South DaCola

Editorial Cartoonist from South Dakota

Bonita Schwan Elections

Congrats Bonita Schwan!

l3wis 2Comments

You may remember Bonita, she fought against Shape Places and ran for city council in Sioux Falls. She now lives on Marco Island in Florida. There was 6 people running for city council with 4 open seats, all at-large. The two incumbents lost and Bonita came in 3rd place!

BAFFLING ELECTION!

The Trump win was NOT a surprise. Harris ran for president for 107 days and Trump for 10 years. All the indicators were there that she did not have a clear path. I am going to try to keep a clear mind about his term and take it one day at a time. I’m not going to predict darkness, because sometimes those things happen organically 🙂 I do feel sorry for women and immigrants. At least we can drive to Minnesota in 20 minutes!

As for the ballot measures I saw a shift over the past week in sentiment. While I thought the gender thingy in the constitution would pass I was shocked it went down in flames. As a retired female politician said to me recently, “The state constitution hasn’t prevented me from serving the public, I’m voting no.”

I assumed the referred law 21 would go down. Anytime the citizens of SD have a chance to vote down legislation they do. I’m glad because even though I am a tree hugger, I think carbon capture is a farce and makes no sense.

I figured MJ would go down. It was one of the most poorly written ballot measures in state history! So you are allowed to HAVE some of the golden nuggs but you can’t buy it anywhere. WTF? So stupid.

I was surprised by the food tax and abortion, I thought both would pass by a narrow margin. The scare tactics worked. While I voted to eliminate the food tax because I think it is immoral to tax food, I am not disappointed it failed. I told everyone if this passes they will just jack up the retail tax rate on everything else which would actually hurt low income people even more since most of them don’t pay taxes on food anyway (giveaways and SNAP). Even if Abortion would have passed the SD Supreme Court would have thrown it out.

I figured Amendment H would fail, it was to confusing to voters. I supported it, but barely, I think it would have eliminated the SD Dem party. But as an Indy, I get tired of the parties controlling everything. I really think our country needs to move to a non-partisan system.

Most of the ballot measures were poorly written and were NOT 100% ready to be implemented. Almost every measure would have to go thru the legislature to be ‘adjusted’. That is a piss poor way to write these measures, they failed mostly because of the horrible language.

I’m willing to give Trump a chance, because I don’t really have choice. I tell my never Trumpers, take a deep breath and stay patient and queue the circus music! Hopefully the Dems take Congress so we can stop some of the nuttiness, but that also means NOTHING will get done over the next 4 years! Oh, and Ukrainians will need to learn Russian and the Palestinians, Hebrew. You can kiss the ‘two state solution’ goodbye.

Code Enforcement Sioux Falls

Update: What’s up with this place?

l3wis 5Comments

Update: I guess this guy is waiting for his insurance claim before he can tear down and build a duplex. Stay patient 🙂

I get so many emails about this place by numerous citizens that I decided to post it, it is at 33rd and Duluth. It was knocked off it’s foundation by a car hitting it, not sure when it happened but Google took this pic in September. A retired city employee told me that when he worked for the city, this would have been remedied pretty quickly. A city backhoe could literally tear this place down in 30 minutes (save the tree!);

Screenshot
Downtown Sioux Falls SF City Council Sioux Falls Washington Pavilion

The Pavilion to open an Ice Ribbon Bar?

l3wis 1Comments

I had heard rumors about this a few years back that since the City now can pull liquor licenses for their own facilities they would open a full liquor bar and restaurant at the new ice ribbon (Items #39-40). I don’t want to get into some moral argument about whether or not we should be selling alcohol at a city park facilities, we sell them at the golf courses and Great Bear, BUT, should the city be competing with other food and beverage providers in that downtown area? Or as one city official said to me ‘Why not contract with a PRIVATE restauranteur?’ The argument of drinking and skating aside being less then safe, I think it is bizarre we are building this facility but it seems the focus is on food and beverage? I also find it funny that a single beer will likely cost you DOUBLE of what a rental fee would be for the rink (ever bought a beer at the Pavilion for a show?)

