My  Dominatrix  Died  (A)
A cold day here
There too
Tears warm my cheeks
No one to wear the black mesh
Closed closet door
Charles Luden
1-28-16
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My  Dominatrix  Died  (B)
A cold day
No one to wear black mesh
Tears warm my cheeks
Charles Luden
1-28-16
– – – – – – – –
My  Dominatrix  Died  (C)
Cold day
Tears
Empty black mesh
Memories
Charles Luden
1-30-16
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The above all written at Black Sheep Coffee.
Many possible variations await discovery.
Welcome to the Sioux Falls Airport, your low wage tour of our city starts here.
Ever stare at the person behind a (customer service) counter and wonder how they could be so incredibly miserable, ignorant or apathetic? Ever think that maybe because they have to put up with people like you all day when they don’t make a living wage, or they have several part-time jobs like this just to pay their health insurance and get by. Maybe they are not stupid, maybe they are zombified into exhaustion.
Recently a friend of mine told me that one of the airlines contracted at the Sioux Falls Airport suddenly lost their contract. They got dinged on something, my friend thought maybe it was for screwing up on baggage delivery too much. Either way, another airline is replacing them.
The worst part is that the airline that is leaving only paid $10.16 an hour to it’s customer service reps BUT they offered free travel benefits and even their part-time employees could buy into reasonable health benefits. They also offered a $.50 raise after a short review period.
Not a living wage, but at least their were other benefits to subset the crappy hourly.
The new contractor isn’t having it. Not only are they starting anyone who wants to come to work with them from the old contractor (you have to go through an interview first) a lesser wage (I believe $10 an hour) NO raises for almost 3 years and NO health benefits to anyone who works under 30 hours a week. The rumor going around is that they will have no one working over 30 hours a week.
I find this all ironic with the recent proposal to take money from essentially the airport authority to pay for infrastructure for wealthy companies to come into our community. Maybe the airport needs to figure out ways (fees) so they can pay their workers more? While we can hoop and holler all we want about our world class airport, in reality it is being ran by poverty wage workers, while the rich developers and shakers in town are trying to squander the money for wealthy corporations who can pay for their own infrastructure (and should). If they can’t and are not willing to provide a living wage, why do we even want them here? I would rather see Foundation Park grow slow and provide solid jobs, then to pop up over night with trailer parks and low income apartments surrounding the area with it’s workers.
Sioux Falls certainly has an image crisis, and it has to do with the kind of wages it is paying to people. You get what you pay for, a miserable, ignorant, apathetic and an exhausted workforce being squandered by the greed of few who have to have secret and possibly illegal meetings with local elected officials to get their plans pushed through. They were foiled this time.
Forget about the straight winds pelting us with snow today. The smoke flying from city administration buildings is a whole lot harmful.
Yesterday during the SF city council informational meeting, during the indoor pool update, councilor Erpenbach pre-arranged a little theater with the admin’s staff. She had to get her gripe in about Cameraman Bruce (without using his name) talking about secret change orders and costing more money for the lobby. Michelle is probably partially correct. While the entire project may not go up in cost, certainly money was diverted from other parts of the facility to put the luxurious fireplace in the expanded lobby. But where the theater gets good is when Michelle has an exchange with the project manager, Kendra, about change orders. Michelle asks is anyone can see the change orders, and Kendra says they can, they just need to request them from her.
It’s the normal Huether bait and switch, tell you one thing in public, do the opposite when the rubber hits the road. We will see if requests are responded to.
But let’s go back to last Thursday when the old steam engine Huether was huffing and puffing about 2015’s TOP TEN WINS & SINS. Towards the end of his blustering, he couldn’t resist to mention that the city has won ALL of the court cases against the SON neighborhood in reference to the zoning and building of the Southside Walmart. He wasn’t lying, they have won them all, no thanks to a bias judge and the mayor pulling a surprise colonoscopy the day he was supposed to testify in court. In fact, his testimony would have been the lynchpin of SON’s case, but apparently his hemorrhoids were acting up so badly he had to setup (demand) and emergency procedure, in which I heard the only thing they found was a ‘perfect asshole’.
What Huether is not mentioning (which technically isn’t lying) is that the case has been appealed to the SD Supreme Court. Not sure how the high court will rule, but the city has a really bad track record when it comes to winning there. Really bad. So I wouldn’t be pulling a GW Bush ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner out just yet.
I have no doubt if the SC rules against the city and Walmart, the store will remain. I think the bigger repercussions will be against the city. If the mayor thinks he had a butt emergency a few months ago, he will quickly learn what a real pain in the ass feels like.
Pat will have a press conference tomorrow at the Oakview Library at 4 PM.
While I don’t live in Pat’s district and can’t vote for him, I do support him.
There are also rumors he may have a challenger, but she has not formerly announced yet.
While we can talk about crime rates going up, traffic issues and lack of affordable housing in Sioux Falls and the MSA, we can also expect the price tag of public projects are going to rise as we continue to have record growth.
Last year the Top 20 building permit projects cost $240 million. Over 25% of those projects ($66.5 million) were public projects mostly paid for through fees and taxes.
We can brag about record building permits all we want, but let’s face the facts, this kind of record growth costs a lot of money.
l3wis