2018
l3wis The SD Republican Party & their ‘Goofy’ ads
Forget about my legislative experience, let’s talk Bible.
It’s one thing to put out ads that are just blatantly false, but some of the candidates for the primary are just blatantly ridiculous. I wonder if the SD GOP has depended on SD voters being ignorant and naïve for so long, they just expect any crap they throw at the wall will work.
Let’s start with Shantel Krebs. She wants to ‘drain the swamp’ (still don’t know what that means) and build a wall. I won’t comment on Trumpian talking points, but seriously Shantel?! Build a wall?! Are we afraid too many Mexicans are coming here from Nebraska? Mexicans have been immigrating to the Midwest for over a century. Not sure how building a wall is even an issue in South Dakota. How about finding a way to increase wages in SD so the Mexican immigrants stop taking our jobs.
Let’s move on to Marty Jackboots, who seems to be talking out of both sides of his mouth lately, wait, he has always done that. In his ads he talks about keeping taxes low, than turns around and runs to DC to enforce South Dakotans have to pay online sales taxes. So which is it Jackboots? Let’s face it, sales taxes are extremely regressive, and as the economy continues to tank, more ways to bleed water out of a rock are not sustainable. It’s time to reduce sales taxes to luxury items only and implement a state income tax.
Oh, and who can leave out Princess Noem. Apparently she is qualified to be governor because in her latest ad her supporters say she believes in God and has figured out reproduction. This one actually confuses me. Instead of touting her DC experience and Pierre experience they talk about God and Sex. Weird.
I’m sure after the primary things are going to get even more strange.
Promises made . . . Promises Kept. (Guest Post, Theresa Stehly)
I recently had the pleasure of visiting with mayoral candidates Jolene Loetscher and Paul TenHaken about some of the issues of the day. I am very excited about a new era of transparency, citizen representation and governmental accountability that will be ushered into Sioux Falls with this election. It is a hopeful time for our Sioux Falls citizens. Â I am also grateful to have a respectful relationship with Paul and Jolene.
PUBLIC INPUT:
Jolene: She stated that she has no plans to change it as it now exists. She wants to work for expansion of public access. She referenced being at the Benson’s Flea Market and having beautiful conversations with the working folks who passed through.
Paul: He stated a desire to return to decorum and professionalism. He wants to find ways to communicate with mutual respect, both from the elected officials and the citizens testifying.
Me: I am a staunch advocate of allowing the citizens to speak at the beginning of the meeting. I believe that with a new mayor, many of the contentious outbursts will dissipate.
DEALING WITH DEPARTMENT HEADS:
Paul: He desires 12 good people to lead. He will assess the performance of the current directors after he is in office. He believes that the Mayor sets the tone for citizen advocacy and proper communication from the department heads. He wants respectful, responsive discourse.
Jolene: The department heads will need to be as committed to open and transparent government as she will be. They need to have a commitment to the citizens.
Me: I feel that there needs to be more accountability and oversight in the spending of each department. Also, we need to find ways to help the department heads connect and listen more to the citizens. We need more emphasis on customer service for the citizens.
SNOW GATES:
Jolene: She has heard good things from the community about them.
Paul: He STRONGLY supports their continued use.
Me: I think we should implement a snow gate hotline. We should mark all motor graders with a big number. The citizens can then call in with compliments and concerns about the quality of the service.
MEDIA:
Paul: He will appoint a Deputy Chief of Staff who will be empowered to speak to the media. He also wants to implement a media roundtable. He wants to hear from the media: “how can we best communicate with you?†He has been transparent with the media during the campaign. .
Jolene: She believes it is crucial to embrace the media. She stated “Close out the media, close out the people.†The media’s role is to cover city news and hold the city accountable for what is coming out of city hall.
Me: Of course, when the media shows up…everyone behaves better. The coverage from the Media in the last year is the biggest reason we have Transparency at the top of the list for citizen concerns. Friend and former councilor Greg Jamison once told me “Theresa, if the media doesn’t show up, it didn’t happen.†He was right.
CODE ENFORCEMENT:
Jolene: Respect for due process, No harassment of citizens, Implement compassionate enforcement. Lead and help people to grow without a hostile environment. Do more with citywide cleanup. She would like to implement more help from volunteers like senior citizens.
Paul: Make it more proactive…. “Strict and aggressive†while still not infringing on the rights of property owners. He believes that well-kept areas will be a deterrent to crime. He likes project NICE and is open to using inmates and temp labor to assist in helping with trimming trees and other labor needs in the city.
Me: Encourage neighbors to help one another, instead of turning them into the city for violations. Encourage city employees to help citizens more. We want to find ways to help neighbors care for one another and make this a community where we show love and kindness to one another. There is a growing spirit of hostility happening from one area of town to another. We need to bring people together. Many things can be remedied with some kindness and considerate conversation.
Miscellaneous
Paul and Jolene are both eager to have regular input sessions from all the council members and to inform the council about upcoming projects and budgetary items. They both said they are committed to transparency in governmental affairs.
Jolene and Paul are both willing to look at using inmates or senior citizens to fill in the gaps for city services.
We also touched briefly upon transportation, RFP secrecy, Park board district representation, project TRIM and city Debt. I didn’t discuss all of these with each candidate, so you can ask them yourselves for their perspectives.
