One curmudgeon’s opinion about various and sundry items of import and things that maybe aren’t much so.

By Gary Dickson, Editor, Siouxland Observer

Greetings Earthlings.

I’ve been wanting to write a multi-topic opinion column for some time. It’s not that I haven’t let my personal views seep into my reporting about various activities earlier. For example, you might want to look up one of my stories about the Union County Commission to see what I think about their workings. I admit that my writing isn’t always objective. So what? I own this site and I don’t get paid to write, photograph or post the stories that appear on it. So there.

I’ve got a lot of problems with you people! Now you’re going to hear about them.

Frank Costanza

You might consider this column in a similar light to Frank Costanza’s “Airing of the Grievances” on the classic Festivus episode during the Jerry Seinfeld Show. During that episode, many might remember, Frank — who was George Costanza’s father — stands up and shouts, “I’ve got a lot of problems with you people! Now you’re going to hear about them.” I loved Frank.

That leads me to wonder, whatever became of the Sioux City Journal? It used to be we could count on seeing the newspaper thrown on our front porch/lawn/bushes by our sidewalk/on the parkway along the street every morning. We’d open it up to see good, solid reporting about local, regional, state and national news. I always loved the photography of Jim Lee and Jerry Mennenga. Jim is now in Des Moines and Jerry is a freelance photographer in Siouxland. The Journal’s editorials were at first pretty conservative for my taste, but then they started to improve when Lee Communications purchased the paper.

But gradually it went downhill as Lee started to reduce staff to cut expenses. To reference former CBS News reporter Dan Rather on the sad state of American journalism, the paper went from being a public service to the need to be a revenue generator.

Now there’s a photographer or two and a couple of reporters. There’s no publisher listed – no person, I mean. The corporation is listed as the publisher. But there’s an editor or two. They don’t even print a newsprint product every day. And now they’ve moved out of their building on Pavonia to some address that looks like it’s in a housing project.

I recall when I was managing editor of the South Sioux City/Dakota County Star I would always cover the South Sioux City Council Meetings. I could also count on the Journal’s Michelle Linck to be there, too. Michelle would be there for most of the Dakota County Commissioners’ meetings and the Dakota City Council meetings, too. These days I doubt you could get a Journal reporter to cross the Missouri to cover a South Sioux City government story even if City Administrator Lance Hedquist promises to pay their apartment rent for a month.

Those of you who aren’t familiar with Lance Hedquist should be.

He’s been managing city government in South Sioux City since Shep was a pup. And he’s done a mighty fine job of it, too. He was the administrator when I came to the Star in 2001, and he’d seen like he’d been in the position for a long time then. Lance has done a great job at securing grants and financing – both state and federal – by marketing it as an agricultural and urban center, IMO. Also, through the years, Lance and his wife Jean have hosted young men who were players for the Sioux City Musketeers. This is in addition to raising their own son. He was and assume he still is a big supporter of the Muskies.

Lance and I didn’t always see eye-to-eye, but I always respected him for his dedication, administrative skills, intelligence and drive. I remember when the city council had to tell him to take a few days off to take care of himself when he obviously had bronchitis. The man just refused to miss a day of work! I would guess that one of these days Lance might decide to retire from his job in South Sioux. I wouldn’t want to be the one who tries to fill his shoes.

It goes to show you, it’s always something when it comes to the weather around here. If it’s not blizzards, it’s red flag warnings.

According to Radio Iowa.com local officials in about a third of Iowa counties have issued outdoor burning bans. National Weather Service meteorologist Rod Donovan says over the past week and a half the satellite data for Iowa shown lots of hot spots and radar has picked up smoke plumes from a lot of field fires.

“We actually had a pretty big fire just west of Colfax going across some grassland yesterday,” Donovan says.

It doesn’t take much to spark a fire in current conditions according to Donovan. “Part of the issue we’ve had across Iowa is really our abnormally short winter, at least abnormally dry and warm across the area,” Donovan says, “…not having a prolonged period of snow cover, a lack of precipitation.”

These conditions have extended the drought. Donovan says pastures, cropland and grassy areas enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program are “extremely combustible” right now.

“It doesn’t take much for an ignition source to create hazardous fire weather conditions,” Donovan says, “warm, very dry, low humilities in addition to these very strong springtime winds that we get across the state.”

The forecast for Iowa indicates March temperatures are likely to be above normal. Donovan says to expect more red flag warnings from the National Weather Service until plants spring to life and fields start turning green.

