gfherald city beat

Off to Area Voices

2006-09-03T22:19:00.000-05:00

Hey gang, the City Beat has (reluctantly) moved to Area Voices. This site will continue but will not be updated. See you on the other side.

UND Research Foundation says "no" to Amazon.com land

2006-08-30T01:33:00.000-05:00

It looks like the UND Research Foundation has decided on a new location for its research park.

President Peter Alfonso said the foundation will build 19.5 acres on the west end of campus with a virtually free lease from UND. That means the foundation is turning down the city's offer of five acres of land for free and another 15 at the old Amazon.com land for $1.3 million.

As I wrote in my story today, it's not so much the money, which is substantial, as much as the control.

Alfonso said the foundation wants control of all 20 acres so it can do some detailed planning on the layout of the research park. The first phase only takes five acres but it has to be integrated with future phases, meaning the buildings and the parking lot have to be in just the right place. And the foundation can't do that if the city has veto power over what goes into the remaining 15 acres.

Well, that's the point for the city.

City Council member Eliot Glassheim, who's on the Growth Fund committee charged with these sort of deals, said the city wants to control what goes into the 20 acres because it still owns adjacent 57 acres adjacent that it needs to develop. If the foundation puts in some incompatible businesses, it could really chase away businesses that the city wants to attract.

My understanding is that the city would sell more land to the foundation as the research park grows. That gives the city a chance to vet what kinds of businesses the foundation puts in the park.

The weird thing, to me, is this: Alfonso mentioned something about there being advantages and disadvantages to both the west campus and the Amazon.com locations. He also mentioned that, originally, the foundation was just going to build on west campus until it got word that the city is interested in developing Amazon.com land.

I asked what the advantages and disadvantages were and he mentioned that the west campus location is easier for researchers to get to and therefore more attractive to businesses that are seeking new technology. Then he decided that he really didn't want to go into details about the advantages and disadvantages.

I explained that the reason I asked that question is I wanted to know why UND bothered with the Amazon.com location if west campus was so hot. To this, Alfonso said the foundation saw an opportunity to partner with the city.

Then I called Eliot and, as I was talking to him, it occurred to me that maybe the foundation needed the city for something. We kind of worked out that the city did bring one major advantage: a local match.

At the time the foundation began talking with the city, it was also seeking a grant from the state's Centers of Excellence program. But that program required local entities to put up a certain amount of funding to match.

Eliot said that he remembered the foundation wanting to price the five acres the city was willing to give up at something like $6 a square foot, for the purposes of the match. It was persuaded down to $3 a square foot, he said. But the thing is, even that is a tad higher than what the city was offering, which is $1.3 million, or $2 a square foot.

In other words, getting some kind of land commitment from the city might have made it easier to get the state grant. It didn't hurt either that the city also offered a $500,000 grant. Ultimately, the foundation got $3.5 million.

Now I didn't have time last night to run this theory through Alfonso, so I don't know if he has an explanation. I'm just going to assume it was all in good faith. Maybe the Amazon.com location is attractive because there's more room for expansion beyond the 20 acres. Maybe there's some internal UND dynamics that made the west campus land less attractive at an earlier time and Alfonso didn't want to talk about it.

But having the city's commitment no doubt helped the foundation get those grants.

Alerus Center budget, some other dull matters and one thing that will shock you at first

2006-08-29T09:38:00.000-05:00

Note: This is another long one. I'm kinda burnt out so it's hard to write short.

What a let down. The City Beat made it to the Alerus Center today at 7:20 a.m. to hear the events center commission discuss its deficit budget with the City Council.

Two council members showed up. That was Curt Kreun, who's a member of the commission, and Council President Hal Gershman, who advocated for the Alerus Center back when he was a private citizen.

(The meeting was announced Monday afternoon so I suspect council members might not have had enough time to change their schedule. Eliot Glassheim, for example, had to be in Bismarck and Doug Christensen was scheduled to be in Fargo all week.)

Man, 7:20 a.m. is like the middle of the night when you have to report on the council meeting the night before and attend another council meeting on the side. So I was hoping for some excitement.

No cigar.

It was deadly dull except for that news about UND football looking for a new stadium. (Hahaha. Wipe the coffee from the computer screen. It's more like a wish list item. I'll talk about it below.)

Anyway, commission chairman Randy Newman reported that, yes, the budget calls for $141,000 loss and that's the fault of higher electric rates. And the center simply can't earn more revenue to offset that in a year, he said.

Curt and Hal didn't say much about that other than making some light suggestions. There wasn't a single decent quote to be found. No coherent overarching narrative. No central idea around which to build a lead paragraph.

It was so dull, I'm just going to do a bullet list:

* Remember when the Alerus Center Commission adopted the deficit budget in July? It was a fest of self-flagellation. They wanted to break even, but they couldn't and they wrung their hands over it. One of them, Brian Conneran, voted "no" because he thought labor costs were too high.

This time around, talking to council members, they were defensive. Hey, we might lose $140,000, one said, but the Civic Auditorium, which the Alerus Center replaced, used to lose $240,000 to $250,000 a year. Another reminded the council members of the humongo economic impact the center makes each year and the deficit pales in comparison. A UND study in April found the center brought $12.6 million in new economic activities to town.

* Most of the talk was about strategic issues, such as the ongoing contract negotiation with the Alerus Center's biggest tenant. UND wants something like $400,000 in improvements as it prepares to go to Division I. The center wants a really long contract not those itty-bitty three-year ones.

Then the discussion started to sound weird.

Randy was talking about how the "the center is a short-term solution to their (UND) long-term needs."

Commissioner Phil Harmeson, whose day job is as associate to the university president, said "we don't have a problem with the Alerus" but are doing really long-term planning.

Randy added that "15 to 20 years from now, football may not be part of the Alerus Center."

What??

Phil explained that to get to UND's goal of being a major football powerhouse, it has to go to Division IA, the top of Division I. To do that, it has to average 15,000 attendees a game and to average that much, Harmeson said UND would need 30,000 to 40,000 at major games to make up for lower attendance at minor games. Right now, the center maxes out at 13,500, so there's no way that's gonna happen.

Hal thought maybe the city could modify the Alerus Center to add more seats. Maybe, "blow up the top of the building." Boy does that sound expensive.

* The other strategic issue is catering. Canad Inns had expressed interest in taking over and that's got the Alerus Center people freaking out. Catering is 20 percent of their revenue and the only part of the revenue that's really, really healthy.

I called a local Canad Inns official who, by company policy, can't be named. The poor guy went on the record and then heard from the bosses that that's a no-no, so I let him stay anonymous. Usually if they talk in public I ignore the policy and I'd do that here but the info I wanted didn't warrant it.

Anyway, my mole inside Canad said, yes, Canad intends to put in a proposal for it since the company will have food service at the hotel and the restaurants. Then he called back and clarified that Canad wants to be a good neighbor and wouldn't submit a proposal unless it was asked to. I told him that's just as well because Randy said he doesn't want to even negotiate that.

On a side note 1

The mole said Leo Ledohowski wants the hotel opened as early as late March 2007. The water park should open sometime after that but there's no clear timeframe yet.

On a side note 2

The city public information department either has to get its act together or city departments have got to tell them about meetings earlier.

The Alerus Center Commission meeting still wasn't on the weekly meeting list as of 9:52 a.m. Tuesday. That's about an hour after it was over.

I knew about the meeting because the Herald got a fax from the Alerus Center at 2:08 p.m. yesterday. But that doesn't help members of the public, who deserve to know even if none of them show up for these meetings.

Quickies: Moving date, Point Bridge

2006-08-28T23:43:00.000-05:00

* I've decided to push back the move to Area Voices to, I don't know, Oct. 1. I'm waiting for news on the RSS feed plus I'm busy with important stuff.

* East Grand Forks' Point Bridge may open Sept. 13.

* The Alerus Center Commission will present its budget to the City Council at 7 a.m. tomorrow in the center's Eagle Room.

* If you're ever tempted to hoard gas when the price is low, like it is now...

* Coffee Guy parodies Marilyn Hagerty. He says Paulo's in East Grand Forks is closed and suggests a reason why.

* What the war has cost Grand Forks. Don't know if I should believe them but it's interesting research.

Update 12:02 p.m., 8/29/06: Guess I was wrong. The last day to move to Forum Communications' system isn't Oct. 1 any more. It's Sept. 5. So the last day at Blogger.com will probably be Sept. 1. The good news is there's word that RSS feed is close to ready.

* North Dakota quarter's being launched 10 a.m. tomorrow at the Bismarck Civic Center. I can't wait to get the Nodak coin in my hands. I've got just about one of each state quarter so far released in my vault.

Nevermind Pt. 2

2006-08-28T23:39:00.000-05:00

The renewable energy ballot measure looks like it is out of trouble.

Grand Forks City Council members told city attorney Howard Swanson to fix the legal language and bring it back to them Sept. 5. They'll put the thing on the November ballot themselves.

Just in case there is some unforeseen bureaucratic cockup, the Citizens for Affordable Renewable Energy people said they'll still gather signatures for their least flawed petition, the one that said "City Council" instead of "City Commission." The council one only got 223 signatures and needed 446. The commission one got the rest.

Nevermind

2006-08-28T23:17:00.000-05:00

Looks like the $200,000 for Grand Forks nonprofits has been saved by the nonprofit hero of the hour: Council member Eliot Glassheim. They all applauded him after the meeting.

Eliot seemed like he was destined by the lone dissenting vote on this one at the last few meetings when he was the only council member on the nonprofits' side. Council President Hal Gershman's idea of spending the $200,000 on streets and sewers in low- to moderate-income neighborhoods was pretty popular.

This would help poorer homeowners with special assessments, though, obviously, it would not help the even poorer people who depend on the nonprofits for aid.

Anyway, Eliot said he found a way to make everybody's dreams come true. The nonprofits would get to keep their money and Hal would get his special assessment subsidy.

Actually, Eliot said it was finance director John Schmisek whose monetary mojo saved the day. John mentioned some rainy day money in the infrastructure fund that nobody remembered. It looks like there's enough for a $200,000 special assessment subsidy fund, which means the nonprofit money isn't needed.

I bet the nonprofits wished they didn't have to kick and scream for this to come about.

By the way, the infrastructure fund is that 30 percent of the 1-cent city sales tax used for major road projects. Eliot said there's some extra after scheduled projects are paid for.

Update 9 a.m., 8/29/06: Council member Curt Kreun set me straight today about who it was that really pushed for that $200,000 cut. It wasn't Hal, he said, but him. Hal's contribution was the suggestion that nonprofits consolidate to save money. But I gave him credit for both pieces because he was the one who introduced both before the council.

Curt said his rationale for seeking street and sewer funding for lower income homeowners was that the infrastructure in these neighborhoods needed repair but people couldn't afford it so they kept protesting it out.

That's a slightly different dynamic because the poor homeowners aren't being compelled to pay crippling special assessments that would force them out of their homes.

Social services cuts contemplated

2006-08-28T02:42:00.000-05:00

That plan by the Grand Forks City Council to divert $200,000 from social services to property tax relief is back for discussion tonight.

Looks like the City Beat led you all astray by a few hundred grands. I thought grants to nonprofits were a lot higher than they would really be, about $1.2 million. But that's not true. (Why didn't anybody correct me? Dang it!)

The total allocation of federal Community Development Block Grants is $1.2 million but nonprofits were only going to get $487,000. That was the plan recommended by the Citizens Advisory Committee, which advises the council on CDBG allocations. The council's proposed $200,000 cut represents 41 percent of that funding.

Here's how the $1.5 million CDBG will really be allocated (note that it's only $1.2 million after administration costs are taken out):

Suggested allocation	Citizens Advisory Committee	City Council
Administration	$306,000	$306,000
Social services (nonprofits)	$200,000	$150,000
Rent assistance	$250,000	$250,000
Housing rehab	$500,000	$500,000
Infrastructure (nonprofits)	$287,000	$137,000
Streets and sewers	$0	$200,000

Since I'm such a fiend when it comes to data, I decided to do a quick comparison of needs in Grand Forks compared to other cities in North Dakota.

Percent of families below poverty line

City	All families	Families with female head of household, no husband
1) Grand Forks	9.3	33.8
2) Minot	8.8	33.5
3) Fargo	6.6	23.1
4) Bismarck	5.7	27.0

Hey, we're No. 1! But we knew that, didn't we?

Ooh, I got an idea! Wouldn't it be cool to compare social service funding per impoverished resident? Yeah, way cool.

Alternative energy ballot measure in trouble

2006-08-25T17:12:00.000-05:00

Remember that ballot measure that called for Grand Forks to get a fifth of its electricity from renewable resources?

Citizens for Affordable Renewable Energy turned in 4,108 signatures the other day and city finance director John Schmisek certified the sigs. Then he did a double-take. Most of the sigs were on petitions that called for action by the "City Commission." That's something that exists in Fargo but not here in Grand Forks. Ours is called "City Council."

Small technical glitch but there's a possibility the signatures would be thrown out. Assistant city attorney John Warcup is doing research and will make a ruling Monday.

If he says "City Commission" is close but not close enough, it would leave CARE with only 223 sigs, which is exactly half of what they need to get on the November ballot. County auditor Debbie Nelson said she needs those signatures certified and turned into her office by 4 p.m. Sept. 8. That means Schmisek will need a few days before that to vet the signatures. I'd say CARE has about two weeks or so. That just might be enough time.

If not, the City Council could just heed the will 4,108 residents and put the measure on the ballot itself.

I see Dakota got to this story a few hours before I did and had an interview with Council member Eliot Glassheim to boot. Eliot says the council shouldn't be so small-minded as to reject the ballot for technical reasons.

Quickies: EGF city admin update, Airlines suck

2006-08-25T03:10:00.000-05:00

* The search for a new city administrator in East Grand Forks continues. Consultants were supposed to come back a few weeks ago with a list of finalists but Michelle Hall, the person in admin that's overseeing the process, says they haven't. Apparently those bots at WDAZ have been calling her everyday to get their hands on the list of finalists. Bahahaha.

Anyway, the news is the consultants are supposed to come and update the council at its 5 p.m. work session on Monday. Michelle says they won't have a finalist list then either.

Looks like I have to be a bot, too.

* Gee, we're not alone. "Airlines trying to save money and return to profitability have cut flights and replaced big planes with ones that have fewer seats on routes serving small and midsize cities. That's led to higher fares, fewer flight options or longer drives to hub airports for travelers and a reversal of fortunes for regional airports that until this year were seeing a surge in passengers."

I'm taking revenge on Northwest by flying to Europe on another airline, but they all suck so what's the use? I blame Osama and I'm gonna keep flying or the terrorists will win.

* Frenchies unite. I went one year and had the best pork pie ever.

Council pay hike update: There is none

2006-08-24T17:37:00.000-05:00

A reader wrote in today asking whatever happened to that proposal Grand Forks Mayor Mike Brown made earlier this year to raise the pay for the City Council as a way to encourage all socio-economic groups to participate in the political process.

Since I was already calling Council President Hal Gershman about the 2,700-square-foot addition to his southend Happy Harry's Bottle Shop, I decided to ask him for an update.

Hal said that there has been no discussion of the issue since, not even during the budget process. "It doesn't seem to be an issue with council members," he said. "Not one council member has brought it up to me. Nobody's in it for the money."

The current monthly pay is $400 for council members and $2,000 for the mayor. City law says the pay rate is set by council resolution, which doesn't require a public reading like ordinances.

The mayor's goal was to increase diversity on the council. The time requirement for council members makes elected office difficult for those that have more than one job or not enough time to balance home life and work life with political life.

The danger, as Hal has pointed out, is if the pay hike is too high, Grand Forks will end up with a professional political class.

Still, even if one doubles the $400 pay, as was suggested at one point, it'd still be a yearly pay of $9,600. That's not professional pay. It's $4.62 an hour. I think I made more at McDonald's the summer of my freshman year in college.

GF cops, firefighters, mosquito killers could get $5.8 million building

2006-08-23T22:11:00.000-05:00

Grand Forks City Council members have disparaged it as too costly for cost-cutting times such as these, but it looks like the city's public safety gang could be getting its $5.8 million training center after all.

The Service/Safety Standby Committee recommended the council fund it.

It's one of those decisions that's gotta be full of conflict for a fiscal hawk, which I think many council members have become, if not by nature then by public pressure. On the one hand, you want to cut taxes as much as you can. On the other, public safety is a core government function and you definitely want more of it. I'm counting mosquito control as public safety here because besides letting us enjoy our summers, they're keeping the West Nile Virus vector at bay.

Note that existing funds would likely pay for the training center. If the center were not built, the city could cut more taxes. So the argument here isn't whether taxpayers will pay more but whether they could pay less.

Anyway, I see that Council member Art Bakken, who said he's a fiscal hawk, took a pretty firm stance for public safety even though his colleagues were sort of wringing their hands. "I don't think any citizen in Grand Forks will complain about police, fire or mosquito control," he said. "If we're going to spend money on anything, if this doesn't qualify, I don't know what will."

I'm starting to like this guy more and more. He doesn't pontificate much, which means shorter council meetings, but when he says something, it's a pretty good, meaningful quote.

Still, even with public safety, you've gotta do some cost benefit analysis, which Council member Curt Kreun tried to do with the department heads.

There's a nice Powerpoint presentation by architect Lonnie Laffen that you can download here. (I'm running out of room on the Geocities storage site so I'm deleting that letter the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa got from Gov. John Hoeven from way back when. Anyone know a place to park all this material? Can't seem to do it on Blogger.com.)

To summarize what the department heads said, here's what the city would get for $5.8 million:

* A modern facility to store mosquito control chemicals. The current facility is rented and rent is going way up. It doesn't have fire sprinklers or good security. And worse of all, it doesn't have a containment system to keep spills from getting out of hand.

* Police and firefighters wouldn't have to go out of town to train as they do now. Chief John Packett said 10 to 15 percent of the cop force is away on training at any one time. We're talking about things like SWAT training.

Firefighters have a fire tower to rappel off of but Chief Pete O'Neill said the thing is 30 years old and not safe.

* Police and firefighters from around the region would get better training with a nearby facility. This would help pay for the center since users would pay a user fee.

* A new cop shop and fire station in the Industrial Park, which isn't all that close to existing stations.

* An empty Civic Center, where a lot of the public safety equipment is stored. The city is trying to attract a tenant for the center.

Landfill lawsuit will go on

2006-08-23T21:40:00.000-05:00

It looks like the City Beat can look forward to many fun hours at Grand Forks District Court this December.

Judge Joel Medd recently denied Turtle River Township's motion to dismiss the city of Grand Forks' appeal. The city wants the judge to overturn the township board of supervisor's decision not to allow the city to build a landfill in township land.

Township attorney Al Boucher said back in mid-July that the city didn't correctly file its appeal because it didn't use the word "appeal" anywhere in its filing. Since the court only has appellate jurisdiction, it has no jurisdiction over the city's non-appeal.

I didn't roll my eyes or anything but Al read my thoughts. He told me later that it may sound like a technicality but these things have to be done correctly. If the statute of limitation on a crime is, say, six years, he said, and charges are filed on the first day of the seventh year, they wouldn't stick. Same situation here.

The city's attorney Ron Fischer said state law doesn't define what an appeal is. By taking the township to an appellate court and asking the court to overturn the city's decision, he argued, he's essentially filing an appeal.

He noted that state law doesn't say what an appeal has to look like.

Medd agreed with Fischer. The city's appeal doesn't say "appeal" so the substance of it makes it an appeal.

The township is free to appeal Medd's decision but Boucher doesn't know if that will happen yet. The question is, will he put the word "appeal" at the top or not?

