Make up blog post

Jeez, what has it been, two weeks? Sorry, readers, work has just piled on higher and deeper this summer. We have a few reporters out on a special project so the rest of us have to pick up the slack, and a few reporters these days is a very large percentage of the reporting staff. Blogging is not the top priority when you have to fill the newspaper.

I don't even know where to start. Maybe I should just summarize a bunch of stuff that I've been thinking of blogging about, but had no time:

Library tax

The frank discussion at City Council about the proposed sales tax ballot measure surprised me. Council members basically said voters are gonna be pissed about taxes in November -- mostly aimed at the federal level -- and the Library Board still doesn't have all the answers to questions voters might have so chances of success are slim. The Library Board decided it better heed the council and agreed to move the ballot measure to a special election in early April, in time for National Library Week.

Covering politics, I've always thought the rule of thumb was that you want potentially tough ballot measures -- tax increases are always iffy -- in the general election rather than special elections. This is because people that hate taxes tend to hate them enough to turn out no matter what while people that want whatever the taxes would pay for tend to not feel so strong and aren't as committed to turning out for the election.

You'll remember how badly the special election went for the county when it sought home rule authority, which many felt would allow it to raise sales taxes.

The council seems to be betting that people that love the library are as willing to turn out for a special election if not more so than people that hate taxes. And that some of those book lovers are also going to be in a foul mood in November.

There was also some interesting discussion about whether voters would prefer a bigger tax burden for a shorter amount of time -- 1 percent for 2 1/2 years -- or a more moderate tax burden over a longer time -- 1/2 percent for 5 1/2 years. Either way, the tax would raise about $18 million.

I would imagine that that's a conservative estimate -- nobody wants to run out of money -- so chances are the library would probably have a bit of a surplus at the end. This would be especially true if it were built at the site of the future Park District wellness center down on 40th Avenue South. The cost of the two sites that the Library Board has been looking at -- the old Leevers supermarket and farmland next to the old Rex electronic store -- is estimated at around $1 million. So free land would free up $1 million for whatever the library needs.

Now that I think about it, if that's the case, the ballot language better not be as restrictive as the one for the Alerus Center. You'll recall the palm-face moment when the council realized that it can't use the 3/4-percent sales tax dedicated to the events center to subsidize operations thanks to the way the ballot was written. I had a copy of the proposed library ballot measure some where, but now I can't find it. Maybe the city did learn from its mistake last time.

Speaking of the Alerus Center....

Concert fund

The Alerus Center's $250,000 concert fund's pretty much a go, and the commission can commit that entire amount to any concert without going back to the council for final approval. It seemed to me that the council had wanted final approval, at least after that report from the task force formed by the mayor to fix what ails the events center. But the report was more nuanced than that:

If the commission is presented with the opportunity to sponsor a major event which is not in its budget which would require the commission to expend funds not in its budget or the commission to purchase and/or guarantee the event, before the commission could commit to sponsor or guarantee the event the commission should make a request to the City Council to have an nonbudgeted expenditure approved by the city.

So the commission can guarantee concert promoters anything up to $250,000, and if they're going to guarantee some monster concert like the Britney Spears one, which exceeded the $250,000 by $600,000, they have to ask permission.

Actually, this makes a ton of sense. If I remember right, former Council member Mike McNamara wasn't too pleased with the way the Alerus Center commission put the whole city at risk for $850,000 without actually having the money. Basically, if the concert had been a disaster, the commission would've said "oops" and gone to the city to ask for more money. Boy would that have looked dumb.

Renaissance Fund Organization

Let's fast foward to tonight. Being under pressure with all these stories has made me rather cranky and I got a lot crankier watching the finance committee play politics, or whatever the hell all that hemming and hawing was about.

So there's this $2.5 million in tax credits that the state allocated to cities with Renaissance Zones. The way it works is cities would form Renaissance fund organizations and use the credits to attract investors for projects, half of which must be in a Ren Zone and half of which can be outside. Investors would see their state tax liabilities cut by 50 percent.

The credits have been available since 2009. Fargo already got half of the $2.5 million, but Grand Forks didn't apply for it because city leaders didn't want a city-run investment fund. I'm guessing this is because private groups didn't step forward here as they did in Fargo.

Now, a private group, the Center For Innovation Foundation, has stepped forward seeking tax credits for a tech park north of the Alerus Center. And did the city greet them with open arms?

What do you think?

It's hard to show the almost insulting tone of the discussion -- you can watch the video here when the city posts it in a few days, it's agenda item No. 1 during the July 26 meeting -- but there was this long maybe-we-should-maybe-we-shouldn't back and forth while the foundation representative, Bruce Gjovig, stood there waiting to defend his proposal.

A bunch of cats playing with a mouse comes to mind. Actually, it was mostly one cat: Committee Chairman Doug Christensen. He must've been incredibly bored to let the discussion drag on for 30 minutes in what was supposed to be an hour long meeting with five other agenda items.

First, Doug wondered if, given the location Bruce is suggesting, maybe the council shouldn't think about using the tax credits to bring in a big retailer.This foreshadows what Council President Hal Gershman said later, which was that he'd heard rumors of major retailers sniffing around that area.

For years and years, city leaders and economic development experts have said the way to grow the economy is to create manufacturing or tech jobs that not only pay well, but also export goods and services outside the regional economy and importing new dollars. Nothing against retail, but retail doesn't create jobs that pay well and mostly relies on regional shoppers.

So you can imagine my confusion when someone suggests using tax credits to attract retail and rumors at that.

Hal then asked whether the tech park would be filled with private businesses that pay property taxes or university buildings that don't.

Bruce said the tech park would be private, though the university might consider putting the university system data network center there -- the same one that would've gone by the Civic Auditorium downtown if it had gotten funding last biennium -- because of the redundant power lines and fiber optic lines the tech businesses would bring.

After the discussion wandered off into some technical details, Doug returned to the point and said he's unclear why the city would fund a university project and that he wouldn't want to use tax credits on the data network center.

I'm not sure what this weird line of reasoning is about, but UND is a state entity and the state doesn't pay itself taxes. The last I checked, 50 percent or 100 percent of zero is still zero.

Bruce got a little annoyed with this and said he can assure the council the tax credits would not go to a state building. "That's a preposterous suggestion."

Doug then does one of those things that often infuriate other people that have appeared before council. He said the committee won't make any recommendation on the Renaissance fund organization until details are fleshed out so, you know, maybe Bruce can do that. He's just hearing oh so many other concerns, there's the tech park, there's retail and the city's worried about the leakage of shoppers to Fargo.

What's infuriating about this? Because it's imperious and dismissive. Go do some more work and maybe I'll let you have it and maybe I won't. I have no idea how I'll decide and I won't give you a clue.

Bruce said the investors he has lined up are very sophisticated entrepreneurs who want to create new jobs, but if the "taint of politics" were on this, they would withdraw. They would frown on political decision made on private investments. (You can see the sort of people he's talking about here.)

Doug said sarcastically that the fact that Bruce is at the council means there's already a political taint involved.

Council Vice President Eliot Glassheim, who was mostly quiet up until now, finally got fed up and said: "This, to me, is a prime example of why we're not Fargo." When people with money to invest come to the city, he said, the city ought to be nice to them. In Fargo, they don't throw up all kinds of obstacles like this, he said.

Things wrapped up pretty quickly after that outburst. Doug said he doesn't want to appear to be delaying things.

I remember thinking that this is one of those weird conflicts between the city and the university that pops up every once in a while when someone from the university comes asking for money.

The city guys think the university guys sometimes presume too much. The university is the city's most important economic engine, they know it and they expect the city to know it and help them whenever they ask.

The university guys think the city guys sometimes play politics too much and demand too much control.

As a voter and a taxpayer, I often feel very parental when I see this conflict. That is, I'm pissed off and I don't really care to find out who's right; I just want the stinking little brats to get along.

Posted by: Tu-Uyen on 7/26/2010 at 9:22 PM | Comments (6) | Permalink

Tags: alerus center, budgets and taxes, concert fund, economic development, gf and egf, gf city council, gf public library, renaissance zone

Quickies: Concert industry oh-noes

We were talking about the Alerus Center and its concert industry woes and, looky here, here's some woes for the industry, too.
A colleague passed along this story about the reliability of unmanned aircraft. We've talked about the reluctance of federal regulators to let unmanned aircraft operate in civilian space for fear of accidents. Stories like this one seem to make a case for that point of view.
Sometimes we don't appreciate how good it is to live in a country where government actually works most of the time. I stumbled on these photos recently and it doesn't seem to be made up. This is a group of residents of Vladivostok in the Russian Far East fed up with the city's failure to maintain what appears to be a main thoroughfare; they decided to fill one of the potholes themselves to shame City Hall. I like the girl directing traffic in fishnet stockings.
Kimberly Hess, the florist I talked to the other day, is getting more mileage out of my story. I got an e-mail Friday from an industry group that saw her story on this blog.

Posted by: Tu-Uyen on 7/09/2010 at 9:06 PM | Comments (5) | Permalink

Tags: alerus center, business, concert industry, frivolous links, north dakota, unmanned aircraft

An analysis of the new Alerus Center budget

Update 3:59 p.m. July 8, 2010: Looks like there's no easy way to fix the table below. The HTML coding is already extensive and changing the format to reduce the font size would exceed the capacity of AreaVoices' blog software. So, here's a link to the spreadsheet in Google Documents.

Also, I should've mentioned that the last two parts of the table are my own categories. With so many line items, I found it hard to understand the budget. So I clumped them together in like categories. They weren't a part of the budget.

Alerus Center commissioners adopted a balanced budget this morning because, uh, the Grand Forks City Council made them do it. Apparently city policy requires departments to submit balanced budgets and, anyway, the events center task force said that the "commission is strongly encouraged to stay within its annual budget and strive to create a reserve fund." (I quoted the draft report the last time I mentioned this.)

Now if the original budget with a deficit of $134,000 was realistic, what does that make this new budget? I posed the question to Executive Director Roger Swanson and he said:"It's an aggressive budget. The previous years' average was six shows a year. Is it aggressive to estimate seven? Yes it is. Does it mean we will be aggressive? Yes, we'll try to do everything that we can."

