Walfart

Not the first public meeting Walmart has missed in Sioux Falls, but when the administration is willing to break the rules for you, why does it matter?

l3wis January 7, 2016 4Comments

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z57ak5rPRiE[/youtube]

Wasn’t zoning this time, beer sales.

The Sioux Falls, SD City Council had some fun poking the underbelly of Walmart on January 6, 2016. Walmart claims to have missed the notice because an employee dropped the ball or missed the mailman or the emails or maybe the Fiddle Faddle’s dog ate their homework.

As Michelle Erpenbach said this is the public shamming of huge corporation and to this end, the Walmart Public Affairs and Government Relations Senior Manager had to show up. Whose butt do you suppose was spanked for this screw-up?

Judge Larry Long rules against the SON neighborhood in favor of the Southside Walmart

l3wis November 7, 2015 5Comments

I guess the ruling came down late Friday. They of course are going to appeal (and have several grounds to do so). The original basis of their case was that the Planning Department (Mike Cooper) re-zoned the property internally after the vote, which ‘should be’ a no-no (realistically it needed to go back through the Planning Commission and City Council).

Hopefully we will hear more about the ruling in the coming days.

Is Walmart a Public Nuisance? An Indiana city thinks so.

l3wis August 20, 2015 6Comments

While our Mayor, City Attorney’s office and Planning department seem to bend the rules for Walmart to move into a well established middle-class neighborhood in Sioux Falls, other city administrations are realizing how much of a pain in the ass they are to the community (not counting the millions each year they bilk from Federal taxpayers for welfare and Medicade benefits to their underpaid employees).

BEECH GROVE, Ind. — A mayor in Indiana reached his wit’s end last week after another publicized scuffle at a local Wal-Mart.

According to the Indianapolis Star, Beech Grove, Ind., mayor Dennis Buckley declared the business a public nuisance after a string of incidents, the latest of which involved a shoplifting suspect wave his gun at store employees before shooting himself in the head. The suspect, 42-year-old Gillace Monroe Samples, died over the weekend from his wounds.

As a “public nuisance,” the Wal-Mart can now be assessed a fine whenever police are called there, the Star reports. The mayor said it was a necessary resolution.

“We’re better than that, our community is better than that and I don’t want to get a phone call every day saying that somebody pulled a gun at Wal-Mart and has done something out of line,” Buckley said.

As one of my friends said to me when they used to be on SNAP, “You should go to Walmart at Midnight when they re-load the cards, it’s 10x worse then black Friday.”

Southside Walmart continues construction . . .

l3wis August 11, 2015 16Comments

Even though they are in the middle of zoning litigation. They must think they are too big to stop.