If City Hall doesn’t succeed, neither do we

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this was incorrectly attributed to Josh Wolsky. This has been updated to reflect the correct author, Jim Maxson. If there are more thankless jobs than being on the Minot City Council or being Minot’s Mayor, I have no idea what they may be. The present administration inherited some pre-existing

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So, you’d like a neighborhood grocery store…

Would you like to be less reliant on your car? Should I assume you even have a car? After all, they are expensive. Those are odd questions to ask in an article titled about local grocery stores, but they’re at the heart of the question that asks why our neighborhood grocery stores disappeared. Minot used

Read & Share   sourced from: Strong Towns

The internet is broken; this is how we fix it

Whether for predatory profit or political persuasion and power, the high ideals that gave rise to the Internet are being increasingly eroded. What do we do about it? Is there a way to turn this extraordinary tool toward outcomes that push us forward? Read more on where we need to direct the Internet from this

Read & Share   sourced from: Quartz

What would it look like if we really committed to #MakeMinotAccessible?

It’s one of those things that most of us take for granted — being able to go where we want, when we want, without logistics planning or concerns about how we’re going to get there. I’m talking about not having to worry about barriers like sets of stairs, steps, curbs, irregular thresholds, or the countless

Read & Share   sourced from: Strong Towns

2020 Census likely to change North Dakota’s political landscape

North Dakota’s population has both grown and shifted over the past 10 years, and when the dust settles following the 2020 count, the political landscape will look different. Rob Port with Say Anything Blog has speculation on where it seems likely more political power is moving to.

Read & Share   sourced from: Say Anything Blog.com

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When it comes to parking, we’ve already embraced socialism

Equal and available parking for all the cars in all the places all the time! I don’t remember the street protest and social activism that secured this ‘right’ for us, but there’s no doubt that the wheels of government drove us straight to our current state of parking utopia.  Through on-street parking in front of

Read & Share   sourced from: City Observatory

Survey says American churches are in trouble

If you were running a business and your customer base went from 70% of the population to 50% of the population, what would you do? That’s the environment churches find themselves in over the past 20 years. Lloyd Omdahl writing an opinion piece for Forum Communications has more on the topic.

Read & Share   sourced from: InForum

This is what happens when you cap property taxes; it’s not good

Property taxes — we all hate them. Naturally, as a result of our disdain, we seek to remove that which we don’t like. This attitude is prevalent in North Dakota. In the past, we’ve voted down initiated measures that sought to eliminate property tax; in the recently closed legislative session, the House killed a bill

Read & Share   sourced from: Los Angeles Times

Social Security for me but not for thee

In sixteen years, benefits paid out by the Social Security Administration will exceed generated surpluses. The options of the federal government at that time will be to reduce payments to the retired and/or disabled, increase payroll taxes on employers, employees or both, raise the cap on taxable wages, increase the age of retirement, or all

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Minot, begin preparing for the loss of our trees and imagining their future

Loss. It’s a big part of Minot’s story — our story — in recent years. The flood took homes and retirements and schools and lives. Yes, lives. Though the official statistics don’t count them, we all know of someone who was lost due to the exhaustion and stress of the clean-up and rebuild. The rapid

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Don’t abolish property taxes

We all hate them, but what happens if we get rid of property tax? Jeremy Jackson, an Associate Professor of Agribusiness and Applied Economics at NDSU shares his thoughts in the letter linked below. A quick review of his position: property tax carries fewer negative impacts into the larger economy than another popular tax —

Read & Share   sourced from: InForum

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Considering the power of ‘place’ at the same time as we talk about our community identity

If you’ve been following The Minot Voice recently, you may have noticed a thread focusing on the idea of ‘place’ and its larger significance in our lives. It’s a lesser-researched topic (certainly in the realm of smaller cities), but the findings that are emerging suggest there are larger patterns in the world around us and

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Lake Sakakawea remains one of the best walleye waters

You often hear veteran anglers and biologists refer to the current status of North Dakota’s fisheries as “the good old days.” Of course, that’s a general reference and each individual water is unique. Some are doing better than others and at the moment one of those “better” waters is Lake Sakakawea. North Dakota Game and

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Getting Real About Rural America — a New York Times opinion

It’s always dangerous casting an opinion on a wide swath of America. And few are wider than what might be described as ‘rural’. Still, economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman takes a crack at it. Perhaps he shouldn’t lump us all together, but not everything he writes should be discounted, either. Here’s the

Read & Share   sourced from: New York Times

Framing and reframing the Igloo, why savvy news readers are always a little suspicious

Media bias is real. Still, it’s not very often that we’re delivered such a clear example from so close to home. Yesterday, Jill Schramm wrote a great recap article on the operation of Minot State’s Air Supported Dome. If you didn’t catch it, please follow the link below to The Minot Daily and read it.

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What Is the Point of the State Board of Higher Education?

Following a week of less than flattering news related to UND President Kennedy’s pursuit of a job in Colorado and the State School of Science’s reporting and procurement practices, Rob Port is wondering what’s the role of the State Board of Higher Education?

Read & Share   sourced from: Say Anything Blog.com