Operating on a scale never before attempted in this country, the city would demolish houses in some of the most desolate sections of Detroit and move residents into stronger neighborhoods. Roughly a quarter of the 139-square-mile city could go from urban to semi-rural.

Near downtown, fruit trees and vegetable farms would replace neighborhoods that are an eerie landscape of empty buildings and vacant lots. Suburban commuters heading into the city center might pass through what looks like the countryside to get there. Surviving neighborhoods in the birthplace of the auto industry would become pockets in expanses of green....

The meaning of what is afoot is now settling in across the city.

"People are afraid," said Deborah L. Younger, past executive director of a group called Detroit Local Initiatives Support Corporation that is working to revitalize five areas of the city. "When you read that neighborhoods may no longer exist, that sends fear...."

Faced with a $300 million budget deficit and a dwindling tax base, [Mayor Dave] Bing argues that the city can't continue to pay for police patrols, fire protection and other services for all areas.

The current plan would demolish about 10,000 houses and empty buildings in three years and pump new investment into stronger neighborhoods. In the neighborhoods that would be cleared, the city would offer to relocate residents or buy them out. The city could use tax foreclosure to claim abandoned property and invoke eminent domain for those who refuse to leave, much as cities now do for freeway projects.

The part about taking wrecking balls to whole neighborhoods reminded me of what happened with the Lincoln Drive neighborhood after the flood.

One of the things that continues to surprise me is the remarkable bond many people have with their neighborhood. I remember reading up on what happened when Lincoln Drive residents had to leave. There was a woman, I think, who talked about how sad she was that she'll never be able to show her young granddaughter where she lived as a child.

Later, when the Riverside Pool issue came up for a vote, there were former Riverside neighborhood residents who had moved farther south, but still chose to vote for the old neighborhood's pool.

Anyway, imagine what kind of an explosive debate we'd have around here if the city were to decide to do away with, say, Riverside, the Sunbeam Park area, the Ulland Complex area and everything west of the Interstate. Good luck, Detroit!

Council member Terry Bjerke said he's all for it, but he suggested that every agenda item that goes to the CoW now will go to each of the two standing committees, without anything going directly to the council for a vote without prior discussion. That would seem logical since the point of the committee structure is to have deliberations first and give the public a chance to offer input before taking a vote.

Most everyone agreed with Terry that all committee meetings should be televised. Only the formal council meeting and the CoW are televised now when they meet in Council Chambers while the standby committees meet in the basement where the cameras aren't.

The Grand Forks City Council will start the discussion tonight on its committee structure, which sounds like the most boring conversation in the world, but, I'm telling you it's kind of important because it's the way things get done at council.

Remember that School House Rock short "I'm Just a Bill"? Yeah, you remember.

The city equivalent is an agenda item and it too starts as an idea in some one's head, usually a staff member who brings it to council. Today, the way it works is the item has two routes it could take, well, two-and-a-half routes.

1. It could go straight to the Committee of the Whole, which is the entire seven-member council meeting in a semi-formal setting. That is, it's not meeting formally as a council, which means it can vote and make decisions -- A committee only makes recommendations. -- but the meeting is formal enough that Robert's Rules of Order, i.e., parliamentary procedures, are in full effect.

After clearing the CoW -- Yes, it's pronounced like the bovine. -- the item goes to the formal council for a vote. CoWs meet on the second and fourth Mondays of each month and councils the first and third Mondays.

2. The item can go to one of two so-called "standby" committees. These are committees with three voting members and the council president sitting in as a non-voting member. One committee is charged with public services and public safety -- Council member Curt Kreun heads that one -- the other is charged with finance and economic development -- Council member Doug Christensen heads that one.

The standby committees, while they observe Robert's Rules aren't real sticklers -- There are only three or four people, after all. -- and are less formal. It's worth noting that the CoW and the council are televised, but the standby committees aren't.

I put "standby" in quotes because, originally, the committees were supposed to meet only when needed. More on that in a bit. But the committees have gotten into the habit of meeting every other week, usually Tuesdays or Wednesdays.

From a standby committee the item goes to the CoW for further discussion and then to the council for a vote.

2.5. The item goes to the CoW and discussion gets a little longer winded than normal. Council members then send the item to one of the standby committees for some more discussion. The item would then go back to the CoW for more discussion and then to the council for a vote. This was the original reason the standby committees were formed, hence the name.

3. There is a little used "committee" that's been used in the past, but hasn't seen much use recently and that's the "work session." This is basically the lovechild of the CoW and a standby committee. It's informal like a standby committee, but is made up of the entire council like the CoW. It's also not televised.

Items that go before the work session would go to the CoW for discussion then the council for a vote.

Imagine making a song out of that!

The reason we have this structure is very simple. It was a reform that didn't quite pan out like everybody thought.

Before the 2000 elections, there was a system of standing committees, not unlike the ones in Congress and there were 14 council members, plenty of politicians to pack those committees. Standing committees are the opposite of standby committees in that they're meant to meet regularly and formally.

Agenda items go into one of several committees and, as with Congressional committees, they don't go to a vote until the committees are done with them. Committee chairmen had a lot of power because they can set the agenda and decide if the agenda items get heard or not.

There were no CoWs.

In 2000, a new bunch of council members and the present mayor, Mike Brown, came in on a platform of reform. They killed the standing committees, started the CoW and downsized the council to seven. They did this because they felt the committees were too powerful. The CoW would level the playing field because everyone would get all the information at once instead of waiting on the standing committees.

Two years after, the council decided that there was actually too much information and, in fact, those standing committees made some sense after all. But because they still didn't trust the standing committees, they decided to have standby committees that met only at the request of the CoW.

You can see from the stuff above how that worked out.

Why should you care?

• The present system is potentially cumbersome with that game of ping pong played between the CoW and the standby committees. However, in practice, this has not really been the case. It does create an extra step for some agenda items; three instead of two.
• That extra step means some city staff must attend three meetings not two. Depending on the agenda items, you may see nearly all department heads at these standby committees, even the ones you don't think would be affected. Either they enjoy these meetings -- I find this difficult to believe. -- or they're afraid their department might end up as collateral damage if they're not there to play defense. Now these are department heads so we're not paying overtime for them to be there, but that's extra time they could be using to do their job.
• The present system does provide multiple access points for agenda items, which prevents the concentration of power that was the hallmark of the standing committee system. I think any elected official or department head could put an agenda item on the CoW.
• The present system is a deviation from the original intent of the standby committees. That is, the committees have accumulated more control and power than the council meant for them to have. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. A lot of the discussion that goes on are just long-term items that the council probably wouldn't be ready to act on for months or years. Also, I find that these discussion are more technical and detailed than the ones at council. I think the more technical they are at council, the more yakking there will be afterwards, which I sometimes suspect is preening for the TV cameras.
• The original CoW-only structure really wasn't adequate. The technical discussions I mention above are important and they don't work real well with the CoW, both because of the preening and because CoWs usually have a dozen or more agenda items. Pack two or three technical discussions in there and we'll be back to the three-hour meetings of the past.
• Finally, you should care because the committee structure affects the council's deliberative decisionmaking -- how thoughtful it makes those decisions -- and its efficiency -- how quickly it makes those decisions.

