BrandonInfo.com

This Sunday, Christians will celebrate Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week leading up to Easter.

For a real feel of what it must have been like that week in history, you may want to attend one of the Last Supper dramas being presented at Brandon churches. If you know of others, please post them here.

I wonder what it’s like to portray one of the disciples in these dramas. If you have done this, how did it feel? Did your participation affect your faith at all? Which disciple did you portray?

I see in today’s Brandon Valley Challenger that First National Bank plans to give its old building to the Brandon Valley School District to use for district administrative offices. Then those offices in the high school would be turned into classrooms.

The gift is contingent on two things, though. One is that the building can’t be used as a bank or competing financial institution. It doesn’t sound like there’d be any chance of that. So far so good. The other condition is that the bank must appraise the building at a value acceptable fo First National’s board of directors. I wonder what value would be acceptable. The story didn’t say when the bank thinks the appraisal might happen. Soon, I hope.

Do you think school offices is a good use for the old bank building? Or would you prefer the building to be used some other way? That is a real good commercial site. It might be better used for some retail or service business that would pay property taxes and would generate sales tax for the city coffers.

On the other hand, a couple-three free classrooms just fall into the school’s lap, which is good also.

Do you think the pluses outweigh the minuses? What is your opinion?

The school board formed a Facilities Needs Planning Committee to look at population growth in the Brandon Valley School District. The committee is supposed to do research and come back to the school board in June with recommendations on where new schools should be built, and about when that might happen, and other things of that nature.

Do you think this committee is a good idea? Do you have any predictions as to what their recommendations will be? What things would you like the committee to keep in mind as they put together their recommendations?

What do you think about Brandon hosting a didgeball tournament for the Amreican Festival?

It’s sort of an off-the-wall choice, don’t you think? (Pun intended.)

In my many years in the newspaper business, I’ve seen hundreds of announcements of summer events in towns all around the area. And to tell you the truth, they all pretty much offer the same sorts of things. So unless you’re from that particular town, what would draw you to that particular festival?

If Brandon wants to draw people into town, planners have to think of something that visitors can’t find in one of the other myriad summer festivals. So maybe dodgeball is just the ticket. We’ll find out this summer.

How successful do you think the dodgeball tournament will be?

We sure hear a lot in the media these days about overweight kids. Lots of schools have put in juice and milk vending machines and have taken out the pop machines. Some states are considering banning the use of trans fats in restaurants. In Sioux Falls and other places, community groups are creating exercise programs for kids so they become more active.

What brought us to this state? Was it air conditioning that kept people indoors in the summer? Was it television that encouraged kids to sit in one spot for long periods at a time? Was it computers, for the same reason? Was it the convenience of processed foods?

And what is the solution? What can we do in addition to the things mentioned above? For years, I’ve been a strong advocate of chores for children. There is always plenty of housework and yard work to be done. What kinds of things do you do in your home to combat the cursed calorie?

Do you rake your yard in the spring? My family didn’t when I was growing up. So we kids never had to do that work, but then again, we didn’t get to run and jump into a pile of leaves, either. My father said raking too early in the season would expose the new grass to possible cold spells that could kill it. And by later in the season, the grass was tall enough to hide any mulch that was left from the previous fall.

In the nearly 29 years I’ve lived in my current house, we’ve never raked the yard in the spring. On the last mowing of the yard in the fall, my husband mulches the clippings and puts them on the flower bed. By spring, they’re pretty well decomposed, or the residue can be turned and mixed with the soil.

What traditions do you have to keep your yard tidy in the spring?

A developer’s plan for Sunrise Estates would turn Rachelle Street into a sort of bike trail.

People who live between the city golf course and Bethany don’t have easy access to any of the other parks in town. Even to get to McHardy Park, which is closest to them, they’d have to cross Aspen Boulevard, which is one of the main drags in town.

Brandon is laid out between two rivers, which can limit access. Also, another of the city’s main drags, Holly Boulevard, dead ends halfway through town. If you happen to live on the east side, your kids can’t walk or ride bikes to school without having to cross some heavy traffic areas.

