Iceland donates money for fire station, cafe and church to North Dakota town

[Ian David]

Iceland Donates to North Dakota Town
The Associated Press

BISMARCK, N.D.
A small North Dakota town is getting a bit of foreign aid to help build its community center: a $75,000 donation from Iceland.

Officials in Mountain, a northeastern North Dakota community with a rich Icelandic heritage told Iceland Prime Minister Geir Haarde about the $1.3 million community center project when he came to the town last year for the 108th annual August the Deuce Icelandic Celebration. It commemorates the beginning of Iceland's journey to independence from Denmark.

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U.S. State Department spokeswoman Nicole Thompson said it is difficult to say how often foreign governments make donations to U.S. projects, though she called the relationship between Mountain and Iceland interesting.

Mountain's community center will house the local fire department, a cafe and other businesses, a banquet room and a church office. Mountain Mayor Tim Moore said it will serve not only the town but the region, where people from Iceland settled in the 1870s.

More:
http://www.theledger.com/article/20080119/APA/801190604

[Bonobo]

1. Increasingly we will come to rely on this foreign aid. Like heating oil in the NE.

We have a crumbling infrastructure, a declining tax base and an uneducated, undemanding population with EXTREMELY low expectations for services.

Combine that with monopolies and mergers and you have an ugly recipe IMO.

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

2. This proves that we're becoming a third world nation when a tiny country like Iceland

has to donate money to help out one of our towns.