The City Beat

How GF feels about smoking

Sorry, sorry, sorry. The City Beat plumb ran out of time last week and there were way too many things to blog about. Since I've gone on at length about the Alerus Center, I'm gonna give it a rest until the next blog post.

Let's talk instead about the interesting information found in the survey on secondhand smoke that came out of the Grand Forks Tobacco Free Coalition last week.

This survey is much more ambitious than the last one in 2005, so we have not only a picture of what people feel about secondhand smoke -- The revelations weren't entirely unpredictable, so were not so interesting. -- but who they are.

First, a bit about the two studies.

The 2005 study involved random phone surveys of 403 adults in Grand Forks and East Grand Forks. It had a margin of error of 5 percent.

The 2010 study involved random phone surveys of 779 adults in Grand Forks only. It had a margin of error of 3.7 percent.

So the two studies are not perfect matches, but I think they're close enough for a comparison.

City of quitters

A big part of my story last week focused on what we know about Grand Forks adults' drinking and smoking habits. It was interesting to note 19 percent of area adults smoked in 2005 compared to 15 percent in 2010. That seems like a pretty big drop!

Cordell Fontaine from UND's Social Science Research Institute said to take these numbers with a grain of salt because some people won't admit, even to themselves, that they're smokers. You know that phenomenon where people say I'm not a smoker; I just smoke when I drink.

Still, all things being equal, there would've have been a significant drop in the smoking population in Grand Forks. This offers hope to those trying to quit. I know of several smokers that have tried many times and failed and they always seemed so defeated. It's nice to know that so many other have found success.

For comparison, 20.6 percent of Americans smoked in 2008, according to the CDC. So, either way, Grand Forks looks pretty good even if many say we're behind the times because we allow smoking in bars. If smoking foes are right, we can expect a further drop once they do manage to ban smoking in bars.

There ought to be a law...

And that ban could be coming soon because if the latest survey provides the Tobacco Free Coalition with a lot of the political ammunition it needs to lobby City Council members to, if nothing, put the issue on the ballot.

They're telling me they want the council to pass it without a public vote because so many are for a total ban on smoking in public places.

Consider these stats on people's perceptions, notice how the "serious hazard" category changes and how, in two cases, a huge majority of the population feel that way (I'll talk more about this "serious hazard" perception in another post as this one is long enough.):

In general how much of a health hazard do you feel exposure to secondhand smoke is to those who breathe it?

Impact do you feel secondhand smoke will have on the health of a nonsmoker if the nonsmoker occasionally breathes secondhand smoke?

Impact do you feel secondhand smoke will have on the health of a nonsmoker if the nonsmoker works in a bar or lounge where smoking is allowed?

Now consider the stats on people's desire for more government regulations, the last astounds me:

How important is it to you to have a smoke-free environment in all workplaces?

Bars and lounges: smoking should be allowed in...

Which statement is the closest to your own view on smoking?

Statement 1: Business owners have a right to decide whether people smoke or not in their place of business, so we should not have laws that prohibit smoking in public places.

Statement 2: Non-smokers have a right to breathe clean air in public places, so we should have laws that prohibit smoking in public places.

In 2005, when the survey asked similar questions, it went like this:

First, I’m going to read a list of different types of places that are open to the public. After I read each, please tell me whether you feel smoking should be allowed in all areas in the building, allowed in some areas in the building, not allowed at all in the building, or not allowed at all either in the building or on the surrounding grounds....

Bars and cocktail lounges:

Now please tell me which of the next two statements is the closest to your own view on
smoking.

Statement 1: Business owners have a right to decide whether people smoke or not in their places of business, so we should not have laws that prohibit smoking in public places like restaurants.

Statement 2: Non-smokers have a right to breathe clean air in restaurants and other public places, so we should have laws that prohibit smoking in public places, such as restaurants.

Compare the last two questions for the 2010 survey and the 2005 survey. You can see how much public opinion has turned around. The bottom line is when asked if they'd allow smoking in bar at all, 62 percent said "yes" in 2005, but 19 percent said "yes" in 2010. The questions were a bit different, but still...

Change of heart

Part of the change may have to do with the number of people who have kicked the habit, but that alone can't account for the big shift. There were never that many smokers to start with.

Haley Thorson, the Public Health Department official who heads up the Tobacco Free Coalition, said it probably has a lot to do with more people aspiring to quit so they're already seeing things from the point of view of nonsmokers.

Teresa Knox, another Public Health official who teaches quitting classes, said she's seen more interest in quitting whenever the city or state or federal government puts new restrictions on tobacco. That doesn't seem like much, I said, especially when she mentioned the 62-cents-a-pack tax added last year. She said it probably would be enough if someone were already thinking hard about quitting.

In the 2010 survey, there's a breakdown of respondents into smokers, former smokers and non-smokers. It's interesting to see that even smokers recognize there is some problem with smoking in public places. Unfortunately, there's no easy breakdown for the 2005 survey so we can't do a comparison.

Overall, how would you describe your reaction to the current smoke-free ordinances?

  Total Current smoker Former smoker Never smoked
Strongly favor 75% 27% 70% 89%
Somewhat favor 14% 34% 16% 8%
Somewhat oppose 4% 18% 5%
Strongly oppose 4% 14% 6% 1%
No reaction 3% 7% 3% 2%

In general, how much of a health hazard do you feel exposure to secondhand smoke is to those who breathe it?

  Total Current smoker Former smoker Never smoked
Serious hazard 68% 42% 64% 76%
Moderate hazard 23% 32% 26% 20%
Minor hazard 5% 16% 4% 3
Not a health hazard 2% 9% 3%
Not sure 2% 1% 3% 1%

Bars and lounges: Smoking should be allowed in:

  Total Current smoker Former smoker Never smoked
All areas in the building 19% 58% 16% 10%
Not allowed at all in the building 57% 33% 62% 62%
Not allowed at all in the building or grounds 18% 14% 24%
Not sure 6% 9% 8% 4%

What's significant between 2005 and now is the city passed in 2006 a ban on smoking in all workplaces, with the notable exemption of bars, casinos and truck stops (in the last, smoking is allowed only in special smoking rooms).

People have had a chance to see what that's like and they like it. Here's the 2010 survey:

Before this law went into effect were you employed in a business (or workplace) that allowed smoking?

In general, do you feel that the passage of this law (that prohibits smoking) has changed your attitude towards your employment atmosphere?

This is actually kind of a weird statistic because it appears that even though only 17 percent of the population worked in at a place that allowed smoking, 43 percent of the population thought the passage of the law made their work more enjoyable in some way. The way the stats read, it appears survey workers asked everyone the second question, not just the ones that worked at places that allowed smoking.

Perhaps there is something like "sympathy enjoyment" that's similar to sympathy pain or the people responding to the survey are a bunch of hypochondriacs.

Imaginary benefits or not, the tide of public opinion has definitely shifted the other way. Even a good chunk of smokers agree a total ban is needed.

Posted by: Tu-Uyen on 2/02/2010 at 3:23 PM | Comments (11) | Permalink

Tags: gf and egf, gf city council, gf city hall, gf tobacco free coalition, rules and regulations, smoking ban

A blog post about the fighting something or other

An anonymous reader asked the City Beat the other day how I would feel if some university had the nickname of "Fighting Asians" and the mascot were some guy in a "pony tail" as mascot.

This was after I suggested that hardcore anti-Fighting Sioux nickname people should temper the self-righteousness they revel in because, when given a chance to vote, 67 percent of Spirit Lake tribal members said they favored the nickname. It's hard to claim something is racist when the group supposedly being demeaned likes it. They even came to the ballot wearing Fighting Sioux gear, not to make a point, but because that's just what they wear.

