One curmudgeon’s opinion about various and sundry items of import
By Gary Dickson, Editor, Siouxland Observer
Greetings, Earthlings.
I’m back with another installment of To Whom It May Concern, my multi-topic opinion column about the goings-on in Siouxland, South Dakota, the nation and the world. I’d been meaning to write this earlier – like last month – but things kept getting in the way. Like my health. I had a cold which turned into a bad sinus infection that kept me in bed for most of a week with a fever. Now that I’m almost 71, stuff like that seems to hit me particularly hard. It sucks getting old. But don’t cry for me Argentina, I’ve rebounded, for the most part.
Anyway, I picked a terrible week to get sick – April 1-6. As luck would have it, I missed the drama centering around the retirement of North Sioux City’s City Administrator Eric Christensen. It turned out to be more of a tempest in a teapot rather than the Big Deal that some would have it be. Let me add that both the North Sioux City Times and myself have been on an email list along with the North Sioux City council members and the mayor for a select number (but not all, I assume) of Christensen’s emails.
Anyway, I started coming down with a wretched cold and cough on March 31. It had gotten worse the next day and I knew I was going to have to cancel appointments the day after. I noticed a couple of emails from Christensen Monday night and even though I didn’t feel like reading them I opened them. When I read them I thought “Holy Cow! Eric’s really pissed off.” There was another one that came in, but I was feeling too sick to read it. I went to bed and pretty much stayed in bed for the next four days. By the time I was feeling good enough to get on the computer and read emails, I found I had been messaged by several area people wanting to know what happened to the North Sioux City city manager.
Here’s the deal: The McCook Lake Association decided to endorse four candidates for last Tuesday’s city council election. They included: incumbent city councilor Greg Meyer plus Bob Davis, Lynn Hoffman and Matt Vanderpool. The McCook Lake Association posted an announcement/ad on the Nextdoor site asking people to vote for their slate of candidates.
This appears to be what made Eric Christensen so mad. According to his emails to Lake Association president Dirk Lohry, he thought the McCook Lake Association was being ungrateful. He stated that current city councilors have provided $25,000 of funding every year to the Lake Association.
“The city has gone above and beyond to try to get extra funding to help with the lake association’s Capital costs,” Christensen said in an April 1 email. Perhaps things would have been fine if the city administrator had stopped there. But, unfortunately, he didn’t. He began to threaten Lohry and the Lake Association with retaliation.
“Moving forward I can assure you that the Lake Association’s ignorance in this matter will not go unrecognized,” Christensen wrote. “As we prepare the budget for the coming 2025 fiscal year, I will work to reduce the cities (sic) contribution of the Lake Association in any manner possible. I believe that the Lake Association’s lack of gratitude is inexcusable.”
Christensen continued: “So be it known that come budget time it will be my suggestion to counsel that it no longer fund the Lake Association to the extent it has before. This is a result of your decision to politicize the city’s funding of the Lake Association.”
Again, the conversation should have ended there. But it didn’t. It appears that Lohry, to his credit, didn’t respond to Christensen’s emails on April 1. What happened next was that the city administrator posted messages on the Lake Association’s Facebook page and on the McCook Lake Issac Walton League’s Facebook page. It said, “If your interest is in promoting the health and welfare of McCook Lake, then vote for Tena Carpenter in Ward 1, Dan Parks for Ward 2, Kodi Benson for Ward 3 and Shane Chartier in Ward 4.”
It was then that Lohry began to confront Christensen about interfering with an election. The emails between the two of them went back and forth and Lohry cited the City of North Sioux City Municipal Ordinance Code on conflict of interest, particularly where it states no city employee shall knowingly or willfully participate in any aspect of any political campaign on behalf of or opposition to any candidate for city office.
Eventually, Christensen saw the futility of pursuing his course of action and decided it was time to get out of a career in city government. He submitted his resignation announcing his retirement before the city council met on Tuesday, April 2.
All this I learned on Saturday evening, April 6 when I finally had enough energy to start reading my email.
I learned from reading the minutes on the South Dakota Newspaper Association’s website that the council held an executive session at the beginning of their meeting Tuesday night where they accepted his letter of resignation. It was determined that the city administrator’s resignation would be effective immediately.
Then I received a text message from one woman in North Sioux City who accused me of covering up the whole thing! Yeah, right.
I finally read all of Christensen’s emails, including his last one which was submitted before the city council met on Tuesday, April 2. In that email, he attached his letter of resignation where he announced his retirement. I figured Christensen would stay around until later this summer but I guess not.
No matter how much the female text messenger wants to believe that I somehow was involved in a conspiracy to cover up the leaving of Eric Christensen, it just ain’t so. Besides, the details of his departure are a private matter between Christensen and the city.
