Williston, ND Active Issues

ok Steve :)  I'm approaching you ! Build me a community center like that !! Make sure there is a daycare available too......and a lap pool.....it would be nice if you could offer free personal trainers also :)  Let me know when its done !! LOL

Ok. So my question would be (and this might have been answered, I'm not sure) where is the funding comming from to build the new park ? How much will that cost?

Larry that was great information, Thank You.  Very interesting to read.     I guess, for once, I have nothing more to add to this.  I don't know anything about the money the parks and rec here recieves or where they get it from. But thank you for informing me a little more :)

     All of you are absolutely correct-I have been in most of the community/ rec centers in MT, ND, SD, Wyoming and Minnesota, and Dickinson's is the nicest one I have ever seen. I will give you a little information on this fine facility, as I was a subcontractor on this job as we did all the gymnasium equipment in it.
     First of all, the city of Dickinson had 5 failed votes on funding a Rec center from the late 70's until it finally got built. It passed with the 1/2 cent sales tax issue on the 6th try. The original facility was approximately 12.3 million dollars with nearly 10 million coming from the 1/2 cent sales tax, and approximately 2.7 million in donations. The building will be paid off in 2012, but the sales tax will continue on providing money for property tax relief, Infrastructure as well as a "subsidy" for the community center of roughly $300,000 per year to asist with maintaining the facility. The first 2 years of operation, they were able to pay for all maintainance and operations thru memberships, but the last 2 years they lost money on it, and they are projecting a loss again in 2008. Their memberships are very good, but it is on the slight decline as of now, which is normal over a period of time before it stabilizes a bit. Since the facility was built, they added another tennis center addition for approximately $900,000.....
       In addition, the Dickinson Park District receives approximately $200,000 per year in oil/ gas lease revenue from land they own minerals on, and that is a big asset for their department.
       I was involved with the fundraising for our current Comunity Center, and we all need to remember it is 25 years old, and their will always be someone with something bigger and better, and we should not necessarily be concerned about keeping up with our neighbors, but what can we do to make what we have better? At the time we built our current facility, we were the envy of the other Park districts in the state, because other than Mandan, we were the only true Recreation Center in the state.......but times change, and we are now in need of some upgrades.......how do we do it? Do we tear it down and start over? Do we fix what we have and try to make it better? How do we fund it? There are a lot of questions to answer before you can go forward, but with a little effort, we may be able to get something accomplished.
      But lets remember, that a $300,000 sales tax subsidy, and another $200,000 per year in oil lease revenues could fix a lot of problems within the Williston Park District if we had that same advantage to draw off of. Please feel free to contact me if you would like any other information on the Dickinson Rec. Center, or if you have questions about the Williston Park District and some of the serious budget issues we are facing right now-we would be glad to share it with anyone who would like to know, just give any Board memebr or contact our Parks and Recreation office.

Larry Grondahl

Short answer...gather as much factual information about their building as you can.  At least that's what I'm prolly going to do.  Give the Rec Center a call and see if someone there would be willing to answer some questions.  Call Greg Sund the city administrator who was the one who kept pushing for this building.  See if he'd answer your questions.   That's always the best place to start. 

Don't let anyone fool you here either.  They'll try and tell you how much the oil around Dickinson helps keep it going.  I lived in Dickinson when that place was being talked about, before it was built.  The people were DEAD SET against it.  But the city pushed ahead and built it and now the people couldn't be happier.  Yeah, oil may have helped some initially but the fact is...and I've spoken to many of the people who were involved in the efforts to build that place...they established a "reserve" fund in preparations for the potential losses they would have to take the first several years of it's existence.  They have yet to dig into that fund since the membership has stayed so high.  The MEMBERSHIP fees are paying for it's existence.  Not city taxes or oil money.  Membership fees.  

If you look on the wall w/in the lobby of the building, you'll see the major contributors of the funding of the building.  A pretty good chunk of the costs of building their rec center was done with donations.  One of the major players was MDU.  They contributed $250,000 to it.  Would they do the same for us?  Who knows?  But wouldn't it be worth looking into?

Anyways, honestly, there's no reason that's been presented to me that leads me to believe we couldn't do this here in Williston right now.   I would think with the push for better quality of life in Williston there would be more action taken.   To have a nice building like that for Williston to be proud of would be great but I don't think we're ready for it.  You'll hear from too many people the reasons why we can't do it.

I'd like to challenge, however, anyone who can post on this thread how we CAN.  Any logical ideas on the ways to make something like that happen.  Try and get people thinking optimistically about how to make improvements like this to our city.  It's the only way to keep making Williston better.

Any ideas?