The Secrecy Cult
l3wis 
October 2017
UPDATE II: Another SECRET decision, the Golf Course RFP
Not even sure why the council even votes on this stuff;
Because its current golf course management contract expires on December 31, 2017, the City of Sioux Falls completed a competitive request for proposal process to select a golf course management company. The news conference will announce the company with which the City will negotiate a contract and why this process was important to undertake on behalf of the City and the golfing community.
If you are voting on a contract, shouldn’t you be shown at least the TOPÂ 2 RFP choices and make an up or down decision from that? How can the council VOTE on ONE contract offering? What makes it even worse is that the RFP committee that picks the ONE choice is secret, and picks there choice in SECRET. Even with the press conference tomorrow, some councilors still don’t know who was chosen.
UPDATE II: Boy, these things change quickly, I am hearing now that DGM & GreatLife have neither been chosen for the golf contract. Not sure who it is, but I hear there were 5 companies that responded to the RFP.
To be quite honest, I’m more concerned about the secrecy than anything. I think there is too many damn golf courses the way it is, and with all the private ones popping up over the past decade, maybe the city should sell the courses and get out of the golfing business. Or better yet give them to the country clubs so we can finally build an east/west route from Kiwanis to Louise in the center of the city. It still amazes me we allow a few rich people in town to dictate the traffic chokehold we have on the west central part of our city. I would have used imminent domain 20 years ago to bulldoze them. But that would take courage and leadership.
Greg LaFollette an average citizen to the mayor?
Like I said, I’m glad we are getting Lyft to the city, and I agree with Mr. LaFollette, we are kind of behind the times and I appreciate his effort in moving this forward. But the mayor saying Greg is just some average ‘positive’ citizen asking him in an email about this is a stretch. Greg is the chairman of the ethics commission in which as chair he cleared the mayor of ethics charges while the mayor holed himself up in his office a couple of hundred feet away without answering to the charges. (see video below). Mr. Huether owes A LOT to this ‘average citizen’.
Mayor’s office agrees to study of Events Center siding
While I am happy this is happening and glad to see the mayor didn’t put up a big fight over it I am a little skeptical about parts of the process.
Public Works director Mark Cotter dropped this on the council at the 4 PM informational out of the blue and they want to get the ball rolling right away on the RFP. I get the feeling that the Administration agreed to this AS LONG as they could control the process, which is unfortunate. I think the council should lead the way on this and NOT the administration which F’ckd up the siding to begin with, then lied to us while blowing thousands on legal counsel. Sorry, anything moving forward with the EC from now on should not have the administration’s hands on it.
Rex once again decided to be a big Jerk to Stehly after she voiced her concern that the ENTIRE council would not be involved in the RFP. She also reminded the council that other stuff surrounding this settlement wasn’t just ‘noise’ (a couple of councilors felt everything but the siding study was just ‘noise’). Rex told Stehly that he was disappointed in her ‘Distrust’ of the administration. Thank God I was at home when he said that because I was laughing so hard I think I sharted. Gee, Rex, I guess the multiple LIES from City Hall on the settlement wasn’t enough for us to ‘distrust’ them. What a sad case of denial.
But there are some good things –
- We are promised that this will be a complete study from an out-of-state firm.
- Two councilors and a local contractor/citizen will be on the RFP committee.
- It will be paid for out of the 2nd day fund from the EC.
- The entire study will be made public.
The one POSITIVE thing about this is, as Rolfing ironically pointed out, this will put this to rest. This of course is if they pick a firm that will really dig in and have no conflicts with Mortenson or the city, which I think they will, because I believe they really do want this to go away.
My opinion though is it really won’t put it to rest, because I do believe there are moisture issues with the building that will have to be fixed. I guess we will have to wait for the experts opinion, oh, and make sure it is NOT a ‘Draft’ report this time.