On August 16, 2021, the South Dakota Automobile Dealers and South Dakota Trucking Boards of Directors announced that Christine Erickson has been hired as the Executive Director of the Association.
Christine is a life-long South Dakotan who grew up in Rapid City and started her career in Pierre before settling down in Sioux Falls to raise her family. She and husband Tony are the proud parents of three active boys: Anthony, Braylon, and Charlie.
A graduate of National American University and the University of Sioux Falls.
Christine is a former member of the South Dakota House of Representatives and current at-large member of the Sioux Falls City Council. Throughout her elected tenure in state and local governments, she has distinguished herself as a problem solver who seeks innovative solutions and brings together diverse interests to accomplish the greater good.
As a small business owner, Christine has created a robust business strategy with consistent growth. Drove business, finance, and marketing acuity – with a deep commitment to quality and service excellence.
“I am honored to be the next Executive Director, and am excited to begin working with Myron Rau and our members across South Dakota,†says Christine Erickson. “I would like to thank Tom Murphy and the board of directors for their trust and commitment to the association.â€Â hide quoted text
I’m NOT quite sure what a realtor and short-term rental property owner knows about this, but hey, it’s who you know in this state not what you know.
Item #6, Approval of Contract, Sub-Item #12, $300K for Midco Aquatic Center Filter. Not sure if this is something that has to be done consistently, but that must be one hell of a filter for that kind of money.
Item #24, Village on the River moving another one of the Bunker Ramp liquor licenses
Item #25, Looks like Dave & Buster’s is parking their liquor license at a Casino. Don’t you love how they can just skirt the rules by moving the license to another address? No restrictions there but boy do we need to HAMMER on Med MJ!
Item #45 & 62-63, 2nd Reading and Resolutions of TIF #25, Cherapa II. This of course NOT needed and private investment could build this entire project, but when the city gives out TIFs like candy what do you expect? Continue to give the tax breaks to the wealthy developers thinking it will trickle down to the rest is futile.
Item #48-49, 2nd Reading, Supplemental appropriations from Covid money.
Item #50, 1st Reading, Platting of Rural areas, I am still researching this one, but I suspect this is the city stepping on Minnehaha County’s toes and trying to get platting fees from rural properties which is why the Sioux Falls Planning Commission voted down the next item;
Item #56, 1st Reading, Expansion of Wedding Barn. This is the project that the Planning Commission felt needed to pay city platting fees. We will see how the council handles this. While we give $200 Million in tax breaks to big developers we gotta find a way to stick it to the rural wedding barns. GEEESH!
Item #58, 1st Reading, Med MJ ordinance. I can’t wait to hear the discussion on this one or if any amendments will be presented or passed.
“It’s important that parents and people who have access to that know that this is still a dangerous substance,†TenHaken said.
It is probably the least dangerous plant based drug in the world. There has never been a recorded overdose of marijuana. In fact prescription opioids and alcohol is way more dangerous then Med MJ causing millions of overdoses and deaths. I struggle with how the mayor of the largest city in the state has ZERO understanding of this harmless plant based drug.
The reason we elect a city council and mayor is to have citizen representation when crafting or upholding our laws and ordinances within our city. They should not be injecting their own personal views on those laws they just need to follow them within reason.
The gross abuse of power the Mayor and the Council is showing with the Med MJ ordinance is appalling and shows the stark similarities between how this ordinance is being crafted and how the Events Center was passed.
The Event Center vote was an ‘Advisory Vote’ in other words it had no legal binding, it was just a suggestion to the city council. A little over 50% voted YES. If this would have been a LEGAL bond initiative vote it would have failed because that needs 60% to pass. Of course, a majority of the City Council ignored that fact and voted to pass the Event Center bonds WITHOUT a LEGAL bond election, and without a 60% majority on the advisory election. In other words, we were NOT properly represented by our councilors and mayor.
Fast forward to 2021, and the new mayor and council are back at their old tricks by injecting their personal feelings and opinions of a very small minority of people when crafting Med MJ ordinances. While the news has been reporting about the ridiculous FIVE dispensary rule (while we have hundreds of bars, liquor stores and telephone booth VL casinos) they have avoided talking about the 1,000 foot setback, the conditional use permitting process and most egregious of all the initial $100,000 1st year license fee and $50,000 a year after that (you have to buy a 2 year license for $100,000.) Remember, over 70% of South Dakota voters approved Med MJ and even a higher percentage in Minnehaha County and the City of Sioux Falls. They are totally ignoring the will of the voters and the majority and doing the bare minimum to restrict these dispensaries. I have also heard there was pressure from a certain bank and hospital in town, you can probably guess.
