February 2018

Huether plans to ‘RAMROD’ all the way to the end

As I predicted there has been rumors that Huether plans to get even more done before he leaves office. On Belfrage’s show the other day he said he was meeting with directors to see what they would like to see tied up in their offices before the next mayor takes over on May 15. Rumor has it that there is well over 30 items on the RAMROD agenda so far. A City Hall insider gave me a brief list of some of those items;

  • Proclaim that April 1st each year in Sioux Falls will be called ‘Interesting Siding’ day. Homeowners will be encouraged to post pictures on the city’s FB page of their ‘interesting siding’ installations. Participants are asked that they paid the contractor double for the job that excludes a warranty.
  • Rename every park in Sioux Falls with a corporate sponsor that will be responsible for putting up two ugly signs in the park proudly showing who the sponsor is.
  • Executive order telling city councilors Starr and Stehly to sit out all city council meetings until after May 15. Huether comments, “We don’t need their votes anyway to get things done.”
  • Flagpole annex the private lake Huether’s second home sits on. After annexation Huether asks to make the lake and surrounding property a city park and gets $500,000 from taxpayers to rename it Huether Family Park.
  • Emergency closure of the Arena for the next three months for city hall document shredding.
  • Huether offers ALL city employees a 20% discount coupon for his future book, “If you can’t stand the Hueth get out of the Kitchen”. For employees who still can’t afford the book after the release there will be financing available at a 79% interest rate.
  • Replaces Project KEEP and NICE with Project LEGACY which will allow citizens to dump asbestos FREE for one week at the land fill.
  • Fires the entire police department and replaces them with a newly deputized Tuthill Ghost. Huether comments, “Because the hype around the crime increase in Sioux Falls is really just a myth.” The money saved from this action will be contributed to the Aaron Hultgren defense fund.
  • Budgets $10,000 for decorating his future office when he gets hired by the next mayor.
  • Removes West Law software from the city attorney’s computers and replaces it with solitaire. The cost saving measure actually makes the office more productive.
  • Shuts down Para transit and Public transit. Replaces bus passes with a business card from Billion Automotive.
  • Submits a city ordinance that makes it a felony to remove any of his stupid quotes from the walls of city owned buildings.
  • Installs tissue dispensers on all city owned podiums.
  • Tells the public for the 685th time his dad was an alcoholic.
  • Gets his final haircut at a barbershop and finally has his ducktail cut off.
  • Leaves a word of advice for the future mayor, “Buy a comfortable couch. You are going to be spending a lot of nights there.”
  • Kisses his wife in public without her acting uncomfortable or grimacing.
  • Asks councilor Rex Rolfing to wear a hat at his last council meeting and to muster up at least one good idea that will benefit the city.
  • Finally admits that he signed off on the installation of the Event Center siding but comments, “It was Mark Cotter’s idea.”

There you have it folks, 3 more months of ‘Getting Things Done!’

If you are visiting a tourist site, that makes you a tourist

Sometimes I think it may be a good idea to drug test legislators, especially when they come up with stupid crap like this. You are either brain dead or on drugs killing your brain cells;

The bill would cut the state’s tourism tax rate from 1-1/2 percent to 1 percent, which wouldn’t leave enough funding for the South Dakota Arts Council.

State Rep. Tom Pischke (R-Dell Rapids) sponsored the bill because he doesn’t like the way the money is collected.

“Let’s say for example, I live in Dell Rapids and I want to take my kids to the children’s museum in Brookings. So I don’t really consider myself a tourist if I drive 30 miles up to Brookings to take the kids to the Children’s Museum. But then again, I’m getting charged a tourism tax,” says Pischke.

The definition of Tourist;

a person who is traveling or visiting a place for pleasure.

Doesn’t matter if Tom lived next door to the museum, he is still a tourist. Oh, but Tom’s argument gets even better;

Pischke says he supports the arts, but doesn’t think the tourism tax should go toward things the SculptureWalk or JazzFest, two recipients of funding from the state art council. He says the collected funds should go directly toward tourism.

Public art is tourism. Do you think people would travel to Mt. Rushmore if there wasn’t a sculpture into the side of that mountain? Where do these legislators come up with this stuff?

How many South Dakota State legislators does it take to screw in a light bulb? Zero. They would be too busy arguing over how to pay for the light bulb, in the dark.

The Denty (Huether’s Admin) still refuses to tell us the value of ticket sales

While this is great news, there seems to be something missing here;

The Premier Center was ranked 44th in the United States and 84th in the world by Pollstar, based on touring event ticket sales of 239,089, according to a release from the Premier Center.

A couple of big things are missing; 1) is the above ticket sales number just tickets sold by touring acts, not total tickets sold at the Denty? 2) What was the value of those ticket sales?

If you were to do just a rough estimate on sales from the number above, promoters and artists pulled in around $17 million last year from the Denty. This number of course doesn’t include food and beverage sales and other events. Total sales at the Denty in 2017 could have easily been over $30 million. But how much is the Denty itself profiting? Not much. Most of that $30 million gets sucked right out of town.

Like the admission as to who authorized the bent up siding job on the Denty, for some reason the Huether administration wants to keep us in the dark about the sales at the Denty and what the Denty actually gets to keep or spend on operations.

So we have a publicly funded facility that takes $10 million a year out of our 2nd penny road fund to pay the mortgage but for some strange reason we can’t tell the public the sales it generates. Instead they send out vague press releases bragging about attendance.

We could of had 10 million people attend concerts last year at the Denty, if majority of those sales are not re-circulating in our community, does it even matter?