Minnehaha County Commissioner Barth helped recommend Milstead to D9

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After a discussion earlier today, Jeff sent me this;

Scott,

I am writing to let you know that I was among those recommending that Governor-Elect Noem plan to select Rhonda Milstead to replace Deb Peters who is quitting before taking office. I am disappointed that the Party in power continues to use that sleight of hand method to protect their domination in Pierre.

Allow me to say that I know Rhonda. We have rented her restaurant for Democratic events. I have eaten there for lunch with groups of Democrats. And, of course I work with her husband, Mike Milstead, our Minnehaha County Sheriff. She is the best Republican choice for this county and it is my job to do what is best for this county.

We can certainly find fault in things she may have said in the past but as has been said,”Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.”

Jeff Barth

I think Jeff said it best to me, Noem was going to appoint a Republican anyway, it might as well be a decent one.

Did Minnehaha County Commissioner Barth get sidestepped?

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(FF: 31:00) The County Commissioners each are appointed to different departments. One of departments under Barth’s direction is Emergency Management. There has been a behind the scenes movement to move Emergency Management to a different location in which Barth had no knowledge of. Listen to Commissioner Beninga try to dig himself out of a hole.

LEGISLATIVE PRIORITIES

As you may have saw a few weeks ago, Sioux Falls City Councilor Brekke was troubled about how the council came up with their legislative priorities. Commissioner Barth has also expressed that he wasn’t to happy about the fact that Council Chair Erickson and Commission Chair Heiberger cooked this up together without input from other councilors and commissioners. Seems leadership is going to some people’s heads pretty quick.

Water Rates going up? That’s news to me.

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Apparently Councilor Rick Kiley has a crystal ball, because he is predicting our water and sewer rates are going up;

“They foresee a possible increase of about $2 per month for a family of five,” city councilor Rick Kiley said.

Kiley says the city knew this day was coming.

“You never want to raise rates, but in a situation like this where we are at 82% capacity today, we have a community that’s growing by 5,000 people every year and we are bringing on regional customers in addition to that it’s the prudent thing to do now is to expand our existing facilities,” Kiley said.

The city council will be voting on the funding this project when it passes the city budget in October.

While I agree we need to fix up a 1980’s water treatment plant, if we didn’t switch the rates over to enterprise funds we could easily pay the bonds with 2nd penny CIP revenue without raising fees. But see, former mayor Bucktooth & Bowlcut wanted to free up the 2nd penny from paying for silly old water pipes, and use it for paying down bonds for monument building.

So now our taxes are going up for a new jail, and Minnehaha county admitted at their Tuesday meeting (Commissioner Barth) that there will likely be another opt out, put that on top of a 25 year around $300 million dollar new school bond and our already existing $300 million city debt, and things are going to get a lot more expensive in Sioux Falls, including taking a dump.