Mayor Pants on Fire

UPDATE: Poops already giving up on the ‘Van down by the River’

UPDATE: Me wonders if the mayor bailed on this to remove his name from the project if it comes to fruition after he leaves office? Why is that important? Because there are rumors he may have conflicts with some people brokering the deal. If the Development Foundation and Chamber are able to sucker voters into this, since Paul will be out of office he can only hope the conflict flies under the radar. I know that is a stretch, because most insiders at city hall tell me he ‘just gave up’ after the extra penny tax got voted down, but I still know how this guy operates. He has made lots of $$$ being mayor, and I ain’t talking about his salary.

You can’t make this stuff up, seriously, I laughed so hard when I read this;

“I made a commitment to myself and to the community when I took office that I will not hand the next administration a half-baked anything that’s gonna put them in turd alley … I had an initiative that was left to me as a challenge, and I don’t want to do that to another mayor,” TenHaken said.

Well, Paul, we have been eating your turd sandwiches for 7 years, and to be honest with you, it ain’t working with my Keto.

Read the article, there is so much defeatism you kinda feel bad for the angry bird running our city. Poops was never going to get a convention center across the finish line because he hasn’t put anything across the finish line, nothing. He got handed an admin building with bad plumbing, and instead of making the contractor pay, he rolled over like a dog, same thing with the Midco, contractor screwed up, we paid. Bunker ramp, could have pulled out of the deal with a small fine, but rolled with it anyway and blamed Huether (reminds you of the guy in DC right now, all my bad decisions are the last guy’s fault.) Just admit it already Paul, you weren’t cut out to be mayor. No one will fault you for that, you just are not cut from a cloth that would understand. You ran a successful web design business overcharging your clients for websites that were produced using software (that anyone can buy) to design. I had someone tell me they charged him $5,000 for a simple website he could have created on his own for $199 in web development software. Paul, you are a fraud, and no surprise you are bailing on this. You bail on everything. Why not buy back your company and do what you are good at, screwing peeps over for overpriced websites a 7 year old could create.

But I have to admit, I was happy he dropped this idea, like he did with public art, mentorship, Lenin’s tomb at the zoo, covid, transparency, equal rights, 1st Amendment rights, and the list goes on. The only thing this guy has finished is a Mountain Dew. And that is all we need to know.

My latest conspiracy

All the talk lately about who may run for mayor and the possible appointment of Erickson had me thinking. Even though Huether has been out of office for 8 years, there is plenty of ‘bad press’ surrounding his previous term that is still fresh. I guess what I am trying to say it will be hard for him to defend his reputation.

So what is my conspiracy theory? I don’t think he is running, BUT, I think he has been mentoring a candidate and will likely run their campaign. If this person wins (I have NO guesses, but I’m sure it’s some stuffed shirt banker) this would set up an opportunity for Huether to be chief of staff (which basically means he would be running the city like the current COS does).

I base my theory on NO evidence, but a gut feeling about how he operates.

I will admit though, if he does run again, I would rather listen to him talk every night on TV instead the Orange Menace.

Who is running for Mayor of Sioux Falls?

The guy who runs Dakota Wuss College thinks he knows who is running for mayor. He basically lifted my predictions that I have had since this summer. You are welcome. But Pitty brings up 3 new names that made me laugh so hard I just about passed out. While we know Erickson, Beck, and Huether will probably run, Pitty says that Councilors Jensen, Merkouris and Selberg are also considering. Pitty says they will have trouble raising money, but it’s NOT money they need to worry about, it is their reputations;

• While Alex was city councilor he gutted the internal audit department to one auditor that basically sends emails to an outside firm. This all came about because he couldn’t properly discipline a city council employee for poor attendance and she ran off to the finance department escaping punishment and got a raise from the mayor to boot. If this guy can’t manage ONE employee, he certainly can’t manage a city. If he announces I will probably piss my pants laughing.

• Oh Marshall. This guy ILLEGALLY lived out of his district for a year (verified by one of his friends) and lied on campaign finance forms. He doesn’t belong in the Mayor’s office, he belongs in a jail cell.

• Rich Merkouris has a pretty clean record, but if you dig, just a little, into his past, you will see he isn’t really respected in the clergy community because of past grifting of a church. It’s a long complicated story that happened several years ago, but the wounds are still fresh, and if you ask the right people, you will get the story.

While I think none of these people are dumb enough to run for mayor, they might. And trust me, I have years and years of proof and data on ALL of the candidates and none of it is good. I think Erickson will rise to the top quickly and will be in the runoff, but who is the darkhorse? Huether may run on the great Trump comeback. Which I find funny, he got the same number of votes in 2020 and 2016.

Greg Jamison told me this summer he would likely not run, and it’s not for the reasons you may think. Greg told me he just wants to spend more time with his family and grandkids, and who can blame him?

I told someone recently that I hope a well intentioned rich person runs for mayor with a good record of community engagement and charity and they will run away with the mayorship. Populism is where it is at these days and no one is interested in electing old (corrupt) hats.

I have a feeling our next mayor will be someone no one has heard of.

LifeScape Parking lot expansion further proof the indoor pool was built in the wrong place

I think the debate is over, we wanted an indoor pool and we got one. But a major issue at the time was the location of the pool. While I wouldn’t be opposed to a public indoor pool built at a city park, Spellerberg Park was problematic from the get go.

Besides the fact that there is no room for expansion, one of the major issues was parking expansion of the VA. We knew the VA was going to expand, we knew they would need more parking and we knew they held the quit claim deed to Spellerberg. If the pool wasn’t built there they could have easily expanded parking into the park. NOW, we have LifeScape tearing up affordable housing in the center of our city for parking because they NO longer have space at the VA.

I still believe a public/private partnership with Sanford at the Sports complex for an indoor pool would have made more sense, and really there is nothing stopping them from doing their own pool in the future.

While the negotiations behind the RR redevelopment was one of the worst in the past administration, building the indoor pool at Spellerberg is proving also to be another poor decision from a RAM-ROD mentality of the previous administration.