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• The ideal solution would have been to keep Evans Plunge in private hands that would have guaranteed public access and kept it open all year. Before last week's vote, a group of businessmen came forward with an interest to buying the Plunge, but the vote to allow the city to borrow up to $1.9 million to buy and restore Evans Plunge may price them out of the running to buy the swimming pool.
• Evans Plunge is the oldest tourist attraction in the Black Hills. Its naturally heated mineral waters have been drawing visitors to the area well before there was a carving at Mount Rushmore and is the reason that there is a VA medical center in Hot Springs to begin with.
• Voters recognized that Evans Plunge is important enough to the identity of Hot Springs and its future to authorize the city to buy it. Modernizing the Plunge building and keeping it open year-round will cost Hot Springs taxpayers more money, as the current owners will attest.
• If the city modernizes its facilities and successfully markets Evans Plunge to the many thousands of visitors to the Black Hills every year, the purchase could turn out reasonably well. The important thing is that the public will continue to have access to the warm mineral waters of Evans Plunge.
• We don't expect Hot Springs to operate Evans Plunge as well as a business might, but a lot of towns have city-owned swimming pools and recreation facilities, and it won't be unheard of for Hot Springs have its own municipal swimming pool with Evans Plunge.
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• Capital Journal, Pierre, April 7, 2013
• Daugaard right to focus on China trade
• Gov. Dennis Daugaard was the first South Dakota governor to visit China in nearly two decades when he first visited the country in March 2012, and this week he is in China again with a considerably larger delegation of private industry representatives than when he first went. This seems to us wise and far-sighted when only Canada and Mexico are bigger importers of South Dakota goods.
• The governor has apparently had other invitations from countries in Europe and South America after his 2012 China trip, but he prefers to focus on China rather than spreading the state's resources too thin.
• Again, this seems to us a good use of state resources. We have an established trading partner and a good rail line to the Pacific. China is the bird in the hand.
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