While I’m on the fence about whether the city council should have a say in city contracts, I always find the quotes entertaining from councilors;
“At some point of time, I think we are delving too deep into something,” he said. “I don’t want to be responsible for buying toilet paper.”
Toilet paper? I thought the city only bought tissues for Mike’s crying bouts?
By having the contracts listed on the agenda, taxpayers can see how the city is spending its money and local contractors can find out about business opportunities with the city, Brown said.
“I don’t need to know every contract, but maybe there’s one on the list that I’m interested in,” Brown said.
I would even go a step farther and post this stuff, daily. I have often said that the city should have a daily news website. We spend millions on media services and Channel 16, would it be so hard to maintain a city website page that had daily updates on city business and a forum. I have actually had this idea for a long time. If Kermit would have won, I was going to pitch it to him.
In the 1990s, city commissioners approved contracts on the consent agenda, where councilors approve the items in one vote without discussion.
Why that changed is unknown, City Clerk Debra Owen said.
Now, the council will approve some contracts and not others. No threshold has been established.
This just proves how disjointed our city charter is, it seems it is up for interpretation depending on who is in office. And we sit around and wonder why the city has so many lawsuits against them. Two pending with the SD Supreme Court (that they will probably lose).
Assistant City Attorney Karen Leonard said that as a general rule, the directors decide which contracts to bring to the council for a vote. Those that the council doesn’t approve are signed off by other city officials and reviewed by the city attorney’s office.
The City Charter doesn’t address the issue, but state law says, “No contract of a municipality is valid unless the contract has been authorized by a vote of the governing body …”
Oh, look at that, the city is trying to trump state law, once again. Will they ever learn?
Public Works Director Mark Cotter expressed concern that requiring council approval would slow the process of getting a project started. The state routinely takes 15 days for the contract process, while the city sometimes uses up to 30 days, he said.
“If we extend that out to 45 to 60 days, it’s going to affect the execution of that project,” Cotter said.
OMG! LMFAO! Since when is the city concerned about ‘timeframes’? This reminds me of when Munson had to approve a 100% budget increase on Phillips to the Falls in the middle of the night because time was of the essence. Years later, the city still owns the property. Funny how these things are time sensitive when misdeeds are going on, but take forever when it will improve citizen services (IE; Snowgates, infrastructure).
The council is responsible for approving the budget and authorize the spending, Entenman said.
“At some point in time, we have to trust the 1,200 employees and let them do their job. If they don’t do their job, we fire them,” he said.
Jim makes me laugh. Classic bully. He seems to live in some fantasy world that when city employees fuck up, they get fired. Yeah, it only took the city 16 years to fire Tornow, so he is probably right. I remember several years ago when I worked for a small print shop (my first job out of technical school) Mr. Entenman was one of our clients. His deadlines were ridiculous with his newsletter, but we always met them, but one time he flipped a lid to our boss because we couldn’t turn a newsletter in one day (layout, print, mail). He even suggested that we suck as employees and should be reprimanded or fired. This has stuck with me over the years, and has taught me one thing about Councilor Entenman; just another greedy person in politics who is watching their own back.
I also want to touch on Jen Holsen’s defense of the city’s policy, like a typical beauracrat she defends the current system, citing city ordinance (which is unconstitutional on ten million different levels);
It seems clear to me, at least, that contract authority and administration rests with the mayor and his administration. To pursue changing this process so the council can approve city contracts is not good business sense and will certainly bog down the business of the city.
Oh, how sweet, just like a good city employee director lap dog, she bows down like Mark Cotter did and claims ‘Time is of the essence.’ Like I have said before, the city council should be a check and balance against the mayor and his directors. If they do not have the power to be that, why have them at all?
l3wis 