Below, you will find the spreadsheet I used for my story. First, I looked at the 2009 budget found in the commission packet from January. Then the actual 2009 spending, which is unaudited. I have an audited financial report from auditors, but it uses different terminology and I think this is good enough.

Next, I looked at the 2011 deficit budget that was approved last month and the 2011 balanced budget approved today.

Then I compared both 2011 budgets with the actual 2009 spending.

The numbers on the left most column correspond to my notes below the table, though the order is sometimes messed up for narrative reasons. Sorry it's so weird; AreaVoices refuses to save it if I change the font size because there would be too much HTML coding. I'll figure something out, hopefully soon.

**Alerus Center budget comparison**
Revenues	2009 budget	2009 actual	2011	2011 revised	% change (2009a-2011)	# change (2009a-2011)	% change (2009a-2011r)	# change (2009a-2011r)
Building rental (1)	$616,495	$398,041	$432,182	$432,182	8.6%	$34,141	8.6%	$34,141
Equipment rental (1)	$165,701	$148,979	$152,544	$152,544	2.4%	$3,565	2.4%	$3,565
Box office revenue (1a)	$35,000	$47,224	$20,095	$25,095	-57.4%	-$27,129	-46.9%	-$22,129
Part-time labor - reimbursable (1)	$303,518	$257,138	$242,285	$242,285	-5.8%	-$14,853	-5.8%	-$14,853
Utility fees (1)	$33,495	$42,327	$43,475	$43,475	2.7%	$1,148	2.7%	$1,148
Cleaning fees (1)	$12,270	$850	$2,250	$5,250	164.7%	$1,400	517.6%	$4,400
Reimbursed expenses (1)	$115,025	$144,307	$124,906	$130,991	-13.4%	-$19,401	-9.2%	-$13,316
Marketing commissions net	$0	$58	$0	$0	-100.0%	-$58	-100.0%	-$58
Facility maintenance fee (1)	$160,945	$43,563	$85,450	$102,450	96.2%	$41,887	135.2%	$58,887
Catering (2)	$914,150	$1,249,337	$1,267,185	$1,267,185	1.4%	$17,848	1.4%	$17,848
Suites food & beverage (1c)	$42,000	$28,786	$42,400	$48,400	47.3%	$13,614	68.1%	$19,614
Concessions gross (1)	$621,080	$584,176	$592,000	$643,000	1.3%	$7,824	10.1%	$58,824
Consigned food net (1)	$22,200	$26,127	$30,050	$30,050	15.0%	$3,923	15.0%	$3,923
Novelty revenue net (1)	$42,155	$43,326	$34,779	$42,156	-19.7%	-$8,547	-2.7%	-$1,170
Misc. F&B (vend, coat check) (1)	$4,450	$7,704	$5,200	$5,200	-32.5%	-$2,504	-32.5%	-$2,504
Ad/sponsor/naming sales (1b)	$561,425	$451,841	$327,100	$357,100	-27.6%	-$124,741	-21.0%	-$94,741
Suite leases (1b)	$269,667	$261,000	$222,000	$222,000	-14.9%	-$39,000	-14.9%	-$39,000
Parking (1a)	$133,500	$131,214	$79,388	$90,013	-39.5%	-$51,826	-31.4%	-$41,201
Hospitality tax (3)	$375,000	$375,000	$390,000	$390,000	4.0%	$15,000	4.0%	$15,000
Interest	$12,000	$4,381	$4,200	$4,200	-4.1%	-$181	-4.1%	-$181
Misc.	$395	$712	$315	$315	-55.8%	-$397	-55.8%	-$397
Total revenues	$4,440,471	$4,246,091	$4,097,804	$4,233,891	-3.5%	-$148,287	-0.3%	-$12,200

Expenses	2009 budget	2009 actual	2011	2011 revised	% change (2009a-2011)	# change (2009a-2011)	% change (2009a-2011r)	# change (2009a-2011)
Full-time labor (4)	$1,216,708	$1,401,402	$1,176,000	$1,176,000	-16.1%	-$225,402	-16.1%	-$225,402
Part-time labor - non event (5)	$55,239	$36,288	$53,693	$53,693	48.0%	$17,405	48.0%	$17,405
Part-time labor - event (5)	$215,510	$168,724	$178,859	$178,859	6.0%	$10,135	6.0%	$10,135
Part-time labor - concessions (5)	$74,530	$54,023	$71,040	$77,160	31.5%	$17,017	42.8%	$23,137
Part-time labor - catering (5)	$191,972	$241,065	$266,109	$259,773	10.4%	$25,044	7.8%	$18,708
Part-time labor - suites (5)	$11,340	$9,189	$11,448	$13,068	24.6%	$2,259	42.2%	$3,879
Part-time labor - bars (5)	$39,265	$39,843	$35,520	$38,580	-10.8%	-$4,323	-3.2%	-$1,263
Part-time labor - novelty (5)	$10,539	$8,352	$8,695	$10,539	4.1%	$343	26.2%	$2,187
Part-time labor - reimbursable (5)	$252,932	$310,254	$201,904	$201,904	-34.9%	-$108,350	-34.9%	-$108,350
Reimbursed expenses (6)	$109,538	$362,545	$53,888	$53,888	-85.1%	-$308,657	-85.1%	-$308,657
Postage	$9,120	$7,389	$9,830	$7,030	33.0%	$2,441	-4.9%	-$359
Office supplies	$10,200	$7,341	$10,298	$10,298	40.3%	$2,957	40.3%	$2,957
Printing	$7,085	$3,780	$9,808	$9,808	159.4%	$6,028	159.4%	$6,028
Dues/subscriptions	$9,785	$9,760	$12,695	$12,695	30.1%	$2,935	30.1%	$2,935
Professional services	$9,709	$11,817	$10,865	$10,865	-8.1%	-$952	-8.1%	-$952
Telephone	$34,500	$31,156	$37,200	$37,200	19.4%	$6,044	19.4%	$6,044
Travel/training	$46,550	$23,150	$30,100	$24,300	30.0%	$6,951	5.0%	$1,151
Insurance	$195,120	$170,520	$157,328	$157,328	-7.7%	-$13,192	-7.7%	-$13,192
Office equipment/maintenance	$12,570	$10,951	$11,550	$11,550	5.5%	$599	5.5%	$599
Marketing/advertising (7)	$227,036	$156,571	$148,788	$135,522	-5.0%	-$7,783	-13.4%	-$21,049
Uniforms	$11,000	$10,961	$5,450	$5,450	-50.3%	-$5,511	-50.3%	-$5,511
Concession product (8)	$161,481	$148,663	$149,480	$162,358	0.5%	$817	9.2%	$13,695
Catering product (8)	$255,962	$327,495	$345,308	$345,308	5.4%	$17,813	5.4%	$17,813
Suite product (8)	$12,600	$7,573	$12,402	$14,157	63.8%	$4,829	86.9%	$6,584
F&B supplies & repair (8)	$74,918	$97,012	$95,079	$97,929	-2.0%	-$1,933	0.9%	$917
Building repairs & maintenance (9a)	$90,100	$48,998	$92,900	$92,900	89.6%	$43,902	89.6%	$43,902
Emergency repair contingency (9)	$10,000	$0	$10,000	$10,000	--	$10,000	--	$10,000
Equipment repair/expense (9)	$15,900	$6,188	$16,500	$16,500	166.6%	$10,312	166.6%	$10,312
Vehicle leases	$10,660	$7,458	$7,200	$7,200	-3.5%	-$258	-3.5%	-$258
Equipment rental	$11,600	$0	$5,600	$5,600	--	$5,600	--	$5,600
Maintenance contracts (9)	$80,135	$70,847	$98,740	$98,740	39.4%	$27,893	39.4%	$27,893
General supplies	$7,425	$1,206	$7,600	$7,600	530.3%	$6,394	530.3%	$6,394
Janitorial supplies	$43,600	$28,262	$45,400	$45,400	60.6%	$17,138	60.6%	$17,138
Snow removal (9)	$125,475	$84,740	$117,010	$117,010	38.1%	$32,270	38.1%	$32,270
Trash removal (10)	$11,720	$11,136	$12,180	$12,180	9.4%	$1,044	9.4%	$1,044
Electricity (10)	$265,792	$218,514	$266,083	$266,083	21.8%	$47,569	21.8%	$47,569
Gas/heating (10)	$170,031	$103,090	$167,706	$167,706	62.7%	$64,616	62.7%	$64,616
Water (1)	$27,750	$21,607	$30,000	$30,000	38.8%	$8,393	38.8%	$8,393
Cable (10)	$4,080	$3,825	$4,560	$4,560	19.2%	$735	19.2%	$735
IS repair & maintenance (9)	$25,700	$16,581	$25,700	$25,700	55.0%	$9,119	55.0%	$9,119
Fuel	$40,325	$15,074	$21,200	$21,200	40.6%	$6,126	40.6%	$6,126
Grounds maintenance (9)	$18,100	$14,371	$25,250	$25,250	75.7%	$10,879	75.7%	$10,879
Management fee (11)	$182,947	$162,958	$175,000	$175,000	7.4%	$12,042	7.4%	$12,042
Total expenses	$4,396,549	$4,470,681	$4,231,966	$4,233,891	-5.3%	-$238,715	-5.3%	-$236,790

Revenues	2009 budget	2009 actual	2011	2011 revised	% change (2009a-2011)	# change (2009a-2011)	% change (2009a-2011)	# change (2009a-2011r)
Building rental and other event related fees (1)	$1,442,449	$1,082,487	$1,103,187	$1,134,272	1.9%	$20,700	1.9%	$51,785
Catering (2)	$914,150	$1,249,337	$1,267,185	$1,267,185	1.4%	$17,848	1.4%	$17,848
Concession and other extra event revenue (1)	$865,385	$821,333	$783,817	$858,819	-4.6%	-$37,516	-4.6%	$37,486
Ads, sponsorship, leases (1b)	$831,092	$712,841	$549,100	$579,100	-23.0%	-$163,741	-23.0%	-$133,741
Hospitality tax (3)	$375,000	$375,000	$390,000	$390,000	4.0%	$15,000	4.0%	$15,000
Other	$12,395	$5,093	$4,515	$4,515	-11.3%	-$578	-11.3%	-$578
Total revenues	$4,440,471	$4,246,091	$4,097,804	$4,233,891	-3.5%	-$148,287	-3.5%	-$12,200

