Folks that lived there before the OIL BOOM...Please give us the truth! GOOD & BAD..CRIME? TRAFFIC?? ANYTHING??? (Williston: renter)
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I for one am getting a little bored hearing from folks that do not live in the Oil Boom areas give their opinions... I have my home there, I've lived and worked there, I pay property taxes there..... but I go by what a sheriff friend tells me, my renter tells me, my kids Father tells them...I want first hand comments from Folks affected by the Oil Boom. Youlive, work, drive daily....What has happened to N.D. Good or Bad.
Add your questions/comments. This is not an attack the newcomers thread....Just an honest "what is happening from the Guy on the street"
I'll start: GOOD; More folks are making money in the Western Part of N.D. than at anytime ever before.
But BAD: Driving in the area is life threatening from what I've read??
People's houses and vehicles are being broken into??
Fights and Assaults??
Doctor's appointments take weeks to get???
The Emergency room is so crowded you are waiting hours??
Well traffic is worse for sure. Crime is up but it is mostly low level misdemeanor crap and assaults which just goes along with the increased population. It does take longer to get a Dr appt and trying to get your car fixed is impossible unless you can wait six-10 weeks. Working for the county my pay has gone from 25.5k to 42k which is awesome, but the cost of living has increased so much that I actually went backwards in disposable income. I think the biggest think that I hate abut the boom is that as a single parent daycare is horribly hard to find and unreliable no matter what you can pay. That and the male/female ratio is so unbalanced that just alking to a single female in my age range is a rarity.
I was born in Williston during the last boom and lived in the city for most of my life. Throughout most of the 80's and 90's, there wasn't a lot of money to be made in the oilfield. Although out family didn't have a great deal of disposable income, it was a great place to grow up.
Crime certainly did exist in Williston, but it seemed isolated in a few areas. Growing up, the only time we locked our front door was when we went on vacation. All the kids in our neighborhood would play outside all summer unsupervised, only heading back home for meals.
It was sleepy and quiet. In high school, I remember getting up and driving to 6AM basketball practice across town. Many times I could go the entire route without seeing a single person.
Like most small towns, the driving pace was relaxed. There was not this rush that you see so often now: people seem to be in a hurry all the time.
Now there is certainly more money to be made in town. However, I'm not sure if it's still a great place to raise a family. That's one of the reasons that we decided to build outside of town.
Like Naelbis says, the cost of living has increased dramatically. There is plenty of talk about the increase in housing costs, but nearly everything has risen along with it. Services like car repair, window cleaning, landscaping, mowing, snow removal, etc have seen a sharp increase in the past 5 years. Fortunately, I am pretty self reliant, and I don't need those services, but the people who can't fix their own car notice the change.
I think all of the things that we complain about boil down to a simple lack of respect. For the countryside, the people who live here, the law, everything. Most of the newcomers have no intention of staying and making this area their home so some (not all by any means) of them have no remorse when it comes to leaving a mess behind. Also, some need to check their attitudes at the state line. We were doing fine before this boom so you aren't doing us any favors. You aren't doing jobs that we feel are beneath us, we just really didn't have enough people here to do them all. We don't have a fast food giant or big box store in every town. Prices for many goods are high and always have been due to our rather remote location freightwise. You can stop beating us over the head because we were unprepared for this. We know. We're trying. Bitching about these things does no good. Deal with it. I do remind people sometimes that you are not in KS, TX, WY, OK, CO, etc, anymore Toto. You're in NorDakotia and we don't much care how you do it or what you have there
On the good side I've met a lot of great people and made a lot of new friends. I know local people who have worked and struggled for years to make a go of it and now are getting some royalty $ to help out. That does my heart good. I'm sure there's more good but it's not coming to me lol.
I for one am getting a little bored hearing from folks that do not live in the Oil Boom areas give their opinions... I have my home there, I've lived and worked there, I pay property taxes there..... but I go by what a sheriff friend tells me, my renter tells me, my kids Father tells them...I want first hand comments from Folks affected by the Oil Boom. Youlive, work, drive daily....What has happened to N.D. Good or Bad.
Add your questions/comments. This is not an attack the newcomers thread....Just an honest "what is happening from the Guy on the street"
I'll start: GOOD; More folks are making money in the Western Part of N.D. than at anytime ever before.
But BAD: Driving in the area is life threatening from what I've read??
People's houses and vehicles are being broken into??
Fights and Assaults??
Doctor's appointments take weeks to get???
The Emergency room is so crowded you are waiting hours??
No vehicles broken into in my neighborhood.
No fights or assaults where I hang out.
My Dr doesn't take long to get into.
ER has been overworked for 5 years. Nothing new.
Good - People are making good money.
Bad - People are greedy.
Good - More restaurants coming in.
Bad - More people coming in to occupy those restaurants.
Good - Houses are being built.
Bad - More people are coming in to occupy those homes.
Good - City is growing.
Bad - City is growing fast.
Good - 95% of people moving here
Bad - 5% of people moving here
Good - RV ban in the city limits
Bad - People living in RV's in the city limits when they pass the ban
When my sons were in High School there, they would have so many activities, and friends to do them with. It was a given on Fri/Sat nites (if they weren't working at Taco Johns, or Pizza Hut) that they were cruising up and down main, parked at the city park, hanging out socializing. The local cops would roll up, converse w/ the kids, just shoot the breeze. I appreciated that the kids could laugh and visit w/ local cops, it made me feel my sons were safer somehow. I wonder if that still happens now? Can the kids still sit parked next to each other, and hang out visiting like kids do in small towns.
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