Yesterday’s local elections put a little extra spring in my step.
I told folks in Brookings that they should vote for my friend Scott Meyer, and they did it! Meyer came in with 1,417 votes, a commanding first-place vote. I also respect Patty Bacon’s brains and organizational skills, and Brookings may have picked her, too! May have—Bacon got 1,134 votes, Lyle Bowes got 1,127, and John Kubal got 1,115. The second-third-fourth margins are well within the two-percent-total-vote threshold set by SDCL 9-13-27.3 for recounts; Bowes and Kubal thus have five days to call for a recount.
But if those numbers stand, Pat Powers’s hometown will be governed by two more people I like. Hee hee hee!
Down I-29, Sioux Falls voters warmed my heart by choosing to start school after Labor Day. The vote was close—52% to 48%. My friend and Sioux Falls School Board member Kent Alberty is disappointed, but I am thrilled to see our largest city vote for the sanctity of summer. (AP students, you’ll be fine: fire up your summer reading lists!)
My hometown Madison still isn’t smart enough to elect Jennifer Wollf to city commission, and for some reason, they booted Nick Abraham and his blue-collar sensibilities off the commission last night, but at least they replaced Abraham with another working man, Robert Thill, who retired as Madison Public Works Department foreman last year an thus knows a thing or two about Madison’s nuts and bolts.
And up in Roscoe, folks in the Edmunds Central School District voted 73% to 21% to approve an $8.95 million bond issue to build a new classroom building… and a bigger gym. I still twinge to see education can’t win without the sports vote, but I can express some pleasure to see that a small community can rally strong support to keep its school district alive.
Readers, did you notice any other happy votes in yesterday’s city and school elections around South Dakota? Post your favorites (or your least favorites) below!
Thanks for the mention, Cory. I won’t make any assumptions about the intelligence of Madison voters, but since you brought it up, I’ve been told on more than one occasion I’m too smart for my own good. Maybe I’m just too smart for Madison’s good, too?
(Comment written with equal parts sarcasm and seriousness … and possibly just a smidgen of sour grapes.)
Jennifer, your comment reminds me that more than one person said that Mason’s on Main was “too yuppie” for Madison. Such narrow thinking deprives Madison of the new and awesome. Don’t let such narrow visions reinforce the Madison bunker and drive you away. If fate leads you elsewhere, no problem, but as long as you’re there, keep working to change the thinking about what intelligence, ideas, talents, and visions fit in Madison. Smart communities know they can always make room for bigger thinkers and bigger thoughts.