Rex Rolfing

Should councilor Erickson be appointed the next council vice-chair?

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The Sioux Falls city council has their leadership election on Tuesday (Items 25-27) at the regular council meeting. Outgoing council chair Dean Karsky will most likely be replaced by current vice-chair Kenny Anderson Jr., but the new vice-chair is up for grabs. The word is Rolfing is pursuing the position, since he has been on the council longer then Erickson. But for a multitude of reasons, I would prefer to see Erickson as vice-chair. I think she would bring more to the plate in the weekly leadership meetings with the mayor then rubber stamper Rolfing would.

I encourage all the councilors to nominate and vote for Erickson as vice-chair. We don’t need a wanna-be comedian as vice-chair who spends half his time in Florida, we need a lawmaker.

Councilor Rolfing makes ignorant offhand comment, but I’m not surprised

I left after the public testimony last night for a reason, I knew a majority of the council would get out their rubber stamps and approve the pool and ambulance service. Fortunately Med-Star will have their day in court.

But what get me every time is the continued sour grapes over Drake Springs pool, it’s one thing for the public to be misinformed about the situation at that park, but when the mayor and councilors say stupid crap they know isn’t true, (or maybe they don’t) it really chaps my hide.

Councilor Rolfing jokingly insisted that we budget extra money last night so we could fix the mistake we made at Nelson Park and build an indoor pool there. The crowd laughed and applauded. I laughed to, but not with you, but at you for your ignorance.

As our outside aquatics consultant said in their report to the city, there is groundwater issues at Nelson Park that would prevent us from building an indoor pool there, because of maintenance issues. Councilor Staggers even pointed out they are having maintenance issues already with the outdoor pool there.

So please, enough with Drake Springs already, your own consultant even said it was a bad idea. Thank God Stehly stopped the indoor pool at Nelson Park, just think of the millions we would be on the hook for now fixing it.

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Councilors Erpenbach & Rolfing riding the pine today

Councilors Erpenbach and Rolfing missed the whole point of ‘conflicts of interest’ when it comes to the ethics of councilors last night (FF: 7:40).

In their disdain for Councilor Staggers (at one point, Rolfing told councilor Staggers to go sit down who was presenting his resolution from the podium, let’s talk about decorum Rex, that was a real classy move) in reference to Kermit’s resolution to allow councilors to be committee members in their respective parties.

Rex seemed angry when reading his statement, which he should be, but it was entirely misdirected towards Kermit’s resolution. I joked not to long ago, Erpenbach and Rolfing would vote against a promoting World Peace resolution if it was Kermit’s resolution.

Rolfing was angry about conflicts, but not once mentioned the obvious and blatant conflict Dean Karsky has with the Chamber of Commerce, which does do business with the city, unlike the party committees. He also didn’t even bring up the mayor representing Obama as a Democratic Party delegate. That apparently wasn’t on the radar. Nope, because Karsky and Huether are not Staggers, and let’s admit it, that’s all their NO votes against the resolution by Erpenbach and Rolfing were about (they were the only two to vote against it, because you know, the rest of the councilors used common sense instead of angst while voting).

To be honest with you, they looked like fools singling out Staggers and Erickson last night, when every single one of the councilors and mayor have numerous conflicts of interest that are more detrimental to governance in this city then going to a convention for your party every couple of years.

Some people on the council need to grow up, or at least grow a brain.

The final financial reports are in from the city election

No big surprises. It looks like Walmart threw in only an additional $33,000 in the last week before the election. Some interesting notes to point out in the candidate races were that Kiley received only ONE individual contributions right before the election, $250 from Cindy Huether. Cindy  also gave $250 to Tex Golfing & Michelle Erpenbach. How convenient that she gave this late in the game, knowing her name wouldn’t appear on a financial report until after the election. I guess she learned well from her sneaky husband.

Mayor Huether also had some interesting contributors. From PAC’s he got $1500 from two separate Unions, Citigroup gave $500, John Morrell’s (Smithfield) gave $1000, and one of the more interesting of his PAC contributors was HDR Engineering, which gave $500. HDR does a boatload of consulting for the city planning office. A very strange donation to Christine Erickson was from Kyle Schoenfish (used to be a Democrat, and is the son of Mayor Huether’s first cousin) who gave $125. Still trying to figure that one out.