2009

It’s a wonderful life?

sanfordville

While I think Sanford Health’s gift to the city of land and facilities for the new Jr. Football fields is appreciated by many, one wonders what their real intentions are. I am still working on putting up a review of the provisions Sanford put into place, I have to comb through that paperwork yet and grab the juicy info. So is it really a gift if they control what we do with that gift? It would be like your grandma giving you a Wii for Christmas but telling you can only play it one hour a day. I am not naive, I know that is how these things work these days, but how many ‘gifts’ are we going to name after Sanford? It is pretty obvious that if Sanford donates the land for the new Howard Wood field, it won’t be called Howard Wood.

You have to realize that the Jr. Football gift will be a model for how Sanford will negotiate the ‘gift’ for the new Howard Wood field. This gift has to be watched and scrutinized.

SAS005_LG2

As I have been telling people lately, I am all for changing the name of Sioux Falls to Sanford Falls, as long as T. Denny wants to pay my taxes. Otherwise, enough with the naming rights, YOU BIG DUMMY.

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So what’s the big secret anyhoo? Are you afraid some other ‘sleepy’ city is going to steal your name?

bart

I think it is a great idea that the SF transit is changing their name. Many cities have abbreviated names for their transit systems. Seattle’s is called CT (Community Transit) and San Fran’s is called BART (see above) Which IMO is one of the cleanest, fastest and most efficient I have ever ridden on, and they had a funny sign above the driver’s cockpit “Safety before unneccesary conversation.” Which I have still been waiting to use in a bar conversation. But what I can’t figure out is if the new name has already been picked, why not tell us?

Sioux Falls Transit soon will have a new name, but it won’t be unveiled until the marketing campaign designed to promote it is complete.

How is telling the public ahead of time going to ruin anything? And besides, it is not like this is a private venture, taxpayers subsidize the shit out the SF transit (because for some dumb reason they haven’t raised rates in 13 years);

Sioux Falls Transit relies on government subsidies to operate. That includes a budgeted $4.5 million from the city of Sioux Falls and $1.9 million from the federal government this year.

If a new name has been chosen, we have a right to know. Right now. It reminds me of when the Sioux Falls school district destroyed all the school name suggestions after naming Rosa Parks elementary.

The committee that selected the name was made up of various citizens, including a college student and City Councilman Greg Jamison.

Oh the hypocrisy of Mr. Jamison. He is always shooting off his mouth every chance he gets about ‘transparency’ in city government, but once he has an opportunity to be transparent about something he has some crap excuse about marketing campaigns, etc, etc. This comes down to being afraid of criticism and negativity. Trust me, as a cynic of city government, I can guarantee you will get criticism whether you release the name today or two weeks down the road. Might as well pull that bandaid off now. Besides, there is no such thing as bad press. You will get more free marketing then you can handle if people criticize the name. Whether people like it or not, they will remember the name.

Secrets, secrets, secrets. The more things change, the more they stay the same in Sleepy Falls.