Moving to Area Voices

2006-08-23T15:39:00.000-05:00

As much as I hate to do it, the City Beat is gonna have to go over to Area Voices, owned by our overlords at Forum Communications.

I'm tentatively making the moving date Sept. 1.

I know how you guys feel about Area Voices so here's the deal: Tell me why you think it sucks and I'll look into ways to change it. We're not real sure how much control we'll have but I'm hoping that as a part of the Forum, we'll get to muck around with the codes more than others would. Who knows...

Update 2:39 p.m., 8/24/06: Word is Fargo's working on the RSS feeds for us. Your complaints are being noted.

Ooh! Secret meeting!

2006-08-22T23:09:00.000-05:00

Some Grand Forks City Council members toured Gateway Drive early this morning. Dakota noted this and said the city failed to give public notice.

I called Council member Bob Brooks and he said that he doesn't disagree with her criticism, though it does appear everything was legal. That's because only three council members attended: Bob, Hal Gershman and Curt Kreun. Three isn't enough for a quorum — four is — though Mayor Mike Brown did invite the entire council to attend. Had they done so, the tour would have been on legally shaky ground.

The situation is kind of a "gray area," as Bob said. The group putting on the tour is called the Gateway Drive Committee. Bob heads it and is the only council member. The rest of the members are city staff and Gateway business people. Usually, the committee's meetings are not widely publicized in the same way that meetings with private businesses seeking city services aren't. Let's say a developer wants to talk about getting annexed into the city with city planner Brad Gengler, there wouldn't be a public notice requirement.

But, at the same time, the Gateway Drive Committee deals with an entire business district so it would appear to be of general interest to the public. I think I'm taking Dakota's side on this one even though everything is legal.

I'll also note that there have been meetings that I weren't posted on the city Web site. There have also been instances of four council members chit-chatting in front of City Hall after council meetings. Obviously they're not hiding anything — I could've stood there and covered the chit-chat — but that's an illegal meeting if you want to be strict about it. Since they talk shop a lot of the time there's the possibility that they're agreeing to policies outside of official channels, which would be a sneaky, not nice thing to do.

Since we're on the topic, I asked Bob why it's taking so darn long to clean up Gateway Drive. He lamented that he'll grow old before it's all over and launched into a detailed explanation about all the things that need to be done to screen the unsightly junkyards west of town. It pretty much boils down to money and the lack of it. Bob reminded me of an idea mentioned some time ago to pool the city's beautification fund each year and spend it on only one project.

Dealing with the junkyards is important, Bob said, because the city can't get other unsightly businesses on Gateway to clean up if the most unsightly businesses are allowed to stay that way.

Quickies: Canad goes smoke-free, EGF ready for Chamber HQ

2006-08-22T22:26:00.000-05:00

* The East Grand Forks City Council is ready to vote on the land transfer to the Chamber of Commerce. The city wants the chamber to build its HQ at the corner of DeMers Avenue and Fourth Street Northwest and is giving the group the land for $10. The only condition is the group has to finish construction within three years.

* Canad Inns says its Grand Forks hotel will be totally smoke-free when it opens this spring. The city's smoking ban allows smoking in meeting rooms and hotel rooms, but Canad says there will be no smoking anywhere inside. Smoking will be allowed in designated areas outside.

The Winnipeg company is converting all of its existing hotels to smoke-free by Nov. 30.

Speaking of burden of government...

2006-08-22T22:02:00.000-05:00

East Grand Forks residents will be facing a bunch of cost increases soon. Real soon in some cases.

* Property taxes are expected to go up about 3.2 percent. That's to adjust for the Midwest inflation rate, according to the city. The city is, however, increasing its property tax revenues by 5.9 percent with the 2.7 percent difference coming from new growth.

* The $2.75 street lighting fee is going up to $3.75 to account for higher electricity costs.

* Storm sewer fees, now at $3, will go up as the city takes over parts of the dike project that are completed. The higher fee would pay for maintenance. The dikes are expected to be substantially done by the end of the year, though there will probably be a few small things left to do before the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers transfers all of it to the city.

* Garbage fees will eventually go up because of that landfill situation in Grand Forks.

Quickies: Stuff from City Council meeting, NWA outsourcing

2006-08-21T22:07:00.000-05:00

* MetroPlains Development, the people behind the new downtown apartment complex, got their five-year tax abatement worth $169,000.

* Fees and licenses in Grand Forks will from now on automatically adjust based on inflation, says the City Council.

* Northwest Airlines is outsourcing ground handling and customer service at Grand Forks International Airport. Only trouble is the guys that were going to do it, Northwest partner Mesaba Airlines, says they can't because they're not getting anywhere with their unions. Northwest says it wants to make start the outsourcing by Dec. 12 at all airports with fewer than 50 weekly Northwest flights.

I checked nwa.com to see how far below that threshold we stood. There's only four flights down to the Cities this week! Maybe there's a fifth flight that's full.

Dog park update

2006-08-20T22:31:00.000-05:00

Roaming Paws Advocates, the guys pushing for a Grand Forks dog park, says volunteers have gathered 1,146 signatures, maybe more. Nancy Joyner, who's the de facto group spokeswoman, says the group is about ready to bring their petition to the City Council.

She did mention, though, that some of the signatures came from East Grand Forks and in other neighboring cities. I sure hope the Roaming Paws people realize that the signatures of Grand Forks residents are the ones that really count when you lobby the council.

The BIG tax story (Warning: Long post ahead)

2006-08-20T04:03:00.000-05:00

Readers, remember that time when I said I was doing some major research on property taxes?

Yeah, it was ages ago!

Anyway, City Beat finally got it done so here's the story and the accompanying side bar.

To cut to the chase, I concluded that our taxes are not the highest in the state, but they seem that way because we aren't paid enough. (Check out all the crazy calculations here. Read on if you want to hear about the methodology.)

Rankings for the tax bill are as follows: 1) Bismarck, 2) Fargo, 3) Grand Forks and 4) Minot.

Rankings for income are as follows: 1) Fargo, 2) Bismarck, 3) Grand Forks and 4) Minot.

Compare the tax bill and the income and you get these rankings: 1) Grand Forks, 2) Bismarck, 3) Fargo and 4) Minot.

(Um, boss, I need a raise?)

First, some background.

From the start, I already knew that our tax rates are the highest among the major cities. City leaders have been trying to make excuses for that for years. We're not as high as, say, Devils Lake, they'd say. We have those 11.5 mills dedicated to the dikes, which other cities don't have to pay, they'd say. Our mill levies are way lower compared to a decade ago, they'd say.

I was never quite satisfied with those explanations. So we're lower than DL but why not our peers, like say, Minot?

At first I tried to compare the Grand Forks city budget with those of the other three major cities. I stopped when I realized that people weren't singling the city out, they were complaining about taxes as a whole. That meant analyzing the budgets for the schools, the counties and the park districts of four cities. *Groan*. It's not just tedious to research, it'd be tedious to read.

So I came up with a way to compare the cities that people could relate to: Compare the average tax bill. You know what you're paying and you want to know if you're paying more than the guy in Minot.

What I had to do was find out what the average family paid in taxes in each city.

Methodology-wise, that was a task and a half.

First of all, you have to understand that there are a lot of taxes out there. The main local taxes include property taxes, sales taxes and utility fees. Fees count as taxes because sometimes cities make a profit on utilities and transfer the money to non-utility ~~fees~~ funds to keep property taxes down. Then there are the state taxes, about half of which go back to the cities. There's sales tax, income tax, auto excise tax, tobacco tax, alcohol tax and on and on.

It wasn't too hard to pin down the average property tax bill. Call the city assessor, ask him or her the median value of a residential property and apply the property tax rate. Bam, you've got the median property tax bill. Same thing with utilities. Ask the public works people what the average water usage rate was and apply the utility fees. Bam, you've got average utility bill.

Then comes the sales taxes and all the other consumption taxes. There really isn't any comprehensive study on spending patterns in each of the four cities. How much did the average person in Grand Forks spend on cigarettes? I have no idea. All I found was the average spending pattern of a Midwestern household, to which I applied the relevant taxes: sales, alcohol, tobacco, insurance, cars, etc.

I'm not sure I've got every single one of them, but I think I got most of the big ones.

Add them all up and you've got a close approximation of your average tax bill.

I know there's a few holes. You don't have to tell me. No doubt, the spending pattern of the average household is surely a little different from the spending pattern of the average household that owns a home. But what are ya gonna do when the data's incomplete?

I was surprised when I found that the average Grand Forks tax bill isn't that high when compared with those in Bismarck and Fargo, which are the highest.

What really clinched it was the median assessed value of residential properties. The median simply was higher in the latter cities than in Grand Forks. I'm still wrapping my head around that because everybody says the houses here are more expensive than in Fargo and elsewhere. In fact, one research firm's cost of living index puts Grand Forks slightly ahead of Fargo. I've written about this index and it compares homes that are similar. I suspect that the average household in Fargo, with its higher income, has a fancier home than the average Grand Forks household. That means the Fargo household will pay more property taxes.

The other thing that really jacked up the Grand Forks tax bill were utility rates. Not only are ours higher, they're high enough that, even though the average Grand Forks household uses way less water than its counterpart in Bismarck, the Grand Forks household is paying about the same. Public works director Todd Feland says that's because our wastewater rates are higher, due to cost overruns when the wastewater treatment plant was built.

Even with the higher utility bill, our lower property values and lower income tax kept the tax bill here lower than Bismarck or Fargo.

So far so good until I started thinking about the average household's ability to pay.

I got the state tax department to send me the average household income for the four cities. I then divided the tax bill by the income to see what percentage of income went to taxes. Turns out we're so poor here that even our third-rank tax bill is a tad too high compared to those of our counterparts in other cities.

In retrospect, I shouldn't have been surprised. People have been complaining about low wages here for a long time and city leaders have tried to attract companies that pay higher wages. But I never really connected wages to taxes. Perhaps the reason is I have two somewhat separate beats: economic development and politics/government policy. Wages fall into the econ side and don't cross over into the poli side.

At this point, you could still ask why the tax bill has to be so high.

I did a quick and dirty calculation by taking the 2006 budget of each city and dividing it by the latest population estimate from 2005, which would give you the per capita cost of government.

Rankings are as follows: 1) Grand Forks ($2,400 per resident), 2) Bismarck ($2,211), 3) Fargo ($1,664) and 4) Minot ($1,380).

But that's really rough. Circumstances vary so much that a fair comparison would need a little more in-depth investigation. For example, spending might be higher one year because of needed capital improvements, say a new fire hall is needed. The population estimate might be wrong. And budgeted spending tend to be higher than actual spending, just to be conservative. Grand Forks' budget, for example, assumes it will spend all of its economic development funds, which has never happened.

In the end, I'm afraid that I still haven't been able to reach a definitive conclusion on where Grand Forks really stands compared to the other cities. There's still more work to be done. It's pretty definite, though, that I could use a raise. (That's rhetoric speaking. Don't e-mail the boss. That wouldn't be good for me.)

Update 10:17 p.m., 8/20/06: I just thought of something. It would be a mistake to try and connect the average tax bill with the per capita cost of government. The average tax bill is just what residents pay. But the cost of government is not only borne by residents but also by visitors who pay sales taxes and hotel/motel taxes, among other things. In other words, just because the cost of government is higher doesn't really mean you're getting a bad deal. Your neighbors in surrounding communities are subsidizing your city services.

Some student-friendly proposals

2006-08-16T23:13:00.000-05:00

OK, one last post. If got paid by the inch I'd have owned the Herald by now.

The other result of that meeting between city and student leaders is a couple of proposals to let students know they're always welcomed in Grand Forks:

* Free soda pop and hamburgers. The city wants to sponsor block parties in the UND neighborhood to bring students and homeowners together. The premise seems to be that if they get to know one another, the homeowners will go easier on student partying. Student government already has an outreach initiative with the same idea. They used to call it "Don't Call the Cops, Call the Neighbors" (or something), but now they just call it the "Good Neighbor" program. I think the old one is more honest.

* A late-night UND to downtown city bus service. Students like hanging out downtown and a bus means nobody drives home drunk. Funding would come from both student government and the city with students paying a nominal fee ($1, maybe).

* Springfest 2007. Springfest 2006 went off without a hitch and city leaders are applauding the students and sponsor Suite 49 for pulling it off. Police Chief John Packett said he was skeptical at first but everything turned out much better than he thought. He said Suite 49 has applied for a license for Springfest 2007, so there is a next year.

* Council President Hal Gershman reiterated his desire to see UND open a classroom downtown, citing the example of the University of Manitoba. I had to get up to go to the boy's room so I missed most of what he said (It was kind of a long meeting and I'd been drinking coffee. Sorry.). But I looked this up on Google and found this report. It says UM opened an inner-city social work office a quarter century ago. This helps the neighborhood and gives the social work students experience. UND had looked at the old Metropolitan Opera House in the past but passed.

The roots of the 24-hour noise ordinance

2006-08-16T22:38:00.000-05:00

Back in January, when the Grand Forks City Council passed a law that banned loud partying 24 hours a day, Police Capt. Kerwin Kjelstrom supported the move saying that it would give his officers more flexibility.

The City Beat, trying to be a good government watchdog, instinctively recoils when somebody suggests passing a loose law to make it easier for the authorities. Being a bad watchdog, I never did follow-up and ask Kjelstrom what the heck he meant.

Well, Police Chief John Packett explained pretty well what he meant at a meeting between city and student leaders today.

As I quoted him in my story, Packett said: "Three-hundred-sixty-four days of the year, it's not an issue. It becomes an issue during Springfest."

In other words, there is almost never a need to break up an afternoon party, except on that one day.

UND student body VP Nathaniel Hilliard said that revelation won't sit well with students. "People will call it a once-a-year law."

I don't think Packett tried to refute that. He only said that his officers have not been overzealous so city leaders should give the law a chance.

Packett had brought a report to the meeting comparing noise complaint calls for the first six months of this year and 2005. The 2005 data is the control data because the 24-hour noise ordinance passed in January 2006.

Two ways to look at the data:

First, the pattern of complaint calls placed, based on hours, is virtually the same in the two periods. The same goes for the calls that led to arrests. Almost all the calls were between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., which is the time period that the old noise ordinance banned loud partying. This supports the argument that the 24-hour noise ordinance isn't necessary.

The patterns for the entire city compared to the UND neighborhood was almost the same, leading Council President Hal Gershman to say that students were no worse behaved than everyone else. (The data doesn't specify students, just areas.)

What's pretty funny to me is that the complaints for the UND neighborhood ended after 4 a.m., but continued until 6 a.m. for the rest of the city. What's also funny is that, unique to the UND neighborhood, a number of complaints came in the middle of the day after the noise ordinance passed. Five in the 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. period and one in the 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. period. None of those led to arrests. That says the cops haven't been overzealous, as the chief said. But what does it say about the neighbors?

On the other hand, the number of complaints that led to arrests have shrunk citywide but grown in the UND neighborhood. Citywide, they dropped from 60 to 48. In the UND neighborhood, they rose from nine to 14. Most of the arrests came late at night.

Amendment promises more moola for rural roads. Probably. Maybe

2006-08-16T21:27:00.000-05:00

Some people from the Minnesotans for Better Roads and Transit dropped by today to meet with the Herald editorial board and the City Beat sat in — for fun.

I think they won the board over with promises that rural Minnesota would benefit from the amendment, which would dedicate 100 percent of the motor vehicle sales tax to transportation. Currently, only 54 percent goes to transportation.

Margaret Donahue, an MBRT member, dropped some exciting numbers.

Eleven Northwestern Minnesota counties that comprise District 2 currently get $36.8 million a year. If the amendment passes, they'll get $961,000 more in 2008 and, by the end of the five-year phase-in period in 2012, they'll be getting $4.2 million more. That's for county highways.

Northwest cities would get funding, too, for their streets.

City	2006	2008	2012
Bemidji	$399,918	+$11,289	+$54,104
Crookston	$451,355	+$12,854	+$61,608
East Grand Forks	$368,003	+$10,710	+$51,329
Thief River Falls	$450,552	+$13,076	+$62,670

It all looks pretty good except I'm told the Coalition of Greater Minnesota Cities, which represents rural cities, is asking you to vote "no."

(I can't access the coalition's Web site — Some genius put in password protection for the whole site. Way to go with the PR effort. — so I'm relying on this news report.)

Anyway, the problem is with the wording. The amendment said at least 40 percent of the extra transportation funding would go to transit and no more than 60 percent would go to roads and bridges. Transit is a shorthand way of saying buses and trains. If you live in rural Minnesota, you know how important those are. Not. So the Greater Minnesota people are afraid the powerful Twin Cities electorate will get all the money and leave rural areas hanging. That's a huge fear among rural leaders because the metro population is growing but the rural population isn't.

MBRT people say there's gotta be a little give and take. Donahue said the Legislature would stick to the 60-40 split.

I don't live in Minnesota so this doesn't affect me. But, I've heard a lot of complaints from East Grand Forks leaders about how hard it was to get state funding to finish the dikes. Meaning, promises made this year aren't always fulfilled the next. As Donahue said, the amendment is necessary because the Legislature has failed to make enough funding available for transportation. Can't trust those guys, right?

Still, if there's gonna be a fight over funding, at least there's more of it to fight over.

What do you guys think?

Quickies: EGF 2 a.m. closing, GF fee increases, N.D. hotties

2006-08-15T20:57:00.000-05:00

* East Grand Forks City Council members renewed 2 a.m. liquor licenses for Whitey's, Cuckoo's Nest and the Blue Moose without discussion. Mayor Lynn Stauss, who had championed the 2 a.m. bar closing law, said that proves there hasn't been any problems, despite what opponents had said a year ago.

I'd have to say I haven't seen any of the drunken fights that were predicted and didn't see any more people getting pulled over by police.

* Grand Forks City Council is considering basing increases in fees and licenses on the consumer price index instead of having massive hikes once every few years.

* Miss Teen North Dakota made second runner up in the Miss Teen USA pageant. Don't forget it was another Nodak gal, Grand Forks' own Nicole Linkletter, who won America's Next Top Model. This is where the hotties are at.

Update 11:24 a.m., 8/16/06: Hey, check it, Smiley water tower's got cousins. Apparently smiley towers were all the rage in the 70s. RoadsideAmerica.com reports:

In one case, Smileage radiation engulfed an entire town. Adair, Iowa made "Smiley, The Friendly Greeter on I-80" its civic hero. A Happy Chef Restaurant and a Smiley Face Budget Inn stood at the Interstate off ramp, ready to "make you smile!"

Local merchants printed the Smiley cartoon on their business cards, and displayed "Evening in Adair, Made with Extract of Ol' Smiley" shampoo in shop windows. Travelers could purchase a yellow plastic piggy bank replica of the water tower.

Sweet.

Eastsiders: Expect some noise

2006-08-15T20:53:00.000-05:00

Looks like street repairs in East Grand Forks' north end will start at 5 a.m. tomorrow instead of the usual 7 a.m.

That would normally be against the law, but the City Council allowed it because construction crews are falling a little behind schedule.

Assistant city engineer Brad Bail said the city found out more curbs and gutters need repairing than it had thought and asked the contractor to take on the additional work. He said they're scheduled to be done at the end of the week.

Construction crews will mostly be building forms for pouring concrete so it will not be especially loud, Bail said, but it won't be real quiet either.

The project was bid at $1.7 million. The additional work will not mean higher special assessments, however.

Nonprofits cuts not a sure thing

2006-08-14T22:14:00.000-05:00

After the big reaction from nonprofit agencies recently, some Grand Forks City Council members clarified that they had not, in fact, made up their mind on the $200,000 funding cut for social services.

