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Message: <blockquote data-quote="eyexer" data-source="post: 148645" data-attributes="member: 315">I think some of the smaller town, strictly volunteer companies received money from several companies.  Williston, to my knowledge never has.- - - Updated - - -Here are some things I've learned living here, working in the patch and analyzing what has went on and what is going to go on.  Some are just opinion some are factual.  During the peak of the boom none of us could understand why things were going full throttle or beyond.  Well as I've learned more about this I've drawn several conclusions.  First off the leases are generally three year leases.  They lease as much land as the accountants will allow them to do.  The problem with leases is as the drilling increased, the production rates were realized, the lease amounts were going through the roof every time a new lease period came up.  So when you have 500,000 acres leased up at $300 an acre you damn well want to drill on those leases as fast as you can because three years later when the leases need to be renewed you will be paying $600,$700, $800 etc. because that's what the competition is willing to pay.  And when oil is $200 a barrel you want it out of the ground because you know it can be $80 in a matter of a couple months.  You have to remember that 80% of a wellls production comes in the first six months to a year of it's life.  At $200 oil these wells were being paid for in 30 days or less.  Another factor is that the cost of the drilling is based on the day for a rig.  So the more feet you can drill in a day the less the well costs are.  Speed of drilling is also essential because winter slows things down, spring thaw complicates things because in many instances you pay 35K in just overweight costs to move rigs on the roads when restrictions are on.  And most people don't realize that 90% of the equipment on the rig (such as wheel loaders) aren't owned by the drilling company or the oil company.  They are leased on a monthly basis.  So the more wells you drill in a month you cut the cost of that on each well.  I always felt the state could control the speed of the train but I've come to realize they really can't.  They approve or disapprove permits.  They don't have anything in place, nor could they, to control the speed the applications come in for drilling permits.  On one hand they would like to slow it down but on the other hand they would have to answer to the people that owned the minerals.  They would be standing in the way of them collecting maximum profit on the royalties.  And one of those is the state itself collecting royalties, etc.  They want that money as quick as they can for infrastructure, etc.  In regards to Williston and how things are being done here, all you really need to know is that Williston's city limits, due to expansive annexation, now encompasses more square miles than Fargo.  That's also been the catalyst to the rapid expansion of emergency services here.  They can get grants from both state and federal if they are at a certain level of response times.  you can't serve that big of an area and meet those times without multiple stations.  Now they are going to build a new airport five or six miles out at an enormous cost.  And you can be sure Williston's portion will be twice as much as they estimate it will be.  That is always the case.  And they will have a full time fire dept. at the airport also.  So that will mean four full time locations for fire depts. in Williston alone.  Does Fargo even have that many?So when I'm asked if I could live with the price of property tax cuts my answer is hell yea.  Even with all that emergency response when they get to my place for a fire it'll be all over anyway.  And by the time the cops come to my house if I call due to a burglar they might as well just send the coroner because all the shooting will be over.  We now have 25% or more excessive police force I think.  Arrests are way down here now.  Five years ago Williston alone was averaging close to ten vehicle accidents per day.  Now it's probably less than one.  Used to need two officers just to handle the accidents.  Back at the start of the boom they were adding on to the jail.  They built it to be big enough to handle expected capacities for 80 years.  Well the boom hit and overwhelmed them so now they are building on again.  However, when the jail was at capacity they were still taking in prisoners from other counties and even eastern MT.  Why the hell do that when you don't have the capacity.  If they didn't accept those individuals they would be just fine.  So now they are building on and if things continue this direction they will have excess space that they will have to heat and maintain.  Same thing happened with the Area Recreation Center.  Tried to get the taxpayers to approve 28 million dollar rec center.  Extremely vague plan so it was defeated.  So they streamlined it, explained it better and put it to a vote at 15 million dollars.  The vote allowed for a 1 cent sales tax for the parks and rec to pay for the rec center.  At that time taxable sales were so damn high that parks and rec were going to receive something like 85 million a year from that alone.  So five days after the vote passed the rec morphed from 15 million to 78 million.  Now they have a monster sized rec center that was extremely busy during the peak of the boom but now sees far less use and when that tax expires they may not be able to prove the money for it's costs to heat, maintain.  The damn parks and rec budget was nearly as high as the whole cities budget.  Talk about screwed up priorities.  Now you have Dist. 8 schools (rural williston schools not in Dist. 1 which is city of Williston) begging for a new school.  They have brought it to a vote for tax increases to build a new school.  The price has been all over the place.  Keeps getting defeated.  In reality the district is a disaster in many ways.  All we hear from both Dist. 1 and 8 is how they have no money.  After the last vote to not allow a school, the next day the district announced they were building a school anyway because they have 16 million in a school maintenance fund they will use to do it.  How in the hell does a school district this size develop a 16 million dollar maintenance fund.  You have to be shitting me.  That right there tells me we are paying far too much in property taxes if they can pull that shit.  Schools lost all credibility with me when I heard that.</blockquote>

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