North Sioux City and Jefferson city races

By Gary Dickson, Editor

North Sioux City experienced what election officials called a higher-than-normal turnout for the four races for city council seats as 614 people cast their votes.

The higher voter turnout may have been at least partially due to the interest generated by the Union Square housing development as well as the proposed North Shore Drive bypass project. Another issue generating interest recently has been a proposed housing project by Mike Chicoine who lives outside the city, where he wants to build a canal for his housing development using water pumped from McCook Lake. This has gotten those living around the lake incensed as they apparently feel a great deal of ownership of the body of water and are very protective of it. The city has gotten involved in the conflict within its legal limits, but Chicoine has refused to meet with the city and its engineers.

Up until the election there has not been any city counselor, the mayor, the city administrator or any other professional in City Hall who has publicly verbalized any support for Chicoine’s canal.

Yet, as they say, politics makes for strange bedfellows.

Somehow, the McCook Lake canal project became a political hammer. Somebody – either a certain incumbent city counselor who had been working hard in the community to gather candidates for office in other wards who thought like he did and would vote along the same lines as he did – got the McCook Lake Association members all in a tizzy by fostering a rumor that the other city counselors were supporting Chicoine’s dreaded canal. Or, a member or members of the Association already had the mistaken belief that the council supported the canal or that somehow the council could block the canal if they could just get the right people on it to go along with their way of thinking.

The McCook Lake Association pushed hard to get four candidates elected. They had an ad in the online network app “Neighbor” asking city voters to “Save Our Lake”. And to vote for Bob Davis, Lynn Hoffman, Matt Vanderpool, and Greg Meyer.

As you can see from the results below, their push worked. The McCook Lake/Greg Meyer misinformation campaign got three of four of their candidates elected. It will certainly make for an interesting year or so ahead in the North Sioux City Council.

As for the McCook Lake Association, it is doubtful that their foray into city politics is going to help them with the battle against Chicoine. It looks like the state and county are going to have far more to say about it than the city when it comes to water use.

And maybe while the state and county are taking a closer look at the lake, they might consider a nice big public beach there with public parking. Also some nature trails. I’m sure there are a lot of folks who would love to picnic or hike along that beautiful lake, but the only way you can get on it is with a boat. I dunno . . . food for thought.

Congratulations to all those who ran the race and to the winners.

City Council – Ward 1

Candidate	Total votes	Percentage of votes
Robert “Bob” Davis	67	59.8%
Tena Carpenter (incumbent)	45	40.2%

City Council – Ward 2

Candidate	Total votes	Percentage of votes
Karri Wilde	8	3.2%
Lynn Hoffman	191	76.7%
Dan Parks (incumbent)	50	20.1%

City Council – Ward 3

Candidate	Total votes	Percentage of votes
Matt Vanderpool	24	36.9%
Kodi Benson (incumbent)	41	63.1%

City Council – Ward 4

Candidate	Total votes	Percentage of votes
Gregory C. Meyer (incumbent)	170	90.4%
Shane Chartier	18	9.6%

Jefferson

City council members serve two-year terms.

Candidate	Total votes	Percentage of votes
Mark LaFleur (incumbent)	24	63.2%
Sarah Lake	14	36.8%

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