From GP:
I hate to beat a done deal but for every piece of bad PR out of the Mayor’s office we need to beat it back. This is SubPrime Mike and staff’s latest effort to make us look petty and foolish.  Commenter ‘Matt70′ is part of it.
Notice how it is now “hundreds’ and not ‘thousands’ of… Since when does 8,000 signers become hundreds of signers?
Soukup crying crocodile tears because they are being pushed to do what the citizens want… Cartoon of Soukup face on crying croc would be nice….
How much information does the city and contractors need to find to convince the public to vote against what the citizens asked for, a public vote? The city rents / leases about ‘32′ plows for 6 months, so make the spec for blades to work with the city owned gates. Tell the contractors and city drivers to learn how to work together. The contractors need to learn how to plow the streets the way the city requires it to be done. After listening to the testimony I now understand why so many areas of town are plowed so badly. One of the biggest complaints heard during the petition drive was the horrible way the contractors have been plowing or not plowing the neighborhoods. There is a great deal of anger boiling under the surface of this town because of the preferential nature of certain neighborhoods when it comes to street work.
Let see, according to Soukup, the contractors are in charge? Let’s add the ill-conceived Spellerberg pool issue in to this mess. Pam Homan’s poor decision making processes endorsed by the school board we have been experiencing.  I thought this was a citizen owned government but I guess we are seeing a tip of the spear pointing at the citizen’s ass once again… As the spear gets poked enough times during the next 17 months we may see the anger realized when SubPrime, councilors, school board and all are before the voters May 2014. Ahh, a perfect storm on the horizon.
From Detroit:
It seems the VP of the AGC’s get’s to decide if snowgates are doable;
“Our contractors would like to see the true cost of what snow gate is before they weigh in and decide whether it is something they’d like to see happen,” Toby Crow, Executive Vice President of Associated General Contractors of South Dakota, said.
Toby, hate to break you the news, but it is NOT up to you and your members, it is up to the voters whether or not we are going to have snowgates. This constant talk from city directors, contractors and councilors is getting down right annoying. Shut your pie holes already.
And the answer is: A government made up of elected officials with zero education or training in government adminstration, or probably even history.
rufusx – Which is why it’s time for another petition – One to change the charter to a Council/City Manager format.
As long as we have an elected Mayor with no experience in public administration, we will continue to have problems.
With a budget this large, I’m surprised more people aren’t demanding it. Most don’t know how many dollars are wasted every 4 or 8 years by a new Mayor coming in and changing the direction of programs or cancelling projects after they started. (More than enough to pay for snow gates)