Posted on 09/19/2014 5:39:15 AM PDT by thackney
North Dakota Republicans on Wednesday unveiled an $800 million one-time spending plan to address immediate problems tied to the oil boom in the western part of the state....
The proposal includes $475 million to oil-producing counties and cities; $140 million to oil patch hub cities of Williston, Dickinson and Minot; $35 million to county schools affected by oil development; and $150 million for road projects outside of the oil patch....
Ron Ness, president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council, said infrastructure needs and a shortage of workers are the biggest challenges facing North Dakota’s energy sector. The state has more than 25,000 unfilled jobs and the lowest unemployment rate in the nation, at less than 3 percent....
(Excerpt) Read more at fuelfix.com ...
The problem I have is, why do we need gvt $$$ for housing? The private sector will build housing, if allowed, and it will probably be superior to any "public housing" the government funds. Whenever government gets involved there are always strings attached and they're never put in place to benefit the community. Maybe I'm just overthinking this.
Not a good sign that the politicians’ reaction to the North Dakota oil boom is to spend like crazy.
The RINOs here in ND are crying like Democrats for affordable housing, etc., yet they defeat most attempts by industry and private developers to expand housing in a rational manner. Town and County fathers howl like banshees when a “man cammp” or long term hotel type housing is proposed. I am getting fed up with the bunch of leftists running this state.
Get the government out of the way and let the private sector solve any issues.
Have property? build housing.
Need schools? charge tuition.
Need workers, raise salaries until you get them.
With all the money being made, there is ample available to PAY CASH for what they need.
Don’t go down the road of “Build Now Pay Later” Bond issues for everything under the sun.
It’s tragic that places that experience a large increase in population don’t seize the opportunity and build NO godless fornication centers. What a golden opportunity this is to increase the number of children being educated without government.
It’s like dangling one hundred dollar bills in the trailer park that another bill used to talk about. Money, and youse guys have plenty of it, can turn government into thinking it has the magic solution to everything. I’m sure it already has spent gazillions on infrastructure from electrical power to housing to roads and still twenty five thousand jobs unfilled. ND is a tough place when you don’t have a place to live at reasonable cost and with winter right around the corner.
In my state it is tourism and agriculture that vie for number one, in ND it is a blessing and maybe a curse, to have Agriculture and Energy in competition for the number one industry.
what is a “godless fornication center”?
Government school. What else?
I was part of a convoy that drove, hauled or towed campers, RV’s and truly mobile homes up there. We only wanted to make a $1000 profit per unit while selling these things but it was almost an auction. I profited more than I ever dreamed of because the customers DEMANDED I take what they offered.
For temporary quarters, lay in a lot of RV parks. These workers can afford them for short term housing.
Once more permanent dwellings are available they can sell them to the newcomers, and so on.
Ping.
I understand there to be a significant shortage of RV parks compared to the demand.
No, you are not over thinking this. I live here. The private sector is furiously building housing. Lots of new houses, apartments and hotels have gone up in the last few years with tons more being built at the moment. The ND GOP is like politicians everywhere. You give them a dollar to spend and they’ll spend it. What needs to happen here in ND is to eliminate taxes, starting with the state income tax or property tax.
I’m not sure it is directly for housing. The big problem seems to be what’s called “infrastructure” - water and sewer, roads and city streets, that kind of thing. One would think there’s a natural lag time between extremely fast population growth like in western ND, the infrastructure it requires, and tax revenue growth. The population grows much faster than the tax revenue. I think the 800 million is to try to get ahead of the population growth lead/tax revenue infrastructure curve.
As the boom becomes big business, the question for those arriving to work and live in Watford City is what kind of home the place will become. So far, housing is often too hard to find or too expensive to afford. A two-bedroom trailer, for example, rents for $2,000 or more a month. So thousands of Watford City’s new residents—economic refugees from elsewhere in America—have brought camper-trailers with them. On the fringes of town, RV parks have sprung up on land that, only a year or two ago, was open pasture. Spots there go for more than $600 a month, even during the winter when hoses freeze and families take to using trash cans as toilets.
Is it safe to assume that 800 million has been collected by the state in taxes since the boom began? Would this not be money that IF not for the companies and people doing this work and SPENDING for the essentials of existing the demand and MORE employment would not be there? I have been to North Dakota and I really enjoyed the visit, alot of very , very nice people . So the 800 million is (I hope) taxes collected because of the oil and the things needed to obtain it..sales tax etc.... with all of this work available and then construction ...medical....everything we do to make life nice will put even MORE money into the states general fund would it not ?...am I mistaken ?
Actually I think they have been very slow at spending any oil revenue. I think it might have been better to move faster then they did. Lots of people in ND remember the last oil boom - and bust - and don’t want to repeat the same mistake made then. This boom looks pretty long term even though some very local areas are having mini-busts when the drilling stops.
I saw a map of the western ND oil wells a couple weeks ago. It classified the wells into different colors based on the year they were drilled. The oldest wells were random on the map, the newer wells were lined up in what looked like deliberately planned lines. The map showed a pad with something like 6 wells total, some in the Bakken layer and the rest in the Three Forks layer. The point of this is the drilling locations seem to be methodically planned, and like once an area is covered there will be no need to go back and drill again. That is why there are localized “busts” - the activity has switched from drilling to production. Production requires way less people, and less local infrastructure. That is why man camps during the drilling phase makes sense.
Hmmm... I worked for the Caterpillar dealership that provided the Alaska pipeline all of its equipment (1970s)...There were similar problems (housing) there...I am wondering how Alaska govt handled it at the time...I was too removed to know.
“The problem I have is, why do we need gvt $$$ for housing? The private sector will build housing, if allowed, and it will probably be superior to any “public housing” the government funds.”
BINGO!
Well said.
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