After listening to his last speech a few weeks ago -- It was pretty good to me. -- I started thinking about all the things he said he'd do in the previous speeches. Did he ever get them done?

I never know how to write these things because it's just one guy talking and, partisanship being weaker here than inside the Beltway, nobody's gonna say anything too contrarian like they do after the State of the Union addresses.

So I made up for that by delving into the records. I read every speech except the one in 2004. The city couldn't find a copy of it so I used my story from 2004 instead.

Here's a list of things the mayor said he'd like to do -- Understand that some of these goals are more or less out of his control. -- with "X" marks indicating they did get done and "O" marks indicating they didn't get done. Also, just for fun, I listed the theme for each speech.

2003: "Our house is in order. We're working together. We have momentum."

• O - Pass a new 1 1/4 percent sales tax for a new water park/fitness center, affordable housing, a fund to market the city, economic development, paving roads and eliminating special assessments, property tax cuts in schools and county and cuts in flood assessments. (Voters said "no way.")
• X - Convince a developer to build a hotel attached to the Alerus Center. (Canad Inns is there now.)
• O - Share services with East Grand Forks. (East Side said "no way," but now some are saying "maybe.")
• X - Lobby to keep Grand Forks Air Force Base open. (The Congressional delegation helped a lot.)
• X - Lobby for more funding to get dikes done early. (Again, credit goes to the Congressional delegation.)
• X - Get more affordable housing. (I think the city's still working to get more, but it's already gotten some.)

2004

• O - See the population grow to 58,000 by 2010. (Not even close, but, hey, blame the economy.)
• X - Create a group to identify what downtown needs to grow more. (The group was formed and it said more housing is needed. This is why there's the Elite Brownstone condos and the Current apartments.)
• X - Have a closer partnership with UND and the Grand Forks Region Economic Development Corp. (Pretty hard to measure, but there's no doubt they're all pretty tight.)
• X - Use infrastructure development to propel economic development. (I don't know. Maybe? The city's always talked about this.)
• O- Preserve the character of neighborhoods by encouraging parks, keeping pools open (Riverside Pool, of course) and enhancing public safety. (The public did vote to keep the pool open, though maybe it's too early to tell if the "character" has been preserved.)
• X - Lobby for more funding to get dikes done early. (See above.)

2005: "The State of the City is strong and the State of the City is growing."

• X - "Hold the line" on taxes. (Not sure what this really means. I'm going to assume it means cutting the citywide property tax rate below 2 percent, as mentioned below.)
• X - Encourage other local governments to rein in taxes through quarterly summits. (Encouraging ain't the same as success, but, eventually, the parks and schools did cut their tax rates, too.)
• X - Continue economic growth.
• X - Beautify the community. (The council did spend, what was it, $200 Gs one year to buy the Christmas lights. It also agreed to that welcome sign on Gateway Drive.)
• X - Create a political climate that's more welcoming to businesses. (City Administrator Rick Duquette did get elected to be Chamber of Commerce chairman last year. I was going to do some story about that -- It's weird; the Chamber is a lobby group -- but never got around to it.)
• X - Create a citizens' group to address shortage of affordable housing. (Group created, met, but with no real conclusion.)
• X - Reach out to other cities, from neighboring East Grand Forks, to towns around the region, to Winnipeg, to sister cities. (Reached out. Not sure what the results are, though.)
• O - Retain more young professionals with affordable housing, good schools, safe streets, more entertainment options. (I think we're still trying to figure out these picky yuppie bastards. Oh wait, that's my people.)
• X - Support the arts more with, say an artists' co-op or artist-in-residence program. (I understand some nonprofits created the latter, but I don't have much info on this.)
• O - Get more research to market. (I think we're doing a little, but not quite the level where we can declare success.)

2006: "A City of Choice."

• X - Cut property tax rate citywide to 2 percent in three years. (Done, but only because the state provided more K-12 funding.)
• X - Continue to work closely with the EDC and UND to create more jobs. (There are more jobs, or were until this lame economic downturn.)
• O - Increase pay for the City Council to attract more diverse candidates, as in people who don't own their own business or are otherwise business executives who have better control of their schedules. (The council said "no way." That would make them look bad.)
• X - Study ways to improve parking downtown. (That diagonal parking has turned out to be a pretty dynamite idea, or as dynamite as parking can get.)
• O - Get a UND presence downtown. (Still working on this one.)
• X - Lobby for more funding to get dikes done early. (See above.)
• X - Set up neighborhood familiarization tours to encourage residents to talk about neighborhood concerns. (I know there were tours, but what happened in them I have no idea.)
• X - Create a signature winter event for Greenway. (That was a few weeks ago.)
• X - Use Cabinet of Young People to talk to youth about better injecting their voice into community dicussion. There could be projects such as a BMX track or a year-round skate park. (Well, there is a cabinet and they are telling the mayor stuff. There is also a BMX track and a skate park.)
• X - Raise awareness of meth as a problem for the community. (We know it's a problem.)
• X - Raise awareness of underage drinking. (Remember the "It's Not OK" thing?)
• O - Raise awareness of violence in community and help break the cycle. (I don't feel that I've heard a whole lot about this, certainly not at City Hall. The city does give money to the Community Violence Intervention Center yearly, but that's nothing new.)
• X - Focus more on Grand Forks International Airport. (I think by focus he means retain local passengers. The airport has seen an increase in boardings because of Allegiant Air so I guess we're doing better.)

2007: "Rebuilt, renewed, reborn." (This is the same as the flood anniversary theme.)

• X - Cut property tax rate citywide to 2 percent. (See above)
• X - Get more affordable housing. (See above.)
• O - Convert the city fleet to biofuels to show support for the green energy sector. (The city will start using some hybrid buses this summer, but that's not the same.)
• O - Encourage the building of a senior village near King's Walk. (Developers and landowners on board, but I understand the area's not quite built up enough to start the project.)
• X - Do more long-term planning starting with a six-year plan. (There is a plan somewhere.)
• X - Raise awareness of underage drinking. (See above.)

2008: "The state of the city is strong, vibrant and primed." (I love these themes. Mine would be: "Grand Forks! WOOO!!")

