He may not win, but I’m guessing there won’t be a press release about this honor on the city’s website;

Sioux Falls Mayor Mike Huether: For going beyond even state law to shroud public business in secrecy. In early 2017, the city council passed an ordinance to require meetings of a city board to be recorded and published on the city website. Huether vetoed the bill and said: “Here’s the way (transparency) works: It protects you one minute. It stabs you in the back the next.” The Argus Leader newspaper filed a lawsuit in 2015 against the city that went all the way to the South Dakota Supreme Court to get a simple contract detailing what the city called a $1 million refund from a settlement over flawed siding installed on a $115 million event center. After the court ruled in the newspaper’s favor in September 2017, the documents showed city officials weren’t telling the truth: The city received less than half of what Huether claimed. After the drowning of a 5-year-old girl in a park in March, the city defended its safety protocols by citing a 2016 audit officials said was conducted on the park. City officials denied the Argus Leader’s request for a copy of the audit, claiming it belonged to the insurance company. When the newspaper contacted the insurance company, reporters confirmed no such audit exists. Huether is term-limited but has indicated he’d seek public office in the future.

Surprised he wasn’t a finalist every year of his administration.

Huether decided to remind us of his top 10 wins of his past 8 years. Where does he come up with this stuff. #1 really made me laugh.

#1. The City purchased the downtown railyard from BNSF Railway Company after a decade of planning and negotiation. Our downtown will never be the same, and economic development will be spurred on for generations to come!

As I have told the mayor and council a couple of times, this was one of most poorly negotiated deals in the history of our city. Besides taking millions from Federal taxpayers, city taxpayers will also have kick in on the cleanup. And the payback? Well the developers of the land will be making oodles of money, us minions, not so much. First off, this should have been negotiated in the public. Secondly we didn’t achieve the original goal of the project, to reduce train traffic downtown, in fact it has gotten worse and they are still switching cars only a couple of blocks away from the site.

#2. Sioux Falls has experienced five straight years of record-breaking construction, a bevy of jobs have been created, and we have a confidence level unmatched in America. Our economy is rocking!

While this is true, a large portion of this development has been by non-profits and public projects that produce ZERO property tax revenue. And something I could never figure out is if we have these record construction numbers why do we continue to handout TIFs and millions in new infrastructure upgrades? The development community is NOT hurting. Enough of the corporate welfare. We need to invest in our people.

#3. Quality of life has never been better thanks to our citizens’ incredible support of our new Events Center, indoor aquatic facility, beautiful parks, and so much more. No wonder 88 percent of Sioux Falls residents think we have good or great quality of life in our town.

The Events Center while needed was poorly funded and built in the wrong place unlike the aquatic center that was built on land controlled by the VA and cannot be expanded. The Denty will be bleeding our CIP for decades. Oh then there was the siding. Also, I must clarify that about 88% of 900 people who filled out a survey said this.

#4. Public and private collaboration and investment has made our downtown the envy of most. Mayor Mike’s goal of making downtown the chosen “place to live” is now a reality. No one now remembers what downtown Sioux Falls was like during the struggles of the recessionary years.

Downtown redevelopment started in the early 90’s. Because of the actions of Carole Pogones and Mayor Munson the ball was already rolling when Huether came into office. All he did was grab the baton.

#5. No matter what Mother Nature has challenged us with—including the unforgettable ice storm, 1,000-year rain events, and record snowfalls—our city has rallied together to conquer it. Sioux Falls is prepared for the next one, and yes, there will be “a next one” sooner than we think.

While the city’s response was great, I don’t think our city employees doing their jobs is a reason to put something on a ‘WIN’ list. Remember, these were natural disasters and they responded the way we expected them to. It also didn’t hurt that FEMA kicked in $10 million.

#6. Our city’s finances are rock solid thanks to centralizing services, tough prioritization, managing costs and FTEs, doing more with less, and running government like a business. Our piggybank is full, and debt per capita is actually lower now than what we had in 2010, even with a bevy of prudent and overdue investments.

This was mostly due to the over 50 increases in taxes and fees over the past 8 years.

#7. Our city’s infrastructure has regained its strength through an aggressive repair, rebuild, and replace strategy of roads, parks, buildings, and technology. It is a recipe all of South Dakota and American should heed.

As Jodi Schwan pointed out recently, the needle on road repair hasn’t moved at all. Our roads rated 7 out of 10 eight years ago and they rate 7 out of 10 today. At least we didn’t go backwards, so this is ‘sorta’ a win.

#8. Thanks to the trust and collaboration of our City’s employees, pension reform actually happened, saving taxpayers $300 million over the next 25 to 30 years. A monster accomplishment that most have no idea about.