Expenses	2009 budget	2009 actual	2011	2011 revised	% change (2009a-2011)	# change (2009a-2011)	% change (2009a-2011)	# change (2009a-2011r)
Full-time (4)	$1,216,708	$1,401,402	$1,176,000	$1,176,000	-16.1%	-$225,402	-16.1%	-$225,402
Part-time and reimbursed expenses (5b)	$960,865	$1,230,283	$881,156	$887,464	-28.4%	-$349,127	-28.4%	-$342,819
Products (8)	$430,043	$483,731	$507,190	$521,823	4.8%	$23,459	4.8%	$38,092
Marketing/advertising (7)	$227,036	$156,571	$148,788	$135,522	-5.0%	-$7,783	-5.0%	-$21,049
Repair and maintenance (9)	$491,353	$368,206	$534,179	$537,029	45.1%	$165,973	45.1%	$168,823
Utilities and fuel (10)	$519,698	$373,246	$501,729	$501,729	34.4%	$128,483	34.4%	$128,483
Management fee (11)	$182,947	$162,958	$175,000	$175,000	7.4%	$12,042	7.4%	$12,042
Other	$367,899	$294,283	$307,924	$299,324	4.6%	$13,641	4.6%	$5,041
Total expenses	$4,396,549	$4,470,681	$4,231,966	$4,233,891	-5.3%	-$238,715	-5.3%	-$236,790

Notes:

1. The number of major concerts and other arena events are expected to drop next year simply because, as I mentioned in the previous Alerus Center budget post, the local market has apparently bottomed out. You can see the effect of this on revenue. (By the way, anything reimbursable is revenue and expenses for services provided during events.)

I don't have the number of arena events for 2009, but there probably were less than six.The original 2011 budget called for two mid-sized concerts. The revised 2011 budget calls for seven, two at 5,000 attendance, two at 4,000 and one at 3,500.

The reason it's not all bad news is because the convention side is expected to remain steady or get a little better.

1a. A good indicator of the dearth of events is the precipitous decline in box office revenue as well as parking revenue.

1b. Another good indicator is where revenue from ads, sponsorship and suite leases are going. Advertisers want more eyeballs from arena events and suite holders want more arena events to enjoy. Fewer events mean the Alerus Center will lose some of these customers.

One thing worth noting is the $30,000 increase in ads and sponsorship that was tacked on in the revised 2011 budget. The assumption is the Alerus Center could work with Newman Signs to sell ads on its electronic reader boards.

This is a highly speculative item that depends mostly on what the City Council does.

There's a law that caps the number of electronic billboards because city leaders fear a wave of garish flashy-thingys all over town. Council member Curt Kreun, who's also on the Alerus Center commission, spent a lot of time working with those that want to curb reader boards and businesses that want to install more reader boards.

The law creates an exemption for electronic reader boards used by private businesses to advertise their own goods and services. That exemption also extends to sponsors of certain businesses, such as hockey arenas and events centers.

The commission is aware that it could hand out sponsorships for minimal costs and then sell ads to the new "sponsors." Commissioners, however, said they didn't want to violate the spirit of the law, which is clearly meant to prevent business reader boards from being turned into billboards.

Two council members who were at today's meeting -- Hal Gershman and Doug Christensen -- actually encouraged the events center to do that because they felt that any business could do the same and exploit the exemption. They said they'd work to change the law so that the events center wouldn't have to offer sponsorships to sell ads.

Curt said he just didn't think it was worth it to open up that can of worms again for $30,000.

I kind of think he has the better part of the argument. Doing what Hal and Doug want would essentially unravel the law or water it down so much that it doesn't mean anything anymore. Like the law or not, I think to undo a law for the sake of a single entity sets a bad precedent.

1c. What's puzzling is even as suite leases go down, suite food and beverage are expected to go up. I have no idea what's going on and forgot to ask Roger when I was interviewing him. Either these suiteholders are getting hungrier and thirstier or the Alerus Center is charging them more, which wouldn't be such a good way to keep them around.

2. Catering remains strong though not as strong as I heard previously. Roger said conventions run in cycles and the events center can't expect big increases every year. As I've noted before, catering has become a dominant source of revenue for the Alerus Center. In 2009, it made up 29 percent of revenue. Officials had only expected it to make up 21 percent.

3. The other reliable and growing source of revenue is the 1/4-percent hospitality tax, which serves as a built-in subsidy for the building's operations. Some task force members had wanted the Alerus Center to not touch the subsidy at all and save it for a rainy day, sadly, a completely unrealistic expectation.

4. Even in the original 2011 budget there had been a serious attempt at cutting costs. Full-time labor costs were expected to drop 16 percent. Roger said he did some layoffs, cut some positions and consolidated others to reflect the lack of activity on the arena side. If you're on the arena side and your day isn't full, he wants you helping on the convention side.

5. There's a lot of flux in the part-time labor categories, which Roger said was because jobs were reclassified. Some staff that were previously seen as event-related staff were made shifted to what basically is your standard part-time support staff. For example, someone who cleans up the suites after an arena event wouldn't be consider event staff, but cleaning staff.

5b. But you can see that, over all, part time staff is down significantly. Between the original 2011 budget and the revised budget there's some increases because of the arena events that were added to balance the budget.

6. You can see how reimbursed expenses also dropped as a result of fewer arena events. I'm not sure why they didn't go up the way reimbursed expenses on the revenue side did.

7. Marketing took a slight hit in the original 2011 budget, but it took a blow to the gut in the revised budget. I asked Roger if this was such a good idea. If you want more business, usually you don't cut your marketing.

He said that the additional arena events would keep the Alerus Center brand name out there. Usually event promoters pay for marketing and they'll have to at least mention the venue, he said, so that's pretty good marketing for no cost.

Either I don't understand what he said or he's messing with me. I really can't believe that having your name on the band schedule or the concert flyer, which naturally focuses on the band, not its venue, is anywhere close to a replacement for ads in industry publications.

8. On the expenses side, you also see the impact of stronger catering business and the puzzling strength of suite food and beverage.

9. The massive increase in repair and maintenance is attributable, in part, to the fact that I compared the 2011 budget with the actual 2009 spending. You always have to budget more for these sorts of things in case something breaks down unexpectedly, but usually everything turns out OK so the amount you actually spend is less.

What I don't understand, and, again, forgot to ask Roger, is why things like the maintenance contract went up so much.

9a. Building repair and maintenance is a special category that the Alerus Center commission discussed this morning. Doug said some of these repairs, provided they're big enough, could qualify as "capital improvement," which would then qualify them for funding from the 3/4-percent sales tax. The sales tax can only be used to pay off the debt on the building or capital improvements, meaning building improvements.

Curt said the commission would appreciate it if Doug's finance committee could find a way to reduce the expenses that way.

10. As usual, utilities and energy costs continue to go up, though, again, the difference between the budgeted amount and the actual amount is likely to be very different. The actual amount, in practice, has been lower.

Roger said the events center has undertaken cost-cutting measures, such as turning off the HVAC -- heating, venting, air conditioning -- system off at night.

11. The management fee is fixed at $175,000 under the new contract, which passed muster with the commission today and is going to the council next. For details, see my last post on the Alerus Center.

Posted by: Tu-Uyen on 7/07/2010 at 1:48 PM | Comments (10) | Permalink

Tags: alerus center, budgets and taxes, gf and egf, gf city hall, venuworks

The DIY florist

The City Beat went for the soft news this weekend, interviewing a new Fargo florist who uses in her arrangements native grasses and wild flowers in the Halstad, Minn., where she lives.

I heard about Kimberly Hess from Dave Scheer, the fella that's opening the Thai restaurant in East Grand Forks sometime in August. Part of the reason he pushed back his opening date was so he can open the Prairie Petals flower shop with her.

When he told me that she spends a lot of time in the ditches picking wild flowers, it brought joy to my nature-loving heart. I arranged an interview and booked down to Halstad with photographer Sarah Kolberg.

Kimberly, who's busy getting the shop open, was kind enough to spend a couple of hours with us, giving us a tour of her "garden" and giving us some extremely useful tips.

(For some great tips, skip to the bottom of this post.)

Her garden, as you'll have read in my story, includes the various ditches in rural Halstad, a small backyard garden and 150 acres of farmland replanted with native flora around 20 years ago. To walk through those tall grasses is like walking back in time into the primeval prairie. But, to the untrained eye, it's just a tangle of leaves and stalks and the occasional flower, not exactly the ideal flower garden.

We started our tour in her backyard garden, where she brought our attention to the curly dock, essentially a weed, that she's growing and some onions that had gone to flower. Nearby is a pile of twigs and branches that she collected just because she liked the way they look.

Not all the flowers and plants she uses are wild; some are cultivated, she said.(Some aren't even native. I've just now noticed that the curly dock is actually from Europe.)

I liked her flexible approach to flower arrangement: If it looks nice, who cares what it is?

Next, we drove out into the 150 acres in her Suburban. With all the tall grass surrounding us, it felt like we were in a Range Rover on the African savanna; I half expected to see a lion lurking about.

Kimberly was clearly in her element, playing tour guide and teacher as she pointed out various plants, some in bloom, some soon to bloom. There's hemlock, sedge, milkweed, some plant with delicate little flowers and spiky leaves -- she doesn't know what it is -- lead plants and anemone.

The milkweed, when you cut it, oozes a white fluid that looks like Elmer's glue. Kimberly said you have to cauterize it with a flame right away or it'll make a mess in the vase. The smell of the blossoms, like lavender, makes it worth the work.

