May 2016

Letters; Sioux Falls City Councilors Stehly and Neitzert

Kermit Staggers defends Stehly, it’s really freaking cold in Carnegie;

I remember many of my colleagues and citizens attending the meetings and expressing their concerns over the cold temperature in the chamber. I have always been amazed that the council has been denied the right to choose the temperature of its own facility.

And we still don’t have an answer from the mayor if he runs the thermostat.

Neitzert talks about his disappointment in the EC settlement secrecy case;

Effectively, whenever the city engages in some sort of transaction with another party and something occurs that might be embarrassing or damaging to the city, they can withhold details from the public by doing nothing more than entering into a contract with the other party and adding a confidentiality clause.

And the administration (Huether) has been very successful at it during his term.

Should Sioux Falls Parks Board members serve in districts?

Thought you all might like to see where the Park Board members live. Notice all are located south of 33rd street and heavily tilted to the Southeast district. No wonder they are always ready to destroy or ignore parks away from their homes.
 Workbook1
Would it be possible to initiate an Ordinance change to change the balance of board to district based as replacements are made? Wonder what the city council thinks. (Charter Doc on Parks Board: park-board-charter )

Firehouse Magazine Article (Guest Post Patrick Warren)

Warren_4.56f55e5c053ca

BY Patrick Warren, Edited by Scott L. Ehrisman

I wrote an article over a year ago that was finally published in Firehouse Magazine this month. It’s taken them so long to publish that it could be considered old news now:

WELLNESS ARTICLE

One thing that has disappointed me is the City’s unwillingness to admit there’s flaws in its mental health programs for firefighters. Its wellness programs are great. They are far above what most other employees receive I’d imagine, but the reality is firefighting is not like other jobs and fitness/wellness coordinators do not have the training to identify, diagnose, and treat mental health issues.

The fact that the City is in denial became quite clear in the Argus Leader article published on June 5, 2015. Where the fire chief, Jim Sideras listed several “fail-safes” he said are in place to help those who struggle with mental illness, because it is considered part of fitness for duty.

Some of the highlights from the article were:

• Annual medical evaluations to National Fire Protection Association Standards: These physicals are supposed to determine physical and mental fitness for duty. Two years after I was fired and no changes have been made to add the listed mental testing as required by the standard.

• Post Incident Analysis (P.I.A.): This probably sounded great to the public, but any firefighter knows this was pure B.S. to stretch out the list. P.I.A.s have nothing to do with mental health, they are conducted by fire personnel and are a review of fire incidents to ensure policies and procedures were followed and the correct strategies and tactics were used. They make certain all operations were performed safely and are used as learning tools to critique incidents to see if anything could have been done more effectively.

• There is only 1 test on that list done by a person qualified to identify and treat mental illness and it is done at the time of hire.

• Comments Sideras made include “We can’t twist someone’s arm and make them go…” and “If they do not share their information of issues… …the proper level of care or referrals cannot be achieved.” So, translation: expect the person with the mental health issue to self-diagnose that there is a problem, and blame them if they don’t?

So since it was clear to me the City was more interested in defending its actions than making change that might actually help people, I wrote the linked article that was recently published in Firehouse Magazine.

The emails I’ve received from firefighters around the country are all basically the same form of question/comment: “The fire service is a brotherhood, how could your chief prosecute you like that?” Once I explain the perfect storm of us both being up for the fire chief position, him convincing himself I was out for his job, the ethics investigation I submitted*; they understood better: payback.

Criminally prosecuting you is one thing, but when your former employer leaks your case to the media to ensure you are publically humiliated and discredited?  Considering the ethics complaint was never fully investigated but instead “swept under the rug” you might call it whistleblower retaliation.

*Warren filed an ethics complaint against Sideras for undocumented vacation time. Nothing came of the complaint.

What is the push behind the transgender ordinance really about?

equallyhousing

The city attorney wants to revisit the ordinance;

City attorneys plan to retract and revise a proposal to add sexual orientation and gender identity to the list of classes protected by the city’s anti-discrimination rules.