To add to Iowa’s good news, according to the National Integrated Drought Information System, here in South Dakota the Black Hills counties of Pennington, Lawrence and Butte and the East River counties of Lincoln, Minnehaha and Moody will have continuing drought over at least the next 30 days. Northern Union and Clay Counties are considered to have abnormally dry conditions. Oh-boy! Thinking positively, Clay and Union counties have a 40% chance of having more than normal precipitation over the next 14 days.

Remember last fall when the Dakota Valley High School football coach got suspended? Of course, you probably don’t.

It was barely mentioned in the area media. I think only one of the local TV stations had any news about it. Kenny Wilhite was announced last April as the new head coach beginning in the fall of 2023 season. According to a story in the Dakota Dunes/North Sioux City Times, Wilhite came to DV with 25 years of college-level coaching experience. KCAU-TV reported Wilhite was “a former player and Director of High School Relations of the University of Nebraska football program. While he embarks on his first head coaching role, the longtime Husker is bringing a new fire to North Sioux City.”

“Passion for the game. Accountability. I’m going to hold them accountable for everything they do whether it’s in school or outside of the fence. And then in the game of life,” Wilhite told KCAU.

Anyway, what I recall, was after the Dakota Valley Panthers got beat in a particularly one-sided fashion by I think, Dell Rapids, Wilhite tried to pick a fight with the Quarier coach during the after-game handshake line. Something like that. He also was said to be yelling at the referees during the game accusing them of favoritism, even calling one a n*****.

Of course, Willhite’s suspension was played down by the Dakota Valley school board and administration. Nary a word about was written in the district’s official publication the Dakota Dunes/North Sioux City Times. Nor was there anything appearing in the Sioux City Journal, that I remember. Sigh.

The Panthers ended the season falling to Sioux Falls Christian for the second time during the year, 24-13 on Oct. 26, 2023. A little more than two weeks later, on Nov. 13, the Dakota Valley School Board approved Willhite’s resignation as head football coach.

A listing for a head high school football coach was posted Feb. 13, 2024, on the district’s job listings page. Among the various responsibilities included in the announcement, the following caught my eye:

General: 1.) The success of athletic programs has a strong influence on the community’s image of the entire district. The public exposure is a considerable responsibility and community/parent pressure for winning performance is taxing, but must not over-ride the objectives of good sportsmanship and good mental health.

2.) The position includes other unusual aspects such as extended time, risk injury factor, and due process predicaments.

3.) It is the express intent of this job description to give sufficient guidance to function. In cases not specifically covered, it shall be assumed that a coach shall exercise common sense and good judgment.

I hope the person hired can demonstrate common sense, good judgment, good sportsmanship and good mental health.

We’ve got a variety of wild animals populating Dakota Dunes, North Sioux City, Riverside, Jefferson and Elk Point. Most of them don’t even drive.

One of the not-so-common varieties was spotted near the McCook Lake Izaak Walton League Beach Hill on Sunday night March 3.

Dakota News Now reports that a camera in that area picked up the image of a bobcat around 7:27 that evening. This isn’t the first time stationary cameras have captured images of bobcats roaming around in the vicinity of the Izaak Walton League Beach Hill. The first time was about a year ago on March 19, 2023. There have also been subsequent bobcat sightings in early May of last year, and in late January of this year in the same area.

According to Dakota News Now it is not known whether Sunday’s bobcat is the same animal that was spotted the previous two times in Union County.

I guess I don’t typically expect bobcats to be roaming around the prairies of eastern South Dakota, but, oddly enough, the South Dakota Game Fish, and Parks Department says it’s not uncommon for bobcats to be found in that region of the state.

Read More: Bobcat Sighted Sunday Night Near McCook Lake in South Dakota.

Just a word of warning to all you trigger-and-trap-happy residents out there, leave the critters alone. Watch your pets and keep them inside if needed. Don’t go feeding these wild animals, either. And don’t approach them. Leave them the hell alone. Their ancestors were here first.

So, the civics-focused center for Black Hills State University has died again. That’s what a story by KELO-TV Capitol News Bureau reporter Bob Mercer. The proposal establishing the center for civic engagement at BHSU failed in the Senate on Monday, 16-17. It needed 18 Mercer wrote.

Republican Rep. Scott Odenbach from Spearfish is now 0 for 2.

“Last year, he asked for $150,000 to create the Center for American Exceptionalism,” said Mercer. “He fell one aye short in the House of the two-thirds majority needed for an appropriation. Had the House approved it, it would have advanced to the Senate.

“In July, the state Board of Regents that oversees South Dakota’s public universities decided civics should receive more emphasis. But Governor Kristi Noem didn’t recommend funding for it in her budget proposal.”

