2016

Now Citylink is screwing up Minnehaha County’s meetings

minn-meet

I reported a few months ago that the county spent around $40K for new video equipment (at the advice of the city’s media department, that record the meetings) and one of the meetings had no audio. So now Tuesday, the meeting is totally defunct. According to a county official there was a problem with a camera that resulted in malfunctioning the other cameras, but they thought the audio was fine. I guess that is defunct also now.

I find it ironic that the meeting that had ‘technical problems’ was the one where the commission approved the contract with Fitch to do consulting for ambulance service and the President of Med-Star came to testify against it.

Where is that audio . . . maybe REMSA filed it with Paramedics Plus call performance reports.

City of Sioux Falls opens new indoor pool with NO game plan

Is this something someone with ‘Business Acumen’ would have done;

Brandon Maddox, the father of a Sioux Falls Swim Team member, says it’s perfect for holding meets, but right now the City won’t allow it.

“It sits empty, I sit there from four to six watching my daughter practice and there’s no one in there,” Maddox said.

Kearney says he thinks there’ll be swim meets held at the Aquatics Center at some point, but the City isn’t ready to take the plunge just yet.

I told people that we should have built this place in partnership with Sanford at the Sports Complex. Would have saved tax payers millions and built at a location with plenty of parking and expansion, and usage from sports special interest groups. Another ignorant move by High Crimes, Ramrod, Mayor Mike.

I know why they are doing this, they are trying to show they are not catering to the swim clubs, but let’s face it, you don’t build an olympic pool with bleacher seating for 500 parents if you were not planning on having swim meets. Stop the facade Mike, you are not fooling anyone. I also heard they are not renting for Birthday parties yet, not sure if that is true, but have had several people tell me they have tried to book with no success.

A also wonder if this is an attempt/strategy to raise the current affordable rates at the pool.

Some say simply ‘questioning’ Wiley’s business practices was out of line. Really?

What short memories people have. Only four years ago, the city council threatened to pull a license for the Vault and put them on warning with a deferral when similar things were going on (city council meeting) and (My post on it) at their establishment that have been going on at Wileys. In fact, after watching the meeting (the discussion went on for 35 minutes), besides the diddling on the cars, the things going on at the Vault pales in comparison to Wileys. It came down to basically not supplying adequate parking. How many private parking spots does Wileys have? I count ZERO. It is also important to note that the Vault had 154 police calls in a 12 month period. In 10 months of this year, Wileys is up to 182 calls. The deferral meeting is here (FF: 11:00). If you watch the meeting, you will see councilors had several meetings with the Vault and the Police department before the vote. Councilor Jamison went on to say that these kind of ‘reviews’ of the establishments was important to establish a public record of the concerns. The council voted 7-1 to renew the license, Rolfing was the dissenting vote. I believe the Vault went out of business in 2013.

Also during the meeting, they try to beat down an immigrant c-store owner in Pettigrew Heights for letting people drink 40’s beside his store. The mayor even said this to the c-store owner’s attorney during the meeting;

“. . . it is the duty of the city council to review all liquor licenses that are up for renewal. If they want to complete some additional due diligence on any of these, whether it be the Vault, whether it be the Mercato or any of the other establishments that serve alcohol in this town, they have the ability to do that. In this case they wanted to ask some questions or do some additional due diligence on the Mercato before they make a decision on that, so before you start to accuse a councilor, or someone else for doing something that is appropriate or not, I would encourage you to use caution. .  .  . I would encourage you to tone it down a bit, the council has a right to ask questions.”

What a short memory our mayor has.

They also beat down a tattoo shop owner for simply wanting a beer license so he can sell during art opening events. And how many complaints has the shop had in the past four years? Not sure. But I would assume if it was major, we would have heard about it by now. I have displayed art at the shop and have attended many other events there. It was no different then an art opening at the Pavilion (which sells alcohol at their art openings). The council voted 4-3 to approve the license with Karsky, Rolfing and Aguliar dissenting.

Seems a bit hypocritical of Michelle and Mike to say they were embarrassed about the very short discussion last night, in which in the end 7 councilors voted to let them keep their license. Let’s talk about embarrassment. It’s embarrassing our city officials have such short memories when regulating liquor licenses.

I also find it ironic that Wiley’s attorney, Drew Duncan is a well known Municipal and State government lobbyist. Seems this story is a lot deeper then we may ever know.

Proud of these three Sioux Falls city councilors

pat stehley neitzert

While I understand the argument of singling out individual businesses, (FFL 1:20:30) I believe these councilors had a right to take a personal look at a business that is making oodles of money while using tax dollars on a high number of police calls. And for disclosure, besides the three councilors, there were 4 citizens present watching what was going on. Since the license renewal did pass 7-1, this was more of a warning to Wiley’s that we are watching. I also found it strange that Erickson didn’t have an issue with the police calls, but just a few short months ago she took them to task over smoking violations. Ironically, I checked out that situation Friday night. What Wiley’s essentially has is a smoking room with it’s own bar and very large doors that open up to an outside heated patio. Basically a 4-season room for smokers.

I am very proud them taking a stand, especially Pat and Greg for standing up to the mayor and councilor Erpenbach. If anyone should be embarrassed, it should be her.