I haven’t heard my mayor say one intelligent thing on public policy since the onset of our ongoing covid-19 pandemic. For sensible responses to public health needs amidst coronavirus, we must turn to Rapid City mayor Steve Allender, who in discussing a new shelter in the Civic Center for sick homeless folks says good coronavirus responses should look like overreactions:
While COVID-19 cases are still low in the western part of the state, Rapid City Mayor Steve Allender says they are preparing for a worst-case scenario.
“If we get the best outcome possible, all this will be for nothing and we will look like we overreacted,” Allender says. “The goal here is to look like we overreacted and spent money that didn’t need to be spent. It’s a pretty odd situation for a government and community to go through” [Lee Strubinger, “Rapid City Civic Center Transformed into Shelter for People Sick, Homeless,” SDPB, 2020.05.08].
If Travis Schanuaman ran Rapid City, he’d be saying we should late nature take its course and let the homeless get sick and float away down Rapid Creek. Besides, the homeless aren’t buying gift cards to the new bumper-car palace, so who needs ’em?
The only overreactions to coronavirus I’ve seen so far are coming from the conservative snowflakes who storm their capitols with guns and threaten to shoot retail workers rather than simply wear a mask to protect their neighbors from contagion.
Allender is no diplomat but his long years of service in RC law enforcement have given him wisdom and leadership we are lucky to have right now. Managing this unruly mob of west river rednecks and their roaring drunk children with fast cars and trucks inching their way toward lawlessness is a challenge, i expect. Dinging Noem occasionally may slow her urge to encourage mayhem during a world wide pandemic :o
RC has the right mayor at the right time. Aberdeen has the wrong mayor at the wrong time. Sioux Falls has a mayor that is sometimes wrong and sometimes right, but the times he’s right and wrong seem to be random.
Allender is the leader we need for governor.
Steve Allender rules! He and the City Council had the wisdom to shut down the city early on, although it has just opened.
Don, that’s an apt description of those mayors. Well done.
SD has the wrong governor for any time. Minnesota has an outstanding governor for this time and most of the other times too.
Compared to being drumpf, being extra cautious is easy to live down. Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t Allender an unpopular choice for mayor because of racist incidents? Or has my memory not served me?
Leslie gets me thinking about long years of service….
If I recall correctly, Allender wasn’t any kind of party golden boy recruited by party leaders. He had a long career in public service, then decided that he could extend that public service as an elected official. He came to office already in a mindset of serving the people.
Schaunaman had no record of public service. He was a party golden boy, recruited by the GOP legislators and other insiders to stick it to that darned Democrat Mike Levsen. He entered the campaign in 2019 to serve his party and his pals, not the public. And here we are.
Kristi Noem had no record of public service before she started running for public office. She just wanted revenge on the government that had the audacity to collect taxes from her family.
Barack Obama was a community organizer. Joe Biden has spent his whole life in public service. Donald Trump has never worked for anyone else, and his continuing focus on ratings, superlatives about himself, and insult contests with anyone who displeases him show he did not take his current job with any eye toward serving others.
When hiring public servants, choose people with a proven record of public service. They tend to serve the public better.
Allender has been a sound leader through it all. Rapid City never had the threat of a meatpacking plant in its realm, but it knew enough to act like it did.
Although, RC might have been left out of a kids’ art contest, however. ;-)
Mike from Iowa– I am not an expert of all things Allender, and I don’t live in Rapid City, but I hear him on the local radio maybe once a month. I’ve thought he was a voice of reason in a sometimes racist city (are you remembering the beer poured on Native kids at the hockey game or one of the many other racist incidents?). When Rapid City business owners wanted more police to deal with panhandling downtown, Allender de-escalted it, saying more police wasn’t the way to handle it. And he talks a lot more about affordable housing and treatment for struggling homeless than any other mayor I’ve heard. Rapid City is slowly moving on OneHeart– a housing/treatment/education facility for homeless at the former National American University campus.
