In the past several years I have written more than 500 blog posts about living in Dickinson, North Dakota.  Readers may wonder, what do I want, and what am I trying to accomplish?

I wanted to bring attention to some of the things that are wrong in Dickinson.  I thought that if I explained these things that are wrong, that many people might agree, and consider trying to change things.  Or, at least people from out of state would know how things are, what to expect, be able to make a more informed decision about moving to Dickinson, or be more prepared for Dickinson.

Here are some suggestions for Dickinson, North Dakota:

• Everyone needs to acknowledge that it was wrong the way that housing prices were quadrupled during this most recent oil boom.  Do not persist in saying things like, “It was a matter of supply and demand”, when there are thousands and thousands of acres of vacant, flat, barren land just outside of Dickinson that stretches for hundreds of miles in every direction.  Steps were taken to make sure that there was a housing shortage, so that local people could profit and take excessive advantage of others.
• Even though, “Millionaires were being made every day in North Dakota”, there was no homeless shelter in Dickinson.  People that were poor, down-on-their-luck, and out of work from everywhere in the U.S. came to North Dakota because of the lie that was told “Everyone was making $100,000 per year in the oil field”.  The poor people who came to Dickinson, slept in their cars, on the ground, or in the bushes at Wal-Mart, Tiger Truck Stop, Patterson Lake, along the railroad right-of-way, or in the ditch behind Kentucky Fried Chicken.  If Dickinson was not going to have a homeless shelter, they needed to contact every newspaper and every television station to try to get the word out, “Whoa, hold on everybody, you won’t make $100,000 per year in the oil field, there is a shortage of housing, and there is no homeless shelter.”
• Dickinson needs to decide, once and for all, if alcohol can be served in bars and restaurants or not.  If the Police in Dickinson are going to try to follow and stalk everyone who is driving on the streets at night in Dickinson in order to try to give them a DUI, Dickinson should just go ahead and ban the sale of alcohol in bars and restaurants in Dickinson.
• There are some things that are done in Dickinson, that ruin Dickinson’s chances for long term growth and prosperity.  One of these things, is the practice of most local companies in hiring convicted felons to be foremen, supervisors, and managers at the companies in Dickinson.  The local people in Dickinson so hate people with a college education, that they give preference in hiring to people who have several felony convictions, with no education.  Although local company owners are more comfortable having people like this working for them, here are the consequences:
  • When you hire a convicted felon with no college education, versus someone with a college education, for a supervisory or management position, what is guaranteed to follow, is that just about every subordinate position to that person being filled by convicted criminals, versus people with any education.  A convicted felon is already someone who has demonstrated that they don’t follow along with what is right and wrong, but whatever they feel they need to do.  If that means hiring only people who are less intelligent, less qualified, and less capable than them, in order to maintain their position, that is what they are going to do.
  • When local companies in Dickinson follow this practice of hiring convicted felons for supervisory or management positions in Dickinson, not only does this load up their company with a bunch of criminals, but this loads up Dickinson with a bunch of convicted criminals.  It doesn’t take long for normal, educated people from elsewhere, who may be doctors, nurses, engineers, attorneys, human resources people, administrators, professors, or journalists, to see, understand, and realize that Dickinson is an “Ugly” town that they don’t want to live in.  By “Ugly”, I mean no culture, no professional peers, no socializing with professionals, no where worth going, someplace that you do not want to stay.

If you people in Dickinson do not believe me, just sincerely ask one of the nurses, doctors, engineers, journalists, human resources professionals, chamber of commerce directors, or teachers who left Dickinson, to describe something that they did not like about Dickinson, and to please be honest.