Besides the secretive roof repair happening at the Pavilion they are also installing new outdoor sculptures.
Besides COS Erica Beck’s son getting a job in HR straight out of college, there seems to be some other nepotism and conflicts going on. There was a rumor for awhile that the Public Works Director’s wife who owns an interior design company got the contract for the redesign on city hall recently (that is a rumor I am still looking into), but his son, who owns Urban Oasis, apparently got the contract to install the sculptures. His father makes $232K a year with the city, so it seems a bit odd that he would need even more from the taxpayers. Now they could argue that the sculptures purchase and installation was paid for by a private donation so there is NO conflict, BUT, as I argued in the past that since these sculptures are sitting on public property, they are public art, and the taxpayers will be responsible for their future maintenance, this is a public project NO matter who is paying for it because we own the property the sculptures are being placed on. There are plenty of experienced landscape contractors in Sioux Falls who could have done the job, and with more then a couple years experience. This was clearly an inside handshake deal. I wonder what the city council will do about it. My guess, like the Selberg incident, they will look the other way.
Remember, much of this crap could be ended if the City Council actually did their job and invoked Section 2.09 of the Charter. They have the ability to Investigate, and Subpoena all public officials, officers, agents, employees of the city, let alone, they can audit, review, and investigate all departments, offices, agencies, non-profit organizations that take public tax dollars to determine any such wrongdoing. The city council can subpoena any such document, email, Transmisson report, any such file from any public office imaginable. But will they?
If your dad worked for the railroad, and then he got you a job there, too, would that be called nepotism or depotism? But to make it even more confusing, isn’t nepotism often associated with despotism? AND, a despot is a dictator, right? So, does that mean that nepotism is a by-product of a dictatorship, which is a form of leadership that railroads everything through (Like the Bunker Ramp) that they want and ships everything they don’t want (Like some stuffed animals) out of town?
Nothing can be done. This is a Trump authoritarian era. We, the people, no longer have a voice in government. Try praying for these hypocrites. I’m not especially religious but I’ll find faith when these names can be smeared in public.
“Say, I was just thinking about this the other day, aren’t we about due for another derecho or haboob?”…. #NoFEMAJustClimateChange 🙂
“Oh, and another thing, with football season coming at us faster than you may think – especially you quarterbacks and wannabee quarterbacks – make sure when you rattle off some numbers, while hovering above the center in a questionable way at the beginning of a new play, that you be careful to not mention some numbers in sequence, if you know what I mean 🙂 ….”
https://hollywoodlife.com/2025/05/16/what-does-8647-mean-james-comey/
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/16/us/politics/secret-service-comey-social-media-trump.html