SON is stirring up some trouble, and a few peeps in town ain’t happy. They have been asking the Chamber to step in (which is funny, because all they care about is mixers and Miller 64).
We have to STOP this citizen activism! Damn these voters who care about their community and not my bottom line (and sweater vests!)
On that note, go sign the SON referendum, and FREE yourself from Miller 64, sellout city planners, and Mr. Potter references.
I must ask – what connection would the chamber have on this issue? They are a non-governing body with no power to draft or change legislation. Even if they wanted to put some energy behind changing the laws surrounding referendums – it would be too late to stop this train now.
Odd.
The upper Toads in the Chamber have a lot more influence then you think.
Influence yes – but even if they wanted to, they can’t retroactively change the law. They might be able to push a few buttons and get someone to draft a new law raising the bar for future referendums I suppose – but I wonder if that would have to go to a public vote itself.
There Many Power Players In SD Who Want To Shutdown The I & R Processes. This Is Just Another Session To Brainstorm.
Voter Initiatives are what have made California the economic cesspool it is today. Just sayin’.
Drake Springs has become one of the most popular outdoor pools in Sioux Falls not a ‘cesspool’. If snowgates are approved, I’m sure their will be very few people calling them ‘cesspools’. The thing I have seen with initiatives and referendums in SF is they don’t make the ballot if people think they are foolish. And getting over 6000 signatures is no easy task.
Getting 1 in 20 voters to sign a petition is a piece of cake. If it was as hard as you’re constantly trying to suggest it is there’d be legions of examples of people attempting these sorts of things and failing miserably.
And while I generally agree with Rufus on why California is a mess, the issue out there is that their citizens actually think they’re smart enough to monkey with the big levers, like tax policy. At least in Sioux Falls people have thus far restricted themselves to pissant things like swimming pools and snowgates.
I said initiatives – NOT referenda. Learn the difference.
hornguy, try getting into the game sometime and gather the 1 in 20 voter’s signatures.
They really opened a can of worms on this one. That parking lot belongs to the taxpayers!
sorry, placed my comment on wrong post
Testor, why would you assume I haven’t been in the game in the past? My comment is based on firsthand experience and knowing well people who have worked on efforts far larger than South Dakota’s usual brand of tiddly-winks. They only need to average 200 signatures a day. At 10 signatures an hour (not at all unreasonable with wide support and intelligent deployment of resources) that’s 600 man hours. In three weeks. Snore. If you’ve got a halfway decent volunteer base you can do that in your sleep.
Sorry, 300 signatures a day. I should be more careful when typing on a phone.
And Rufus, you’re free to keep telling yourself there’s a tangible difference between referendum and initiative if you’d like. In one case, narrowly motivated interests try to convince a mindless public to do something. In the other case, narrowly motivated interests try to convince a mindless public to undo something.
Po-tay-to, po-tah-to.
HG, I am glad you have figured out the math. No put people in to the effort who are volunteers with lives to live. I guess we could figure the math of how many signatures are needed per minute on a 24 / 7 schedule then break it down to the nano second to run a slave labor operation in a 17-18 day period. It is not a full three week operation when the city clerk and attorney decide to play start date games. Then you have to compile the signatures to track the numbers you need. So it is not a simple matter of using your math skills. How are your people skills?
I have been hearing that Mr. Potter wasn’t the one pimping the Chamber, it was WM, and the Chamber told them to beat it.
If your cause is popular, you could have the worst people skills in the world and people would be grabbing the petitions out of your hand to sign them. In Wisconsin, the Walker recall effort in 2011 got legal signatures from 42% of the total number of those who voted in the previous election in just 60 days. I can assure you that Dale Carnegie wasn’t circulating all those petitions. And to boot, they were doing it in the dead of winter – mid-November to mid-January.
Five percent of registered voters? You don’t need any kind of slave effort to get that, but it’d probably help if they had a cause that could generate more than 321 followers on Facebook and 11 followers on Twitter. Not only are they short on active support, they’re short on passive support. I wouldn’t be surprised if they get what they need but it’s hardly going to be any convincing groundswell of support. They’re going to limp over the finish line at best.
