During ‘Ask the Dictator . . . uh, I mean Mayor’ (FF:19:32). He says;
“You know Sioux Falls, we don’t have to wait for the street sweepers to come by and sweep our streets, we don’t have to, ah, if you got leaves or junk in your curb or gutter, hey, go out there and sweep it up . . .
I think sometimes we rely on government so much to do the work for us, when we are so capable to do the work ourselves . . .”
He also went on to claim that they are sweeping the streets three times a year. I don’t think so.
I will have the mayor know, that I do go sweep my own curb, several times a year, but I usually have to use a scoop shovel, because there is so much crap, and while I don’t take issue with that, I take issue with your statement about ‘depending on government’ to do our work for us.
1) The streets are owned by the city and we pay taxes to have them maintained. This includes repair, resurfacing, snowplowing and YES sweeping.
2) The city maintains a public works department responsible for street maintenance, our taxes buy the street sweeping equipment and YES, pay the operators to run the machines.
Do I expect government to do everything for me? Not at all, but when I am paying into government to perform a service, I expect it to be done.
Locally I figured I spent about $2,800 in taxes (sales/property) last year. If I sweep my own street (which I do quite often) do I get a discount?
As for government ‘expecting’ to do things for us, you are right. I don’t expect things like;
– $500,000 to an indoor tennis center so 102 members have a place like that.
– $24 Million to an indoor pool
– $115 Million for an entertainment facility
Government’s first expectation is to provide services for the taxes we pay (like sweeping the streets) Not to entertain us.
Once again, the mayor demonstrates his skewed priorities.
It’s amazing what he gets away with. There are many neighborhoods that have been waiting years to get potholes fixed but huether’s street has been resurfaced 3 times since he’s been in office.
He might be able to silence the media, but not silence all of his neighbors. What a waste of tax dollars.
He’s just trying to have budget left for a dome over his private lake near Madison. It’s no secret Mike’s recreation projects are all indoors so his hair doesn’t blow in the South Dakota wind.
sheeple, a certain reporter at a certain paper has been trying to get the resurfacing data from the Public Works department for a long time, with no avail.
I had to laugh the other day, I heard Mike Cooper did a Planning presentation to a group of city folk in Seattle. He was asked after the presentation “How do you get things done in Sioux Falls?”
Let me answer for him;
1) Make up your own rules or break the existing ones with loop holes in the law
2) Use Home Rule Charter to step on the property rights of residents
3) Have a very non-transparent mayor make decisions in the dark based on his personal investments.
I have been reading a thesis by a USD student about the Walmart on the Southside process, it is called “The Growth Machine” based on a study about how since the 80’s growth and development has been based on greed and making money and not for the community as a whole. It is alive and well in Sioux Falls. Just look at the housing trends, used to be that everyone wanted a house, and when that collapsed, the developers have gone into apartment mode. They will only do what makes them the MOST money at any given time, not worrying about the future of our out of control growth.
BTW, I am trying to get permission to publish the thesis
“Politicians spending” is addressed in the following email I just received.
The next time you hear a politician use the
Word ‘billion’ in a casual manner, think about how you want the ‘politicians’ spending
YOUR tax money.
A billion is a difficult number to comprehend,
But one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in one of its releases.
A billion seconds ago it was 1959.
A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.
A billion hours ago our ancestors were
living in the Stone Age.
A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.
A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes,
at the rate our government is spending it.
While this thought is still fresh in our brain…
let’s take a look at New Orleans …
It’s amazing what you can learn with some simple division.
Louisiana Senator,
Mary Landrieu (D)
was asking Congress for
250 BILLION DOLLARS
To rebuild New Orleans . Interesting number…
What does it mean?
Well .. If you are one of the 484,674 residents of New Orleans (every man, woman and child)
You each get $516,528
Or… If you have one of the 188,251 homes in
New Orleans , your home gets $1,329,787.
Or… If you are a family of four…
Your family gets $2,066,012.
Washington , D.C
HELLO!
Are all your calculators broken??
Building Permit Tax
CDL License Tax
Cigarette Tax
Corporate Income Tax
Dog License Tax
Federal Income Tax (Fed)
Federal Unemployment Tax (FU TA)
Fishing License Tax
Food License Tax
Fuel Permit Tax
Gasoline Tax
Hunting License Tax
Inheritance Tax
Inventory Tax
IRS Interest Charges (tax on top of tax)
IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
Liquor Tax
Luxury Tax
Marriage License Tax
Medicare Tax
Property Tax
Real Estate Tax
Service charge Taxes
Social Security Tax
Road Usage Tax (Truckers)
Sales Taxes
Recreational Vehicle Tax
School Tax
State Income Tax
State Unemployment Tax (SUTA)
Telephone Federal Excise Tax
Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax
Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Tax
Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax
Telephone Recurring and Non-recurring Charges Tax
Telephone State and Local Tax
Telephone Usage Charge Tax
Utility Tax
Vehicle License Registration Tax
Vehicle Sales Tax
Watercraft Registration Tax
Well Permit Tax
Workers Compensation Tax
(And to think, we left British Rule to avoid so many taxes)
Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago…
And our nation was the most prosperous in the world.
We had absolutely no national debt…
We had the largest middle class in the world…
And Mom stayed home to raise the kids.
What happened?
Can you spell ‘politicians’!
And I still have to
Press ‘1’
For English.
What the heck has happened to our Country?????
I think sometimes we rely on government so much to do the work for us, when we are so capable to do the work ourselves . . .â€
That sounds an awful lot like a guy trying to appeal to GOP voters while he’s contemplating a run for a higher office.
I swept the street by my driveway. I didn’t want the street sweeper to blast sand and pebbles on it.
There was an economist who had an idea about how the funds from the bail out could have helped in more ways than just the car companies. If we took the money from the bailout and gave it to everyone in the U.S. each person could have received around $50,000. His theory was that this money could have bailed out a lot more people in our country than simply giving it to the car companies. Just thought that was interesting and kind of goes along with eyes wide open’s explanation of 250 billion dollars.
Oh boy, I want to see that thesis.
With Home Rule sovereignty and strong mayor dictator, don’t be surprised if street sweeping stops and you get citations if not run over for not sweeping.
I could not help but notice when Mayor Huether first came to power that the street cleaners seemed to disappear.
For many years the cleaners went by my house three times a year and I could predict when they would show-up with high accuracy.
Then they utterly seemed to disappear, but they now seem to be back to a two or three times a year reappearance in my neighbor and with some predictability…. And they should be back…. Having the city street cleaners is a reasonable service that the city can and should offer to its citizens the taxpayers.
Government is not a business and it should not be run like a business. Efficient yes, but not run like a business. Government exists to do somethings which business either cares not to do nor should be doing, or is to impractical or expense for many of its citizenry to perform on their own.
However, on this note, I am reminded of all things, when Nixon went to China and the American media witnessed the Chinese citizens sweeping the streets after a snow storm themselves by hand without government snowplows. Perhaps there are some in our City government who now want us to do the same in addition to keeping the streets clean?… We are already shoveling the City’s sidewalks for them, aren’t we?
Imagine, a communist country not a capitalistic country with capitalist leaders came-up with this idea….? Do we want to be the same?
FF: 31:58
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyCZDvec5sY
This again. Leaves are abundant in the gutters. Will it happen or not? My neighborhood hasn’t seen it in at least eighteen months in spite of what the spreadsheet at city hall may say.