Council President Hal Gershman said he would keep an open mind. Though he urged nonprofits themselves to keep an open about consolidation as a way to save money.

Council member Doug Christensen said he hasn't decided to support the cuts yet. A week ago he thought the city ought to give it a try, just for a year, to see what happens.

The council will decide Sept. 5.

In the meantime, Council member Eliot Glassheim, who opposes the cuts, said he's looking into having the city buy the old County Social Services Building and give it to the nonprofits. He said it doesn't make much sense to ask the nonprofits to consolidate and not give them a way to do so.

Quickies: Fargo inspirations, Team WDAZ's chili

2006-08-14T21:42:00.000-05:00

* I've been checking out the ramblings on NanoBison's blog. I like the imaginative topics, like this one about how to make downtown better. Sounds like a future City Beat post.

* Terry Dullum's blog has more photos of Team WDAZ's chili effort.

* Seen on the street: ~~An apparently new~~ A lawn-care company called "Happy Grass" has trucks with the slogan "Nobody smokes weed better" or something like that. Haha.

* Speaking of which, anybody seen the Mystery Machine around? It was in Grand Forks last year and I miss seeing it. There was also a Herbie cruising around town, too.

* Good grief. This is nuts. It's been 109 days since the City Beat first started blogging and there have been 156 posts. That is an average of 1.4 a day.

New Census numbers could mean more moola

2006-08-14T21:24:00.000-05:00

It looks like the U.S. Census Bureau messed up its last population estimate for Grand Forks. The July 2005 estimate said there were 49,792 people living here but the bureau said recently that 50,303 was closer to the mark.

City officials here have long considered the bureau's estimates, calculated by state demographer Richard Rathge, is way too low. The Metropolitan Planning Organization, whose numbers were proven to be more accurate following the 2000 Census, said there were 53,230 Grand Forks residents in July 2005.

The problem is, the Census goes with Rathge's numbers, which means the feds goes with Rathge's numbers and adjusts the amount of money they give to the city.

With the revised estimate, Grand Forks once more crosses the 50,000 threshhold, which means more fed programs are available and existing programs could get more money. CDBG, which nonprofits are screaming over, is one program where funding levels are based on population. Another program is the HOME program, which helps with affordable housing. The MetroPlains apartments are in line to get some of that money because the rent will be aimed at poor and moderate-income folks.

There's even better news.

The bureau's director Louis Kincannon came to Grand Forks today to talk about the revised estimate and about how the bureau could make the estimates more accurate. He told City Council President Hal Gershman, among others, that the bureau will consider all factors that might affect its estimates. Which effectively means the city can bring the MPO's data to bear and appeal Rathge's numbers.

Update 5:56 p.m., 8/15/06:Prairie Pundit's got a lot more to say about the Census.

Latest MetroPlains renderings

2006-08-14T16:03:00.000-05:00

The other day, reader RJT was dying to know what the MetroPlains apartment complex would look like. Amanda Silverman Kosior, a friend of mine from JLG Architects, saw RJT's plea and sent along these images.

But she cautioned that renderings are not always what the final product looks like:

In regard to the question on the blog - much of the time, these renderings change so often from the initial rendering to the final rendering (before the project gets built), that architects and clients don't like to publish the updates because you'd basically be changing them all the time (for example, every time you changed a material).

Thanks to Amanda for taking the initiative and, also, a huge congrats. She's the newly minted Mrs. Kosior. Kyle is the lucky fella's name.

Dear Liz

2006-08-14T00:38:00.000-05:00

The City Beat was lollygagging at the Urban Stampede this afternoon, when I found myself talking to Liz. I'm guessing Liz is 20 or 21. Liz heard that I write about the City Council and wanted some advice about political activism.

Specifically, she thinks the chemicals the city uses for mosquito control is poisoning the environment and wants to know how she can get the city to stop. Should she talk to the City Council, she asked. Will that do any good?

I babbled something about getting a petition and filling up Council Chambers on Monday night. But, after letting the idea rattle around in my skull for a while, I decided that I could probably come up with something better than that.

So, given what I know about the council, here's what I think, Liz.

Let's start with four principles.

First, change is inconvenient. Some say people fear change. I say people are set in their ways and don't want to bother.

That leads to the second principle. If you want to effect change, you have to make it not too painful and not too expensive. We're assuming, here, that not everyone agrees that change is critical.

Third, persuasive arguments are more persuasive with numbers. That's what that comment about packing Council Chambers was about. If you're a cynic, you'll say that council members are politicians and the only way to get their attention is to demonstrate that you have a lot of voters behind you. If you're not so cynical, you'll say that council members are elected to serve the people and the more people speak up on something, the more convinced they'll be that that thing is what the people want.

Fourth, know yourself. You might not think you're being an extremist, but if you're not in the mainstream, then there's a chance that you are. Maybe extremism is a pejorative. Maybe you're ahead of your time. The practical side of being ahead of your time is that you might not get anything done until you're dead.

Given all of the above, what should you do?

[Update 3:09 p.m., 8/14/06: DadinGGF has some good advice that I should've given. The first thing you do is call your council member and get a sense of how the council feels about it and if there's been any similar effort in the past.]

You need find an alternative to mosquito chemicals that is environmentally friendly and affordable. Look into what other U.S. and Canadian cities do about their mosquitoes and how much it costs them.

If it costs a lot more than what we're doing, is there a way to blend our cheap and ungreen approach with their pricey and green approach?

Ask those cities why they decided to pay the higher price. Do they have research that shows the harm mosquito chemicals can do?

Then you start your public education campaign.

Get a core team together and announce your intention to gather signatures to petition the council. Don't gather signatures, at first, just start getting the message out. Talk to opinion makers, like say the Herald editorial board. Write letters to the editor. Get yourself on a radio talk show. Be prepared for massive criticism. Focus on being sincere and reasonable and force your opponents to take an extreme position, which could turn off the undecided.

As you get people familiar with your issue, find allies among local civic groups and gather additional volunteers.

Then it will be time to start gathering signatures. Since this is a citywide issue, you'll want a couple of thousand signatures. Get them from every ward. It's nice to have people in each ward to call their council member. Be careful how you word your petition and how you sell it. Don't use scare tactics, don't exaggerate, don't lie. If you do, it'll be ammunition for your opponents and you'll deserve anything you get.

Once you're ready to present your signatures, sign up with the mayor's office to speak at a Committee of the Whole and get as many of your volunteers as you can to come with you. Pack the Council Chambers. It looks good in pictures and on TV and probably has a psychological effect on council members. When you make your spiel continue to be sincere and reasonable. Extremism and arrogance make a poor mix.

If the council doesn't bite, don't give up.

Find a council member that's sympathetic to your cause and get him to form a task force, which would, of course, include your volunteers. Be aware that task forces are where ideas are sometimes quietly strangled or mutated into something unrecognizable. Fight smart. Give ground on the little things and be immovable on the big things.

If you're really swimming against the tide on this one, compromise. Get the city to do a little first and, if things work out, you can try to get it to do more later.

Chances are, it'll be several months or even a year or two or three before you get what you want. Look at how long it's been since that dog park idea was introduced. But don't give up or the issue goes away.

It doesn't hurt to get someone to make a big stink about the city dragging its feet, if that's the case. Make sure that person isn't a core member of your group or on the taskforce (in other words, it's fringe member of the group "speaking out of turn"). You can't attack the city and work with it at the same time. I know that sounds sneaky but, believe me, knowing what I know, it's well within the rules of the game. I've seen far sneakier things and, haha, they're all off the record.

Anyway, that's my take on political activism. Readers, does this make sense or am I full of it?

Note: If you readers wish to comment, there's no need to lambaste Liz and her idea. She's not crazy, just green and maybe liberal. Since I don't know a whole lot about mosquito chemicals and, chances are, you don't either, let's stick to the topic of political activism. There's a potentially very fruitful discussion to be had.

My tongue hurts and my tummy feels gross -- and I kinda like it

2006-08-12T16:34:00.000-05:00

So the City Beat went down to the Red River to sample some chili today. The actual event is Cats Incredible, a catfish fishing tournament, but I think much of the draw comes from the Friends of the Greenway chili contest and all the fun things to do for the kiddies.

This year's chili contest looks like it might be the most well attended. I got there at 1:45 p.m. and three or four of the chili contestants had run out of chili. Tasting was supposed to be from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. Some contestants were running out of cups by maybe 2:30 p.m.

I've got some photos below of the chili contest. Check them out.

Anglers trying their luck on the Red River.

East Grand Forks Mayor Lynn Stauss' team doing their best to restore the city's honor. Team Eastside, stricken one year by the mayor's illness, has been beaten time and again by archrival Team Grand Forks. This year's cooks, from left to right, are former Ward 5 City Council member George Wogaman, economic development chief Jim Richter and the mayor himself.

Pirates of the Red, Grand Forks Mayor Mike Brown's team, in their usual wild getup. From left to right, public health director Don Shields, city administrator Rick Duquette, the mayor, fire chief Pete O'Neill and finance director John Schmisek. The mayor's assistant, Pete Haga wasn't here for the photo. See him below.

Pirate Pete, shown here, subscribes to the Capt. Jack Sparrow school of piracy. "You're no man if you don't wear eye ~~shadow~~ liner."

One of local television's hottest women, Cassie Walder from WDAZ, the people that brought you the titilating slogan "Make a date with Channel 8." (Update note: That's my beer.) Her other team mates included anchor Terry Dullum, weekend anchor Tami Osborne, chief photog Chris Regimbal and photog James Degelder. Anchor Milo Smith was judging the contest (blind taste test of course).

The women from The Herald's Red River Valley Women Today team. That's Shanna Flannagan on the ~~right~~ left and Barb Steadman on the ~~left~~ right (Update correction: Your other right, fool!).

Just for fun, the catfish contest was accompanied by a fat cat contest. This cat is named Benton and the guy holding him is his owner Greg (I wasn't working so I didn't have a notebook to write his last name down). Greg must have pipes of steel if he's carrying Benton around all day.

AAARGG! The Pirates win the chili honor again for Grand Forks. East Grand Forks will just have to wait for the Boy Scouts' pine wood derby car contest, which Eastside has dominated every year.

A more interesting crop of that last photo. Pirate John Schmisek getting totally aggro. What's a suitable title? "When accountants go wild"? Go John!

It reminds me of the insurance company clerks turned pirates from "The Crimson Permanent Assurance," a segment from "Monty Python's The Meaning of Life." I asked some friends about this but no one knew what I was talking about. Geek.

(Update note: Those of you who saw today's paper will see almost the same photo. Just so you know, I didn't steal anyone's photo. Herald photog Jay Pickthorn and I were next to each other, waiting for the pirates' reaction. It looks like he cropped his photo tighter, which in retrospect, might be what I should've done.)

Update 6:04 p.m., 8/12/06: The photos are available in larger formats at my Flickr Web site. That's for anyone looking to torment John. I can't believe I called this guy a "wonk." How cool is AARG?

If you want the Cassie Walder photo, you'll have to pay for it. She's gonna kill me when she sees this post.

Update 4:47 p.m., 8/13/06: Here's the Herald story about the chili contest. I forgot to mention the Single Guy from Warroad, Minn., who came with his chili and a sense of humor. He called it "F3 chili," as in F3 tornado.

Nonprofits to council: Have a heart

2006-08-10T22:03:00.000-05:00

The City Beat went to that nonprofits meeting I talked about yesterday.

Basically, the message from the nonprofits to the Grand Forks City Council, which is moving to cut $200,000 from nonprofit funding, is this: Tour our offices, see how we work, meet our poor clients and then see if you've got the nerve to make those cuts.

United Way president Pat Berger talked about the families with no food in the fridge and the home-bound seniors whose only human contact might be the guy that delivers their meals.

Earl Beal, a former United Way chairman, took another tack. He said nonprofits perform social services that the city would otherwise have to provide, that's why they get city money. In other words, they're not just a bunch of whiners screaming mad because they didn't get their entitlements.

I don't have first hand knowledge of how lean these agencies operate but something that Janell Regimbal, senior VP for youth services with Lutheran Social Services, said really struck me.

She described nonprofit funding as a "mosaic" made up of grants from various foundations and government offices. Every year, that mosaic shifts. One year a foundation might be generous and another year it might shift funding elsewhere. The same for government offices. "We don't know year to year if those programs are going to be even operational," she said, speaking specifically of three programs that she oversees.

If Beal is right and these social services are the obligation of government, what Regimbal describes appears to be a ludicrous way to fund them. I'm glad we don't fund the police department that way, most of it anyway.

The thing is, some of these programs appear to be the kind designed to nip public safety problems in the bud. Regimbal oversees a program called Healthy Families that help parents that weren't expecting to be parents and who's not quite ready to bear the burden. There's a risk of child abuse when this happens -- you know, frustrated dad who's too stupid to know you don't shake the baby when she cries -- so a little counseling could prevent a big tragedy. The two other programs help potential juvenile delinquents away from the path of professional thuggery and criminality (That's my flip wording, not theirs.).

But, wait, the funding issue gets more ludicrous.

Berger mentioned something about small, less well-known agencies not wanting to consolidate with the big ones for fear of losing their identity.

Isn't that kind of self-serving, I asked.

She replied that United Way allows donors to specify which agencies they will give money to so if an agency is obscure it wouldn't get money. I'm guessing this makes donors more willing to give money.

I said wasn't United Way founded as an umbrella fundraiser so that nonprofits didn't have to worry about fundraising?

Yes, she sighed, but it hasn't worked out that way completely.

I don't know. I can't blame the council for trying to help poor families keep their homes. That's where the $200,000 would come in to help the families pay for needed street repairs, which otherwise would lead to special assessments. But I hate to see the poorest of the poor lose services. Who's got a perspective? Is Grand Forks social services funding generous compared to other places or do we suck?

Update 3:34 p.m., 8/11/06: CulturePulse talks about nonprofits from the arts' perspective.

Downtown apartment construction starts Oct. 1

2006-08-10T21:43:00.000-05:00

MetroPlains Development, the company that's building that apartment complex across North Third Street from the Ryan House will start construction Oct. 1.

The company's marketing manager Ann Daly says so.

It's gonna be a pretty hip development, especially when you consider they got state and city incentives to hit the low- to moderate-income demographic.

For starters, the 40-unit complex, to be named "The Current," is aimed at the 20 to 30 age group. How could they resist? The place is down the street from a dozen bars and clubs.

Daly said the ambience is supposed to be like Starbucks. (What is it with Starbucks? Remember that proposal by Traie Dockter?)

The complex is to have its own exercise room and a community room with a big screen TV and big kitchen (after bar anyone?).

All of these references to drinking and partying is not gratuitous.

Here's the thing. The Current would attract a, shall we say, fun-loving population. Kitty corner from the apartments, you've got a slightly older and slightly less wild demographic. That would be the owners of the Elite Brownstone condos now under construction.

The situation near the apartments is already kind of, well, I don't think there's a problem but there are cop cars cruising back and forth in front of Uptown Downtown and Gilly's late at night on the weekends. Preventative security maybe. Still, I fear there might be a culture clash of some kind between the young and the not-quite-as-young.

We've had this problem before in the UND neighborhood where a few wild student renters got on the nerves of many homeowning families. Result: The homeowners demanded a zoning change to keep out the renters and the council complied.

What's done is done, but let's be clear here: The bars and their clients were here first.

On another tangent, I hadn't realized the depth of MetroPlains' holdings in Grand Forks until I checked out their Web site. Look at this portfolio. It's funny to see how much they've invested in senior housing. The Current looks like a major departure for them.

Update 3:49 p.m., 8/11/06: If you're curious about the incentives that MetroPlains will get for the apartments, it's on page 5 of the City Council packet PDF file. MetroPlains formed a company called MDI LP #110 to develop the apartments so that's the company that will get the incentives.

4.18 mill cut in GF most likely

2006-08-09T23:37:00.000-05:00

Grand Forks City Council President Hal Gershman said today that he's probably on the losing side of the vote to cut the property tax rate by 6.5 mills. The mayor and four council members prefer a 4.18 mill cut. A major difference being that 2.5 mill cut to the dike fund, as discussed here.

Council members Eliot Glassheim and Bob Brooks have both favored cutting the city's debt early rather than cutting property taxes by just 2.5 mills.

Council member Doug Christensen said he's not agonizing over the 2.5 mills because he's got bigger fish to fry when it comes to the budget. We'll get to that in a moment.

Council member Art Bakken feels the same way Eliot and Bob does. He's a professed fiscal conservative, but he's taking the fiscal prudence approach this time -- as in don't dawdle around when you've got heavy debt to pay.

Council member Curt Kreun feels as Hal does, which is that the tax relief is needed now not in 2014, the earliest the dikes will be paid off. Only Council member Mike McNamara has not weighed in. He's still in Iraq.

Back to Doug's big fish. Hal's frying the same fish, too.

They've got some questions about the administration's spending priorities. Doug accused finance director John Schmisek of talking about paying off the debt in one breath and, in another breath, talk about bonding to pay for the police and fire training center and mosquito control chemical storage facility. Cost: $6.5 million.

Doug and a bunch of other council members are also worried about the pension fund and the fact that it's short of money. There's some talk of spending down reserves to bridge the gap or maybe specifically dedicating certain mills for the fund. I admit this is a little murky for me because it's such a devilishly complicated issue.

Doug also wants to know why the city has such a high level of reserves in its enterprise fund, which is where the utilities get their money. He knows very well that the money is for the wastewater treatment plant to replace the lagoons. But he figures the city can bond for it, as in get into more debt. I think he's flying solo on this one.

Nonprofits upset by funding cuts

2006-08-09T22:50:00.000-05:00

Nonprofits in Grand Forks are reacting to the City Council's proposed diversion of $200,000 in funding from the nonprofits to poor homeowners to help pay for street repairs.

The way I hear it, maybe "reacting" is a little too neutral. They're flabbergasted, indignant, agonized, mad as heck, etc.

In an earlier post, I said that this looks like taking from the poorest -- the homeless, the disabled -- to give to the poor. United Way president Pat Berger thinks so, too. I chatted with her for a while today having been unable to reach her for a response on Monday night, when the council proposed the funding cut.

The thing I was most surprised by -- though I shouldn't have been, having written about similar cuts in the past -- is that the $200,000 is not the only impact to nonprofits. What they do is use that money to get more money. A lot of foundations and agencies that make grants to nonprofits require a local match. So you can imagine how one of these nonprofit directors feel when she or he hears about the cuts.

The other surprise is that nonprofits might not save that much money if they consolidate. Council President Hal Gershman, who spearheaded the funding cuts, said he's hoping the nonprofits will make up for the loss of funding by consolidating.

Berger said she's looked into this. There would be some savings but not as much as you'd think. Nonprofits can't share receptionists because the agencies are already lean as can be and receptionists often have a bunch of other jobs.

Quickies: New Fargo blog on city issues, old buddy gets new job

2006-08-09T20:52:00.000-05:00

* Just saw a new blog by some Fargo guy called NanoBison. "I'm looking forward to writing my ideas about the wonderful metropolitan area I live in, especially in terms of new developments." Sounds like the Fargo equivalent of GrandForksGuy.

* Former reporter Dave Knutson gets a new job with our old sister paper, St. Paul Pioneer-Press.

* I'm liking the continuous updates of new blog posts on GrandForksGuy's blog and Rob's Say Anything blog.

Update: 2:32 p.m., 8/10/06:I've got the power of the trash can. Don't be alarmed if you see a bunch of messages getting deleted. It might say something like "message deleted by administrator." That's me killing spam.

