2009

I guess we are ‘playing games’

l3wis April 11, 2009 0Comments

I guess you could say we are kind of in limbo right now;

City officials maintain that Citizens for a Responsible Sales Tax had to have approximately 5,000 signatures on file with the city clerk’s office at 5 p.m. Friday to force a vote. The group didn’t meet that threshold, and now officials say their effort is dead.

“They played the game and didn’t come up with the signatures. That’s the way it’s set up,” City Council Chairman Bob Litz said.

I never thought this was a ‘game’. Sure I come on this site and snark politicians for their ignorance, that is a game I play. But when it comes to election and petition laws and raising my taxes for foolish and harmful expenditures, I don’t play games. Maybe Bob thinks politics are a game, that’s unfortunate, since I have to pay his wages.

Under state law, petitions in municipal ballot measures can’t be counted if they’re older than six months. But the law doesn’t say a group only has six months to collect signatures, Secretary of State Chris Nelson said.

Funny thing, when you call our SOS and ask him a question, he answers it, but when you ask the city attorney’s office the same question, they play the game of cat and mouse. Which is no surprise, since they have been playing games since our drive started.

City Attorney Robert Amundson said he hadn’t looked at the issue.

“I haven’t been requested by my client to research it,” he said. “If I get that, you can rest assured this office would.”

The city isn’t your ‘client’ they are your ’employer’. Good old Bobby has said this several times in public meetings, like he is a paid private legal consultant. Your office is in city hall, you draw a paycheck from the taxpayers of the city, you are an EMPLOYEE of the city. The taxpayers of this city are your CLIENTS, and I don’t need a law degree to know that.

Why we fell short of the deadline-and why we are continuing

l3wis April 10, 2009 0Comments

Since Stormland TV just couldn’t wait to talk about our petition drive (though ignored us during the drive) I figured I better say something. About a month ago I decided that spending more time on the drive during March would be pointless since it would be next to impossible to get enough signatures (about 5,000) without more volunteers helping by the deadline.

Angel

I suppose I could blame a lot of ‘other’ people for not meeting the deadline, but it’s kinda hard to blame people who didn’t help to begin with. I blame my own selfishness and not going out more. I think that the signatures were out there, but the manpower wasn’t there to attain them.

As you know, I originally agreed to come on board with this AFTER it was decided to do the drive. Mainly because I didn’t believe in the tax increase and secondly because of my knowledge of the city council meetings.

Bread for the World started the drive and asked Theresa Stehly and I to be co-chairs. Initially I didn’t want to be a co-chair, but got aboard anyway. I felt the tax cut should have been deeper than 1.9% I thought it should have been about 1.75%. I see how much money this city WASTES on things, and I think they could have gotten by just fine on that amount.

The drive started out good in October, that first month I estimate we got about 1,000 signatures. It didn’t hurt that people were absentee voting and the courthouse was a hot spot. There was also a lot of volunteers from BFW helping with the drive. But once the weather got cold it was down to about four of us core people. BFW was also in Pierre lobbying to end the food tax, which I fully support, but they were unsuccessful (imagine that-that’s a dig on legislators, not BFW).

We gathered about 3,000 signatures in the 6 months we were at it, and talked to hundreds of petition signers at great length about city government and all the wasteful spending.

Maybe that’s the one thing I took from this drive, is that citizens aren’t as apathetic as you think they are in Sioux Falls. They know a lot more then you think when it comes to what the city is doing, and that is refreshing. I also was surprised that only about 10% of the people we asked to sign said NO. That was pretty shocking to me, I expected it to be around 40-50%. Like I said earlier, we had great support.

I also was surprised (or maybe not) by the lengths City Hall went to to try to derail us. Not only did they have one consultant mislead the public about the constitutionality of the initiative, but at one point actually flying in a consultant (at taxpayers expense) from Minneapolis to try to scare us into believing our drive would affect bond interest rates. I personally found that whole circus to be quite amusing, especially when Councilor De Knudson demanded in a public meeting we get a hold of the council ASAP then took it back the next day. It was a load of crap, and we knew it.

There was one other thing I took from it to, that 2010 will be ripe with grassroots candidates that want to see real progress in Sioux Falls, by putting citizens first and growing Sioux Falls and it’s economy from the ground up, not from the top down. We will have a new mayor and up to four new councilors, this will be a prime time to implement real change for the city (not trying to sound like Obama).

I am supporting two candidates for sure and anybody else who agrees with my populist views.  I don’t care what party you belong to. I will give any candidate that I agree with philosophically FREE graphic and marketing services, and might even knock on some doors for you.
Don’t get me wrong, this won’t be an easy fight for the grassroots populists, the special interests and developers will be throwing a lot of money at the established candidates so they can print slick postcards and put up fancy billboards and websites, but I think this time the people will win in 2010.

I would like to end by thanking anybody who helped with the drive so far and the people who signed the petition, especially Theresa, Matt, Kathy, Russ, Kermit and Emmet.

NOW, for the rest of the story . . .

We may have missed the deadline, but we plan to continue, state and city charter are murky about having an actual deadline and having a ‘rolling date’. We think that as long as the signatures are gathered within a 6 month period, it does not matter what that period is. Obviously we need clarification, but City Hall and the Attorney’s office isn’t talking. SOS, Chris Nelson told KELO that we may be right. As we see it, that is up to city charter, but as usual the city is being big babies about answering constituents questions (I guess they keep forgetting who pays their wages). The city clerk requested that information from the city attorney’s office this week, and they refused to give it. This makes me suspect we are right about the rolling date.

I have always felt that our biggest obstacle was the weather, so hopefully we can continue. We’ll see I guess. Hopefully the pouting in the City attorney’s office will be over by Monday, so we have an answer, but I am not holding my breath.