Cant believe this was recorded in 1995
l3wis [youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-VJIi9frRQ[/youtube]
June 2016
Sioux Falls City Councilors and Cameraman Bruce visit the water reclamation plant
We hope to have video up soon. Since this was a quorum of councilors the tour was open to the public, so Bruce tagged along.
Below: Councilors Selberg, Neitzert, Erickson, Stehly, Starr and plant manager.
Another consultant, the RR relocation project burn barrel just got bigger
Here we go, seems no one in city government is smart enough to know what to do with 10 acres of undeveloped land downtown, even though developers and the city have been successfully developing projects downtown for over 100 years now;
“The City is hiring a consultant to work with us to ensure the redevelopment of this land is done in the best way possible,†says Mike Cooper, Director of Planning and Building Services. “Most cities never have this type of opportunity—to reshape the heart of their downtown—so we want to make sure we get it right.â€
I’ve said the best way to develop the land would be to let free enterprise shape it. Once BNSF hands over the keys to the property in 2017, we drive down to ACE hardware and pick up a couple of FOR SALE signs and stick them in the ground.
Why should the taxpayers be on the hook for even more expenditures cleaning up the site, and coming up with proposals. Wasn’t the $27 million of Federal tax dollars enough? Especially since the tracks and traffic are really going NO WHERE. What kind of grand development ideas is the consultant going to have? You can’t build residential because the trains will still be rolling through, maybe even more often.
This sounds like another back door scam so that certain developers get their hands on the land by shaping the RFP’s in advance to fit their already conceived ideas. I say put it for sale, let the adjacent property owners have first dibs, and if they decline open it up to other developers. We aren’t building a resort in the Cayman Islands, we are taking a brown field, scraping the top layer off and making it available for someone to build on. This isn’t rocket science and certainly not worth the expense of a consultant.
I still maintain that since we did nothing to limit the traffic of trains downtown by moving forward on this project, we have accomplished nothing but blowing $27 million dollars as BNSF walks away with a gigantic smile on their face. You’re welcome Mr. Buffet.
A hard (tues)days night
I won’t ramble about Hillary vs. Trump, that will just make my head spin, but some interesting things did happen last night locally in the primary races.
For the first time since she was elected 12 years ago, Minnehaha County Treasurer, Pam Nelson will have a challenger in November. Kris Swanson won the Republican nomination against Pam’s Nephew in-law, Marlin something or another, even though Marlin didn’t live in Minnehaha county.
Pam has proven to be an advocate her 12 years as treasurer for the low-income elderly trying to stay in their homes and not being over burdened with the atrocious property tax increases over the last decade. Pam will also help anyone else who needs it, Pam has a couple of rules though, follow the law and don’t lie to her.
Speaking of people who don’t seem to know what county they live in, Dick Kelly lost by 13 votes to Dean Karsky in the Republican primary for Minnehaha county commission. This means Dick will not be up for re-election this November. I could go on a monster rant about how it is time for Dick to retire, but I will let his fellow county commissioners tell you their feelings on that. Besides Dick suffering through a heart transplant and being hard of hearing, it seems his time has come. It is also rumored he spends a majority of his time in his retirement residence in rural Spink county and not his voter registration residence in Sioux Falls. Maybe it’s time to say good bye to Mr. Kelly, it’s just unfortunate that he may be replaced by Dean Karsky, the do nothing city councilor, who I will predict will do the same nothingness on the county commission. Dean and Jean Bender will be up against Democrats Feinstein and Rust in November. The top two vote getters when the two open commission seats.
And something I refrained from talking about until after the election was the battle royale in District 15 between democrats Nesiba and Kirschman (Nesiba won). The Democratic party in SD can hardly get enough people together to play a game of solitaire let alone two challengers in a the same district for a primary. Instead settling this over a cup of coffee and a donut and saving funds for a November run they decided to hack it out in a primary.
Don’t get me wrong, I like both guys. Patrick has been an advocate for labor, and Reynold has been a strong advocate against government corruption (Round’s airplane kerfuffle) and pay day lending.
But it wasn’t about their common threads that had these two at each other. It was about abortion and gay rights. Ironic really, considering neither of them could choose to have an abortion, or are gay.
Strange indeed.
I wish Nesiba luck in November.
More questions arise about our ‘New and Improved’ ambulance service
As the Argus Leader reported, there seemed to be some trouble getting an ambulance when most needed.
Sideras stated in the article that “many SFFR members are paramedicsâ€. This ‘may’ be a change from the last contract held by Rural Metro, the fire department paramedics were PROHIBITED from using any of their skills within the city limits.
Was that ban lifted under this contract? Was any Advanced Life Support (ALS) equipment added to the fire trucks for the paramedics to use?
If not, Sideras’s statement is misleading because the paramedics cannot perform any skills other than their EMT-level training (under the old contract).
If the Ambulance company (Paramedics Plus, Rural Metro under the old contract) is in system overload, only they could approve other ambulances to enter the city (such as volunteer service ambulances from surrounding communities, like Med Star, Sanford or Avera) to transport patients to hospitals.
Did this change in the new contract? Wouldn’t this be better than people driving themselves to the hospital? Why wouldn’t the fire department have this decision-making power instead of the company that profits from transporting the people?
Like Mr. Lonneman said, in a tornado or some other major disaster, should we need a private company’s decision to bring in more ambulances? Maybe language has changed in the new contract, I don’t know, but a good question to ask.
It would be in the patient’s best interest to have the ability to call in an ambulance whenever one was needed, Paramedics Plus losing a transport shouldn’t be the City’s concern. If they lose too many transports, they’ll put another ambulance in service.
On a side note. REMSA, should be determining what calls will and won’t count against the ambulance service for that 90% of the time number they have to meet. For example: If the ambulance has to go through construction traffic because 12th street is torn up, the Q/A person has decided in the past that isn’t the ambulance company’s fault, the construction was caused by the City, so that delay didn’t count against their numbers. Another example: All of their ambulances were out on calls on higher than expected call volume due to a multiple vehicle accident.
The fire department counts these types of calls and doesn’t take them as exceptions for their accreditation and as you probably guessed, Rural Metro always was in compliance with their required 90% times.
It would be interesting to see how many things are now in the new contract that could benefit the SFFR by allowing them to charge PP back for services like fire stand-bys, equipment, code 5 calls, etc.
I have often scratched my head why the SFFD just doesn’t run a public ambulance service that they could set up as an enterprise fund (all the money paid into the service could go in to improving it instead shareholder profits). The Fire Department is already beating the private ambulances to these calls, it is a majority of their calls, and we are already paying for it through our taxes, so why not find a way to save the city money by charging for the service while providing better service then what our private ambulance companies are doing. The city of Los Angeles figured it out, why can’t we?