Nancy Bommelman, Minot
Has anybody ever wondered how much money is owed to the City of Minot? Let me give you an example. If you go to court and get a DUI, and you tell the judge, "Oh, I can't pay for all of it at one time. Can I make payments?" The judge says "sure." So you make a few payments and quit making them, then you get a warrant for your arrest and pay another fine.
Call the city of Minot and ask them how much is owed and how much people have paid. Everybody would be surprised.
If all the money was paid for fines, such as speeding tickets, parking tickets, DUIs what have you just think what the city could do with it. They could keep police officers here instead of training them and having them leave. I've talked with officers and they have told me they had really good officers leave because rent was so high, he wasn't making enough. How sad!
On any given day there are less than seven police officers on a shift, one has to be at the airport at all times. So that means if there are three ambulance calls we only have three left patrolling our streets? Then one gets a call for a traffic accident or emergency at somebody's home. We need more police officers here!
Again, because of the almighty buck we can't keep good help when we need it. Rent is way too high. The city of Minot needs to get their head out of the clouds and control the rent here. It's going to get worse before it gets better.
I don't understand how these "slumlords" can sleep at night. If a person can't pay their rent they get kicked out, the owners don't care, somebody who can afford it will move in and pay that. Again, the oil field workers can pay it, not the people who work 40 hours a week at $13 an hour.
I've talked to a few owners about their rent increases. They are smug and arrogant. One of them even told me he didn't care if he kicked somebody out because he could get twice as much from somebody else. How sad is that? Twice as much? Wow!! That's too bad.