While I commend PTH for wanting to do charity work half-way across the world, he should look in his backyard;
He may now be Mayor, but that’s not stopping TenHaken from making his annual trip to help those in need in a Haitian city called Ti Riviere.
“This is how I’m going to spend a week of vacation every year. This is not a city junket. This is not a political trip. This is me needing to go to Haiti to recharge my batteries and get some perspective each year,” TenHaken said.
Just look at our school system, half of the students are on FREE and reduced lunches. Some of the schools in the poorer neighborhoods are around 90%. Recently a study determined that a neighborhood by North Cliff is a food dessert. The Banquet is expanding to the Westside of the city. Week after week a concerned citizen shows up to the city council meeting and begs the mayor to open a temporary shelter for those who get turned away at the other ‘god-fearing’ joints. There is county a few hundred miles from here on the reservation that is considered the poorest in the nation. If PTH wants to help the poor, he just needs to look out the backdoor of city hall. With our low wage work environment, he will find plenty who need help.
UPDATE: I also find it a bit ironic that PTH mentions this was NOT a junket but he paid for it himself. Did you know Sioux Falls mayors have unlimited vacation time? And I guess PTH has been maxing that fringe benefit quite a bit. This is why he had to allow COS Beck to be part-time mayor in his absence.
But it gets even better, I guess Public Works director Cotter went along for the ride to study ‘infrastructure’. No offense, but wouldn’t you be studying the ‘LACK’ of infrastructure? Also if this was a ‘fact finding’ mission for Cotter, did the taxpayers of Sioux Falls pay for it? Did PTH pay his way? As I understand it, this is missionary work, and the fine line between government and religion could have been crossed. But I think the pressing question is, ‘Who in their right mind would take a vacation with their boss, to an undeveloped country, to read the bible to the natives?’