Whether Mayor Allender is able to get things done is another matter, as Leslie points out– he’s having to try to find a balance between the people who don’t want change and the folks who want more business and tourism, and between the progressives and the rednecks. A lot of us are a little bit of each.
Thanks for your reply, Fairburn. I know nothing of Allender other than what my memory tells me of his campaign for Mayor, and it was discussed here at DFP. Without having to look through months and years of archives and relying solely on my aging memories, I’m thinking the late, great DFP friend and long time commenter Roger Cornelius did not think much of Allender and his relations with Native Americans.
Nearly forgot….
Coronavirus Cases:
1,386,514
Deaths:
81,852
Before I get my foot in my mouth any deeper, I will take the time to peruse archives and see how bad my memory is. Thanks again for your reply.
https://dakotafreepress.com/2015/06/07/cornelius-on-race-relations-theres-hope-for-rapid-city/
And who is the mystery woman with our Roger? I know, I know, pick me, pick me.
mfi, great pic! I attended the event and although I missed the opportunity to meet and talk in person with the two pictured DFP superstars, Roger and Debbo (nor you dang it), I did meet Godfather Cory and assured him that I was a real living person and the comments I submitted to DFP were not from a Russian bot. In the words of Bob Hope and Shirley Ross:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKgUq5dziEk
Our mayor is a pretty solid hybrid between compassion and authoritarianism. A full career in law enforcement provides a public service perspective like no other. The mayor had his conflicts with mayors he worked for and with but by in large, he skillfully worked his way around the typical Republican-style politics that often corrupts and distorts law and order. He has also skillfully and factually mitigated the constant fusillade of allegations of racism that have plagued Rapid City for more than 30 years. That said, I didn’t agree with him at all on the city’s decision to enlarge the Civic Center arena and encumber the City’s Vision Fund that was put in place entirely for civic stewardship purposes. Of course, he had to manage a whole bunch of tourism and entertainment interests that continue to seek public resources and funding to elevate regional attractiveness, while increasing their business and cash flow. I’m guessing now that there are a few people that wish that we hadn’t voted for the indebtedness that we’ll now have a really hard time paying for. There are a lot of good things about Mayor Allender that aren’t found in other public officials; not the least of which is he’s a fisherman and is pretty sensitive to clean and abundant water resources that support life of all kinds…. One might say that he is a far better “steward” of public resources and culture than the self centered dullards of private enterprise origin that think government ought to be run like used car dealership.
JW is right about the Vision Fund. I opposed that fund from the day it was proposed in the 1990s when it was called Vision 2012. As you might have guessed,. It was supposed to disappear at the end of 2012. It was too much of a special interest money pot for it to just go away, however. But, if you have that sort of fund it needs to go to a broad array of citizen needs. I like the Civic Center, but it shouldn’t eat up all the money. I thought it should go for infrastructure improvements, We did finally get ice in Rapid City and improvements in parks. But, I mean, the tourism center? That was a payoff, but I think they closed that, didn’t they? The Journey Museum ended up as a nice addition, even if I had my doubts.
Thank you, bcb. i had heard of, but, never herd that song. I did not make the DFP beer bust Cory held. Too far to drive for my aching back. Debbo and I keep in touch by email frequently. Ms Debbo has many talents and the potential for many more to come shining through.
Just a reminder it is still hard at work….
Deaths:
83,455
If only Kruel Kristi would overreact. Look at this Axios map/chart. SD has the highest rate of increase among all 50 states!
is.gd/Z32azu
Plenty of whiners in these remarks, but none of them have an iota of intelligence to display. Rapid City is blessed with a perfect Mayor for these times and he is doing a fabulous job of managing the city. Kudos to Mayor Allender.
Ben Coopwer: Me thinks you have a reading and language comprehension problem that lacks objectivity; among other things. Based on your own remarks, you’d better add yourself to the list of whiners that display little intellect. Assertionem probandum.