May 2017

Thank you to the Neitzert Family

Besides the Mayor and his wife, Greg and his wife Jennifer were the only elected city officials to donate to the Levitt Pavilion. I know the councilors don’t receive nearly enough money for the job they do, so it is always nice to see when they donate to local charities (and most of them do). Essentially giving something back to the community from the small salary they receive.

Thank You.

The donors; LevittShellDonorsVolunteers

Mayor Huether has never been a leader. He’s a bully.

The AL Ed Board seem to be surprised that Huether isn’t acting like a leader when it comes to the Sideras incident;

OK, but that shouldn’t stop the mayor from doing his job, which is to lead. Leadership doesn’t mean only holding press conferences and being accountable when things go well. Quite the opposite. It means standing up and facing the music when things get messy.

Ironically, Sideras may not be the one that is in trouble, it may be the city. And his termination may be the city’s attempt of protecting themselves. Who knows at this point since no body is talking.

Even with all the secrecy and lack of transparency, no one should be surprised that Huether only gets things done by bullying. He has NO time for controversy, in his mind there is NO controversy if you don’t admit to controversy, just cover it up. That’s what he did when former assistant chief Patrick Warren complained about unauthorized vacation time back in 2011.

I do think the silence on behalf of the city and especially the mayor has little to do with his leadership style. I think many heads are about the roll. I struggle to think something so many agencies are involved with would have only one suspect. Jim is a smart guy, but I struggle to believe he is the only one involved. This may end up being Huether’s Watergate or Waterloo, because even if there is no direct wrongdoing by the mayor, he is the one in charge, and as Truman so proudly displayed on his Oval Office desk, ‘The buck stops here’.

Is Legacy so intertwined with government we can’t boot them from the parking ramp project?

First Fiddle-Faddle does his best bang-up cracker-jack job of defending their investors;

Pfeifle said another protection the city has against improper investors is inherent in how the project will be financed. It’s assumed Legacy Developments will be financing at least a portion of the construction costs. Ignoring a state law barring the improper investing in a project, Pfeifle said, could jeopardize it and void it entirely, preventing the financier from getting its money back.

Yeah, we don’t need to see the investor list, we can just ASSUME they are doing the right thing.

Then I also see Legacy has their fingers in the newly announced Win Chill warehouse at Flopdation Park;

Win Chill, a refrigerated food storage and distribution center facility, will be built on a 54-acre parcel at Foundation Park. Legacy Development CEO Norman Drake said the facility will provide cold-storage for food companies in order to ship products to and from Sioux Falls and surrounding areas.

Besides the fact that we are allowing a development company that may be sued over the Copper Lounge collapse to build our DT parking ramp, and now benefit from over $30 million in infrastructure from taxpayers, Mayor Huether went on to say at the press conference reveal that this warehouse will produce good paying jobs.

Nothing wrong with warehouse work, it’s an honest living, but I would be shocked to see if they pay forklift operators $18-20 per hour. Even if it did, I’m not sure spending $30 million in infrastructure is worth the 35 or so jobs this place will produce.

Once again, our state and city leadership, in partnership with some questionable developers (who don’t use union labor for their projects) suckered the taxpayers out of millions for some corporate pigs benefit.