The question/accusation intrigued me though. In fact, I had thought about it before and concluded that I really couldn't care less, though I'll admit "Fighting Asians" sounds pretty goofy. But let's go with that instead of narrowing it down by ethnicity, as Fighting Sioux does. Fighting Asians is more analogous to the Braves, or the Chiefs, or the Indians.

Given that we're generalizing about all Asians, a true analogy to any Indian mascot would be more of a warrior Asian type. A fellow in a queue isn't really in full warrior regalia. He is more like the coolie or, at best, the laundromat owner.

A Fighting Asian mascot could be a guy in a white gi with a black belt, like this (It's a frickin' teddy bear, I know, but I couldn't find any mascot in a gi.):

Or a samurai of some type, like this, but with a sword (The image is from Japan.):

 While we're on the the Japanese page, check this slanty-eyed cat creature out:

 

Or how about this dude for a mascot:

 

On the same page, you'll see video of Bruce beating up some dude named Chuck Norris. You know, the dude who counted to infinity twice. Well, Bruce counted to infinity four times, because four is the number of death (Death times infinity! Have some of that with your pansy drink.).

The only thing that could make this better would be two pairs of whirling nunchucks -- ON FIRE.

...

Holy smokes! You know what? That would be awesome.

Unfortunately, there aren't any well-recognized images of Vietnamese warriors, except guys in black pajamas, and they were on the wrong side, so I would not advocate that.

Now I'm not saying a whole lot about the Fighting Sioux nickname with any of this. That's up to Sioux people to figure out. The Asian-American experience in America is completely different than American Indians' so the context is different. For example, no genocide. Also, our homelands are currently fairly safe from foreign devils and our peoples aren't in reservations.

What I am saying is don't try to race bait me you crazy rascals. I come from a tribe of ferocious warriors and there's 77 million of us.

The wrong kind of nickname

Coincidentally, after the question of Asian nicknames came up, I encountered a reference to the Pekin (Ill.) Community High School Chinks. Chink, as you well know, is a not-nice thing to call Chinese people specifically and Asians more generally, mostly because white people have such trouble distinguishing between different kinds of Asians (Don't tell anybody, but it's not that easy for us either.).

A little Googling landed me on a blog belonging to a Pekin alumnus who had this to say:

In 1961....and for many years prior to that and until 1967 or so.....we were the Pekin Chinks.

No lie!......Our radio program broadcast by students, including Moi, five days weekly, was Inside Chinkland, and we wrote, produced and spoke the words of the 15 minute daily show on a local station. (eventually led to my 8 year radio-TV newsman stint!)

Each year we elected the Chink and Chinklette who appeared at sporting events and welcomed the other team.....in their Chinese costumes and coolie hats!

I look back today, in this time of "political correctness" and am amazed we did it.....

We interpreted Chink to be a term meaning "worker", and we were proud "workers" for Pekin High.

I still have the glasses, letter sweater, etc. proclaiming our heritage.

Know what?

Inspite of the renaming of the team, and the era of political correctness.....we are still

Pekin Chinks

and shall be forever........

In fact, in the right small shirt shop in Pekin, in a back room to which access is controlled, you can still purchase bright red tee shirts that proclaim Pekin Chinks; and, of course, I have one! Next year, 2006, I plan to attend our 45th year reunion in Pekin, and join my fellow Chinks as we enjoy our heritage.

Here's some images of said T-shirts and a mug, too.

This line absolutely slays me: "I plan to attend our 45th year reunion in Pekin, and join my fellow Chinks as we enjoy our heritage." I'm pretty sure I should feel infuriated.

But I'm laughing because, well, how the hell do you get mad at someone so earnest and clueless? He doesn't sound particularly hateful or disrespectful, but it doesn't seem like he knows a whole lot about "chinks" either. Those "workers" he spoke of were not very well liked and I have to wonder what his reaction would be if a Chinese married his daughter. I like to imagine he would boast about his "chink" son-in-law to the rest of the town. Or maybe not.

I'll tell you a funny story.

Many years ago, I met a certain county commissioner from one of the counties up north. Very loquacious fellow. Anyway, a year or more goes by and I never ran into him again and had kind of forgotten who he was.

One day, I'm at the border station covering some press conference that Sens. Byron Dorgan or Kent Conrad was holding. Up comes this commissioner and he walks right up in front me and bowed very deeply, oriental style, without saying a thing.

Bewildered, I looked all around. Who the hell was this guy bowing to? It was like a comical bow that you do to your buddy after you've both spent the weekend watching old kung fu or samurai flicks. I just stared like he was out of his mind, because there was no one in that part of the room but us and I didn't remember that we'd met. He must've been embarrassed because, without a word, he quickly walked away.

It only dawned on me on the drive back that he was trying to show respect and must've gotten his lesson in Asian culture from the movies.

The guy who said he was celebrating his "chink" heritage could've been this county commissioner. He means well, but screwed it all up.

By the way, you'll notice the Pekin high school nickname are now the Dragons.

That's also the mascot of the East (Akron, Ohio) High School Orientals. They call him Chang the Dragon (via -- God you'll love this -- Angry Asian Man). I really think I'm going to have to buy the T-shirts.

My calculations indicate that there are 139 Asians in Pekin's population of 33,857 and 3,256 Asians in Akron's population of 217,074.

Honorable mention is the Northfield (Minn.) High School Raiders. They apparently used to have a Mongol mascot, but is now totally vanilla.

Slanty-eyed Spaniards

One final race-related thing.

I ran into this old controversy while surfing the Web the other day. The Spanish basketball team, overenthused about going to the Beijing Olympics, decided to pose for a photo while making slanty-eyed faces. Like so:

Holy smokes was there a lot of indignation by westerners, including, I think, some Asian-Americans.

In China, the response was more like "Oh? So what?"

Here's a Chinese-American journalist talking to the Chinese man in the street:

I showed the picture to some people here in Beijing, who never saw it or heard of the debate. One man said the team was being funny, and that they were just making a joke. He was also very curious that the notion of pulling at the eyelids could be considered racist.

"Doesn't hip-hop culture allow for these types of things?" he added.
Another man said the team was only acting mischievous and that the eye-pulling was just a sign of affection.

"If I did this," he said, as he pulled his eyes wide open with his hands to create a 'round-eye,' "Would that be racist against white people?"

The New York Times did something similar:

Chinese Web sites have been reporting on the issue but without great energy or emotion. In my office Wednesday, the photo was shown to two Chinese staffers. Neither viewed it with surprise or disgust, but more with bewilderment.

An American I know who has spent much time here speculated that the Chinese reaction would naturally differ from that of Chinese people living in the West, where, as with any minority, they would understandably be more sensitive to such a display.

Here's a column by some Brit named Tran -- we are not related -- who thinks it's dumb, but not offensively dumb:

Perhaps the Spanish athletes and officials who posed in the pictures intended to show their solidarity with their fellow Chinese athletes, albeit in a crass, cack-handed way. There is little point in getting too worked up over this foolishness, but somebody should gently point out to the Spanish sporting authorities that there were probably better ways to show empathy with their Chinese hosts.

This is more my feelings about the Pekin Chinks. That word is just too loaded to be used, though the old timers can have it for the sake of their memories.

But the Spanish thing, I'm with the Chinese. Big frickin' deal. They're a nation of a billion people with the third biggest economy in the world and an army that could crush the Spanish ten times over. They have the confidence to see beyond the formulaic if-they-do-this-then-I-must-be-offended response. It's clear the Spaniards were just being friendly. Unlike the British who uncovered this scandal, the Spaniards never stole any Chinese territory.

