South DaCola

Editorial Cartoonist from South Dakota

November 2013

Gregg Jamison SF City Council Sioux Falls

Misc. City News; Jamison, Director Updates & Agreements

l3wis 20Comments

Sioux-Falls-SD-City-Seal

The big city news of the day is Jamison announcing a campaign manager;

Jamison Announces Campaign Manager

Sioux Falls, SD – Greg Jamison has announced today the hiring of his Campaign Manager.
Former SDGOP Regional Field Director and Secretary of State Election Coordinator, Garrett DeVries, has joined the Greg Jamison for Mayor Campaign as the campaign manager.
“Garrett DeVries is a welcome addition to this campaign,” said Jamison. “Garrett has a great history of being a work horse to win campaigns.  His energy, organization, and proven experience will serve this campaign very well.   I am excited to have him on the team.”

Garrett DeVries grew up on a family farm near Canistota and attended the University of South Dakota. He has been involved in campaigns from a very young age and has worked extensively with many campaigns across the state of South Dakota. In 2012, he served as the West River Regional Field Director for SDGOP specializing in grassroots campaigning and getting out the vote.  With the Secretary of State, DeVries worked to increase access to voting utilizing Vote Centers and by improving the absentee process for military personal.
For more information – visit its website at www.JamisonForMayor.com or call (605) 215-5184.

The city council has also not met for several weeks, so they have a lot on their plates tomorrow;

During the informational we are going to have a ‘Top Ten’ list from Huether’s mouthpiece, Kendra Siemonsma, I guess it is so ‘awesome’ they can’t post it ahead of time on SIRE.

We will also get updated as to why Public Parking needs to charge $25 for an appeal, we gotta cover that Golden ‘P’ marketing budget somehow I guess.

Jim David also will inform us about the council’s legislative priorities, like a statewide texting ban (even though Sam Clemens from the SFPD KINDA admitted on ‘100 Eyes’ that texting and driving and getting in an accident is already covered under ‘distracted’ driving) but Erpenbach won’t be happy until she restricts all naughty things in SF like speaking longer then 5 minutes on a topic at city council meetings. The council also wants to have the power to tax us for whatever and use that money to ‘benefit’ us. LOL!

At the Fiscal Committee meeting, financial director, Tracy Turbak will give us an update on Debt Management (that must be super-uber-secret because docs are not up on SIRE either, maybe they are heating up in the pre-SIRE warming bin before they can be released to the public.)

Item #1 on the city council meeting agenda, approval of contracts, has some interesting expenditures. Project #189064 has a charge for redesigning/engineering the existing pedestrian bridge by the Hilton, $19,150. Nice to see they are leaving the bridge, and I saw today they were putting new hand railing on it. I guess I need to get in the business of designing and engineering hand railing on an existing bridge, pays pretty good. I guess our own engineering department at the city couldn’t figure that one out on their own. Maybe we don’t have any engineers that work for the city that have hand railing experience?

My favorite though is the A/C unit for city hall’s computer room (I’m hoping this is a typo and they mean the A/C unit for the entire building) $145,834. At that price, they could recreate the ice age in the computer room. I do think though the A/C will be counter productive, as of right now we need to fire up SIRE fifteen minutes in advance to get it cooking enough for public meetings, and WE ARE USING THE OLD A/C SYSTEM!

And lastly, the IcePlex and TennisPlex agreements with the city.

Ice Facility; Iceplexagreement

Tennis Facility; tennisagreement

Corinna Robinson

Corinna Robinson, Democratic candidate for Congress; First Impressions

l3wis 30Comments

Corinna19-x254

I had the chance to hear Corinna speak today at Democratic forum. I will give her credit, I took from her speech that she is very intelligent, driven and hard working. The SD GOP is going to try to hang the ‘Carpet Bagger’ yolk around her neck because she spent 25 years in the military traveling the world. Her latest stint was in DC (and she has kind of an Eastern accent).

There were some concerns I have about her after hearing her speak. She seemed cold and distant (this is kind of typical of the military upper crust). She said her nickname at the Pentagon was ‘Gunslinger’ because she got stuff done.

I can probably deal with someone who is pretty stringent and driven in their ways. I want smart, hard working people in DC representing me, not obstructionists like Noem.

But something else was very clear about Robinson, she is a bureaucrat. You don’t get that high up in the Pentagon without playing reindeer games in DC. This can be looked at a couple of ways, as she explained, she knows the ins and outs of the halls of congress. Selling point? Sure, but a lot of South Dakotans don’t like DC insiders and have a distaste for all things Washington.

I also was a little disappointed that she gave a brief speech (about 15 minutes) and was planning on skirting out of the forum until Tom Cool reminded her to take some questions. While most gave support, including Phil Shrek, a regular attendee of Forum asked how she was going to deflect the ‘Carpet Bagger’ label. She said she looked forward to the attacks about carpet bagging. Jim Abourezk reminded her that Eisenhower was never called a ‘carpet bagger’ when he ran for president.

But the best question came from Roger Elgersma (a regular at public input at city council meetings) He asked how she would work to cut defense spending. She pretty much admitted that kind of ‘change’ is nearly impossible, further making me assume that she is part of the DC system. But hey, at least she admitted she would look at the issue.

At the end of the day, I look forward to her campaign to defeat a do-nothing congress person we currently have who has only damaged South Dakotan. Robinson said if she was appointed to a committee, like armed services, she would show up to ALL the meetings 🙂

Mike Huether Minnehaha County

Mayor Huether’s Diamond Lake home

l3wis 13Comments

I wanted to post about the mayor’s lake home because it is a question I get quite often. There seems to be some confusion on how he attained the property, and as far as I can tell, has the only lake front property (there is a farm on the other side of the lake adjacent to it).

Okay, I can’t see that the mayor attained the property in any sort of nefarious way, this from the SD GFP;

Ownership of Lake and Adjacent Lakeshore Properties
Diamond Lake is listed as meandered public water in the State of South Dakota Listing of Meandered Lakes. Game, Fish, and Parks (GFP) owns the majority of the lake basin as a Game Production Area and manages the fishery. The remainder of the shoreline is privately owned.
As you can see from the Google map images (2012) a special road had to be built to the home. I know many people who fish on that lake, and have witnessed the mayor having ‘get togethers’ at it.
While I commend anybody who is successful to build lake homes, it befuddles me that he would want to have the only home on the lake and when does he find time to stay at it? (it is located in Minnehaha county in rural Colton).
So just for the record, as far as I can tell, it’s his place, free and clear. Just trying to dispel any rumors.
lakehome
lakehome2

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