Ground Level Blog

A new University of Minnesota study outlines a series of ways local governments can innovate and redesign, including examples from the across Minnesota of collaborating, using new incentives, finding volunteers and more.
Is community policing enough in Rochester?
Rochester’s facts and fictions around crime will get a public forum on February 1 as MPR and the Post-Bulletin host a discussion on public safety.
For Minnesota cities that nervously set their budgets last year with one eye on uncertain state aid levels, the debate in the Legislature is putting their concerns back on the front burner.
Join the rural health care conversation: Virginia and the public hospital dilemma
Virginia’s public hospital faces red ink and the prospect of merging. It also points to the larger problem of paying for health care in rural regions of the state. MPR will hold an online forum on this topic on January 28 at noon.
Minnesota ranks 42nd in entrepreneurship, a fact highlighted by the state’s science and technology authority.
Ten percent of Minnesotans don’t have consistent access to nutritious food. Marilyn Jackson, raising five grandchildren in Minneapolis, is among them.
Northern Minnesota’s Lake County has a $66 million federal award to build a fiber-optic broadband network to reach every home in the county. The cable and phone companies that offer service to many of those homes aren’t happy.
Immigrant farmers try to get beyond farmers markets
Immigrant farmers, long a staple at Minnesota farmers markets, are trying to break down barriers that have prevented them from scaling up and injecting their operations into other parts of the local food movement.