{"id":3811,"date":"2011-07-18T14:30:27","date_gmt":"2011-07-18T19:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=3811"},"modified":"2011-07-18T14:32:01","modified_gmt":"2011-07-18T19:32:01","slug":"its-hockey-stupid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=3811","title":{"rendered":"Its Hockey, Stupid!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From an email I just received regarding<a href=\"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=3803\"> Art Johnston&#8217;s Reader Column<\/a>: (I tinkered with it a bit because it came in two installments)<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I Just finished Art&#8217;s brilliant description of the behind the scenes actions of the district.<\/p>\n<p>But why a hockey facility at Congdon?<br \/>\nThe Congdon Hockey Association is a private group that floods the rinks, maintains the boards and fixed up the warming house years ago. Why would the district contribute money to this?<\/p>\n<p>A few years ago [with Red Plan money flowing like Niagara] the district gave the public\/private Heritage $1mil. Even though they knew there would only be 2 HS and the improved DECC and Pioneer Hall were still available.<\/p>\n<p>A guy with much hockey background had predicted that there would be a push for a facility on the East end.  I told him, that couldn&#8217;t possibly be true. The Heritage was just built to cover DULUTH hockey needs.  He was right.  Looks like I owe him a dinner.<\/p>\n<p>And will they take away the pleasure rink for the recreational skaters at Congron?  Will they justify taking houses for a parking lot for the new rink?  Will they justify taking money away from the Heritage?<\/p>\n<p>What they don&#8217;t tell you is that the number of hockey players has been dwindling over the years. 1999\/2000 had over 1000 registered with DAHA (Duluth Area Hockey Assoc)  Current figures, maybe 550 (and this now includes the girls)<\/p>\n<p>For the East End to demand sports facilities (no doubt using Dixon&#8217;s go to phrase &#8220;equity&#8221;) is beyond entitlement. It is robbery. Where are the priorities??? <\/p>\n<p>Wow, just unbelievable.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From an email I just received regarding Art Johnston&#8217;s Reader Column: (I tinkered with it a bit because it came in two installments) I&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3811"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3811\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}