So someone tipped me off that the sudden change in the board at Mt. Pleasant Cemetery had to do with the forced sale of Gage Brothers to a competitor in Minnesota. Read the comments from the above post. WOW!
Complicated. I encourage everyone to read all the posts from the beginning (if you FF thru the deer pics and remodeling projects 🙂 there is some juicy stuff in there, like this;
Oct 27
I’m posting this morning about my conversation today with Kayla Kleman in the department of consumer affairs in the attorney general’s office.
Her response was that all complaints were forwarded to the new board for response to all of your complaints.
My previous letter of August 29th states that she sent the complaint to the previous board and they did not respond in 20 days. She would not send me anything in writing. Please contact Marty Jackley and ask why this problem is being pushed off on the new board!Call 1 800 300 1986. Remember he said he would help if enough people were involved. NO HELP SO FAR!
Funny how Marty gets in front of the camera a lot these days trying to track down cartoon porn, drug dealing prison guards and extensive fraud throughout state government, but when there is obvious tax fraud, malfeasance, and disappearing funds the AG office goes radio silence to protect certain folks. Reminds me of Marty covering up the sexual harassment scandal at DCI and claiming Pat and Gant did nothing wrong in the SOS office because they didn’t steal money from the petty cash draw (just historic flags and intellectual data, no biggie) all the while our current mayor was playing server musical chairs with Dakotawusscollege.
I guess if I was the NEW board of Mt. Pleasant, I wouldn’t want Marty’s help, I would go straight to the Feds. If you think you are going to get any help from Pierre you would probably have better luck finding the LOSER that stole your Christmas Wreath.
I would see if you can get a retired attorney to help you navigate this fiasco and sue the former board and get your money back.
This is a classic case of established rich folks in town taking regular folks to the cleaners and suffering no consequences. No surprise, this state is so corrupt I’m not surprised it hasn’t collapsed on itself.
UPDATE: I had to laugh this morning when I was parking in a lot downtown. And it wasn’t a commercial truck. Figures.
I have been commuting the streets of Sioux Falls almost daily for 4 years on my E-Bikes. Certain things stick out with our traffic flows. The thing that has surprised me the most is how rude and aggressive big truck drivers are. While most of the drivers are men, it doesn’t seem to matter their gender or race they are all guilty of being very BAD drivers and rude. I’m not talking about commercial trucks, those drivers are usually good because the company they work for is plastered all over their vehicle, it is people who drive large extended cab pickups or very large 4 door SUVs for personal use. I used to think it was because of phone usage, but it is NOT, most large truck drivers will look right at you and pull in front of you. If they see you crossing the street they speed up to scare you or try to hit you. And if they fail in messing with your commute they usually roll their window down and yell profanities at you. They are RUDE as F’CK. And like I said it is ALWAYS people in large personal trucks. I don’t know if they think it is some status symbol to own a truck that costs more then the original purchase price of my home (no kidding) or if it is tiny dick disease (can women have this too?). But I don’t understand why large truck drivers are so aggressive, not just towards bicyclists and peds but other drivers. Here’s an example; I drove my car thru a little snow storm the other day to work, and the roads were pretty bad. I was going down South Cliff and all of the traffic was moving cautiously and slowly until some jackass in a King Ranch blows past everyone doing 50 MPH and blowing snow all over everyone. They are just soooo damn rude.
I know this isn’t scientific, but every time I have a close call it is always with a large personal vehicle. I don’t think visibility in those vehicles is better, I think it is worse. I saw a lady driving a Nissan Armada (they the most ridiculous SUV you have ever seen, it looks like a SWAT team armored vehicle, but bigger). All you could see was the top of her head and the way she was driving it was obvious to me she couldn’t see crap. I also think there should be weight limits on large personal vehicles. If you are a contractor hauling around equipment and tools, you need something super duty, but what is the purpose of driving a King Ranch as a commuter in town? It’s silly. And who has $600 a month to spend on gas?
I’m not sure how you make large truck drivers better, but you can certainly regulate them. I would love to force them all to drive a Mazda Miata for a year.
UPDATE: I guess Rich Merkouris talked about the MCC and Data Centers on this podcast. Ellis tried to claim that if this Data Center meets the criteria of the rezone the council doesn’t have a choice but to approve it. Yes, this is TRUE, but they DON’T meet the criteria;
As you can see compatibility should be somewhere between 1-5. If any of those numbers are 4 or below they CAN deny the re-zone. This is EVEN worse since the Compatibility is NA. WTH?
As for the MCC they did apply for funding and were denied. But it sounds like they may be working on something. Sneve asked him if the public is perceiving the council as prejudice towards immigrants by cutting these programs. Merkouris said he didn’t see the correlation because they fund the Dudley house and that population is diverse. That is true, but most of them are natural born citizens and not immigrants, also there is difference between teaching English and housing someone on a cold night. A big difference. And if you don’t educate immigrants they may end up at the Dudley.
