Last night was kind of uneventful, except when Walter showed up.
During public input, Mr. John Cunningham threw some good barbs about the ethically challenged city and made the comment, ‘We have a mask mandate but you don’t have to wear a mask unless you want to, kind of like ethics rules that say you shouldn’t accept gifts from lobbyists, unless you want to. . . ‘ While John is right, it didn’t stop a gentleman (our new Trumpist in town, who kind of reminds me of Jeff Dunham’s character, Walter) claimed John didn’t have the facts. Really? Oh, I think John had the facts, it’s just that the authoritarians didn’t allow him to bring them to the hearing.
I have also noticed that the Mayor has become more and more intimidating about asking public commenters their name. As far as I am concerned, you don’t have to give your name, only that you are resident of Sioux Falls. While I think it is in public input ordinance that you have to give your name, I believe it is a violation of your 1st Amendment Right to anonymous dissent. I also think asking for a name is a method used to intimidate average citizens from commenting. Since public input will now be at the end of the meetings thanks to the authoritarians JENSEN, SELBERG, ERICKSON, NEIZERT AND TENHAKEN, I am still encouraging citizens to speak out. We may even have some surprises for them . . . stay tuned.
During the informational meeting they introduced their ON-DEMAND Transit Pilot Program. What surprised me about the presentation was I’m not sure what took so long to develop something that is coming directly from a private contractor? I am also of the opinion that we need to fix paratransit and the fixed route before horsing around with this. For a city our size, we have one of the worst public transit systems in the country.
We also heard about problems at some of our local bars (PAVE and LaCretta), mostly that they like to crank the music too late at night. A Lt. from the SFPD told a different story that there have been underage drinking problems. When asked by councilors why they haven’t heard of these problems, the Lt. said, “I pass that information on to the licensing department.†Obviously, Jamie Palmer, the licensing agent who mysteriously got promoted to the job after Debra Owen was fired, isn’t passing that information along to the council. Hmmmmmmm.
The big fireworks of the night that really are not going to go off until next week was six of the councilors (Jensen and Kiley were NO votes) deferred the union contract with the regular city employees (not PD or FD). The reason? They want the mayor to explain where the money is coming from for their new contract.
Sidenote: While this may not have anything to do with the city council I wanted to address all the hysteria around vaccines. For the record I have never received a flu shot and I can count two times where I had the flu so bad I stayed in bed for a couple of days. That being said, when available I WILL take the Corona Vaccine and YES I trust it. Many people have argued that since it was done so fast, how can it be reliable? While I agree that long term health effects, allergies and effectiveness can be better measured over a longer review process, I think this has little to do with the time frame and more to do with money. In our greedy society, especially the enormous greed of Big Pharma, if you put a lot of money behind something (like the Feds did with the vaccine research) they will hop right on it. I have actually believed for years that better treatments for Cancer and Aids even cures would come faster if Big Pharma could find a way to fill their pockets faster. While I thought Trump was the worst president in the history of our country (yup, he beat out Reagan) he did do two things correctly, killed the Iranian General and Operation Warp Speed. There is NO reason why in a modern society we cannot create treatments and cures fast, just throw a bunch of money behind it.