SWEEPS

I am opposed to the SWEEPS program that the Pierre Public Schools have implemented. To summarize the program, once the final bell rings for a class if you're not inside the classroom you're hosed. You are locked out of the room and get a D for the day. Proponents of the program, including students, say that tardiness is virtually eliminated by the program. Many words have been written on this subject about how in the "real world" people who are late for jobs face disciplinary action including termination. They feel that students need to learn this lesson early and SWEEPS is a good way to do this.

However, in the "real world" if your employer had a program in the employee handbook stating how tardiness was going to be handled and then they deviated from that program and did something radically different, you would have grounds for a nice, juicy lawsuit. The same situation exists here.

The school has a program in their handbook on how they are to handle tardiness. The SWEEPS program was implemented as supposedly a "implementation change", but the results are very different from what's in the student handbook.

My personal thought is that there should be a penalty for tardiness. Being locked out of class and having to catch up is a big enough pain without adding the insult of the reduction in grade as well, especially for a first offense. I think that's a bit harsh, and would argue that the same exists in the "real world" where flat tires happen, kids are sick, traffic jams up, cars don't start etc, etc. Tardiness is a concern when it's an ongoing problem, not a single event.

Pierre Budget

The city of Pierre just approved a $41 million dollar budget. This is just a week or so after a story hit the paper about how they had to cut $910,000 from the budget. After spending hours working the budget over, they finally trimmed $5,000. Seriously? Well, at that rate they would need almost 200 more meetings to get to their target.

Since that would be impossible, they did what every other government body has done when faced with a similar situation. The raided the reserves cookie jar for the $910,000, took out another $2 million from the electrical department reserves "just in case", and passed the budget.

We have a $41,000,000 budget for the city with roughly 14,000 residents and they cut a whopping $5,000 from their budget. Wow. Way to tighten the belts there people. Oh but wait, that's not the end of the joy. This "new improved" budget includes a 4% increase in electrical rates, and a 3% increase in water rates!

Additionally their number crunching is including a 3.5% increase in sales taxes collected. Has anyone else heard about Sioux Falls, the growth wunderkind of South Dakota, having problems with their budget because sales figures are off dramatically which is causing budgetary shortfalls? No? How about state numbers on sales tax? Oh.. guess it's just me.

It wasn't that long ago that the city was raising rates and changing their minimum usages (ie: hidden rate change), and here they go doing it again. Why? Well according to Mayor Gill, they need $21,000,000 to overhaul the electrical system to "meet Pierre's growth". Does anyone even look at economic numbers down there? Are we really growing that rampantly?

Then today in the Journal, I see that they are allocating $53,000 for a road design to go from River Rim to Country Drive. Do we have the money budgeted to build the road, or are we just designing it for when we finally get around to building the road? Heck, I could have done ten times better on balancing the budget just by cutting this line item. The residents there already have a road. This is another road, just in case.

What has the city said that they are going to spend your money on? And this is just a recent list...
$20,000,000 on a water treatment plant
$21,000,000 on electrical system upgrades
$9,000,000 on a water splashy park
$75,000 for design on a library expansion
$53,000 for design on a road to serve 1 block of houses
$70,000 for design of a possible parking garage for Pierre St, IF they get participation from the businesses

The list goes on and on... well, until it hits $41 million obviously.

You get a “D” in Deficit

• $1,000,000 budget deficit. (Cost: $1,000,000 tax-payer dollars to make-up)
• Hours upon hours combing out unnecessary spending (Cost: days of paid salary for politicians from tax payers)
• Landing only a $5,000 difference. (Cost: Priceless)

Welcome to Trouble in River City, South Dakota

There's trouble in River City. Trouble that starts with a "T" and rhymes with "P" and P stands for Pierre. In this blog, we're going to be exploring all the things that seem to be troublesome for moving our community forward, and ensuring that our city leaders act with integrity, and with the taxpayers in mind.