The Whistler

The first thing I would do is just contact the office at the Ralph and ask them. I'll bet you can drop it off and pick it up the next day. Just don't be getting it dedicated to Sioux17. ;-)

Aren't the anti-nickname people going to make up for lost donation now. As for me I figure that donations to the athletic department for scholarships is for value given. If I'm going to be a fan I'll keep donating for the athletes. I told the University that if they did this they'd lose my support forever. They went and did it. They could have waited for the deadline, but they couldn't chance that. So I guess it's for the anti's now to step up.

I think this is a case of magical thinking. This group can imagine that all kinds of great things will come about if a change is made, but what we've found is that the larger the entity the more inefficient it becomes. What we need actually is for the schools to be MORE competitive with eachother without using the taxpayer as the means to their growth.

Does anyone know where the hockey coaching staff's salaries come from. Are they being funded by the state or are they getting money from the REA people to pay the coaches? Blais's first big contract came through the alumni center.

That might be what needs to be done, but the first thing is to try to find someone who CAN manage it. Those Venuworks/compass guys have proven to be even more incompetent than the long-term Alerus Commission members.

Really? It's seemed up here that the Alerus bombs really bad in the first half of the year and then does less bad in the second.

Ha, an endorsement of the Aleurs coming from you is just about perfect. Thanks for making my day.

Fargo seems to be having as good a year as the glory years of yesteryear. That means to me that the Alerus Gang can't blame the "concert industry" for their mismanagement of the Alerus. http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/fargo-dome-profits-while-alerus-gang-fritters-away-our-hard-earned-money/ I don't see any justification for forcing me tot subsidize concerts (more than the tax to build and maintain the building) so that someone else can enjoy the "quality of life" that they think they're entitled to. I would also dispute that Britney Spears concerts aren't quality of life anyway. Of course that's subjective, but it makes my point of you paying for the concerts you want to go to. I like Neil Diamond, but hate concerts so I didn't go. Despite that it seems that those of us that didn't go to his concert picked up half of the tab for those that did. The main problem here is that among a certain group of unfortunately influential people keeping up with Fargo is something the rest of us are just going to have to pay for. Well I don't want to live in Fargo. If I did want to I think I'd just move there. In the first six months of the year the taxpayers had to pay 3.6 million in taxes to support the Alerus. According to the city website the net amount the Alerus supposedly brought in (the largest of which was the Republican state convention) is $1.7 million. http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/what-kind-of-idiots-spend-3-6-million-in-cash-to-bring-in-1-7-million/ I blame the guys that lied to get the place built in the first place. They need to step down so we can at least minimize the cost of their mess. Instead they want to extend the 3/4 % sales tax and use that to subsidize their bad business sense.

The Alerus Gang, as I've named the various interests, doesn't want to change anything. The city council Alerus Task force had a number of recommendations that the Alerus gang has pretty much ignored 100%. For the record, the audit showed that the Alerus had a 2.7 million dollar loss in net operating income in 2008. So why would you want to change anything? The Alerus gang wants to fix the problem by creating a whole new level of subsidy.

Why can Fargo make money on concerts and we can't even break even? In my opinion the difference is management. Venuworks is doing a terrible job and the Alerus Commission seems to be happy with that. Edit: One other thing, the Alerus has been losing money for years. I'm sure they want to blame today's concert industry but the problem is a lot deeper than that.

You would think that we don't have to worry about chemistry in that we only lost two everyday players. I don't want to knock him, but I think we need our goalie to steal a game when the team isn't maybe playing their best.

Hey Hoeven stepped up and did the right thing. I was wrong. In his position I think he phrased it in the exact right way.

Kelley, Shaft and Faison are writing a book on how NOT to do it.

Sounds like he won't suggest any action to the people he appointed.

I don't make many predictions but here's one. Hoeven won't touch this topic.

Time for them to go.

I think Faison, Kelley and Shaft are trying to dupe us. It's not working.

So Faison said we had to act on the Sioux name now so we could get into the Summit this June. This article says there's no guarantee they'll look at it. From my reading of the NCAA settlement that as long as we get approval from Standing Rock to the terms in the agreement then we can restore the name through a statewide referendum.

They anti-nickname has been falsely been trying to stir up trouble between the races in order to prove their superiority.

Well I have only the one source and as I said haven't confirmed it (haven't had the time). I will say that a plan on a website can look pretty good. Whether or not that project actually goes smoothly is where the skate hits the ice. Did they have the funding in line before they started the project?

My source says that project was planned very sloppily and they're running short of cash (perhaps up to 1.2 million dollars). It was funded with stimulus dollars so it isn't that the money wasn't there to be had. The building was no great shakes when I was in school and it hadn't had a thing done to it in recent years. So I'll grant you that one way or another there was a problem. Now I haven't been able to run down the story so I haven't blogged on it. But I think there's some serious questions if that's how Kelley handled it.

Not that he's done any of that or looks to be capable of doing any of that.

The anti-Sioux name folks have been stirring up racial divisiveness for years to accomplish what they've done. Can they be any more disgusting. The fact of the matter is that the GF/UND community and Spirit Lake and presumably the Standing Rock are all of one mind. We love the name and logo. Let's keep that in mind and remember who it is that's trying to divide the races.