The city claims they are canceling the 4th of July parade due to lack of interest. That’s not what I heard. Anytime an officer works a parade, especially on a national holiday, they have to ‘volunteer’ to work overtime (they don’t pull officers from their regular shifts). I guess the volunteers came up short.
What the Heck is Huether up to?
I was talking to some city employees (management) and they said Mike has been busy ‘reaching out’ to them. He has also assembled a team for his next run. So Governor or Mayor? I’m switching my prediction to mayor. Why on earth would you be contacting city employees if you are running for governor? I also heard Merkouris is out, but no prediction on Beck.
LinClem County Commission
Some seemed surprised a Lincoln County Commissioner made anti-semitic statements then blamed the Queers for his racist remarks. No surprise to me, the LCC is made up of the biggest bunch of Clems I have seen in a long time. It amazes me that the wealthiest county in the state is ran by hillbillies.
One reason I try to avoid political convos on Facebook is because the comments are a cesspool of crap. Mike Zitterich got this friendly email from the mayor about one of his comments;
Mike, I have always been nothing but cordial to you over the years, responding to your emails and never attaching your positions, but your comments online can be quite disrespectful toward me at times. Let’s do better than this. – Paul TenHaken, Mayor of the City of Sioux Falls, S.D
Mike made this comment (which I felt was harmless):
It’s pretty thin skinned to be monitoring peeps comments and emailing that your feelings are hurt. Mike did apologize and feels remorse, but I told him;
He’s not progressive, and that is why the comment pissed him off. He just put out a letter today saying he is not running for office after leaving as mayor. Pretty thin-skinned to be sending you emails about his hurt feelings. I would have left it. He is a politician, it was a political statement, and you are NOT family or close friends, so not sure why he got so worked up about it. He struggles with his responsibilities as a public servant, the main job is LISTENING to your constituents not sending them emails about hurt feelings.
Speaking of the Mayor getting out of politics and going into the private sector I think he will do political consulting and marketing. First off, I would like to THANK HIM for not running at this time for political office, you ARE not cut out for it. Secondly, Poops is really good at one thing, winning elections (mostly with lots of money) he just doesn’t know what to do when they win. I think he will have a very successful campaign marketing business.
As for Poops marching out the door, I guess quite a few directors are going with him, the rumor is that Cotter (Public works director) Thum (Police Chief) Bill Da’Toole (Human Resources) and Kearney (Parks and Rec) are retiring after Poops term. I guess it would explain why they don’t care about all the nepotism at city hall* There are also many others leaving. This is actually a good thing because the next mayor will be able to appoint his team. Not sure if the city attorney will resign or try to keep a job with the next administration? Either way, I think the next mayor should fire him 30 minutes after inauguration. It’s time to clean the Fiddle out of the Faddle at city hall. And don’t let the door . . .
*(Besides Cotter’s son getting the contract to install sculptures at the Pavilion he also got something else from taxpayers. It caused quite a stir in fleet. I guess if the city hires you to work in Fleet and you don’t have your CDL the city will train you for a Class B for FREE as long as you work for them. Cotter’s son took a short job with fleet so he could get his CDL for FREE, but it gets better, they trained him for FREE on a Class A CDL. If you want a class A with the city, you have to pay for that training on your own. And we used to think Councilor Erpenbach’s kid picking up branches for the parks department was a conflict.)
UPDATE: I didn’t think about this until this afternoon but also if there’s anybody sitting on the current council that is running for reelection as an incumbent or if any councilor decides to run for Mayor that’s a huge conflict to be picking your own election date for a campaign you’re running in. Why? Because by picking a June date that means fewer months of campaigning and having to raise less money.
Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, we know the scenario. The State DoDo birds we call our legislature decided to change state law so they could control local elections. Tsk! Tsk! Stay the F’ck out of our elections and start working on your AA and diet plans. Either way, we now have a decision to make, but for some reason our brilliant city council thinks they need to make the decision, but that is NOT how the law is written. It is up to the citizens of this community to decide that date (June or November) not them. So at the informational today (I encourage to watch before forming a opinion) they pitched this legal concept that indeed the citizens do get to choose the election date, BUT NOT for this first election, that was up to them. Bullwash! What needs to happen is a special election in September determining the date of the election, and while they are at it, also put a charter amendment that eliminates the ‘Rex Rolfing/Stehly Rule’ that there has to be a runoff in city council races if no one gets more then 34% or some whacka-doodle thing like that. Make it a plurality so there is no runoff. Barranco suggested this. I think it would be incredibly confusing to voters showing up to vote for council and mayoral candidates and having to choose an election date, they would most likely pick the day they were currently voting, which is a setup because the council is initially leaning towards a June election. One of the arguments they make that they HAVE TO decide the first election date is because candidates and campaigns need to know ASAP. Silliness. Anyone considering running has already kind of made up their minds, they also know that the earliest their would be an election is June and the latest November. The date of the election is of no consequence to the candidate if that decision isn’t made until September. They would only have to adjust their campaign budgets if November was picked. That’s IT! They would also have more time to campaign, which is a good thing locally. I think the city council is on shaky legal ground. I think they know they have to call a special election and let the citizens decide, but instead they continue to eat the Fiddle-Faddle. I would get really weary of chomping on the old maids . . . wait . . . or maybe not
Jamie Smith announced today, while David Z. announced a few weeks ago. Also, Christine Erickson and Joe Batchellor will announce soon. But there are some big maybes. There is a regular guy exploring the run, If I told you his name you wouldn’t know him, but I look forward to hearing more about his campaign. Soehl is out and is supporting Erickson. Alex Jensen had to sell his business and start a new job, so he is out. Selberg is a gigantic maybe, and if he doesn’t want us to drag up him illegally living out of his district, he would be wise NOT to run. There are three other big maybes; Erica Beck, Mike Huether and Rich Merkouris. My guess is Huether is NOT in and will run as independent for governor, escaping the messy primaries. Aberson is also out. To be honest with you, I would like to see more women running. I told Erickson recently that if she won she would have two precedents under her belt, first female mayor and first city councilor to be elected mayor of Sioux Falls. I’m not in any camp right now, simply because I think we will see many more candidates running, so I am a wait and see. I also think with the economy and SF biggest campaign donor to local races, Craig Lloyd’s passing we will see a different ball game in money spent and money raised. Which is good, would love to see a local race on the issues not just who buys the most Facebook ads.
Oh, the political games played on such an unsubstantial level. The other night the city council elected their chairs. Usually I chide a few councilors into nominating someone (they never pick the person but this time I stayed out of it, I guess I wanted to be surprised. Councilor Merkouris was promoted to Chair, which was no surprise, and Barranco kept his Auditor Chair title. Sigette was nominated as Vice-Chair. While I was a little surprised, I was also NOT. She has shown she wants to dig in, so that’s good. But she seemed surprised to accept the nomination. I asked a councilor afterwards, did she know in advance? They said, YES. This is SOP with the city council. They usually play games behind the scenes trying to get the person nailed down on voting night so they are not surprised or embarrassed. So how do I think this played out? I’m not sure, so I am going to take an educated guess; When Rich and Curt set out to find their candidate I am sure they reached out to all the councilors asking who would be interested. My guess is Thomason probably said he would like to do it, because I know he has mentioned it to me in the past. Then in comes the COS Beck and the Mayor’s office encouraging a female councilor. My guess is that all three of them turned it down. Miranda probably turned it down because of work commitments, Cole is not running for a 2nd term, and Sigette may have considered but also worried she wasn’t experienced enough. So what happened between the time Thomason probably told leadership he was interested and the moment Sigette was convinced to take the job? Not sure, but now the Mayor’s office is apparently playing games with the council’s leadership picks. tsk. tsk. But that’s just WILD SPECULATION on my part
l3wis 
