Novak says state investment would allow North Country Food Bank to start feeding more people immediately
Including $3 million in the 2018 Minnesota Legislature’s capital investment/bonding bill for Crookston-based North Country Food Bank is the “right thing to do,” Susie Novak told members of the Senate Capital Investment Committee Wednesday evening, because it would allow the NCFB to more of what it solely exists to do: Feed people.
“It’s the right thing to do because we could start feeding more people immediately,” the NCFB executive director stressed to the legislators during a stop at NCFB’s downtown offices and warehouse.
NCFB has been seeking $3 million from the state for three years, without success. The money would be matched with $3 million being raised as part of an NCFB capital campaign, and the $6 million would be invested in the construction of a new facility on six acres of donated land on North Broadway near Fisher Avenue, just south of Agassiz Townhomes that is currently under construction.
NCFB is a non-profit that was incorporated in 1983. It currently serves a 21-county swath in northwestern and west central Minnesota (and part of Grand Forks County) and partners with more than 230 agencies. One of those partners, Feeding America, carries an immense amount of clout, Novak told the legislators, and Feeding America has deemed NCFB’s Crookston facility as being “non-compliant.”
“So we’re basically required to do something,” she said.
Gov. Mark Dayton earlier this week released his initial 2018 bonding proposal totaling $1.5 billion. It does not include any money for NCFB. The $3 million for NCFB is included on a separate list of projects totaling more than $800 million that Dayton said are worthy of state investment and he’d be willing to include some of them as his bonding proposal is tweaked during the legislative session that’s soon to convene.
The Senate committee members were hosted on their Crookston visit by District 1 State Sen. Mark Johnson, R-East Grand Forks, who is not on the committee. During their stop at NCFB, Johnson implored committee members to include funding for a new NCFB in their bonding proposal. “The work Susie and her team have done here and continue to do as they meet growing needs for their services is just amazing,” Johnson said. “What they do is absolutely critical and vital to a very large region.”
The legislators toured the warehouse in back and walked through NCFB’s cooler and freezer, which Novak said are “horrible” and “woefully inadequate.” She cited the exploding growth of donated produce, which can’t be stored for long periods of time and needs to get to those who need it much faster than non-perishable food items. The NCFB’s current coolers and freezers simply aren’t up to the task, she said.
Last year, Novak noted, North Country operated programs that distributed over 7.4 million pounds of food to people in need. Most local charitable organizations in NCFB’s service area, including food shelves, soup kitchens, homeless shelters, senior community centers, after-school programs, and other non-profits that serve those in need, receive at least 50 percent of the food they distribute from North Country. There are many agencies that receive more than 70 percent of their food from North Country, and some that receive more than 90 percent of their food from NCFB, Novak explained, with the percentage rising the further north from Crookston you go.
North Country has 11 full-time employees, and one of the best pounds of food distributed per employee ratios in the nation, she said. North Country also has more than 1,000 volunteers who provided more than 12,830 hours of service last year.
Novak spent much of her presentation stressing what a large-scale operation NCFB is. While local food drives and other volunteer efforts to collect food items for those in need are frequent and always appreciated, she said that much of what NCFB receives in the form of donated food comes large amounts and in bulk form. She mentioned as an example receiving several large totes of spaghetti from a pasta manufacturer. With no licensed “clean table” at its Crookston facility, Novak said NCFB has to pay outside agencies to package and take other necessary steps to get the spaghetti ready to be disseminated to those in need.
“By the time we’re finished with all of that, it would have been cheaper for us to just go to the store and buy a bunch of spaghetti,” she told the lawmakers.
Novak said the NCFB’s request for funding is all about adding space to increase its capacity to serve the growing needs of people in a massive geographic region.
“We’re not looking to build something fancy,” she said. “We just need more space.”
UMC visit
Prior to arriving at North Country, the committee took a tour of the University of Minnesota Crookston campus, which is seeking, as part of a funding package allocated to the full U of M system, to do improvement projects such as replace the windows in Dowell Hall. But, in addition, UMC specifically is requesting money to improve student lab space on campus.
Included in Dayton’s initial public works bill is $10.5 million to build modern chemistry and biology labs in the U of M Crookston’s Owen Hall. (A portion of that money would also be spent on similar projects on the Duluth and Morris campuses.)
Andrew Svec, UMC director of communications, marketing and public relations, told the Times earlier this week that the project involves renovating 4,000 square feet in Owen Hall that would provide more flexible and modern lab space for up to 30 students and support independent undergraduate research.
UMC’s request also include optimizing 9,500 square feet in Dowell Hall with lab stations for 122 students in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education, computational research, and teacher education. That project is not specifically mentioned in Dayton’s narrative regarding University of Minnesota system funding in his bonding proposal.