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Saturday, December 05, 2009

SCHMID - LOOKING BACK FROM THE LEFT COAST: DECEMBER 4, 2009

Forbes is just hanging on -- its school closed in 1987.   The town of 50 is perched on the South Dakota border in east central ND.  Like many of its small brethren, the town is held together by a community grocery store staffed largely by volunteers.  The Peoples Store was started years ago with a grant from the Lutheran Aid Association.  Many believe the store is kept afloat by WOLFF FAMILY SAUSAGE and 25-cent coffee.  Ted Wolff and various relatives make and sell the popular sausage at the store.  Wolff says, “So many of our people have died off.  And the farms are getting bigger with less people on them.”  Sausage customers from as far away as Aberdeen, SD, are needed to keep the doors open. 

 

Another small town has a more deliberate strategy for hanging on.  Westhope (500) is near the Canadian border in central ND and, like Forbes, has a community grocery store.  They didn’t stop there -- fearing the loss of its only motel, the town bought the damaged building, converted part of it for city use, and operates the remaining16-unit GATEWAY MOTEL.  Those projects, plus efforts to save other small businesses, won the city a $100,000 “Great Strides” award from the NW Area Foundation.

 

Napoleon (60 mi. SE of Bismarck) fell into an easier way to hold its 800 residents together.  REUBEN’S RESTAURANT opened on November 30 -- a $500,000 gift to the town from local benefactor Reuben Wentz (93).  The building has amenities such as TV monitors and wireless mikes for presentations, and houses the Logan County economic development coordinator.  Makoti (145) also has a community cafe which reopened after a year -- the Minot Daily News enthused that people “will appreciate the food because Carlsten (the new cook) brings the cooking skills honed with his former employer” . . . Denny’s.

 

Angela Stott was born in Montpelier (south of Jamestown) in 1919; she died Angela Brennan 90 years later, still in Montpelier.  MUCH HAPPENED IN BETWEEN.  Angela married and outlived three husbands, had children and in her 50s received a degree in genealogy from NDSU.  She authored “Montpelier, The First Hundred Years” while keeping an eye on 42 great-grandchildren.  Another testimonial to the hardiness and initiative of ND women of her generation.

 

INDIANS AND DRUGS are one of the most vexing crime problems in the upper Great Plains.  Jurisdictional confusion and weak law enforcement on the reservations are among the main problems.  The U.S. Attorney’s office in Fargo is wrapping up a massive prosecution of drug gangs at the Turtle Mt. Reservation and three dozen suspects have just been arrested at Montana’s Ft. Peck Reservation (about 100 miles west of Williston).  The Three Affiliated Tribes at the Ft. Berthold Reservation are seeking a federal grant, mainly to control drug-related crimes.

 

“O, what a tangled web we weave . . .”  Gary Tharaldson (one of ND’s richest investors), Brad Scott (a Bismarck financial advisor) and the Bank of North Dakota are all involved with ManhattanWest, a failed $350 million Las Vegas real estate project.  Tharoldson is being sued by an Oklahoma bank, he is suing Scott, and the Bank of ND is one of 29 banks that may try to make Tharoldson honor a $110 million guarantee to an investment pool.  The ND bank has $15 million in the pool.  This is BIG FINANCIAL STUFF FOR ND.  The federal court in Bismarck is allowing the suit against Tharoldson to go forward and, absent a settlement, the complex issues could take years to unwind.

 

ND’s mountain lion population is steadily growing.  The state has a limited annual hunt, principally, to gather more data about LION POPULATIONS in the state.  In late November, the Game and Fish Department killed a 100-pound lion in Bismarck -- the first time a cougar was taken out in city limits anywhere in the state.

 

Minnewaukan (300) held a special election electing a new mayor and city council member.  The GF Herald reported the “election ends a fiery chapter in Minnewaukan civic history that was prompted by City Council’s firing in July of longtime city employee Verdeen Backstrom.”  That got my attention -- WHAT SPARKED THE FIERY CHAPTER?  Answer, Backstrom allegedly swore at one of the council members.  Relief all around -- another scandal put to rest.

 

Sometimes, politicians are too eager to get favorable publicity.  ND Public Service Commissioner Kevin Cramer moved quickly when he learned that Minnesota’s Xcel Energy leased aircraft.  His clear implication was that corporate aircraft are inherently wasteful.  He wanted to know how much Xcel customers in ND were charged for the planes  -- the amount was not significant.  To its credit, the Fargo Forum pointed out that CORPORATE AIRCRAFT, properly used, increase efficiency.  The Forum should know -- Forum Communications also has a plane.

 

Prosperity does not necessarily lead to well-being.  A county level study found that half the rural counties in Illinois, Indiana and Iowa were more prosperous than the nation as a whole.  Nearly half the counties in ND scored equally well.  But a separate study, focusing on well-being, found the above states to be average or below.  ND RANKED #28 IN WELL-BEING.  On average, well-being was highest in Mountain and West Coast states.  Mississippi, Kentucky and W. Virginia managed to be near the bottom in both studies (they were also exceedingly neurotic).  Utah, not an especially prosperous state, led the nation in its sense of well-being and had a boringly low level of neuroticism.  

 

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