November 2015

Let’s talk decorum Rex Rolfing

andi-bender

While councilor Rex Rolfing worries about constituents wearing baseball caps at Carnegie Hall, I have a HUGE issue with the above picture of the Sioux Falls Planning Commission chair, Andi Anderson wearing a ‘Bender Commercial’ shirt while chairing the meeting tonight. It actually pales in comparison to when former councilor Diamond Jim used to wear clothing from his motorcycle dealership at council meetings.

As the land specialist for her employer Bender Commercial she should show NO bias in her duties as a planning commission member.

Either she didn’t have a couple of seconds to pull off the polo shirt before the meeting (with a turtle neck underneath) or she is testing the waters?

Either way, it is not appropriate.

The Arts in Sioux Falls and South Dakota

Many of my artist friends have often asked me why I don’t participate locally much anymore. I will be honest, I’m F’ing bitter. You often read about the arts in this community and I get really ill to my stomach when I hear about ‘opportunities’ but they just don’t include anything monetary.

Recently I had a show at a community college in Minnesota. Not only did they not charge me a commission on my sales, they paid me to have the show there. This happens rarely in Sioux Falls.

People need to realize, artists don’t do this out of the goodness of their hearts to entertain people, they would also like gratitude for what they do. And even if they don’t, a reimbursement for supplies would be nice.

I wrote this little booklet several years ago, and ironically it still applies.

(Click to enlarge)

prairie-priced-art

Another Record in Sioux Falls

Yeah! The rich developers are making loads of money (while we give them tax rebates)! The elected officials are spending our money on entertainment palaces! Yet the homeless rates, violent crime, hungry children and the under employed continue to grow in our community. But that’s all negative, so let’s not talk about it;

Sioux Falls City officials today announced a third record-breaking year of construction values. The construction valuation for building permits issued by Building Services in 2015 reached $619,862,799 million this morning. Last year’s record (2014) was $619.5 million, and the previous record set in 2013 was $588.2 million.

I actually believe that ‘public’ projects should not be included in these numbers, IMO. Always amazed how our mayor can spin all the positive in this community around a dollar amount while many are suffering in this community. Yet, councilor Kenny Anderson said on SuFuStu’s show today that the mayor is more transparent then mayor Munson was with working with the council. While I wouldn’t want to get into a grading system on how well either did on that issue, I will say this. THEY BOTH SUCKED!

Yeah, there seems to be A LOT of things missing Marty

I usually don’t comment on these kind of crimes, I prefer to blog about living politicians and politicos fiddling around with our money.

But I took an hour out of my life that I will never get back to hear our esteemed AG, Marty ‘Silver Fox’ Jackboots talk about the Westerhuis death investigation.

I won’t speculate what was ever recovered in the investigation, but Jackley danced around a lot of things that don’t add up;

  1. First he says that the safe was not recovered and was probably destroyed in the fire, than he said that it might have been stolen or Scott hid it somewhere. So which is it Marty? First off, a safe, especially to a guy who may have been embezeling millions of dollars, was probably fireproof, not because it may have had money in it, but probably a lot of damaging records, not just about what Scott was doing but he may have had dirt on others involved. I would think the first thing DCI would have looked for was a safe, and if it wasn’t recovered, it is somewhere. Like I said, I won’t speculate where the safe is, but you I know what I’m thinking.
  2. While it was brought up that a shell was found in the gun that Scott killed himself with, there was no mention if shells or remnants of shells were found around the other victims. In other words, he never says the gun that killed Scott was the same that killed the victims. Maybe I missed that?
  3. In another bizarre twist in the press conference, Marty says the voice mail left on Nicole’s phone has been ‘terminated’. This is probably highly unlikely. Talking to a programmer today who works on different computer devices and phones said DCI should have asked for access to those records right away, and the provider (Verizon) should have had them, heck, they probably still do. So why would Marty say this? Not sure?

Once again, more deaths due to financial mishandling of Federal money in our state, and a closed investigation that leaves us with more questions than answers. Pretty soon Marty is just going to finish all of his reports with “It was the third gunman on the grassy knoll.”