The Denty (Huether’s Admin) still refuses to tell us the value of ticket sales

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While this is great news, there seems to be something missing here;

The Premier Center was ranked 44th in the United States and 84th in the world by Pollstar, based on touring event ticket sales of 239,089, according to a release from the Premier Center.

A couple of big things are missing; 1) is the above ticket sales number just tickets sold by touring acts, not total tickets sold at the Denty? 2) What was the value of those ticket sales?

If you were to do just a rough estimate on sales from the number above, promoters and artists pulled in around $17 million last year from the Denty. This number of course doesn’t include food and beverage sales and other events. Total sales at the Denty in 2017 could have easily been over $30 million. But how much is the Denty itself profiting? Not much. Most of that $30 million gets sucked right out of town.

Like the admission as to who authorized the bent up siding job on the Denty, for some reason the Huether administration wants to keep us in the dark about the sales at the Denty and what the Denty actually gets to keep or spend on operations.

So we have a publicly funded facility that takes $10 million a year out of our 2nd penny road fund to pay the mortgage but for some strange reason we can’t tell the public the sales it generates. Instead they send out vague press releases bragging about attendance.

We could of had 10 million people attend concerts last year at the Denty, if majority of those sales are not re-circulating in our community, does it even matter?

We have known for a long time what is wrong with the EC siding, we just want to know who authorized it!

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A letter writer points out the obvious problems with the Denty siding;

Would the mayor and his crew accept that kind of work in their own homes?

Apparently they would, because we speculate that is who authorized the installation. All the arguments over the appearance, structural integrity and silly settlement are secondary arguments to who authorized it.

During the mayor’s last ‘Shut Up and Listen’ episode the mayor said leaders should learn from their mistakes. You can’t learn from your mistakes unless you admit to them first. The mayor continues to deny a mistake was made by putting the flat panels on a curved building. It is obvious from the settlement details and the consultant’s siding review a mistake was made. In fact it is glaring. So why won’t the mayor just say he issued the code red? He continues to ask people to drop the subject, but until he ultimately takes responsibility, apologizes and than learns from that mistake by offering a long term solution it’s hard to drop it.

Please Mike, give us the documentation that shows you authorized the cost cutting installation, otherwise you can continue to hear about this topic until the election and beyond.

They’ll just find another loophole

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No matter how many laws Pierre wants to pass, municipalities like Sioux Falls will just find ways around them;

Senate Bill 84 would bar state and local governments from negotiating confidential settlements in lawsuits. Settlement agreements involving government entities would be public records, including the amount of money paid in the settlement and the parties involved.

The citizens of Sioux Falls were fortunate enough to have a multi-million dollar corporation willing to take the city to the Supreme Court, but in most cases, with individual citizens, that would be rare. We would ultimately be victims of the corrupt and closed government of the city administration.

It doesn’t help that the former head city attorney, David Fiddle-Faddle has his College BFF, Attorney General Jackboots, in his back pocket to kill DCI investigations (before even interviewing witnesses) or to refuse to investigate at all.

The city attorney’s office has always had it’s own set of rules it goes by, way before Fiddle-Faddle took over, and be damned if some dirt fool citizen with no lawyering deegrie and no money hires an attorney (if they can find one to represent them in Sioux Falls).

Pierre can goof around passing all kinds of laws about confidential settlements, doesn’t matter, the Mike Huethers, Marty Jackboots and David Fiddle-Faddles of the world will find ways around the laws.

BREAKING: Tooth Fairy authorized Flat Siding installation on Events Center

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Okay, it was a little hard getting a hold of the Tooth Fairy, with her busy schedule and all, but she was able to have a short interview with me about her roll in ‘Siding Gate’ and who actually authorized the flat panel installation.

ME: Sorry to interrupt your busy schedule  . . .

TF: No problem Detroit, I needed a break anyway. I’m in the middle of editing the Book of Mormon right now, and it’s a stickler.

ME: So tell me how you got involved with authorizing the flat siding on the EC.

TF: See, whenever Mayor Huether needs someone to sign off on something controversial he has a group of us in rotation to pick from, and it was my turn, unfortunately.

ME: A group of you?

TF: Yeah, it’s Me, Santa Clause, The Easter Bunny, Mickey Mouse and of course Mark Cotter.

ME: That explains why Mark signed off on the TIF Mayor Huether’s wife got for an apartment project she invested in.

TF: Exactly!

ME: Why did the Mayor consider the flat panels controversial?

TF: You are kidding me? Right?

ME: Uh, No.

TF: See, he had his panties in a bunch about getting the Premier Center done on time and under budget because SMG had this ‘grand’ idea to book acts before they even had the toilets installed, so to cut corners they decided to ditch pre-curved panels for flat ones, saving the city oodles of time and money. You know, it’s all about the present with Mike, that whole doing important things with the day God gave you.

ME: Didn’t he know this would bite him in the butt eventually?

TF: Of course he did, that’s why he had city attorney Fiddle-Faddle draw up a secret settlement and me sign off on the panels. All in a day’s work, I guess, until the SD Supreme Court had to meddle with it.

ME: Well, thanks for clearing that up. BTW, is there any other projects he had you sign off on we should know about?

TF: Not that I can think of. Santa handled the Administration Building and I think the Easter Bunny was involved with the DT Parking Ramp.

ME: What about the Quit Claim Deed on Spellerberg Park?

TF: Uh . . . gotta go . . . the Mormons are calling.

This is satire. The Tooth Fairy does not exist and is a fictional character. Unfortunately the flat panels do exist and look like crap.

Events Center Siding Consultant confirmed it; Flat siding on curved building = BAD

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There were two revealing moments yesterday during the Sioux Falls city council informational meeting when council was questioning the siding review consultant.

Councilor Neitzert started asking some pretty (basic) questions and got some very frank answers. What I noticed was when the consultant answered two of these questions, he wasn’t nervous, but VERY confident in his response.

So what were they?

Neitzert asked if the siding was applied to the building according to specifications?

Consultant, “The siding was not installed according to specifications.”

(We have to remember that while MJ Dalsin was the contractor on the siding, they used a subcontractor that Mortenson recommended for the curved portion of the building, and were NOT the direct contractor installing the siding. That contractor is responsible for the buckling siding on the Pinnacle in Lincoln and the botched dome job on the Corn Palace they had to redo).

Neitzert then asked about the photos of the siding being installed, and asked the consultant if he thought it was visible the buckling was occurring during installation.

The consultant confirmed that it was apparent the siding was buckling during installation.

So where does this leave us? Right at the beginning; WHO AUTHORIZED THE FLAT PANELS?!

While councilor Stehly wants to hire outside legal counsel for an opinion about the legality of looking at the draft reports I think the council needs to pressure the mayor publicly for the documentation that has the signoff for the installation.

Let’s be realistic here, it was either the mayor or someone directly below him that authorized the installation, the public isn’t stupid. So please Mike, stop being a chickensh*t and fess up already – you ordered the Code Red.