It seems the mayor is on a spending spree now that he raised our taxes to give the city an extra $5 million dollars next year. His first expediture is this stupid calendar. Ironically this calendar is way more important then the $16,000 the city saved by surpressing the democratic process and implementing super precints (which cut voter turnout in half). Pretty pictures of our city: important – a functioning municipal democracy: not-important. Good priorities, Huh?
I will agree that the info in the calendar is important, but it could have easily been put in a small brochure that could have been inserted and mailed out in our water bills, a fiscally responsible city hall would have figured that out. But hey, we have $5 million dollars extra to spend, so let’s get spending.
What did this calendar cost? Well I have worked in the printing and direct mail industry for 15 years, so I’m gonna give you some estimates here on what I think it cost. Get ready to be flabberghasted:
The SF household mailing list is about 70,000 people and businesses. Postage was probably about $.22 a piece. The printing cost of the calendar was probably around $.50 a piece.
.22 + .50 = .72 x 70,000 = $50,400
My numbers are an ESTIMATE, and are CONSERVATIVE. It could have cost lot more depending on the printer and if any services or paper was donated. At the very least it cost $35,000. A simple brochure would have cost about $6,500 with no mail charges because it could have been inserted in the water bill. This also doesn’t include the money it cost to layout the calendar and photograhy which could have cost as much as $20,000. Wrong message to send in these economic times.
Am I upset about this? Sure. But it does not surprise me one bit. What is even more frustrating about the calendar is it is another example of taxpayer funded propaganda. Besides the pretty pictures the second page is full of bologna.
The second paragraph, first sentence ‘Ninety percent of you . .’ is a flat out lie. The survey was sent to 3000 people, and even if the mailing list was ‘scientific’ the science went out with the bathwater when less then 1000 households responded. I wasn’t opposed to the survey, but there should have been some kind of incentive for people to mail it back in, for example a free pool pass or something of that nature.
The line in the second to last paragraph, ‘Together, we are creating a well-rounded city that is the envy of many others nationwide.’ is partially true. Other municipal governments are probably jealous. We are one of the few communities in the nation that gets away with not only taxing the shit out our own citizens for food and utilities we are also taking money out of the pockets of people who don’t even live in our city or state. We are literally fleecing visitors to our city. It would be like going to grandma’s house for thanksgiving and she makes you pay a cover charge.
But since I am a sarcastic and cynical f’ck, let’s have some fun with this thing.
McKennan Park rock and wood thingy that has no function or purpose. This is one of the ‘improvements’ to McKennan park you paid for. What is it? Not sure. But I bet it wasn’t cheap.
If you go to city council meetings, always use this door, it probably won’t have a metal detector.
Rare pictures of a snowplows with there blades actually dropped and plowing.
A cop with a mustache – GET OUT!
Another rare picture of the city filling a pothole (they must have borrowed this photo from another city).
Your federal tax dollars hard at work. Who needs water and good roads? We have a trolley!
Mayor Minions reading ‘My Pet Goat’ (Bush’s favorite book) to the kids. This must have been excruciating. When he gave his budget address earlier this year I almost fell asleep.
A great picture of someone losing their home. No wonder they didn’t send in the city survey.
Someone getting free dental care on your dime while the rest of us pay thru the nose.
Sioux Falls celebrating diversity; White Christmas Lights. Does it make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside that you are paying this electric bill?
In closing I encourage everyone who got this calendar to flood their councilors email boxes with messages of dissent about this kind of wasteful spending.
Damn…you’re good at this.
Mr. Ie3wis: My family loves the calendar – (except for Uncle Rusty and Gramps Grumpy who want to use it for toilet paper) – it is worth every penny, even if it cost over $5,000,000.00 – the same as for arterial road developement for cash-poor city developers – because my family and I need to know that the City Public Works Deptartment offers a FREE Christmas Tree Drop-off from Dec. 26-Jan. 10th. Yippee! The sooner we get our tree out of the house, the less we have to listen to Granny Gumption grinding up against it – when she ends up breaking numerous tree ornaments in the process. On a sad note, Neighbor Creamy Nugent is upset with the calendar because the city did not include any stark naked, exotic poses of Gerrald BeingGay wearing nothing but an active generational smile…darn it all anyway. But she still really likes it a lot because of the photos of Mayor Munchkin, snow plows, and cops with ‘staches and takes the calendar and reads it long and hard in her bedroom into the wee hours of the night and day. By the way, did you people know that there were city council meetings on Monday night? Wow! The city administration sure takes care of us, don’t they? Happiest Holidays to you Christians out there (the rest of you can go to Hell!)
Sincerely,
EggBert yepsp03ke;s=c.gks;
This is such BS. I’m working on getting the actual cost. It could be as high as $100,000. How ironic, Munson raises taxes then sends this POS out.
At least when Gary Hanson was Mayor he sent me a check for $65 just before Christmas. All Munson did was send me this lousy calendar. Now if Dicky Brown is the next Mayor, will he send me a t-shirt?
Remember when OJ Janklow gave everyone who volunteered to cleanup the Spencer tornado aftermath a free hat? About a year later I was at Goodwill and there was a bin full of about 100 of the hats.
Are you sure the firefighters weren’t training on a controlled burn? Sometimes they get to practice on buildings sheduled to come down anyway.
My firefighter buddies used to love training like that.
No, I remember that fire. It was over by the cop shop Kum and Blow.
Apparently this post got the attention of KELO. They are doing a story on the cost of the calendar tonight on the news. Wonder if it will be a Blowjob piece where they let Munson tell more lies to cover up the lies in the calendar, like 90% of us saying it’s a great city. If 90% said that, there must only be 1100 people living in Sioux Falls. Who knew?
The reason they couldn’t put a meesage in the water bill is they were too busy telling about a rate increase. I’ll pay more for water but I’ll know when to send the money by looking at my new calendar.
Maybe there’ll be an insert in there next month to tell us how long we should take showers.