Quickies: GFK impact, ultimate fighting in EGF

2006-08-08T17:40:00.000-05:00

* Grand Forks International Airport lost a good chunk of its market share between 1994 and 2004, according to a new survey by the state Aeronatics Commission. Boardings have been dropping for a while now, so this not especially surprising, but the 10 year data does put things into perspective. Notice how Fargo and Bismarck have been growing and how Grand Forks and Minot shrank.

Poor Grand Forks, so far from heaven so close to Fargo.

On the other hand, for some weird reason, airline passengers are spending way more money when they stay in town. Adjusting for inflation, average spending per passenger jumped from $260 in 1995 to $618 in 2005. This is the case statewide. It jumped from $287 in 1995 and $729.

Anyway, the big news is the state is touting is that GFK had an economic impact of $93.1 million in 2004, most of that from spending by travelers.

* I mentioned Catfish Days in the last post but forgot to mention the entirely separate event that follows called "1st Annual Ultimate 'Catfish' Fighting." Despite the name, no catfish will be hurt in the event. Just humans. The fight is at 7:30 p.m. in the parking lot behind East Grand Forks' Riverwalk Centre mall. Cost is $20 for adults, $15 for those 16 and under. The event promoter is Butch Hajicek, a local boxer who teaches at the same boxing gym I go to (No, I'm not hitting anybody yet).

Butch organized the last ultimate fight event, the Tuffman competition, this past winter at the East Grand Forks Civic Center.

* Off topic: A different twist on AOL's disclosure that it had release the search records of its users.

Update 7:32 p.m., 8/8/06: Follow up: Forgot to mention last night that the deer feeding ban passed its first reading. For some reason, this fear of a Bambi population explosion centered on the Greenway reminds me of that Star Trek episode with all the tribbles.

* Urban development director Greg Hoover said Central High School students will still be able to park at the Civic Auditorium parking lot. The city earlier wanted to move them to the lot down by Riverboat Road to make room for a possible tenant at the civic. Looks like he's not anticipating that deal to come through any time soon.

Quickies: EGF road work, Mac returns, chili fest

2006-08-07T22:19:00.000-05:00

* If you live in East Grand Forks' north end, don't be parking your car on the street for the next couple of days. The city is kicking off its massive road repair project tomorrow, beginning with the mill and overlay. That's engineering talk for scraping the paving off the road and repaving. Check out this map for more info.

Ever notice how those guys at WDAZ make you visit their Web site before they'll give you the link? "For the link to their Web site, go to our Web site." Lame. You'll notice in today's Newsline on the Herald's Page 3A that I gave you the link right there.

* Don't forget to check out The Chamber's Cat's Incredible fishing tournament on Saturday. Actually, I loathe fishing but can't resist the Friends of the Greenway Chili Cook-Off starting at 1 p.m. For a small fee, you get to sample all the chili. My saliva glands are already tingling.

Last year's champ, Grand Forks Mayor Mike Brown is again challenging his rival East Grand Forks Mayor Lynn Stauss. This year's costume theme for Team Grand Forks is "Pirates of the Red."

Oh wait... I think I just saw WDAZ anchor Cassie Walder announcing that those guys have a chili team, too. ("Make a date with Channel 8." What does that mean?)

* Grand Forks City Council member and Marine Maj. Mike McNamara said he's returning from Iraq Sept. 3 or 4. Council members are delaying approval of the budget to accomodate their newest colleague.

Update 4 p.m., 8/8/06:Little story about how the other Knight-Ridder papers are doing under new ownership.

Choosing between the poor and the poorer

2006-08-07T20:12:00.000-05:00

It appears that the Grand Forks City Council is set to change its policies regarding the use of Community Development Block Grants, federal funds aimed at helping the poor and working poor.

I think the policy is shifting closer to the latter and away from the former. The reason I say that is because, tonight, the council agreed in principle to shift $200,000 out of this year's $1.5 million in CDBG away from non-profit agencies and towards helping poorer homeowners pay off their special assessments.

The benefiting areas are roughly downtown and adjacent areas, around UND and around the Grand Cities mall. These neighborhoods qualify as low- to moderate-income areas.

I know. It's a story that's got "b-o-r-i-n-g" written all over it -- which may explain why it slipped under the City Beat's radar -- but the tiny bleeding liberal side of me is warming up to it.

The council's decision Monday reflects an policy laid down by the council's influential finance and development committee two weeks ago. You know it's influential when it has the word "finance" in it. But I skipped the meeting because, generally, I know that when CDBG is on the agenda, it's gonna be two hours of 10-grands-to-this-group-and-20-grands-to-that-group with intermittent squabbling in between.

Too bad I wasn't there.

But, according to urban development director Greg Hoover's report, here's what the committee decided:

1) United Way convene a meeting among nonprofits to make recommendations for increasing service coordination and reducing administrative costs; and 2) affordable housing be established as a primary goal of the CDBG program.

The goobledygook in the first goal just means the council wants non-profits to move in together and share expenses like receptionists and photocopiers. The second goal is interesting because it means some of the money will go towards homeowners, who, let's face it, are poor but can at least afford to own a house.

All of this is pretty kosher as far as I know. CDBG programs must meet three goals: 1) Benefit low- to moderate-income people, 2) eliminate slum and blight and 3) address an urgent community need.

I guess I was a little surprised, though, because I tend to think of CDBG as going towards groups such as domestic abuse victims, the disabled and the poor. They're not the only ones but they're the ones that need the help the most. They certainly would seem to need more help than someone that can afford to own a home.

The other side of the argument, as Council President Hal Gershman articulated, is non-profits would free up more money if they'd only move in together. He said he'd suggested they do so about six years ago and, more recently, United Way's Pat Berger had been trying to make that happen. But she only got one other agency to join her effort, The Village Family Service Center. Other agencies basically said "Thanks but not right now."

CDBG money, by the way, has been getting scarcer and city officials have said they fear it will get worse.

Quickies: New format

2006-08-07T16:15:00.000-05:00

These quickies are getting too long. I'll try to limit them to just eight to 10 paragraphs.

* Grand Forks City Council meets tonight and the one item on the agenda that's really of major interest probably won't be discussed. Council members indicated they wanted to take the mayor's 2007 budget to a separate meeting -- which implies a lengthy debate -- which would be the 5 p.m. work session on Wednesday. I already know I'm going to enjoy that one.

* New council in Grand Forks means new positions for council members. They'll vote Monday night on the appointments.

Curt Kreun gets a seat on the Alerus Center commission and Emergency Management Board.

Doug Christensen gets a seat on the Planning and Zoning Commission, right next to Kreun. These two sometimes appear to get on each other's nerves at council and it's gonna be funny when they sit through those 10-hour long P&Z meetings, which can only mean even longer meetings. Sausage being made indeed.

New guy Mike McNamara, who's supposed to get back from Iraq in about 40 days, gets seats on the Board of Health, the Library Board and the Pension and Insurance Committee. Good luck studying up for pension and insurance. That's painful (albeit, important) stuff.

Art Bakken gets a seat on the MPO's Executive Policy Board. Doug sits on that one, too.

* That deer feeding ban is back.

Quickies: Dog park folks look into fundraising

2006-08-05T16:38:00.000-05:00

* Roaming Paws Advocacy Group, the people agitating for a public dog park, are beginning to plan their fundraising effort, according to Nancy Joyner, the group's acting coordinator.

There's plenty of ideas out there, she wrote in an e-mail:

Fund raisers such as a dog walk, a dog show, and products like you suggested would be a great start. Contacting large companies such as Purina or Tuffy’s and requesting a donation. Selling ads on the park benches could be a great way to maintain the up keep. Contact a fencing company and request to purchase the fencing for cost.

Other ideas have been selling collars and leashes with logos. Pet food and dog license thoughts have come up as well. Even enforcing dogs at large and leaving excrement behind fines was offered. Or maybe a portion of the dog license going to the park?

* Are there any CB radio buffs out there? We have some scanners in the Herald newsroom (to check police and fire bands) and it is an endless source of amusement for us to hear people have personal conversations on the CB. Occassionally, someone will give out a cell number, which makes you wonder why these people aren't talking on the cell instead. We're just super curious who these folks are. They don't sound like cops of firefighters.

Update 5:25 p.m., 8/6/06: Readers cleared up the mystery. Looks like it's Joe Sixpack and his walkie-talkie. There's also Jolene Sixpack, too, and I swear I've heard flirting. Romance is in the air. Literally.

Quickies: Big idea; N.D. quarter minted

2006-08-02T13:24:00.000-05:00

* Just got a press release from the North Dakota governor's office. The first North Dakota quarter got minted in Denver today. Ours is pretty cool with the two bisons at the Badlands. I'm still a little pissed at Kansas for using the bison first.

Check out South Dakota's. Yeck. Minnesota's all right.

Update 3:48 p.m., 8/3/06: I noticed this story in the Herald today about the Knight Foundation's "big idea" contest, which basically offer prizes for people that come up with a big idea to improve the community.

My first thought was: Who's going to pay for this?

But I looked more into it and the idea of the big idea is pretty cool. It was inspired by a book by Journalist Malcolm Gladwell called "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference." According to Wikipedia, Gladwell wanted to figure out what kicks off sudden changes in society.

There aren't too many details on the Knight Foundations' seven finalists and their ideas so I'm not entirely sure how these ideas will lead to cascading positive changes. I'm more confident, though, that some of these ideas would probably need tax ideas.

Here they are, straight from the paper, the finalists and their ideas:

Donna Anel, who proposed a food festival showcasing baked goods made from locally grown sugar and wheat. [Sounds a lot like the idea behind Dakota Harvest Bakers.]

Emily Burkland, who proposed a cultural exposition featuring Grand Cities-based organizations from the performing and visual arts. [Sounds like a localized Artfest.]

Traie Dockter, whose "tipping point" idea is to physically remodel older public schools using the ambience of Starbucks as a model. [Starbucks is to coffee houses what McDonald's is to burger joints, in my opinion. So, my first thought was, Starbucks??]

Naomi Jackson, a Manvel, N.D., teen who would like to see a city-run roller skating rink in the Grand Cities. [Sounds like a job for the Park District!]

Marlys Pung, who submitted an idea in each of Knight Foundation's six areas of funding priorities.

Taylor Sand, a teenager who proposed several ideas for children and youth, including creating a dog park. [Don't say anything Grand Forks Guy, he/she's just a kid.]

Eric Trueblood, who proposed the "Yellow Bike Project" that would provide free-to-borrow bicycles throughout Grand Forks. [Sounds like another job for the Park District. It'd be cooler if people could rent canoes, though. I already have a bike.]

Update 9:31 p.m., 8/3/06: Reporter Kyle Johnson said the local food festival won, followed by the cultural exposition.

* Just got back from Mike Mohaupt's photo exhibit at Third Street Gallery downtown. Mikey's one of my colleagues. A really nice guy with plenty of talent. Seriously, drop by the gallery. He exhibited with artist Mariah Masilko. Their art is for sale.

GF mayor and council differ on tax cuts

2006-08-01T21:52:00.000-05:00

The Grand Forks City Council gets it's first crack at the mayor's proposed 2007 budget today at 5 p.m. at City Hall.

I'm betting there's going to be a lot of discussion about the property tax rate cut. The council earlier said it wants a 6.5 mill cut. Finance director John Schmisek is recommending only 4.18.

I've reported on this before.

As in the past, the main difference between the two sides is the council's desire to trim the mill levees set aside for the dikes. Council members figure that, with higher property values and more taxes collected, the city can cut the tax rate and still pay the debt in the same amount of time.

Schmisek wants to keep the money and pay off the dikes sooner, saving on the interest.

I once compared it to paying the minimum payment on your credit card (the council's approach) and paying off as much as you can afford to pay (Schmisek's approach). Both approaches have their merits. What do you guys think?

Update 12:18 p.m., 8/3/06: Man, I suck. Sorry readers, I forgot to give you an update on what happened at the budget discussion yesterday. Actually, practically nothing.

The meeting was scheduled two hours before the Planning and Zoning Commission meeting and one hour was taken up by Schmisek's presentation. Two council members were absent. Council President Hal Gershman was on vacation and Council member Mike McNamara, well, given the time difference, I'm guessing he was still on duty at the time. So there were hints of the big debate to come but little in the way of debate.

Here's a couple of nuggets I came away with:

* There appears to be less resistance to the mayor's refusal to trim the dike mill levees. Council member Doug Christensen, for example, said he wasn't going to fight the mayor on this issue. Both he and Council member Curt Kreun acknowledged the differences with the mayor were merely philosophical.

* Schmisek gave another reason for paying off the dikes early: It'll make it easier for the city to get a better credit rating from Moody's Investors Service. The city's debt load is just a little too high so it's still at Aa3. Schmisek said credit analysts told him bringing the debt down could help get the city Aa2.

Moody's is pretty much the most trusted name in credit ratings and is known for giving entire countries credit ratings. "Issuers or issues rated Aa demonstrate very strong creditworthiness relative to other US municipal or tax-exempt issuers or issues," according to Moody's. Aa3 is on the low end of that ranking with Aa1 at the top. The best ranking is one level up at Aaa.

For you Alerus Center haters, Schmisek also said the other significant debt load the city carries is the Alerus Center debt. We're paying that off with the 3/4-cent sales tax.

* Council member Art Bakken said he was a little disturbed by the $7.4 million the city was pulling out of reserves. I asked Schmisek later if it would be fair, then, to call it a deficit budget. He said it's not quite like that because there is revenue that the city got in other years that it saved for this spending.

Other spending, such as economic development, is, as a matter of caution, maxed out even though it's inconceivable the economic development fund would be drained. Hypothetically, if a really, really, really great business came along and needed an incentive, the city might do that.

What counts, Schmisek said, is that reserve levels stay within a certain range. I'll admit that I haven't had time to check into this because there are multiple funds and reserve levels vary. The utility fund reserves, for example, is 25 percent of the utility budget. The general fund reserves is 15 percent of budget.

* Christensen is having heartburn over the $6.5 million the mayor wants to spend to build a police and firefighter training center and a mosquito control chemical storage facility. It's a needs versus want thing, he said.

* Remember that resolution the council passed asking the other local taxing entities -- the School and Park Districts and the county -- to match the city's mill levee cut?

Basically, the council wanted the other entities to "consider" a quarter mill cut for every 1 percent of all property tax levies that they now collect. For example, the city collects 24 percent, so it would cut at least 6 mills.

The other entities' response: Yeah, right. The city is the only one with a truly diverse revenue source. It's the only one that collects sales tax, a tax most people never complain about.

Anyway, if the city only makes a 4.18 mill cut, that pretty much makes a mockery of the resolution.

Essay: I Heart G.F.

2006-08-01T21:37:00.000-05:00

The City Beat noticed that JGS has been mocking the hokey "I Heart G.F." T-shirts City Hall is selling.

Knock it off, man! That was my idea!

Seriously, I used to go over to City Hall every Friday to pick up the City Council packets, which are now online. One Friday, the mayor was there and I said something to the effect that those polo shirts they have are kinda lame. Why don't they make something like those "I Heart N.Y." T-shirts, because that would be kinda hip (I think I meant in a kitschy kind of way)?

So they did.

I've seen a few people wear it around town, so there are differing opinions out there. In fact, I'm gonna go buy one just out of spite.

Anyway, the criticism that it's obscure -- "G.F." is short for what? Great Falls? Girl friend? -- is fair but that has always been kind of the charm of Grand Forks. I'm from Seattle where nobody knows where Grand Forks is. They barely know where North Dakota is. To me, that makes the place pretty exotic.

I love the way some people pronounce "creek" to rhyme with "brick." The way they say "for fun" when they mean "how fun." I love hot sandwiches, the ones with mashed potatoes piled on top of an open-faced sandwich and smothered with gravy. I love seeing nuns playing accordions at the Farmer's Market. I love seeing combines roll down the freeway. There used to be an East Grand Forks City Council member who is a farmer during the day. I loved it when he and his mud-caked boots stomped into City Hall straight from the fields. I love buying kuchen at Lever's. I love knoephla soup. I love Ole and Lena jokes. I even love that "Fargo" accent.

Who the heck cares if the outside world can't figure out what "G.F." stands for? They're just not in the know.

EGF hires new fire chief who's also been a cop, is departmental consolidation far behind?

2006-08-01T21:13:00.000-05:00

The East Grand Forks City Council hired Randy Gust as permanent fire chief tonight. Gust, who was the fire marshal, has served as interim chief since Chief Frank Ringstad retired earlier this year. The city will not hire a new fire marshal because that position got folded into the fire chief position. The savings in wage and benefits for the city is $65,000.

Interesting piece here is that Gust used to be a cop. Council Vice President Henry Tweten made a point of mentioning that Tuesday. Henry had wanted to consolidate the police and fire departments and still wants to consolidate departments. That'd be a lot easier if the guy in charge has experience in both fields.

The city had combined the positions back during the flood. There's a story in the archives about the council reluctantly accepting public safety director Ed Leier's resignation, and the council members all seemed to have had something nice to say.

Quickies: More updates

2006-07-31T13:21:00.000-05:00

The City Beat is gonna try something new. I'll throw stuff out as I notice them during the day. This week might be a slow one because I'm doing research on taxes.

* NYT's got a story about which states are getting the college students and which ones aren't. North Dakota, Montana, Vermont and Maine aren't.

On the bright side, this could be a strength in the future as the high-draw states fill up and it's harder to get in.

"In states with low capacity, look for places with tuition benefits like the ones the state provides," Mr. (David A.) Longanecker says. "North Dakota will give you a hell of a deal. My guess is in the future, there will be some pretty good deals in Midwestern universities."

Longanecker is executive director of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, based in Boulder, Colo.

Sorry, you'll have to register with NYT.

* Interesting tidbit in Fargo Forum's interview with Lars Moller, the Danish-born president of DMI, about the Danish wind energy industry. Grand Forks' wind turbine plant is owned by Denmark-based LM Glasfiber.

* One year anniversary of Grand Forks' smoking ban. Biz reporter Elisa Rineheart has a story today and the people responsible for the ban, the Grand Forks Tobacco Free Coalition, have released a survey of public opinion on the ban. Check here tomorrow for the story on the survey.

Update 12:06 p.m., 8/1/06: Looks like JGS restarted the My Grand Forks blog again. Good. These quickies are hard when there are fewer blogs to link to.

* Grand Forks Guy sees a new coffee shop at Columbia Mall.

Update 3:06 p.m., 8/1/06: Dakota's got a funny interview with some big chicken. Reminds me of this conversation, though it's far more ridiculous.

Update 6:39 p.m., 8/1/06: Photographer Mike Mohaupt is one of two artists on exhibit at the Third Street Gallery in downtown Grand Forks. Mikey works for the Herald occasionally. The other artist is Mariah Masilko.

Ooh, fresh meat

2006-07-31T00:02:00.000-05:00

After a (too) long period of contraction, the Herald newsroom is actually growing! Some long time readers have noticed that we simply don't cover as much as we used to. Our excuse was we just had fewer people doing the same work.

We're currently advertising four positions, two of which are replacements and two are new positions. Actually, they're positions we used to have until all those darn lay-offs.

You can thank our new overlords at Forum Communications for the expansion. Investing in the product, a concept Knight-Ridder investors never thought of.

The replacements include a new business reporter to replace Elisa Rineheart, who is leaving; a new education reporter to replace Paulette Tobin, who is taking over the arts and entertainment beat left vacant by Lisa Davis, who has left. (It's not a turnover problem. They're just following their spouses.)

The new positions include the region reporter and a copy editor -- that's the person laying out the paper.

