82SiouxGuy

The city very well may come up with another project. But a library tax would have a sunset clause and would end, so the city would have to sell the new project to the community and the people would have to vote on it again. I believe that is what happened with the original sales tax in Grand Forks. It was voted in for a specific project (water plant maybe???). After a short time they were either done with it and the sunset clause was about to kick in or they realized that they didn't need the tax any more. They went back to the people and asked if that sales tax could be used for economic development and general city operations. The people said yes and that 1% tax is ongoing. I brought up the property tax for 2 reasons. You said that you had never heard of taxes going down, anywhere. Other people keep talking about taxes continually going up and never going down. I wanted to point out that taxes have gone down before, they have gone down fairly significantly, that it happened right here in North Dakota and that it was very recently. So much discussion on issues like this is based on emotion and rumor. I try to make sure that people are dealing with facts so they can make informed decisions and not react to the latest rumors or misdirection.

That was the year Grand Forks set a record for snowfall. We had about 110 inches of snow. The snowbanks were huge, and he disappeared in one of the many storms. No one had any idea where to look. I think he got lost and got off the route they expected him to take. The van he crawled into didn't move for months so no one looked in it, and the storm covered all of the tracks. It was a terrible story.

I understood that part. But my point is that they have to squeeze the schedule to get 20 games in during the shortest number of weeks in the season. So it will probably be a rotating schedule instead of having traveling pairs plus 1. Montana and Montana State will probably not be playing the same 2 teams every week during the season. To do that they would have to have 2 weeks where they had the traveling pairs play a single game against each other and UND didn't play (which would add a week to the conference schedule), or have the traveling pairs play home and home the same week with UND not playing. Neither is going to fly. Most of the time the teams playing at UND will still have to play a second game that weekend. Besides, I will ask again why the Big Sky would give UND special treatment for their schedule? Especially if there are schools mad about bringing UND in because of the distance. UND is not going to get preferential treatment.

That was the story I was thinking about also.

To make a 20 game schedule work they are going to have to play 2 games pretty much every week. There is no way to set up a regular traveling partner schedule like the NCC had where 2 schools would come to North Dakota for a weekend and swap opponents on the second night. That means they are going to have to play in Grand Forks one night and in another town the next night. We don't know what that other town is, but all of them involve at least 2 airplane rides. Some of them include 3. So under your plan a team would have to play in Grand Forks on Friday night, get up early Saturday morning to take 2 or 3 flights, and hope they don't miss any connections, just to play again that night. That team would be at a large disadvantage playing on Saturday night since they spent most of the day on an airplane. That is the best case scenario if they can make the connections work and if the weather doesn't interfere. One delayed flight would cancel the game. Does that really sound fair, or even feasible? Is the league going to risk that 10 times a year for UND when the chances for delay are so good in Grand Forks, Minneapolis and at several other locations across the league? It isn't going to happen. The league isn't going to go a long ways out of their way to set up a special schedule for UND. They play on Thursday and Saturday, with 1 Sunday game every week. That is the way the schedule will set up for UND. It is the only way they can do it because of the long travel distances between so many of the schools. Traveling to UND is going to be the longest for most, if not all, of the schools.

The Friday-Saturday schedule is going to be impossible. These teams are going to have to travel a long ways between games to get to Grand Forks. So they are going to need travel time in between, especially since connections might be tough at times. It would be very difficult, if not impossible to play somewhere else on Friday night and get to Grand Forks at a reasonable time for a Saturday game, or play in Grand Forks on Friday and get somewhere else for a Saturday game. Traveling team would be at more than a normal disadvantage on Saturday night. And weather will interfere with travel at times throughout the season, much of the Big Sky is in country with real winter. They need the travel day in between. Let the dream die, it doesn't have a chance of happening. And that doesn't even take into consideration the hockey factor. I'm sure the Big Sky will try to work with UND, but there is no way that they can guarantee that the basketball team can be scheduled opposite of the hockey team.

The library board is proposing an increase in operating revenue in addition to the cost of building. The increase in operating will depend in part on the additional usage. They project an extra $125-140,000 for a small increase in usage up to about $250,000 extra if usage doubles. The library budget is currently a little over $1.9 million per year. The extra costs will be mainly for staff. The majority of the increase would come from the city and the rest from the county. The projected price is based on square footage space needed for the population of the Grand Forks area and the usage of the current library. Basically they used approximately 1 square foot per person within about 30 miles (actually it works out to a little less than 1). That is about the industry average for libraries built in the last several years. The really nice libraries are closer to 2 square feet per person. The current library is about .57 square feet per person which is half of what is considered normal in the industry. That is in spite of usage being above normal for the population. The architect has worked on more than 70 libraries. I would guess he has a pretty good handle on construction costs. He also has a pretty good idea what is needed for libraries. I would trust his instincts and his design more than the average person on the street in Grand Forks. How many libraries have any of us designed? How many of us know what is needed in a good library? How many of us would be able to tell a good design from a bad design? Why do you need a drawing, do you know anything about designing libraries? Would you know a good design from a bad design? Would you know what our local library needs to do it's job properly? The architect is also working with Widseth, Smith & Nolting, a local architecture and engineering firm. They should be able to provide the accurate local costs. So if they say they need approximately $20.8 million to accomplish what they are trying to accomplish they probably have a better handle on that number than I would ever have. I can choose to either say yes or no. Unless something happens that changes my mind, I will be saying yes. If it passes, they will have a set amount of money to spend. They will build as much as they can for that amount. If costs on something go up they will probably have to find something else to adjust. The Park District is doing that with the Wellness Center, so the library can do the same thing.

