2016
l3wis UPDATE II: Approving the Admin Building Advisory Vote is the right thing to do
UPDATE II: I want to say that it doesn’t surprise me one bit the council voted down the advisory vote tonight (6-2. Stehly & Starr, Yes. Erickson, Kiley, Rolfing, Erpenbach, Neitzert, Selberg, NO). They want this to go away, who can blame them? When people start seeing how sausage is made, it scares them and they have lots of questions.
But I would like to give my two cents on some of the comments made by councilors Rolfing and Kiley about ‘conspiracy theories’ and the mayor’s involvement. There is none. The mayor vetoed the repeal, it is up to him or a judge to stop the bond sale. That is a fact. His hands are all over this.
As for Rolfing’s comments that he hears 10 to 1 that people are for the building, well your golf course survey is just dandy, but the petitioners have ACTUAL signatures, over 6,400 of them, approximately half the people who voted in the last city election. Straw polls don’t count in real life.
As for the defense of the city clerk and the ‘negativity’ towards him. Doesn’t matter if Danielson got the petition oath and language from the tooth fairy, it was Greco’s job to stamp it (in which he did). It is HIS stamp on the petition sheet that he received the petition. This is a FACT. There has been NO one on the council, the administration or the clerk’s office that has said otherwise. His job was to verify and stamp the petition. He stamped it, he just didn’t verify it. This is also a fact.
We can cloud this debate all we want with ‘feelings’ and ‘theories’ but the facts are undisputed.
UPDATE: A court hearing in front of the Honorable Mark Salter will be September 28, 2016 to hear the Writ of Mandamus on the petition validity.
At this point, there is really nothing to report with the validation of the petitions. Let’s just say the legal rangling is in full swing.
But there is something that CAN be done. At tomorrows city council meeting, the city council will hear and vote on the 2nd reading of the advisory vote for a city administration building.
Many have argued the election would be moot if the bond sale goes through on October 3rd. This is very much true, AND it is still a possibility. The mayor has said he will not change his mind on the bond sale. And why would he? He broke two council ties and vetoed the repeal.
But as I have said in the past, the planets could align, the bond sales could be restrained, either by a court intervention, or the mayor miraculously changing his mind. In this case, an election would be set already.
I urge the majority of the council to pass the advisory vote. If the bond sale goes through on October 3rd, it can easily be repealed. No tax dollars spent. No harm done. The right thing to do.
Dakota Access Pipeline protest in Sioux Falls ignores the importance of why local politics matter
I often shake my head that more people are concerned about the tiddlewinks that goes on in DC then in what goes on every Tuesday at our city council meetings.
Tonight I was presented that cold hard facts again. I attended the Dakota Access Pipeline protest at Falls Park, there was several hundred people in attendance (many local, including former state lawmakers). They were protesting the section of the pipeline several hundred miles away.
I ask where were these people when the 1st and 2nd reading of the easement of this pipeline to our very own landfill was voted on? (March 1 & 8, 2016).
1st Reading (FF: 27:00 – also listen to my public testimony)
At the 1st reading, I was the only one to speak out. At the 2nd reading only one person (a landowner that was affected) spoke out. At first, the easement failed 4-3 (councilor Erickson recused herself) It needed at least 5 votes to pass. At the end of the meeting, councilor Rolfing had a brain fart and didn’t realize his protest vote counted as a real vote, and he changed his vote to pass the easement.
The councilors who voted for the pipeline easement argued that we already have several gas lines running through our city, so what is another one?
My bigger question is where were these hundreds of people those nights? Well I blame apathy of local government. Just think if several hundred of these people, including former lawmakers would have shown up those nights to protest this easement, maybe all of the council would have voted differently, maybe it would have failed unanimously, maybe Rex would not have changed his vote.
I even spoke to a local journalist tonight who said he had written several stories about our local easement, so the information was out there.
This is further proof that local politics do matter, get involved on a local level, you can make a difference, or you can hold hands, burn sage and sing songs of mother earth in a park. Speak out on a local level as well as on a national and state level. All protest is important, make it count where it matters most, right here.
City of Sioux Falls Internal Audit on the Development Foundation; show us measured outcomes
Giving the Sioux Falls Development Foundation tax dollars each year is a debate of it’s own. My stickler with handing over this money for workforce development is that we never see what kind of results there is. I have often called the practice as ‘Welfare for Want Ads’. If you pay good wages and are a good employer, workers will seek you out. If you have to ask the government to fund your want ads because you are struggling finding workers, maybe you are not a good employer to begin with. If you can’t find ‘qualified’ workers, maybe offer a worker training program. I often hear these same business owners and the Chamber scream about the FREE market, then turn around and ask tax payers to bail their asses out. So which is it?
Maybe we were never in the running for the F-35?
So this happened back in April of this year;
WASHINGTON (AFNS) — Air Force officials announced April 12 that Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona; Homestead Air Reserve Base, Florida; Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth, Texas; and Whiteman AFB, Missouri, are candidate bases for the first Reserve-led F-35A Lightning II location.
The preferred and reasonable alternatives are expected to be selected in the fall and the F-35As are slated to begin arriving at the first Reserve-led F-35A location by the summer of 2023.
Maybe I missed the fine print, but it seems Sioux Falls isn’t even in the running.