I won’t give Mayor Stoneless all the credit on this one, this actually started with Mayor Bucktooth and Bowlcut. I noticed in the last few years of his administration and into TenHaken’s there really hasn’t been a strong effort to plow the side streets during the winter, which turns them into icy ruts. After Paul’s church volunteer tornado cleanup effort, I’m getting the feeling more and more he is more concerned about developer handouts and less on citizen services. We pay taxes for a reason, to keep our infrastructure maintained. It will be interesting to see how he reacts this year, but if it is anything like the end of last winter, we are going to be driving on some pretty crappy ice covered streets.
This question has come up a lot with me from foot soldiers and political friends.
I try not to think about it too much, because I am so glad he is no longer in leadership, but I will try to break this down. I think the positives would outweigh the negatives;
POSITIVES
• Hardworker. I could never argue with the fact that B&B was a 24/7 employee. I guarantee he would have not taken off a single weekend until we got through this crisis and would have worked at it every day putting in long hours.
• B&B was not afraid to make hard decisions, right or wrong. He was pretty resolute when he made a decision and would not backdown from it, even if it was tragically wrong.
• He would follow expert’s plans and emergency management manuals. B&B knew he wasn’t an expert about a lot of things and would rely on the knowledge of others to implement the best plan. Of course, he would still take credit for it. He leaned on his directors a lot during a crisis, we saw this with the ice storm. This is what leaders do. Lincoln was a great example of this. B&B was no Lincoln though.
• He would find a way to balance business and government. In other words he would have not taken a heavy hand, but would have been strong about getting businesses to do preventive things. I also think he would have acted much, much earlier.
• He would have put city employees to work, helping business to secure safety by redirecting them to do other job duties. B&B would have never let a single city employee slouch during this unless they had underlying health conditions.
• B&B was not afraid to take legal risks. He did this during the entire 8 years he was mayor. Laws? We don’t need no stinking laws. He certainly would not have been a wilting flower when it comes to our Governor and her box of rocks for a brain.
NEGATIVES
• B&B would have taken advantage of the situation for business opportunities for himself and friends. We would have never heard about it because those plans would have taken place behind closed doors. City councilor Brekke said it best recently, ‘During a time of crisis there will be Heros and there will be Scoundrels.’ He would have worn both badges – proudly.
• He would have used the crisis to promote himself. We saw this during ‘Operation Timberstrike’.
• B&B would have used the opportunity to use his authoritarian powers under home rule charter to the fullest extent.
• He would not have bothered to consult the majority of the council to get buy in. He would have garnered the four votes he needed and steamrolled the rest of them.
• He would use the opportunity to bilk taxpayers more in the future with hidden and not so apparent tax and fee increases and unnecessary bonding.
• Lastly, he would have used the crisis to be even less transparent and lie to the public about what is going on behind the scenes to put a ‘positive’ spin on the situation.
But I will be honest with you, during this time of crisis if I had a choice between the last guy or the current guy, I would pick the last one.
How truly sad is our options?
What I want to know is why PTH doesn’t know the age of two of his three kids? So odd.
While I do not want this person as mayor again, it sure would be fun to watch him run again. I know, I’m a little twisted.
I have come to the realization that bitching about this project at this point is almost futile;
After a contentious five-year saga of fits and false starts, we’re left with something that looks more like it belongs in downtown Chernobyl post-meltdown.
Now we’re faced with setting aside our dreams of a silk purse in return for a sow’s ear.
But we find the current state of affairs unacceptable. The “finishing†touches on such a huge and visible public initiative should excite and energize the citizens of Sioux Falls. Instead, we stand disappointed and disillusioned.
TenHaken has an opportunity to begin earning back public trust in City Hall.
While the editorial makes some good points, I sometimes wonder if it is too late. I don’t think that Mayor TenHaken or his administration have ANY intention of becoming more transparent, in fact, they have been in hunker down mode for over a year, and it gets worse by the day. The super secret, hurry up and ramrod through the 5G implementation without (real) public meetings is proof of this. I said to someone the other day, “It makes you wonder all the things they are doing behind the scenes we don’t know about?”
While the previous mayor was very OPEN about his SECRECY – it was almost a badge of honor with him, this mayor pretends like it isn’t going on, but they are one in the same. I saw when Munson did this, when the next guy did it, and now our current mayor, and it is getting worse and more deceptive by the day. God help us, because I’m not sure there is much the rest of can do to stop this.
You can say what you want about Stehly, but she warned that the Parking Department Enterprise Funds would NOT be able to support the bond payments for the Bunker Ramp, and this is why we used the 2nd Penny Road Funds for collateral;
Mayor Paul TenHaken wants the City Council to dip further into the city parking fund to come up with another $1.5 million, which his administration says is needed to open the ramp. Using that cash would drain the account the city is using to pay back the $18.5 million it borrowed to build the ramp, making it more likely that the city could need to dip into tax dollars to pay off the debt.
Once again folks, we are dipping into our infrastructure funds for projects that have nothing to do with needed infrastructure.
UPDATE: Joe Sneve found this great quote from TenHaken;
“Unfortunately, the public doesn’t have all the facts and getting at the ones the taxpayers do have has been a challenge. The City government needs to be open and transparent with taxpayer dollars, which includes settlements like the one in question. We all can agree that bringing openness to historically closed door processes of City government is a great move,†Paul TenHaken told KSFY News while campaigning for mayor.