Also, the Chinese have their own problems with racist policies.

Posted by: Tu-Uyen on 1/25/2010 at 7:50 PM | Comments (13) | Permalink

Tags: fighting sioux nickname

Fighting over how to fight the debt

The office of Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., sent over a press release today about how the president is throwing his support behind the proposal to create a special task force to deal with the national debt.

Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., the ranking member of the Senate budget committee is a co-sponsor and the other 27 co-sponsors are pretty split between Republicans and Democrats. Conrad is the committee chairman.

Your City Beat was asked to put together a brief story about this, but I couldn't help but do a bit more research.

About that task force

First, here's how this task force would work:

Where we stand

Second, let's consider where our public debt stands in relation to our gross domestic product, which is analogous to national income.

If we're looking at the estimated $9.9 trillion in 2010, it's 67.1 percent. But, since I don't have any data from other countries for comparison, we'll have to use 2008 data. The following is an excerpt from the CIA World Factbook, from highest to lowest:

Note that I included the Top 5; the Bottom 5; members of the G8; and the five biggest economies in the world, which adds China to the list.

So, We're not the worst, but we're not the best either and we're getting worse.

Who's for and against

The task force is noted as being bipartisan, but opposition to it appears to be also bipartisan in some way.

Here's conservative columnist George Will (Yeah, the link is from Canada's National Post. Haha.):


Substantively, the task force would be a means of conscripting Republican participation in huge tax increases. There are precedents. The 1983 Greenspan Commission that "fixed" Social Security permanently (permanence is not what it used to be) involved large and immediate tax increases and small and delayed trims to benefits. The year after the 1990 budget summit, which resulted in President George H.W. Bush's renunciation of his "no new taxes" pledge, the budget deficit almost doubled.

Were the Conrad-Gregg task force to come to a consensus, it almost certainly would be that Congress must make the supposedly "difficult choice" of spending more of other people’s money. Fortunately, the task force probably would be paralyzed by the requirement that its proposals must be endorsed by at least 14 -- 78% -- of its members. Given the difficulty of getting 60% of the Senate to agree on anything important, a 78% consensus on raising taxes and cutting entitlements will be extremely elusive.

So... they'll want to raise your taxes, but they'll never be able to agree to do that, so they won't. Sounds like a sound critique to me!

Here's something from Huffington Post that Michael Moore's Web site re-posted:

On Monday morning, wealthy hedge fund mogul Peter Peterson and his Commission on Budget Reform held a press conference to issue a "Call to Action to Stem the Mounting Federal Debt." Their scary promotional material declares, "The ever-growing federal debt is spiraling out of control. If not addressed . . . Americans could be faced not only with a lower standard of living, but a real fiscal crisis."

Peterson's self-appointed deficit warriors don't really have a plan to cut debt and deficits -- although most of them have a clear record of trying to cut America's meager Social Security and Medicare benefits. But they are selling a dangerous and undemocratic new budget process that would take the responsibility for budget-making away from the president and the committees of Congress and give it to a new commission charged with coming up with a plan to reduce the deficit and then jamming it through Congress on an up or down vote, with little debate and no chance for amendments.

Here's the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, or NCPSSM. Watch this ad (via Time Goes By). It says:

Fiscal hawks want cuts to Social Security and Medicare on the legislative fast track, hoping seniors won't know what hit them until it's too late. Legislation now before Congress would create a fast track-style Congressional commission charged with making unprecedented changes in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Tax increases? Nuh-uh, says the NCPSSM. It's massive benefits cuts that's the threat.

Support is also all over the board.

Here's the Concord Coalition, which is :

"This is a very timely development. Senators Conrad and Gregg are to be congratulated for taking the initiative. There is very little dispute that current fiscal policies are unsustainable and that a serious course correction will require suspension of the partisan trench warfare that has stymied all attempts at finding solutions. Since the regular legislative process has been incapable of dealing with the impending fiscal crisis, a new bipartisan commission makes sense as a method of jump-starting serious consideration of the issues, ” said Concord Coalition executive director Robert L. Bixby.

Of course, they'd say that. Peter Peterson is their founder. Besides being a capitalist scumbag, he used to be commerce secretary under Richard Nixon. A bunch of Dems, including the late Bob Tsongas and Bob Kerrey are also among founders of the coalition, which has the goal of ensuring my grandchildren won't go broke paying for grandpa Tuey's benefits.

Also on board is Alan Green, the former Federal Reserve chairman and Ayn Rand's number one fan.

In Congress, as of this writing, 29 senators are on board as co-sponsors, including 13 Dems, 15 Republicans and one independent.

There were six Republicans who backed out under conservative pressure, including maverick John McCain. On the other hand, newby Republican Sen. Scott Brown, who's supposed to be the bellwether for national sentiment, is saying he's for the task force.

Posted by: Tu-Uyen on 1/25/2010 at 6:26 PM | Comments (9) | Permalink

Tags: budgets and taxes, congress, kent conrad

The difference between economic impact and economic development

The City Beat had a conversation the other day with an acquaintance about the economic impact numbers coming out of the Alerus Center and it occurred to me that, like a lot of things involving that city building, there is some serious confusion of terms.

The events center has long reported what's known as the "gross economic impact." That's the total impact of every single event that happens there. This number has then been used to justify the building's existence and the fact that it often loses money.

The critics charge that counting weddings and UND football games that otherwise would still occur in town is dishonest. The Alerus Center's real value, they said, is the extra events that it brings. This would be the "net economic impact."

Now, I'm not sure how everyone could've overlooked this, but, as the Alerus Center task force discovered last week, the original economic impact study by UND economist J. Lloyd Blackwell III included both gross and net numbers. When I checked my archives for the story I wrote when the almost-final draft of the report came out in 2006, I overlooked the net numbers as well. Either that or they didn't get in there until the final draft, which I didn't look at.

To summarize, the report said gross impact in the study period -- Sept. 1, 2004, to Sept. 1, 2005 -- was $20.1 million with attendance of 239,342. Total local taxes collected was $759,000.

The net impact was $12.6 million with attendance of 156,381. Total local taxes collected was $465,000.

The Alerus Center had an operating deficit of $246,000 in this period. Now that I'm looking at it again, it appears to not include the 1/4-percent lodging tax that automatically goes to the events center. It also doesn't include the 3/4-percent sales tax that goes to paying construction debt and building improvements. I have no idea what those might be during the study period.

Why the Alerus Center chose to report only the gross impact all these years is not clear to me. At some point in 2006, someone must've started using the gross impact formula and eventually it just got to be a routine.

One might think that whoever this was they did it to inflate the numbers and justify the Alerus Center's losses. But that's not so because even the net impact alone would've been higher than the operating deficit, as stated in the report.

David Flynn, the UND economist who replaced Dr. Blackwell as director of the Bureau of Business and Economic Research, told the task force last week that it's unwise to fixate on the net numbers too much. City leaders would then be telling the events center to emphasize events that could never have existed without the building and, therefore, de-emphasize local events, which would seem to conflict with the building's function as a public facility.

The net impact, for example, ignores smaller meetings, such as those held by service clubs and other local groups.

Notice he's not saying ignore the net impact. He's just saying it's unhealthy to focus only on that figure.

Total impact

So where's the confusion of terms?

Here's the mission statement of the Alerus Center -- Which by the way, ought to actually be on the Web site somewhere under the governance section, but isn't:

The mission of the Alerus Center is to provide premier entertainment and events that stimulate economic impact and improve the quality of life for Grand Forks area citizens.

The first is obvious. The last is the public-facility function Dr. Flynn talked about. The "economic impact" is the part that's unclear.

