Saturday, October 27, 2012 Faribault Daily NewS Page 3a

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — The exhibit “Lost Egypt” has re-turned to the Science Mu-seum of Minnesota, and this

time, visitors can actually see it. The last time it was here, it was being built behind closed doors in the museum fabrication shop.

“Lost Egypt” highlights a part of the museum invisible to the public: exhibit design and development. The museum’s exhibit services division employs more than 100 people, ranging from writers to model builders to carpenters and audio-visual specialists.

“We’re one of the biggest players nationally in making exhibits,” said Paul Martin, senior vice president of science learning. “And we have one of the oldest and most prolific touring exhibition programs in the museum field.”

The museum created its first traveling exhibit, on wolves, in 1982. It toured for 10 years before settling at the International Wolf Center in Ely. Since then, the mu-seum has produced 25 touring ex-hibits. Five currently are on tour, including a large one that explores race and a small one about infec-tious-disease detectives.

The museum also is one of only a few in the country that regularly build permanent exhibits for other museums, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reports (http://bit.ly/T0ymli ). Contract and touring revenue combined brought in more than $7 million in 2011, a figure that has steadily increased and which accounted for about a fifth of the museum’s overall $36 million bud-get last year.

When the Science Museum was gearing up to move into its new building in St. Paul overlooking the Mississippi River in 1999, Martin and other staff noticed an unset-tling pattern. A number of other science centers were being built around the country at the same time. They would hire a lot of ex-hibit developers to fill the empty exhibition halls, and then those people would be let go when the museums were up and running.

“We had staffed up for this building,” Martin said. “And we knew when we opened, we’d have more staff than we could use here. So in the mid-1990s, we started to look for work with other organiza-tions.”

Martin’s staff made exhibits for the Lemelson Center at the Smith-sonian and the California Science Center in Los Angeles, creating a business and building their own ex-pertise at the same time they con-structed, say, magnetic racetracks and tidepool displays for other in-stitutions.

The most recent big project was a four-year, multimillion-dollar contract with the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, slated to open in December in Dallas.

“We were building a museum from scratch, and we were looking for the experts to help us,” said Pe-rot’s chief executive, Nicole Small, who is heading up the new $185 million center. “Minnesota kept coming up and coming up and com-ing up in conversation. I’d say the Exploratorium (in San Francisco) and Minnesota are two of the finest in building hands-on exhibitions.”

Dallas also is working with two private exhibit-design firms, but Small said Minnesota offered the advantage of being able to test ex-hibits on visitors.

“We love the fact that they had an existing museum and could pro-totype exhibits on their museum floor,” she said.

The Science Museum of Minne-sota designed and built exhibits to

fill four galleries. Most of the dis-plays have shipped out, but a few last pieces were being finished last week in the museum shop, which takes up nearly the entire bottom floor of the museum.

Mark Hegnauer was attaching a top to a black kiosk that will sit in the Dallas museum’s sports gal-lery in a display that will let people “race” against various animals. Like many exhibit builders, he has a background in theater. In his case, he was a prop manager at the Guth-rie Theater. Cliff Athorn, director of exhibit production, is a former production manager for the Min-nesota Opera.

Nearby stood a prototype of an interactive display about toilets in space for “Journey to Space,” which will premiere in St. Paul in 2014 before touring. The museum got a grant from NASA to work on it with the California Science Cen-ter, which just acquired the retired space shuttle Endeavour.

Across the room under a wall of neatly shelved lumber were displays of what looked like fat hockey pucks connected by wood rods for a small exhibit on nanotechnology. The Sci-ence Museum will be building 70 replicas of the exhibit to send across the country, paid for by the National Science Foundation, which is eager

to raise public awareness about a field it has given substantial funding to in the past decade.

“That’s never been done before,” Martin said, “where there have been that many small exhibits distributed to so many museums.”

The next big thing on the hori-zon is “Maya Worlds,” an exhibit about the ancient city-states of Mexico and Central America. It will open in St. Paul in 2013 and then go on tour -- becoming the museum’s largest touring exhibit to date, on the scale of some touring exhibits developed by for-profit companies, such as “Real Pirates,” which just closed in Minnesota.

The Science Museum came up with the Maya idea and approached the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, which has Mayan artifacts in its collection. Museums in San Diego and Boston also joined the partnership.

“The opportunity came here to us, and coming from Minnesota, I didn’t have to question the source,” said Larry Ralph, director of edu-cation enterprises and temporary exhibits at the Museum of Science in Boston. “It looked like it could be a big one, it looked like -- we don’t like to use the word ‘blockbuster,’ but this is clearly a topic that we know will interest our members.”

Local/State

the Faribault Daily NewS SubmitteD a queStiONNaire tO bOth OF Faribault’S caNDiDateS FOr mayOr. here iS hOw they aNSwereD:

candidate Q&a • Faribault mayor

john jasinskiage: 46Family: two children,

mother, five siblingsoccupation: real

estate brokerEducation: Gradu-

ated Faribault Senior high School. attended college at university of minnesota –Duluth and mankato State university. bachelors of Science Degree in business administration with concentra-tion in finance and real estate.

Political / community involvement: mayor of Faribault, board of directors of Faribault main Street, South central college President’s advisory committee, and beyond the yellow ribbon Steering committee.

Why are you running?It is important to be involved and give

back to your community. I was encour-aged to run four years ago by citizens that wanted to see more economic development in the city of Faribault. Faribault has seen above average growth in jobs, given the worst economy in decades. Unfortunately, we are in the middle of transition with management staff, and it is important to maintain stability in the mayor position while continuing for a positive change.

What’s the most important issue facing Faribault?

