South DaCola

Editorial Cartoonist from South Dakota

April 2017

Glory House SF City Council Sioux Falls

Mayor gets his way and squeezes $50K out of Glory House for (half) the land

l3wis 5Comments

Not only does the city make sure they pay ‘something’ for the land, they only let them have half of what was requested;

Under the deal, the city would raze the existing building and divide the property it owns there into three pieces. A 9,000-square-foot parcel would be sold to the Glory House for $50,000, while another 43,000-square-feet would be gifted.

Mayor Mike Huether and his administrators have resisted the move, saying it’s not in taxpayers’ interest to give away city assets, even if it’s an empty building used for miscellaneous storage. Last month, City Planning Director Mike Cooper and Public Works Director Mark Cotter were in front of the City Council when they shared a recent appraisal that valued the park land at $675,000.

It’s funny how the mayor just couldn’t stand to give this land away and cut a back door deal with the Glory House to side step the council. Yet $500k for a tennis center bearing the mayor’s name is no problem at all for the good taxpayers of Sioux Falls.

South Dakotans

Living History of my Great, Great Grandfather Charles Blachnik

l3wis 6Comments
This is my Great, Great, Grandfather that will portrayed in a living history.
On Saturday afternoon June 17 at 2 pm during Czech Days in Tabor, Darrell Beran will be portraying Charles F. Blachnik, his great grandfather, telling about his life history. The presentation will take place in the Czech Heritage Park starting at the museum next to the post office on the main street. Darrell is just one of five presenters portraying different Tabor pioneers that day. There is only one performance, so don’t be late. Please let other members of your family know about the presentation as I am not sure I know all of them. Cost is $5 per person which includes a kolache and bottle of water.
Oh and don’t miss the family museum while you are there!
Food Washington DC

A conservative’s guide to the greasy side of DC (besides the caucus)

l3wis 1Comments

A guest post by my conservative friend, Matt Showers;

Yeah, you would think I would need to go through a car wash to scrub off all the grease once I visited with our (mis) representatives, Rounds and Thune. But luckily I escaped their offices with just a couple of brown streaks, mostly on my nose.

The real grease is all the fine eateries around DC. And I’m not talking about the fancy smancy places, when I travel I must eat the same greasy crap I eat in my Podunk college town of Brookings. So forget about the 4-Star ratings, I head straight to the fart factories of Irish Pubs.

I give O’Burgers on 4th street a 3 Fart rating, mostly because the cheese not only backed up my bowels it shut down the gas chamber.

Cabbage O’Nally’s really had the best Rueben of all. Naturally with all that Kraut, it got a 5 Fart rating, and a night on the rollaway (yeah, since the old lady is the breadwinner, she funded the trip).

I almost bit my fingers off eating this deep fried and breaded banger at Sausage O’Donnells. 4 Farts for sure.

I completed the trip with some Fish N’ Chips at the airport, it sure would have made Ronnie Proud, and easy 4 Farts which gave us a turbo boost on the way home.

So the next time you go to the Nation’s capital, don’t worry, they have plenty of places that serve the same greasy crap they serve at home. Your tummy will thank you, your butt, not so much.

 

Art Sioux Falls

Should we still fund the NEA?

l3wis 1Comments

Of course we should.

Whichever side of the federal funding for the arts and humanities debate you stand on, in light of the proposal to not only eliminate future funding but also renege on already promised funding for 2017, please inform yourself of what is at stake locally. It’s substantial.

I had a revelation the other day when our beloved president decided to shoot 59 cruise missles into Syria. Did you know a cruise missle is valued at $1 million a piece. We don’t have the money to fund the NEA but we have $59 million to harass a country? This is why it often irks me when people cry about funding the arts, public broadcasting, Planned Parenthood or SNAP. You want to know what the biggest waste of your tax dollars are? The Pentagon. We could easily cut military spending in half, and still be the strongest military force on the planet while providing even better care to our veterans.

You might think I’m against arts funding with all my criticism of the Pavilion and SculptureWalk, not at all, I just think if these projects are going to receive funding, they should be using it prudently, I get that argument from the Right. I have benefitted from arts funding tremendously since I have lived in Sioux Falls (mostly to display my work, but not much monetary). But if it weren’t for local (city), state, and private funding also, the NEA couldn’t work.

Personally, I think the president is just blowing a bunch of smoke to piss off the liberals when it comes to cutting the NEA and Public Broadcasting, but I guess we will have to wait an see, afterall, we elected this monkey not based on a popular vote so anything is possible these days.

MIDCO Aquatic Center SF City Council Sioux Falls Watertown

Watertown builds an entire Rec center for $23 million, we just got a pool, that we can’t expand.

l3wis 3Comments

Click to enlarge

And guess what else? They built the facility so they could expand it and it’s parking! What a concept! They also have it next to a proposed Middle School! WOW! Planning ahead. I bet the lockers are big enough to at least fit your sunglasses and car keys into.

I often wonder how construction costs in Sioux Falls could be that much higher then in Watertown? I actually think it would be MORE expensive to build in Watertown a facility like this.

Like many Sioux Falls city projects, I believe the contractor and price is set before the bidding process even begins. The CMAR process is a boondoggle to make sure contractors rake the tax payers over the coals. It’s unfortunate that with all the ‘smart’ people we have working within city government (that we pay quite nicely) couldn’t see that the Indoor Aquatic Center was a complete rip-off. But Mayor Ramrod had to have it. This is what happens when you don’t let taxpayer’s decide on these projects. A NO vote on an outdoor pool only said that people might prefer an indoor pool. But since there never was an official vote we will never know. Was it a preferred location? Good Price? etc. We see what happens when we only let the mayor pick these projects, we get a huge price-tag and a $25 million dollar administration building.

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