Do you think it’s important to make sure there are recreation areas available to folks who live east of Split Rock Creek and north of Aspen Boulevard? What can the city do to provide safe and easy access from there to other parts of town?

Let’s start using just one thread to talk about the ambulance issue. All previous posts will stay as they are, but please put any new posts under this “all things ambulance” heading. That way it will be easier for people to follow the dialogue.

Feel free to post any insights you have, as well as questions, complaints, praise or general comments.

Thanks.

Congratulations to the Brandon Valley boys basketball team for their third-place finish in the state tournament. I know the loss to O’Gorman was disappointing, but it wasn’t caused by lack of determination, spirit or hard work by the Lynx teammates. Good work, team. We’re proud of you.

This year I gave up chocolate for Lent.

Most years, I tell people I’m giving up hang gliding for Lent, but that’s mostly just in fun. This is the first year I really gave up something. It feels sort of good, knowing that I’m doing something formal on a day-to-day basis to observe this Christian season.

Are you giving up something for Lent this year? If so, what?

Since my family names include Moriarty and Mahaffey, I think I’m qualified to wish you the luck of the Irish today, St. Patrick’s Day.

It’s also my mother-in-law’s birthday, so in our family, we celebrate doubly much.

Do you have any St. Patty’s Day traditions?

The proposed city ambulance ordinance, #381, has been corrected and appears on this blog in the ambulance category. It now reads the way the City Council members originally voted it to read. The parts that were published incorrectly before were sections 6-7-12 and 6-7-15.

At last night’s forum, I heard statements that sound like there is some common ground. It seems like folks want good emergency care. Folks agree that the Brandon Police Department and the Brandon Volunteer Fire Department do a real good job of arriving at medical emergencies fast and taking care of patients as much as they are capable. And folks even agree that there are problems with the ordinance.

What I’d like to hear now are suggestions for alternative plans of action from the people who oppose the ordinance. If the ordinance fails at the April 10 election, what do you think should happen next? Should the City Council take another stab at rewriting Ordinance #381? Should they look real hard at reinstating Brandon’s old city ambulance ordinance? Should they forget about a city ambulance ordinance altogether?

Brandon could have 15,000 to 20,000 residents within 20 years. What kind of emergency services system do you think would be necessary in a town that size? What steps do you think Brandon should take to plan for that?

One suggestion that came from both sides of the table at last night’s forum was for the city to put more emphasis on increased training for the police and firefighters in town. The “vote no” side, during their opening statements, said, “If we’re going to spend money, maybe we should put it into training the people we already have.” Councilman Steve Rubin said the city and the fire department need to “get together as a team and work together …. I see that we need to do a better job there.”

Common ground.

The City Council is going to publish a corrected version of the proposed city ambulance ordinance. According to city administrator Dennis Olson, the Secretary of State’s office said that is the proper procedure if an ordinance gets printed incorrectly.

The corrected portions are part of a story that can be viewed on this Web site, www.brandoninfo.com.

So tonight at the public forum, which starts at 7 p.m. at Brandon Valley Middle School, let’s avoid rehashing the corrected points, ok? We shouldn’t waste the forum’s time with person after person getting up and saying to the council, “You said such-and-such,” and the council answering, “Yeah, but we fixed that.”

Here are a couple questions I have:

1. If Brandon passes this ordinance, who plans to apply for a license, if any? The two services that keep getting mentioned are Rural Metro and MedStar. Have either of them said for sure if they will or will not apply? Has anyone else?

2. If MedStar comes to my house but I say no thanks, my family will drive me to the hospital, will MedStar still charge me just for showing up?

Here are a couple things I learned after checking the City Council’s minutes, which were published at the time.

When the Council repealed the old city ambulance ordinance on Sept. 20, 2004, councilman Dan Mostek was the only council member to vote against repealing. (He said that at last week’s public forum.) Mostek was also the only person to vote against adopting Ordinance #381, the one we’ll vote on April 10.

