Overheard Today at LAIC Annual Meeting

Today's Lake Area Improvement Corporation annual meeting was a potpourri of bits and pieces about Madison. (It also was a free lunch -- good potato chips!) Among things seen and heard:

--Darin Namken received the LAIC's Community Service Award. In business for 20 years, single-handedly doubling (tripling? more?) the number of DSU grads we manage to keep here to live and work, donating all sorts of web space and service to various groups -- he's a busy community booster.

--Jerry Johnson and Mechelle Nordberg don't plan to run for re-election to the city commission (the apparent consensus at my table: who can blame them?). Possible candidates: Myron Downs* (who has served before) and Monica Campbell (a force to be reckoned with!).

*Update 2008.01.31: I spoke with Myron himself last night. He says no way is he running for anything. Another correspondent with a nose for news says he'll be surprised if we can come up with a full slate of candidates for any of the open offices -- city, school, or county.

--Outgoing LAIC President Jim Iverson reported that the LAIC helped create 125 new jobs in 2007, including positions at Rosebud, CE Attachments, and Farmers AG Center (the merging F&M Coop and Farmers Elevator, which also received the Growth and Achievement Award). Choose your preferred level of optimism: these gains offset the loss of 18 jobs from Pavement Services, Inc. and 89 jobs from Arctic Cat.

--We got visits from our Congressional delegation, or at least from their field reps. Steven Dahlmeier came and said hi from Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin. Carmyn Asencio (another old debater who loves South Dakota!) represented Tim Johnson, while John Thune's staffer Ben Ready was the lonely Republican at the front table. All sang praises of the stimulus package. Ready said Thune is considering tacking an infrastructure/transportation bond measure onto the stimulus package, allowing states to sell bonds for highway projects instead of raising taxes. Ready also emphasized that the stimulus package is deficit spending, something he vaguely associated with the Democratic leadership's lack of attention to that issue. Ready then in the next breath expressed Thune's readiness to buck the President's staunch opposition to earmarks to bring home "necessary" projects for South Dakota.

--New LAIC president Mike McDowell laid out some goals for the LAIC this year. Among them:

1. develop and implement the housing study (to be released Feb 20)
2. apply for Rural Development grants (also known as government handouts, right? ah, socialism)
3. implement a Main Street program (holy cow! where do we sign up to help?!)
4. do an economic impact study on Highway 34 to persuade Congress to write us an earmark for our four lanes to I-29!

--And the LAIC will be hiring yours truly at $150/hour to conduct a three-day seminar on how to avoid plagiarism. Oh, no wait -- sorry! Wishful thinking. I've already told them how to do that. Silly me, giving away all that information for free....