We stopped in her house to get some water -- it's ground water and tastes a bit salty -- and I realized I understood where she was coming from. In the living room is the cooling component of a walk-in flower cooler that had been tossed out by some super market. It runs on cold water, presumably from the ground. By the kitchen is a floor to ceiling pot and pan rack with rotating shelves made out of welded scrap metal. Next to the door is a coat rack also out of welded scrap metal.

Though I'm a little too clumsy and lazy to fully embrace the do-it-yourself culture, I appreciate it enough that I can recognize a kindred spirit. Later, I asked her why she had so many home-made things and picked flowers from ditches. Did it come out of some philosophy, as I thought?

She said that she'd had a tough upbringing and, in young womanhood, embraced consumer culture because she assumed that people were happier than her because they had stuff that she didn't have. It didn't turn out like that, of course, and she abandoned that life for the present one.

I sympathize because I can still remember growing up in Vietnam in the early 1980s. All of us were poor, but some of us were very poor. I, at least, had a few toys sent from relatives abroad. Most of the kids I knew weren't so lucky. They were crafty, though, and made toys out of various pieces of junk, cigarette cartons and aluminum cans. I always envied them.

Wild flower arrangements in vases made of Mason jars, like the dozens in Kimberly's basement, is surely the ultimate in DIY.

(By the way, Kimberly's DIY creds extend to gardening and sewing, and she's been recognized for her invention, a bag for growing plants in confined spaces.

Modifying the DIY ethos is a sort of local purchasing ethos that seeks to keep the supply chain at the local level to avoid the environmental costs of long-distance transportation. Both Kimberly and Dave Scheer mentioned this in my chats with them.

Next, Kimberly took us on a tour of the ditches of Norman County. I was surprised to see far more flowers and plant varieties than I'd ever noticed while driving by similar ditches. It's hard to see them even from a bicycle.

In one ditch off of U.S. Highway 75, we found prairie lilies growing on the other side behind a tall row of cattails. No wonder we didn't see them from the road. Kimberly noted a tiny little plant that looked to me like just some squat green bunch of leaves; she said it's an endangered kind of lily that she hopes to grow in her garden and return to the ditch.

We go from one ditch to another before stopping at one by a little bridge off of County Highway 18. There's a patch of purple prairie clovers that Kimberly had explored earlier. Again, it wasn't so obvious from the road, but, down in the ditch there must've been four or five kinds of flowers. In my notes, I wrote down a prairie rose, black-eyed susans and purple and white prairie clovers. Kimberly grabbed a bunch and assembled a boutonniere, the kind a groomsman would wear. Yeah, I'd wear it.

When we got back to the farm, we got a flower arranging demonstration from Kimberly who assembled two arrangements, one of which you see to the left (My cell phone camera doesn't do it justice.).

It was a fascinating performance, like watching a painter at work. Her flower shears and her hands are the paint brushes, the buckets of flowers her palette and the Mason jars her canvas.

She worked quickly, grabbing flowers and other plants, stripping their lower ends of leaves and arranging and rearranging them. Later, she'd say that, if she has a style, it's that she likes to do flat arrangements that rise up dramatically, kind of like a tree on the savanna. I can see some of that in the arrangement to the left.

It's a mix of native flora -- the black-eyed susan and the horsetails -- cultivated flora -- the leaves and possibly the lilies -- and something that I can't identify -- the purple-white flowers. And, yes, that's a Mason jar.

All in all, it was just about the most satisfying assignment I've had in months because Kimberly gave out tricks of the trade so freely. Here are a few things I picked up:

On flower arranging

There are three elements to your standard flower arrangement.

The filler: Some sort of backdrop for the flowers. Leafy plants, such as ferns, or tiny flowers, such as baby's breath, are commonly used in the industry.
The main actor: The focal point of the arrangement and the most prominent flower.
Two supporting actors: Other flowers or leafy plants.

Here's a link with a bunch of flower arrangement styles, some more corny than the others. I think those pictures date back to the early 1980s.

On keeping flowers fresh

Kimberly said keeping the water as clean as possible is the most important thing.

Plants, like people, suffer if there are too many microbes in the water. This is why she trims the parts that will be in the water of all leaves, because the leaves decay fastest.

She uses a two pronged approach to fighting microbial growth.

The first is to use a bleach solution in lieu of pure water. The formula is 1 gallon of water to 1 tablespoon bleach and two tablespoons sugar.

The second is to spray the plant stems every two or three days to get rid of that film of microbes.

This should keep those plants fresh for two to three weeks.

On native flora

I've always wanted to grow wild flowers in my planters because I'm kind of a DIY snob and I think that's cooler than a bunch of store-bought perennials. The store-bought wild flower seed packages haven't given very satisfying results, consisting entirely of dinky little flowers of rather bland coloring.

The day trip with Kimberly gave me a lot of interesting ideas and I think it might be fun to transplant some native flora that I find in the ditches. Here's a list of the stuff we encountered, along with links for more information. There's a terrific reference book called Minnesota Wildflowers that's now gone online. The USDA also offers a nice guide.

If you go exploring yourself, realize that different ditches have different growing conditions so just because you don't see something in one doesn't mean there isn't anything interesting in another. Kimberly noticed that north-south ditches tend to differe markedly from east-west ditches, which makes sense because of the differing sunlight.

**Wildflowers of rural Halstad**
Plant (scientific name)	Notes	USDA ref.	Minn. Wildflowers ref.
Black-eyed susan (Rudbeckia hirta)	These make great main actors because of their size and bright colors.	Link	Link
Purple prairie clover (Dalea purpurea)	--	Link	Link
White prairie clover (Dalea candida)	--	Link	Link
Curly dock (Rumex crispus)	This sucker's a noxious weed. Kimberly likes it because it turns a salmon orange in the fall.	Link	Link
Hoary Vervain (Verbena stricta)	--	Link	Link
Common Tansy (Tanacetum vulgare)	--	Link	Link
Spotted water hemlock (Cicuta maculata)	The flowers of the hemlock are tiny, white clusters and make reasonable substitutes for Queen Anne's lace. It'd make a good filler.	Link	Link
Pennsylvania sedge (Carex pensylvanica)	--	Link	Link
Baby's breath (Gypsophila paniculata)	The classic filler.	Link	--
Common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca)	These plants ooze a white fluid and have to be cauterized after being cut or they'll mess up the water in the vase. The pinkish florets smell like lavenders.	Link	Link
Lead plant (Amorpha canescens)	The regularly-spaced leaves on these plants would make a good filler, though they also have flowers.	Link	Link
Canada anemone (Anemone canadensis)	The white flowers smell like honey.	Link	Link
Scouringrush horsetail (Equisetum hyemale)	Another nice filler.	Link	--
Spotted knapweed (Centaurea biebersteinii)	Even before they bloom, these plants have interesting buds that look like pineapples or artichokes.	Link	Link
Wild bergamot (Monarda fistulosa)	--	Link	Link

Posted by: Tu-Uyen on 7/06/2010 at 8:53 PM | Comments (5) | Permalink

Tags: business, halstad, minnesota

Some ideas for getting more docs for North Dakota

If you're not sick of reading about rural health care yet, here's a list of suggestions from Dr. Richard Johnson, the Devils Lake radiologist who inspired the rural health care story. I found the list, dated April 15, while cleaning out my desk and thought it worth repeating here since some of the ideas are either being considered, been considered or are already in effect in some form.

Here's his list, verbatim, with my comments in brackets.

Med students/school outreach to high school (middle school) science departments (monthly) for communities in North Dakota. [He's well aware of the scrubs camps that introduce students to a health care environment, but it appears he thinks more outreach is needed.]

Admission committee selection demographics ---- re-examine geography, grades, age, experience commitment of applicants. [Med school dean Joshua Wynne said he is thinking of something like affirmative action for rural students, as mentioned in the previous post.]

Conditions of admission to School of Medicine .... Paybacks in service to to the state of North Dakota.

Tuition waivers/grants [This is now in effect with the RuralMed program, which offers free tuition in exchange for five years of service in a rural area. The goal, though, is to select individuals who would likely stay much longer than that. Notice that this combines nicely with No. 3.]

Two-year M.D. program-Nurse Practitioners/Physician Assistants with 5 years experience and roots (home/husband/family) in a rural community .... 2 per year. [I mentioned this in the previous post, but I see Dr. Johnson's got it more fleshed out here. I'm not sure how you can use the "roots" requirement; it seems legally sketchy. But length of service in a rural community could be a good substitute.]

UND senior med student/resident clinics on Native American Reservations ... win, win.

Examine INMED .... closely with regards to serving North Dakota. [Indians into Medicine is a well-regarded program at UND. Here He's saying it could have some requirement to serve on reservations in the state.]

Allocated admission slots .... 2 students each quarter of the state .... per year.

1 from towns with less than 10,000 .... 1 from towns less than 5,000. [This goes beyond just affirmative action, but goes into quotas. The RuralMed program has eight slots and Dr. Wynne's argued that that's a kind of quota, though I'm not sure the rural residency requirements are spelled out explicitly like this.]

Let's make it work!!

Posted by: Tu-Uyen on 7/01/2010 at 10:34 PM | Comments (0) | Permalink

Tags: health care, higher education, legislature, north dakota, population decline, und, und school of medicine

Rural health care mania

A few months ago, the City Beat was at UND to hear Dr. Ellen Cosgrove, one of the finalists for med school dean. I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Richard Johnson, a radiologist from Devils Lake, who went to the same meeting to raise heck about the university not producing as many doctors for rural areas to address the growing shortage.

When I went to introduce myself to him after the meeting, he was chatting with a UND faculty member, whose name I didn't write down. They were having a very animated discussion about the shortage, which is what eventually inspired me to write the story about the issue last week.

Dr. Johnson laid out a compelling scenario, which he has seen as a doctor in Devils Lake.

Many of the doctors are older and close to retirement while many are foreigners who will probably leave once their work visas allow it. It's even worse in the smaller towns around where there aren't even doctors. Nurse practitioners are doing the jobs of doctors and just getting doctors to sign off on their work. Some want to become doctors but it's been hard to get into the state med school at UND.