On Nov. 1, 2004, Jay Masur of MedStar appeared before the City Council to ask for a license to operate an ambulance for Brandon. Here is an excerpt from the minutes of that meeting:

“Jay Masur appeared before the Council requesting that the Council write a new ambulance licensing ordinance so he can operate within the limits of the City of Brandon. After a lengthy and heated discussion, Alderman Polzin moved Alderman Rubin seconded to direct the City Administrator and City Attorney to work with Jay to draft a new ordinance and present it to the Council by the December 6, 2004 regular meeting. Motion carried.”

We can be grateful that Senator Tim Johnson is recovering from his life-threatening brain hemmorhage in December. We can hope he has a full recovery.

Today he released his first public statement since his incident. In it, he said he is “determined and focused” on on his recovery and he looks forward to returning to the Senate.

Given that his rehabilitation probably will take several more months, what do you think should happen to his seat in Congress? Shall it sit empty until Johnson can go back to work, or should someone do his job temporarily while he recovers? Should Johnson take this opportunity to retire? What do you think?

Congratulations to the Brandon Valley girls basketball team for their showing in the state tournament. To be eighth seed and finish out the season in fourth place is quite an accomplishment. Thanks for the hard work and good games, girls!

And here’s wishing the boys team much success in the upcoming tourney. Let’s go, Lynx!

If you didn’t have a chance to make it to Wednesday’s public forum on the proposed city ambulance ordinance, you have another chance next Wednesday. The Brandon Valley Area Chamber of Commerce and the Brandon Valley Challenger will sponsor the March 14 forum at the Brandon Valley Middle School media center, beginning at 7 p.m.

The forum will be moderated with a panel of four people, two for each side of the issue.

Council members have said the goal is to get more highly-trained emergency personnel than there are now on the scene faster than they do now.

If you don’t think this is necessary, vote no on April 10. But even if you think this is necessary, that doesn’t mean you should automatically vote yes. You still need to take another step.

You need to read the proposed city ordinance and the county ordinance it would replace. You can find the propsed city ordinance, and directions on how to find the county ordinance, in other posts in the “Ambulance” category on this blog.

Yes, I know the ordinances are long and might be boring to read. But someone’s life might depend on how well you educate yourself before you vote on this ordinance.

Once you have read and compared both ordinances, you still may have questions. I did. Ask those questions next Wednesday at the forum. Or ask them here on this blog. Or call your city council representative.

Then, on April 10, you will be able to make an educated vote on whether you think this ordinance will accomplish the goal of better and faster service, or if you think it won’t.

I recently read this in a news summary:

“More than 1,000 journalists and their support staff have died in the past decade, with Iraq and Russia topping the list as the deadliest countries for the profession, according to a report from the News Safety Institute (Wash. Post, p.A13*; N.Y. Times, p.A7*; AP).”

Not all journalists go on assignments that put them in danger, but a lot of them do so they can document things like wars, natural disasters and other tragedies. Our founding fathers thought this was so important that they added freedom of the press to the first amendment.

A lot of people know the first amendment guarantees free speech, but did you know it actually guarantees five rights?

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

You probably got the same flyer in the mail that I did, from Med-Star Paramedic Ambulance Inc. After reading it, I have the following questions. Do you know the answers? If so, post them here. In addition, I’m hoping City Council members will answer these questions at tonight’s public forum, which will be held at 7 p.m. at the Brandon Municipal Golf Course Community Room.

1. Are we to understand that the text under “Council Response” was written by Alderman Brett Karber? If so, did he write it as a council representative, or as a private citizen?

2. It says, “Response times were omitted (in the proposed Brandon ambulance ordinance) on recommendation by the City Attorney on the basis that if we specified a time that an in town service could meet but Rural Metro could not, than (sic) they would have an out not to come as back up.” Karber has said that fast response times are crucial, and I suspect most people would agree. . But if response times are crucial, why not address them in the ordinance, at least the acknowledge and en route times? By not mentioning them in the proposed city ordinance, presumably the city would default to the county ordinance on that point. The county ordinance requires acknowledgement of a call within 60 seconds, and an ambulance en route no more than 10 minues from time of acknowledgement. Are those guidelines sufficient for the City Council?

