Let’s face it, while Huether accomplished a lot during his tenure (building monuments and bonding our future) it was all done under a dark veil of secrecy. Just look at the RR redevelopment plan that he touts as his greatest achievement. A deal cut in the dark of the night in a Minneapolis board room. Just today I had to wait 20 minutes at 1 PM while trains re-switched right next to Avera hospital on Cliff Avenue. My wait was actually shorter than the 4 blocks of cars on either side backed up because I finally just drove around the mess. The train traffic has become more frequent which opens us up for more incidents of accidents. And it’s not a matter of when but how? Will it just be corn next time or something more dangerous? This is what happens when you negotiate in the dark, you get very bad deals that are ripe with corruption.
Tomorrow when the new council and mayor get sworn in, they should have one priority on their list, sunshine in government. I hope they think about that while taking the oath to the defend the US Constitution, the State Constitution and the City Charter.
As I told a friend recently, I could care less about diversity, equal rights, higher wages, affordable housing, roads, public safety, and public transit, without a transparent government you can’t tackle any of those issues properly. Period.
Some of the first initiatives our new council and mayor should take on should focus on transparency. I have suggested a wide reaching ordinance that requires the mayor and council share information with each other, not when it is just convenient, but ALL OF THE TIME.
They should also pass an ordinance that requires them to disclose all real estate investments that require city approval of any kind. I don’t care if this is a multi-million dollar city parking ramp or a tool shed.
They should also be required to say ‘why’ they are recusing themselves from a vote.
They should allow public input at 1st readings. I actually think this would cut down on regular public input.
They should update the city website so that ALL documents are online available for download for citizen use. They should also post all contracts and applicants of RFPs and TIFs. In that vein they should also live stream as many meetings as possible and have some of the more important boards be required to have their meetings at Carnegie and be recorded, like Board of Adjustment, REMSA and the Parks Board.
They should allow city employees to speak openly about their job with the media (as long as it doesn’t involve litigation or personnel).
All I have ever asked is that we have open government, everything else comes easy when you do these things in the open.
I actually believe that Huether’s lack of transparency killed his opportunity to ever run for public office again and win. His darkness will haunt him forever.
Goodbye Huether. You’re history. Your last day was you and you. Now, let’s assess the damage and try to recover from the excess.
From Jack White to Mike Huether, and lets not forget Hanson and Munson too, is a third of a century of Sioux Falls history. We have gone from the age of the “Teenage Loopers” to a time when now “some” of the tracks are literally leaving town. John Morrell is still here in the name of Smithfield and Citibank too with a new building in hand. The City has continued to grow during these past 32 years, while crime has begun to rear its ugly head.
Wages, however, in this town have not kept pace with the growth nor our property taxes. Sioux Falls has gone from the largest town in a five state region to a city of “Two Tales.”
And now, the greatest challenge for the new administration at City Hall is to bring wages into focus so that the once town, which is now a city, can be a land of opportunity for all and not just the Chamber and their friends.
The continuity of five re-elected administrations, and actually six, if you include Knobe too, and the interregnum two years of Joe Cooper as as well, speak to how some must be happy with this perpetual incumbency, but are the people really? Sure many of the people have helped to elect these “incumbents,” but its now incumbent upon on all of us to ask why? With wages low and crime high, it time for the citizens of Sioux Falls to demand of the new Ten Haken administration what has not been ask of the past administrations and that is a city government, that works as much for the people as it seems to work for the developers….. For its time that the interests of a dead construction worker and his fellow constituents are heard as well as those who can yell “blight” like one who cries wolf far too often….
VSG nailed it, ‘perpetual incumbency’. City government is not of, by, and for the people. It’s a crime syndicate worthy of a federal investigation. TenHacks got elected so he could delegate power to past mayors so he can focus on his private business. The only big surprise is that Huether isn’t a member of the obscure insider commission meant to override elected commissioners.
I got to thinking, I remember watching the evening news with Walter Cronkite live, when western reporters still in Saigon reported that VC tanks were now beginning to enter the city limits of Saigon. I remember when the Wall came down in Berlin, too. I remember when the first black was elected President of the United States ending 220 years of white dominance of that office, and now this, the end of a Janklow inspired tenure, which was peacefully ended…. I don’t know if my grandkids will ever care about the latter one, but they should….They definitely should……