I probably should have mentioned earlier that we got a new addition to our team, higher education reporter Joseph Marks. He's substituting for my good buddy David Dodds, who is deployed somewhere in the Middle East.

The word in the newsroom is we aren't done with the new hires yet, so check this space for future news. Ooh, ooh, I'm so excited!

Quickies: Bambi's coming and he's bringing all his cousins; Columbia Mall owner says it's doing great; The Herz's wedding photos

2006-07-30T23:43:00.000-05:00

* The City Beat has a follow-up to the earlier story on Grand Forks' potential deer problem. North Dakota Fish and Wildlife Department biologist Marty Egeland said that, when it is done, the Greenway will definitely be an attraction for wildlife. "Build it and they will come."

One way to deal with deer overpopulation is the holding of an urban hunt, as is done in Bismarck and, on Sept. 1, in Fargo. There won't be any urban deer hunt here any time soon, though the idea isn't as dangerous as it sounds. According to Fish and Wildlife biologist Doug Leier, bow hunters usually shoot from about 20 yards out, he said.

* "The town really wants to shop at the mall now. Retail sales have increased in each of the last two years." That's Garo Kholamian, head of the company that owns Grand Forks' Columbia Mall, talking about the mall in The Great Falls Tribune. His company, GK Development, just bought the Holiday Village Mall in Great Falls.

* AP reports story on Fargo potentially tapping Lake Ashtabula if the Red River keeps dropping. I don't know how alarmed they are down there but it reminds me of how not alarmed Grand Forks water people are, as I mentioned in this story. Grand Forks gets water from the Red Lake River and the Red River and we're first in line for Lake Ashtabula water, too.

If you'll recall, we're still working out which city pays how much for that project to pipe Missouri River water to the Red River Valley. This is another a reminder of how much more Fargo appears to need an alternate water source compared to Grand Forks. (Of course, some think that when the big drought strikes we'd need the pipe almost as badly as Fargo.)

* Pictures from The Herz's wedding here and here. Bridesmaid Lisa took the picture so it's more like photos from "The Herryn's" wedding.

* Off topic: Anybody read Garfield this past week, the one with the amnesiac date? Garfield has been consistently unfunny for the past, what, 15 years? Is this the start of an era of non-suckiness for the Herald's suckiest comic? I sure hope so.

Quickies: Downtown apartments starting, Point2Point snubs Cirrus Design

2006-07-26T21:30:00.000-05:00

* Bad news: Parking downtown will be getting a tad tougher on Monday due to the temporary closure of a part of the lot across the street from the Dacotah Hotel building. Really great news: The closure is so they can do soil testing for the apartment complex that's going up there. I reported it as the Dakota Block a few months ago but now it's called Riverview Apartments.

* More Canadians headed for North Dakota, presumably with wallet in hand and a shopping mall in mind.

* What gives? Point2Point Airways, formerly based in Grand Forks and now in Bismarck, says it won't be buying Cirrus Design planes. They're buying Canadian. Oh yeah, they got $1.25 million in federal grants by way of the city of Bismarck in August.

* Grand Forks Guy has more new biz announcements. Even made WDAZ.

* City of Grand Forks confirms the Point Bridge will be closed until early September.

Update 3:10 a.m., 7/27/06: A few things I negleted to mention:

* One of my colleagues, Carol Graham Brue, passed away recently, striken down by cancer. We had quite a few people show up for a ceremony at the Herald yesterday evening. The house was full of tears. She'll be missed.

* The second ~~week of the summer block party~~ Thursday night Farmer's Market at Town Square is tonight from ~~5 p.m.~~ 4:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. There's also a concurrent summer block party. It's run by a some of my fellow Greater Grand Forks Young Professionals. Thanks to Farmer's Market president Cheri Reitmeier for the correction.

* The Third Street Gallery, owned by a couple of Young Professionals, is holding a silent auction tonight from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. The social starts at 6 p.m. I'll be volunteering during the event so if you want to say "hi" or kick my *ss, come on down!

Downtown parking: Get off the street and make room for the customers

2006-07-25T20:44:00.000-05:00

Grand Forks' consultants are back and they have a message: Get off the street and make room for the customers. That's what I took away from that downtown parking open house today, which, by the way, was attended by four people, two of them reporters.

The consultants, a couple of nice fellas from ND LEA's Winnipeg office, figured the big problem with downtown is that the allocation of parking spaces is all wrong. The major concentration of parking, parking ramps and big public parking lots, isn't near the places people want to go. Most of drivers use on-street parking and avoid the ramps and lots. Hence the perception of parking shortage when, in fact, there is a surplus.

The way to fix this, according to consultant Richard Tebinka, is to get all the people that have to be downtown anyway -- that would be high school students, downtown residents and workers, like me -- into the ramps and lots so there's more on-street parking for the people that don't have to be there -- that would be customers of downtown businesses.

(I was going to tell you how pissed off that makes me feel, but remembered not to get too opinionated. It should be mentioned that many people that live and/or work downtown are the customers, too. I've got enough of those "frequent flyer" cards from Urban for half a dozen T-shirts [10 cards for a free shirt] to prove it.)

There's various ways of doing this, Tebinka said, such as strictly enforcing the time limit on on-street parking, meaning more parking tickets, and upgrading security in the parking ramps.

He said that the ramps are statistically safer than many people believe. Police report that the Central High School ramp, the most dangerous one in many people's minds, gets an incident of criminal mischief only once every two months. (He conceded that minor vandalism might go unreported.)

This seems to imply that the ramps are safe, except there weren't any statistics on incidents of criminal mischief for on-street parking. Since we're talking about parking for workers, there should be a break out for daytime versus nighttime incidents.

Anyway, the security upgrade Tebinka talked about would include things like better lighting, security cameras and regular visits by uniformed security personnel.

ND LEA's Powerpoint presentation is available here. There's more information about proposed changes to downtown parking, including angled parking and better signage.

Don't like the fountain? You got a better idea? Sure you do!

2006-07-25T17:09:00.000-05:00

When it comes to local politics, the City Beat tends to hear way more criticisms than proposals -- note the comment sections of postings about the Alerus Center, the Riverwalk Centre and that $800,000 fountain. (Love the comments, by the way. Keep them coming.)

Let's balance out the imbalance. If the old railroad bridge pier in the Red River downtown is an eye sore to you, what would you put on it? And how would you pay for it?

Saying "thanks" with an $800,000 fountain

2006-07-24T22:48:00.000-05:00

East Grand Forks Mayor Lynn Stauss went to the Grand Forks City Council tonight to ask for $300,000 to build a $800,000 fountain in the middle of the Red River. The City Beat is surprised the council was so receptive with only Council member Mike McNamara saying "no" to using tax dollars on the project. Some others indicated they were willing to consider it.

Stauss' funding plan is as follows:

* Grand Forks: $300,000.
* East Grand Forks $200,000. ($100,000 approved for the River City market place transferred to the fountain. Another $100,000 would come from utility fees.)
* Private donors: $300,000. ($150,000 committed)

So here's some of the reasons Stauss thinks tax dollars ought to be used:

1) Grand Forks and East Grand Forks got $1.5 billion or so in aid from the federal and state governments, which probably doesn't include donations from private citizens. The $800,000 would be a nice way to say "thank you" because the fountain would be dedicated to everyone who helped. It'd be "selfish," he said, to do otherwise.

2) Grand Forks should pay $100,000 more than East Grand Forks because it got more aid.

3) Since the nation helped the governments of the two cities, the governments have to be involved in the thank you. "We as cities should give back a little of what we received."

4) Sure this isn't a strict necessity, but it benefits the community. He didn't specify much but he did talk about all the tourists that would flock downtown to get their picture taken in front of the landmark fountain.

You'll notice in my story about this today that I mentioned "a reporter" asked "why a project to honor the nation wasn't being built in Washington, D.C." That'd be me.

I was thinking, didn't we spend $33,000 on a bison statue that we sent to our old sister city Awano, Japan, in part, to thank the people there for sending us flood aid? We didn't put the statue in one of our parks to honor them while we kept the tourist money.

Not to be cynical but if we spent the money here in town, isn't that like buying a present for yourself and going to your friend's birthday party and telling her you'll be thinking of her when you use the present?

Stauss kind of evaded my question. Yes it will benefit us, he said, but "we can't do it for the past. We need to do it for the future." Future generations will look at the fountain, he said, and remember the trauma of the flood.

I then asked if the nation wouldn't be more likely to see it if it was in Washington? He said some thing about people coming here to see the fountain and, prompted by me, the national news media will also report about it.

Maybe the mayor got caught by surprised, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt and reported: "Stauss said he'd like citizens from around the country to come for a visit. And, he said, the news media would spread word of the fountain."

That still doesn't really answer my question.

Quickies: Downtown traffic jam?

2006-07-24T22:21:00.000-05:00

Short Quickie today:

* That plan to lease the parking lot off of Riverboat Road to Central High School for student parking could have a slight problem. Grand Forks Council President Hal Gershman wondered if all those cars turning left from DeMers Avenue onto Riverboat Road might not cause a big traffic jam downtown. Council member Art Bakken thought the solution might be to have traffic patrol directing traffic.

Patrol or no patrol, more cars has to mean slower traffic. I'm glad I don't have to commute across the river during the morning hours. That's gonna suck.

* Lack of rain around Grand Forks is getting to be a drag, but, on the bright side, there aren't too many mosquitoes and mosquito control is costing $100,000 less than the $640,000 budgeted. Abundant rains last year meant the city had to spend nearly $700,000.

Mosquito control supervisor Todd Hanson said to tell you guys that, if you're older than 50, you still have to be careful about mosquito bites. Culex mosquitoes, the ones that carry the West Nile Virus, aren't easily deterred by dry weather so they'll still be coming out in August and September.

Update 3:44 p.m., 7/25/06: Oops, it rained. There goes the 100 grand.

Quickies: Hunting on GF's Greenway?

2006-07-23T19:31:00.000-05:00

* Not being from around here, the City Beat had to sort of snicker at the letter the state Game and Fish Department sent to the city of Grand Forks.

Department director Terry Steinwand said he'd heard the city was looking to ban the feeding of deer. City staff reported that that is necessary because the new Greenway park system would prove irresistible to the animals.

But Steinwand suggested that the city might want to go one step further:

What the North Dakota Game and Fish Department, as well as other agencies around the country, have found to be the most effective and cost efficient approach is to: 1) reduce or eliminate deer feeding and baiting, and 2) have a hunting season.

Whu-what?

Apparently, Bismarck already has a bow hunting season, Bemidji just put one in place and Fargo is looking to do the same. Besides that, Steinwand is right, there's tons of places where urban bow hunting is allowed. A quick Google search found that cities in Virginia do this, so do cities in Missouri and Ohio.

Being the ignorant city slicker that I am, this scares the willies out of me. Hopefully, it's safer than it sounds. We're probably talking about hunting in sparsely inhabited areas of the city, not, say, Belmont Road.

* Dog park activists at Roaming Paws Advocates have a new Web site. They're also planning to push their cause at the Aug. 19 Farmer's Market, which has the theme of "Dog Days of Summer." There will be petitions available for signing.

* That request from LM Glasfiber to expand its space in the Noah's Ark Building in the Industrial Park is coming up Monday night. It'll be on City Council TV on Channel 2 at 7.

* Grand Forks city staff is proposing the city apply for National Recreation Trail designation for the city's Greenway by the river. "National Recreation Trails benefit from the prestige and increased visibility of being part of the National Trail System," staff wrote.

Here's a Web site with trails that are now part of the system.

* There's going to be a follow-up to that meeting on downtown parking that the Grand Forks-East Grand Forks Metropolitan Planning Organization held a month ago. It'll be from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m., Tuesday, in the Herald's Community Room. A presentation starts at 5:30 p.m.

If you're planning on attending, be aware that the entrance the Community Room is in the alley and there's a fence blocking the area of the alley closest to the Herald parking lot. Use the alley between the Herald and the federal courthouse.

* Speaking of parking, the Urban Development Department is looking to move Central High School student parking from the Civic Auditorium lot to the one behind the dikes off of Riverboat Road. I'm told the walking distance appear longer but is the same. The reason for the move is Urban Development thinks it might have a tenant for the auditorium. No, I still don't know who the would-be tenant is. There's some speculation it's Amazon.com but that rumor has apparently been around for a while.

Big news for a few: The Herz gets hitched

2006-07-23T18:27:00.000-05:00

The biggest news for the City Beat this week was the wedding on Saturday of my friends former WDAZ personality Herryn Riendeau and Matt Herzog, or as friends like to call him, "The Herz."

The Riendeaus have roots in Gentilly, Minn., and the Herzogs in Cavalier, N.D., and, man, were there a lot of aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, neighbors, etc. I was the passive-aggressive usher, one of two, that tried to get them all seated at St. Peter's Church in Gentilly. (Talk about small world. Grand Forks city finance director John Schmisek, a friend of the family, was there. He said he'd brought his camera if he knew I'd be there in the penguin suit.)

The reception was at the Alerus Center and Herryn's mom, Lynn Erie, says the staff did a great job. I agree.

The proud parents, by the way, are Tim and Judy Herzog, Ted Riendeau and Lynn and Steven Erie.

Indulge me if you're not familiar with the newly minted Mr. and Mrs. Herzog. A remarkable number of the relatives have actually read this blog, so I'm indulging them.

Here's something for you general readers: If you're ever in the Gentilly area, arrange for a visit to the church. It's one of the nicest ones I've seen and, as a bonus, the little statuettes and stained-glass windows bear French inscriptions, indicative of the area's heritage.

Quickies: Catching up with all the blog news

2006-07-21T14:57:00.000-05:00

What a barrage of local news from the other blogs! I was wondering when people would get back to Grand Forks issues...

* GrandForksGuy has a bunch of news on all the commercial developments in town.

* Not to be out done, Coffee Guy has a rumor about Olive Garden coming to town. I checked with city planner Brad Gengler but he said he hasn't seen anything to that effect, yet.

* Dakota checked out a news report on that casino the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa is developing down in Mississippi. She said she talked to tribal Chairman Ken Davis who said this development is not replacing the Grand Forks casino effort, which continues. I think that's more than he told me last time around!

* Ben Klipfel from Culture Pulse says street musicians can freely play and collect tips. The cops have been informed. Way to go Ben!

* I forgot to note that former Grand Forks City Council member Gerald Hamerlik made a final appearance as a commissioner at the Alerus Center commission meeting Wednesday. Gerry's been involved in this project for a dozen years so he's taking a lot of institutional knowledge with him. His replacement will be Council member Curt Kreun. The council still has to approve the appointment.

Looks like Curt is a glutton for punishment. He's involved with that landfill brouhaha being a vocal supporter of the city's efforts. Now he's gonna get involved in a facility for which there is also a lot of brouhaha.

Holy heck! LM Glasfiber explodes!

2006-07-21T01:45:00.000-05:00

A couple of months ago, LM Glasfiber said it would expand employment at its Grand Forks plant from 320 to 450. This week, the company said it plans on expanding to 550. That's a whole lot of jobs in a very short time.

For a comparison, check out the Grand Forks Region Economic Development Corp.'s 2004 report on major employers. At 550, LM would be the city's biggest manufacturer by head count.

There's been a lot of discussion about economic development on this blog, accompanied by a lot of healthy skepticism. Some question whether this is the proper province of government, with most of the criticism directed at money-losing facilities such as Grand Forks' Alerus Center and East Grand Forks' Riverwalk Centre.

To me, those facilities are just economic development's sideshows. The main attractions are really employers like LM, Cirrus Design, SEI Information Technology, and Amazon.com, among others. Companies within primary sector industries -- meaning firms that export products and services outside their homd regions -- that pay a relatively high wage are what economic developers go after.

How those companies perform should be benchmarks for the state of economic development in Grand Forks, not how events centers and malls perform.

LM got its start in Grand Forks in 1999 when the EDC built, with city funding, an 84,000 square foot plant, which was then leased to the company. Back in March, the city decided to spend $2.65 million to renovate a section of the Amazon.com building, which the city owns, to turn it into factory space for LM. The city will soon be deciding whether to spend $2 million to renovate the rest of the space. LM would then lease the warehouse.

You could ask if LM would have come if the city hadn't built a plant for the company. I suspect the answer would be "no." Philosophically, you could say that government should let businesses decide where businesses go. Realistically, with other cities competing for the same companies, governments that are philosophically pure would be at a disadvantage against those that are pragmatic.

I have to admit, as a fan of economics, I tend to think that the economy operates most efficiently when it is free of distortions caused by government intervention. I suspect, though, that places like North Dakota would be empty of people if that policy were followed to the letter. And, broadly speaking, I'm keenly aware that a lot of innovation have come out of government efforts. After all, it was DARPA, a government research agency, that invented the Internet.

Not feeling the love

2006-07-19T21:46:00.000-05:00

Some of those guys at the city of East Grand Forks are way too sensitive about the Riverwalk Centre mall. So a guy reports how the mall is losing money and some of its tenants didn't pay rent, and suddenly he's getting hate.

Anyway, the City Beat was trying to report that the Buffet House had closed under pretty mysterious circumstances. I called Jim Richter, the economic development chief who's also the mall manager. The conversation isn't verbatim but here's what it came out to:

Me: So, Jim, I'm just following up on that conversation we had (at City Council) about the Buffet House closing. So how much did they owe the city?

Jim: Tu-Uyen, that's not a story.

Me: Why?

Jim: Because it's sad. It's a sad story.

Me: Um, so what? We do sad stories all the time.

Jim: It's sad. "They walked. They packed their bags and they left."

Me: What do they owe the city?

Jim: They owe a lot of people money. They owe us rent money.

Me: How much?

Jim: I don't know. I'd have to look that up.

Me: Could you?

Jim: [brief pause] I could.

Me: Would you?

Jim: [5-10 second pause] I don't have time right now.

Me: Could you get the numbers to me later this week?

Jim: [I forget the answer, I recall it was something like "I'll try."]

Anyway, no, I still have no idea how much the restaurant owes.

I had to ask the interim city administrator and finance director Wayne Oberg. He said he didn't know either because Richter reports the numbers to him at the end of the month. But he did know that the Buffet House paid $21,100 in rent last year and has paid $7,700 so far this year. He also though the restaurant hadn't taken out a loan with the city. Bottomline: Not a huge amount owed.

I know where Jim's coming from. A city owned mall operates at a disadvantage to a private business because anybody can ask for its finances. Also, reports of tenants leaving doesn't help the mall get more tenants. I'm not making his job easy.

Some may say the city ought never have gotten into the mall business and to that city officials would say they had to. They bought the mall after the flood and used it to house businesses that would've otherwise left town or gone under without subsidized rent.

Still, I wish it were easier to get info out of some of these guys. They're public servants and I'm a member of the public, ergo...

Break even definitely a goal for Alerus Center

2006-07-19T20:56:00.000-05:00

So it's official: Alerus Center commissioners said again Wednesday that one of their main goals is to break even. One of them, Brian Conneran, was so intent on breaking even he voted against the new 2007 budget because it's a deficit budget. He said he thought management should check to see if the labor cost to revenue ratio was within industry standards.

This dissent is significant because usually by the time a budget is ready to be voted on, everybody's on board.

The other commissioners approved the budget, too, but only because they felt there was no way around the higher expenses, blamed mostly on new electric rates. Boy I wish I had the presence of mind at 6:30 a.m. to ask if they'd seen these new rates coming. The new rates standard commercial rates that most businesses pay. The Alerus Center has been paying the economic development rate reserved for new facilities.

