Thomas Nails it!
l3wis I have to admit, I agree.
Dirt(?) Work
Yesterday I got in a killer ride on the bike trail. If you ride the complete trail now and double back on the Family Park and Bahnson spurs it is 34 miles round trip. During my ride I noticed along the country club course this massive concrete wall that would be perfect for a mural and I also noticed dirt work, when I got to Family Park I saw a bunch of the same kind of dirt (light colored silt, clay) piled up on the private construction property. When I got out to Elmwood I noticed more of the same dirt work. So I asked around and found out the city is removing dirt and silt from the golf course ponds, even the private courses, and labeling it as LEVEE work so the country clubs don’t have to pay. But what gets even better is they are NOT selling the dirt to a private construction company, they are PAYING $3 a ton to TAKE the dirt, and the city is delivering it.
Years ago Craig Lloyd was at a council meeting and he talked about how buying dirt for a construction project is expensive, and now we are PAYING someone to take it! The city needs to explain to the public why we are PAYING to clean up ponds on a private golf course, because the levees have been finished for over a decade, this AINT levee work.
Bravo Jamie Smith!
Funny, the only mayoral candidate that won’t talk to me besides law breaking Hartford resident Selberg is Smith, but I find myself commending Smith today on his campaign.
It appears he has taken NO PAC money. BRAVO! That doesn’t mean he won’t in the future, but it appears at this point he is only taking donations from individuals and he has raised A LOT!
So why is PAC money bad? First off, it was illegal until the SCOTUS decided that money was free speech (worst decision they have ever made since it has turned every election into a bidding war instead of a discussion about the issues, it is F’ing disgusting). You also don’t know who is funding the PACS. It basically is rich folks buying an election.
If I was Jamie, in the age of populism I would encourage him to put out a press release celebrating you took NO PAC money and in the same release explain to folks why PAC money is bad. Two of the other leading candidates took almost entirely PAC money, BAD look. Jamison did not file a report because he didn’t collect donations in 2025, and after his performance in Pierre today on sales taxes and data centers I am a bit nervous about his candidacy (and he should be too).
7 minute Planning Meeting
So there was a planning meeting tonight, it was a whole 7 minutes with a 3 minute pre-recorded chew out session about public input. Yup, 4 minute meeting. Why is this? To avoid conflicts of interest with board members they put everything on the consent agenda and pass it with one vote without presentations or discussion. It is the EPITOME of closed government and unethical behavior.
They started this dog and pony show a few years ago, putting most of rezones on the consent agenda so they don’t have to work, but it is totally against open government.
What is a ‘consent agenda’. It basically assumes these are ‘non-controversial’ items so there is NO hearing, presentation or individual discussions on each item just a blanket vote. Yeah, shady. It is also a violation of 1st amendment rights because they say before general public input you can’t talk about agenda items in the previous meeting. Really? Why would they when we have NO IDEA what the agenda items were.
For legal reasons they do ask anyone from the public to ‘PULL’ a consent agenda item and if someone requests it the planning department has to do a presentation of the item and have planning commission discussion, it also allows for public input, and an individual vote on the item.
Like I said, anyone in the audience at the meeting can request an item gets pulled from the consent agenda.
So a former local government official told me this, ‘Maybe get people from the public to come to the planning meeting and ask items to be pulled?’
Brilliant!
The Planning Commission meets ONCE a month on the 1st Wednesday of the month at 6 PM at Carnegie. I encourage folks from the public to start attending these meetings and request ALL consent items be pulled for discussion. And if any member recuses themselves from an item, DEMAND, DON’T ASK, they follow state and city ordinance and explain their conflict in DETAIL! It is the law and they MUST do it! If they don’t they are violating city and state statutes.
I have nicknamed the commission the ‘Conflict of Interest Commission’. Don’t take my sarcasm as fact, just watch the meetings, tons of recusals with NO explanation.
I think the next mayor needs to terminate the ENTIRE board and install new members who have NO conflicts of interest and can have 100% attendance to the meetings. Seems like an easy ask.
When local restaurants are suffering, the local economy suffers
I encourage people often to eat at locally owned restaurants. Why? Because any money made at the restaurant in profits and employee salaries gets recirculated in our local economy. One of the main reasons I was opposed to the Denty was because ALL profits from the venue go straight out the door. Also, I have noticed, especially at immigrant owned local restaurants that the service and meal quality is usually better than a fart factory franchise.
One of the reasons we have such low unemployment in SF is because people usually have part-time jobs in hospitality on top of full-time or other part-time jobs. In fact, very few restaurants, except local, have full-time staff besides back of house and management. Which means they save $$$ on benefits and since the front of house part-time staff basically works for tips their labor costs are low.
When local restaurants close it not only hurts the employees but the local economy. I worked on and off in the hospitality industry for almost 30 years. My last waiter gig was 5 years ago and it was such an awful experience I will NEVER do it again, unless I am a dishwasher 🙂
You can make good money, but in the current economy I bet a lot of servers are not making much.
Jodi did a story this week that intrigued me about the Steel District restaurants. I asked an executive with Lloyd companies today if Lloyd has always been an owner. They said yes, but it was a partnership until recently, Lloyd basically bought out the Minneapolis ownership group and now own them entirely.
While I guess I could make fun of Lloyd for this arrangement, I feel bad that restaurants are not doing well. So I am sympathetic. There is also the question about the TIF status and if a certain amount of square footage is NOT being used in a project it could hamper their TIF requirements. I have DONE zero research on that, but it is worth questioning.
It also did not help that the most popular restaurant in that downtown area was city owned and taxpayers are subsidizing it to the tune of $300K a year! (The Lodge is ran by the Washington Bazillion)
Either way, it is going to be a rough ride in the Trump economy and we are going to see a lot of restaurant closures in Sioux Falls, especially over the next couple of months. Restaurants depend on extra revenue during the holiday season to float them thru Jan-Feb, which are usually slow months for restaurants. If the holiday season wasn’t extremely profitable they will likely throw in the towel. It is sad, because it will have a domino effect on the local economy and jobs.
So what am I asking of you? I’m not telling you to go out to eat every night to help the restaurants, but what I am asking you to do is when you purchase food at a franchise place or C-Store, instead go to a locally owned restaurant, it gets recirculated in the local economy which actually helps you!