Ground Level®: Amplifying Community Voices

Your story is powerful. The stories you share with others honor the complexity of our communities while forging a more equitable and vibrant future.

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We’d like to hear your thoughts and questions. Your ideas about solutions. How are your communities? What are you seeing today? And what do you want to see tomorrow?

Note that while we will exercise editorial judgment for language, length and avoiding personal attacks, we will not sacrifice your meaning. We will ensure your main message comes through on air and online.

April 10, 2013 5:00 AM

Proposals would spend $500,000 a year on broadband office

Legislation in both Minnesota houses would spend $500,000 a year to create a broadband development office that would track and promote ways to increase high-speed Internet availability in the state.

by Dave Peters

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April 5, 2013 4:06 AM

Join a video chat on the Minnesota skills gap question

See a video chat on whether Minnesota has a skills gap. We’ll talk to people from industry, the state and higher education.

by Dave Peters

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April 4, 2013 6:17 AM

Suburbs, regional centers would gain under new LGA compromise

A local-government-aid compromise moving in the Legislature would benefit suburbia and exurbia but also regional job hubs in outstate Minnesota. An initial increase of $60 million per year would rise with inflation.

by Dave Peters

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April 2, 2013 4:45 AM

Subscription farms boom in Minnesota

The number of CSA farms has grown dramatically in Minnesota, from just eight in 2004 to at least 100 today.

by Jennifer Vogel

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April 2, 2013 3:55 AM

How a skills gap may be forming in high school

This week, MPR’s Ground Level and reporter Tom Robertson look at whether there really is a jobs-skills mismatch n Minnesota — what’s causing what we’re seeing, and what’s being done about it. (Hint: It’s a lot more complicated than you think.) I posted yesterday on a conversation Robertson had with Steve Hine, research director for…

by Alex Friedrich

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March 29, 2013 11:51 AM

Tune in for a look at the skills gap question in Minnesota

Ground Level launches a look at why some manufacturers have difficulty filling jobs and why it’s only partly because of a skills gap.

by Dave Peters

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March 29, 2013 3:30 AM

Metro area creeps farther into rural Minnesota

The federal government has expanded the Twin Cities metropolitan statistical area from 13 counties to 16, adding three outlying “rural” areas.

by Dave Peters

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March 21, 2013 3:32 AM

Deaths and births in Minnesota. Where are they?

More than a third of Minnesota’s counties are experiencing more deaths than births, but a few places with high immigration in recent decades run counter to that trend.

by Dave Peters