Anyway, the concern with breaking even is a big deal to me -- as you'll have noted from this post -- because for a few years, it seemed like it wasn't on the commission's radar screen. Typically, the conversation about breaking even comes up after the year end financial report is released and the center is in the red. The commissioners usually get pretty defensive and point out the big (estimated) economic impact. And I end up saying, "but you guys said that one year when the moon was blue and hell was cold that you wanted to break even."

Anyway, here's some facts about the budget, which you can also read in the Herald story:

* Revenues are expected to be in the $4 million range. Last couple of years, actual revenues have been in the $3.8 million range. I'm not saying it's impossible but they have a lot of work ahead of them.

* Revenue from the hotel-motel tax (a built in subsidy) is about 9 percent of total revenue.

* Commission Chairman Randy Newman keeps saying that the whole budget is driven by "programming," meaning by concerts and other events. He sounds like he's really worried that without enough concerts, advertisers and suite holders would leave. Together the suite leases and advertisers make up 22 percent of the budget or $880,000.

* As Dadinggf commented, the Alerus Center does compete for weddings with local businesses. Catering makes up 20 percent of the budget, or $817,000.

I'm sure that's not all from weddings but center officials were pretty excited about how good they were getting at the wedding business. In June, the single biggest category of event in terms of attendance for the Alerus Center was wedding receptions with 1,800. That's a 242 percent increase over the same month a year ago. The second biggest was conventions with 1,600.

It's just a single month, so I'm curious what it was like for the first half of the year.

* Electricity costs is are up 55 percent to $242,000.

* Parking fees, a new revenue source, is expected to total $103,000. The center doesn't plan on starting parking fees until September so that's just the last four months of the year, albeit potentially very profitable months with the football games and winter concerts. The amount would be more than enough to cover the higher electricity costs, which amount to an additional $86,000 in spending.

* Labor costs amount to about 48 percent of total revenue at $1.9 million. That's what Conneran was concerned about.

Quickies: Point Bridge closed until mid-Sept.; bar owners seek to punish underage drinkers

2006-07-18T22:27:00.000-05:00

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.

GF landfill court battle begins

2006-07-17T20:19:00.000-05:00

The city of Grand Forks faced Turtle River Township in Grand Forks District Court for the first time today. As has been reported, the township's attorney, Al Boucher, looks like he's hoping to nip this thing in the bud by getting it dismissed before it even really begins.

Al said the city didn't follow procedure and file an appeal so it doesn't make sense for the city to appear in appellate court. The city's attorney, Ron Fischer, said he did, too. The lawsuit he filed pretty much put the township on notice that he's appealing even if he doesn't say he's "appealing."

The judge, Joel Medd, said he'll decide within 30 days.

Quickies: Comment on Park District fitness center; water sales are brisk

2006-07-17T19:40:00.000-05:00

* I'm a day late on this link to Ryan Bakken's story about the Park District efforts to build a new fitness center. But I figured y'all would appreciate the opportunity to comment. The main story is here. The sidebar is here.

* Grand Forks Public Works director Todd Feland said the dry weather is, in an odd way, good for his department. Most of the costs of pumping and treating water are fixed, he said, so additional usage of water doesn't add much more to expense. On the other hand, it adds a lot more to revenues. The city doesn't want to max out capacity, he said, but getting close means the system is operating at peak efficiency. End result: Public works is getting more cash than usual.

More on this later when I interview Feland more in-depth. (Note to WDAZ: You think my story ideas are so lame, so don't take them, OK?)

* Grand Forks City Council members elected new officers today. Council President Hal Gershman got another term and the council's grand old man Eliot Glassheim was voted vice president. He replaces another grand old man, Gerald Hamerlik, who retired from public office last month.

The council's two big policy geeks, Council members Doug Christensen and Curt Kruen got chairmanship, respectively, of the Finance-Development Standby Committee and the Service-Safety Committee.

The council will figure out who else sits on the committees next week.

(Note: "Old man" and "geek" used affectionately here.)

* What a grand discussion we all had ~~hear~~ here when the Alerus Center last came up. Get ready for more after the center's commission meets this Wednesday to talk about the budget. The fun begins at 6:30 a.m. with a finance committee meeting followed by a two hour commission meeting. I for one am stoked.

* Council member Mike "Mac" McNamara, back from Iraq in less than 60 days, wished his wife Susan and daughter Katherine happy birthdays.

* City Council must've broken a record today. It was over in less than 30 minutes.

* Got an e-mail from a friend about this block party starting at 4:30 p.m. on Thursday at Town Square in Grand Forks. JLG Architects is organizing it with other sponsors. There will be one every Thursday after that until Aug. 24. What a perfect compliment to summer.

* What the ding-dong happened to the My Grand Forks blog? Something screwy going on. Disappeared without a trace.

Update 8:14 p.m., 7/18/06: Bummer! JGS says he's been too busy to work much on the blog so it's gone.

Hey Tran,

I closed down my blog due to not having much time to write anything. I feel the City Beat and GFL [Grand Forks Life blog. - Ed.] cover the main topics around town. I will continue to read all the blogs, post and voice my opinion. You might see My Grand Forks in the near future or a different name, who knows. Until then, keep on blogging.

JGS

Well, hope nobody else goes anywhere. We got a good thing going on here. See you around, JGS.

Quickies: VastLane back up; GF artists feeling suppressed?

2006-07-15T15:53:00.000-05:00

The City Beat played hooky Friday and went tubing with some hot-looking TV news women -- this must be why I got into journalism -- so the blog has been sparse. So here's some quickies to make up for it.

* I've been wondering what the heck happened to VastLane, one of Grand Forks' first discussion group. They're back up now and they gave a plug to the entire local blogosphere.

There's a funny quote too (emphases mine):

I believe there are some Fargo sites out there, but they represent the Johnny-come-lately in this little foray of the digital status quo. Interestingly, a diverse range of ideologies seem to exist within the GF blogs, but they all seem to rally together against their shared geographical foe.

* Thanks to VastLane, I found out about the CulturePulse blog. The latest post is by Benjamin Klipfel, who asks the question: Why is the city trying to suppress the artistic community?

I didn't know you have to have a transient merchant license to play music and accept tips. On the other hand, if you stand in the road with a cardboard sign asking for money, you're left alone.

The main CulturePulse Web site, by the way, is a community events calendar.

* I checked out the National League of Cities Web site the other day, Grand Forks being a member and all. The league has a neat Cities 101 reference section with all kinds of information about how other cities around the country conduct their business. Good compare and contrast possibilities.

Update 12:25 p.m., 7/17/06: What a curious lapse in etiquette. I forgot to give GrandForksGuy credit for pointing out that VastLane's back up.

Twilight Zone at the Alerus Center

2006-07-13T17:48:00.000-05:00

It was like an episode of the Twilight Zone this morning when the City Beat groggily went to the Alerus Center commission finance committee's 7 a.m. meeting.

It's the first time the Pollyannas at the Alerus Center have planned to lose money, about $150,000. Everytime, they've planned to make money or break even and they've never made goal.

Here's how it normally works: The center reports it lost money and I go, "Holy heck! How dare you fools waste taxpayers' hard earned cash!"

Center commissioners say, "No, Tu-Uyen, you fool, we're losing money but what do you think all those people that come to our events do when they're in town? They spend money at the mall and the restaurants and the hotels!"

Here's how it happened today: Center commissioners say, "This projected loss of $150,000 is terrible! How can we show our face before the City Council with a budget like this?"

Some of these guys actually agonized over the losses. I swear, committee chairman Randy Newman said bringing a deficit budget to the council would be like "accepting" the inevitability of losses.

I couldn't believe it, but I actually said, "Realistically, shouldn't you be budgetting for a bigger loss? I mean, you've got that Canad Inns construction right next door disrupting everything, you've got huge energy bills and big concerts are as scarce as ever. It'd be reasonable for you to expect to lose more money, right?"

[Fade out as Twilight Zone theme plays. "Dah-dah-dah-dah, dah-dah-dah-dah..."]

Anyway, I still think they ought to try to break even. After all, the Alerus Center gets about $300,000 in hotel tax revenues that it gets to count as its own revenue. It's deficits are paid out of the economic development fund. But all those obstacles I just mentioned are truly outside of the Alerus Center's control and it'll take a little time to transition into some kind of new revenue model. Whatever that is.

As a side note, expect this year's budget to be skewed by the cancellation of redneck woman Gretchen Wilson's concert.

Quickies: Dog park on Park's back burner; AG comes to town

2006-07-13T11:10:00.000-05:00

* Looks like the dog park proposal is squarely in the city's court. I chatted briefly with parks superintendent Steve Mullally the other night and he said it's pretty much on the "back burner" for the Park District.

* Sweet! Frolf in Crookston!

* Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem is holding a presentation on the state's laws on open meetings and open records at 4 p.m., July 19, at the Alerus Center.

I was gonna just leave the notice at that. But a friend pointed out that this comes after his opponent, Democrat Bill Brudvik, questioned a recent ruling that the State Board of Higher Education didn't violate any laws when two of its members met with the governor in February to talk about university system Chancellor Robert Potts.

Whatever the motive, I gotta say that I've always liked the way Stenehjem treats the press. He's always approachable and makes himself available at strange hours.

Advice column: Ask a City Council*

2006-07-11T23:00:00.000-05:00

Dear City Council: Why is the sky blue?
- Suzie, age 6

Dear Suzie: Sometimes the sky is blue and sometimes it is grey. We on the council get a lot of comments from the community and the community wants blue skies. Just yesterday, we ran into a neighbor of ours who said overcast days are depressing and he wished it would clear up already.

To us, it's sad that a few clouds could change the our quality of life like this.

The time may have come, then, for the city to look into the cost-effectiveness of weather modification. We motion that the City Council form a task force made up of representatives from the council, city staff and residents, both from the pro-blue sky camp and the pro-grey sky camp. We also motion the city set aside up to $10,000 to hire consultants to run some calculations at our direction. Do we have a second?

Dear City Council: There's this really pretty girl in my class and I really like her. What should I do?
- Johnny, age 9

Deary Johnny: If this girl is as pretty as you say, no doubt a lot of boys will be trying to get her attention. Normally, we would suggest you send her a nice card with maybe some Tootsie Rolls. But since you really have to stand out from the competition, we think you should build a fountain dedicated to her.

It should be a really nice fountain, possibly in the middle of a river, that can spray water high in the air. That way, the girl you like will be able to easily see it. It should also have lights so it is equally attractive day and night.

As a side benefit, this fountain would also attract visitors to our community, helping our businesses. That's what we call a win-win situation, Johnny.

But a fountain like this, our engineers say, would cost a lot more than the average 9-year-old's allowance. We understand the water and light department has some money that it won't be using next year so we recommend you go ask them. You should ask nicely and soon because those guys get pretty grumpy when you ask at the last minute -- something about needing to do budget planning.

Dear City Council: Kyle took my toy and he won't give it back.
- Cynthia, age 3 1/2

Dear Cynthia: The city's role is to protect and serve and we need to show zero tolerance towards toy-taking. Our officers tell us that they can't always respond to incidents of toy-taking because toy-taking is lower on the priority list than other crimes, such as assault and battery or murder.

Sometimes the officer has to help another officer requiring assistance.

Let us say that you, Cynthia, call 911 and an officer is sent over. But suppose, at that time, another officer pulls over a speeding driver and that officer needs help with the ticketing process. The officer that was supposed to help you would have to divert to help out a fellow officer.

It occurs to us, then, that our police might need more resources to enforce the existing toy-taking laws. It further occurs to us that the laws we have might not provide our officers with enough flexibility. For example, if the toy is taken but then is returned, the laws do not specify whether the original toy-taking is still a crime. The law also does not say whether our officers can scold the toy-taker or not.

Therefore, we motion the city attorney draft the necessary amendment to the toy-taking ordinance and present this matter before the public safety standby committee.

Dear City Council: How are babies made? My friend Stu says kissing is involved. Is that true?
- Timmy, age 8

Dear Timmy: We're not convinced that making babies (or kissing for that matter) is the role of city government. Our role is to "protect and serve," not "titilate and procreate." Also, in this time of fiscal constraint, it really wouldn't be prudent to create new programs. Private individuals, we feel, can best kiss and make babies without interference by government.

It might be, as you suggest, that we as a community need to make more babies to counter outmigration. It occurs to us that, going forward, the city might consider providing incentives to help the private sector reach its full potential.

Anyway, Timmy, we don't think we should talk about how babies are made right now. Making babies, like legislating, is like making sausages.

*This is a fact-free article. It is satire. It might not be funny, but it's still satire. See McSweeney's for similar weirdness.

Quickies: Discord on the board; trading junk

2006-07-11T22:05:00.000-05:00

* Prairie Pundit shreds the Grand Forks School Board, based on this story by Paulette Tobin.

Discord on the board brings back memories of the Grand Forks City Council circa 2002. Accusations of conflicts of interest. Debates over ethics. Fourteen council members with almost as many agendas. Ah, sweet memories....

* There weren't enough quickies yesterday for a post so I saved this item. If you didn't check Dakota's blog, she's getting the city to put together a Web site to exchange -- well, one man's trash is another's treasure, especially if it stays out of the landfill. Fargo's got one. There's even a junk wanted page.

* East Grand Forks' Civic Center to turn Green Wave green.

* Behold the power of blogs: Looks like the Kentucky state government can't handle the heat from this blog.

GF Park District energy bill too high

2006-07-11T21:23:00.000-05:00

The budget writers at the Grand Forks Park District figured that energy costs would go up by about 15 percent this year so that's how much they added to the energy budget. It actually went up 20 percent.

Executive director John Staley told park commissioners tonight that they might have to make some cuts starting this fall -- for example, reducing the number of hours warming houses are lighted -- and make cuts for next year's budget.

For you people clamoring for a cut in the property tax rate, John says he still expected the district to reduce some mills. Unlike the city, the park district has certain mills dedicated to certain functions and can't transfer money among different funds. That means some funds will be overfunded due to the recent increase in property values citywide.

Other funds, like the general fund, which pays the energy bills, will not change. The general fund won't even go up, despite the higher bills, because they have as many mills as the state allows.

Dog park petition, the sequel

2006-07-10T00:55:00.000-05:00

Anybody remember Nancy Joyner?

Four years ago, she wrote a letter to the Herald editor suggesting the city of Grand Forks build a dog park where dogs like hers can enjoy a little freedom from the leash.

Well, with progress on the dog park moving at roughly the speed of -- hmmm, what is it that takes three years to move no where?* Let's say it's not moving at a pace that suggests there will be a dog park, conveniently located in town, any time soon. There's also a lot of NIMBY opposition popping up and irate taxpayers wondering why they have to pay for somebody's pet's happiness.

So Nancy is doing what a lot of people have been doing lately: She's putting together a petition. It says simply: "I support Grand Forks City and Park District in establishing a fenced dog park area within Grand Forks." Nancy's just trying to show a little voting muscle. Petitions are at veterinarian offices, pet stores and pet supply stores. You can also e-mail her here.

In the interest of fairness, I haven't talked to other dog park petitioners but if you are one of them, let me know and I will post your contact information.

* The city identified two potential sites for a dog park back in August 2003. Now it is July and two potential sites have faced such vigorous opposition that I'm pretty sure they've been ruled out. Haha. Like Council member Doug Christensen likes to say, this is like "making sausage."

Quickies: This is encouraging recycling? New city Web site

2006-07-10T00:14:00.000-05:00

* This is the scene at Hugo's on Sunday evening. Either Waste Management has been really successful at encouraging recycling or they need to pick up more.

Oh yeah, when does my apartment complex get a no-sort recycling bin?

* The city of Grand Forks has unveiled its new Web site. The links page with all the information for taxpayers -- to me, the most important one -- is pretty comprehensive.

There's a bunch of forms that you can fill in to request anything from repairing streetlights in your neighborhood to getting on the city mailing list for news releases. There's also information on current bids the city has open for construction and other services.

And there's what you've all been waiting for: Council TV online! Woohoo! Yeah, baby!! Come over to my quarters for some toast and we'll watch Council TV.

* JGS has an update on all the biz that's going up around town. GrandForksGuy has an update on the old Stratford Building downtown. Man, I always thought that place would look great with a brew-pub. Now it's massages and facials and stuff.

* The City Beat went to the movies this weekend for the first time in a long time. I won't complain since I don't know how the business works, but I can't help but wonder a) why the theater here charges $8 a ticket and theaters in Fargo charge less -- how much they charge, I don't recall -- and b) why, at that price, new theaters don't want to come to town. You'll recall that Canad Inns had such a hard time finding a theater operator that it told the City Council not to expect one, just some amenity to be determined. You'll also recall Columbia Mall announced about a year and half ago that Wallace Theaters is supposed to come to the old Target space. Whatever the delay is, they sure ain't in a hurry to get here.

(I saw Nacho Libre, by the way. It was hysterical. I expect the line "Have you ever had feelings for a nun?" to appear on T-shirts soon.)

* Almost forgot: Viva Italia! To think, we tied those guys.

GF council turns right

2006-07-06T22:46:00.000-05:00

It looks to the City Beat that the Grand Forks City Council has shifted a bit to the right.

Last night, during discussions of two new laws, newly elected Council member Art Bakken explicitly questioned whether new regulations would have the desired impact. (Maybe "right" is the wrong description. "Libertarian" is probably better.)

The first law discussed was the the one requiring bartenders to receive training on false IDs. Bar owners are afraid it would cost too much and do little to reduce binge drinking. They also feel it would shift responsibility to them rather than punish the real culprits: kids using fake IDs. Bakken appeared to agree with the bar owners. His predecessor, Dorette Kerian, favored the licensing law.

The second law discussed was the one requiring owners of single family homes who rent them out to get a license. The law was proposed to curb the wild partying and chaotic parking in the UND neighborhood. Bakken said he's not necessarily opposed to the law but he wants the council to, in six to eight months, examine whether the law had worked. Kerian favored the law, too.

I don't want to suggest a humongo shift, since Bakken is only one new member. The other new member is Mike McNamara. But I see him as a conservative in the law-and-order mold and that's a little different from the libertarian mold. (That's just a hunch. We'll see if I'm right or not.)

What I did notice, though, was the balance shifting on the bartender licensing law. Initially, there were three council members who questioned its effectiveness: Council members Doug Christensen, Hal Gershman and Curt Kreun. The other four varied from cautious to supportive. With Bakken, though, that makes four out of seven council members.

I also noticed Bakken's skepticism of new regulations. He mentioned that, as the owner of a trucking firm, he finds that some laws intended to enhance safety on the road comes at too high a cost for businesses.

Reader question: What's up with the water on the paddle wheel?

2006-07-06T15:09:00.000-05:00

Barb wrote:

I enjoy the paddlewheel at the Town Square and think it adds to the atmosphere during the summer when the "water" part of it is up and running. I do have a question though and wonder if you could investigate it. Why does the water run down one side of it? Can't it be made to work so water runs down both sides of the paddlewheel? To me it looks like it's only working half way right...

As luck would have it, Barb, I did investigate this a long time ago. The answer is that the wheel is supposed to look like it was in motion. Imagine the wheel on a paddleboat as it's turning. Water comes down only on the side that was just in the water. The other side is still in the air. If that's the case, I always thought a more asymmetrical arrangement would've enhanced the illusion of motion even more.

While we're on the topic of public art, I'm still trying to figure out who's responsible for that goofy fountain thing -- the one with the two faces facing each other -- at the parking lot across from the Dacotah Hotel. I'm told city staff calls it the "Beavis and Butthead" lot. If you don't know what I'm talking about head downtown sometime. The likeness is uncanny.

Come to think of it, there must be a city guide to public art somewhere. Be back soon with the answer.