The City Attorney’s Office unveiled a proposal earlier this year that would put in writing that private employers, landlords and business owners can’t discriminate against someone for being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.

Councilor Greg Neitzert this week called the proposal “an outrageous infringement on religious freedom” and wanted to know how it would affect private businesses’ bathroom policies. The proposal’s authors now say they want more time to tighten the language.

While Greg may have a point, I see all kinds of other issues with this besides bathrooms and churches. The rumor circling in the halls of city hall is that the city could be eligible for more HUD money if they change the ordinance. Are the consequences of hundreds of lawsuits worth it? And what kind of money are we talking about? As I said before, as the city’s public policy it is a good idea, forcing it onto private employers (especially landlords) could be problematic and may even be a violation of individual constitutional rights. You can’t change your race or gender (very easily anyway) and those are examples of a protected class, it’s easy to tell if they are being discriminated against. Transgender may be more difficult to police and control and as someone said to me the other day, “Kind of looks like a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.”

Councilors expect to revisit the issue sooner rather than later, and some are more eager than others. Councilor Michelle Erpenbach said she hopes to see it reintroduced in quick fashion.

“I can’t figure out what you’re going to do to tighten the language because we have to use the words ‘sexual orientation and gender identity,’” she said. “We need it to pass in the most comfortable way possible. But it’s something we absolutely need to pass.”

Comfortable way? There is no comfortable way. I am more in favor of educating the public about the issue before passing more regulations on private industry. When people don’t understand something, their knee jerk reaction is think it is bad, and when you start regulating private citizens to do something they appear as bad, you have not done a very good job of educating them. That’s why it took several years for gay marriage to pass, people first needed to understand it.

I think if the city thinks this is an important thing to pass besides getting more money from the FEDs for housing, then it should go to a public vote. Asking 8-9 individuals to pass such sweeping legislation is unfair.

I also think this is a Red Herring to separate out the conservative councilors, and make them look anti-equality, which couldn’t be further from the truth. If I was on the council, I would excuse myself and refuse to vote on it based on the fact I may be bias because I have gay friends.

What’s going on with the old ice hockey center, parking at Spellerberg and Foundation Park housing?

9337_glory_house_of_sioux_falls_57109_efc

A few months ago I posed the question of what the city would do with the ice center. I even suggested if they don’t sell it, they could use it for a new city services building, or even better yet, team up with Lincoln & Minnehaha county to offer services.

At the time a city councilor told me that the city wants to sit on it until they run 49th street straight through to Western Avenue, then sell it for development.

Not such a bad idea, but in the same breath, this person told me that the Glory House was interested in expansion and wanted to purchase the property.

I think that would be a fantastic use for the land. Besides, the Glory House isn’t going anywhere, so why not expand at that location? I guess the city has refused sale to them. Seems puzzling that the city has no problem with the expansion of the Arch in a residential neighborhood and the same with a homeless shelter, but a facility that is not very close to residential housing and helps ex convicts back on their feet the city would refuse. Hopefully the council can put pressure on to help this sale go through.

Parking is NOT an issue?

Recently a Spellerberg neighborhood resident when to an open house at the new Aquatic center, they asked what was going to be done to the open ball field area. They were told the parks department was going to try to budget for expanded parking in that area. If this conversation took place and is true, this goes against what was promised with the green space left at Spellerberg. But no surprise with the chain of lies that has come with building this facility. This place will be more cursed than King Tut’s Tomb.

Bring on the Trailer (Foundation) Parks!

There has been a lot of talk about affordable housing in Sioux Falls lately. I have told people if we don’t start tackling the problem aggressively right now, we will be in a crisis mode in 4-5 years. Even with rumors the only reason the city is changing the discrimination laws when it comes to housing is to get more HUD money, one wonder what are plans are?

Foundation Park wants to bring in 40,000 workers. Where will they come from? Where will they live? While we hope these will be all living wage jobs, we know that living wage housing will be cramped. That only leaves us with building enormous apartment complexes, twin homes and more trailer parks. While Foundation Park is a great idea, there doesn’t seem to be much thought going into housing for the workers.