Ask our city’s union employees how they feel about this? Or the police department who lost 30 experienced officers to early retirement.

#9. We celebrate good neighbors and neighborhoods and work with the others to instill those same values. Safety is a virtue and code enforcement is a commitment in Sioux Falls that helps us reach statistics where 91 percent of citizens think Sioux Falls is a good or great place to live.

Code enforcement is a mess and needs to be reformed. Once again 91% of 900 people surveyed think this.

#10. Sioux Falls has become the first choice for flying again with our grand airport upgrades, added flying options, and improved airfares. Leisure and business travelers are flying high thanks to Dan Letellier and the Sioux Falls Airport Authority!

With an airline that has the worst safety record in the industry and airlines that pay the lowest wages in the country.

There you have it, so many wins and not a lot of losses. Ha. I have coined Huether’s administration, “Progress at a Price.”

Just when I was considering writing a letter to the editor about Mike’s term in office, someone beats me to the punch, and they don’t gloss over anything;

We elect council members Huether doesn’t want to listen to. Their opinions don’t matter to him, to the point where one council member even walked out of a meeting. Can’t say that I blame him. Now the frosting on the cake is the April 4 article where theArgus Leader had the guts to poke fun at one of the candidates who answered a question from the public. Why should he even comment? All he wants people to be aware of is “What I have achieved.” Accusing a candidate of finding a way to capture the attention of the electorate was very uncalled for. At least that candidate is sincere, not phony like Huether. Take your “big shot” accomplishments home and live with them. We elect the council members, so what gives Huether the right to make our decisions, ignoring their opinions? He also chose the out-of-state ambulance service. I hope he doesn’t have a need in his family and need to wait 45 minutes to one hour, like some people have. One man had to take his wife to Acute Care, as no ambulance ever came. Sound like a proper response to you? Not to me. He probably would get special attention that we average folks can’t get. Highly disgusted with him.

She missed a couple of things, but I do agree with her ending. It has been truly disgusting.

*For the record I have no idea who the person was that wrote this letter.

UPDATE: I don’t think we caught it in the video (we have difficulties with the wi-fi in this building) but the mayor was telling the same story about leaving to all the news media lately and was continuing the story at Forum (to a lot of snickers in the crowd). When it got to about 12:50, Jim stood up and reminded the mayor that he needed to take questions. Mike said he was going to finish his ‘story’ first and if Jim didn’t like it, he was going to leave. Mike continued for another 10 minutes without taking any questions. At the end Jim said out loud, “Thanks for the filibuster mayor.”

Hizzoner was on the B-N-B show this morning spreading his own special kind of love. He started telling his victory lap story he has been telling over the past month that he will be on to bigger and better things right after taking a break, because as he put it, his daughter wants him to be ‘fun again’. I don’t even want to know what that all entails but I’m picturing a speedo and a couple of empty Coors Light Silos.

Either way, besides serving up his own special brand of BS this morning, now claiming people hate him, or hate progress, or hate something, not sure where he was going with it since he always prefaces these kind of statements with ‘I better be careful about who I am talking about’. He made another one of his Half-Truth statements;

There is NOW less debt than when I became mayor.

Well folks, that is absolutely true. In fact I think when MMM leaves office there will be around $10 million less debt then when he rolled in in 2010. So you ask, how is this so? First off, the obvious; many of the debts that were incurred during the Hanson and Munson administrations have come to fruition. This has nothing to do with Huether, just the way the repayment was set up. In fact, if we wouldn’t have borrowed ANY money during the Huether administration our debt now would probably be around $100 million instead of 3x that.

So you ask, what about all the debt MMM incurred? That still exists, and will for about 20-30 years.

But this is where Huether gets even more dim on his great debt payoff. Many of the infrastructure debts were re-financed and paid down due to the increase of fees in the enterprise funds, front end property tax assessments, property taxes, building and platting, and the list goes on. In fact the Mayor’s office with the help of the rubberstamp council has increased fees and taxes over 50 times since 2010.

So while the mayor may brag about not increasing the debt on the city over the past 8 years, he has certainly put that burden on property owners in Sioux Falls in higher fees and taxes. Don’t believe me? If you still live in the same home you lived in 2010, pull your property taxes from that year and compare them to 2017. Tell me what you figure out?

It’s too bad wages haven’t increased by that much in 8 years?

He also finally admitted that you essentially can’t get things done in government unless you make the decisions behind closed doors with a minority of support from the council and key business players in town. He said that open meetings and forums with the public just drag out the conversation and nothing gets accomplished. While his statements might piss you off, I was happy to finally hear him say publicly that he never gave a rat’s ass what the public thought.

Full steam ahead.

I hope when the mayor decides to be fun again, it will be on another continent.