If only there was a way to get young doctors who will stay, Dr. Johnson said.

The faculty member said it's not just Devils Lake.

It's hard to get young doctors in Grand Forks, too. His neighbor, a surgeon, was speaking to some sort of medical advisory board and decided to illustrate the problem actually existed. The neighbor called up Altru and asked for an appointment to get an insurance checkup. Three months, he was told. He said the insurance company will pay for everything and bargained it down to a month. A whole month!

The faculty member said Dr. Johnson that he's heard some frank talk from students and it doesn't involve going back home and serving their community at all. "Let's talk (expletive). It's about the shortest hours and the highest pay."

What he means is the tendency of med school students to go into specialty fields, oncology, say, where the pay is higher and the hours are regular. Nobody needs an oncologist at 8 a.m. on a Sunday. North Dakota, however, doesn't have a shortage of on oncologists. It has a shortage of what are known in the profession as "primary care physicians," known to the layman as your pediatricians and family doctors.

That conversation really opened my eyes to the problem.

In fact, not long after that, I had to get a medical check up because I was in line to fly with the Thunderbirds -- That didn't work out, unfortunately. -- and was given an estimated waiting period by Altru that would be way longer than the Air Force was willing to wait. Such a wait was not necessary the last time I called Altru for a check up, maybe six or seven years ago.

Fortunately, Altru referred me to its Family Medicine Residency at UND, which got me in the following week.

Writing the story took a lot of research and I ended up talking to quite a few people, including Dr. Johnson. Unfortunately, I didn't have the space that would've done the story real justice. This was self-imposed because if I wrote as much as I wanted to, everyone would be bored.

On this blog, of course, I have a weird group of readers who are willing to put up with that sort of thing, so thank you and allow me to dump the content of my notebooks on you.

The problem from 20,000 feet

The shortage of doctors had been on my radar screen since at least January 2009, when Dr. Joshua Wynne, the then-interim dean and the now-med school dean, told the Legislature about the devastating demographic trends that threaten to turn North Dakota into the land of the super-elderly always in need of medical care, but unable to get enough of it from the available supply of doctors.

But, as Dr. Johnson's tone suggested, the shortage as it exists is already pretty bad.

Before I get to my interview with him, let me give you the 20,000 feet view. I was clued in to something called Health Professional Shortage Area by Aaron Ortiz, a recruiter of doctors working at UND's Center for Rural Health -- which I failed to mention even once in my story because writing was such a struggle.

What makes an area an HPSA is pretty complex -- You can read the center's explanation here. -- but suffice to say that one definition is a geographic area in which there are fewer than one doctor per 3,500 residents. It could be a whole county or a natural population made up of portions of many counties.

Below are some links that helped me visualize these HPSAs:

You can see on this map, also from the center, all the HPSAs in North Dakota. I ignored the yellow areas that are HPSAs that apply only to health care that's affordable to the poor. That's a entirely different problem that affects only one population group and I didn't have time to delve into it.
For a comparison, see this map of health profession shortage areas for primary care physicians around the country (Check out the main map page for the Rural Assistance Center, run by the Center for Rural Health. These guys are all over this issue.). Again, I ignored the yellow areas. You'll notice that the geographical HPSAs make up a very large proportion of North Dakota's land area compared to many states. Mountain states appear to suffer the most.
I looked for a map of population density to see if there are any correlations and, yes, sparsely populated areas -- rural areas -- tend to have shortages. Not an earth shattering conclusion, but I had to see because I was surprised there were so many HPSAs in California. Apparently that state's an exception.
What the maps don't tell you is the extent of the shortage, which vary from HPSA to HPSA. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services offer a more specific list of HPSAs and their scores from 0 to 25, with 25 being a really, really bad shortage.
I even used that to make a rough, color-coded map of the HPSAs and their scores.

The problem at ground level

To understand what the situation looks like on the ground, I naturally called Dr. Johnson.

Now, there's something I have to tell you about Dr. Johnson that you might not sense from the interview: He's crazy passionate. He has the same zeal as a Tea Party activist, and he's mad as heck, too, except his focus is on health care. He is like a thorn on the side of Dr. Wynne, whom he is pushing like mad to make rural health care the med school's No. 1 issue. So I like him, but sometimes there's a slight bit of rhetorical excess.

Dr. Johnson started out by talking about all these foreign-born doctors in Devils Lake and how he's scared they won't be able to feel at home there and, eventually, leave. "We spent this week interviewing lady from Pakistan. Her husband's a banker. Is he going to find a job here? The weekend before was a fellow from Nigeria. The last doctor was a young single woman from Uganda. Do you think she's going to make a life here in Devils Lake?"

He said they have temporary work visas that require them to serve in an underserved area for three years, but, after that, they can go wherever they want and they tend to. He called them the "best and the brightest" that their nations have to offer, but they wouldn't want to stay here. "They're great doctors. The problem is this is not their culture. The climate here is not for them."

Of the native-born doctors in Devils Lake, many are on the verge of retiring, according to Dr. Johnson. There are 11 docs at Altru's Lake Region clinic and six are older than 60.

The shortage has gotten so bad that Dr. Johnson, who's a radiologist, has started playing primary care physician so patients can get the referrals to specialists they need.

He said I should talk to Elonda Nord who runs Altru's Lake Region clinic.

So I did.

We talked first about recruitment and I was surprised to learn that the clinic is "continually recruiting," as in all the time. There are 11 doctors, six that are 60 and older and four that are from overseas, she said (I know that only adds up to 10; obviously the remaining doctor doesn't fit in those categories.). However, the four foreign-born doctors are all citizens and some have been in the area for a long time, at least 1980 in one case.

Still, Elonda said, most of the foreign-born doctors that come are as Dr. Johnson described, staying only long enough to fulfill their visa requirements.

I asked her about the suggestion that doctors aren't accepting new patients and she said that this is true of the older doctors, who have full loads. The younger doctors do take on new patients, she said, but it can take a while to get an appointment. The clinic tries to never turn people away, she said.

This is why the clinic is always recruiting. The goal, she said, is to increase staff to 15 or 16 doctors, including 2 to 3 more in family practice and 2 to 3 more in internal medicine.

Continous recruitment is apparently the norm among the state's critical access hospitals, those in the HPSAs. According to recruiter Aaron Ortiz, 23 of the 36 hospitals he works with are always looking for new people.

Now Devils Lake is a pretty decent-sized town compared to a lot of other places in North Dakota. What's it like in the smaller towns?

At MeritCare's Mayville (N.D.) Union Hospital and Clinic they're down to two doctors and two nurse practitioners from three doctors and two nurse practitioners. Nurse practitioners are experienced nurses who fill in for doctors, but, as Dr. Johnson mentioned to me, they have less training. So as good as they are, they're not a real substitute.

Doris Vigen, the director of nursing, said all of them stay super busy at the clinic and in area nursing homes. This reminded me of Dr. Johnson's lament that doctors are so busy in these small towns that it's a challenge for them to find time for a vacation, which becomes a deterrent for anyone thinking about going into practice there.

The solutions

The remedy for this shortage isn't exactly a mystery. As Dr. Johnson noted to me, "The literature is replete with solutions." One example, he said is the University of Minnesota-Duluth, which sends 65 percent of its med school grads to the state's small towns. How? The dean told him the school only takes students from towns of 20,000 or less. "What you put in is what you get out" is what Dr. Johnson said he was told.

So how about that Joshua Wynne?

I went to talk to the med school dean about that and other solutions. Let me summarize three basic approaches to solving the doctor shortage that Dr. Wynne ennumerated for me:

Retain the doctors you're educating.
Import new ones.
Increase the number of doctors you can educate. You'll hear terms like "broaden the pipeline" or "grow your own" related to this approach.

The first is most important because it's the most cost effective. The state is already spending money to educate doctors, it just has to persuade them to stay. Not that UND's been slacking. There's a terrific and relatively recent study in Academic Medicine showing that it's among the top in the nation in placing its grads in rural areas.

The second is helpful but very expensive. Turnover is higher whether you're talking about doctors from Pakistan or from San Francisco. Those folks tend not to want to stay in North Dakota. And, for foreign-born doctors, there are legal fees associated with their visas. So this is a stop-gap measure at best.

The third is important but expensive. As you've read, Dr. Wynne wants a massive budget increase to hire more faculty and add a new building. On the other hand, a lot of universities around the nation are already doing this so there is a threat of a glut down the road. Of course, as the Academic Medicine story says, only a small number of med schools focus on rural health care.

So let's talk specifics.

Retain the doctors you're educating

UND's approach in this regard is all encompassing.

It starts all the way in middle school or even grade school. "Scrubs camps," one of which I visited in Mayville, introduce children and teens from rural areas to the medical profession in the hope that a few of them will be inspired to go into medicine.
When the students are applying to med school, the fact that they're from rural areas do help. One in four at the med school are from towns of less than 2,500 residents, which Dr. Wynne said isn't bad.

Being the state's only med school means it can't take in only rural students the way Duluth does, he said, but it can do something like an affirmative action program. The school is evaluating the admission process, he said.

Recently the med school, with state funding, started the RuralMed program to make it more affordable for rural students to attend med school. Basically, it's the Northern Exposure plan where the state pays for the education and the students promise to practice medicine in rural areas. I'm not 100 percent sure how they pick who gets the money, but I think there has to be some reasonable certainty that the students will stick around, say if they're from a rural area.
In med school, students may join a family medicine interest group where they can meet with doctors that have already taken that route. Research shows that those in family medicine are more likely to serve in rural areas.
They can get placement in rural areas as interns where they focus on specific patients and all the medical issues they face, just as family doctors do, rather than specialize in one disease or another. Again, research lights the way. Familiarity increases comfort.
Once they graduate, the med school tries to remove barriers to serving in rural areas. I didn't have time to get him to explain what he means by this, but I do know that some rural clinics can't afford to keep residencies open.
When the new doctors are done with their residency, the university is considering a program to provide substitute docs so the new docs can take vacations. Doctors serving in underserved areas, as I mentioned above, can be very, very busy because so many depend on them.

