Citizens for Integrity • Public testimony SF City Council meeting • 3/18/14

Good evening, I am Bruce Danielson, a resident of Sioux Falls and chairman of Citizen’s for Integrity.

We citizens would like to thank this administration. Some of us attended a political meeting last Friday, to listen to their speaker talk about politics, our town and his role in it.

In my role, with Citizen’s for Integrity, I am attending as many information meetings as possible. One of these gatherings was last week’s Democratic Forum at the VFW. This partisan organization has met for decades every Friday, with a different speaker each week. I am sure many of you have appeared there.

During the post speech Q&A period, I asked the speaker why during these advocacy sessions, disguised as education, didn’t cover the 3 Charter Revision Commission’s ballot measures. Aren’t these also on the ballot?  Can anyone here tell us what these measures are?

This year the administration is presenting a cute little green tri-fold advocational brochure, disguised as information, in a subtle effort to defeat the 4 citizen ballot measures. By the way, 27,000 petition signers would like to know, why didn’t the city just pre-mark them for us?

This town has asked citizens to be part of the CRC. These people take time to clean up messy language in the city’s charter, but I guess it’s not worth mentioning. The speaker proceeded to make a sham of their work.

Where the administration, its attorney and printing presses could actually make a positive difference, there is nothing presented?

The speaker stated we citizens were not interested in the measures. Saying in other words to the voter: “move along, nothing to see here”.  Just vote NO or ignore these. Remember, the Charter is the city’s equivalence to a State or National Constitution. We are being asked to naively make changes to basic city rules the people sitting in front of me are charged with following.

At the meeting, the speaker was asked why the silence. His answers included, “Where do you stop” plus, only citizen efforts “garnered the most attention”.  It’s saying “how much do the people really need to know?”

This was a strange response considering the speaker has consistently promoted political views while on the city’s dime and time. For some reason, basic information is not necessary, but advocacy in the name of education is required.

We want to be informed, not propagandized. We had to search on the city’s website for the miniscule charter measure information.

We have several more city Advocational meetings yet to be held.  Will the city treat the hard work of the CRC as something we the citizens deserve to know about?

So to the speaker of last Friday’s forum, direct the City Attorney’s Office to put an effort into unbiased information concerning the proposed Charter changes.  This city government has proven it can make marketing materials.  Again we see the city’s dime and time advocating the defeat of the 4 citizen ballot efforts while completely ignoring basic city charter rule changes.

The activities of this government once again prove it is not here to help the average person. It has become selective, punitive and for the privileged.

The ballot is sacred. This administration is a joke.

So thank you for helping the people of Sioux Falls understand the need for more petition efforts.

Download Charter Revision Commission Ballot Questions (With no explanation)

http://siouxfalls.org/~/media/Documents/city_clerk/elections/2014/info-docs/charter-amendments-.pdf

Watch videos on Youtube Channel, Citizens4Intergrity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7gSlK7Nu5Q

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsao3TFcldlkoBifyeanZ5g