When Dr. Staggers was running against Huether, my union friends would bust my balls about Kermit being a Republican against organized labor. While I can’t speak for Kermit’s opinion on labor, it stung a bit. While I have never been a part of a union, I supported them, and understand their power.
The Unions backed Huether, mostly because he called himself a Democrat. Which I never understood. Maybe he was pro-choice or had a homosexual friend? Not sure. But it seemed odd coming from a guy who marketed the WORST credit card to ever exist.
Fast Forward tonight, where our mayor, the newly crowned Trump supporter and Independent had to break a tie vote retro-paying the police and city employee unions until January 1st, which may have cost taxpayer’s under $100K.
But one of the most troubling pieces of the argument to not pay police more tonight came from councilor Erpenbach, who works for a well funded nursing home. She stated that pretty much times are tough, and raises don’t come easy.
I will agree with Erpenbach on that statement alone, but we are not talking about people who write newsletters, we are talking about people who are fighting crime, and guess what, it is increasing in Sioux Falls at a dramatic rate.
I will make this argument simple. While are city is seeing massive growth in development, we are NOT seeing that trickle down to the masses.
But let’s simply this. When the Fire Department shows up to put out a fire, and the flames are increasing, they don’t throw gasoline on the fire, they throw more water. So if we think we are going to get our crime rates to go down by not giving decent raises to our police force, we might as well just being buying guns for the criminals.