Hank Harris photo of the day
l3wis 
June 2012
UPDATED: Director Smith mocked during Land Use Committee meeting
Full-time director, part-time court jester
During the meeting, Dunham asked for a TIF to build affordable housing. After his presentation, Director Smith explains the city’s involvement with affordable housing. (starts at 24:30).
He pretty much admits that the city loses money on the deal, and tries to defend it by saying it is an ‘investment’ because if they wouldn’t build these homes, the city would lose money on code enforcement actions.
While I do understand his argument, no one is forcing the city to help pay to tear down older homes. The property owner should be responsible for those costs, not the taxpayer. If they cannot afford to fix up their property or tear down a home, it should go into foreclosure and become the bank’s problem.
Kermit then says to Director Smith, “So all these houses the city has built, we have lost money on?”
And Smith says, “They are investments.” in which the entire chamber busted up laughing.
Staggers points out, “Most people who invest money and they lose money, they call that a bad investment.”
Darrin reiterates his original argument about code enforcement, and didn’t seem to pleased that no one understood his argument.
Karsky and Anderson defend the practice. Staggers points out that the argument of investment is anecdotal information, because no one knows if we are saving money by making this ‘investment’.
UPDATED: I’m starting to wonder if Darrin even understands his department’s budget and how it works? And does he even understand prevention? Prevention shouldn’t start at demolition. As I have pointed out in the past, there are ways the city can provide assistance to property owners without giving them a handout, such as community development loans and even considering TIF’s to private property owners. By seizing and buying a foreclosed piece of property, all we are doing is bailing out the bank that owns the property. As taxpayers we are not benefiting from this lost CIP revenue that could be better spent on roads, sewers or parks actual INVESTMENTS in our community.
The plot thickens over the SOS scandal
There is so many angles to this story, I could have never imagined this many termites coming out of the woodwork.
Apparently this all started in 2010 when Gant was running for office, with the help of BK Jr;
In light of the recent developments regarding Secretary of State Jason Gant and his possible impeachment, I would like to bring forth additional information that shows this inappropriate commingling of business and public service between the duo goes back at least as far as his run for the current office he now holds.
Back in my run for office in 2010 against Jason Gant and Ben Nesselhuf, I wanted to order signs from a South Dakotabusiness. The only one that I could find online just so happened to be Pat Powers’ business. The reason I completely ruled it out was that Gant had basically taken over part of his website stating that using this business would be like contributing to his campaign for Secretary of State. He implied in writing that proceeds from Powers’ sign business would help him to get elected.
There were 3 things that had immediately jumped out at me regarding this situation:
1. Any contributions made through doing business with Dakota Campaign Store would be in essence unreported and undisclosed political contributions that could be hidden from the public under the disguise of sales by a business rather than political contributions subject to reporting requirements and the maximum donation limit by an individual of $4,000.
2. In Sioux Falls alone, Jason Gant’s signs blanketed the area. If these signs were in a round about way donated to Jason Gant’s campaign through Pat Powers’ business, the value should have been in the thousands of dollars and should have been reported as “in kind” contributions on Gant’s campaign finance report. I never found anything on his reports that could have taken into account the potentially large dollar amount of the value of these signs.
3. Any candidate that had a potentially unlimited supply of campaign materials would certainly hold an unfair advantage over his 2 opponents.
Oh, but Stacey’s story is just the tip of the iceberg (a IT specialist who just happens to be a loyal foot soldier sent me this information this morning);
DWC was down so they could move their server to a private server routed through an Albany NY service from a public Utah service. In this process they can attempt to lose the archives to send investigators into blank servers. The data posted as #50 testor15 on 05.11.12 at 4:21 pm was the old server where the offending data was located.
dakotawarcollege.com, dakotacampaignstore.com, patpowers.com all have the same hidden webserver 66.152.109.31.
The last known link to each is through an IP, Tech Valley Communications, Albany NY. Tracing route to each is  [66.152.109.31] you will notice in the document below 16 jumps labeled “ *       *       *    Request timed out.â€Â This means the IP translation service is attempting to find the actual server but is now hidden. It could be located in a garage in Pierre or Timbuktu. This is very likely someone playing a game they should not be. Someone in Pierre with Brookings connections may have been working very hard on his ‘vacation’ from the web to cover his tracks.
PP is trying to keep the site private. “Bill Clay†was on ‘vacation’ during the time it was ‘down’. His post telling us so:
Stop jumping to conclusions
Jun25
2012 4 Comments Written by Bill ClayI went on a family vacation for a week and when I got back to town I was told told a certain respectable legislator wants to put my face on a milk carton for a missing persons report.
(I suppose I should have given notice before going out of town)
Lots has happened over the past week and I’m looking forward to posting about it.
IP trace document;Â trace
Thanks for the compliments
It used to be I was scoffed by many people, angry conspiracy theorist and all. But over the past year I have gotten nothing but positive feedback, donations and encouragement, and not just from people I know, but readers and commenters.
Several commenters have even came ‘out of the closet’ and have approached me in public and told me their screen names.
This is what I have wanted South DaCola to be, a platform for information you won’t get from the local media. A vent for citizens.
I have made incredible friends that I never would have imagined. People passionate about integrity and open government. People expecting top notch customer service from their elected officials. And honesty.
In fact I actually enjoy the criticism more then the compliments. It keeps me on my toes and makes me look in the mirror, much more then I want to.
Now for the compliments. I met a South DaCola reader about a month ago and she sang praises about my site. I recently ran into her again, and she said something that almost made me cry.
“What you do is so wonderful, never stop!”
She said some other things to, that made me blush a bit.
The best part was a comment she made to me that I have turned into a joke;
‘What’s the difference between a SD Democrat and a Minnesota Republican?’
‘Nothing.’