Personally, I find it puzzling that our legislature should put so much emphasis on one college having to be a center for teaching civic responsibility to our students. It seems to be a waste of money to fund such a center – not just at BHSU, but in any of the other five state-supported universities as well. I think what Mercer wrote that Senate Democratic leader Reynold Nesiba of Sioux Falls, an economics professor at Augustana University, said is quite appropriate. Sen. Nesiba said all six of South Dakota’s public universities should be promoting civic engagement.

Another question raised in Mercer’s story is “What is BHSU’s purpose as a university?” Perhaps the better question should be Does South Dakota need to have six state-supported universities?

My thinking is that some consolidation could be done between BHSU and the School of Mines in West River and Northern State University and Dakota State University in East River. And I’ll just leave that topic there to marinate for a while.

Is North Sioux City Councilor Greg Meyers a machine that only answers “NO”? You’d have to go back and listen to Firesign Theatre (1971) and their album “We’re All Bozos On This Bus” to really appreciate the full meaning of my statement there. But seriously, Councilor Meyers seems to be only able to vote no on nearly any proposal or ordinance that comes before the North Sioux City Council. He and others in his clique who may or may not be running for city office appear to be opposed to most everything that comes down the pike that would improve the town, especially in terms of housing development or street expansion. I’m not sure if it’s fear of change, fear of the unknown or what. But there’s a lot of misinformation coming from Meyers and he behaves like an obstinate toddler. Citizens of North Sioux City need to be careful and not let backsliders do their thinking for them.

And while I’m on the topic of local government, how is it that salaried public servants are also serving as elected officials on other boards and/or commissions in this county? I may possibly be naive, but it all seems like interlocking roles. I’m sure it’s not illegal, otherwise, you’d think the state’s attorney general would have his nose in here wondering what’s going on. It just seems to me unusual, to say the least, when we have the North Sioux City Police Chief Rich Headid also serving in the role of a Union County Commissioner. And then we have the North Sioux City Director of Economic Development Andrew Nilges also serving as a member of the Dakota Valley Board of Education.

Of course, the argument goes that they have every right to run for these public offices. Okay, but looking at the salaries of their full-time jobs and the duties those jobs require, I have to wonder if they are unhappy with their regular jobs? Why do they need to fill the elected positions? Didn’t somebody question whether or not they were taking on too much to devote adequate time to both roles?

Now, in the case of the police chief, Rich Headid, there have been rumors that he may want to run for Union County Sheriff since Dan Limoges has passed away. I hope that the rumors aren’t true. For one thing, I believe it will cause friction within law enforcement within the county and city. Two, the sheriff’s salary is less than the police chief’s and he shouldn’t be able to keep your county commissioner job. Three, Interim Sheriff Jim Prouty was Dan Limoges’s chief deputy and trained to step into the job in his absence, whether temporary or permanent. He seems to be doing a terrific job and has the support of the department to be successful. I think the best thing Chief Headid could do would be to publicly state he is not interested in the job and to say he will give Sheriff Prouty his full support.

Finally, whatever happened to Sioux City’s downtown business district? Have you driven through the downtown core lately? It looks like a ghost town most of the time – worse depending on the season or time of the year. Storefronts are empty or have sketchy-looking occupants. Some buildings like the Promenade have been empty for years, their vacant spaces having dirt floors. There seems to be no consistency between what is being developed – the east end (Historic Fourth) or the west end (Historic Pearl). It appears to me that Nebraska and Pearce Streets are lacking the most.

Of course, there are these lofts and condos that are being promoted for urban living space. Big whoop! What can downtown residents do? You’ve got gambling and the Department of Corrections Residential Treatment Center on the west end and a strip club and empty restaurants and bars and adult book store on the east side.

In the summertime, Vangarde Arts puts on the Downtown Live concerts. Vangarde Arts tries its best to bring music and art to its space year-round, but it’s hard to build a lively downtown by yourself.

I know people will always say, “Why can’t we be more like Sioux Falls?” Well, why can’t we when it comes to our downtown? I lived in Sioux Falls before, during and after the change of the Phillips and Main Avenues downtown areas. That process didn’t happen overnight. It took a supreme effort by the director of Main Street Sioux Falls, Carol Pagones, and dedication, effort and money from both the city and a lot of small and larger businesses. But even with growing retail on the edges of the city, downtown Sioux Falls also grew and continues to this day. In my mind, there’s no reason downtown Sioux City can’t approach something similar to Sioux Falls. The buildings are there. If only the vision and dedication to a future with retail could join them.

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Until next time. Ta-ta-for-now.

Your friend,

Gary