• X - Cut property tax rate city wide by getting the state to increase K-12 funding. (See above.)
• X - Support more growth south of the 32nd Aveune South retail corridor. (Sort of. Furniture Row is pretty lonely back there.)
• O - Work with Congressional delegation on a National Wind Energy Research Center and Composite Development Center of North America. (Still working on it.)
• X - Increase energy efficiency to save taxpayers money, both in taxes and their utility bill. (Traffic signals are getting realigned to reduce stop-and-go traffic. Also there are these new federal funds to help homeowners pay for energy audits.)
• O - Rally the community to volunteer more by issuing the "million-hour challenge." (The Web site kind of sucked. I couldn't find local volunteer opportunities easily because all these opportunities from Fargo and elsewhere were all over the place. So I said screw it. Most of Grand Forks said screw it, too. It was a good idea, but execution was not so good.)

2009: "Grand Forks, the future is here."

• X - Cut property tax rate citywide to 2 percent. (See above.)
• O - Build a light rail system from UND and Ralph Engelstad Arena to the Alerus Center. (No funding, no project.)
• O - Encourage a developer to build an aquarium or air and space museum at the Canad Inn complex. (No developer so far.)
• X - Create a retail task force to fill gaps in market, such as outlet stores, discount stores and better women's clothing selections. (Task force created, but problem still being worked on.)
• O - Create a Destination Corridor along 42nd Street: Beautify the corridor from Gateway Drive to DeMers Avenue, expand the retail mix nearthe Alerus Center, get more retail on 32nd Avenue South, connect to the new wellness center farther south and encourage more residential development down there. (Still working on it. The city planner is working with landowners around the Alerus Center.)
• O - Ban smoking in bars. (Getting real close on this one. The council appears willing. Hearings are coming up next Monday, I think.)
• O - Mandate helmets for bicyclists. (Nothing so far.)
• O - Share services with East Grand Forks. (See above.)

2010: "Team Grand Forks is going D-I."

• O - 1/4 percent sales tax for a new library and infrastructure development. (No major discussion on this yet.)
• O - Integrate the city's bus system with UND's for more efficiency.
• O - Convince voters to amend city law to allow expanded use of the 3/4 percent sales tax now restricted to Alerus Center debt and building improvement. (A city task force made up of the entire council and six private citizens are recommending this, but it's not formally gone to council yet.)
• O - Expand the Industrial Park. (Still working on it.)
• O - Encourage development of the green energy sector and unmanned aircraft system industries. ("Encourage" in this context appears to me to mean get more jobs, so we're still working this one.)
• O - Get more residents downtown. (The new apartments at the Civic Auditorium should do this.)
• O - Reexamine City Council's committee structure to see if reforms are warranted. (Council President Hal Gershman's encouraging this. He said the "standby" committees are meeting so regularly and doing so much that they might as well be "standing" committees.)
• O - Lobby the state to allow a change in the city election date from June to November for UND students' sake. (Too soon for this.)
• O - Ban smoking in bars. (See above.)
• O - Mandate helmets for young cyclists. (I see this has changed to youngsters and not all cyclists.)

Private citizen Ray Dohman went before the council to ask a bunch of questions about various economic development projects, which, by the tone of questioning, the City Beat understands he doesn't like much. He got a little personal and council members dismissed him, saying he was "out of order."

We call him "Citizen Ray" here at the Herald because he's so verbose and opinionated about city government. Recently, he's been at council a lot and asking a lot of questions and, sometimes, being a bit abusive. I've noticed that, early on, the city put two cops instead of one on duty just in case. Last night there was just one.

To be fair, the man is a bit erratic. Back in 2008, Citizen Ray was one of a handful of people protesting the appearance of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton during the state Democratic convention back in 2008:

"In my opinion, the only reason abortions are allowed is they knew the majority of children aborted would be white. They wanted 40 to 50 million babies dead. They wouldn't have gotten their New World Order or one-world government if they (the aborted) were still alive," said Ray Dohman, of Climax, Minn.

Asked who "they" might be, he replied, "I don't know who they are. I have no idea. But they're the ones telling Bush to jump." The new president better jump, too, Dohman said, or he'll end up like John F. Kennedy and his brother, Robert.

Heck, Dohman said, he bets the reporter that gets his words printed will be out of a job lickety-split.

How could I resist?

Fast forward to last night. Citizen Ray wanted the council to tell him what it was doing with the Civic Auditorium site, who the developers are and, if I remember right, why hadn't it been announced?

All good questions, I thought, except the last one, which anyone who's followed the news in the last several months would've been well aware of.

But it seemed like everyone just fumbled around trying to answer the questions without getting all the information out. They'd been caught by surprise by the specificity of the questions, I suspect, and didn't know how to respond without looking ignorant.

To see the action yourself, see this video from last night's meeting. This is the Jobs Development Authority meeting that preceded the council meeting. They're all the same players -- the council and mayor -- except the JDA is an arm of the city that can engage in business dealings, such as giving land to developers.

Ray's first question: The city's giving $331,500 in land to private developers so they can build two apartment complexes worth $10.1 million. Besides land, they get $1.2 million in fed funds to demolish the Civic -- nobody is willing to renovate that thing and an offer to pay $100,000 for it to use as a glorified storage center was pretty lame -- $375,000 in no- or low-interest loans and up to five years of tax abatement.

I had to look all that up myself, so I'm not surprised everyone fumbled trying to piece together the answer. But it gave the impression that they had no idea what the hell they were voting on.

They did. The money decisions had already been made months ago and last night's decision was only to give the land over to the developers. It would've been nice to have the information about the money, but it wasn't really relevant to the decision at hand. Everyone had already pretty much agreed to the land transfer when the financial incentives were approved.

Citizen Ray said if he couldn't understand it, he doesn't think the average citizen would either. I think this is a tad unfair since, if he'd sat down with a city staffer instead of asking questions out of the blue, the city might have been able to explain it in a way he could understand, though he might still think it's a waste of money.

Second question: The developers are Dakota Commercial and Development and MetroPlains, both veterans of the local development community.

Third question: It's been under discussion since, I don't know, last fall?

There were some other questions about some other proposals and the answers from city officials were also a jumble. (I don't have time to look through every video, so check this list of videos out and decode whatever the hell "Items 4.7 & 4.9" means with this agenda. This is where I think the city Web site could be a little more helpful. I think 4.7 and 4.9 is where the rest of the Citizen Ray action is.)

After a while, Citizen Ray made the mistake of accusing the council of not understanding what it's like to work for a living. "You're out of order," they said and told him to sit down and that was that.

A few weeks ago, he got similar treatment when he attacked the city for encouraging immigrants to come here, bringing, if I remember right, crime and diseases. Council member Mike McNamara almost yelled at him to "get out of here" because he was getting pretty ugly.

At that point, there were a bunch of Cub Scouts or Boy Scouts waiting to lead the council in a pledge of allegiance. I was rather uncomfortable wondering what kind of lessons these kids were taking home. If the people in power don't like what you say they can shut you down?

