Compiled by LAURENDONOVAN

Bismarck Tribune

The Three Affiliated Tribes council is taking steps to get a handle on its record debt.

The last time the tribes had a balanced budget was in 2000, and since then it has borrowed money at a rate that is causing its auditors to become alarmed.

Including $19 million borrowed in 2005, the tribes' known total debt is more than $80 million for the four-year period from 2002-05, auditors said at a recent council meeting devoted to tribal financial problems.

One auditor said spending exceeded income and to make up the difference, the tribal council kept authorizing more loans and eventually refinanced the debt.

The auditors said they still don't have the full picture because fiscal year 2006 has not been audited and nor have tribal enterprises including Twin Buttes Custom Homes, Fort Berthold Development Corp., Mandaree Solid Surfacing and other enterprises.

"We need to get it done," said tribal chairman Marcus Wells Jr. "Enterprises, here we come."

The council agreed to have the enterprises audited this year.

The auditors told the council that part of its financial crunch is related to low-performing investments of the tribes' $149 million JTAC fund, a federal trust established in 1991 as reparations for land taken for Garrison Dam.

The tribes can spend interest from the trust and have made a practice of investing the interest in short-term portfolios to get better access.

The federal Office of Trust Fund Management manages JTAC investments and the auditors recommended transferring to higher interest funds.

Payroll is yet another financial problem. Between 2002 and 2005, the tribes paid out nearly $31 million in salaries.

"The general fund payroll is the biggest area where you can make some changes," the auditors said.

- New Town News

Looking for losers

The biggest loser will return to Washburn.

After a first appearance 25 years ago, when Washburn held its centennial and the men beat the women by less than a pound, the contest is back.

Come 2007, the town will celebrate its 125th anniversary and yet another "biggest loser" contest will be held.

The men and women will be weighed as a group, probably at the grain elevator scale. The plan is to hold the group weigh-in in January, though a date has yet to be decided.

Then, there'll be a mid-term weigh-in, just to keep everyone in the spirit of things and get those procrastinators on target.

A final weigh-in will be held just before the 125th celebration, and winners will get bragging rights for the whole event.

No one's individual weight will ever be posted, planners promise.

Signup is going on now, by stopping in at the Freedom Fitness Center in Washburn.

- Leader-News

Small-town girl makes big

Goodrich is so proud of Rebecca Feickert, it has a billboard outside town, welcoming folks to the home of Miss Basketball North Dakota 2006.

The 6-foot-2-inch forward-center from Goodrich was a standout on the Sheridan County Coyote's basketball team during her high school career.

She averaged 22 points per game and 15 rebounds and was an ace at the three-point line, nailing them half the time.

Now, she's at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, after being recruited last year by the college's head coach and assistant.

The campus newspaper's story about the small-town girl enjoying college life told about head coach Bonnie Hendrickson's first drive to Goodrich, which has 150 people, three paved streets, no streetlights, and no police.

The coach stopped at the local feed supply store and the workers there invited her and her assistant to a corn dinner.

Feickert is on a sports scholarship for the Kansas Jayhawks, one of a seven-member rookie basketball class that's three times bigger than her own graduating class of two.

While she still needs to develop her back-to-the-basket game, she'll probably get off the bench as a backup post player, allowing the Jayhawks to stretch the floor with her shooting ability, says her coach.

"She shoots the ball from the three probably as well as anybody," said Hendrickson. "Until she gets some physical strength, she's going to get beat up inside."

Feickert's smart, besides. She left high school with a 4.0 and earned 26 college credits, mainly by interactive television, before leaving high school.

She's enjoying her life in Kansas.

"I like the town that I was from, but I didn't really feel like I was incapable of going to a bigger town, or a bigger school," she said.

- The McClusky Gazette

All pipeline, all the time

Medora won't be drinking half-pipeline, half-well water anymore.

The Medora City Council decided it would switch to all pipeline water at its Nov. 7 meeting and the change was immediate.

There had been some resistance to using treated water delivered by the Southwest Water Pipeline because of additional expense, especially for big users. The city had been charging a nominal $10 for well water every month.

So the city compromised and blended the treated source, with its own well water, on a 50-50 ratio.

The decision to go all-pipeline generated relatively little discussion, and resident Jane Muggli said she favored getting better water in town.

Medora residents will pay 17 cents more a thousand gallons for the pure pipeline water.

City engineer Ron Manchester said the city would have to continue to maintain its wells so it has a good backup source for fire protection.

Manchester also said a clean-out of the city's sewer system removed two truckloads of the some of the nastiest clogging the cleaning company had ever seen.

Local restaurants are believed to the source of the greasy clogging, and the council discussed the possibility of requiring food servers to install grease traps if they don't have them.

- Billings County Pioneer