Christine Erickson

Super Majority for bonding in Sioux Falls is great idea!

l3wis November 7, 2017 2Comments

I might even add, that Councilor Erickson’s idea is way past due;

Erickson hopes to raise the bar on borrowing money by requiring a “super majority” on the Council. She says that if a project can’t get six of eight votes, it’s not worthy.

All other state governments require this majority for bonding. If this would have been in place when the Administration building was being debated, it would have failed.

Right now, the city is paying down eight sales tax revenue bonds, including ones that financed the administration building, the Denny Sanford Premier Center, and the tax increment financing bond that covered the removal of the former Zip Feed Mill in downtown Sioux Falls.

Also ironically if the Events Center vote would have been a LEGAL bonding vote instead of an ADVISORY VOTE, the bond sale would have failed (would have required 60% of the vote).

Pull up your belts and tighten your bootstraps

l3wis August 22, 2017 1Comments

Not sure if the Argus screwed up this quote or if councilor Erickson actually said this, but it made me chuckle;

“The administration is really tightening their bootstraps and so we need to do the same thing,” Council Vice-chairperson Christine Erickson said during a recent budget meeting at Carnegie Town Hall.

Don’t tighten your bootstraps to much, you might hurt your feet 🙂

Sioux Falls City Council Leadership continues to play inside baseball with the Mayor’s office

l3wis August 15, 2017 5Comments

I guess I was a little naïve to think that once we sent Rex Rolfing packing and brought on Erickson as vice-chair, things would get a little more transparent. In fact it’s gotten worse.

It’s a real head scratcher, but it is clear that the mayor had a ‘sit-down’ with Christine after she took over as vice-chair (she admitted they had a one-on-one meeting), and it seems some horse trading went on.

Make no mistake that Erickson aspires to be Mayor of Sioux Falls someday, also take into account that Diamond Jim may be our next mayor, and the rumors are getting stronger about the possibility of Huether serving as Jim’s Chief of Staff. I shutter at the thought of it.

Recently Erickson flip-flopped on the districting of the parks boards. She promised she would support it if Bruce and I would not comment about it during public input. We kept our promise. She did not. It was blatantly obvious that this change wouldn’t hurt a single soul, she really had NO reason to vote against it except for playing reindeer games with the mayor.

It also came to light that Team leadership, Erickson and Kiley, have been hand picking who can serve on RFP committees. She served on the Lloyd project RFP committee.

Not only were councilors Stehly and Starr NOT asked, they had no idea these committees were being formed.

It goes back to leadership thinking they have more power than their peers. They do not. Like I said, the charter doesn’t give them any more power. Their duties of running meetings and being ‘messengers’ to the ENTIRE council are their only REAL duties. So why are they not fulfilling those duties?

It also makes you question what certain council staffers know and what they are not sharing with other councilors. They are to report to the entire council, not just leadership. If they are being told to hide information from certain councilors, that’s an issue. We know this problem recently reared it’s head when the lead auditor followed orders from council leadership to pick our external auditor without informing the rest of the council in a public meeting.

Open government is good government, secrecy is tyranny. The tyranny with council leadership needs to end.