Sioux Falls City Council Agenda, Dec 19, 2017

Sioux Falls City Council Regular meeting

There is NO scheduled informational meeting.

Item#1, Consent Agenda. There are some strange items on the list I just can only speculate on. There is a massive Right of Way acquisition by the city along Ellis road, 12th street to 41st street.

There is also a curious building lease for $43K for vector control. I’m assuming the city is leasing space for safe storage of their highly poisonous and flammable concentrated mosquito control chemicals. I guess there was no room in the new city administration building 🙂

There is also several expenditures for affordable housing.

We are also throwing more money at the Railroads. Apparently they couldn’t squeeze $1,600 out of their $27 Million payout from Federal taxpayers.

Item #31, the city is moving forward borrowing money for storm drainage instead of just paying for it out of reserves, because it is a ‘heckuva’ deal.

Item #36, an ordinance change on essentially tool sheds with the county.

Item #39, A resolution for the new golf course management contract. This is the big one of the night. Rumor has it that the city will probably not buy the used equipment from Dakota Golf Management. The question is, if the city doesn’t buy it, will new equipment have to be purchased and if so, who will pay for it? The taxpayers or the new contractor? I find this disheartening for a couple of reasons. Like the Snowcat groomer at Great Bear, it seems the city has a habit of buying new equipment instead of maintaining what they have that is still useable. At a recent Minnehaha County Commission meeting (FF: 42:50) the commissioners were made aware of a county vehicle that was totaled in an accident (not the county’s fault) and their concern over replacing it because of it’s heavy usage (5 employees share 3 vehicles). Not only was the vehicle 13 years old it was originally a surplus vehicle gifted from the State DOT. If the city would use such prudence with maintaining city equipment we could probably save taxpayers millions each year.

Charter Revision meeting (Dec 20, 2017)

The CRC is in it’s final throws. In this meeting they will discuss increasing councilor’s pay. Like many things presented to the CRC so far, it will probably be thrown out. Erickson had suggested a super majority on the council for major bonds and Neitzert had suggested going back to plurality in council races (essentially letting voters decide how they want THEIR elections to be run). Both ideas were thrown out because they felt the council should change these things instead of the voters (even though ironically two councilors suggested taking it to voters). The whole purpose of having the CRC is to bring sensitive items like this to the voters instead of the council. I’m assuming the pay increase will be thrown out to. The CRC has been one of the most useless I have seen in recent history, though members like Sue Aguliar fought hard to put some of these items on the ballot, a new comer Attorney Justin Smith has been very vocal about squashing items and essentially keeping voters out of the legislative process. It’s almost as if Fiddle-Faddle has been sending him telepathic messages during the meetings. Hopefully the next mayor/council removes him from the CRC, he has been very detrimental to the process and the rest of the sheep on the CRC seem to be following him threw the hole in the fence.