Tony Blair on America

What A Great Answer

In case we find ourselves starting to believe all the anti-American sentiment and negativity about our government and its policies, we should remember England's Prime Minister Tony Blair's words to his own people.


During a recent interview, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Great Britain was asked by one of his parliament members as to why he believes so much in America. And does he think America is on the right track?



Blair's reply
"A simple way to take measure of a country is to look at how many want in ... and how many want out."

The Museum - The City vs. Everyone Else

The location of a new Sioux City Public Museum has been a hot(?) topic over the past few months and will quickly come to a head with presentations of prospective locations rollin out in the next few weeks.  Two sites are on the table...the lot next to the Art Center and the old JC Penneys building. 

In general the Council and City staff are pushing the Art Center location, presumably because they are intrigued by a new building, "synergies" with the Art Center (read elimination of positions down to one director, less maintenance, etc), and possibly future "better" use of the Penneys building for some large employer (or something).  

Pretty much everyone else under the sun outside of City Hall prefers the Penneys Building.  Thanks to a proposed donation of 1/2 of the space by the building owner, the pricetag of this option is roughly half of the Art Center site.  Behind the scenes there appears to be almost no support for the Art Center site. Representatives of the Museum Board and the AC Board both have expressed lack of interest in the AC site.  Since nobody with a vested interest appears to be stepping up to endorse the new building, and since someone will have to raise the $ for the project, the city should drop the AC location post haste (unless they want to toss in $4-5 million to make it feasible - which they don't) and embrace the Penney's location, giving the Museum some things it desperately needs like a big breath of fresh air, the ability to raise some form of endowment, and its own identity (since the museum entity would undoubtedly be absorbed over time by the AC in the other scenario). 

One thought in closing for the City and Museum Board - please spend a lot of time pondering and planning the content of the new museum and please DON'T just lob it off to some overpriced consultant to deal with.  The content is key and needs to be unique and Sioux City, we don't need the same science center crap everyone else has (a recent comment by someone closely involved suggesting a recreated stockyards exhibit with smell-o-rama and maybe animatronic cows getting slaughtered has great merit as it is our history - the smell of $).  Content is king.

And please don't try to raise private funds ($1 mil?) to reopen 4th Street as part of this project and campaign.  Let the City pay for that..

Welcome

Welcome to the Sioux City Blog. We aren't really sure where this blog will go, but the intent is to have a forum for subjects relevant to the Sioux City, Siouxland, and the Northwest IA/Tri-State Areas that aren't normally covered in the main stream media. We hope it will become another community sounding board, and that a diverse audience will find it interesting and accessible. We also hope that it will have some impact, and also at times provide some fun. It should be interesting...a senior high level City official, when informed of the formation of the Sioux City Blog, instantly and spontaneously developed a panicked look on his face, prior to getting somewhat excited about the prospects. Let's see where it goes...