Christine Erickson

Another Karsky suggestion . . .

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While Dean doesn’t care who puts shingles on your roof, he seems to be very concerned about who is drinking malt liquor;

Karsky said Sioux Falls law enforcement is overburdened with alcohol related problems, and the calls that come in tend to cluster in specific areas of the city – downtown and the Whittier and Pettigrew Heights neighborhoods. “Alcohol-impact areas” – places where alcohol-nuisance calls are most frequent – could be established with more restrictive booze rules, Karsky said.

Dean, we tried this thing called ‘Prohibition’ it didn’t work out so well. Did you take American History in High School? Did you go to High School? Alcoholism is a disease, they will find a way to get a drink, you are not going to fix anything.

What I want to know is what yahoo on the chamber made you be the poster boy of this idea? They owe you a drink . . . that is at least 40 ounces.

Erickson says it best;

City Councilor Christine Erickson said she’s open to discussing the alcohol rules on the books in Sioux Falls, but questioned whether banning single sales in select areas of the city would significantly reduce the number of alcohol nuisance complaints. She’s concerned also about the unintended consequences of alcohol impact areas.

“I understand the reasoning behind it. My concern is, too, are they going to get in the car and drive somewhere else to get it? Now we would just be encouraging them to get behind the wheel,” she said.

Erickson said a ban in specific areas of town wouldn’t alleviate the problem, only move it, similar to what happened when the council banned alcohol from Van Eps and Tower parks.

“It’s kicking the can down the road again. That was my concern when we banned the alcohol at Van Eps as well. We weren’t really fixing anything – just telling them to go back into the neighborhoods,” she said.

Besides her great points, I also would like to point out that I think product designations are up to the state and maybe the county. Don’t know, but I think the City of Sioux Falls learned the hard way about trying to limit video lottery. They lost in SD Supreme Court. They seem to be very good at that.

Should councilor Erickson be appointed the next council vice-chair?

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The Sioux Falls city council has their leadership election on Tuesday (Items 25-27) at the regular council meeting. Outgoing council chair Dean Karsky will most likely be replaced by current vice-chair Kenny Anderson Jr., but the new vice-chair is up for grabs. The word is Rolfing is pursuing the position, since he has been on the council longer then Erickson. But for a multitude of reasons, I would prefer to see Erickson as vice-chair. I think she would bring more to the plate in the weekly leadership meetings with the mayor then rubber stamper Rolfing would.

I encourage all the councilors to nominate and vote for Erickson as vice-chair. We don’t need a wanna-be comedian as vice-chair who spends half his time in Florida, we need a lawmaker.

What are your thoughts?

I found this image of Christine Erickson interesting. A sitting Sioux Falls city councilor essentially endorsing a Senatorial candidate. While I don’t have a problem with her endorsing a candidate (even if he is a crooked snake) I question why she would want to emcee the event and put herself in that spotlight?

The one thing I have learned about following SF city government, whether you are Republican or Democrat it is always best to portray yourself as a non-partisan in the capacity of your service to the city.

It will be interesting to see how residents portray Erickson now and the decisions she makes as a councilor, no matter if Rounds wins or loses. Some will ask,

“Is Christine a puppet for the SD GOP? Will she treat Sioux Falls Democratic business owners the same as Republican business owners? Will her decisions be based on ‘Big Republican Government’ or common sense. Does she approve of how Rounds has handled EB-5?”

These are important things to think about when you are serving on a non-partisan body of government while out publicly endorsing party members. There is NO fine line. Endorse away, but stay out of the spotlight.

Not sure about you. But it has changed my opinion about her.

SCREENSHOT: Dakotawarcollege.com

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The final financial reports are in from the city election

No big surprises. It looks like Walmart threw in only an additional $33,000 in the last week before the election. Some interesting notes to point out in the candidate races were that Kiley received only ONE individual contributions right before the election, $250 from Cindy Huether. Cindy  also gave $250 to Tex Golfing & Michelle Erpenbach. How convenient that she gave this late in the game, knowing her name wouldn’t appear on a financial report until after the election. I guess she learned well from her sneaky husband.

Mayor Huether also had some interesting contributors. From PAC’s he got $1500 from two separate Unions, Citigroup gave $500, John Morrell’s (Smithfield) gave $1000, and one of the more interesting of his PAC contributors was HDR Engineering, which gave $500. HDR does a boatload of consulting for the city planning office. A very strange donation to Christine Erickson was from Kyle Schoenfish (used to be a Democrat, and is the son of Mayor Huether’s first cousin) who gave $125. Still trying to figure that one out.