3. It says, “Brandon’s Ordinance refers to the Minnehaha County Ordinance as well as State Regulations with exception of sections where we exceed those guidelines.” Section 6-7-9 of the proposed city ordinance calls for a medical director who is a general practice physician licensed in South Dakota, but it doesn’t say the doctor has to have hospital privileges. By not mentioning hospital privileges one way or the other, does that mean the proposed city ordinance would default to the county ordinance (Section 1-6, No. 6) on that point and in fact require the doctor to have hospital privileges? If so, why not just write that into the proposed city ordinance? Or, if not, then why not specify that so the City Council’s intent is clear?

Government is run by those who show up. Please show up tonight at the public forum.

The City Council story on www.brandon.info.com today says one word in the following portion of the proposed city ambulance ordinance is incorrect. According to Council members, the verb “shall” in the following section should instead be “may.”

“The City of Brandon shall by resolution designate a medical doctor having staff privileges at a major trauma center hospital in Sioux Falls, SD, to conduct a review or reviews of licensed services, their employees, and each request for service to which a licensed ambulance service responds withing the City of Brandon.”

This brings to my mind the following questions. Do you know the answers to any of them? If so, please post them here. In addition, I’m hoping City Council members will answer these questions at Wednesday’s public forum, which will be held at 7 p.m. at the Brandon Municipal Golf Course Community Room.

I understand that there will be no moderator for the forum, but City Council members will be on hand to answer questions, as well as the mayor and the city attorney. In addition, the Council has invited representatives from Rural Metro, the deputy state’s attorney, the medical director for REMSA and the county, Brandon Volunteer Fire Department, Brandon Police Department and the state emergency medical services. Representatives from some or all of these groups may or may not be in the audience.

There’s an old saying that “Government is run by those who show up.” You, who are reading this, should be one of the people who show up. I hope you do.

Here are my questions based on today’s City Council story:

1. Hypothetically, what is the proper procedure to follow if an ordinance gets published with a mistake in it, whatever that mistake may be? It might be that an earlier version of the ordinance gets published by accident. It might be something as simple as a typo that changes the meaning of the ordinance. There must exist rules dictating how that should be handled. What are they? In this case, it looks like the word “shall” was in an earlier draft of the ordinance and that Council members chose to change that verb to “may.” They approved the second reading of the ordinance believing it said “may.” Yet, for whatever reason, the ordinance was published Dec. 13 with the word “shall.”

2. It also looks like, whatever the procedures are to correct such a mistake, these steps were not taken. Ideally, you’d think someone would have brought it up at the next council meeting after the Dec. 13 publication. It looks like nobody even mentioned the discrepancy until March, even though the ordinance was published in December. Why is that?

3. Now that the discrepancy has been identified, are there any steps the City Council can take to fix it before the election? And if not, do they intend to change “shall” to “may” if the ordinance passes April 10? That would require another first and second reading with publication and a 20-day wait, correct?

Cearly, there are many other reasons to vote for or against the ordinance than just this one verb. But it’s one of the issues of controversy in the ordinance. Let’s make sure we all know what we’re voting on before we go to the polls April 10.

Two deaths from flu have been reported this season in South Dakota. Let’s make sure someone from Brandon isn’t the next victim.

Does your workplace encourage employees to stay home if they’re sick? If so, do you?

Does your family have any traditions about when kids should stay home from school? When I was young, our family had a rule that if you ran a temperature or threw up, you automatically didn’t go to school the next day.

Do you keep antibacterial cleaners in your home? If so, do you use them, especially during the cold and flu season? A quick spray of Lysol on all surfaces people touch is a good idea. Hit the telephone receivers, door knobs, toilet handle, faucets and cabinet handles. It’s a good idea to keep antibacterial wipes in your desk at work, too, and wipe off your phone and keyboard every day.

What other precautions do you take?