Just another echo chamber . . .
My guess is the mayor will veto the decision purely on arrogance and ego, I hope I am wrong.
What was incredibly ridiculous was the testimony supporting the facility.
A city director felt we needed the new building so he didn’t have to fear urine coming through his current city hall office in the basement.
Another guy testified about America being a great country, so we needed the building.
Erpenbach said city employees need natural light and she works 40 hours a week in a cubicle farm (yet didn’t say anything about quitting her job because of it).
Kiley said it was about his children and things will get more expensive (yeah, Rick, that’s called inflation). It won’t get a penny more expensive if you don’t build it at all, just saying.
Bob Winkels (who used to own his own architecture firm, and now is in charge of Sanford’s expansion that is destroying affordable housing in central Sioux Falls) claimed that the general public didn’t understand ‘conflict of interest’ when it came to the contractors, explaining that renovation costs more (which can be true). What he failed to point out is that the contractors were hired to build a new building, not to renovate. So if they build the new building they will make X amount of dollars, if they choose to buy the 300 building and renovate they make $0. Bob, kind of sounds like a conflict of interest to me.
Rex Rolfing cut off public testimony of Tim Stanga, because he was offended.
Mayor Mike’s BFF, Augie President Rob Oliver was rambling about something he doesn’t quite understand, but he says he likes to build new buildings for Augie (but had no problem with taking a used building-the Arena-for a new basketball stadium).
I testified about the hypocrisy of this debate that the building has been discussed for 10 years, yet no one brought it up when building the new aquatic center and the funding for that building.