Does the SFPD profile, or is it more of a symptom of who is reporting?
I will admit, as a middle-aged white dude, I have no idea if the SFPD profiles. I have heard stories before, but just rumors. One of my Lakota friends used to tell me whenever he gets pulled over by the police it is for DWI. I said, “What?” He replied, “Driving While Indian.”
This past Sunday though I saw something that makes me suspect that the profiling is shared between who is reporting it, and how the officer reacts. Shortly I will tell you about an incident I saw on Sunday afternoon, but a short introduction first.
If you have ever been downtown you will notice a bike and pedestrian crosswalk on 6th street between Phillips Avenue and Raven. The sidewalk/bike trail continues South right in front of Raven’s front door, than goes past an open amphitheater and across a pedestrian bridge bought and paid for by taxpayers. The sidewalk in front of Raven’s, IMO, is quasi-public.
This Sunday after enjoying some brunch at my new favorite restaurant, The Blarney Stone, I rode my bike to Falls Park. It was packed, if I had to guess there was about 200 people down there. The water was high due to the snow melt and many adults and children were walking very close to the rushing water. As I have mentioned in the past, you can’t legislate ignorance, but what surprised me the most was there wasn’t one single person from the Parks Department, Fire Department or Police Department monitoring the visitors and reminding them to stay away from the water. There wasn’t even any temporary fencing.
But hey, I get it. The SFPD is short staffed and they have better things to do, or so I thought.
I proceeded to 6th street on the bike trail and crossed the bridge going towards Raven. As I was crossing the bridge I saw a cop car speed past and pull into Raven’s parking lot. As I started to ride past the entrance I saw a police officer talking to what appeared to me as a wedding party taking photos in front of the building. Mind you, it was obvious they were there to take pictures, the entire family, about a dozen of them and two photographers were dressed in their wedding best with the wedding party in tuxes. They also didn’t appear to be touching anything on the building, just standing in front using the quartzite walls as a backdrop. They were having an engaged conversation with the officer, who stood there and monitored the situation. Now most would wonder why a PO would have to monitor this. It occurred to me that someone at Raven must have saw them on a security camera and called it in. I know, probably still scratching your head why anyone would think a wedding party not disturbing the property taking photos would cause such an alarm. Than I wondered if it had anything to do with these very nicely dressed people (I don’t even have a wardrobe that nice) being African refugees (I could overhear them speaking in their native language).
First off, if makes you wonder if the person who called this in was profiling, but what disturbed me even more as I sat and watched this was the officer stayed there while they continued to snap photos. You could tell by the quite loud conversation that the wedding party seemed either confused or upset that an officer would respond to this situation.
So when I hear our officers are understaffed, all I have to point to is an officer monitoring an obvious photo session while hundreds of people are standing dangerously close to the falls and wonder if they really are understaffed or if they are profiling?
Not sure. But it didn’t look good.
Greg Belfrage
Mayor Almost Done
Mayor Grump Toad
Mayor High Crimes
Mayor Hubris
Mayor Pants on Fire
Mayor Subprime Mike Huether
Mike Huether
Sioux Falls
Mayor Huether has paid off debt by taxing us to death
Hizzoner was on the B-N-B show this morning spreading his own special kind of love. He started telling his victory lap story he has been telling over the past month that he will be on to bigger and better things right after taking a break, because as he put it, his daughter wants him to be ‘fun again’. I don’t even want to know what that all entails but I’m picturing a speedo and a couple of empty Coors Light Silos.
Either way, besides serving up his own special brand of BS this morning, now claiming people hate him, or hate progress, or hate something, not sure where he was going with it since he always prefaces these kind of statements with ‘I better be careful about who I am talking about’. He made another one of his Half-Truth statements;
There is NOW less debt than when I became mayor.
Well folks, that is absolutely true. In fact I think when MMM leaves office there will be around $10 million less debt then when he rolled in in 2010. So you ask, how is this so? First off, the obvious; many of the debts that were incurred during the Hanson and Munson administrations have come to fruition. This has nothing to do with Huether, just the way the repayment was set up. In fact, if we wouldn’t have borrowed ANY money during the Huether administration our debt now would probably be around $100 million instead of 3x that.
So you ask, what about all the debt MMM incurred? That still exists, and will for about 20-30 years.
But this is where Huether gets even more dim on his great debt payoff. Many of the infrastructure debts were re-financed and paid down due to the increase of fees in the enterprise funds, front end property tax assessments, property taxes, building and platting, and the list goes on. In fact the Mayor’s office with the help of the rubberstamp council has increased fees and taxes over 50 times since 2010.
So while the mayor may brag about not increasing the debt on the city over the past 8 years, he has certainly put that burden on property owners in Sioux Falls in higher fees and taxes. Don’t believe me? If you still live in the same home you lived in 2010, pull your property taxes from that year and compare them to 2017. Tell me what you figure out?
It’s too bad wages haven’t increased by that much in 8 years?
He also finally admitted that you essentially can’t get things done in government unless you make the decisions behind closed doors with a minority of support from the council and key business players in town. He said that open meetings and forums with the public just drag out the conversation and nothing gets accomplished. While his statements might piss you off, I was happy to finally hear him say publicly that he never gave a rat’s ass what the public thought.
Full steam ahead.
I hope when the mayor decides to be fun again, it will be on another continent.