It will be written right into the ordinance that the tax will end after 30 months or when $20.8 million has been collected. So it will go at least 30 months, and under normal circumstances that should collect the $20.8 million. If for some reason the projected taxes don't add up quite that fast it would continue until the $20.8 million is collected. At that point it will end. The only way the tax could continue would be to have another election and have the people approve the tax for another purpose. Neither the city council nor anyone else could continue the tax without another vote and approval of the people. And the money can't be spent on anything else without a vote of the people. If the project fell apart and they didn't build the library they would have to go to the people and get permission to spend the money in another way. You may not believe this, but sunset clauses do happen and they do work. Even the sales tax being collected to pay for construction of the Alerus Center will end after 30 years. Only about 20 years to go on that one. And property taxes for most North Dakota residents went down last year thanks to the extra revenue from oil and other sources. The state increased their support of secondary education so that local school districts could decrease their property taxes. The average decrease in the Grand Forks area was about 12%. I don't know if the percentage was similar in all areas of the state or not.

Fargo recently increased their sales tax to help pay for the proposed flood control. They are currently 3/4% more than Grand Forks. I believe that it will be in place for several years. I don't think it has affected business in Fargo much. So if Grand Forks increased it's sales tax 1% to pay for a library it will only be 1/4% more than Fargo and only for about 30 months (2 1/2 years). I don't think the sales tax increase will affect business in town very much.

Actually, I'm pretty sure their strength of schedule will end up right in the middle of the pack, at least by the end of the season. I guess that's what happens when you have every team in college hockey on the schedule.

You better check the numbers again. Bye hasn't given up a point yet this season. I would be surprised if UND gets anything out of the weekend.

I haven't looked tonight and I don't know it as well as some others, but the thing to remember about Pairwise is that it isn't just about what your team does. It also involves how everyone else does. It involves comparisons of how you have done against other teams and how other teams have done against the rest of the teams. Teams can become TUC's or lose their TUC status. Your record against them will either hurt you or help you no matter what you do that day. You can win big, and if the right teams win or lose that day you can drop in Pairwise. You can lose, and if the right teams win or lose you can rise in Pairwise. Pairwise isn't a straight or simple ranking system. So the simple results of a single game won't tell the story of what will happen in Pairwise when all of the other games played that day figure in. And it is also why I have always said that there is no point in watching Pairwise early in the season because there are way too many variables in place that will change the rankings by the end of the season. I'm sure that Jim or someone else will take the time to explain in more detail exactly what happened this weekend to allow UND to drop in the rankings even though they won the game. My guess is that a comparison or 2 flipped because someone now has a better record against common opponents, or because a school UND has a good record against dropped out of TUC status or a team that someone else has a record against became a TUC.

Hak has done this before. He usually does it when one or both players are dinged up. Going out for warmups helps them decide if the player is healthy enough to play. I'm sure he has told them that if one of them is able to go he is the choice. The actual decision might not be made until they get back to the locker room and see if the injured player is ready or not.

They would have no obligation to play UND, which means they can decide not to play UND for any reason. The only obligations would be if they were in the same league or in a tournament. The courts can't make them schedule a non-conference game. There is no chance that any kind of lawsuit would be possible.

UND is transitioning to Division I and has plenty of other irons in the fire. They have chosen to spend their money in other places. Plus they are only one part of the partnership that broadcasts the games. If they were just getting into broadcasting games they would probably spend the money to get better equipment. But this equipment is less than 10 years old and works great so why would they buy new when they need money for other things?

Where do you see Sac State on that schedule at all? Eastern Washington is a good game for them, probably arranged a couple of years ago. Or it was on a weekend that UND already had booked. Southern Utah and UC Davis are league games. UND hosted Lamar last year and won 31-6. Lindenwood is NAIA if I remember correctly. Missouri S & T is Division II. So the main difference in their home schedule compared to UND is EWU. USD's road schedule is better, but they will probably get beat up pretty good by Air Force and especially Wisconsin. Overall they have a better schedule but it isn't 100 times better.

I'm sure that Mussman and the football team would be glad to give up any hope of hosting a playoff game for an indefinite period. That wouldn't hurt the football program at all. Because we all know that Standing Rock will gladly hold an election as soon as the State Board of Higher Education allows them to.

My point is that this is not only Hak's 7th year coaching at UND, it is only his 7th year as a head coach in college hockey. Just like anything else, it usually takes people some time to learn how to coach at a new level. Being an assistant in that same program helps. But being the head guy is a whole different ball of wax. That is why I keep pointing out that even the most successful head coaches don't often have great success at the beginning of their career.

It all boils down to $$$. Money for equipment has been mentioned many times, but I'm sure that it would cost more for bandwidth also.

With computers it would be very simple. They can just set up the system to count all tickets sold after a certain time or before a certain time. It probably takes 1 person less than a minute to get both totals.

Lucia won in his 3rd year at Minnesota. But he had 2 coaching stops before that, including 6 very good years at Colorado College. At CC he was in the national tournament 5 out of the 6 years, Frozen Four twice and finished 2nd one of those years. The year he didn't make the national tournament was his first at CC, he only won the WCHA that year but didn't make the tournament.

Jerry York's head coaching career.

But there is a whole season (2011-2012) left between the end of this season and the start of the first year in the Big Sky.

Hockey starts in early October, so Hennesey wouldn't have time.

Ralph supported the university and the hockey program more than the nickname alone. He would have done everything in his power to keep the name, but I don't think he would have hurt the school or the hockey program just to keep the name. UND and UND hockey are bigger than the Fighting Sioux nickname.