A Fog of Stupidity was cast over the entire Sioux Falls City Council meeting last night

Trust me, the Parking Ramp repeal was only ONE part of the fiasco last night’s council meeting turned out to be.

Due to a typo in a dollar amount the city council had to defer a subsidy payment to the SF Art Council in the consent agenda. During public input I suggested they take a percentage of the 3rd Penny (not a dollar amount) towards public art instead of throwing it all at the Pavilion on brick and mortar. I suggested we hire local artists to do projects that help beautify our whole city. I did see Erpenbach nod in agreement.

I also brought up the fact that we have had the Events Center siding report since Friday, December 29th (5 days) and we still haven’t seen it, even though the council approved the report and paid for it, it seems to be sitting in Mark Cotter’s office. I suggested they release it immediately, at least to the council, but also to the public. I said it should be posted online, the entire report, without it being condensed or edited. I said the public is smart enough to understand the full report.

The mayor broke the tie again on the council plurality/majority vote ordinance. Councilors Starr and Stehly wanted citizens to vote on it as a charter amendment instead of an ordinance. It failed due to the mayor again. There was the same stupid arguments from Walter Rolfing who claimed the legislative and governor races were not a true plurality because of the primaries, which is NOT true, since primaries deal with party candidates and the city council is a non-partisan race that DOES NOT have a primary, and for good reason. They also argued that they thought they needed to get a majority of the vote to be more fair, even though a run-off really is a false majority because fewer people show up to vote. And if the ignorant arguments couldn’t get any worse, they did, when Rolfing and Selberg tried to make it sound like people who only get a plurality are not as good as those who get a majority vote.

But the last thriller of the night was when councilor Selberg’s pointless SIOUXPERHERO award program resolution (a name they stole from SIOUXPERCON) came up for debate. While nobody has a problem with a little citizen recognition for good deeds (apparently the city council needs to spend even more of it’s budget on shiny plastic statuettes) I pointed out that the disclaimer about political activity should be taken out, to which councilor Stehly tried to amend, but failed.

I closed my testimony by giving them their first nomination, Aaron Hultgren “For pulling the biggest scam the city has ever seen pulled on them.” Not sure if they heard me.