After hearing all this, I asked if he wasn't taking a rather soft approach to the shortage. I mean if the problem is as dire as it sounds, why isn't he talking about goals or quotas?

Dr. Wynne noted that RuralMed alone would put eight of 55 annual med school graduates in a rural setting.

Of course, that's just 15 percent of the graduating class.

"This can't be an all or none phenomenon," Dr. Wynne said. The focus on primary care and family medicine is great, but the state is short on specialists as well, he said. Unlike Minnesota, North Dakota has but one med school, which can't afford to play only one role, he said.

Another question I remember asking, but isn't reflected in my notes is: Why not offer a program to help nurses get their medical degree?

Maybe it was Dr. Johnson that mentioned this or maybe I just made it up on my own, but it seemed reasonable because many of these nurses have been serving in rural communities for a very long time. The ones I met in Mayville have been there for years and years and are well-rooted in the community. Why not give them free tuition like the RuralMed students? They've already more than demonstrated their commitment to rural medicine.

I don't think Dr. Wynne really had much to say about this to me, but Dr. Johnson said Dr. Wynne told him doing so would be a challenge because accreditation would be a nightmare.

Import new ones.

To talk about recruiting new doctors, I talked to Aaron Ortiz, who, as I mentioned before, is a UND employee who helps rural health care providers statewide with recruitment.

"One of the biggest issues we constantly hear is lifestyle," he told me. Candidates often ask about big city amenities or jobs available for spouses, he said.

The most ideal candidates are from North Dakota who know the quality of life the state offers, he said, it's even better if they have relatives in the community where they're recruited to.

The next best candidates are from similarly rural places, such as Wyoming, he said.

The worst are those from the East or West coasts or from abroad who aren't familiar with rural living, he said, and, typically, it's better to just go for the ones that are doing their residencies in North Dakota.

"What we're trying to do is not put square pegs into a round hole," he said.

"Sometimes just hearing that we're calling from North Dakota, they're not interested," said Elonda Nord, the Lake Region clinic administrator. "I never try to sugarcoat the weather. Yes it's cold here, two to three months it's really cold."

Still, sometimes outsiders do fall in love with North Dakota, Aaron said, such as Dr. Rup Nagala (and also his wife, Dr. Vani Nagala) who moved to Oakes, N.D., in 1982 and never left.

One way to retain foreign-born doctors, Aaron said, is for the community to work hard at integrating into the social fabric, inviting them to events and making sure they're not always going home alone after work.

Elonda said her experience with the foreign-born doctors that choose to stay in Devils Lake is they have very good friends in the community and go home to visit family fairly regularly.

Conscious of the desire of some to at least live in a city rather than in a small town, I asked Aaron if it wasn't possible to recruit a doctor who would commute from a bigger city.

He said he's seen that done, such as the case of two doctors commuting to Elgin, N.D., from Bismarck (which Google Maps says is an 87-mile drive each way.). But, he said, those doctors sometimes find it hard to attract patients put off by the fact that they don't live in the community.

Increase the number of doctors you can educate

The problem with recruitment is the pool of labor that's available, given the conditions stated above, is kind of small. The problem with retention is there aren't that many to retain to begin with. UND graduates only 55 doctors a year.

In the longterm, in Dr. Wynne's view, the best solution is increase the number of grads. If the the percentage of grads that go into family medicine and move into rural areas stay the same, an increase in the number of grads will increase the supply of doctors for rural areas.

I don't think Dr. Johnson is satisfied with that sort of logic and he's been talking about going to the Legislature when Dr. Wynne is there asking for money.

Since I have delved into exactly how Dr. Wynne plans to structure the added faculty -- Will there be more focused on family medicine? -- or the expanded residency program -- Will more of them be in rural areas? -- I couldn't tell you much about how this effort to "broaden the pipeline" might work out.

I did, however, ask Dr. Wynne if it was important to tread cautiously here because, as he recognized, a lot of other universities are expanding their med schools, too. UND wouldn't want to end up overinvesting.

Dr. Wynne said the university will be able to adjust as market trends emerge. "We're not being closed-minded about this," he said. If there are too many faculty members in a field that's saturated, he said, their numbers could always be thinned through attrition.

For now, there's not a lot of other trends on the horizon other than the rapid aging of the Baby Boomers and their increased need for medical care.

That tsunami will reach shore in about 10 to 15 years, Dr. Wynne said, so UND has to start now.

Posted by: Tu-Uyen on 6/30/2010 at 3:39 PM | Comments (10) | Permalink

Tags: health care, higher education, legislature, north dakota, population decline, und, und school of medicine

Quickies: The debate over the McChrystal story

Here's an interesting proposal for making higher education more affordable: Instead of borrowing money, sell shares of yourself to investors. The argument is that it's very risky to get a loan for a college education when you have no idea how easily you could repay that loan because you have no idea how much you'd make after graduation. Theoretically, if someone were to set up a market in which investors could pay $X for X percent of your future income, the risks would be easier to manage.
Here's a really sweet story about a Chicago charter school that sent to college all of its students, all of whom come from pretty lousy backgrounds.
The whole SNAFU over some dumb comments made by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the guy who used to be in charge of our war in A-stan, and the loudmouthed macho men on his staff has got the City Beat thinking about all the dumb comments I've heard over the years, which I usually don't repeat.

On the one side is the argument that, what the hell, they're big boys, they knew they were talking to Rolling Stone, what were they thinking? They probably weren't thinking or they got used to being coddled by most reporters.

On the other side is the argument that the reporter should've suppressed those comments because it's ambush journalism; nobody expects to have frank comments like those repeated. And, even if you've got nothing against an ambush, it's in the interest of the journalism profession and of readers to avoid destroying the trust of sources this way because trust allows journalists to get at the really important story.

I think I lean toward the last argument. If making my sources look dumb doesn't further understanding of the issue or improve the debate, I tend to avoid it. Obviously when it highlights an important issue, I can't help but enjoy dishing it out. Just a little.

I ran across this blog post the other day at Danger Room about a Customs and Border Protection Predator that lost contact with its controller somewhere over Texas. As you know, the CBP is flying Predators over North Dakota, too, though within restricted air space, more unmanned aircraft are coming with the Air Force and, because of these things, we as a community are involved in a big push to open up civilian airspace to these aircraft. As Danger Room noted, the loss of control of the Texas Predator could have some implications for that effort.
Sometimes when I mention climate change, I get the push back from climate-change deniers. I enjoy ripping into them so much I'm going to bait them with this column about how that big to do about British researchers making up data about climate change is actually a bunch of hooey and the dumb reporters who passed the disinformation along have said "oops." But, as writer Sharon Begley pointed out:

One of the strongest, most-repeated findings in the psychology of belief is that once people have been told X, especially if X is shocking, if they are later told, "No, we were wrong about X," most people still believe X.

Posted by: Tu-Uyen on 6/29/2010 at 2:52 PM | Comments (4) | Permalink

Tags: affordable tuition, climate change, frivolous links, higher education, journalism

A little Cold War nostalgia

The City Beat was going to blog about my story on the rural health care shortage today; I feel like I didn't do it justice because the issue is so vast and I had limited space.

But yesterday was a really exhausting day -- 7:30 a.m. to 11 p.m., with a dinner break in between -- so I'm gonna take it easy today and relate an e-mail I got from an old vet from Grand Forks Air Force Base. I like these old stories about the old days at the base.

OK, here's Rick Nelson from Arvada, Colo., a former missile silo maintenance guy:

Dear Mr. Tran, I want to thank you for your article on the show [Link is mine; it's not in his e-mail.] and the Air Force for putting it on. My interest in the area is due to my being stationed at GF AFB from 1966 to 1968. While browsing the Internet I noticed some info about the air show, plus Oscar "0," an LCF (Launch Control Faculty), is open to the public to tour. Since I had serviced that facility while in the Air Force, I made plans for a tour.

Myself and my '57 Corvette at GF AFB in 1967. We cruised the streets of Grand Forks many times in the 2 1/2 years we were there.

43 years later the '07 and I cruised the streets of Grand Forks.

Friday afternoon I cruised Grand Forks looking for some of the places we used to hang out, they're all gone, or I could not find them. Grand Forks has at least quadrupled in size in the past 43 years. The only place I recognized was "Weekley's Salvage Yard", where I had purchased a hard top for my '57 Corvette there.

Oscar "0" was an interesting place for me to visit, brought back a lot of memories, and the chance to see one of the computers I worked on so long ago really attracted me.

The updated version of the P465L system that I worked on, and now even the updated version is obsolete.

The air show was absolutely wonderful. I attended another at GF AFB in 1966. I wonder if at least one of those KC-135s was there in 1966. The Thunderbirds are really a polished group of performers that we as Americans can be proud of.

Sincerely
Rick Nelson
[Address redacted]
Arvada CO 80007

P.S. That shiny red '57 Corvette that I cruised Grand Forks in, I still have; it's in my shop getting a well deserved restoration.

I wrote Rick back and asked if I could publish this on the blog. He said yes and then he sent more images:

There was a captain in the 319th BW [That's 319th Bomb Wing, predecessor to the 319th Air Refueling Wing] with a very good artistic talent. Every now and then these bulletins would appear. I thought they were so good that I acquired copies. Thought you might enjoy them also.

Rick

[Look at the header with the, Minuteman missile, the B-52 and the atomic symbol. Gawd this is old school. I love it.]

[That's a B-52 blasting the runway, by the way. Four engines and that funny wheel at the tip of the wing. Also, there are still machineguns sticking out of the tail. Modernized BUFFs don't have guns.]

Pretty neat, eh? Thanks Rick! Come back and visit again!

Posted by: Tu-Uyen on 6/24/2010 at 11:45 AM | Comments (1) | Permalink

Tags: gf afb, military, nuclear weapons

Alerus Center money matters

Oh boy, I'm running out of time again tonight, so here's a quick run down of two issues from the Alerus Center meeting this morning that I thought were pretty important.

Contract concessions

First, the Alerus Center commission is working on a contract with VenuWorks, the firm that manages the city-owned building. I had no time to scour through the contract, but my understanding is that the major changes have to do with management fees.