What's peculiar to me is how irked the council was by this lone gadfly. He basically egged them into an emotional response instead of a measured response that I think they would've desired. None of the things he questioned were done without some decent public debates and his questions had been answered. Why everyone got so flustered is beyond me.

The lesson I've learned from people like this is not to get too excited and let them hang themselves with their own rope, a la the conversation at the anti-Barack and Hillary protest above. Some readers I heard from thought it was priceless. (By the way, I led the story with people who had something more substantive to say about the Democratic candidates, but couldn't resist putting Citizen Ray in.)

Initially, the hotel, restaurant and bar industries and Manitoba Lotteries Corp. said the [province-wide smoking] ban would trigger economic apocalypse. MLC suggested there would be tens of millions of dollars less flowing into provincial coffers. Hotels, restaurants and bars foresaw mass layoffs and closures.

However, five years after the ban was enacted, much of the predicted doom and gloom did not come to pass. There were winners and losers, but the hospitality and gambling industries have, on the whole, fared much better than expected.

The hardest hit by far were bar and lounge owners. In 2005 and 2006, the first two years after the provincewide ban was enacted, receipts in these establishments dropped by half.

Well, blow me down if I forgot how to add last night. Yes, I know I said the vote was 5-3 at the Grand Forks City Council work session to have the council ban smoking in bars without going to a referendum. That's one council member too many! I was thinking something like three out of five members, but was in a rush to fill in other details and just screwed it up. Luckily, I also reported who voted how so it's pretty clear the 5-3 was really 3-2.

I'm short on time, as always, it seems. So here's a few issues popping up regarding the smoking ban:

Will it pass muster at council?

There's a good chance, I think, of the council going along with the recommendations of the work session and not hold a referendum on the issue. We already know Council members Doug Christensen, Eliot Glassheim and Curt Kreun are for it. That's how they voted last night.

Because this issue could hurt bars, or at least bars think it will hurt them, I would think Council President Hal Gershman would asked to be recused. He's a liquor store owner and has traditionally avoided any votes concerning bars, mostly because of the potential perception that hurting bars would cause more people to drink at home.

Council member Art Bakken seemed cool with it last time this came up. Doug said he thought Art would side with him, Eliot and Curt. So that's a 4-2 vote. (Checked my math. That works!)

Even if Art voted with Council members Terry Bjerke and Mike McNamara, who oppose the council passing a smoking ban, there's still Mayor Mike Brown, who wants a ban and has the power to break a tie.

Survey accuracy

Council member Mike McNamara brought up something that I'd heard about a while back, but hadn't done anyt hing about. That is, one of the people who conducted that smoking ban survey called to say that when he, the pollster, dialed up a smoker, often the smoker would refuse to take the survey upon hearing it was for an anti-smoking group.

A different person had e-mailed me about this. I checked into it and it turned out not to be such a huge deal, so I didn't write a story.

Cordell Fontaine, who heads the polling group, UND's Social Science Research Institute, said the refusal rate on this survey was about 8 percent. I don't know how big that is in the world of polling -- I did ask Cordell, but we ended up laboring over some other point -- but let's assume all of them wanted to leave smoking in bars, that would still be 67 percent of adults favoring banning it in bars. Take away the 3.7 percent margin of error and that's still 63.3 percent. I've probably violated any number of rules of statistics, but you get the drift.

Cordell also said that when someone refuses, he or she is referred to a supervisor, who calls and tries to persuade him or her to take the survey. Is this a bad time? Why don't we call back in an hour? So the refusal rate is after that.

The reason pollsters do this is because they want the results to be truly random, not just the first random person who will answer the survey.

Bar owners' opinions differ

A couple of bar owners testified last night at the work session and I was surprised to hear Josh Gilleland's take. Unlike many bar owners, who think it will just crush their business, he thought that, in the long run, things will settle down and smokers will get used to not smoking in bars.

In the short run, there's going to be some pissed off smokers who will decide they're going to stay home. That impact would probably be immediate. On the other hand, the nonsmokers who claim they'll go to bars more won't do so right away because they're not in the habit of it.

Another bar owner I know said he's philosophically against a smoking ban -- It's his business and if you don't like it, stay out. -- but doubts there will be much of an impact. The only concern he had was that East Grand Forks bars would enjoy a competitive advantage, which, of course, they don't any more because Minnesota banned smoking in bars a long time ago.

It's worth pointing out that the market has demonstrated that whatever demand there is for a nonsmoking bar is adequately met by supply. There were at least two bars that didn't allow smoking that I know of that went out of business, one was the former Dagwood's -- I never got used to the new name, so I can't remember it right now. -- and Suite 49. Canad Inns has two bars that are smoke free, though I've never seen them packed like the downtown bars.

So, let's recap on some of the stuff I should've blogged about, starting with that story about the babies with the frighteningly large face of a baby on the cover.

My only assignment was to check out the number of babies born at Altru Health System, but that didn't make for a very entertaining story, so I went all nerd and decided to bring in more data to flesh out the story. My inspiration was something Grand Forks Mayor Mike Brown had said back in 2004 when he set a goal of increasing the city population to 58,000 by about this time.

(Here's a special treat: The spreadsheet I worked off of to get most of the numbers below.)

The question is how many babies had to be born for us to meet that goal?

The population change formula is very simple: (Births + In-migration) - (Deaths + Out-migration) = Population change. If births and in-migration outpace deaths and out-migration, then the population will grow. If not, it shrinks.

Karen Olson, the helpful staff member from the State Data Center at NDSU, clued me in to this formula, which reminded me of the mayor's goal. Just to cut to the chase, I don't think we'll meet the goal, though the city population estimate isn't out yet. As of last year, we had about 55,700 residents, according to the Metropolitan Planning Organization. Getting 2,300 new residents in a year would be unusual given population trends of the past and given that we had fewer babies born -- about 702 last year compared to 776 the year before -- and the Air Force base population is downsizing.

But I chose not to focus too much on the city because I don't have all the data at that level. Births and deaths are available through the state, but only the Census releases migration data, using IRS records, and only at the county level.

Compiling the data for the years 2000 to 2008 and averaging them out, I found that, without births, Grand Forks County lost 777 residents a year. So to stay even with the year before, there'd have to be about 777 new babies each year. Countywide, we had 914 babies, so were ahead a little more than 100.

The migration data for 2009 isn't in yet and the average might have changed a bit.

Compared to other big counties in the state, Grand Forks is better off than Ward County, but not so good as Cass and Burleigh counties.

Even though Ward County was extraordinarily productive -- about 1,027 births last year -- the number of deaths and outmigration -- averaging 1,236 -- meant that probably wasn't enough to stem the population decline.