Moving right along, I guess North Sioux City had a fun-filled and exciting city council meeting on April 2. I would have attended if not for the darned sinus infection that laid me low. Still, I was able to read the minutes of the meeting and saw where then-city council candidate Bob Davis got his knickers in a knot during the community input portion of the meeting. Davis has, as you might be aware, won a seat on the council. (Way to go, Bobster!) Anyway, Davis expressed his ire about yours truly to the current council. The minutes state, “Bob Davis expressed concerns about posts from Gary Dixon (sic) and remarks that he feels came
from City Hall.”
Now maybe Davis should do something about those resentments before he gets into office. It’s not physically or emotionally healthy to carry them around like that.
While we’re on the subject of elections, I wonder what happened to appropriate consequences for breaking federal election laws? I’m talking about how Kim Taylor, the wife of Republican Woodbury County Supervisor Jeremy Taylor skated by with four months in prison and four months of home confinement for voter fraud. She was convicted last November of providing false information in registering and voting, three counts of fraudulent registration and 23 counts of fraudulent voting. Her husband was named as an unindicted co-conspirator. Mrs. Taylor did not make a statement nor express any remorse before she was sentenced. Government prosecutors had asked for a much stiffer sentence.
And now, Kim Taylor is appealing her conviction. Well, Hell’s Bells. I doubt she could get a more severe sentence on appeal, could she? It would be nice if she could. And then they could include the worthless county supervisor husband along with her. Nothing wrong with hoping, I guess. Sometimes the justice system doesn’t work quite right if you ask me.
Speaking of federal court cases, I’ve been wondering what’s going on with the lawsuit in federal court where J & L Staffing and Western Iowa Tech Community College are being sued by Chilean and Brazilian students for human trafficking. The last I heard was that some of the racketeering charges had been thrown out, but left stand several counts alleging human trafficking, breach of contract, fraud and, concerning the school, the intentional infliction of emotional distress.
We ran a story from the Iowa Capital Dispatch in December reporting that the defendants (J & L Staffing, WITCC, et al) wanted to depose the students here in the U.S. but that the students, who were living in their home countries now were resisting face-to-face depositions because of the steep personal cost. The former students say they can’t afford the expense of returning to Iowa and have sought the court’s permission to provide deposition testimony remotely through Zoom-type videoconferencing. I also read that the trial was slated to begin sometime this spring in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Iowa.
This is definitely a case that should prove interesting to those of us in Union County as so many of the players are from the North Sioux City area. Even that female text messenger that I mentioned earlier in this column has a stake in the outcome. I believe she is the named defendant listed under J & L Staffing. Of course, she’d want to have that covered up, so I won’t name her.
I’ve been wondering, just how many reservations can South Dakota’s Gov. Kristi Noem be banned from this week? I think it’s four, right now. Way to go, Kristi! You’re doing a swell job of ruining the relationship our state had with the Native People. Meanwhile, the guv and Attorney General Marty Jackley have announced an extra training opportunity for tribal law enforcement officers which would allow recruits to train close to home.
Did you know that April 18 is National Lineman Appreciation Day? Yeah, neither did I. However, in commemoration of National Lineman Appreciation Day on April 18, the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission asks South Dakotans to thank the men and women whose work helps ensure safe and reliable delivery of electricity year-round.
“In times of crisis, lineworkers are first responders and I’m incredibly grateful for the work they do,” said PUC Chairperson Kristie Fiegen. “We Midwesterners are not strangers to extreme weather that has the potential to damage our power lines and other essential infrastructure. When you and I are hunkered down at home during a storm, these men and women brave the elements to restore utility services because they understand how important their role is to the safety of the public,” she continued.
Has our television ad acting governor been a lineworker yet? Or maybe she could play a victim of a lightning bolt strike who was dashing across an open field carrying an assault rifle on one of our tribal reservations. In an electrifying conclusion, tribal EMTs could revive her.
Did you know that the South Dakota Newspaper Association publishes legal notices from all the newspapers in the state? I like to go there to read the different notices for Union County as well as others. It beats purchasing the local papers which we all know don’t bother attending local government meetings. So if you subscribe to them or purchase single copies you can just go to their web page and click on the View Public Notices button to read public notices free of charge.
Under my heading of “Well, whaddya know!” I saw the following legal notice on the Newspaper Association legal notices: “Today the South Dakota Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources (DANR) announced the Dakota Dunes CID public water system and the systems operation specialists have been awarded a Secretary’s Award for Drinking Water Excellence.
“‘Consistent success is a true measure of excellence,’ said DANR Secretary Hunter Roberts. ‘With more than 23 years of consecutive compliance, the Dakota Dunes CID has demonstrated its commitment to providing its customers with safe and reliable drinking water.'”
Safe and reliable is good. So now the Dunes CID just needs to make their water taste like something other than a rusty metal barrel. Then they’ll be on to something.
Until next time. Ta-ta-for-now.
Your friend,
Gary
The Siouxland Observer 