There is a subtle distinction between "economic impact" and "economic development" that not everyone has noticed.

In a general sense, economic impact can be and is taken to mean gross impact. The logic of that is we want to know what the full impact of the building is. Period.

The only reason we'd worry about subtracting events that preexisted before the building is if we felt the building needed to justify itself in some way. It's like we're assuming that if the building failed to justify itself, we could somehow go back in time and unbuild it.

Seeing how Stephen Hawking still has not invented a time machine, that's not an option.

Or, more to the point, some of us still haven't lived down 1996, when the majority of the city voted to build the Alerus Center, and now we want to wag our fingers and say "I told you so."

The Alerus Center, not being a member of that camp, naturally chose to worry only about the gross economic impact. It's probably also mindful of what Dr. Flynn said about fixating on net impact.

Growing the economy

In recent years, the events center and its allies at City Hall began to see the building not just as a public facility, but an economic development engine. That's reflected in the rhetoric among events-center commissioners and in Mayor Mike Brown's "Destination City Initiative."

The whole idea is to bring in more visitors and outside dollars into the local economy and, therefore, grow the economy.

Yet, the Alerus Center continues to use the gross economic impact number, which, again, counts events that would've occurred anyway regardless of the events center's existence. This doesn't really tell us whether the building had contributed to the growth of the economy. If the goal is economic development, then net impact is the way to go.

It makes more sense, then, to subtract the subsidies that goes to the Alerus Center from this net impact. If the number is negative, it would mean our investment isn't paying off as it should. If the number is positive, we're on the right track.

Last week, when the Alerus Center task force discussed this matter, it appeared to have agreed that net impact is meaningful and real. More accurately, it didn't disagree.

Council President Hal Gershman asked if everyone could agree that there is a net impact, and I remember hearing some murmurs that didn't sound like "no." Knowing that group, if anyone didn't agree he or she would've said something.

Finding a voice

Also noteworthy -- and I'm going to be watching for this -- is the seeming monopolization of the discussion by some City Council members on the 13-member task force. Some are more guilty than others.

The whole point of putting six private citizens on that group, I thought, was so the council could hear outside opinions about the Alerus Center. I didn't think they were there to respond to whatever opinions the council expressed. There is a subtle difference.

Some of the six members said said last week that they'd like to caucus privately, and sought an opinion from the city attorney if that's OK. I'm guessing the lack of voice is part of the reason. When I ran into one of those six members recently, he or she nodded knowingly when I observed that council members seemed to dominate the task force a bit more than they should.

Posted by: Tu-Uyen on 1/25/2010 at 6:05 PM | Comments (3) | Permalink

Tags: alerus center, budgets and taxes, economic development, gf and egf

The timeline driving the nickname process

Well, it's certainly nice to see that the predicted non-action at the State Board of Higher Education came about after all. The City Beat always feel terrifically stupid when someone I interview predicts something and the opposite happens. It's like running a headline warning of a winter storm and then you get a heat wave.

There was a whole lot more info about the Summit League situation yesterday, and the news is not that it's too late in the school year for UND to apply for membership in the league. It's just almost too late, according to Athletic Director Brian Faison.

Here's some excerpts from my audio file:

Board member Grant Shaft: Here's a question about timeline. A lot of this board's actions, of course, in 2009, in setting timeline in getting near some resolution that would be satisfactory to the Summit League to make an application in calendar year 2009. Obviously, now we've bumped into 2010. There are a couple of dates that loom out there, one of them is the Aug. 1 date that has been used by this board as a possible transition date, the final date for the resolution. One is the [unclear] that's been discussed. And, of course, letting the timeline run with the settlement agreement, November of 2010.

As we sit here today, in your view, how should this board view its timeline as far as Summit League application?

Brian: In conversations with, -- I'm sorry -- Chancellor, members of the board: In conversations with the conference commissioner of the Summit League, Tom Douple, yesterday just to follow up and make sure I was understanding where he was coming from. Tom has been consistently close to the vest with his comments, as I'm sure you've all understand when you visit with him.

In terms of process, scheduling is really the driver in terms of time, from their perspective. They are now working on the '11-'12 schedule so we're already looking at a year plus a year no matter what would happen in terms of where this would go.

The longer this goes on without resolution -- and I want to stress resolution; they have not indicated a position either way with respect to the logo; they just talked about resolution -- we're at a point now where 2011-'12 is the schedule we're dealing with. And that's important to the league because they all commit to not to allow those schools to then go out and schedule non-conference opponents.

So what'll happen is you'll be locked out for another year in terms of our ability to come in.

There's no guarantee that we would be accepted for membership, but my sense is they would've liked to be on a parallel track with us and [the University of] South Dakota. It would make perfect sense to do that. Since that action with South Dakota, Centenary [College of Louisiana], which is a member of that league, has elected to leave the conference and drop to Division III. So they've gone from an odd number to an even number, which, of course, is a little bit of a concern, too.

As any conference would do -- and as Mr. Douple certainly does; he's a good steward of his program -- they're constantly looking for things that will strengthen their league. So from a membership standpoint, they're always going to be open to membership consideration. But when you get down to timelines, the schedule becomes the critical issue in terms of how they look at what they can do.

My understanding is the next meeting of the presidents' council is in March and, after that, I believe, it'll be in June. That's the body that ultimately makes the decision on membership for the league.

Grant: And if I may follow up, Mr. President. It's been a little while since we were in Chicago [Summit League HQ], but if I recall our discussions, once that presidents' council meets within the Summit League, there is then a process that unfolds as to considering an application of an insitution. It's the acceptance of the institution application; it's the consideration of the presidents' council; it's a scheduled visit to an insitution; and there's a timeline that goes along with that. I think Mr. Douple was hesitant to give us an average, but it was a bit of a process.

Just so I understand it, if there was a resolution to this thing in spring of this year, there's some possibility, but that action could be accomplished within 2010, which will allow us to remain in the scheduling just one more [inaudible].

Brian: I doubt that, but it is possible. I can't speak for Mr. Douple; that's what the presidents elect him to do.

Grant: What I'm really getting at is if we were to resolve this later and the application process moved into 2011, does that then bump us again in scheduling?

Brian: No, at that point we're looking at '12-'13 anyway. From that perspective it wouldn't change anything in particular.

UND President Robert Kelley: In my conversations with many, but not all, the presidents of Summit League presidents' council, I believe we are in the best position we can possibly be at the present time, pending resolution of this controversy. All the things Mr. Faison said are absolutely true and I do believe that we would be welcomed in the Summit League based upon the conversations I've had with many of the members.

Board member Duaine Espegard: Mr. Chairman, uh, Mr. President: I understand then there isn't a necessity to do something now as opposed to, say, August as opposed to November for scheduling purposes.

Brian: Mr. President: My understanding from Mr. Douple is there is no specific commitment on their part one way or the other. All I can tell you is, from a scheduling perspective -- and I think this would drive -- June becomes the critical point in terms of the two-year issue with respect to our ability to compete in the conference.

The other thing -- and again this is something that he would not share; and I appreciate the compliments -- there are institutions that are seeking membership in the Summit League. And they're not going to be adding three or four teams to the Summit League. We don't know what competition there is; they wouldn't share that with us. So there maybe other issues that is driving the necessity, from our perspective, to get a resolution, to get a resolution as expeditiously as we can. June looms as the finality on scheduling issues and they're currently finalizing that as we speak. If that becomes [garbled] then it's two years.

...

Duaine: Mr. Chairman, I understand that even if it was delayed for six to eight months, which puts it off to the automatic shutoff anyway, that it still doesn't change the scheduling for the coming season.

Board President Richie Smith: No, that's not my understanding.