I believe it will be important to build the new management team at City Hall. Some feel that the recent transition of upper level management has been negative. I would like to emphasize that personnel issues can obviously be complex to deal with. I believe the current transition of the city adminis-

trator and some directors can be used to our advantage and will have a positive long term effect on the city of Faribault.

What do you believe is the role of the Mayor?

The mayor’s official role is to preside at all city council meetings. He is also recog-nized as the head of city government for all ceremonial purposes. In reality the mayor is responsible to lead the entire city council through discussion and debate, and then to help develop a consensus amongst the council on all policies affecting the city. The mayor position should also project a posi-tive image for the city of Faribault.

Who is responsible for drawing jobs to the city, who should pay for it and how?

It is important to make drawing jobs to the city a collaborative effort between the state, Rice County, the city of Faribault, and the Faribault Chamber of Commerce,

as well as the local business stakeholders in the community. New jobs will benefit the entire area, however, each opportunity should be analyzed on a case by case basis to see if it will have a positive impact to Faribault, and if local incentives should be used.

Do you believe the city council has been transparent in its dealings as it could have been?

Yes. The city has been criticized for not being transparent. Unfortunately, some items are regulated by law and are in the best interest of the city to be cautious when releasing information due to the risk of lawsuits that could cost the city taxpayers a large amount of money in potential dam-ages. These areas include items that have pending litigation or when dealing with personnel issues where individual rights must to be protected by law.

Why are you running?I am running because I would like to be

the next mayor. I also believe the timing is right because Faribault citizens need op-tions. An elected official should never run unopposed. I feel with a strong backround in community involvement, leadership and low level of conflicts of interest, I am a very viable candidate for your next mayor.

What’s the most important issue facing Faribault?

Faribault’s largest issue is maintaining the tax base. Every year when the council prepares budgets, the amount of money we have to work with is based upon the valuation of the city, minus the non-taxable properties. We may think that we can get by on a 1 percent increase to the local tax rate, but if the valuation drops 12 percent, that creates an automatic deficit for our operat-

ing funds. If we can create a larger diverse tax base, i.e., residential, commercial and industrial, it helps maintain those number because not all of these items are affected in the same way.

How involved should the council be in the day-to-day operations of the city?

The council should be in a very hands off mode as far as day-to-day is concerned. This is the reason we have directors in place. We meet weekly and discuss what is going on in the city and put our hands in for larger decisions brought to us by the city adminis-trator and the directors. Unless we are on a sub-committee appointed by the council, we in no way should be directing how a shovel is used, or what color pens are to be used in the office.

Who is responsible for drawing jobs to the city, who should pay for it and how?

I feel this is more of an EDA issue, but the council should always be promoting our city. The EDA is given a special levy to build funds to help entice business into Faribault and maintain them here. The council has a larger role on deciding TIFS and tax defer-ments. The council is given this authority to maintain our tax roles. But, as I stated, we all need to be cheerleaders for Faribault.

Are the city’s public safety staffing levels where they should be? Why or why not?

I think the public safety staffing levels are at a good point right now. We are almost fully staffed to my knowledge, one known vacancy due to a promotion. I think there are some openings on the paid on call at the Fire Hall. But for the most part, it seems as though they are running at a soon to be comfortable level after all of the final place-ments have been made.

kEvin voracEkage: 34Family: wife, Gretch-

en, two childrenoccupation: centu-

rylink technicianEducation: bethle-

hem academy Grad, two technical colleges

Political/community involvement:

Paradise center for the arts, Knights of columbus, communications workers of america 7203

In this Oct. 9, 2012 photo, Science Museum of Minnesota exhibit designer Amanda Wamback works near a scale model of an exhibit about the West opening in Denver next year at the museum in St. Paul, Minn. (AP)

Behind the scenes at the Science Museum arOuND miNNeSOta

Feds cut number of MN clinics that got NECC drugs

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — The federal government now says 111 Minnesota clinics received drugs from a Massachusetts phar-macy at the center of a fungal meningitis out-break. That’s 18 fewer clinics than state officials reported last week after receiving a different provider list, and they don’t know why the number changed.

Only one steroid made by New England Compounding Center has been linked to the fungal meningitis outbreak. But the Food and Drug Administration warns it can’t verify the safety of other drugs made at the facility.

Assistant State Epidemiologist Richard Danila tells Minnesota Public Radio the lower number of clinics is confusing.

A spokeswoman says the FDA is focusing on drugs shipped since May 21, believed to be at greatest risk of contamination.

Minnesota has nine confirmed cases of fungal meningitis so far.

Kraft plant to lose 90 jobsNEW ULM, Minn. (AP) — The New Ulm

Kraft Foods plant will lose an estimated 90 jobs under a restructuring plan that takes ef-fect next year.

Company officials say the move could re-sult in the loss of 80 fulltime hourly positions and 10 salaried positions.

A Kraft representative tells The Free Press of Mankato it will be another few months before the company how many employees are affected.

The move includes a $25 million invest-ment in new equipment and infrastructure at the New Ulm plant.

Kraft has been in New Ulm since 1955 and employs 555 people at the plant.

Judge: Minnesota school can’t go to soccer tourney

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A judge has de-nied a request to allow the boys’ soccer team from Prairie Seeds Academy to compete in the Minnesota Class A state tournament.

The Brooklyn Park school was seeking a court order to reverse the Minnesota State High School League’s decision to disqualify the team from the state tournament.

The Star Tribune reports Hennepin County Judge Jay Quam (kwahm) on Friday denied the request.

The league ended Prairie Seeds’ season because of the school’s use of an ineliglble player. The investigation began after an on-field fight at the end of the team’s playoff victory over Totino-Grace. The league then disqualified Prairie Seeds after finding the team used an ineligible player the entire 2012 season.