I had to chuckle a little during the Operations Committee meeting yesterday of the Sioux Falls city council when councilor Erickson argued against longer informational meetings. She kept referring to the councilors having other jobs and commitments and not being able to make certain meetings.
First off, Erickson runs a rental, real estate and Air BNB business with her husband and is essentially self-employed. But really, does that matter? You signed up for running for city council, you knew your responsibilities and duties (served two terms) before you ran, and you are paid to be there. So please, your excuses ring hollow, BTW, let’s look at the council’s ‘jobs’?
Erickson – Self-employed
Neitzert – works from home
Stehly – self-employed
Brekke – retired
Soehl – retired
Kiley – semi-retired(?)
Starr – self-employed
Selberg – Real estate agent (semi-self employed, but does work for a company)
So out of the eight city councilors, only two of them are not either retired or self-employed, and those two have pretty open schedules.
Christine, stop whining, you know what you signed up for, and you know most if not ALL of councilors schedules are flexible due to their ‘jobs’.
I will say this in her defense. Being a mother to growing kids is also a full time job, all by itself. Still, she knew that coming in.
Having children is a choice, just like running for office.
Is self-employed or retired a fair representation of the working class? There should be a few that work full time but get time off. National Guardsmen get time off for training. Maybe a few councilors who work full time for Sanford, Lloyd, or Bender!!!!
You take the oath so help you god. For the city of Sioux Falls, I often wonder if the hand on the book is not the Bible but ‘Mein Kampf’.
Are you implying self-employed people do not work? Why do you speak of it in such a disparaging way?
“Is self-employed or retired a fair representation of the working class?”
Excellent point! That’s one of many reasons as to why I love having Sullivan represent McKennan Park and Pendar Lane in the state legislature. Her full-time job is one as a bartender. We need more working people liking Sullivan representing us in government at all levels.
Any one can run for public office to represent the people. Both Self Employed and Employed Persons can do so anytime. Yes, it’s typically easier for Self Employed Workers to do so cause they can choose their own hours the most part. But keep in mind – they to have a hectic schedule cause they still got to make sufficient income to pay their bills. I did NOT really see Christine Erickson complain about having a job, her point was pretty much she was afraid that if you make to many public meetings/committee hearings, your are going to bog people down so much that they will not have time to do their job, let alone got to take time away form their job to participate in the committee hearing.
I highly recommend “employed workers” run for public office, and include their BOSS within that process. That boss may become their biggest supporter and love to provide you the resources for doing so, especially when they feel YOU may lobby on their behalf.
We all can agree to disagree on any topic, but lets remember to be respectful of our “representatives” time and schedule. None of us know how many hours they truly put in, but they commit their lives to serve the public regardless if we all agree with their decisions or not. This is America – and we have 350,000,000 people with 350,000,000 different opinions, ideals, morals, and values.
Thank You,
Mike Zitterich
Sioux Falls, SD
N.W District
I didn’t say self-employed people don’t work, usually harder than others, I just think they have more flexible schedules to attend meetings.
I see both sides of the argument. On one hand being a city councilor is a “part time” job. Part time is usually defined as less than 30 hours per week and usually around 20. If someone spends 2 -3 hours per day per week on top of your regular schedule your looking at 12-15 hour days. That’s pretty hard on ya after awhile, not to mention all the $hit you get from blogs like this about every little thing you do or do not do. It can be exhausting I am sure.
On the other hand, you were elected to work for the people and outside of a few mandatory meetings per week, it can be a cake walk if your like Selberg, show up, and vote. I bet you could make this a 5 hour gig per week and call that good, I think Selberg does nothing, just my opinion
I think the reason you see someone like Erickson complaining is she probably is one of councilors that puts in quite a bit of time to this role. I see that from Stehly, Neitzert, but, not Selberg, Kiley, or Soehl. We don’t know the amount of emails, phone calls, or follow ups they do outside of the mandatory meetings so I get where she is coming from.
The only solve to this is to have full time city council and that would be a BAD BAD BAD idea. We go down that route, the salaries go through the roof, we get professional politicians (yuck). We add more nepotism, corruption, backroom deals, etc.
I have thought if an average person were to have a full time job, a family, and be on city council, and you wanted to do the job right, you would be working 70+ hours a week and your family would be left in the dust. Let’s think about that a bit and be pragmatic, thats probably why you see everyone is self employed/retired but Greg.
That’s a tough gig and what is your reward, 20k a year and constant critique, name calling, even threats at times, on everything you do or don’t do. This is why good people don’t go into politics and never will. This blog while informative, does a lot of this and yes it’s fair game I guess, but, is it right, probably not. Most of the people who sit back in the cheap seats and throw stones wouldn’t last a minute in the hot seat.
I personally think more often than not anymore is the only way you can be an elected official is you have to almost crave the attention, limelight, and probably have a degree of Sociopath in you hahaha. Good caring people who have hearts and minds would get tired of the BS of nothing ever getting done and what is done rarely adds value for all. It’s usually aimed at certain groups and its always about optics vs best outcome. I could probably drone on all day about this but, criticize them for policies decisions, not stuff like this, its childish and dumb, they have lives too.