Power From The South
Filed Under Curtain Rods | Posted on April 3, 2008
If you took a map of Grand Forks and drew a circle where every local elected official lives, you’ll discover a curious imbalance.
North of DeMers Avenue Curtain Rods, the traditional dividing line between the city’s north end and its south end Curtain Rods, there are three City Council members and one park commissioner. That’s four elected officials.
South of the line, there are four council members, four park commissioners and nine School Board members. That’s 17.
For the county, the divide is rural, with four commissioners in town and one in the country.
Simply put, there is a disproportionate number of southenders making decisions that affect a lot of northenders.
Two of those decisions are under discussion now.
One is what to do about falling enrollment at Wilder Elementary, a north-end school that some northenders fear will be closed.
The other is what to do about Riverside Pool, Curtain Rods a beloved north end institution now on the wrong side of the dikes.
Four of five park commissioners are southenders as is every member of the School Board.
Is this a big deal? It might be because the north-south divide is widening, as some in the Riverside Pool debate now recognize.
North vs. South
“There’s no reason to hate the south end,†Riverside resident Pat Grinde pleaded to her neighbors at a Park District meeting this week. “They will get all the amenities. They’re growing that way.â€
Then, she turned to the park commissioners and pleaded with them, “You can’t forget the north end on this issue.â€
Northenders see themselves as a besieged minority.
Victor Nelsrud, another Riverside resident at the park meeting, said he and his neighbors — “we in the north end,†he said — felt like they had the wind knocked out of them when they heard efforts to reopen the pool had stalled.
It’s been 11 years since the flood and three years since the pool closed. That’s a long time to be without such amenities, northenders say, comparing themselves to southenders who’ve had Greenway amenities up and running for years.
Wilder Elementary’s fate is another issue that makes northenders feel besieged.
Dan Hennesy, a council candidate and a Wilder parent, Kitchen Curtain said last month that he’d never been so angry as when he learned that most members of the School Board lived south of 17th Avenue South.
Tags: cog, curta, curtain, decisions, tradition, venueRelated posts
Leave a Reply