South DaCola

Editorial Cartoonist from South Dakota

Sioux Falls

Art Downtown Sioux Falls Public Works Sioux Falls

Public Art Critique

l3wis 0Comments

I have been admiring this new sculpture at the Steel District. I like the concept and the design (the cut out key hole is laying to the side of the piece) But, the yellow color doesn’t fit well in the development. I would change the color to a pearl essence iridescent paint that illuminates and sparkles in sunlight and moonlight and changes color depending on the light shining on it, I would also round the edges of the outer structure while leaving the keyhole with a straight on cut. It would give it more of an obelisk look to it. This is why ALL public art should go thru a PUBLIC vetting process even if it is privately funded. You get better art. We learned nothing from Mural-Gate when a private donor email harvester, the police chief and the mayor censored a piece that was later presented at the Smithsonian. When picking public art, a diverse jury of not only artists, but designers, contractors and other lay people help decide. This diversity gives you diverse public art. I can guarantee how this played out; The developer picked out the piece (concept drawings) and presented to the VAC ‘as is’ and they approved it. Zero vetting process. Money doesn’t buy class or taste.

Elections SF City Council Sioux Falls

Update: Why our very ‘Special’ city council is ignoring a special election

l3wis 4Comments

UPDATE: I didn’t think about this until this afternoon but also if there’s anybody sitting on the current council that is running for reelection as an incumbent or if any councilor decides to run for Mayor that’s a huge conflict to be picking your own election date for a campaign you’re running in. Why? Because by picking a June date that means fewer months of campaigning and having to raise less money.

Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, we know the scenario. The State DoDo birds we call our legislature decided to change state law so they could control local elections. Tsk! Tsk! Stay the F’ck out of our elections and start working on your AA and diet plans. Either way, we now have a decision to make, but for some reason our brilliant city council thinks they need to make the decision, but that is NOT how the law is written. It is up to the citizens of this community to decide that date (June or November) not them. So at the informational today (I encourage to watch before forming a opinion) they pitched this legal concept that indeed the citizens do get to choose the election date, BUT NOT for this first election, that was up to them. Bullwash! What needs to happen is a special election in September determining the date of the election, and while they are at it, also put a charter amendment that eliminates the ‘Rex Rolfing/Stehly Rule’ that there has to be a runoff in city council races if no one gets more then 34% or some whacka-doodle thing like that. Make it a plurality so there is no runoff. Barranco suggested this. I think it would be incredibly confusing to voters showing up to vote for council and mayoral candidates and having to choose an election date, they would most likely pick the day they were currently voting, which is a setup because the council is initially leaning towards a June election. One of the arguments they make that they HAVE TO decide the first election date is because candidates and campaigns need to know ASAP. Silliness. Anyone considering running has already kind of made up their minds, they also know that the earliest their would be an election is June and the latest November. The date of the election is of no consequence to the candidate if that decision isn’t made until September. They would only have to adjust their campaign budgets if November was picked. That’s IT! They would also have more time to campaign, which is a good thing locally. I think the city council is on shaky legal ground. I think they know they have to call a special election and let the citizens decide, but instead they continue to eat the Fiddle-Faddle. I would get really weary of chomping on the old maids . . . wait . . . or maybe not 🙂

Christine Erickson Elections Sioux Falls

Sioux Falls Mayoral Race update

l3wis 2Comments

Jamie Smith announced today, while David Z. announced a few weeks ago. Also, Christine Erickson and Joe Batchellor will announce soon. But there are some big maybes. There is a regular guy exploring the run, If I told you his name you wouldn’t know him, but I look forward to hearing more about his campaign. Soehl is out and is supporting Erickson. Alex Jensen had to sell his business and start a new job, so he is out. Selberg is a gigantic maybe, and if he doesn’t want us to drag up him illegally living out of his district, he would be wise NOT to run. There are three other big maybes; Erica Beck, Mike Huether and Rich Merkouris. My guess is Huether is NOT in and will run as independent for governor, escaping the messy primaries. Aberson is also out. To be honest with you, I would like to see more women running. I told Erickson recently that if she won she would have two precedents under her belt, first female mayor and first city councilor to be elected mayor of Sioux Falls. I’m not in any camp right now, simply because I think we will see many more candidates running, so I am a wait and see. I also think with the economy and SF biggest campaign donor to local races, Craig Lloyd’s passing we will see a different ball game in money spent and money raised. Which is good, would love to see a local race on the issues not just who buys the most Facebook ads.

