with the others civic bloggers/blogging non-profit organizations in the area who are part of the Northfield Civic Blogosphere. (Those blogs are now grouped by Gov't officials, organizations, citizens - each group in alphabetical order.)

If you're an area citizen and want a blog hosted by N.org, contact us. If you're involved with an area non-profit which has a weblog on its website, let us know. You can also create your own blog with a service like Blogger, Typepad, Live Journal or many other services, and then let us know about it. If you regularly post to your blog about civic issues, we'll consider including it in our Northfield Civic Blogosphere list and aggregating your recent weblog headlines to our homepage list.

We're experimenting with using smaller images (thumbnails) in this weblog, letting you click them to see the larger versions, having the text wrap around them, and using the "extended entry" option for blog posts that contain more than 100 words or so.

These changes allow us to post more information on the blog in a compact way, while keeping the slow-loading images to a minimum for those with slower connections.

Attach a comment here if you have feedback or suggestions for us. Or use contact us form.

The Red Cross Bloodmobile will be at the First United Church of Christ this week, noon to 6 pm on Wednesday, 300 Union St. I saw the blurb in Saturday's edition of the Northfield News.

There doesn't seem to be a Red Cross web site for the Rice-LeSueur counties chapter, looking at their MN links page. Nor is the donation event this week listed at the Give Life website. So call them at 800-GIVE-LIFE or 651-291-4607 (which is a local call for Northfield).

I took a couple dozen photos after today's final performance of Rock 'n Roll Revival VI. Pictured at left: John "Lowrider" Witt and Derek "Whole Lotta Shakin'" Remes. (Click the photo for a larger size original.)

See the 24 new photos starting at the bottom of P. 8 of the Rock 'n Roll Revival album.

Northfield City Councillor Jim Pokorney has launched his weblog here on N.org, joining a growing list of civic leader bloggers who are part of Northfield's civic blogosphere.

Jim's first post is on this week's Patty Dazzle: St. Patrick Parade Secret Revealed. (He also sent me 15 photos of the event and I've put them up in a Patty Dazzle album subfolder.) His second post is Talk the Walk, on the "pedestrian crossings across the downtown portion of Highway 3 as part of the new reconstruction planned this summer and next."

Northfield received about 10 inches of snow yesterday. By 7 am this morning, all the streets and city sidewalks, including Bridge Square, were plowed and intersections salted/sanded.

I saw City Engineer/Director of Public Works Heidi Hamilton checking the streets at about 6:45 am. She said crews returned to the streets at 1 am to plow. They were out all day Friday, continued plowing primary routes from 8 pm on during Friday night. And even though rapid snow melt is predicted for next week, downtown snow removal will happen tonight.

Update 3/21: My original report incorrectly stated that crews finished up at 1 am. Thanks to Heidi Hamilton for the correction. Also, Heidi reports that the snow from the downtown streets was dumped at Sechlar Park parking lot because the rodeo grounds were soft.

I took this photo (click for large version) of NDDC Executive Director Ross Currier, Dundas Mayor Glenn Switzter, and Northfield Planning Commission Chair Betsey Buckheit looking at a Rice Country transportation map at the Goodbye Blue Monday on Thursday morning.