Under the old contract, there was a fee structure -- it's too complicated to go into here, but you can read about it in this old post -- where VenuWorks would get more money if it generated more revenue, but it would be penalized if the Alerus Center ran in the red. In other words, lose too much money and the firm gets nothing. As I noted in my story, this sort of favorable arrangement came out of a time when the commission dumped VenuWorks.

I say "sort of" because, depending on who you believe, VenuWorks either had to count concert losses against its fees or it doesn't. It says it doesn't and the Alerus Center commission backed it up because the commission promised that it would be that way. The city says it does because the contract doesn't contain the commission's promise. Ultimately, the commissioners, with city pressure behind them, got VenuWorks to repay all fees from 2008 and 2009, which amounted to about $270,000. That means zero earnings in those years because concert losses erased whatever revenue gains the Alerus Center made.

Obviously, that's a favorable arrangement for the city.

Too favorable. VenuWorks won't do it any more. It wants a flat $175,000 a year, which is what it was paid in 2008 and 2009. Some of the fees were suspended when losses appeared certain, so that's why the total owed is $270,000 and not $350,000.

In my view, this contract is step backwards. There is no incentive to perform better and no deterrence from being sucky. This is an especially odd thing because the City Council is taking the risk on the concerts now and it wouldn't count against VenuWorks even if it did face a penalty for losing money. The concert losses that VenuWorks wanted to avoid is a moot point.

This probably all sounds confusing so here's how I sort it out in my mind:

Old contract, the way it's interpreted by the city: Reward VenuWorks for higher revenue. Punish it for losses for everything from conventions, to rodeos to concerts.
Old contract, the way it's interpreted by VenuWorks: Reward VenuWorks for higher revenue. Punish it for losses for everything, except concerts.
Old contract, but with the council taking the risk on concerts. Interpretation is irrelevant here: Ditto.
New contract: VenuWorks gets paid exactly the same no matter the losses.

My pal, Commission Chairman Randy Newman helped negotiate the contract. He said VenuWorks simply won't agree to a penalty clause. The company has suffered a lot financially, he said.

Well, yeah, but so has the city! I said.

He said he's not sure penalty clauses are very common in the facility management industry, which I suppose might be true.

I asked if the commission had consider finding a management firm that was more willing to play ball, and Randy said basically that the city can dump VenuWorks anytime, with 90 day notice, as allowed in the contract.

What changed between 2007 when VenuWorks was on its knees begging for a contract with what it called its flagship client and today when it's rejecting the very penalty clause that it had proffered three years ago? Randy wasn't real helpful with this and I don't have time to call around for someone who would be.

I have a few guesses as to what happened.

First, VenuWorks might have run up against a real limitation: Money. It can't afford to make the same offer given the amount of money it has to pay back. The commission can get the penalty clause or it can get the money back, but it can't have both. Given the political pressure from the council, it chose the money.

Second, Grand Forks might need VenuWorks more now than it did three years ago. There was a lot of discussion about how promoters are avoiding Grand Forks because of the poor attendance at the last few concerts -- Neil Diamond and Britney Spears. Our market sucks and we're going to need a lot of help rebuilding it. VenuWorks is willing, but that might not be true of other management firms.

By the way, just to put this in perspective, the commission's pretty desperate for a concert. You can't keep suite holders happy with so few shows, by which I mean no shows so far. And concerts with the potential high payoff might be the only way to break even. Many expense categories are fixed and to offset them, you have to make a lot of money.

It hasn't escaped my notice that it was VenuWorks that decided on the concerts for the Alerus Center so the destruction of the market might be laid at its feet. On the other hand: I'm sorry, but we suck as music fans. Black Eyed Peas was extremely popular when they came here -- I even bought a ticket -- but attendance was subpar. I've been to live events hosted by other venues, back when we were still getting bands from big cities, and attendance was an embarrassment.

Deficit budget

The other significant issue is the 2011 budget. It would be the first deficit budget ever for the Alerus Center.

In itself that's not a real big deal. The events center rarely breaks even, if ever, as the budget calls for anyway. Commissioners agreed that a budget showing a loss of $134,000 is more realistic than a break even budget.

Basically, when they're budgeting to break even, it's almost wishful thinking. They plan to have such and such number of events that make such and such money, except they haven't booked all the events and, given the state of the concert industry, probably won't.

By the way, that $134,000 deficit includes $390,000 in subsidies from the 1/4-percent hospitality tax.

The reason this deficit budget is a big deal is:

One, the task force that met to reform the Alerus Center concluded earlier this year, after much discussion, that the building should aim to break even without the subsidy. The subsidy should be a surplus.

Here's the exact phrasing: "The commission should be strongly encouraged to stay within its budget and to use the 1/4-percent additional sales tax as a reserve fund in hope of creating a surplus,"

I always thought that was wishful thinking, too, given the building's record. But when politics is involved, that's what you get.

Two, the entire commission voted for the budget yet four of the seven voting members were on the task force: Laura Block, Duane Hafner, Curt Kreun and Dwight Thompson. And one of those guys, Dwight, was on the budget committee.

I called Dwight up to see what was up. He said that he's aware of the task force recommendation, but, upon discussion with VenuWorks staff it was clear that a realistic budget would have to be a deficit budget. He chose realism over fantasy.

Dwight's a long time source and I respect his willingness to give consistency the finger. In politics, people often look for contradictions -- Hey, that's what I just did. -- but being a consistent supporter of something that you no longer believe in makes you a hypocrite.

It remains to be seen if being impolitic is such a wise move, however. A highly-placed source of mine called after reading the story and said this budget deficit is gonna be trouble. He doesn't think it's actually legal for city departments -- and the Alerus Center is essentially a department -- can budget for deficits. I'm not sure he's right because I recall that this has happened before, but it could still be a headache for the commission.

Posted by: Tu-Uyen on 6/23/2010 at 10:46 PM | Comments (17) | Permalink

Tags: alerus center, budgets and taxes, gf and egf, gf city hall, venuworks

Some legal advice for the Alerus Center commission

Apparently the City Beat was the only one at the Alerus Center commission meeting this morning who was even vaguely familiar with the open meeting laws of this state. I say apparently because I was able to point out several features of that law, which the commission seemingly violated, and was met with kind of an "Aw, shoot, really?" from three different commissioners.

Here's how it went down:

They had the auditors from Brady Martz come in this morning to talk about the results of a year-long audit -- If I find time, I might write about it; there's not too many exciting findings. -- and toward the end of the discussion, Chairman Randy Newman called for an executive session, or a closed-door session.

I remembered that whenever the Grand Forks City Council holds an executive session, it announces such sessions in advance and, in this case, there was nothing on the agenda about such a session, but I hesitated to object. I feared that I was mistaking the North Dakota open meeting laws that I thought I knew with the laws in Minnesota from the time I covered the East Grand Forks City Council.

If I remember right Commissioner Darrell Larson, an attorney in his other life, made the motion or Randy consulted with him. He was involved one way or the other, because I went up and asked him the one thing I was sure of: Officials have to cite the North Dakota Century Code provision that gives them the authority to close the meeting.

Darrell said he wasn't sure what the provisions are.

The commission went ahead and closed the session anyway. I could've made a stink, but I didn't think whatever I would learn in the closed session would be worth it, and, honestly, I kind of felt like kicking some butt in print. Reporters hate executive sessions.

After the meeting, I talked with Commissioner and City Council member Curt Kreun and told him I think that the commission needed to announce the executive session in advance.

"What for?" he asked.

"I think it's the law," I said.

He shrugged.

Where's your city attorney? I asked. Do you invite him to these meetings?

Curt has grumbled in the past that the commission doesn't get enough attention from the city attorney.

Howard Swanson was going to make an appearance this morning to talk about the contract with management firm VenuWorks, but had a conflict, Curt said.

We'll get back to Howard in a moment.

So then I grabbed Randy when he was free. I asked why he called for the executive session and he said that's commonly done in corporate settings -- He's the CEO of Alerus Financial. -- so that auditors can speak freely without having staff present. I was pretty sure that that's not a valid reason for a closed session, but I figure I'd better look it up first.

I explained to Randy what I understood about the open meeting law, the same as I said to Darrell and Curt, and he looked a little uncomfortable. "All of us want to do the right thing; it's a difficult environment." Basically, what I see him saying is he's a businessman, not someone who's intimately familiar with governmental procedures.

Now I like and admire Randy and everything -- He's a good banker, very public-minded and nervy enough to run a building that so many people hate for the past 10 years. It's a thankless task. -- but I think he and the other commissioners really need to get up to speed on this open meeting stuff.

They got spanked last year, by Howard Swanson, of all people, for some violations. That, along with several other issues, led to the task force to reform the Alerus Center and restore its credibility.

I could've sworn Mayor Mike Brown or someone in his administration had talked about offering more training to members of public bodies, such as the Alerus Center commission, but I can't find any reference to it. If nobody said it, I guess it's still a good idea. If the city attorney can't make it to the commission meetings -- he doesn't attend other committee meetings -- he could probably give the commissioners some basic legal advice.

Or they could look up this stuff on the attorney general's Web site or do a Google search for the Century Code provisions for "executive session" and get this page.

I'll summarize the laws for you if you're too busy to follow the links:

A public body has to announce that it's holding an executive session in advance.
It has to say what the session is about.
It has to explain what gives it the authority to do so. Typically that's citing the Century Code provision.
It can hold executive sessions for one of two reasons:
- It's talking about negotiations or law suits where revealing the details would leave the city at a disadvantage.
- It's talking about confidential records. This can range from personal information about employees to the identity of companies that may be negotiating to move to town.
Everything else is supposed to be open.

Posted by: Tu-Uyen on 6/23/2010 at 12:29 PM | Comments (10) | Permalink

Tags: alerus center, gf city hall, open meeting laws

Quickies: Texting and driving demographics, voters' paradoxical feelings

Since we're talking about texting and driving, here's a story about a report on which drivers act so recklessly. I didn't include it in my story today because I didn't have time to look at the report, but, if the reporter did his homework, it appears that the guilty party is more often adults than the usual teenage and college-age suspects. It was amusing to hear Grand Forks Council President Hal Gershman talk last night about how a ban on texting and driving would send a message to the kids when this study indicates maybe it's their parents he needs to reach.

