Good evening, I am Bruce Danielson, a resident of Sioux Falls and chairman of Citizen’s for Integrity.
I attended a forum last Friday to listen to their speaker talk about our town.
In my role with Citizen’s for Integrity I am attending as many forums as I can fit in. One of these gatherings was last Friday’s Democratic Forum at the VFW. This political 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 the city’s advocacy sessions disguised as education why the 3 Charter Revision Commission ballot measures are not also mentioned. Are these not also on the ballot? Can any of you tell us right now what these measures are?
We are offered a cute little green triâ€fold advocational brochure giving the city’s wishes disguised as information, to defeat the 4 citizen ballot measures. We have citizens who have worked hard to clean up the messy language of the city’s charter, but I guess it’s not worth mentioning. Where the city attorney could actually make a positive difference, there is nothing presented?
The Friday speaker stated we citizens were not interested in them, so the items do not need to be explained. The speaker did not seem to understand the Charter is the city’s equivalence to the State or National Constitution. We are asked to make changes to basic city rules you are charged with complying with.
At the meeting our speaker was asked why the silence, his answer was, “Where do you stop?†This was a strange response when the speaker has promoted his political views on the city’s dime and time. For some reason, basic information is not necessary but advocacy in the name of education is required.
Some of us like to be informed, not propagandized. So we are left to hunt for the miniscule charter question information hidden on the city’s website.
We have several more city Advocational meetings yet to be held, will the city treat the hard work of the Charter Revision Commission as something we the citizens deserve to understand?
So to the speaker of last week’s Democratic Forum, we ask you direct the City Attorney’s Office to put some effort into the Charter ballot measure education as you have the advocational defeat of all the citizen initiatives.
Thank you Mayor Huether and council for helping the people of Sioux Falls understand the need for our new petition effort.