... [Some garbled stuff because Dr. Kelley was away from the microphone. He's asked to go back to the mike and repeat himself.]

Dr. Kelley: Mr. Chairman: I'll ask Mr. Faison to correct me, but I my understanding is that we are currently having the open door extended to us. But the door is rapidly closing.

Some decisions have already been made. In our conversations with commissioner Mr. Douple, in our conversations with the presidents of the presidents' council, there is a receptiveness.

Clearly scheduling is ongoing. We're already looking at another year out. We may -- I think the emphasis here is 'may' -- if we can react to this situation in [garbled], we could start the ball rolling, which could position us in the scheduling session for the coming '11-'12 competition. I think if we do not, if we delay into the summer then clearly we're going to be delayed beyond '11-'12. We'll probably be in '12-13 or beyond. So my understanding is the door is still barely opened, but it is closing. I think I'm fair on that, and I can certainly be corrected by Mr. Faison.

Smith: I have a question if no one else does: What does a 30-day delay do to that window? Does it close in 30 days or is it still open?

Dr. Kelley: Well, I hate to ask Mr. Faison to hobble back up to the table, but I think he might be amenable to helping me with that.

[Long pause as Brian shuffles up.]

Brian: Mr. President, you are correct. [Pregnant pause. Laughter.] There is a brief window, a very brief window. I can't speak specifically to what 30 days would do, but 30 days in my best estimate, or thought would be, is that it would actually be right on the line in terms of any ability to be considered for '11-'12.

And quite frankly, my understanding is after that it would clearly push it back two years down the road.

So the timeline looks like this right now:

It does, however, seek an expedited decision from the court. The SBHE's general counsel Pat Seaworth said the Supreme Court needs the transcripts to get started and it takes about 45 days to get those transcripts out. That means, if you're gonna be technical about it, March 2. Pat said he'll ask the SBHE's attorney to seek to expedite the transcripts.

The question is, how soon will that get the transcripts to the court and then how long will it take the court to decide? Even if the court were to accept the district court's ruling and not bother hearing the case -- it seems many people are assuming this, given the timeline they're talking about -- making that decision would still take a bit of time.

Finally, the SBHE essentially agreed to take some "action" at its next monthly meeting. It didn't formally vote to do that, but the tone of the board members suggest they're probably going to retire the nickname whether the court rules on it or not.

I asked him yesterday if he'd be willing to ask the league to accelerate the membership process for UND, given the lack of clarity about how long that might take. He said he doesn't know how much of a voice he has as a new member, but he'd try.

Posted by: Tu-Uyen on 1/21/2010 at 5:17 PM | Comments (17) | Permalink

Tags: fighting sioux nickname, sbhe, und

Boardings at GFK

The City Beat was interested to learn last night that boardings at Grand Forks International Airport are expected to grow far beyond previously projected levels thanks to Allegiant Air.

Airport Executive Director Patrick Dame told the City Council's finance committee that as soon as the new terminal that's now under construction is opened, the parking lot will probably be at capacity. Evidently the planning for that lot was done before the full impact of Allegiant's presence was appreciated. The airline said in September that it would add a second destination: Phoenix. This means more boardings from snowbirds, a category that Patrick identified as one justifying the additional parking.

For years, we've written stories about the essentially static if not slightly declining traffic at GFK. To hear this news from Patrick was certainly a refreshing change.

It so happens that I had asked the state Aeronautics Commission to send me some boarding data, including historical data. I passed it on to one of our other reporters, but it's worth repeating in depth here:

Boardings at North Dakota airports
  CY 2009 CY 2008 CY 2007 CY 2006 CY 2005 CY 2004 CY 2003 CY 2002 CY 2001 CY 2000
Bismarck 181,114 175,082 181,310 180,674 173,290 159,963 141,090 139,343 131,246 134,483
Devils Lake 3,756 3,226 3,548 3,292 3,378 2,946 1,968 2,129 2,390 2,396
Dickinson 8,961 8,734 7,576 5,403 4,851 5,081 3,827 2,911 3,366 3,921
Fargo 348,951 324,434 297,964 305,218 275,200 256,004 243,097 230,406 217,979 230,969
Grand Forks 95,633 85,571 80,725 84,049 86,790 89,301 87,935 86,573 82,054 86,868
Jamestown 3,564 2,829 2,234 2,368 2,206 2,495 1,879 2,166 2,507 2,600
Minot 66,771 70,998 70,554 74,940 75,344 74,085 70,528 70,571 68,255 72,330
Williston 11,229 11,802 8,469 6,493 5,594 6,144 5,164 4,163 4,333 4,718
TOTALS 719,979 682,676 652,380 662,437 626,653 596,019 555,488 538,262 512,130 538,285
                     

Commercial
(BIS-FAR
-GFK-MOT)

 692,469 656,085 630,553 644,881 610,624 579,353 542,650 526,893 499,534 524,650
Regional
(DVK-DIK-
JMS-WIL)		 27,510 26,591 21,827 17,556 16,029 16,666 12,838 11,369 12,596 13,635

 How does that look in terms of percentage changes? Check this out:

Boardings at North Dakota airports (% change from year before)
  CY 2009 CY 2008 CY 2007 CY 2006 CY 2005 CY 2004 CY 2003 CY 2002 CY 2001 CY 2000-2009
Bismarck 3.4% -3.4% 0.4% 4.3% 8.3% 13.4% 1.3% 6.2% -2.4% 34.7%
Devils Lake 16.4% -9.1% 7.8% -2.5% 14.7% 49.7% -7.6% -10.9% -0.3% 56.8%
Dickinson 2.6% 15.3% 40.2% 11.4% -4.5% 32.8% 31.5% -13.5% -14.2% 128.5%
Fargo 7.6% 8.9% -2.4% 10.9% 7.5% 5.3% 5.5% 5.7% -5.6% 51.1%
Grand Forks 11.8% 6.0% -4.0% -3.2% -2.8% 1.6% 1.6% 5.5% -5.5% 10.1%
Jamestown 26.0% 26.6% -5.7% 7.3% -11.6% 32.8% -13.3% -13.6% -3.6% 37.1%
Minot -6.0% 0.6% -5.9% -0.5% 1.7% 5.0% -0.1% 3.4% -5.6% -7.7%
Williston -4.9% 39.4% 30.4% 16.1% -9.0% 19.0% 24.0% -3.9% -8.2% 138.0%
TOTALS 5.5% 4.6% -1.5% 5.7% 5.1% 7.3% 3.2% 5.1% -4.9% 33.8%
                     
Commercial
(BIS-FAR-
GFK-MOT)		 5.5% 4.0% -2.2% 5.6% 5.4% 6.8% 3.0% 5.5% -4.8% 32.0%
Regional
(DVK-DIK-
JMS-WIL)		 3.5% 21.8% 24.3% 9.5% -3.8% 29.8% 12.9% -9.7% -7.6% 101.8%

 Look at 2008 and 2009 at GFK. Booya, huh?

Posted by: Tu-Uyen on 1/21/2010 at 9:30 AM | Comments (5) | Permalink

Tags: airport boardings, economic impact, gfk

Nickname still in limbo

Just a heads up, readers. The State Board of Higher Education will meet tomorrow, 10 a.m., at UND's Memorial Union. The Fighting Sioux nickname is on the agenda.

I talked to SBHE member Grant Shaft about the meeting and he predicted that no action will be taken. Usually board members would get some inkling that one of the others would propose something big, he said, and he's not sensed anything like that.

