I don’t know who is more ignorant, my students or my state legislators
I recently thought a way to get more money for both would be for the public schools and counties split a statewide room tax. We could dedicate 100% to fixing roads and paying teachers.
I have often been baffled that the state doesn’t have such a tax, especially with all the business travel to Sioux Falls and tourism travel across the state.
Yesterday at the Sioux Falls City council informational meeting, Darrin Smith did a presentation on the $500K the city will be granting to businesses to recruit workers. Some interesting points he made;
1) He said employers are telling him they are having trouble recruiting workers in the $20 an hour an lower range.
2) He said recently in Sioux Falls there was 2,300 available openings and in the same period 3,800 people applied for unemployment.
Am I the only one that sees the correlation here? I think some people would just rather draw unemployment then work for a low wage.
I think to put some teeth in this grant process the city should require anyone seeking the recruitment money that they pay market scale-living wages. In other words $16 an hour or higher.
I also think for every dollar a business gets in grant money they should roll over as a bonus to employees that get recruited and stay with the company over one year. In other words, if Company A receives $5000 from the city in grant money, and they hire 5 people that stay with the company for over a year, each employee would receive a $1000 bonus.
We can recruit low wage employees until the cows come home, but it doesn’t have much of an affect on our local economy and is really just a waste of tax dollars.
What smoking gun?
So I was talking to a public official yesterday and he asked me an interesting question;
“Who is doing an independent review and investigation of the Tuthill shooting?â€
I told him that it seems they are reviewing it themselves (SFPD). He pointed out to me that since the SFPD doesn’t have an internal affairs department that normally if they have an officer use their firearm in a related shooting incident, the Sheriff’s office or the state DCI investigates it.
Maybe they are, maybe they aren’t. Will we ever know what happened?
My thumb is going to start hurting this week, but this is what these foundations are supposed to do;
The biotechnology industry is about to get a whole lot stronger. Tuesday, the Sioux Falls Development Foundation announced it’s investing $3 million in SAB Biotheraputics which uses genetically-engineered cattle to produce antibodies all in an effort to fight infectious diseases.
I think this will be great for jobs and growth in our community and state and a perfect fit for our development foundation.
I was glad to see the mayor do a proclamation about stalking awareness last night at the city council meeting. As ALL of our local media has been focusing on the string of domestic violence related murders this past year in Sioux Falls, we must ALL remain vigilant about domestic violence in our community. If you suspect something is going on with a friend, a relative or a neighbor – DO SOMETHING and encourage them to seek help before it is too late.
l3wis