Retail On/Off Sale Malt Beverage (yearly renewal) $333.00 Retail On/Off Sale Wine (yearly renewal) $533.00 Package Liquor (yearly renewal) $533 Retail Liquor (Bar) One time License Fee $192,393 with a yearly renewal fee of $1,500
You could either argue that the licensing fees of alcohol (a narcotic, not a plant) is too low, or the licensing of Med MJ is too high, but they are grossly mismatched. And where did the $100K fee come from? It is obvious it was pulled from their behinds and isn’t based on any economic or financial data, it’s just vindictive. Also factor in that dispensaries would be selling a harmless plant discreetly for medicinal use and no product can be used on the premise. It’s no different than picking up vitamins at Wayne & Mary’s. The immense ignorance and dictatorship like actions taken by Mayor TenHaken and the City Council are extremely worrisome and concerning. This is why most of this ordinance was crafted in secrecy, they know it is unethical and wrong.
I also think this is a part of a statewide effort to punish voters and petitioners for passing their own laws. Just look how they gutted the minimum wage (for teenagers) transparency laws, Rec MJ and the list goes on and on. They hate the initiative process because it strips them of their authority and they seek to punish anyone who dares to participate in it. I joked that even if Med MJ passed with 99.9% of the vote, they would still move to limit it. Their greed and power sees no limits and they have no shame about it.
There is a silver lining though.
I’m guessing there will be immense pushback from the industry, and I am also guessing it’s going to be very public and very intense and will hopefully expose who is leading this city into a dictatorship. Get out the popcorn folks because it’s going to be quite a show watching the rats run for their holes but this time they may have no where to hide.
Pitty, the Neo-Con Blogger from the North has attacked me on several occasions. He now of course is attacking Private Citizen Activist Blogger Cory Heidelberger for moving to Nebraska (even though Cory has said nothing about the move). So what’s his beef? Besides the fact that he apparently is extremely bored, he seems to think that Cory shouldn’t be able to blog about South Dakota politics after leaving the state. Mind you, Cory isn’t possibly moving to another country, he might be moving to Nebraska (I believe Lincoln). I have friends who grew up in South Dakota who now live in California, Colorado, New York, Florida and New Mexico who are always sending me tips about what is going on in Sioux Falls and South Dakota. In the age of modern technology and the internet it is easy to keep up with local politics even if you don’t live here.
But what I find hypocritical about Pitty’s obsession is all the stuff he has been involved in or associated with.
Remember when a certain young female legislator was living out of state with her new husband yet still served her last year of her term though she didn’t live here? There were formal complaints filed with the GOP leadership in Pierre and nothing became of it. Where was Pitty’s outcry then?
Or when Pitty interjects himself in Sioux Falls city politics though he lives in Brookings. Seems a bit hypocritical to me.
But Pitty’s greatest hypocrisy is how he was still involved and owned his political blog while serving as Deputy SOS in which he had to leave in disgrace because he was using access to public information to benefit his personal marketing business while current Sioux Falls Mayor Poops was trying to hide his servers.
While Pitty seems to be concerned about a private citizen activist blogger living about 2 hours from the SD border still blogging about SD politics, may I suggest he looks in the mirror, or two (probably needs to slide a couple together to see his full body).
Update I: Census came out today, as of April 1, 2020 the population of SF was 192,517. So it is under the estimate of about 3,000.
Update: This probably has little to do with this post, but a city hall mole told me that the council is going to amend the Med MJ ordinance to only allow 5 dispensaries in Sioux Falls a a yearly licensing fee of $45k per year. Pretty silly we are not taking advantage of this economic impact? Flandreau has a million dollars in sales per month.
It’s like putting a double layer of chocolate frosting on brownies, it seems the Finance Director for the city got creative on how to mix Covid money with general fund money to come up with a package that has ‘a little bit’ to do with the pandemic’s affect;
It’s the result of months of work both from the city administration and the council in anticipation of excess funds that would be available because of pandemic-related federal dollars and greater-than-anticipated revenue that came into the city.
