As this whole administration building thingy got wrapped up today with the mayor’s press conference at NOON (we will have video up soon with my commentary) and his multiple lies and unanswered questions, I did get a good laugh out of the ‘service’ the petitioners received from the city employees. Like I said, it helps to laugh at these people and their bizarre excuses.
Mayor Huether started the press conference with an apology to city clerk Tom Greco and the city attorney and their families for the way ‘they were treated’ throughout the process. I almost burst into laughter.
First off, I find it hard to believe that Greco was at Bruce’s ‘Beckon Call’ when it came to questions about the petition. This is the same Tom Greco that sent a middle of the night email rant to Bruce about his sick kid and military service. But there was also this interesting email sent out by the city attorney back in July to the mayor, city council and city directors, and it is NOT about caramel popcorn and peanuts;
From: Pfeifle, David
Sent: Wednesday, July 27, 2016 5:06 PM
Subject: Argus inquiry on possible initiative for new building bond ordinance Tom Greco and I were contacted by Joe Sneve about a possible initiative effort by Bruce Danielson. An initiative effort would need to gather at least 7,000 signatures to produce approximately 5,750 valid signatures, based on historic failure rates. Tom would then need to conduct the random sampling process to validate the petition. He would review 10 percent of them according to SD Administrative Rule. This process can take two to four weeks, depending on various factors, including whether someone challenges the petition and demands all the signatures must be validated. Assuming a petition contains sufficient valid signatures, Tom would then present the petition to the City Council for further action. The Council can either automatically place the item on the April 2018 ballot or order a special election to be called no earlier than 30 days from the date of the ordinance calling for a special election. A unique situation is present when bond sales are involved. We both informed Joe that it would be extremely unlikely that this effort could lead to an election and canvass to occur before bonds would be sold in the first part of October. Once bond sales occur, state law prohibits the use of the initiative process to “nullify the purpose†for which bonds have been sold.
David A. Pfeifle, City Attorney
Wow! Where to begin? I’m out of breath just reading this boloney roll.
a) It is actually 5% and we did reach that threshold with 6,400 signatures
b) The validation process takes between 4-6 hours with 2-3 people. Based on what past clerks have done.
c) Fiddle claims that if sufficient and valid signatures were attained and the city council was able to call an election before the bonds sold, it still would not stop the sale. Well, that would have been up to a judge. As the minimum wage petitioners proved, since they referred it to a vote, it stopped the law from going into affect.
While the mayor made this ‘personal’ by apologizing to the families of Greco and Fiddle, I will not. But if the mayor, the courts, or the city council think or believe Greco and Fiddle were at the beckon call of Danielson and did everything in their power to help them, it doesn’t take much to buffalo them. As you can see from the email, it was evident from the beginning they were going to stall and railroad this anyway they could see fit. Hardly helpful to process, in fact quite the opposite. Maybe next time the mayor needs to apologize to the public for having such poor and vindictive public employees working for this city.