Burleigh and Cass counties had such high inmigration that even without births, they would've grown. Burleigh gained an average of 237 residents and Cass 256 a year. They were productive, too, with about 1,073 births in 2009 for Burleigh and 2,179 for Cass.

An interesting, though probably meaningless statistic as far as Grand Forks is concerned, is the fertility rate, which the Census defines as the number of births per 1,000 women of child-bearing age, which is 15 to 44.

For Grand Forks County, the average is 56.4. Ward is a whopping 78.5. Burleigh is 60. And Cass is 59.9.

Because of UND's presence, Grand Forks County's population of younger women is exaggerated and, as state demographer Richard Rathge pointed out, college women tend to hold off on starting families while in school. It's true that other counties have universities, too, but I believe ours is a bigger proportion of the county population.

Last Fall, UND had on-campus enrollment of 11,207 and, if we assume that half of that number are women, that's 5,604 women of child-bearing age who won't be bearing. Removing that population from the child-bearing population, we get an average fertility rate of 86.8.

If I do the same by taking NDSU out of the equation for Cass County, I get 76.6. (Yeah! We're more fertile!)

Taking Minot State University out of Ward County gives me 87.5.

Taking Bismarck State College out of Burleigh County gives me 65.5.

Well, that's kind of the quick and dirty estimate anyway. No doubt there are those living in Grand Forks County who attend Northland Community and Technical College in East Grand Forks or even the University of Minnesota-Crookston. Cass County women might attend Concordia College or Minnesota State University Moorhead.

As Mayor Brown noted, having more people means more federal funding, though it's more accurate to say it means more chances of getting more federal funding since the population also has to meet other criteria to qualify a city for more aid. For example, head start funding for schools depend on the number of kids in head start, not just the total number of kids.

More importantly, it decreases the impact of the aging population. Most people would agree that an economy is most vibrant when the population is diverse. Too many retired folks and it means you don't have as many young workers available for industry. Too many kids and it means you have more kids in school and not enough workers earning money to pay for those schools. I don't know if there's an economic impact to having too many young workers, but that's not a problem we're likely to face!

Top 5 boozing states (2007):

1. New Hampshire.
2. District of Columbia.
3. Nevada.
4. Delaware.
5. Wisconsin.

Top 5 beer-swilling states (2007):

1. New Hampshire.
2. Nevada.
3. Montana.
4. North Dakota.
5. Louisiana.

Top 5 wine-loving states (2007):

1. District of Columbia.
2. New Hampshire.
3. Idaho.
4. Nevada.
5. Vermont.

Top 5 rot-gut states (2007):

1. New Hampshire.
2. District of Columbia.
3. Nevada.
4. Delaware.
5. Wisconsin.

Below, you'll find data from the National Institutes of Health, which I trimmed for your enjoyment. The data shows how much ethanol is consumed a year by the average person in each state, so we're talking about only the alcohol portions of beer, wine and liquor.

For your information, here's some information about alcohol content. If I haven't screwed up my calculations or if my assumptions aren't wrong, 2.88 gallons of ethanol, which the average North Dakotan consumed in a year, is equivalent to 72 gallons of beer at 4 percent alcohol content (ABV). This is 1.58 pints a day.

The average New Hampshirite, by comparison, consumes 4.22 gallons of ethanol a year, or 105.5 gallons of beer, or 2.31 pints a day.

Farther down, you'll see how we compare globally. The average Luxembourger -- they're tops among the world's nations -- consumes 4.12 gallons of ethanol a year, or 103 gallons of beer, or 2.26 pints a day.

Here comes the numbers:

I don't really believe West Virginia is bottoms in drinking. The feds must not be able to count moonshine consumption.

Here's how we stack up against other countries. I'm trusting Wikipedia has this right because there is a reference to the World Health Organization Web site. Also, I've converted liters to gallons.

Top 10 boozers around the world (2003):

1. Luxembourg: 4.12 gallons.
2. Ireland: 3.62 gallons.
3. Hungary: 3.59 gallons.
4. Moldova: 3.49 gallons.
5. Czech Republic: 3.43 gallons.
6. Croatia: 3.25 gallons.
7. Germany: 3.17 gallons.
8. United Kingdom: 3.12 gallons.
9. Denmark: 3.09 gallons.
9. Spain: 3.09 gallons.
10. Cyprus: 3.09 gallons.
10. Portugal: 3.04 gallons.
10. Saint Lucia: 3.04 gallons.
24. United States: 2.27 gallons. (Remember, North Dakota's at 2.88 gallons.)

Today, it happens that I've finished early so I'll catch up with a post about the Alerus Center task force, which wrapped up its work last week. I'm going to ignore the stuff about governance -- no more unannounced meetings -- and the stuff about more financial reports -- just administrative stuff. Let's talk about the business of the Alerus Center.

When the task force was formed, it wasn't too many months after the events center released Britney Spears fiscal figures, including the $97,000 loss. The central question to me was whether taking these kinds of losses are justifiable in light of the potential net economic impact? More broadly, are any losses at the Alerus Center justifiable?

The task force had a very nuanced answer.

First, the task force said the goal must still be to break even and upped the ante by saying that there should be some kind of profit.

This isn't such a change from what the Alerus Center aims to do now; it just hasn't managed to reach that goal.

Second, the task force said big-risk events such as concerts must go to the City Council for final approval. The point is the council has control of the pursestrings and the Alerus Center can't guarantee performers that they'll make money and then turn to the council for a bail out. To my knowledge, that's not happened because of that $250,000 concert fund the council gave the events center each year, though, of course, a seriously disastrous concert could exceed that fund.

The message seems to be that the Alerus Center must break even, but if it wants to take the risk of not breaking even, it should come to the council. This was never explicit in any of the discussions that I sat through, so this is more my interpretation.

The task force never said it's OK to lose money even though it acknowledged that there is a positive economic impact and, at least in discussion, the group agreed that the impact can be higher than losses.

Now, I've heard it said that breaking even is, essentially "impossible." Council Vice President Eliot Glassheim was paraphrasing Alerus Center Executive Director Steve Hyman when he used that word. Steve said that to break even would require cutting the events center "to the bone," the implication being that this would reduce the number events and, therefore, the economic impact.

Some might argue that this is just an excuse, though, of course, no one who says this is actually in the business.

One person that's in the business that I've talked to, if I remember our conversation from about six months ago correctly, agreed that breaking even for such a facility in this market is a real challenge. Not impossible, but challenging. I even asked if VenuWorks, the management firm, were to blame and was told probably not.

I'm saying this because many Alerus Center critics are quick to point fingers and, though I respect their opinions, I tend to rely on more knowledgeable sources. Which is why I've not hammered VenuWorks as those critics might like.

