OUR VIEW: Week in review: the best and worst

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OUR VIEW

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HISSES to the string of fires that has afflicted Mitchell of late. We reported in Saturday’s edition that the amount of property damage caused by fires this year alone in the city now tops $1 million, which in just four months is far more than the damage from most previous years. Firefighters interviewed for the story tended to think it’s just Mitchell’s time to be unlucky. We hope there’s nothing more to it, and that our luck will change.

HISSES to failed school board candidate Craig Guymon’s challenge of the June 5 results of the school board election. We agree that the errors in the results as they were originally reported was embarrassing, and for that the Davison County Auditor’s Office deserves criticism. Even if the vote-counting machine and its software were malfunctioning, a thorough review of the numbers by human eyes on Election Night could have avoided the necessity for a recount days later. But the recount was completed, and both the county and city canvassing boards have now certified the new results. We don’t think any further assurance of accurate results is necessary, and we fear that this lawsuit will be unnecessarily costly in money and time.

CHEERS to the Lake Mitchell Advisory Committee and the other city officials who are working on a plan for an improved boat ramp area near the Sportsmen’s Club at Lake Mitchell. Though some are criticizing the potential project because it could result in some lost trees, we hope discussion of the project continues. An open process that takes into account the concerns of the critics could produce a proposal even better than the one now envisioned. Far too little has been done to make our lake usable for this city’s residents, and we think any means toward that end is worth consideration.

CHEERS to U.S. Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., who last week was in the national spotlight for his chairmanship of the Senate Banking Committee. The committee questioned JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon about a lack of risk controls that led to $2 billion in trade losses, and Johnson was front and center. It’s good to know that in these troubled times for the nation’s financial sector, there’s a level-headed, hard-working South Dakotan impacting oversight efforts in Washington. Johnson is following in the footsteps of another South Dakota senator, Peter Norbeck, a Republican who was chairman of the committee during the Great Depression. Some of the lessons learned back then were obviously forgotten or ignored prior to the Great Recession, so it’s perhaps appropriate that another South Dakotan is in position to shepherd the reform process.

Tags: opinion, updates, editorials