The difference is that it's 2010 and the SBHE's goal had been to resolve the nickname issue by the end of 2009. The reason for that had been, as you know, so UND can apply to the Summit League athletic conference ASAP. The league won't consider any such application until the nickname is resolved and the sooner UND applies and, presumably is accepted, the sooner it can start scheduling games.

Grant said the board will talk as group to UND Athletic Director Brian Faison at the meeting. He might well say that there's no longer any sense of urgency because the damage is done.

Even if he did say there's urgency, there's still the threat of the lawsuit to contend with even if the lawsuit's been dismissed. The plaintiffs, nickname supporters from the Spirit Lake Dakotah Nation, appealed to the Supreme Court and the court could take their side.

Grant said it's not a good idea to make a big decision like retiring the nickname and then being forced to bring it back.

Also, having the court decision hanging in the air means the issue isn't resolved yet, so UND would still not be able to satisfy the Summit League.

One thing I noted in my story for tomorrow is we, the Herald, have tried calling league Commissioner Tom Douple numerous times to ask why getting this issue resolved is so important when it will be resolved one way or the other Nov. 30, 2010. That's the deadline for UND to win approval from the state's two Sioux tribes or retire the nickname, as stated in the NCAA's settlement with the state.

Well, Douple's never called us back and when we called league universities, they tell us to call Douple. Pretty cute, huh?

Posted by: Tu-Uyen on 1/20/2010 at 7:49 PM | Comments (23) | Permalink

Tags: fighting sioux nickname, sbhe, und

How N.D. can get two seats in the House

The other day, the City Beat had a funny discussion with one of the other reporters. We wondered: Wouldn't it be great if we could get another congressional representative? As in having two of them?

So I had to do a little research.

It turns out that the state with the smallest population that has two representatives is Rhode Island with an estimated 1,053,209 residents. The state with the largest population that has only one representative is Montana with an estimated 974,989 residents.

North Dakota has an estimated 638,613 residents. So to get to be like Rhode Island, we'd have to have 414,596 more residents, which means either a massive influx of new residents or a lot more babies being born.

Now I realize that's a little rough. U.S. law says there can only be 435 representatives so when one state gains a representative some other has to lose. That means the threshold for getting another representative is always relative to the population of other states. But, it's a bit too complicated for me to calculate so I'm just assuming Rhode Island's population is the threshold number.

Assuming in-bound migration isn't going to increase rapidly, the way to reach the target population would be to have more babies. Understand, I'm not serious. This is just a thought experiment!

The Census is estimating that the state has 216,051 residents age 20 to 44, roughly the age one might expect people to have kids. I'm sure teens could do it, too, but we don't want to encourage that sort of thing. Assuming that the male-to-female ration is 50-50, that's 108,025 couples. Each couple would then have to have 3.8 child on average.

I was thinking a mass octomom scenario, but this is still pretty crazy.

Posted by: Tu-Uyen on 1/19/2010 at 4:52 PM | Comments (4) | Permalink

Tags: census, congress

Cleaning up after the old administration

Ya know, the City Beat is such a glutton for punishment. NDSU fan(atics) are not going to like this blog post at all.

So the State Board of Higher Education's finance committee convened a meeting to get a briefing on the financial situation from interim President Dick Hanson. Evidently, the board had heard rumors of some sort of massive deficit and seemed relieved to hear it was only $2.5 million -- it was $1.8 million in mid-December -- and that Dr. Hanson thinks he could find enough savings to erase it.

The overall theme that I came away with was NDSU went into maximum overdrive in recent years and the engine started smoking a little. Former President Joseph Chapman, praised for the massive growth the university enjoyed, had put the pedal to the metal for a bit too long and the administrative mechanisms couldn't cope.

As I note in my story in tomorrow's paper, between fall 2005 and fall 2009, NDSU's enrollment grew 17.3 percent. But most of that wasn't in the earlier years. In 2006, it was 1.3 percent. In 2007, 2.2 percent. Then, in 2008, 5.6 percent. And, finally, in 2009, 7.3 percent.

You could've heard the tires squealing last fall.

In my story, I said that NDSU appeared to have "broken some sort of administrative speed limit." What I meant is the university seemed to have grown faster than it could plan for the growth.

As Dr. Hanson detailed today:

Dr. Hanson said he's not sure why. It could be the students are doing it to save money or for the sake of convenience or because they couldn't get in the class they wanted.

Now there's another thing that Dr. Hanson brought up that didn't have a great deal to do with the $2.5 million shortfall. That's the president's local fund and the piddly-dinky $3,704 deficit in it. A local fund is made up of money raised locally -- parking fees, etc. -- and not appropriated by the Legislature. The president's local fund is the one that he has at his discretion while other local funds have other uses.

Now, as board member Duaine Espegard noted, the reason the deficit is so tiny is because of a massive transfer of cash -- $2.3 million -- from those other local funds to the president's local fund. Where the money came from is still not known to the board because Dr. Hanson has to produce that report. The way he described it, it's just bunches of funds from really big to really tiny, like the girls' volleyball team T-shirt sales fund, so it might be a lot of work finding out where it all came from.

You might expect, from the spending scandals surrounding Dr. Chapman before he resigned, that the president's home and the aircraft fleet would be a big part of the extra spending. Apparently not so.

I don't have time to list them all, but here are some of interest:

It goes on. Total budgeted expenses was $12,190,517. Actual total expenses was $13,920,591.

Again, this isn't related to the deficit because it's already been covered with that transfer.

What it looks like is the new guy wants to do some full disclosure so he can start with a blank slate instead of having to explain all the things done by his predecessor. In fact, there seemed to be an awful lot of things said today that seemed to subtly place the blame on Dr. Chapman. That's just an observation, not an indictment of anyone.

I asked him after the meeting if he was saying in some way that the previous guy wasn't so transparent or accountable.

Dr. Hanson answered this way: "People are different. People are different in the way they lead. People are different in the way they communicate. I prefer a system that is accessible by people. They understand why we make decisions the way we make them. I just don't make them."

Dr. Chapman, of course, was known and loved for his damn-the-torpedoes-full-speed-head attitude. The slow-down-so-we-don't-blow-up-the-engine approach, as exemplified by the quote above, is a major change in policy.

Dr. Hanson hinted that some in the administration might not be too pleased with how he's doing things. I didn't quote him directly and I'm too tired to go into my audio files right now, but he said something to the effect that "I bring a different style. People are getting used to it. I hope people are getting used to it.... There's a need to mourn and deal with the loss. But we need to prepare for a new era of institutional excellence."

Another way to look at this situation is Dr. Chapman's era was one of unfettered expansion. Dr. Hanson's brief era -- he's gone when the new president is hired -- is one of consolidating NDSU's conquests.

Posted by: Tu-Uyen on 1/18/2010 at 8:31 PM | Comments (11) | Permalink

Tags: budgets and taxes, dick hanson, higher education, ndsu, sbhe

Lapdogs and what they say

So the public hearing about Grand Forks' ever controversial Alerus Center turned into kind of a lovefest instead of what one would imagine it would be based on the barrage of criticism of the city-owned building that one sees on the blog and hears on talk radio.

The City Beat is not even being sarcastic about this. I really think that a good mix of opinions, even ones that I might think of as pretty extreme, would eventually result in better policy over all.

It's too bad that the only person that was really criticizing the Alerus Center tonight was City Council member Terry Bjerke. I appreciated his point that the building should aim to break even or it'll never break even. This was after Earl Strinden, one of the people who originally campaigned to get the building built, said it's unreasonable to expect the events center to make money.

Terry was, in effect, articulating a question that the Alerus Center task force is struggling to answer: How much of a subsidy is too much? Voters approved the use of the 1/4-percent hotel tax as a subsidy and any losses beyond that comes from the 1-percent sales tax.

