May 2012

City Council rejects Walmart 7-1

I was pretty shocked that only Jamison voted for the Walmart plan at 69th and Cliff. While the neighborhood organizers had strong arguments against the plan, one fact remains the same, they had a legal right to build there. Hopefully someone interviews Jamison so he can give his reason as to why he voted for it. It seemed to me the vote was based on emotion and not fact. Could Walmart have offered a better plan? Of course they could have, but this seemed to be an ANTI-WALMART campaign from the beginning. To tell you the truth, I wish they wouldn’t build anymore stores in SF, but from what I can tell they crossed all of their T’s and dotted all of their I’s. Bizarre.

A local politician predicted it though, he told me a few weeks back that the council will vote against Walmart based on emotion, I just never thought it would be 90% of them.

The City’s ‘depositories for municipal funds’

I first want to say that I am not speculating any wrongdoing by the city. In fact I think the city is doing a good job of spreading out their depositories. Click on this PDF to see them: md (Source: Sioux Falls City Clerk’s office).

Where it gets interesting is when it comes to our current mayor and his past relationship with First Premier Bank. Mayor Huether’s Executive Order No. 11-31 (see attached PDF above) ADDS First Premier as a depository. It is also important to note, FP was added in 2004 under Mayor Munson as one of their ‘Checking Accounts’. I am not an accountant or lawyer. But I am curious what the ‘subtle’ differences there is between the two, if any.

Maybe this is a question of fairness. Maybe it is not. Not sure?