So excuses or not, here's what I've heard from various sources about the challenges the Alerus Center faces:

• If Ralph Engelstad Arena didn't exist and the Alerus Center had been able to host Fighting Sioux hockey and didn't have to compete for concerts, it probably would have an easier time breaking even.

It's obvious that if hockey had gone to the Alerus Center, it would enjoy much bigger attendance and concession sales. But a search of our archives indicate that that was never something anyone seriously expected. There was mention of hockey back in 1996 when events center supporters were campaigning for a "yes" vote, but I think it has more to do with NHL exhibition games.

• The size of our regional population compared to the populations of the Fargo and Winnipeg regions, both of which have competing arenas, makes it hard to bring concerts here.

This is certainly plausible because of the kinds of shifts we've seen in the concert industry, which I've written about before.

• Even if we don't like the fiscal performance of concerts, we still need them for two reasons.

First, when the events center was just a convention center, voters wouldn't approve it. They only agreed when an arena was added so they could get concerts and other events. So, we need concerts to keep faith with voters. On the other hand, it seems like voters have voted with their feet. Concert attendance has not been that hot, even before the economy turned south. The Black Eyed Peas concert a few years ago had disastrous attendance I'm told (I actually went to that one!).

Second, a lot of revenue rides on concerts, from concession profits, to advertising fees to suite leases. Not having concerts could exacerbate the losses. The reason is that arena is a huge volume of air to heat and cool and there's a lot of equipment in there, meaning expenses can only be trimmed so much.

• The Alerus Center is a first-class facility and it has a first-class price for conventions. In fact, the Convention and Visitors Bureau has had to spend some of its money, which it gets from restaurants and bars, to sweeten the deal. I'm not entirely clear why it costs more here than elsewhere, but the way the CVB's Julie Rygg put it, basically convention organizers want a deal on either the convention space or the hotel rooms and, because the Alerus Center has to try to make money and so does Canad Inns, the attached hotel, nobody's budging on prices.

Ever since I thought about the idea of branding for newspapers, I've found myself noticing branding everywhere. A while ago, I read about the city of Melbourne, Australia, and its MTV-like branding effort and wondered why our city has such a lame brand. Our city is great and it deserves better than this or this:

Who has some ideas for a more fitting brand? This is another one of those times where I feel like getting a serious answer. Snarky or obnoxious comments that has nothing to do with the question will be deleted.

The SG goes even further, with this totally outrageous statement: "the scientific evidence indicates that there is no risk-free level of exposure to secondhand smoke." This leaves us with the clear impression that if we merely walk through a smoke-filled room, we have put our health in irreversible jeopardy.

These statements violate the basic tenet of toxicology: "only the dose makes the poison." What is most alarming here is that the top doctor in the land is communicating a message that anything that is harmful at high dose can be lethal at low dose -- when that is simply not true.

A careful read of the Surgeon General's report will reveal that, as I note below, secondhand smoke is potentially lethal with long exposure. Basically, all it really seems to say is the risks of secondhand smoke is about the same as the risks of actually smoking. So, I don't think the report exaggerates things as much as ACSH argues.

I'll admit that the "no risk-free" exposure statement is a bit misleading. There is always some risk in everything. There's no risk-free exposure, for example, to the pesticide the city uses to spray for mosquitoes -- For goodness sake, the city even tells us to stay indoors for 20 to 30 minutes -- the risk is just very, very small.

The City Beat's been getting an unusual number of phone calls about the smoking ban survey with a lot of questions about how it could be that 75 percent of the adults in Grand Forks think it's OK to ban smoking in bars. (Add the 57 percent that favors banning it in the bar and the 18 percent that favors banning it around the bar.)

Did pollsters just talk to smokers? No, though I'm told many smokers didn't want to participate in the survey.

How many people did they survey? They called people randomly and 779 chose to participate.

Who did the survey? UND's Social Science Research Institute.

Isn't UND opposed to smoking? Yes, it banned smoking on campus, but the SSRI is a professional group of pollsters. You have to trust that people have more integrity than that otherwise there's no point in believing anything that anyone says because anyone can be bought off. My caller said anyone can be made to say anything if there's enough money in it. Perhaps my caller was paid off by the tobacco lobby?

Anyway, we know there is a very large number of people that think banning smoking in bars, even over the objection of bar owners, is OK.

The question that no one's asked is just how accurate is public perception about the hazards of second hand smoke. That's what's driving this discussion. In the survey, 68 percent thought that secondhand smoke is a "serious hazard" and 43 percent think that occasional exposure to it is also a "serious hazard." This is like saying secondhand smoke is equal to asbestos or plutonium or something.

I can see how people might think working in a smoke-filled room might be a serious hazard, given the enormous exposure to the stuff, but I find it difficult to believe that occasional exposure could be such a dangerous thing. Walking through a smoke-filled room would hardly seem to be a serious hazard.

We're talking about smoke. Everyone's sat by a campfire or been stuck in a traffic jam on a hot day.

So I asked Haley Thorson, the Public Health Department official who heads up the Grand Forks Tobacco Free Coalition, why she and her boss public health chief Don Shields kept talking about there being "no safe exposure to secondhand smoke."

My impression is that what they really mean is there is "no safe _long-term exposure_ to secondhand smoke."

First a bit of background. I took the liberty of tracking down the origin of the "no safe exposure" line and found a reference to the U.S. Surgeon General's 2006 report on secondhand smoke.

The report actually says: "The scientific evidence indicates that there is no risk-free level of exposure to secondhand smoke."

"Risk-free" is a lot different than "safe" because safe implies that, while there could be some risk, it is negligible. A car that's "safe" is safe in most circumstances, but certainly not if it's caught in a head-on collision between two semis. Meat that's "safe" is safe most of the time, but sometimes safety breaks down at the meat processing plant or in the restaurant and people get e. coli poisoning.

Haley said that secondhand smoke isn't "safe" because even brief exposure will produce a response in the body. Blood gets thicker because the platelets are "stickier," which then exerts more pressure on the blood vessel, decreasing blood flow and slowing down the heart. The blood doesn't get to the body as quickly.

But doesn't the body recover from that sort of thing pretty quickly?

The more times that happens, she said, the greater the probability that there will be permanent damage. So it might be a slight, almost unnoticeable damage at first, but if it happens enough, then the damage becomes cumulative, she said.

People with heart diseases will have it worse, she said.

In other words, we are talking about long-term exposure. If someone were to sit in a bar, say, twice a week, each time spending three hours there, over a year, that's 312 hours and over five years 1,560 hours, which is about 65 days. So that's the true hazard.

I wished the public health people would talk about it in those terms rather than use the "no safe exposure" line, which sounds suspiciously like propaganda. Secondhand smoke is bad enough. It doesn't need exaggeration.

What does the Surgeon General say about this? His report is ridiculously detailed, so I'm not going to pretend I read the whole thing. I skimmed a lot.