I knew the Pavilion’s Darrin Smith had his claws in this contract for a couple of years now, so no surprise they are getting it, but like buying the Sanford Fitness Center, we are NOW competing with private business for absolutely NO reason. So is this an ice ribbon or a bar? Maybe right before they turn if off in the Spring they could fill it full of Jello Shots!?

OTHER CITY COUNCIL TIDBITS

Besides opening another bar downtown we don’t need the city is also having a Riverline District meeting, but it is entirely an Executive Session. So how is it that just regular folks that get appointed to a bogus committee get to see legal documents in an executive session? If they can be shared with them, normal members of the public, then those docs need to be shared in public with the public at the same time. This whole process is sooooo crooked it is not even funny.

Item #6, sub #3, is a funny one. $62K to tell the city the Canaries Stadium is a dump.

Item #42, Notice in this lease agreement where we are allowing Sanford to continue to use space we bought from them at the Wellness Center, it has NO dollar amount, just that it will be over $500 a year. Betcha they are leasing the space for $501 dollars a year. Wonder if any of the councilors will ask the actual lease amount.

Item #43, The mayor appoints a VP of banking to be on the Parks Board, and who says that board isn’t made up of regular folks!!! Because what we need is more rich people on that board! They just are not represented enough!

Items #44-45, the council moves to make Jim David boss of everyone, even the City Clerk. Weird. Has the city council lost confidence in their City Clerk?

Item #46, council makes a bunch of benign changes to policies. For instance, they are changing ‘public comment’ to ‘public input’. Doesn’t really matter, same thing, except that input is a broader definition of comment.

Item #47, Seems councilors want to ‘lock in’ a price on future rec bonds. Good Luck with that. They did that with Drake Springs then after they lost the election stole money from that pot for other park projects. A snot rag would have a greater legal standing then this resolution.

On a weird note, Harris may win the election by taking IOWA!!!!!!

Downtown Sioux Falls Sioux Falls Sioux Falls Parks and Rec

Update: What the heck are they building next to the Steel District?

l3wis 5Comments

Update: someone involved with the project reassured me that the Corps did sign off, the problem is the RR is taking their time on approval thru there easement. I have assumed from the beginning that the city would not be dumb enough to proceed without approval. Not sure if they followed plans, but that is a discussion for another day.

I took the above picture in the middle of September on a Saturday morning. I counted 15 construction hard hatted men inspecting what they have built so far.

According to this article;

It will take the next few weeks “to complete everything other than the low-head dam,” said Mike Patten, city parks planning and project manager. The plan is to work on that throughout the winter and into the spring as the city continues to work toward necessary approvals from BNSF Railway to fully complete the project.

This is an interesting ‘excuse’. The city received a $750K donation from Lloyd Companies to construct a picnic area but the city apparently is using some of the funds to create this diversion dam (they are calling it a low head dam, but it is NOT.) Last month the city brought in heavy equipment to build this dam that many local waterway advocates say is ‘troubling and suspicious’ because changing the natural flow of the river should never be an afterthought.

So after building 80% of the structure they suddenly stopped and then the above ‘inspection’ occurred. So why didn’t the city ask for permission from the Fed DOT to construct this before bringing in all the equipment? I don’t know. This is Federal easement land and those permissions also have to have the Federal Government involved, and we know the pace they move.

So the nagging question is, did the city get ANY permission from the Feds before starting this project? I don’t know. But it has all the signs of a ‘ask for forgiveness instead of permission’.

There are also some other interesting things going on, for instance there is a massive culvert that flows out into this area that comes from underneath the Sioux Steel district, and there has been a constant flow of water for over a month, and NO rain. Where is the water coming from? Is there that much seepage from the buildings and the quartzite underneath?

I believe the city had a convo in 2018(?) about this saying they wanted to raise the water levels next to the Steel District project 6 feet which would certainly flood the east bank everytime it rains. It’s fun to have dreams.

Some would say why don’t I just ask the city what is going on, oh I have made many attempts and the answer is always the same;

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Bonita Schwan Elections

Congrats Bonita Schwan!

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Code Enforcement Sioux Falls

Update: What’s up with this place?

Downtown Sioux Falls SF City Council Sioux Falls Washington Pavilion

The Pavilion to open an Ice Ribbon Bar?