Don’t let the few decide your city’s future —the petition carriers want that.

By Gary Dickson, Editor – Siouxland Observer

It’s possible you thought the election was over and done with, right? But you’d be wrong if you lived in North Sioux City, South Dakota.

Tuesday, Dec. 10 is an extremely important election for North Sioux Cityans. You may have heard little or even nothing about it.

That’s because many of those who developed the question being voted on as well as those who carried the petition around gathering signatures to get the question on the ballot want a low turnout for the election.

What’s being voted on, you ask?

A group of folks believe North Sioux City needs a different form of government than the one it currently has. They’ve come to believe that the current aldermanic form of government with its eight aldermen and mayor is too unwieldy and non-productive for a city of about 3,000. Instead, this group of people thinks a commission form of government would better serve the citizens of North Sioux City.

The commission form of government they are proposing would have five commissioners which would actually be a mayor and four commissioners. Each commissioner would manage an assigned area. One commissioner would handle utilities, another supervises finance and revenue, another one supervises public works and the fourth one would oversee public safety. The mayor has general supervision over all departments, is the chief executive and handles other general duties. All five positions would be elected at large from across the city.

A major drawback to the commission form of government is that it would be easy for one area of the city to exert control over the city government by supporting a slate of candidates for city commission over their challengers. We saw this happen in a way during the last city council election where members of the McCook Lake Association heavily supported three candidates that were elected to the city council.

This type of bloc voting can be prevented by keeping the North Sioux City government as it is – an aldermanic form with eight aldermen and a mayor elected to govern the city. Two aldermen are elected from each of the four wards in the city. Doing so ensures that different parts of North Sioux City have representation on the council. Only the mayor is elected at large. The aldermanic form of city government keeps one neighborhood from dominating what happens in the North Sioux City government. It makes sure that everybody’s interests are dealt with as fairly as possible, not just those who can afford an expensive home along the lakeshore.

Below you will find a copy of the fact sheet that is posted on the North Sioux City Government web page. It outlines everything you need to know about both types of city government. I’m reprinting it here because two city councilors tried to keep the city from posting this for people to see. The reason is quite clear why they opposed it: both have been active in distributing the petition asking for a vote on a change in government and getting voters to sign it.

These two city councilors -Bob Davis and Greg Meyer – are a couple of backsliders in a futile search for two brain cells. I’ve written about them recently and their despicable efforts to gum up council progress and workings of the city as they’ve put their own interests and grudges before the economic growth of the city. They are part of the group that sees the benefit of keeping voter turnout low. They’ve latched on to a religious stooge of Pastor Carey Gordon’s Cornerstone Whirled Outreach, by the name of Dennis Johnson to be a sort of front to their efforts to their change of government operation. Johnson, who owns a couple of pizza businesses in Nebraska and started his own version of Whirled Outreach in northern Minnesota applied this summer to be the city administrator of North Sioux. His application was rejected for unknown reasons – possibly because of a sweaty handshake – I’m not certain. Anyway, I’ll bet Johnson has his own grudge to bear against the current form of the North Sioux City government and this would be a way of exacting revenge.

The main thing is to go vote in this election. The proponents of change aren’t saying how they are going to pay for the new form of government. I suspect that governmental change costs money. You don’t just decide to change the government, put it on paper, then let er rip. Do accounting methods have to change? How about payroll? What changes will be made to utilities? How is a change going to affect grants that the city has?

It seems like these folks are wading into a swamp without knowing about any alligators and snakes residing there.

The lack of information and knowledge from the proponents of change of government now could easily bankrupt the city.

And you think it was bad last summer after the flood.

Changing types of government with these clowns trying to drive the bus could be an even bigger disaster.

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