Quickies: Point Bridge closed until mid-Sept.; bar owners seek to punish underage drinkers
BUSY DAY for the City Beat. I think I have five bylines in the paper tomorrow.
* As promised, here's the story on water usage in Grand Forks. Water usage in June was the second highest ever for a single month at 322.5 million gallons. The highest was in July 1989 when residents and businesses used 383.8 million gallons.
* The Point Bridge, closed since early June for major renovation, might stay closed until as late as mid-September. That's from East Grand Forks city engineer Greg Boppre. Good luck with that extra 2 mile commute.
* Bar owners in Grand Forks say a proposed law requiring bartenders and liquor store clerks to receive server training is unfair. Led by Mike McMenamy of McMenamy's Tavern, the owners say the city ought to punish the real culprits: minors using false ID. They want to increase the minimum fine for that offense up to $2,000. All this additional regulation is meant to cut down on underage and binge drinking in the area.
* Everybody who's calling the city of East Grand Forks about that humongo road repair project, check out this map from Floan-Sanders first. The city engineer is begging you. (This wasn't in a story, in case you're counting bylines.)
* Is it hot enough for ya, people? A Grand Forks street buckled yesterday because of the heat, said city engineer Al Grasser. Most streets have gaps that allow concrete to expand, he said, but silt can fill in the gap on older streets. This sort of thing was pretty common back in the late 1980s and early 1990s when it was hot and dry, just like it is now, so the city expects this buckling might happen again.
* Not city related but I had to cover Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Amy Klobuchar's visit to East Grand Forks today. She was just like she is on her TV commercial. Her opponent is Republican U.S. Rep. Mark Kennedy.
* As promised, here's the story on water usage in Grand Forks. Water usage in June was the second highest ever for a single month at 322.5 million gallons. The highest was in July 1989 when residents and businesses used 383.8 million gallons.
* The Point Bridge, closed since early June for major renovation, might stay closed until as late as mid-September. That's from East Grand Forks city engineer Greg Boppre. Good luck with that extra 2 mile commute.
* Bar owners in Grand Forks say a proposed law requiring bartenders and liquor store clerks to receive server training is unfair. Led by Mike McMenamy of McMenamy's Tavern, the owners say the city ought to punish the real culprits: minors using false ID. They want to increase the minimum fine for that offense up to $2,000. All this additional regulation is meant to cut down on underage and binge drinking in the area.
* Everybody who's calling the city of East Grand Forks about that humongo road repair project, check out this map from Floan-Sanders first. The city engineer is begging you. (This wasn't in a story, in case you're counting bylines.)
* Is it hot enough for ya, people? A Grand Forks street buckled yesterday because of the heat, said city engineer Al Grasser. Most streets have gaps that allow concrete to expand, he said, but silt can fill in the gap on older streets. This sort of thing was pretty common back in the late 1980s and early 1990s when it was hot and dry, just like it is now, so the city expects this buckling might happen again.
* Not city related but I had to cover Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Amy Klobuchar's visit to East Grand Forks today. She was just like she is on her TV commercial. Her opponent is Republican U.S. Rep. Mark Kennedy.
posted by Tu-Uyen at 10:27 PM
7 Comments:
"Good luck with that extra 2 mile commute."
Is that some kind of jab? It sounded a little mean.
Oh no! Now you have to be politically correct on a Blog too! "it sounded a little mean"
Didn't the EGF City Council claim that they had no use for the Point Bridge when asked to help pay for it? Seems that they wanted GF to foot the whole bill because they were the only ones benefiting by the work. Funny how things change once the money issues are settled...maybe they should give $78,000 back to the EGF taxpayers who have been affected.
Hey Tu-yen, I gotta say that the bar owners have a great idea here. When I was a kid in GF it was no big deal to use a fake id, if you got caught the worst that would happen would be you got it taken away. I heard bar owners would pass the ids along to the cops at the end of the month, but that is where it ended, I never heard of anyone being prosecuted. News travels very fast in GF, so if bar owners called the cops, and the minors were prosecuted this would likely be a big part of a solution to the problem.
This is pretty common sense, and only goes to show how out of touch the council can be. Man, you'd think that Hal would've thought of something like this being all of his Happy Harry's staff would have likely had to go through the planned bartender training.
Boy, second anon is touchy!
Did I say I was offended?
Did I say he should have not said that?
There is counciling for that snap temper that you have. Please seek it.
I was giving Tran the business because he is always nice and cordial.
Wolfgf: Gee thanks!
Anon. and Anon.: I wasn't being mean. Imagine me saying it with eyes rolled. One of my buddies live south of the Point and I imagined myself talking to him about it. The poor sucker.
Dadinggf: Actually, Paul Endres from El Rocko stood up yesterday and said that one of his doormen got a $100 fine for letting a minor in. Not long after that, the doorman caught a minor using fake ID and called the cops. The kid was still in his car when the cops came. They talked to him for 15 minutes and then left. Paul indicated that he was really pissed because it kind of showed how biased the justice system here is against bars.
All this talk of underage drinking has made me pay more attention to stories my friends from the area tell. Seems to me that boozing has always been the thing to do if you're a kid growing up in the country (I bet your council man's probably got a story!). If these friends of mine did that sort of thing where I'm from -- the suburbs of Seattle -- they'd probably have ended up in jail later in life. The miraculous thing is they all turned out OK. Of course, people binged on beer back then not hard liquor.
P.S.: The council actually favors the bar owners' plan. They were not so keen on the plan to make server training mandatory.
P.P.S.: All of Hal's staff has gone through server training.
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Did Paul expect the cops to haul this guy of to court, or to give him a ticket and a court date, which was most likely done? In GF we have a jail built for a town with a population of 20,000 and a population of around 55,000...I am sure the cops would like to take some of these people to jail, but that isn't always the option that is open to them.
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