Update: 10:10 p.m., 7/6/06: Since you asked, here's a side-by-side comparison. Sorry about the first image. I have a digital camera but it doesn't cooperate with the computers here so I had to use by cell phone camera.


"Now and Then" statue	Beavis and Butthead

According to a pamphlet published a couple of summers ago:

"Now and Then"; Patrick Luber; Grand Forks, N.D. The interior of the doorway outlines two faces looking at each other, the negative space forms the shape of a vase. [Not sure why that's significant. - Tu]The upper portion of the fountain echoes the shape of the vase/face configuration. The repeated use of the vase suggests looking forward and back, contemplating the changes that have occurred over the years and anticipating things to come. [Photo is from the other side so the fountain isn't as prominent. - Tu] The flowing water of the fountain mimics the theme of the passage of time. "Now and Then" reminds us that, although water has the potential to create havoc, it is also a thing of beauty and a life-giving force.

Luber has some other works that you can see here.

Amazon.com land lease

2006-07-05T22:51:00.000-05:00

The city of Grand Forks is set to renew a $1,710-a-year lease on the 77 acres off of 32nd Avenue South. It looks like that site is next to the 77 acres the city bought back in 2000 for $1.25 million. Another $1 million was spent leveling the land. City officials thought at the time that Amazon.com would locate a warehouse and distribution center here.

The lease lets the owner, Beau Bateman, continue to farm unless the city needs the land for some new company. This could come in handy if the city runs out of land in the Industrial Park.

New tenant for Corporate Center

2006-07-05T22:50:00.000-05:00

The north building of downtown Grand Forks' Corporate Center is gonna get a new tenant after sitting vacant for the last three years.

The Social Security Administration, which has an office near downtown, is moving into the third floor and paying $146,000 a year for the first seven year. The lease for another eight years is negotiable.

The city built the Corporate Center in 2000 and quickly filled the south building with Alerus Financial; Camrud, Maddock, Olson & Larson; and Brady Martz. But man has it had trouble with the other building. Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Dakota, also known as Noridian, moved into the second and third floor in August 2000 but had left by August 2003. The first floor has always been vacant.

The same year Noridian left, United Way of Grand Forks, East Grand Forks and Area and Village Family Service Center began plans to convert two floors into a non-profit center. But the groups sought incentives from the city to make that happen and the city wouldn't bite.

Quickies: Scenic views of Grand Forks, doing business with East Grand Forks

2006-07-05T15:08:00.000-05:00

* The City Beat went out and took some photos of fireworks last night and was pleased to find all the downtown parking ramps packed. Those ramps were definitely helpful. The cars would have otherwise taken up all the parking in the surrounding neighborhoods.

* Speaking of photos, anybody besides me and young Rick Abbott posting their photos of Grand Forks online?

I found a couple of cool photos, like this one (Hard to remember the "thrills" of winter at this time of year. Here's a reminder.) from Lazy~Lightning; or this one (Indy Day fireworks) by The Angel Frog; or this one (Great Flood of '06) by Cpod the Elder; or this one (I had the same shot!) by Vaseeharan.

Then there's this guy who's OBSSESSED with Dairy Queen. Scroll down to see all the photos of the Columbia Road DQ.

Don't forget, the city of Grand Forks has this photo calendar contest. Deadline is Aug. 15.

* I noticed two funny items on the East Grand Forks City Council agenda today.

13. Consider adopting Resolution No. 06-07-64 a Resolution authorizing the City of East Grand Forks to approve purchases from Bert’s Truck Equipment for #615 Packer Repair and #733 Fuel Filler Cup for a total of $1,173.53 whereas Council Member [Wayne] Gregoire is personally interested financially in the contract.

14. Consider adopting Resolution No. 06-07-65 a Resolution authorizing the City of East Grand Forks to approve purchases from Hardware Hank the goods referenced in voucher 29691 and 29692 for a total of $1,803.01 and $252.71, whereas Council Member [Craig] Buckalew is personally interested financially in the contract.

Nothing sinister here. It's just a really small town and the city wants to do business only with Eastside businesses, if at all possible (I don't think Grand Forks has this policy). When it says "personally interested," it means the person named will abstain from voting.

* My good buddy, reporter David Dodds, stopped in recently to visit after several months of hardcore training at Ft. McCoy, Wis. Doddsy, a National Guardsman, is headed for the Middle East for a while.

He'll be back but, man, it makes me think of the changes in this business. I've been here six years and so many faces have passed by. Who remembers weekend anchor Herryn Riendeau? Or the Herald's political reporters Ian Swanson and Sam Black? Or Herald reporter Xiao Zhang? Or WDAZ anchors Jane Joyce, Sara Groenberg and Jenny Frederickson?

Quickies: Cowan signs off; Herald totally owned

2006-06-29T22:23:00.000-05:00

* My old enemy, I mean friend Lori Cowan from WDAZ is signing off tomorrow night. Anchorman Terry Dullum mentioned it in his blog today. Me and Lori used to kinda compete when she covered City Council. She'd say it was no competition but she's cocky like that.

Now I'm "stuck" with Lacey Crisp and that KVLY gal I've never introduced myself to.

* I shoulda mentioned this sooner but the Herald was officially sold to our enemy, I mean friend Forum Communications earlier this week. The paperwork was signed and we bid farewell to Knight-Ridder. The Forum people bought us a cake to welcome us to the company. Awwwwwww.

* Anybody been frolfing? For me, Frisbee golf is one of the more enjoyable part of the summer around here. Here at the City Beat, I try to keep a close eye on city taxes, but the frolf course at Lincoln Park is worth every penny. Way to go city.

Lakeville Township reacts to landfill proposal

2006-06-29T21:33:00.000-05:00

So the good people of Lakeville Township, N.D., west of that well-known township of Turtle River, got a chance to see the proposed landfill in their backyard on Thursday.

Paul Sproule and John and Jack Scott are asking township residents for permission to build the landfill in exchange for, among other things, up to $150,000 to pay off all property taxes in the township and improving County Highway 33.

I had a hard time reading the mood of the residents, they seemed pretty combative at first because they thought Sproule et al. was going to dump on them. But after Sproule said he'll follow their wishes and keep them informed, the residents looked much more relaxed.

My guess is Sproule is going to have to offer a little more. Nobody seemed that impressed with the money. Many of the residents have either followed the fight between the city and Turtle River or have been talking to landfill opponents. I say this because they were asking very similar questions. Is the design a subtitle D dry tomb landfill (that's a legal description)? Didn't you know that site sometimes sit under 7 feet of water? How can we be sure you won't import more garbage to make more money?

In fact, Kyle Braaten and Daryl Bragg from Grand Forks County Citizens Coalition, the landfill opposition group, were there to ask more tough questions. Like have you drilled to see what kind of soil sits under that site? Sproule said he hasn't started yet because he wanted to talk to residents first.

Just for fun, I checked to see how many times GFC3 members has gotten a letter to the editor into the Herald. Eleven times since 2004.

Quickies: Buying time for landfill; one moment of forgetfulness, a lifetime of regret

2006-06-29T02:24:00.000-05:00

* The City Beat was surprised that so many regional customers of Grand Forks' landfill hadn't even decided on a drop-dead deadline for deciding whether they'll stay with Grand Forks or defect to another landfill. Many council members had thought the regional customers were pretty anxious with news that the replacement landfill in Turtle River Township, N.D., may be stuck in court for a few years.

It helps that the city is trying to extend the closing of the landfill to the end of 2008. By then, the lawsuit might be settled.

* Horrible news: Grand Forks mom thought she took her baby to daycare but went straight to work, leaving baby in the car. It was a hot day. After work, she heads for daycare only to learn she hadn't taken baby out of the car. Runs back to car. Baby is dead.

Our intern Lisa Gibson took the lead. The City Beat helped out with a sidebar as did intern Kyle Johnson. Remarkable how easy it is for people to forget a baby in the car. Don't cast any blame, people. Be glad it's not you.

Maybe if there was a way to switch off those front seat airbags so baby seats can go in the front seat again? Check out the stats on this page.

* What the?? North Dakota Department of Health got some details about a cyanide bomb design?

What if Grand Forks ran this country?

2006-06-27T19:26:00.000-05:00

It's a slow news day for the City Beat. Let's play Fantasy Federal Government, people, except we'll stick to local government officials in Grand Forks and Polk Counties.

Here's my picks from the officials I happen to know. (A quick note: I'm not playing favorites, here. People that don't make it just don't fit the categories I'm looking at or I don't know them real well. Each position is important so I'm not allegorically saying somebody should be somebody's boss instead of the other way around.):

President: Grand Forks City Council President Hal Gershman. The presidency is a hot seat and who ever's there is going to take the heat from all sides. I see Hal as being versatile enough to crack knuckles when he has to and smooth talk when he doesn't.

Vice President: People used to call Grand Forks Council member Curt Kreun a "junior mayor" so I'm making a junior president. I'm sure Hal will give him something to do, otherwise he'll be stuck making speeches and being laughed at.

Secretary of State: Grand Forks city administrator Rick Duquette. Being city administrator these days require some diplomatic skills. You got council members knockin' on your doors demanding one thing. You got your boss the mayor wanting another thing. What you need to do is get the council people to give your boss what he wants. But you also need to be smart enough to know when to back down and give them what they want, too.

Secretary of the Treasury: Alerus Center commission chairman Randy Newman. Well, the man's a banker, so why not?

Federal Reserve Chairman: Grand Forks finance director John Schmisek. This isn't a political position and needs somebody who's really wonkish about finance. That's our guy, John.

Secretary of Defense: Grand Forks Mayor Mike Brown. I like the way the mayor trusts his staff and uses their advice. I don't like the way the current secretary of defense has ignored the advice of his generals. Plus Brown used to sit around in a missile silo so I'm sure he's had a chance to think hard about the implications of warfare. (No, that's not a backhanded criticism of the war in Iraq.)

Director of National Intelligence: The DNI's position is a tough one. There's 16 different intelligence agencies and most of them belong to one department or another, meaning they don't work for the DNI. All the responsibilities and none of the power? Man, this one is hard. I'd say Alerus Center commissioner David Evenson. Personality-wise, I see him being able to cajole different agencies into cooperating or, if need be, twist arms. Since he ran Mayor Brown's campaign and defense controls a ton of intel assets, it'll be nice to have some cooperation there.

Secretary of Homeland Security: Grand Forks Council member Mike McNamara. Mac, a Marine serving in Iraq, told me once that his job right now is to "babysit the city of Fallujah" meaning one day he's delivering water and the next day he's delivering artillery shells. Sounds like he can run FEMA and take care of security.

Attorney General: This one's about as hard as the director of national intelligence. Who would I want to run the FBI -- meaning his job is to ferret out terrorists -- and be responsible for an array of other legal matters -- everything from prosecuting crimes on Indian reservations to prosecuting white-collar criminals? I'm stumped. I don't know that many attorneys and I don't know any that has experience catching terrorists. Ah, what the heck. Let's make it Grand Forks Council member Doug Christensen. He's got that prosecutorial style of his, I'm sure criminals will be terrified.

Secretary of the Interior: Former Grand Forks Council member Dorette Kerian. Dorette's colleagues on the council praise her for her well-reasoned policy positions. I always feel that the use of federal land favors corporate interests too much. So I'm looking for balance here.

Secretary of Commerce: Economic Development Corp. president Klaus Thiessen. His job is to make jobs. He's doing a fine job to me so he gets the job.

U.S. Trade Representative: East Grand Forks Mayor Lynn Stauss. I've heard he's pretty tenacious in negotiations. When you're in a small town in a big state, it's sometimes hard to get the attention of state officials or federal officials. These experiences will serve him well when he butts heads with the Chinese and the Europeans.

What's the blogosphere think? Make suggestions please but don't attack people. That's puerile.

Dear Anonymous, would you please pick a nickname?

2006-06-27T02:25:00.000-05:00

I think I understand now why so many people post as "Anonymous" when they can just as easily put in a clever nickname.

In case you didn't know, here's how you do that: After you type in your comment, look below where it says "Choose an identity," select "Other." Type in whatever name you want. Click "Publish your comment." That's it.

Now you sound suave and sophisticated instead of dorky like that "Anonymous" boob. No, the other one. Not him either. The one that misspells "the." No, the first one.... (You see the problem with having 10,000 people called "Anonymous," right?)

Cold hard facts about cold hard cash

2006-06-27T01:32:00.000-05:00

The City Beat has two stories today about the property tax cuts being debated at the Grand Forks City Council. One is about the council debating with itself over a 6.5 mill cut. The other is about the council urging all the other taxing entities to make a 5 percent cut to their mill levies. You can read them if you want.

I want to take a different approach on the blog, which is how much would you really save? Assuming you own a $100,000 home, here's a few facts:

* Currently, the total mills levied by all local government entities is 491.83. That's a $2,213.24 tax bill.

* If the city cuts 6.5 mills, as the council wants, you save $29.25.

* If the school district cuts 11.7 mills, as the council wants, you save $52.61. The school district has decided, after finishing its budget, that it can only cut 6 mills. You'll save $27.

* If the county cuts 5 mills, as the council wants, you save $22.50.

* If the park district cuts 2.2 mills, as the council wants, you save $11.

* If they all made the cuts that the council wants, you save $114.26 (there's a lot of rounding involved so don't expect everything to add up properly). But that's probably not going to happen because the school, the park and the county people say that they're very dependent on property taxes for funding. The city, at least, gets the sales tax revenues, 28 percent of which it uses for property tax relief.

For each mill levied, given the current assessed values of Grand Forks properties, the government entities collect $120,973. That means:

* The city would collect $14,242,151 without the tax cut. With the 6.5 mill cut, it would collect $13,455,827. Note that this isn't the city budget, just what it gets from property taxes. The budget is way bigger.

* The school district would collect $27,837,097 without the tax cut. With the 6 mill cut district officials agreed to, it would collect $27,111,259.

* The county would collect $11,903,743. No tax cut has been determined, so I won't guess.

* The park district would collect $5,273,213. No tax cut has been determined here either.

Quickies: Good-bye to Hamerlik and Kerian, update on historic debate

2006-06-27T00:23:00.000-05:00

* Last night was the last council meeting for Grand Forks City Council members Gerald Hamerlik of Ward 2 and Dorette Kerian of Ward 6.

Good luck to both. I thought they both did a fine job and I enjoyed working with them.

Gerry used to call me up when I got the details wrong, which was cool because he was always nice about it. He'll also be missed on the Alerus Center commission. He was known for making the motion to file the financial data with "the appropriate city authorities" or something like that -- I'm sure he'll correct me if he reads this. It was called the "Gerry motion" in his honor.

Dorette was great with policy matters and, even though she didn't talk much, I always had the feeling she was almost as much a wonk as Council member Curt Kreun. She had a gentle way of correcting other council members' misconceptions that was completely unquotable. I really hated that. Dorette sat on the Planning and Zoning Commission, the home of the greatest collection of planning policy wonks in this town. Attend one of their meetings and find out why.

Gerry's and Dorette's replacements, Mike McNamara of Ward 2 and Art Bakken of Ward 6, will take over next week.

Well, that was going to be a "Quickie" but look how long it got!

The council always annoys the living wits out of me with those long debates over, like, $2, but I guess I like 'em anyway.

* In case you missed it, there were some explanations about the apparent red tape at the Historical Preservation Commission. So go ahead and destroy that priceless historical home you own. No one can stop you!

* I got a follow-up on that big fight between the City Council and the Water and Light Commission.

* Some updated numbers on that earlier post about the 2.5 mill-cut from the dike levies. Just read it. Don't make me explain it again.

Savings now or savings later

2006-06-25T21:09:00.000-05:00

Well, since Dave Miller says he's reading my tax stories, here's another one for ya.

A budget resolution is the first item on the agenda Monday night for the Grand Forks City Council. The council is using the resolution to tell the mayor publicly that it wants a 6.5 mill cut to the property tax levy.

The administration looks like it'll go along, but it's advising the council to only cut the levy by 3.63 mills. Most of the difference is in the dike levy, which the council wants to cut by 2.5 mills and the administration doesn't.

The philosophical debate comes down to this: If there's no cut, homeowners could expect to save $51.75 per $100,000 value of their home starting in 2015. If there is a cut, homeowners will save $11.25 a year immediately.

It's like your credit card. You pay off the principal, in this case the city's share of the dike project, early, you save on interest. If you don't, you do pay interest but the debt payments are gradual so you have more money to spend right now.

The first thing that struck me was that the savings are pretty modest either way. For every $100,000 value of your home, you're paying about $2,200 now to the city (the rest goes to the school and park districts and the county). It might mean a lot to a senior citizen on a fixed income, though. I don't know.

What's your opinion, blogosphere? Is this just a political move or do you still appreciate the savings?

You can read more in my story here. (This is a query to the Herald search engine so don't expect anything until the story's gotten on the Web.)

Tune in to Channel 2 at 7 p.m. if you want to watch the council debate.

Update 1:31 a.m., 6/27/06: So I finally figured out what Conservative Yahoo wanted. What will you save total, assuming your house never increase in value and assuming it's worth $100,000?

If the council cuts the 2.5 mills now, you'll save $168.75 over 15 years starting in 2007. If it pays off them dikes early, you'd save $362.25 over seven years starting in 2015.

Quickies: Peder Rice's blog, EGF Civic Center funding

2006-06-25T20:25:00.000-05:00

* Yet another new city issues blog, this one from former Grand Forks City Council candidate Peder Rice. His first post on "The Progressive Palette" is about plans for the Merrifield Road bypass. What's it about? he asks. It's gonna be a road for trucks so they don't have to go through town. This will be pretty handy during the beet harvest season.

Funny note: Peder says he likes playing virtual mayor with SimCity. I like SimCity, too, but I wish I didn't have to micromanage so much.

* The East Grand Forks City Council will be discussing whether it accepts the Water and Light Commission's deal to fund Civic Center repairs. Council members wanted $750,000 from the commission but the commission would only give them $150,000. The rest will have to be repaid, though without interest. The city will pay another $25,000 using money from reserves.

Downtown parking problem is perplexing

2006-06-24T16:31:00.000-05:00

Downtown parking was the focus of a recent sparsely attended open house put on by the Grand Forks-East Grand Forks Metropolitan Planning Organization. Those are the folks responsible for the recent battle over Grand Forks' population.

At the open house, they had a couple of eye-opening graphics that showed how people were using available parking. It's clear that everybody hates those parking ramps. Check out the ramp across the street from Central High School. Cars packed the on-street parking right outside the ramp but, inside, the ramp was less than half full.

MPO executive director Earl Haugen said many people don't think the ramps are conveniently located -- too far from businesses -- and there are safety concerns.

I'll say there are. The day the MPO held that open house, one of my colleagues at the Herald had his satellite radio stolen from his car. The security guard was even making his rounds that day.

The weird thing is I asked one of the consultants that's working on the MPO parking study. He thought the real issue is people don't know those ramps are public parking and the crime thing is overrated. Maybe if you're from a big city like Winnipeg, which is where the consultants are based.

If you want to tell the MPO your parking woes, click here.

ND AG says he can't stop video bingo but gov. can

2006-06-23T19:08:00.000-05:00

Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa officials got some sorta-good news from Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem Thursday. "There's not much I could do in my official capacity to prevent a Class 2 casino of the kind they're talking about," he told the City Beat. But, he said, the governor could still put the kibosh on the Grand Forks casino the tribe wants to build.

The tribe wants a Class 3 casino, meaning one with slot machines, but there's fat chance of that. The tribe would have to get the state gaming compact amended and Gov. John Hoeven said he wouldn't do it without the Legislature's blessings. In other words: Fat chance.