First, we know that secondhand smoke -- "sidestream smoke" in the Surgeon General report -- can cause tumors. They made a lot of rats breathe a lot of secondhand smoke for long periods of time -- five months in one case -- or condensed the smoke and put on the rats' skins.

Second, we know there are carcinogens in secondhand smoke, such as formaldehyde, and that stuff gets into the human body.

Third, secondhand smoke screws with your respiratory system. The immune system is injured, increasing the chances of getting some sort of infection. The cells can get inflamed, causing obstruction to the airway, and this is a progressive condition that's irreversible.

Fourth, secondhand smoke activates the platelets in blood making it, as Haley said, stickier. What that means is there's a higher chance you'll get a thrombus or a blood clot. Big enough clots and there's a risk of a stroke or heart attack. Weirdly enough, nonsmokers are way more susceptible to this than smokers, maybe because the smokers' bodies are used to smoke and doesn't get too excited about it.

Secondhand smoke also reduces the amount of oxygen that blood can carry to the heart and damage heart cells' ability to use oxygen.

Basically, you're not going to get a heart attack from sitting in a smoky room, but you could if you did it a lot.

There's more, but I don't have time to slog through what's basically a 700-page medical journal. But, you get the picture.

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

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

First, a bit about the two studies.

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

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

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

City of quitters

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

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

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

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

There ought to be a law...

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

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

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

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

• Serious hazard 68%
• Moderate hazard 23%
• Minor hazard 5%
• Not a health a hazard 2%
• Not sure 2%

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

• Serious hazard 43%
• Moderate hazard 39%
• Minor hazard 12%
• Not a health hazard 4%
• Not sure 2%

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

• Serious hazard 80%
• Moderate hazard 13%
• Minor hazard 3%
• Noth a health hazard 2%
• Not sure 2%

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

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

• Very important 79%
• Somewhat important 11%
• Not too important 4%
• Not at all important 4%
• Not sure 2%

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

• All areas in the building 19%
• Not allowed at all in the building 57%
• Not allowed at all in building or grounds 18%
• Not sure 6%

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

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

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

• Statement 1 16%
• Statement 2 79%
• Not sure 5%

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

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

Bars and cocktail lounges:

• All areas 25%
• Some areas 37%
• Not allowed at all 28%
• Not allowed in/out 10%

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

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

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

• Statement 1 32%
• Statement 2 68%

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

Change of heart

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bars and lounges: Smoking should be allowed in:

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

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

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

• Yes 17%
• No 83%

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

• Much more enjoyable 35%
• Somewhat more enjoyable 8%
• No difference 37%
• Somewhat less enjoyable 5%
• Much less enjoyable 1%
• Don't know 14%

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or how about this dude for a mascot:

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

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

...

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

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

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

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

The wrong kind of nickname

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Know what?

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

Pekin Chinks

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

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

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

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

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

I'll tell you a funny story.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Slanty-eyed Spaniards

One final race-related thing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The New York Times did something similar:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

About that task force

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

• Its mission would be to come up with recommendations to resolve our estimated $9.9 trillion public debt (according to the White House). Note that this is different from the national debt, which includes private debts. The national debt is estimated at $14.4 trillion.
• Congress would put 16 of its members on the task force and the president would put the treasury secretary and another person of his choosing.
• The task force would not issue any recommendation unless 14 of its members agree. That's 78 percent, much more than a two-thirds supermajority.
• Congress would automatically vote up or down on any recommendation without any chance to amend. The recommendation would become law only there were supermajorities in both houses.

Where we stand

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

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

• 1) Zimbabwe: 265.6 percent.
• 2) Japan: 172.1 percent.
• 3) Lebanon: 160.3 percent.
• 4) Jamaica: 116.3 percent.
• 5) Italy: 105.8 percent.
• 16) France: 68.1 percent.
• 20) Germany: 66 percent.
• 21) Canada: 63.8 percent.
• 35) United Kingdom: 51.8 percent.
• 61) United States: 37.5 percent. (I have no idea why the CIA is using an estimate that White House data sugggests came from 2005. Using the White House data for 2008, which was 40.8 percent, we'd be ranked 51, just behind Costa Rica.)
• 101) China: 15.6 percent.
• 117) Russia: 6.5 percent.
• 122) Estonia: 4.8 percent.
• 123) Azerbaijan: 4.1 percent.
• 124) Libya: 4 percent.
• 125) Oman: 2.8 percent.
• 126) Equatorial Guinea: 0.9 percent. (This is the nation with the lowest debt-to-GDP.)

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

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

Who's for and against

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Support is also all over the board.

Here's the Concord Coalition, which is :

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Total impact

So where's the confusion of terms?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Growing the economy

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finding a voice

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

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

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

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

Here's some excerpts from my audio file:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Long pause as Brian shuffles up.]

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

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

So the timeline looks like this right now:

• Jan. 15: The plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the state board filed an appeal to the Supreme Court. As part of the process, they asked the district court where they lost the case to send transcripts to the Supreme Court.
• Jan. 21: The SBHE decides not to do anything with the nickname out of respect for the appeal process.

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

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

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

• Feb. 18: The SBHE holds its monthly meeting at Lake Region State College in Devils Lake.
• Feb. 21: The theoretical cut-off point for applying in time to get into the 2011-2012 schedule. Why Feb. 21? I'm just adding a month to the Jan. 21 meeting.
• March 2: The theoretical date the court will get the transcripts without the expedited process.
• March ??: The Summit League's presidents' council meets. This would be the first opportunity for it to discuss UND's application, if UND is able to do that in time. NDSU President Dick Hanson said he'll be a good ambassador for UND.

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

• June ??: The presidents' council meets again.
• June 15: The theoretical earliest date the Supreme Court would make a decision without an expedited process. This is based on Pat Seaworth's six to eight month estimate.
• Aug. 1: The SBHE's deadline for UND to begin the transition to a new nickname if it can't win tribal approval, based on an earlier timeline.
• Aug. 15: The theoretical latest date the Supreme Court would make a decision, again, based on Pat's estimate.
• Sept. 15: The theoretical latest date, based on the plaintiffs' attorney Pat Morley's estimate.
• Nov. 30: The deadline for UND to begin the transition to a new nickname, based on the timeline laid out in the settlement between the state and the NCAA.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So I had to do a little research.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You could've heard the tires squealing last fall.

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

As Dr. Hanson detailed today:

• More students are forgoing face-to-face classes for online classes. Because online credits are cheaper, NDSU is getting less tuition than it planned for. The budget said $60.4 million in tuition. The reality is $59.9 million.

