Had a good chuckle last night during the discussion about ‘Club Cambria’ at the city council meeting (FF: 14:00)
Besides the hilarious exchange between the mayor and councilor Staggers (in which the mayor tried to stop Kermit’s line of questioning, and Kermit just ignored Mike and asked the questions anyway)* I really got a belly roll when SMG said they would store the contents of the Quartzite Club after tearing it out of the Events Center to make way for Club Cambria.
First off, we all know that is probably not going to happen. Why would anybody, including a municipality, store a bunch of construction material that has laminate & dried glue on it and is custom cut for a specific space? I can guarantee you it will get stored for about one week, and once the air is cleared, it will be transported to the landfill in the middle of the night. That is just my assumption.
Let’s give you an example from a few years ago.
Remember when the Statue of David was removed from Fawick Park for cleanup? While David sat in a Parks storage yard, the Italian marble pedestal mysteriously disappeared. Maybe I missed something and the pedestal is in storage at a museum or something, but I am not sure. Anytime the city says they are going to store something, you can pretty much kiss it goodbye.
The best thing for the city to do is to remove the materials and sell them on the next city/county auction, instead of playing PR games like they did with the stupid Jesus snowplows. If Cambria is paying for the remodel entirely, sell the materials that are removed so we are not totally taking it in the shorts.
*The mayor has been cutting Kermit off a lot, and even after many people have told the mayor and other councilors about how the mayor is running the decorum of the meetings poorly, he continues to interrupt Kermit. So Kermit now is just choosing to ignore him.
I don’t know who the clown was from the city, but it now creeps further into city staff. Now it is not just the mayor and other councilors.Now it is not just directors or city engineers. Now the underlings are disrespecting Kermit. The smart ass remark to Kermit about what licenses pizza delivery people are required to have (see presentation on food vendors) deserves a rebuke, an apology, and if not forthcoming, a resignation. That guy works for the city, is responsible to Kermit and the tax payers, and should respond to questions not insert his obvious dislike for Kermit.
I see the Public Services video replay is conveniently not working today. Go SIRE!!!!!
Stu writes another funny today;
http://www.argusleader.com/story/stu-whitney/2015/03/11/rapid-city-civic-center-vote-stu-whitney/70145774/
“Kooiker could have learned a lesson from Sioux Falls mayor Mike Huether, who took his city’s pulse and pursued a location and price tag for the Premier Center palatable to the majority of those who typically vote. In doing so, he hammered home a campaign pledge and delivered an events center to Sioux Falls after decades of political bungling.”
While I would agree the Civic Center was doomed, it had more to do with the price-tag then leadership. Also, remember the vote in RC was an Ref/initiative vote, the citizens were actually getting to decided the fate of the projects. In SF our EC vote was simply an ‘advisory’ vote, we had no power to approve the project.
As for the sales job Mr. Huether did on SF, we decided that the only way he could sell the project to the public was to give us the $19.99 price tag (Keeping it under $100 million) Nevermind that shoddy work has already been showing up, cracked floors, bad siding (because they went a cheaper route instead of the one recommended by the architect, and no doubt the millions we will spending over the next 20 years in maintenance and repairs and a possible parking ramp. We may have gotten our EC for $100 million, but it will probably end up costing us another $100 million in upkeep, it’s like the classic song by the Bottle Rockets;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lb4A4q4zYyM
Kooiker should count his lucky stars it failed yesterday, it will give him the opportunity to come up with a more affordable option, like remodeling the current Civic Center (something we SHOULD have done with the Arena).
Of course none of this butt kissing of the mayor should surprise us from Stu, as a letter to the editor author described Stu writing the other day, “Drivel”.
Ah yes…the consummate mmm press secretary. I wonder if mmm has any idea how stu’d rants play outside the very tiny horseshoe shaped area of SF that thinks mmm is doing a good job.
There is not a community outside that horseshoe that believes mmm or his press secretary have a pulse on anything.
What do you expect, when your subject matter you are covering is ‘drivel’ everything you write about said subject will be ‘drivel’.
stu want to be the next mitch krebs, but with his own hair.
Staggers makes sense and Huether can’t stand it.
Dan. That is the truth. Thanks for a great post.