BrandonInfo.com

According to one resident of the Stone Ridge Addition, some lots are having bad drainage problems. Brent Lyng told the city council recently that his yard, and those of three of his neighbors, has standing water. It’s difficult to mow, he said. He wanted the city to do something about it.

When new neighborhoods are built, it’s the developer’s responsibility to make sure the drainage is appropriate in the first place. But what if the developer doesn’t do that?
Council members are quoted in a Nov. 19 Brandon Valley Challenger story as saying it’s the property owner’s responsibility to fix drainage problems on their own property. Do you agree?

Under what circumstances should the city fix drainage problems, in your opinion?

The school board last week said no to gym seats that would have more leg room and more head clearance than standard bleachers. These fancier bleachers would have cost $30,000 more than the standard ones.

Some board members said they promised no frills when they advocated for the $23 million they needed to build the new gym, new grade school and to make improvements at the high school and Valley Springs Elementary. And they’re sticking to that promise, they say. At least one board member said that since some costs have come in under estimates, the district could spring for the nicer bleachers and still not exceed the $23 million overall.

Do you attend events in the Brandon Valley High School gym? Would you like more leg room? Would you like to be able to see over people’s heads easier? If so, is it worth $30,000 to you?

I’ve already attended my first holiday party of the season, and it’s not even Thanksgiving yet.

Christmas merchandise is in all the stores already.

Is it too soon?

I make many of my gifts, so I have to start early. It’s hard to create ornaments in time if the cards of jingle bells, for example, don’t appear in the craft stores until into December.

Lots of people put their tree up on Thanksgiving Day or shortly thereafter. If you’re in the market for a new (artificial) tree, it’s hard to put it up on Thanksgiving if it doesn’t appear in the stores until December.

And it’s always nice to get the lights hung on the house before the real cold weather sets in.

But is it all too much, too soon? Can we maintain the Christmas spirit when Santa and Rudolph are among the Trick-or-Treaters?

The Argus Leader had this question as an online poll question Saturday. Out of 1,339 responses, 85.1 percent said yes, Christmas comes too early at stores. And 14.9 percent said no, it doesn’t. Where do you fit in there?

I grew up on Sylvan Circle in Brandon, and our back yard abutted Highway 11. Before my fifth-grade year, the Brandon Valley School District changed the boundaries. Everyone east of Highway 11 (Splitrock Boulevard) had to go to Valley Springs Elementary.

I wasn’t happy. I said I’d pitch a tent in the ditch across the road and establish residency there so I still could go to Brandon Elementary, where my friends were.

Didn’t happen, though. I went to sixth and seventh grades in Valley Springs. I think it was a good experience. I made new friends. Coincidentally, a couple of kids I knew from kindergarten in Sioux Falls had moved to Valley, and I got reacquainted with them in Valley Springs. Plus, when both grade schools came together in junior high, I already knew everyone.

Next year, Brandon Valley Schools will open its fourth elementary school. Someone has to attend there. Will it be your child? Maybe he or she will be upset, like I was, to have to leave friends in one school to attend another. But maybe your child will make new friends, like I did, and will be grateful in middle school and high school for those early connections with fellow students.

What do you think about the new school boundaries the district is proposing? Post your thoughts and questions here, and we’ll do our best to respond. And if you have questions, you can ask them at two upcoming public forums at the middle school media center (library), on Nov. 24 and Dec. 8.

The elementary schools in Brandon are looking for PTA officers for next year. Current board members say it is become harder and harder to find officers each year. It’s becoming harder to find enough volunteers to work at PTA-sponsored events, too.

PTA officers say it doesn’t take very much time, but some parents think it does take a lot of time. As always, the more people who are involved, the easier it is on everyone.

Many parents say they are too busy to make a time commitment as an officer in any organization. Many people say they are too busy to volunteer to work at events. But what are we all so busy doing? Do you work 40 hours a week? 50? 60?

Do you spend many hours a week cleaning your house? Tending to your lawn? Caring for your vehicles or pets?

Do you attend every single meeting of every single activity that every single one of your children is involved in? Is doing that a good thing? Or is it overkill?

It seems the bigger the town gets, the more people think that someone else will do the work. In smaller towns, sometimes people understand better that if they don’t do it, no one will.

What do you think?

There are people who are upset when their neighbors park in front of their mailboxes.

Other people are upset because the whole block’s worth of mailboxes is in front of their house.

People have been complaining to City Hall about this.

I called Brandon Postmaster Dennis Heilman, and this is what he told me:

The city doesn’t control where the boxes are located. The post office does.
Residents have mailboxes at the curb instead of on their houses because Brandon has rural delivery. We have that because that’s how it was originally set up. It’s not likely to ever change.

The older parts of town have a mailbox in front of each house because that’s the way it was done when those houses were built. In newer parts of town, the post office is requiring boxes to be grouped together. That is to save wear and tear on the post office vehicles and to make delivery easier for the carriers.

The post office would be happy if residents would put those fancy commercial mailbox things on the corners of the blocks. The post office never owns the boxes. The residents always own the boxes.
If someone has a problem with a neighbor parking in front of, or otherwise obstructing access to, their mailbox, they should call the police, not the post office.

Have you had troubles with your mailbox? What kind of troubles? If you had trouble with your neighbor, have you talked to him? Have you talked to the post office? The police?

If you’re on a block where the post office requires you to have your boxes grouped, did they tell you specifically where the boxes had to be? If not, can they be moved to a place where they aren’t near a driveway? Would it be possible to move them to the corner of the street?

The postmaster said it’s unlikely that Brandon will ever have walking mailmen. But I suspect Sioux Falls at one time was rural delivery too. Eventually it got so big things changed. Brandon is growing all the time. It’s estimated that within 20 years, it will be among the top five most populated cities in the state. Will we then still have rural delivery?

Would you even want a mailbox on your house instead of at your curb?

What is your analysis of the presidential election results? Are you happy at the outcome? Not so much? What do you predict for the next four years?

The polls are busy today, my friends. This is an e-mail I got from my husband, who stopped by the fire hall to vote on his way to work this morning:

“I got to the firehall at 7:15. Cars were parked down to the daycare, up to Casey’s and two blocks directly east as well as the fire hall parking lot. The line at the building went around inside the firehall, outside the south door, around the east side and midway along the north wall. It took 45 minutes to get to a voting booth.”

But even if you have to wait in line, it’s worth it. Please exercise your right to vote today. Make the best decision you possibly can, and let’s all hope for the best for our country in the next four years.