Note that I found a brief mention of another report that does put the blame on younger drivers.

Here's an interesting blog post from The Atlantic about national opinions regarding the economic stimulus package. The hed says it all: "Americans think stimulus didn't work, want more."

Paradoxical behavior by voters no longer surprise me much. The one example around here that stands out for me is the vote to keep Grand Forks' Riverside Pool open. For years prior to that, I'd heard residents complain about city taxes and city spending; it's not uncommon for people to suspect waste without being able to put their finger on what is wasteful. Then residents vote to keep a pool that would be on the wet side of a dike system we're spending millions to build. Emotions are weird that way.

I fanned the Chronicle of Higher Education on Facebook and found a link to this blog post the other day. The author argues that students today are lazier, but get higher grades because the practice of having students evaluate faculty has pushed professors to be more lenient. I wonder if this is true. I can't imagine the evaluations are in regular use by administrations to determine promotions for faculty. That would really be stupid.

I was a colle ge student once and I remember having what now appears to be an idiotic and pointless obsession with grades, but I never graded a professor badly for giving out bad grades. Those are usually the frighteningly good ones.

Popular Science has a fun story about cities and countries ambitious about carbon neutrality. We've got a Green Grand Forks initiative of our own here, though, it's relatively conservative and cautious just as you might expect from a small Midwestern city.

Imagine my surprise to find that there's another small Midwestern city that's thrown itself wholeheartedly into the green movement: Greensburg, Kansas, the town destroyed by a 2007 tornado. Note that, like us, they took advantage of a disaster to reinvigorate themselves.

Here's a link to a month-old CNN Money story featuring the most affordable U.S. cities in which to buy a house. I saved it for a quickie post because the house prices in some of the Midwestern cities listed were way, way better than in Grand Forks. I know our housing prices put a crimp in our cost-of-living indicators, but didn't realize that we were so high.

I did a check for the last time we reported housing prices and found an April story where we reported the average price was $147,000 in Grand Forks and more than $162,000 in East Grand Forks. The CNN story says the median price in Indianapolis was $96,000. I realize median and average are different, but they're often not too far apart. In Youngstown, Ohio, the median was $69,000.

We ran this AP story a while back and I forgot to mention it here. It's about efforts to get the Federal Aviation Administration to open up civilian airspace to unmanned aircraft. There wasn't anything new that I hadn't reported or heard about except this stuff:

Texas officials, including Gov. Rick Perry, Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn, and Rep. Henry Cuellar, have been leaning on the FAA to approve requests to use unmanned aircraft along the Texas-Mexico border.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has told lawmakers that safety concerns are behind the delays. Cornyn is blocking a Senate confirmation vote on President Barack Obama's nominee for the No. 2 FAA job, Michael Huerta, to keep the pressure on.

Other lawmakers want an overall plan to speed up use of the planes beyond the border. A bill approved by the Senate gives FAA a year to come up with a plan; a House version extends the deadline until Sept. 30, 2013, but directs the transportation secretary to give unmanned aircraft permission to fly before the plan is complete, if that can be done safely.

I didn't realize so many other powerful interests were putting the squeeze on the FAA on this matter.

We were talking a while ago about reducing the number of counties in the state and a reader was kind enough to post a link to some reports the North Dakota Association of Counties had released a few years back. I'm posting it now because I forgot to post it earlier.

Posted by: Tu-Uyen on 6/22/2010 at 10:07 PM | Comments (4) | Permalink

Tags: alternative energy, budgets and taxes, business, economic development, frivolous links, north dakota, public safety, uas

Texting and driving ban: Persuade or punish?

Following up on that discussion of the texting and driving ban, the Grand Forks City Council agreed to a fine of $30 tonight.

Council President Hal Gershman started the "bid" at $15 because he didn't feel it should be an opportunity for education rather than an opportunity for punishment. Some public health and safety activists wanted it higher, though they didn't say how high.

The council eventually settled on $30, the same as the fine for careless driving.

The skeptic

I have to say I'm always skeptical when public scolds try to get the government to tell other people what to do on their behalf, even when the cause might seem worthy. I'm especially skeptical when no or almost no attempt at persuasion has been made, as appears to be the case here.

On the other hand, I'm also skeptical when activists try their hand at persuasion because true believers sometimes overstate the case.

Tonight, I heard again the fact that texting and driving is 23 times as dangerous as driving normally. Council member Curt Kreun cited it last week and, tonight, Carma Hanson from Safe Kids Grand Forks repeated it. I wish people would check out the source before they start citing these things because, in fact, that statistic does not apply to drivers of cars.

As I mentioned in the blog two weeks ago, it applies only to commercial truck drivers. It's probably outrageously dangerous for drivers of cars, too, but the research isn't there. This particular "fact" annoys me because I've noticed it on several anti-texting activist Web sites, which indicates to me that there must be some sort of echo chamber for activists. That's frightening.

The research does indicate massive driver distraction from texting, even when compared to drinking and driving (see page 62), and it's sufficiently persuasive. Jim Whitehead, from Greater Grand Forks Health and Wellness Coalition, made a similar comparison and I'm glad he did because that's accurate.

I should note though that, on closer reading of the study I've just cited, it appears that the texting and driving study was a separate study from the study on drinking and driving. That latter study compared drinking and driving with talking on the cell phone and driving. The studies used tests for drivers that were somewhat different. It's worth noting that talking on the phone and driving would appear to be more distracting than texting and driving.

This seems to contradict common sense as well as the study that says texting and driving is 23 times more dangerous. That study clearly shows talking on the phone to be less dangerous.

I point out these various gaps of knowledge because scientific research is seldom as cocksure about the facts as most people naturally prefer, and certainly as most activists would prefer. I noted this discrepancy between what the research says and what the activists say not too long ago when the city was getting worked up over the smoking ban.

And that's for a field with a long history where there are lots of studies with which to compare and contrast results. How much more so for a field as young as the study of texting and driving, which is a relatively recent phenomenon? Ms. Hanson contends that there's been "a significant amount of research," but, in having tried to assess the field, I find that, in fact, there isn't a whole lot. There are a lot of activist Web sites and a lot of news media attention -- we reporters love to scare the living daylights out of readers -- but they often cite the same studies.

Given that, would we really be that comfortable dropping hefty fines on drivers?

How high?

As I wrote in my story, the upper limit is $1,000. State law says city fines can't be higher than state fines for comparable offences. But, since the state doesn't have a texting and driving law, the city can go much higher. I'm guessing there's an upper limit at $1,000, but I didn't have time to ask City Attorney Howard Swanson.

Minnesota, which I've always considered an overbearing state government for a variety of reasons, fines drivers as much as $300 for texting and driving. (If you want to see how other states approach the problem, check this Web site out.)

Hal said he wanted $15 because this is an opportunity for the police to educate drivers. That is, they can stop them and inform them they're driving like an idiot.

Council member Doug Christensen upped the ante by setting it at $30, the same as the fine for careless driving.

That's in City Codes 8-0701, which defines careless driving "at a speed greater than is reasonable and prudent under the conditions." In other words, texting and driving is not the equivalent of drunk driving, but speeding.

Enforcement

I should also address enforcement.

Hal said something to the effect that Police Chief John Packett told him enforcement could be a challenge. I talked to the chief and he refused to say that. I mean he dodged my question, which I've noticed when talking to some other higher-ups in the GFPD. In this case, I suppose he wouldn't want to tell people which laws they can violate with impunity.

Basically, to nail somebody for texting and driving, it's the same as going after somebody for any other offense. The police need probable cause.

How do they establish that? There's no set criteria, according to the chief, though they're going to have to convince the judge when the time comes. From our conversation, I gathered that if they see you texting -- fiddling on the phone with two hands, for instance -- or if you fess up or if they see you driving in an odd way and see a cell phone out when they pull you over, that's probable cause. This then allows them to seize the phone as evidence if they want and it's not that hard to see when messages have been sent!

In doing some research on this, I found a PBS story about other states' experience and found some mention of Minnesota's enforcement of its two-year-old ban on texting and driving:

But enforcement of the statutes has proven challenging. Minnesota was one of the first states to pass a driving-while-texting law, which has now been in effect for more than a year. While the state doesn't keep data on the number of citations issued for the specific offense, Lt. Matt Langer of the Minnesota State Patrol acknowledges it can be difficult to prove.

"We certainly aren't ever going to eliminate all the texting that goes on behind the wheel because it's such a prolific part of our culture now," said Langer. "But the statute is clear and it does give our troopers great authority to enforce it when they witness this behavior."

An officer witnessing the infraction, or a driver who volunteers the information after being pulled over, are two of the main ways the citations are issued. Troopers can request phone usage records, but Langer said that option is usually only used in cases of serious accidents causing property damage or injury.

Nearly a quarter of Minnesota's vehicular accidents are caused by distractions, a broad category that includes phone use, texting and activity going on in the car.

Langer said for the texting ban, the "ultimate goal is voluntary compliance," as the laws help educate the public on the risks of distracted driving.

"The law enforcement community understands we are only reaching the tip of the iceberg," he said.

The story doesn't mention seizing cell phones, which may suggest that's not as easy as we think. It also seems to agree with the goals set out by Hal: Persuasion.

Posted by: Tu-Uyen on 6/21/2010 at 11:06 PM | Comments (11) | Permalink

Tags: gf and egf, gf city council, public safety, rules and regulations

Blog Archive: Next »

Make up blog post

Quickies: Concert industry oh-noes

An analysis of the new Alerus Center budget

The DIY florist

Some ideas for getting more docs for North Dakota

Rural health care mania

Quickies: The debate over the McChrystal story

A little Cold War nostalgia

Alerus Center money matters

Some legal advice for the Alerus Center commission

Quickies: Texting and driving demographics, voters' paradoxical feelings

Texting and driving ban: Persuade or punish?

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