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South Dakota is enjoying an unusually warm and dry early spring. Snow geese passed through a couple weeks early, tulips are popping out of the ground and, in what was a relief for thousands of high school basketball fans, the annual threat of a state tournament blizzard never materialized.
Read moreA couple of days ago my wife Brenda and I had a meeting in Aberdeen so we traveled north on highway 281 towards our destination. The landscape along this way is pretty flat with not much to see except lots of farm land. After 98 miles of driving time we came to the town of Wolsey. We joked about how many people in South Dakota probably have no idea where Wolsey even is. We joked about it for awhile and then we saw it had a population of about 459 people. I commented on what was probably not happening in Wolsey on a typical day, when all of a sudden we saw 9-10 fairly new houses on the edge of town. We were surprised with what we saw and then we felt like we needed to stop and ask some people how this happened, but we had not extra time to stop. We clearly changed our joking and started talking rather serious about what they were doing to promote housing growth that we were not. Since this was not the case, we drove on and talked some more about what kind of people must live there and what kind of leadership they must have to help make this growth happen. We tried to think about the last time we saw a new house go up in the city limits of Wagner and why it is so hard to come up with the answer. Do you know the answer to this basic question? If you do, you have a better memory than we did. We wondered what was standing in our way when we know it has been talked about a lot, but no action ever takes place. What kind of leaders need to be leading to help change this story? What ever the answer is it seems to elude us year after year. When will this change and what will it take to change the road we seem to be on?
Read moreRail to Trail updated Tyndall to Platte: On January 29 I attended the first meeting on the Rail to Trail Project. After we introduced ourselves, the main spokesman for the friends group commented that I, Ed Van Gerpen, should not be permitted to speak because of letters in the paper indicated that I didn’t support the R&T Project. Without support from others at the meeting, he wasn’t able to silence me. I then reminded him we live in America and still have Freedom of Speech. It appears they want to use intimidation to silence the opponents. The purpose of this meeting was to set guidelines for when the engineers do the feasibility study, a project taxpayers are paying for.
Read moreThe Bon Homme County Commissioners have voted to have me represent Bon Homme County in the controversial Rail to Trail Project.
Read moreI am writing this letter to make taxpayers aware of some recent decisions your county commissioners have made that have detrimental impacts on several small businesses in Charles Mix County.
Read moreUpdate on Rails to Trail (Tyndall-Platte) When this project started a law firm, Lewis Rice out of St. Louis, Mo. sent letters to landowners to have them sign a contract so they could represent them when the lawsuits start.
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When you’re new to deer hunting, it can seem hard to figure out your first hunt.
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