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

• Second, tuition waivers are bigger than expected. It was budgeted at $12.5 million. It's now $15.1 million. While the difference of $2.6 million is what NDSU could've gotten, we also have to remember that some students might not choose to attend if they didn't get the waiver.
• The additional face-to-face students, while less than expected, seemed to have caused greater than expected increases in the costs of new class sections, renting more space and paying for more instructors. The additional cost was $1.1 million.

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

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

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

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

• President's home. Budgeted at zero. Actual was $575,451. (Not a surprise, of course.)
• Aircraft fleet, operations and maintenance. Budgeted at $600,303. Actual was $425,303.
• Athletics. Budgeted at $4,559,129. Actual was $5,209,129.
• Presidential search. Budgeted at zero. Actual was $175,000. (Also not a surprise.)
• Library funding. Budgeted at zero. Actual was $111,021.
• Scholarships. Budgeted at $2,953,000. Actual was $3,015,300.
• Old Main building remodel, including accounting and president's office. Budgeted at zero. Actual was $361,261.

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

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

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

• First, the words "transparency" and "accountability" was used a lot, and not just by Dr. Hanson.

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

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

• Second, Dr. Hanson said this to the finance committee, without really any prompting: "As you know, I slowed down a lot of the processes on campus intentionally. Had I not done we could've avoided publicity and things like that. But I'm glad I did because I think we'd be in a worse mess if I hadn't done what I did. The problems would've been repeated next fiscal year and I’m not going to let that happen."

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

• Third, in response to questions about whether it's necessary, as some observers say, to bring outside auditors in to clean up NDSU's books, Dr. Hanson said it's not necessary because he's got a handle on the situation. "I'm very experienced at this kind of forensic auditing and I think we've uncovered what we need to uncover." My gosh, it's like he's looking at a crime scene....

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rah-rah sis-boom-bah

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

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

• The Chamber "strongly supports" the Alerus Center because it has a positive economic impact on the community. Bear in mind that the task force was arguing about that economic impact at its last meeting.
• It's healthy for the council to take a look at governance and set parameters for success with public input.
• Various Chamber committees discussed this issue and, as far as they're concerned, once the whole governance and parameters thing is agreed to, everyone should get behind the building.
• The community should get the positive word out about the Alerus Center so we can bring in more visitors.

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

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

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

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

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

Well, I guess the Chamber came through tonight.

______ vs. ______

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

GFK by the numbers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

UND's impact

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

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

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

• The airline industry is ailing and not hiring as much.
• The recession's making it harder for students to afford the higher cost of flight training.
• The recession's also reducing the financial aid available.

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

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

Grand Forks, ND – The Alerus Center Task Force is looking for your opinions. At the next regularly scheduled meeting, the task force will hold a public input session, to allow residents to offer suggestions or other comments regarding the future of the Alerus Center.

That meeting will take place on Thursday, January 14, 2010 at 5:00 p.m. in the Grand Forks City Council chambers. The Council chambers is located on 3rd Floor of City Hall at 255 North 4th Street.

The public is encouraged to attend.

I look forward to meeting the verbose yet anonymous members of the blogosphere.

The Alerus Center task force met again tonight for the second time and there was, I thought, some productive discussion on how to come up with an economic impact figure that will be satisfying to a majority.

As I've mentioned before and as many of you know, those figures get to be pretty controversial, sometimes for good reasons and sometimes for pretty dumb reasons. But there's apparently enough of the good reasons to cast doubt on the economic impact. Task force members recognized that they'll never come up with anything that will please 100 percent of the people, so it seems to me the goal is to please 80 or 90 percent.

Two of the task force members, in particular, seem to be good sounding boards because they're in the critics' camp: City Council members Mike McNamara and Terry Bjerke. The two of them, for example, said economic impact should leave out wedding banquets and UND football games because Grand Forks had those even without the Alerus Center. They conceded that attendance is probably greater when those events are at the events center, as argued by other task force members, including Park Board President Bill Hutchison.

There was a lot of give and take in the discussion that I enjoyed.

Mac argued against including any wedding banquets because that would make the economic impact figures harder to criticize. They should be something that even Terry can embrace.

Council President Hal Gershman argued that the figures shouldn't be something that only Terry or only Hal can embrace. Essentially, he's saying there ought to be a compromise. He feels that bigger wedding banquets should be counted as a positive impact.

That Bill, who I've noticed is pretty cautious fiscally, seems closer to Hal's position, I felt, makes that compromise more likely.

Also in attendance was David Flynn, the head of UND's Bureau of Business and Economic Research and the guy who's been working on tbe much criticized economic data. He said something I thought worth repeating in the story and here: The Alerus Center commission asked him a question and he answered it. If you don't like the answer, maybe you should try asking a different question.

The question, if I remember right, was: What is the total economic impact of the events center? It was not what is the economic impact minus the impact of whatever events we used to have.

Over the next few weeks, the task force will probably refine the new question.

There's one other point of contention from the task force meeting that must be noted though it ended up not being such a big deal. The public image of the Alerus Center continues to be obsessed over in a way that I can't quite understand. Task force members spent a lot of time bellyaching about how the news media portrayed the events center and how there wasn't a very good public relations strategy.

Council member Art Bakken even said that maybe if PR is a problem, the Alerus Center should have a PR department. Council member Doug Christensen said maybe there are too many voices saying too many things and the Alerus Center needs a spokesperson to which all questions should be directed.

Good gravy! Can you imagine the backlash?? I know what my reaction would be if public officials start shunting all my questions toward a spokesperson. I know that the critics will have a field day pointing out how dumb it is to waste money and time trying to shape public opinions instead of trying to just not lose money.

(To be fair to Doug, I think he was simply reacting to the infamous incident where an Alerus Center commissioner called some critics "morons.")

Most task force members said the PR department was probably not worth pursuing. Council President Hal Gershman said he thought the truth would speak for itself.

Mac and Julie Rygg, the head of the Convention and Visitors Bureau, made good points about PR though: The Alerus Center commission should quit screwing it up.

When people hear that the Alerus Center would've made money if not for the loss from a concert, Mac said, "they go into brainlock" and ignore anything else that's said.

"We're in the black if you don't count this loss," Julie said, characterizing essentially the lede in about half of the stories I write about the Alerus Center's year-end financials.

I've noted before that the reason for such bizarre statements is the financials are used to track the performance of management firm VenuWorks. Some of the losses don't get counted toward the company's performance bonus, namely the concert losses, so, even if concert losses destroy all profits, for purposes of calculating the bonus, the Alerus Center stil made money.

Whether the exemption for concerts is a good idea is for another discussion. As far as public consumption is concerned, the total losses is the number that people want to know about because that's tax dollars that could be spent some other way. For Alerus Center commissioners or VenuWorks itself to crow about making money when the events center really didn't is to skirt credibility.

To give 'em credit, they don't do that anymore; but, shoot, they never should've in the first place. Messing up is easier to forgive than messing up and acting like you didn't.