Drinking Liberally Sioux Falls

Drinking Liberally Update

l3wis 1Comments

In Politics: South Dakota: The South Dakota Democratic Party (SDDP) sent out a fundraising appeal touting a 2500 increase in Democratic voter registration before last November’s general election. The one positive aspect of this PR spin is that SDDP’s leadership agrees that voter registration numbers are a good measure of the health of the Democratic Party here. Their self-congratulations led me to update the spreadsheet detailing the SD Secretary of State’s statewide voter registration statistics. Neither the long term nor the short term trends are as positive as the SDDP wants you to believe. (In their defense they are just trying to get you to give them your money and are in their salesman mode.)

Here are the facts as presented in the spreadsheet above: Since its height in 2008, Democratic Party voter registration has declined from 39% to 23% of South Dakota’s electorate. (From 204,413 to 145,420) Meanwhile, Republican Party voter registration has increased from 46% to 51% of registered voters. (From 241,101 to 321,598) And, as to the claim the SDDP made that it is turning things around ( ie. the 2500 new voter claim), the opposite is true. Since last November’s election, Democratic voter registration declined by 784 voters while Republican registration increased by 3175 registrants. A little more honesty and a little less PR spin might help the SDDP confront the fact that, despite the multitude of undemocratic and despotic acts of Donald Trump in the last 4 months, people are still not buying what the SDDP is selling.

But then maybe that is the whole point. Perhaps the SDDP’s leadership is not into winning so much as to maintaining its control of their smaller and smaller organization and its ideological purity.

I need a drink.

Oh! And by the way, for whom would you vote in the US Senate election next year, if your choices were, Republican Mike Rounds, Independent Brian Bengs or Democrat Julian Beaudion? Inquiring minds would like to know.

Elections SF City Council Sioux Falls

Girl Power at Carnegie?

l3wis 1Comments

Oh, the political games played on such an unsubstantial level. The other night the city council elected their chairs. Usually I chide a few councilors into nominating someone (they never pick the person 🙂 but this time I stayed out of it, I guess I wanted to be surprised. Councilor Merkouris was promoted to Chair, which was no surprise, and Barranco kept his Auditor Chair title. Sigette was nominated as Vice-Chair. While I was a little surprised, I was also NOT. She has shown she wants to dig in, so that’s good. But she seemed surprised to accept the nomination. I asked a councilor afterwards, did she know in advance? They said, YES. This is SOP with the city council. They usually play games behind the scenes trying to get the person nailed down on voting night so they are not surprised or embarrassed. So how do I think this played out? I’m not sure, so I am going to take an educated guess; When Rich and Curt set out to find their candidate I am sure they reached out to all the councilors asking who would be interested. My guess is Thomason probably said he would like to do it, because I know he has mentioned it to me in the past. Then in comes the COS Beck and the Mayor’s office encouraging a female councilor. My guess is that all three of them turned it down. Miranda probably turned it down because of work commitments, Cole is not running for a 2nd term, and Sigette may have considered but also worried she wasn’t experienced enough. So what happened between the time Thomason probably told leadership he was interested and the moment Sigette was convinced to take the job? Not sure, but now the Mayor’s office is apparently playing games with the council’s leadership picks. tsk. tsk. But that’s just WILD SPECULATION on my part 🙂

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You Missed

Art Downtown Sioux Falls Public Works Sioux Falls

Public Art Critique

Elections SF City Council Sioux Falls

Update: Why our very ‘Special’ city council is ignoring a special election

Christine Erickson Elections Sioux Falls

Sioux Falls Mayoral Race update

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