We all know why this happening. It’s Trump’s war on brown people and the orgs that provide services to them. It has been a wet dream of Republiscum for decades to kill Luthern Social Services. I guess I don’t care WHO teaches immigrants English, maybe the School District should be doing it but killing needed services without having a full review of their programming is awful. According to Merkouris this went thru several review processes (all in closed door behind the scenes meetings). They just never learn!!!! And that is the one thing that bothered me most about the interview. Ellis and Sneve of course take the side of government and feel they should approve the Data Centers because they are simply following the law (they are NOT) and the citizens opinion doesn’t matter (Sneve made a wisecrack about it.) I would expect those two to say these things, but what astonished me was how Merkouris kept justifying these steps by following the proper procedures (they are not, because this stuff is not being done transparently). Not one single time did Merkouris acknowledge he works for the people of this community, and I think that says it all. We know who butters the council’s bread, and it ain’t Joe Smoe.
As for approving the Data Centers under current zoning regs that part is also troublesome. It is obvious to me they are trying to pull permits and break ground before July 1, 2026. Why? Because if the legislature passes regs this session they would likely go into affect on July 1st, so if they start building before then they don’t have to follow the new laws because they will be grandfathered in.
To tell you the truth, the council should just defer this rezone until July 2, 2026, and force them to follow the new regs. But that would take foresight and vision. 🙂
Original Post ——–
So when the mayor dropped his bomb right before Christmas eliminating funding for MCC and several other non-profits I suspected the council would be working behind the scenes to restore the funding or work out a long-term solution. Who am I freaking kidding?! So I went radio silence after the announcement because I wanted to see how the council would handle this without me rattling them. I usually email, call or text 1 or 2 councilors a week. Ever since this announcement I have said nothing and I have not gotten any messages from them about what they are working on.
They are ‘probably’ working on something behind the scenes, but it is radio silence. I also found the timing of the cancellation a total A$$HOLE move. But we don’t need to go into that.
When there are hot topics with the city I usually have a couple of people ask me about the issue. On this one, people are crawling over each other to talk to me about it. No kidding. Last night at the Orion Pub I had over a dozen individuals ask me about it. I know that’s not scientific, but shocking to me. It’s bad and the little game of cutting funding right before Christmas when city government is on a 2 week vacation is NOT encouraging.
Believe it or not, I am urging the council to do NOTHING. Let this funding relapse occur.
So why do I want them to do nothing?
I watched the library funding fiasco and how the council was put in a corner because of the turd in the corner office. Don’t do this again! Let the mayor own this. Let the public inform him of his bad decisions. You let this guy get away with soooo much, then you take the blame, and cry in the corner. Probably one of the weakest councils I have seen in 20 years. You need to eat more STEAK! LOL.
DATA CENTER NEEDS TO BE KILLED AT THE BALLOT BOX
As I mentioned before I think a petition drive CAN be done to stop this, but it will take HUNDREDS of volunteers and the cooperation of many orgs. I have mentioned these before;
• Sustainability Task Force (these folks spent months developing a plan only for the mayor to have his pumpkin pusher take a leak on it).
• National Dem Party, the State Dem party or at least the Minnehaha County Dems.
• The mayoral campaigns of Batcheller and Smith.
• Knobe’s group The Change Makers.
• Indivisible 605 (They organize the No Kings Rallies, and actually have one planned on the same day the council will approve the rezone on Data Center. The rally ends at 5 PM and I would encourage everyone to attend and speak at the city council meeting at 6 PM against the rezone, even if they will still vote yes, this will be important to the petition drive publicity).
I think these folks, if teamed together could get 10,000 sigs in less then 24 days! I would also unify advocates! I often roll my eyes at supposed local advocacy groups who write a couple letters to the editor and send STERN emails to legislators. Give it up. Real advocacy happens in the field, talking to folks on the ground.
I think this petition drive could be uniting, even if you don’t get the sigs or some judge with deep pockets in the city throws it out, it will send a clear message that the citizens are fed up with the city council making poor decisions that affect our daily lives and expenses.
We WILL SEE if these groups act or just drink tea, eat gummies and write letters that no one reads 🙂 Kinda like how I run my blog 🙂 and that is why I could never do it alone. Hey folks! It takes a village! But yah gotta leave your hut.
I make a few bucks on my site from Google advertising. I have little control but I can add filters, but only add a few because I am a monster free speech advocate. As long as it is not online gambling or mail order brides I’m cool.
What I have noticed is my site is popular for political ads, 100% GOP. So this ad doesn’t surprise me. But honestly, Hansen’s communication folks should really stop advertising on a site that thinks your campaign is a total POS and your candidate is a clown. No lie.
The new bike trail spur from Falls Park to Bahnson has basically been open, but they don’t plow it. They barely finished it before winter set in, so there really hasn’t been an unveiling but it is completed. Before the project was even finished this Fall this rock showed up. I found it funny that they had to make sure the sponsor rock was there before anything else. Pathetic.
Notice it is Broin, you know, the folks involved with Tre (Lyre) Ministries. I still think there is a ton of corruption going on with that project, but I just can’t finger it. But I am working on it. Ethanol is a scam, probably bigger then bottled water.
l3wis 
