Sioux Falls Mayor Huether and crew blew a lot of smoke over the past week
l3wis 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.
