Of course, the director for Siouxland Libraries lives in Minnesota and would be ineligible, and she makes about $5K more a year then the mayor, but her latest performance on Inside Town Hall was fantastic. She talked about strategic planning and it’s importance. I thought to myself, maybe Jodi needs to be the COS or heck even a city manager (once we get rid of the home rule charter). It was refreshing to hear a city director who not only works their butt off but knows what the heck they are talking about!
VETERANS COMMUNITY GETS SNUBBED
I pointed out last week that the additional subsidy of $200K to the Veterans Tiny Home community seemed shady, well I wasn’t the only one that thought that. After Councilor Soehl made a stink about the legal agreements and gifting during the 1st reading the council was advised at 2nd reading to defer until September so the agreements can be updated.
Yeah right.
This happened so quickly in the meeting I can guarantee this will get killed before September.
Seems odd that they have been talking (privately) about purchasing the Sanford Wellness Facility for years (according to councilor Soehl) yet no one discussed the operating expenses.
I will give you a funny example. A few years back a gentleman came to the zoning board for an adjustment so he could expand his garage (wanted to make it longer). I think the board denied the request after his reason for the expansion. He bought a new truck and it didn’t fit in the garage.
The Sanford facility isn’t a good fit for the city and we should have NEVER purchased it until we ran the operating expenses. We bought a big truck that doesn’t fit in the fricking garage.
Maybe we need to have the zoning board making these decisions instead of a bunch of green horn councilors. They seem to understand the concept of the cart before the horse.
STOP RIDING ELECTRIC FOOT SCOOTERS ON THE REC TRAIL!
Speaking of our Parks System, I have been seeing a trend lately, adults that should know better riding electric foot scooters on the rec trail without an ADA pass. Keep horsing around with the wrong mobility devices on the trail and the next thing you know the only thing that will be permitted is the golf cart tours from the nursing home downtown (they do this quite often).
One of the reasons I don’t pay much attention to other blogs or even local news is because they either just let great stories go or don’t report about stuff for months after it happened.
I remember recently a person called me frantically to tell me about a city controversy and I replied, “That happened 2 years ago.” And they were like, “Where was the news reports, besides your blog?” I replied, “We have local news? Could have fooled me.”
Also the local yocals tend to stay away from any story that could be perceived as controversial. Well guess what? Government corruption is controversial, but it doesn’t get fixed by covering it up.
For example, one reporter decided to just blow off that councilor Marshall Selberg was illegally living out of his district. Another reporter decided to alert the School District about perjured campaign forms instead of doing an investigative story about how it happened.
Jodi recently wrote about the disengagement of folks. She touched on many things I agree with and some things I disagree with. I think one of the main reasons people have become disengaged so quickly over the past few years is 1) The lack of quality journalism and journalists in our community. 2) Folks are working their asses off trying to keep up with inflation. Peeps don’t have time to read the news when they are slaving away.
This past Saturday I went to Czech Days with my Mother. It had been a few years since I went, so I needed to get refilled on gravy.
We visited the Blachnik Museum which sits in the backyard of my Mom’s cousin’s place. My Mom’s parents were Blachniks. I found out from my Mom’s cousin that the Blachniks are likely of German heritage and NOT Czech. When borders were moving quite a bit back in the day, they think the Blachniks left Germany on the border of Czechoslavakia at that time and embraced the new culture. My grandma was originally a Blaha, which is ALL Czech.
Below is inside the museum. My grandpa’s uncle Emil built it. And it is fascinating.
The cousin also filled me in on Bob Blachnik, my Grandpa’s nephew. Bob was a very well known architect in this area and worked for Spitznagel remotely in the late 50’s and early 60’s (he lived in California and would ship his drawings back.)
As you can see from his portfolio he designed many well known structures in Sioux Falls and across the country;
Blachnik illustrated buildings that we are familiar with on campus, including the ID Weeks Library and the Fine Arts building. Blachnik also designed other buildings around Southeastern South Dakota: apartments, other college campus buildings, public schools, hospitals, religious buildings, office buildings, and shopping centers – even the visitor’s center at Mt. Rushmore – all these first came to life through his hand-drawn illustrations and watercolors.
As you can see from his portfolio he did a ton of stuff. KELO TV building, McKennan Hospital, YMCA, Eastway Bowl, Mount Rushmore visitor center. He also helped design the Midland National Life building downtown and the Arena. Too bad my cousin Bob wasn’t around to design the Denty. Maybe would have went with a better siding.
I had learned about cousin Bob when I was a kid (he died in 1988) but kind of forgot about all the buildings he designed in Sioux Falls. If I can track down his actual building resume and portfolio it would be fun to go see what the buildings look like today. KELO hasn’t changed much at all.
Good to know . . . surprised that Hanson was the last one to touch this, thought maybe Poops, who loves to play word games with titles didn’t change it.
I also love hearing slip ups by councilors during live meetings. Last week during an informational a certain councilor asked a director ‘Whose throat to choke? As the mayor always likes to say.’ HMMM, seems like very strange hyperbole Mr. Mayor. Better be careful with your WORDS, wouldn’t want people to think you are making a threat.
l3wis 
