Mayor Mike’s Photo Bomb Page
l3wis 
Imagine that, Mike with his hands in the cookie jar.
We gave him his own photo album page on the city website. More tax dollars being spent on his upcoming campaign for higher office. Keep it classy cookie monster.
2015
Congrats to Debra Owen
I still shake my head when I think about the city council’s termination of someone so talented. But those things happen when you have a city government run by paranoid salespeople;
The South Dakota Association of Healthcare Organizations (SDAHO) President and CEO, Scott A. Duke announced that Debra Owen, J.D. has been named Vice President, State/Federal Relations. Owen joins SDAHO’s Policy and Advocacy Team and will provide leadership in the area of public policy and advocacy, and will serve as chief lobbyist on State issues. Her background includes more than 25 years of experience in both business and government leadership positions, including public policy, advocacy, strategy, planning and implementation.
“We want to share how pleased and excited we are to have Debra join the SDAHO Team. She brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the position, along with a keen insight and understanding of the legislative process in State of South Dakota,†said Scott A. Duke, President/CEO.
Owen has extensive experience in state government serving most recently as senior attorney with the SD State Health Plan and Governor’s Office of Economic Development and the Bureau of Human Resources. In addition, she worked for City of Sioux Falls as the Chief of Council Operations/City Clerk. While there, Owen established the city’s first independent internal audit team and incorporated better technology that included performance measurement tools, doubling the productivity of the city clerk’s office.
Sioux Falls City Councilors Karsky & Kiley approve of inefficiency and poor customer service in city government
During the December edition of ‘Inside Town Hall’ four city councilors had a discussion about Project TRIM (Or as we call it Project Tree Tax). Councilor Staggers of course believes like many cities throughout the Midwest (Brandon, Brookings & Kansas City for example) that the city of Sioux Falls should trim the trees in the boulevard. As a Brandon city councilor brought up in a joint meeting with SF city councilors, “It’s just more efficient and accurate.” then policing homeowners to do it. Councilor Erickson believes the way the city goes about policing the policy is cumbersome and could use improvement.
But councilors Karsky and Kiley think it works just fine (mailing out vague letters about the trees that need to be trimmed, sending out city employees to tag those properties but not identify the actual branches). Kiley goes on to say that it would cost to much for the city to trim the trees. That statement in itself is ridiculous. As the Brandon city councilor pointed out, they discovered it was cheaper to contract out a licensed arborist to just go out and trim those trees then to go through the ridiculous process of paying city employees to drive around and tag properties then send out letters when the time could be better spent at just trimming the violating trees to begin with. Then there is the matter of the adjoining property owners not owning those trees anyway because they sit on city property.
No surprise to me that Kiley and Karsky would find the process A’ OK as is.
Art Collective
Pretty excited about this exhibit.
I have a mountain of $25 dollar paintings (OBO for the smaller ones) and 4 x 6″ digital photograph montages I did a few years back. I will let them go for a couple of bucks.
See you there!
Funny how Mitchell, SD figured out how to fund an indoor pool with private funds
Hey, Mr. Business Acumen, Mayor Huether, see something in the above numbers that make sense?
Funny how the Mitchell aquatics club was able to donate a million, while Snowfox in Sioux Falls raised enough money to pay a consultant and print some t-shirts.
I wasn’t against an indoor pool, but we should have partnered with the Sanford Sports complex to build it out there.