And it certainly isn’t going to get any easier once these well-meaning realize that, if they’re successful, they’re going to have to fund a referral campaign against the world’s largest retailer and their many well-connected friends who realize that this notion of allowing the NIMBY set to start referring zoning decisions has the potential to become an enormous obstacle to economic growth in this community. Those folks will have every incentive to win big and send a message to people that this kind of neighborhood-specific issue is not of interest to the broader public and is a huge waste of people’s time, effort, and money.
Who’s going to bankroll SON? Will our host generously offer to put a PayPal button in the sidebar next to his own?
Grassroots efforts usually need little funding. I know when the REC center and indoor pool at Drake Springs failed, the opposition spent next to nothing.
Drake Springs is a lousy comparison. As I recall, it was a vote on what type of pool to build, not whether or not to build a pool at all. Furthermore, where exactly were the deep pockets funding the indoor pool campaign? The city isn’t allowed to spend money on advocacy. This is a whole different ball game, one that involves private businesses and entities that will spend to win.
Futhermore, your characterization of this is a grassroots effort is again exceedingly generous. This is a handful of people in one subdivision, you grinding your usual anti-Huether, anti-Council ax, and a couple of conspiracy theorists who think Craig Lloyd is running the city by proxy.
My money says if this goes to a vote, SON loses by 25, minimum.
I see the AL article quotes the SFPD as stating that people entering/leaving the Canaries game called about being harassed by petitioners. Being pushy and obnoxious on top of their obvious self-interested motivation won’t win SON any friends.
Hubris – it ain’t restricted to elected officials – referendum mongers can have it too.
ruf, glad to see you are still so well informed. It’s good to see you once again accept the ‘officials’ word on what happened without knowing any of the facts.
We were told by a city employee Friday night they were not to sign petitions or be cooperative. The ‘powers’ of the media and town want the WM project no matter what they do to the town.
The WM officials at the chamber put the word out the SON / citizens groups had to be stopped. Some have taken it to heart. The manager of the stadium / Canaries employee was the person most responsible for the issues on Thursday night and a few incidents on Friday. I used to attend Canaries games, sitting behind home plate on a regular basis but no longer will attempt to. I have not wish to support their efforts after the way they have been treating the petitioners.
Light reading for those eager for another Walmart:
Walmart’s Latest Scheme to Replace the Middle Class With an Underclass Forced to Buy its Shoddy Goods http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/walmarts-latest-scheme-replace-middle-class-underclass-forced-buy-its-shoddy-goods
“Walmart’s planned takeover of urban markets threatens to cut off other viable economic development options.”
“Groceries now account for 55 percent of Walmart’s U.S. revenue, up from 24 percent in 2003. The company is planning to grow that ratio even further, with about 100 Neighborhood Market stores (Walmart’s new-ish supermarket format) in the pipeline this year alone, along with 125 new supercenters. So we can expect that at least half of Walmart’s new spending on U.S. goods will be for groceries, with no net gain in jobs and, very likely, a further decline in wages. ”
“Walmart’s Buy America program represents the home stretch of the economic transformation the company set in motion decades ago, when it set out to replace the American middle class, rooted in small business ownership and unionized jobs, with a vast underclass that has little choice but to rely on the shoddy, short-lived products sold at big-box stores to get by. “
Oooh, a link to Alternet. The left-wing equivalent of WorldNetDaily or Newsmax…
It is interesting how offering a information cogent to a discussion we have to exclude data because the reader doesn’t want to pollute preconceived prejudices.
I’ll confess ignorance. What is the Mr. Potter reference?
It’s a wonderful life, Lionel Barrymore’s character Mr. Potter has a striking resemblance to a certain special person in town.
Accept Lionel is more appealing, I’m just saying.
Long familiar with the author’s work, Testor. It was a joke. While not on their payroll, she’s made a fine living off of Walmart.