Dakota Beacon

“Jerry, Are you crying?” is the punch line in a State Farm Insurance commercial.  The speaker is a perky agent named Jessica.  Jerry is a hapless driver standing by his car, which is up against a telephone pole.  Jessica reminds Jerry that he dropped his State Farm coverage.  The woman playing Jessica is Jessica DeCleroq, an actual State Farm agent in Mayville, ND. The commercial was filmed in Hollywood and has been a business booster for the real Jessica, who now participates in a second State Farm commercial.

For 20 years the twin cities of Mayville and Portland have used the catchy slogan “The way America is supposed to be.”  It didn’t work and they have taken down the signs.  A confident new slogan and logo proclaim that M-P stands for “many possibilities.”  Get it?  The logo incorporates the Goose River which joins the two towns.  Tribune columnist Ryan Bakken says the rebranding targets commuters from Fargo and Grand Forks.

Explosive growth in the oil patch may cause us to forget that very different trends are still present in other areas of the state.  Steele is a Red River Valley county that had 7,400 residents in 1920; by 1970 the population had halved to 3,700; and in 2010 halved again to 1,900.  The county seat of Finley shrunk to 450 residents and is physically falling apart -- street lights are failing and the water tower needs help.  The only remedy the city could think of was doubling the one percent local sales tax.  An election on that matter is scheduled for January. 

In his weekly column in the Bismarck Tribune, Ken Rogers observes that ND was desperate for the current oil boom: “The state was on the wrong side of economic growth for decades. North Dakota was losing population. Towns were slipping away. The countryside was emptying out.”  Now, he says, “The economy and the environment, as well as much of life in the state's oil producing counties, are out of balance.”  Right now, if these things are not brought into balance, he says the state “runs the risk of great regret.”

A state representative said Williston State College faces “extraordinary” circumstances” --  while other communities have faced floods of water, “Williston is actually experiencing a flood of people.”  At a special session, the Legislature gave WSC $2 million with no strings attached.

Roads on the Fort Berthold Reservation are in dangerous condition.  The Three Affiliated Tribes were unable to maintain roads prior to the oil boom and things have gotten worse. The tribes are asking major oil companies to assist with repairs.  Residents of White Shield said they had been complaining about damaged roads since 1997.

Another billion dollar baby.  Prior to the 2011 floods, the Devils Lake basin had already received a billion dollars of flood relief aid.  U.S. Sen. John Hoeven announced the state will receive another billion in federal disaster assistance for the 2011 floods.  Neither billion includes money spent in the past for Red River Valley floods.

Almost monthly, projects in the $50-100 million range are announced in western ND: pipelines, natural gas plants, rail facilities, etc.  So, projects that once seemed large, now seem small by comparison.  A proposed $7 million railroad loop to serve the Spiritwood Energy Park near Jamestown is an example.  The local municipal development corporation will go out on a limb and invest $3.75 million in the project; the remainder will be borrowed.  The rail loop will serve Spiritwood Station, a power plant, and Dakota Spirit AgEnergy, a hoped for biomass refinery.

ND became accustomed to being one of the states with the highest earmark dollars per  capita due to the influence of its congressional delegation.  That’s all changed -- the delegation is less influential, but more importantly, the earmark process has been discontinued.  This may mean the loss of tens of millions of earmarks for research at NDSU.  The university is scrambling to find funding from private companies.  UND President Robert Kelley reports similar drops in earmarked research funding.  He said UND will be “learning to work differently” at the federal level.

Over a month ago the Fargo Forum obituary page changed abruptly -- gone were most of the obituaries and pictures.  The website now has mainly death notices.  Here’s the deal: obituaries are now considered to be paid ads.  The minimum cost is $100 a day, another $99 if you would also like the obituary online.  Don’t try an end run by selecting online only -- that will be $199.  

In ND, obituaries have a significance that goes beyond the deceased -- they record an important part of the state’s history and culture.  For example, the obits show paths of migration, such as people moving from ND to the West Coast defense industries during WWII.  Ethnic and religious patterns are also documented.  An invaluable record is being lost.  One reader charged the Forum with a lack of civic responsibility and accountability for the change, but obituaries are an expensive service and the Forum is not alone in dropping them.

Did they think it through?  A grassroots group convinced the Turtle Mt. Tribal Council to pass a resolution banning “fracking” on the reservation to protect “Mother Earth.”  The reservation was about to receive bids for oil leases on 45,000 acres of land.  Fracking is a hydraulic fracturing process generally used over a mile below the surface to recover oil in ND.  The widespread practice has not been associated with environmental problems in the state.

Clyfford Still is relatively unknown, but is considered a leader of abstract expressionist art.  Four of his paintings just sold for $114 million in New York.  ND has a claim on Still; he was born in Grandin (25 miles north of Fargo) in 1904, but his parents soon moved to Canada.  A newly opened museum in Denver is exclusively dedicated to his work.

Both UND and NDSU finished their regular football seasons and share the championships of their respective conferences.  UND in the Great West Conference and NDSU in the Missouri Valley Football Conference.  Next year, UND enters the Big Sky Conference.  NDSU is a #2 seed in the Div I FCS playoffs where it will be a host team.

DAKTOIDS: ND has the highest percentage of people over age 90 in the nation; South Dakota is close behind . . . The Bismarck Airport had the most passenger boardings ever in October; other airports in western ND also had large increases; but there was little change in boardings in Grand Forks and Fargo . . . The Fargo Beer Co. was used by the Wall Street Journal as an example of “Equity Crowdfunding” -- the use of online social networking to finance a business startup . . . The ND Tax Dept. reports that the number of millionaires (those with adjusted gross income over $1 million) rose 38 percent from 384 in 2009 to 532 in 2010.  Yes, you guessed right, oil royalties were the biggest reason.