The biggest question I have wondered is why did we take the money to begin with? Seriously? I don’t mean to sound like my old friend Councilor Kermit Staggers, but unlike getting FEMA money to clean up tornadoes (with church volunteers) why does Sioux Falls or even South Dakota qualify? We didn’t close down during the pandemic, and we certainly are not using the money to encourage vaccination. It seems they cleverly mixed the money with general fund money so they could skirt the rules on how to spend it.
To be fair, there are things in here that we should get Federal dollars for anyway, but some of the stuff just seems like frosting. Let’s review;
$5 Millon Low-head dam reconstruction for Big Sioux = Good
$6 Million for Pavilion roof = Bad. Not only should we NOT be spending Covid money on this, we shouldn’t even be spending city money. This was a major screwup by the contractor who was supposed to replace the entire roof at the beginning of the project. The roof has been leaking since day one. They should have sued them 20 years ago. This is probably the most ridiculous expenditure in this package. Next they will use Covid money to fix bouncing balconies . . . wait.
$6.8 Million, Water Reclamation = Good
$1.25 million for a cul-de-sac at 7th Street by Arc of Dreams. I could see this coming miles away. I warned people that just because the sculpture itself was privately funded we would be paying as taxpayers to prop up the area. I still think the piece is cool but I also think it’s in a bad location. I also don’t think it drives any economic impact to tourism in Sioux Falls. If someone can find me the numbers that prove people came downtown and spent money just because of the Arc of Dreams, I would love to see them. Most visitors come downtown for entertainment and discover the Arc.
$9.5 Million for River Greenway by Sioux Steel = Bad. So after giving a $25 million dollar tax break to these folks for a parking ramp the public doesn’t need and a top secret land transfer that probably violated open meetings laws, we are also expected to pay for their landscaping along the Big Poo. There is only one word to explain this; Boondoggle!!!!
$800K for Skate Park=Good/Bad. While I am all for giving them the money, 1) it should be more & 2) it should come out of the Parks Budget instead of Covid money. Remember, this will be a public park on public land when it is completed, no reason why the city shouldn’t be footing the entire bill for this project which brings us to another stupid investment since we already have, MORE tennis courts.
$512K for MORE Tennis Courts=Bad. I continue to ask the question, how many damn Tennis Courts do we need in Sioux Falls?! I don’t think the tennis folks will be happy until every park has courts, then they will want the city to start building them in city parking lots. Is it really that popular? I also wonder what we got for our $500K investment in Mayor Bucktooth & Bowlcut’s indoor tennis arena? It would be nice to get an update from MMM someday how we are benefitting from that.
$300K for Mary Jo Wegner Park=Bad. While this is a public park and should be funded, this is another example of how the money should come from the parks money pot and NOT Covid money.
$800K for Dakota Aquarium and Butterfly House=Bad. Not sure if this is totally bad, but it is a private non-profit that can raise it’s own money and also not a wise expenditure of Covid money. You can always tell when the council knows it is highly questionable when they have to have Councilor Rick Kiley give one of his sugar coat speeches about how we need to do this.
$5.5 million Housing=Good. This is actually something most of the funds should be going towards with workforce development ($4 million). As laid out in Federal guidelines, these are things the money should be spent on. Not only would it help shore up some of the issues associated with these projects, it would have the greatest economic impact, unlike tennis courts and river greenways.
$500K, Public Safety Homeownership program=Bad. While I understand the premise behind this program, I’m not sure why it is needed in Sioux Falls. Starting pay for new officers and firefighters is actually pretty good, pile on benefits and I don’t see these folks buying homes in poorer neighborhoods and if they do, GREAT, but not sure they need MORE subsidies from taxpayers. Maybe an education program for officers willing to buy in these neighborhoods instead of a handout and if they need fixed up, an interest FREE community development loan.
$1.4 million Youth Programs=Good. This is a good use of Covid money where you can actually measure the impact of the funding.
$ 11.2 million public safety and health=Good. Ding! Ding! Ding! This is actually how most of this money should be spent with the housing and workforce development.
I still haven’t heard from the council or mayor’s office the real justification for how some of this money is being spent. But like most things in local government, if there is a pot of Federal money, they will find a way to spend it on crap we don’t need. But nothing beats us spending $27 million on dirty railroad land we probably already owned in Federal easements and not getting the trains to move out of town. The worst negotiation in the city’s history. But hey we gave another $25 million in tax breaks to build luxury condos on the land – so everyone wins ☹
l3wis