That question wasn't really answered by the lovefest though it's the question that a lot of critics are asking. Well, they're not asking so much as arguing that no subsidies beyond the 1/4-percent tax is acceptable. That's fine, but where were they?

Railing away in anonymity is cathartic, I'm sure, but if you want to be taken seriously, nothing beats appearing in person with a notebook full of arguments. So the lack of critics -- other than Terry and maybe Council member Mike McNamara  -- seems to imply that there are very few that aren't just complaining for the fun of it.

Rah-rah sis-boom-bah

This leads me to the other thing worth noting, which is the letter to the editor that Terry wrote in which he called the Herald the "lapdog for the Alerus gang." He was directing his barbs mostly toward Publisher and Editor Mike Jacobs, though surely I play enough of a role in the debate to be included.

Well, I'd like to see if he would direct the same sort of criticism at the Chamber of Commerce, whose President Barry Wilfahrt made the strongest statement tonight in support of the Alerus Center. According to my notes, his testimony went something like this:

I once asked Barry how the Chamber felt about the Alerus Center. Surely those paying hotel and hospitality and sales taxes would have some strong feelings about the building, which makes use of some or all of those taxes. Barry said then, as he did tonight, that the Chamber really likes the events center. It wasn't the majority of the Chamber, it was just the Chamber, as in pretty much everybody.

The strong positive feeling surprised me because I thought that there had to be some resentment. From my vantage point, it almost seemed like the city was 50/50 in its sentiments and the Chamber couldn't be an island apart from all that. Business owners, I've always thought, tended to be a bit more conservative than the average person because they deal with taxes more.

Why, then, hasn't the Chamber defended the Alerus Center during its travails last year? I asked Barry.

He replied that the Chamber has said positive things before, but some members didn't really want to get involved in the controversy.

I talked to a council member about the same thing some time after that and he said he'd push the Chamber for a stronger commitment and it annoyed the hell out of him that some didn't want to get involved.

Well, I guess the Chamber came through tonight.

______ vs. ______

Another thing worth noting is that there is an interesting divide in the debate over the Alerus Center that reflects a similar divide in state and national politics.

The ultra-libertarian, Tea Party populists like Terry are on the one side and the moderate conservatives -- your Republican establishment -- and moderate progressives -- your Democratic establishment -- are on the other side. Barry, Earl and Council member Art Bakken are Republicans and Council President Hal Gershman is a Democrat, but all are Alerus Center supporters. Art, in fact, said he teams up with another business to pay for a suite at the Alerus Center mostly because he wants to support the city.

So, it's not as if the conservatives are accusing the progressives of tax-and-spend wastefulness, which, if you agree with Terry, is what the Alerus Center's all about.

I'm curious where the not-so-moderate progressives stand on this. I suspect that they might see the Alerus Center as corporate welfare, but they don't seem as vocal as the libertarians. If that's true, this is more a debate between the populists and the establishment than the traditional left-right divide.

Posted by: Tu-Uyen on 1/14/2010 at 10:50 PM | Comments (34) | Permalink

Tags: alerus center, budgets and taxes, economic impact, gf and egf, gf city council, gf city hall

Hybrid buses coming to GF

It looks like the hybrid-diesel buses the Grand Forks City Council talked about in March are arriving in July. The City Beat confirmed that with Public Works Director Todd Feland today after, I'm told, it was discussed at the Green Grand Forks committee meeting.

Todd's hoping it'll cut costs, fuel usage and the city's carbon emissions, which pretty much sums up the committee's mission.

The city's buying a total of four buses of roughly the same model to replace four older buses. Two of the new ones are powered by regular old diesel engines and two by the new hybrid diesels. Each pair of hybrid and regular diesels will run one of the city's busier routes, those that involve a lot of stop-and-go.

The intention, Todd said, is to test the hybrids to see if they're cheaper than the diesels as expected. A lot of communities have had experience with hybrids -- King County, Washington, where I'm from, is one of those communities -- but not many run their buses in the kind of cold that exists here.

The council discussion indicated that that was the cautious position Council member Terry Bjerke took. Council member Mike McNamara said the city doesn't need to throw out the experience other cities have had. It's just that the city can't afford four hybrid buses; the money it has from the feds is only enough for three.

As you can read from the staff report, the second link above, hybrids cost $550,000 a piece and regular diesels $325,000. Over the 12-year life of the buses, the hybrids are projected to save the city $312,000.

Funding comes from the stimulus package, fed public transportation funds and $93,500 in local funds.

Note that the buses are New Flyer buses, which are made in Crookston and St. Cloud. If I remember right, Crookston does some of the work and sends it down to St. Cloud.

Communities that already use the hybrids include Washington, D.C.; King County; Madison, Wis.; Fargo; Vancouver, B.C.; Banff, Alberta; and Toronto.

The discussion about other communities' experiences is interesting because at least three of those communities have cold winters not unlike Grand Forks. So I think Mac is probably right about relying on other communities' experiences.

Another community that uses hybrids is the Twin Cities, though it's a different model. About a year ago, I called Bob Gibbons, the customer services director of the cities' Metro Transit authority, for a story that I never got around to finishing. I was dismayed to learn that he didn't expect the hybrids to be cheaper than the diesels over the 12-year life of the buses.

At the time Metro Transit had bought 28 hybrids and planned to have 172 hybrids by 2012. The hybrids cost $556,000 and regular diesels $356,000, so that's a difference of $200,000. Bob's projections indicated the savings would not be as high. He hoped the resale of the buses after 12 years would make up the difference. Metro Transit bought the buses anyway, but for environmental reasons.

The reason the savings didn't work out, though, is because Metro Transit insists on using biodiesel, which had been cheaper than diesel. But by the time I talked to Bob, biodiesel costs were on the rise because of the increasing demand for agricultural products.

Since Grand Forks won't be doing that, perhaps King County's experience is more instructive. The payback time for the hybrids there was 8.5 years, which sounds pretty good.

Posted by: Tu-Uyen on 1/13/2010 at 8:21 PM | Comments (0) | Permalink

Tags: alternative energy, budgets and taxes, gf and egf, gf city council, gf city hall

GFK gets busier thanks to Air China

So the City Beat finally got around to reporting the year end number of flight operations at Grand Forks International Airport and it was as impressive as airport director Patrick Dame promised me last month.

The 347,533 takeoffs and landings -- those are what "operations" are -- in 2009 blew the old record of 306,989 set in 1990 out of the water. Naturally, it has a lot to do with UND. I'm going to talk first about the numbers and then more about UND Aerospace enrollment and their future, so skip ahead if you need to.

GFK by the numbers

I'm going to let the numbers speak for themselves with a bit of initial explanations. First, these numbers come out of the FAA's Air Traffic Activity Data System, or ATADS. You can start your own research here. The database itself is here.

Once you extract the tables of data, you'll have to understand what the labels mean. I asked local FAA tower chief Dave Cink to go through it with me so the more technical stuff below is from him:

Calendar year: You have the option of breaking the data down by fiscal year or month or day, even.

Facility: This is the name of the airport itself, listed by IATA airport codes. Grand Forks, for example, is GFK. Minneapolis-St. Paul is MSP. Los Angeles is LAX.

Class: Airports have different air traffic control capabilities. Some have TRACON systems, which are major radar facilities that control airspace for several airports. Some control only airspace for one airport. Those are the "towers with radar." GFK is one of them, though it relies on the Air Force base's radar. FAA contract towers are ones with low volumes of aircraft so don't require an FAA presence.

Itinerant: This is a class of flight operations for aircraft that come in or depart the local airspace, airlines for example. This is contrasted with...