As an alternative, the tribe is looking at a Class 2 casino, which may have bingo, except it wants electronic bingo machines that look a lot like slot machines. The good news for the tribe is the AG can't stop this. The bad news is the governor can. The tribe will need to convert land to trust status, meaning tribal jurisdiction, to build a casino and the governor has veto power over that.

What's a tribe to do? The better news for the tribe is, without the AG in the way, it can develop video casinos at existing trust land sites near Williston, N.D., and between Minot and Bismarck. But then again, if those were such great locations, it would've built casinos there by now.

Reader request: What's up with that Altru sign?

2006-06-23T14:38:00.000-05:00

Kbgfnd had a question:

What's the deal with the huge new sign on the Park Board's Center Court building?

Altru's logo is now prominently displayed on that sign. It was being installed by Cook Signs Thursday.

I put a call into Altru. We'll see what's up.

Update 2:47 p.m., 6/23/06: Julie Jeske in Altru's PR department said Altru has been providing outreach services at Center Court for a while and is now doing a bit of promo. By outreach services she means having a physical therapist at Center Court.

Julie, by the way, is one of the new members of the Park Board and says she's already gotten e-mails from concerned citizens.

Landfill options get closer to home

2006-06-22T22:23:00.000-05:00

The City Beat attended yet another dull meeting on your behalf Thursday. Grand Forks City Council member Curt Kreun said, "He's here so often it's like he's one of us."

I tell ya what, you know how anthropologists hang out with their subjects a long long time until they blend into the background? That's me, your anthropologist at City Hall. I was gonna say Jane Goodall, but that'd be calling city officials chimps and that ain't nice.

Anyway, back to the point: Looks like that landfill lawsuit the city is embroiled in with the Turtle River Township zoning board is getting more and more uncertain. So the city is preparing some options in case it loses.

I feel for those guys at the city. Nobody wants a landfill in their backyard so the only way the city's gonna get a landfill without a fight is to put it, say, in the middle of nuclear weapon test site. I say this because I'm expecting the options being laid out to be challenged.

1) The city could put a landfill somewhere within its four-mile extraterritorial jurisdiction, which is the area where it controls zoning codes. That'll get people riled up because, earlier this year, when the city was extending the ET, many landowners were paranoid that this was to make it easier to build a landfill near them. City leaders said they just wanted to control growth in the region. Well, now they've decided the landowners' fears sound like a viable idea.

2) The city is working with some landowners in Lakeville Township, southwest of Turtle River Township. The landowners there apparently want to sell their land to the city to build a landfill. The question is do they have neighbors and are those neighbors gonna be mad?

3) The city could work with Fargo to build a new landfill together. But, again, where is it going to be and who lives nearby?

The only option that's not going to make anybody mad is to say the hell with it and contract with Waste Management, which owns a couple of landfills in North Dakota. Of course, none of them are nearby so the region will have to pay more for garbage. Maybe that'll make somebody mad, too.

Reader Request: Historic red tape?

2006-06-22T21:31:00.000-05:00

Cottonwoodbeach has something to get off his/her chest:

Any thoughts on the City Historical Preservation Commission? I would be interested to see a blog entry or newspaper article about what exactly their contribution has been to the progress or lack of progress by the city. It seems that the commission is holding back a number of business and residential property owners from making changes to their properties, which has the effect of increasing the cost of making changes or preventing the changes from being made. An example showed up in their most recent meeting. During discussion about a proposed teardown of the Transport, Inc. building, one of the commission members became concerned that the teardown of the building might make way for something "new and hideous". As opposed to the crap pile that is already Gateway?

Aw, don't be so hard on these guys. Their charter is to protect the city's historic heritage. What you were reading is the commission deliberating about whether certain buildings deserve to be protected. That's important because there's always the possibility that the "pile of crap" could be restored and converted into something worthwhile.

Consider some of the coolest buildings in town and you'll notice a lot of them were restored. I don't know what kind of wreck they were but they're pretty nice now. There's the Warehouse Apartments, the Metropolitan Opera House (now apartments), the Freighthouse Apartments, etc. The Herald building was butt-ugly right after the flood, but it looks pretty cool now.

The question you're asking, Cottonwoodbeach, is where the balance lies between heritage and cost. I'm not sure how much more it costs to build around here because of the commission -- you readers can tell me -- but I haven't heard any complaints yet.

Full disclosure: One of my colleagues, Marsha Gunderson, chairs the commission. But I'd feel the same otherwise.

Update 8:14 p.m., 6/26/06: I had a brief chat with Marsha today. She says you could blow up your historically significant home and she wouldn't have the power to stop you. The Historical Preservation Commission only has control if you use federal funds (which sometimes goes through the state or the city) to blow up the house. Unless you know something I don't, that sounds pretty fair. You use government money, the government gets to tell you what to do.

Update 8:22 p.m., 6/26/06: Looks like the commission's Peg O'Leary beat me to the punch. Check out her comments. I hope this teaches us all a lesson about getting too far ahead of the facts.

Request to readers

2006-06-22T15:30:00.000-05:00

I've noticed some readers making off-topic comments because, well, there's no on-topic place for them to post. Here's my request: E-mail your off-topic comment to me -- the link to my e-mail is below my picture and profile -- and I'll turn it into a post. If you want anonymity, give me a nickname and I'll use that for attribution. Just trying to keep the place neat. Thank you. That is all.

Alerus Center and UND

2006-06-21T23:09:00.000-05:00

The City Beat covered UND way too much today.

Besides the story about the reaction to the university going to Division I, I ended up at an Alerus Center meeting where UND came up a couple times in the discussion.

The biggest issue for the center is trying to get UND to commit to a long-term lease. Right now, it's just three years at a time. That's too short a timeframe for the center to commit to major improvements, such as that graphics package we talked about last month.

UND is also urging the center to change the turf. That "magic carpet" system was way cool six years ago but now its considered outdated. Alerus Center executive director Charlie Jeske says new turf simulates grass better and reduces injuries.

Athletic director Tom Buning recently gave Alerus Center officials a wish list. Besides the graphics and the turf, he'd like to have a coach's office out there for football staff and renaming of the field to Red Jarrett Field.

The other discussion about UND has to do with the parking situation. Canad Inns is supposed to replace some of the parking taken up by construction of its hotel complex but there's been some miscommunication. Alerus Center staff and UND is getting real worried that there will be even less parking for football fans than before. The fewer parking spaces available the more fans will have to take the shuttle bus.

I can't see how people can tailgate if that happens. You could always ask the bus drivers to hitch your BBQ trailer in the back, but I'm guessing they'll say "no."

Is there a problem?

2006-06-21T22:04:00.000-05:00

The City Beat is puzzled by the apparent lack of reaction to what would seem kind of a provocative post about the funding for the overhaul of East Grand Forks' Civic Center. Even if you thought I was way out of line, you woulda said something right?

This is the problem I have with writing stories about tax dollars. I'm never sure if anybody knows what I'm rambling about. What's up people? Surveys told us that you, our readers, want us to do a better job as "watch dogs" for the public interest. You say taxes are too high but it's like I'm talking to walls here!

Quickies: Politics, women in politics and talk show politics

2006-06-21T00:21:00.000-05:00

* I complete forgot to mention that I had this story in yesterday's paper on the Riverside Pool. "Politics"? What politics? I see a pattern here. My prediction is that when they hire the consultants, whoever these unlucky souls are, they will be hounded in the hopes that they produce the expected results. Hope I'm wrong.

* Christine Paige-Diers' group aimed at promoting women in politics is meeting 5 p.m. Thursday at the Ina Mae Rude Entrepreneur Center at UND.

* Dakota reports that some people want to keep newly elected Council member Mike McNamara from talking about city issues on his radio talk show.

Utility fees in place of property tax?

2006-06-20T23:08:00.000-05:00

The City Beat has a fun little story for you today about the struggle the East Grand Forks City Council is having with its water and light commission.

Basically, the council needs $1 million to repair the Civic Center. It doesn't have that kind of money sitting around and -- I'm just taking a wild guess here -- raising property taxes isn't that popular.

So it's asking water and light to foot 75 percent of the bill. Water and light gets its money from utility fees and, considering the pressure it faces to cut fees, naturally resisted the council's suggestion.

I'll admit that I'm pretty skeptical when funds get mixed like this. When most people pay their utility bills, I think they believe that their money is paying for the amount of water or electricity they consume -- not for the repair of a city own events center.

Following this train of thought, it's reasonable, then, to ask if the council isn't looking for a source of funding that isn't going to make taxpayers angry. Don't forget that, in 2004, voters voted against the proposed repair and upgrade of the Civic Center that carried a price tag of $3 million. It's only $1 million this time.

There's two ways to look at this.

First is the purist view. I know that in Grand Forks, many council members like the fact that they don't transfer utility funds to other city operations. This is in contrast to other North Dakota cities, whose utility departments are essentially profit making operations. Some council members like Eliot Glassheim have even said that they see fees as a kind of regressive tax.

The other view is more mixed. East Grand Forks council members argue that their utility department has the additional responsibility of maintaining city buildings. Council member Henry Tweten is a strong advocate of this position and he used to be on the water and light commission himself.

The fountain of Stauss

2006-06-19T22:53:00.000-05:00

Check out the story the City Beat had on Mayor Lynn Stauss' efforts to build a fountain to memorialize the 1997 flood in the middle of the Red River.

Now that's what I call chutzpah. You just can't keep the guy down.

He'd tried to get funding in 2002 before by suggesting that Grand Forks share a $1 million federal highway that both cities applied for but only Grand Forks got. I think it only ended because the feds stepped in and said highway money can't be used for a fountain.

So he's been waiting four years to bring it up again.

This time, he's asking his City Council to spend $100,000 that it had set aside for his River City market -- which implies he's coming back for more when that project gets going.

A source told me he'll ask for $100,000 from the water and light department, right after the city said it will ask -- actually tell -- the department to cough up $681,000 to help pay for the overhaul of the Civic Center. And that's with council members already wondering how utility fees can be kept from rising too high.

Add to this the expected request for $300,000 from the Grand Forks City Counci at a time when the council is trying to keep property taxes down. Council President Hal Gershman said he's not necessarily opposed to the request because the money could come from dike betterment funds, which have been used in the past for cosmetic improvements.

Anyway, this isn't a criticism of Stauss -- just sheer admiration. How the heck does he think he's gonna do this? But, then, I've heard of how hard he lobbied for dike money both from Congress and from the Legislature. Chutzpah got the job done, then, didn't it?

Then again, he did piss the hell out of the Grand Forks council when he went on talk radio in 2002 to gripe about how unfair it was for Grand Forks to keep that $1 million to itself.

Update 12:18 a.m., 6/21/06: The council voted last night to give Stauss his $100,000. The total cost is expected to be $800,000. The break down goes like this: $100,000 from the city, $100,000 from East Grand Forks water and light, $300,000 from Grand Forks and $300,000 from donations. The mayor suggested that people who got flood aid give back a little of what they got.

Holy moly, long meeting!

2006-06-19T22:38:00.000-05:00

Did anyone out there follow that insanely long discussion on new billboards at the Grand Forks City Council on Monday? You'd think they were deciding something earth-shattering.

Actually, the council just had to decide whether Newman Outdoor Advertising could put up four new billboards on South Washington Street. Business owners there are up in arms because they say the billboards would detract from their own advertising and, besides that, they say billboards are ugly.

The city planning department agrees. Too much clutter.

But council members favored Newman, giving the company three billboards.

I liked Council member Curt Kreun's explanation. He said Newman is building three new ones to replace three other dilapidated ones that it hadn't dare take down. Under the old billboard law, old billboards could be taken down but not replaced so advertising companies just left them there.

Could Newman have just replaced its old signs in the same location? asked businessman Greg Norman.

Sure, Kreun said, but those signs blocked the view of street entrances. "You want somebody to be killed?"

Maybe it is earth-shattering!

To be fair, the council was struggling to be fair to Newman, to the objecting businesses and, Kreun said, to the businesses that have to put up with the dilapidated signs. Fairness takes a long time.

No kiddin'. It took three years to amend that billboard law. Kreun was on the committee. You shoulda seen his face when Council member Bob Brooks, worried about the fairness of the law, asked that another committee take another look! Man, I'm glad I just report.

Update 11:49 p.m., 6/19/06: I noticed that Dakota was watching the meeting, too. She mentioned something that Council member Gerald Hamerlik pointed out. Hmmm, I could've sworn there was an explanation for this at the Planning and Zoning Commission but I can't recall for the life of me what it was.

Quickies: Election analysis, Mac

2006-06-17T21:48:00.000-05:00

* The City Beat decided to indulge my love of numbers. So I did a story today analyzing the City Council election.

It was too weird. Dems voted en masse but rejected one of their own, Tom Potter. Mike McNamara looked like he had pretty good competition -- I mean four other guys who wanted the same seat -- but turned in a stunning victory. And the weirdest thing is how big a deal the property tax issue was in the council race even though the city gets a quarter of the tax revenues. The school board gets half but C.T. Marhula who wanted steep mill cuts lost his race for school board.

As usual, you can see my work by downloading this Excel spreadsheet.

Check out the voter turnout. The biggest turnout was in Ward 5, which didn't even have a council seat open. I always thought people were obsessed with city politics more than other political entities. Hmmm.

* One last fawning story about Mac, I promise. It's in the Sunday edition. Complain all you want. I don't care. It's a national story.

* I don't know if any of you care, but the U.S. tied Italy 1-1 at the FIFA World Cup today. Nice backdrop for the Grand Cities Soccer Tournament. People around here are always mocking the "beautiful game" because there's hardly any points scored. Uh, like that game hockey? I called the Park District once to see if they had any soccer leagues. Only for kids, they said. Ayayay.

I see Rick Abbott saw the game, too.

* Don't forget to be nice to dad on Father's Day. I got mine a book on dog obedience. He's nuts about Leo, his new dog.

Quickies: Voter turnout, Mac all over the news

2006-06-15T18:53:00.000-05:00

* Herald colleague Prairie Pundit is interpreting low voter turnout on Tuesday as satisfaction with the status quo. It's item No. 3.

The City Beat is working on an election analysis, too. More on that later.

* In a "duh" moment, I decided I'd better post those letters that the governor and Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa exchanged. Check the bottom of this post.

* The story about Mike McNamara is getting a lot of national attention as we here at Herald thought it would. Web master Tom Dutcher reports that we got 210,000 hits on that story alone, which he said is three times what we get daily for the entire Web site. In fact, the story was the most requested on the entire Knight-Ridder Digital network.

The AP version has been making the rounds. Here it is on CNN. This one's the early version from Grand Forks. Here it is on the "San Jose Mercury News." This one was written from Iraq.

Rick Abbott reports that he was on CNN's American Morning with Soledad O'Brien~~, but I haven't found a link yet~~. There's a link in the story to a video.

* There's a new blog from Jeni M.. The blog's name is it's topic: "Grand Forks, UND, and the unvoiced." Are we talking about students here, Jeni?

* A colleague sent along this interview with a journalist-blogger. It's always nice to know how others practice their craft.

* Don't forget, Farmer's Market starts this weekend in Grand Forks' Town Square downtown. It's 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. every Saturday until Sept. 30. This has always bugged me: If it's "Farmer's Market" singular -- rather than "Farmers' Market" -- which farmer owns it? Writers are such nit-pickers.

Correction: Wilkerson Hall is in Ward 1

2006-06-15T15:25:00.000-05:00

Ayayay. Will somebody kick me in the pants, please?

"Poor Peder Rice. The polling place at UND's Wilkerson Hall had a grand total of five votes. Ouch." I mentioned this in passing in a comment. I was wrong. Wilkerson Hall is in Ward 1. Peder ran in Ward 2.

Five votes ain't a lot and probably doesn't diminish Dakota's criticism. But it changes the story a little. Sorry. Sorry. I got confused by the fact that city precinct numbers are different from county precinct numbers.

Take your resolution and shove it

2006-06-15T13:34:00.000-05:00

Haha. It'd be pretty funny if the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa ended up saying that the to Grand Forks City Council. Not that I'm expecting anything of that nature, but a) some tribal officials are apparently confused/infuriated with the way they've been treated while trying to get a resolution of support from the council and b) they're looking for other options.

The City Beat offers you two stories today.

One talks about the political maneuvering going on at the state and local level. Bill Johnson, the tribal consultant leading the casino effort, gets the feeling there's some conspiracy against the tribe by some members of the council. I'll let you figure out who. It's in the story.

The other story is about the other, other option for the tribe. Tribal chairman Ken Davis told me the other day that if the tribe can't get trust land in Grand Forks for a casino it could build casinos on existing trust lands near Williston, N.D., or between Bismarck and Minot. That's the other option. The other, other option is to leave all the restrictions behind and build a casino where the people really want casinos. That would be in Mississippi, the nation's third largest casino market by revenue.

I got some links for you to fiddle with:

* Edmonton, Alta., based Myriad Golf, doing business as Myriad World Resorts, is the company that's developing the whole casino and entertainment complex that Turtle Mountain would be a part of. Check out the slideshow in the intro page. That indoor golf course -- yes, you heard right, air-conditioned golf -- is HUGE.

Architect's rendering courtesy of Myriad World Resorts. If you really want to see how that golf course would look, check the image at the top of this page. Myriad rep Fred Haynes says the layout is different now, but this gives you a good idea of the size.

* Here's the press release mentioning Turtle Mountain buying a $40 million parcel at the Myriad development.

* Other media have been all over this story and I picked up the scent from this story and this story.

* Curious about this Tunica, Miss., place? Look here and here.

Update 9:43 p.m., 6/15/06: I just remembered that people might want to see the content of the letters that Bill Johnson and Gov. John Hoeven's legal counsel Duane Houdek exchanged. Here's Johnson's. Here's Hoeven's, page 1 and page 2.

The "Mac" fiasco

2006-06-14T19:03:00.000-05:00

Alright, now that the election is over, let me reveal this to you: I didn't really want Mike McNamara to win.

Nothing against him personally, I just don't really want a potential media competitor to be in a position to know things I don't. Cripes, people, I don't even like talk radio (sorry Dakota, et al.).

But none of you knew that because I did my job and tried to be fair and balanced (not the ironic Fox version, the authentic version).

Yes, we screwed up on the banner photo. ~~That's the fault of the photographer and designers, none of whom know anything about city politics and therefore couldn't be supporting any candidate~~. The weekend photographer and layout staff that did the page isn't very politically astute. The part-time photographer who took the now infamous photo is a UND student from Las Vegas.

I also focused early on on Mac because -- guess what? -- he's got a really interesting story. A marine running for office from the war zone? Are you kidding me? Matt Drudge thought it was cool and we've been getting media inquiries all day. I wouldn't be surprised if the guy got on national TV.

When I wrote about Mac initially, I didn't let him talk too much about the politics, just his situation in Iraq. Since that initial coverage, I haven't given him any more ink than other candidates.

Hope this clears up any conspiracies.

Update 1:14 p.m., 6/15/06: A major "whoops" by me. I didn't mean the entire desk staff didn't know anything about city politics. I meant the staff that laid out the Monday page with the offending photo.

We had a friendly debate over beers. To them, it was just a random and attractive photo that shows a glimpse of the community. They didn't really think about whose name it was that's on the sign. It's not their fault, one of them said, if readers perceive their intentions to be less than honorable.

I tore my hair out and said it's all about perception when you're in the public eye. That's why smart politicians will avoid not only a conflict of interest but the appearance of a conflict of interest. Oh well, they'll be repentant someday.

Also, the other thing I should have noted is that Mac did say he wouldn't let his political career mingle with his radio career. I won't discount a Marine's honor, but it still makes my professional instincts itch like mad.