VIEWPOINT: Being thankful for who we are
Guest column by Joe Kippley
With almost one year completed in my role as a Minnehaha County Commissioner, I wanted to take some time to reflect on what we have to be grateful for this Thanksgiving season.
It is easy to be jaded about the national political scene especially with performative politicians that play up grievances to gain attention. However, it looks different if we turn our attention closer to home and find an antidote to a culture of grievance with a spirit of gratitude.
We are blessed with many local businesses, civic associations, religious communities, and non-profit organizations. We have excellent options for our kids with public and private education. We can go about our days free to engage as we please with a strong civic society from school to work, from church to a local restaurant, from a book club to a Rotary Club – all the while rarely needing to interact with government let alone Washington, DC.
Our local government runs on lean budgets with professional and courteous employees who do their best to serve the public. Our local culture has largely resisted the need to look at every issue through a prism of nationalized politics. It has been said that there is no Republican way or Democratic way of fixing a pothole.
We have a county sheriff and a city police chief that get along and work well together. That isn’t something we should take for granted, and it isn’t the case in a lot of other places. Public safety is a challenge, but we don’t have turf wars, egos, and bureaucratic red tape making it harder than it needs to be. The new public safety campus shows that our community has been willing to invest in our first responders while some other parts of our country didn’t share that same priority.
We have a diversified economy with an agricultural foundation that has added on banking, finance, healthcare, and an entrepreneurial culture. Partnerships with area colleges continue to set us up for the careers of the 21st century. One of our biggest problems continues to be creating more jobs than we have people to fill them – which is still much preferable to a hollowed-out economy with no growth and no opportunity.
We have an amazing network of city parks, libraries, bike trails, and recreational activities. We have two outstanding health systems that compete on clinical quality and cooperate on community initiatives.
Minnehaha County is blessed with everything that makes South Dakota a great place to live. We are as urban as our state gets while having some of the highest agricultural production. We have small towns with their own identity and character that will never be merely “suburbs” of Sioux Falls.
Most of all, we can be thankful for our people. I had to leave South Dakota for a while to gain this appreciation. When I told someone that I was from South Dakota, his eyes lit up as he gave an insightful commentary on the nature of our people. He said South Dakotans always ask “how are you” and more importantly they actually listen to the answer. I hope we never lose that quality of caring for our neighbors and genuinely listening to their needs.
Finally, I want to thank all those serving in our South Dakota National Guard. Many of these soldiers and airmen have day jobs in our community and exemplify the best of our neighbors by standing ready to respond to natural disasters and international events. May God bless them, and may God continue to bless our great state of South Dakota. Happy Thanksgiving!
Joe Kippley is a Republican member of the Minnehaha County Commission.
