In Fargo, pilot project to bury alley overhead utilities approved

Here in Minot, the City is proud of our downtown infrastructure project. And appropriately so — it was a big project and the improvements were long needed. But from a critical perspective — we did a great job on our underground infrastructure like water, sewer, and storm sewer, but we missed on the overhead stuff

Read & Share   sourced from: InForum

The high cost of free parking in Minot

With news out of Michigan that an appeals court has ruled chalking tires unconstitutional, some cities may be forced to innovate how they regulate parking. While it’s too early to say exactly how the ruling will shake out, there’s no doubt that if it holds, we’ll feel it. It’s because in North Dakota, parking meters

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When does a minimum wage become too high?

If the government mandates an increase in the minimum wage, will it reduce the number of jobs available? Simple economic principles suggest yes — the more expensive to provide jobs, the fewer employers will provide. But simple economic principles don’t always win out in the real world. The article linked below from MPR highlights a

Read & Share   sourced from: MPR

Road infrastructure is expensive, self-driving cars will demand more of it

For most in Minot, the idea of a self-driving car is pretty far off. For the companies chasing the opportunity, the technology is much closer than most realize. For a community like ours, this shift has big implications. And the common assumption is that when it arrives, self-driving cars will reduce traffic and congestion. But

Read & Share   sourced from: Science Alert

The funeral as we know it is becoming a relic – just in time for death boom

Have you noticed our rituals around death changing? You’re not just imagining it, and as the largest generation in U.S. history begins contemplating end-of-life issues, we’re likely to experience as many changes to the conventional funeral as we’ve seen in other stages of the baby-boomers life experience. The Washington Post has the story.

Read & Share   sourced from: The Washington Post

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St. Paul asks residents to weigh in on alley plowing

In an example of the ever-evolving snow removal plan, collaboration, and community engagement, the City of St. Paul is surveying citizens on whether the city should plow alleys. In Minot, our alleys are maintained by the City but typically only when they become a priority for maintaining services like garbage pick-up. Still, potential revisions to

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Street art proving to be travel-worthy in India

On the other side of the world, people in India are traveling to see street art after Delhi’s Lodhi Colony laid claim to being the country’s first public art district. Get the story from Quartz, and consider whether Minot’s emerging street art movement and reputation as a regional arts center is an overlooked opportunity to

Read & Share   sourced from: Quartz

Big Data Has Transformed Agriculture…In Some Places, Anyway

If you’re familiar with the farming industry you know it’s a technology and data driven industry. Investment in higher yield is built into the cost of growing food — around here, but the American model is not the rule in other parts of the world. When it comes to farming practices, and particularly the use

Read & Share   sourced from: Scientific American

Finland’s Steve’n’Seagulls is back in the U.S. touring the West

Finland’s Steve’n’Seagulls has been featured at least a few times here on The Minot Voice. Their performances — at least the Youtube videos — often mix traditional instruments with reinterpretations of classic 1980’s rock like ACDC and Guns n’ Roses. They’re a relevant Minot topic because of our Scandinavian heritage and our constant need to

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Cedar Rapids Learns from Past Floods to Protect City

Cedar Rapids flooded in three years before Minot, and there are enough similarities between the town and recovery that their work is worth watching. This article from Engineering News-Record provides a nice recap of their progress and calls particular attention to making use of opportunities as they present themselves. Flood fight days are a huge

Read & Share   sourced from: Engineering New-Record

How Local Music Scenes Make our Cities Stronger

If you take a minute and think about what makes Minot unique, you probably won’t have to work hard to land on music. From the Minot Symphony and the Western Plains Opera to Why Not Fest, Leewok and all the regular music you can catch at places like Ebeneezers and Souris River Brewing, Minot’s music

Read & Share   sourced from: Strong Towns

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Eagle nests observed throughout North Dakota

The historical plight of bald eagles is told often. At its lowest point, surveys estimated the bald eagle breeding population was once as low as 500 nesting pairs in the lower 48 states. Unregulated taking by humans, loss of habitat and environmental contaminants were main factors in the eagle’s population decline. Bald eagles were not

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Williston District 1 weighs options after school bond vote fails a second time

With property taxes heavy on the pocketbook more and more school districts across the state are stuck carrying the burden. The most recent example is from Williston where a second failed bond approval vote will require the district to figure out what to do with high school class sizes they don’t have room for. Few

Read & Share   sourced from: Williston Herald

25 reasons not to widen freeways

Our neighbors to the West are wrestling with a question of widening a freeway through their downtown corridor. It’s not much of a news topic; stories like this have been an afterthought for most cities and citizens for the past 50 years — when traffic gets bad we widen roads. But this story is different.

Read & Share   sourced from: City Observatory

In Maryland, pay-as-you-throw trash collection effectively reducing waste and nudging behavior

Landfill expansions, recycling, service days and rates, single-use plastic — they’re all topics that have been front and center for the City of Minot over the past year. That’s appropriate — there are few things more central for a municipality than garbage removal. And it’s on that topic that this story from Maryland is relevant

Read & Share   sourced from: Carroll County Times

An introduction to the father of Minot

When Erik Ramstad made it to the Mouse River Valley in 1883 there wasn’t much else here. ‘Minot’ was still a few years away, but it was his land that eventually became the base of operations for the Great Northern Railroad and eventually the City of Minot. For a great refresh on the man behind

Read & Share   sourced from: InForum