Local: This is a class of operations of aircraft that stay within the local airspace, training aircraft for example.

Air carrier: These are operations of aircraft that carry more than 60 passengers. They also have nationally-assigned callsigns. Chartered aircraft are also considered air carrier.

Air taxi: These are operations of aircraft that carry 60 or fewer passengers and have nationally-assigned callsigns. I'm not sure what that means since all aircraft have registration codes.

The important thing to note is that in October 2004, UND aircraft changed from being just general aviation, the next category below, to air taxi. This change is why it's very hard to figure out how much of an impact UND had on the numbers over the years. UND's student pilots will train both around the airport and travel to other airports in the region or farther afield. When they're away from the airport, that's when the planes are known as air taxis.

You'll notice that before 2004, there were still quite a lot of air taxis in the area. Those are probably the Mesaba Airlines regional jets, some of which seat about 50.

General aviation: These are operations of private aircraft that aren't air carriers or air taxis.

Military: These are operations of military aircraft, mostly those belonging to the National Guard or Canadian forces stopping for a customs check before heading to whatever U.S. base is their destination.

Civil: These are operations of all civilian aircraft that are classified as "local." UND's student pilots are probably responsible for almost all of these.

Military: These are operations of all military aircraft classified as "local." Sometimes the Guards will practice flying at the airport.

Here comes the data. Note that a) I simplified my table and took out the "facility" and "class" columns and b) the years 2006 through 2009 are different from the ATADS results because I got them from Dave Cink, who says they should be the same because his staff is the source of those ATADS numbers.

Notice how the "air taxi" column has grown since 2005 and how the "civil" column has grown since the beginning. A lot of that is UND related. Also notice how the air carrier category dropped even though GFK now has both Allegiant Air and Northwest Airlines. That's probably related to NWA cutting some flights and maybe using regional jets more:

Flight operations at GFK
Calendar Year Air Carrier Air Taxi General Aviation Military Total Itinerant Civil Military Total Local Grand Total
1990 3,614 4,157 113,560 531 121,862 185,127 0 185,127 306,989
1991 3,767 5,190 97,183 575 106,715 154,592 366 154,958 261,673
1992 3,578 7,146 91,955 539 103,218 139,234 16 139,250 242,468
1993 3,823 9,388 86,943 692 100,846 146,774 544 147,318 248,164
1994 4,368 8,825 80,108 1,491 94,792 127,536 852 128,388 223,180
1995 3,841 8,198 66,018 761 78,818 99,459 110 99,569 178,387
1996 3,814 8,582 62,638 594 75,628 100,379 16 100,395 176,023
1997 3,935 8,123 60,646 1,451 74,155 104,272 76 104,348 178,503
1998 3,047 7,501 70,035 333 80,916 132,463 6 132,469 213,385
1999 3,140 6,674 80,282 353 90,449 132,428 30 132,458 222,907
2000 3,332 6,588 83,796 343 94,059 142,262 25 142,287 236,346
2001 3,247 6,565 95,680 431 105,923 163,988 29 164,017 269,940
2002 4,434 7,159 106,344 504 118,441 167,010 59 167,069 285,510
2003 4,312 12,517 97,038 288 114,155 174,445 37 174,482 288,637
2004 4,836 25,980 72,020 289 103,125 163,124 17 163,141 266,266
2005 4,594 76,010 11,930 302 92,836 150,927 22 150,949 243,785
2006 3,657 67,651 12,780 403 84,491 144,915 64 144,979 229,470
2007 3,301 66,248 11,498 552 81,599 142,126 90 142,216 223,815
2008 3,141 77,606 12,283 433 93,463 147,881 79 147,960 241,423
2009 3,087 108,114 14,007 537 125,745 221,660 128 221,788 347,533

Now, here's a comparison with other airports, using ATADS numbers, meaning I'm not using Dave Cink's numbers. ATL is Atlanta, ORD is Chicago O'Hare, DFW is Dallas-Ft. Worth, DEN is Denver, LAX you know already. GFK is at No. 21.

2009 flight operations of top 25 U.S. airports (ranked by grand total)
Rank Facility Air Carrier Air Taxi General Aviation Military Total Itinerant Civil Military Total Local Grand Total
1 ATL 662,248 221,575 6,357 1,031 891,211 0 0 0 891,211
2 ORD 501,347 253,060 6,345 151 760,903 0 0 0 760,903
3 DFW 432,875 147,232 4,218 532 584,857 0 0 0 584,857
4 DEN 418,575 138,317 3,228 120 560,240 0 0 0 560,240
5 LAX 399,963 79,723 15,303 2,821 497,810 0 0 0 497,810
6 IAH 236,905 246,435 9,908 181 493,429 0 0 0 493,429
7 LAS 329,802 103,185 37,101 1,810 471,898 0 0 0 471,898
8 CLT 292,773 151,505 21,630 1,732 467,640 0 0 0 467,640
9 PHL 241,960 173,344 18,799 1,397 435,500 0 0 0 435,500
10 PHX 334,927 60,807 19,778 2,372 417,884 798 11 809 418,693
11 MSP 261,786 123,399 11,392 2,463 399,040 0 0 0 399,040
12 DTW 191,368 199,632 6,370 126 397,496 0 0 0 397,496
13 JFK 306,596 75,881 6,214 263 388,954 0 0 0 388,954
14 EWR 248,312 124,634 8,446 202 381,594 0 0 0 381,594
15 DVT 0 3,549 137,380 11 140,940 230,341 0 230,341 371,281
16 SFO 256,334 77,696 12,022 2,840 348,892 0 0 0 348,892
17 SLC 160,688 125,866 54,427 1,952 342,933 304 0 304 343,237
18 IAD 162,536 129,665 44,476 533 337,210 0 0 0 337,210
19 BOS 169,644 147,547 16,534 611 334,336 0 0 0 334,336
20 LGA 181,040 141,032 6,334 291 328,697 0 0 0 328,697
21 GFK 3,144 101,963 13,033 444 118,584 209,398 123 209,521 328,105
22 VNY 0 8,010 212,133 205 220,348 107,349 24 107,373 327,721
23 MIA 264,999 37,134 15,788 1,021 318,942 0 0 0 318,942
24 DAB 2,642 4,162 205,090 774 212,668 84,173 72 84,245 296,913
25 SEA 273,953 15,670 2,846 67 292,536 0 0 0 292,536

 UND's impact

When I saw the numbers, I assumed that UND Aerospace enrollment must be way up. I was surprised to learn from Ken Polovitz, assistant dean for student services at the aerospace school, said the numbers are up a bit, but still lower than a few years ago:

Fall enrollment of UND aviation majors
Year Aviation majors
2005 1,630
2006 1,530
2007 1,438
2008 1,414
2009 1,450

The key, though, is that, in fall 2008, those numbers included 100 students from corporate contracts and, in fall 2009, 300. Contract students are a bit different in that they arrive from companies like Air China and are on an accelerated training schedule that aren't aimed at getting a four-year degree. It's the accelerated training that's causing the big bump in flight operations.

What I didn't have room to write in my story for the paper is Ken's discussion of enrollment and its future. First, it's not as high as it used to be because:

Second, Ken expects the numbers to grow again, though possibly not for another three to five years. The economy will rebound and the airlines will hire more even as many pilots of the Baby Boomer generation will be retiring.

Both of these factors mean there will be a shortage of pilots that will cause the airlines to scramble for new pilots. The problem is there's a lag between when that happens, when students start thinking about studying aviation and when they graduate.

Posted by: Tu-Uyen on 1/13/2010 at 10:32 AM | Comments (4) | Permalink

Tags: gf and egf, gfk, higher education, und, und aerospace