City of Sioux Falls Compensation and Benefits Study
l3wis You will see that Sioux Falls pays a lot higher in MOST categories compared to other cities. I guess the Unions are doing a good job bargaining!
DOC:Â 2018-comp-benefits
2018
UPDATE: Sioux Falls City Councilor Stehly asking for an advisory opinion from Ethics Commission
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhMw7mOZgSc
She is wondering if it is OK for city councilors to circulate petitions. The ethics commission will give their opinion tomorrow at 3:30 PM. The meeting will be at city hall in the old commission chambers. While I support councilors wanting to circulate petitions, I have encouraged Stehly to try first to work with her peers on the council to get legislation passed and if that fails than do a petition drive. I know she has run into walls with council in the past, but I have argued that mainly had to do with the rubber stamp leadership of council and doing whatever the mayor told them to do. I think her opportunity to get legislation passed on the council is much greater now with the new mayor and council than what it has been in the past two years.
UPDATE: Stormland-TV is speculating that Big T is going to try to have a petition drive to change our form of government. Maybe. Doesn’t really matter, she should have the right to have any petition drive she wants to. I do know that her and I have talked for years about changing Project TRIM and having the city trim their own trees in the boulevard (if the citizen is unable to). With the Ash Bore crisis coming upon us, right now would be the time to get the city to take care of those trees. I do know, like snow gates, it may be hard for Theresa to get that past the council, even though Brekke does support it. We will see. Stehly hasn’t shared with me what her intentions are, but it would be interesting to watch a sitting city councilor lead a petition drive to change our form of government. Things could get very, very, very ugly.
Mayor TenHaken proposes a Narcotics Crime Unit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6PTn5sX_dg
I’m going to take a ‘wait and see’ approach to Paul’s plan. Not because I have been light on him lately, but I’m not sure what it all entails. I will say though I have little confidence in Chief Burns and I would have replaced him, also I hope this doesn’t turn into putting away small time users (who really need treatment more than anything.)
Good Luck.
UPDATE: Sioux Falls School Board has questionable Executive Session
The school board met at 2 PM today (video above) to discuss the Envision Task Force Draft report. The meeting was posted as a 2 PM start meeting, but when people arrived they noticed the agenda changed to a 1:45 PM Executive Session before the meeting started.
First off, most of the time Executive Sessions are at the end of meetings not at the beginning. Secondly they have to state SDCL that it is an executive session, that is 1-25-2(2);
Executive or closed meetings–Purposes–Authorization–Violation as misdemeanor.
As you can see, besides stating SDCL numbers they must tell the public on the agenda the ‘purpose’ of the session. While they don’t have to state what/who will be discussed, that is the whole purpose of an executive session, they must say the topic or purpose. For example, pending litigation, student issue or personnel issue. They did not state the topic and took no action in open. This could be a possible open meetings violation.
Once the 2 PM meeting started they went straight into the draft report. Some interesting things occurred.
At 32:30 a member of the public, Michael Wyland asked where the document was that outlines the 30 member TF’s individual priorities and how the ranking was done. No one produced the document.
Other things that were stated was 70% of the people who will vote on the bond issue DO NOT have children in the school district.
TF Chair Vernon Brown bragged about the how nice it was only a $2 a month tax increase. This hasn’t been fully explained yet either how that will compound over the 10-25 year loan span except that there may be a lower capital outlay levee promised to offset that tax increase. No idea what that will be either except that they will model it after the 1997 school bond.
Super Maher stated that while staff can share FACTS about the bond issue they cannot encourage people to vote for or against the bond. This is questionable because they haven’t been sharing all of the FACTS so far, so I have a feeling the FACTS they do share will be cherry picked.
He also went on to say there is a private community group interested in promoting the passage of the bonds but wouldn’t say who it was. My guess it is probably involved with the Chamber, but not sure.
Finally, Maher said that while the $190 million will be for the construction of 3 schools, $40 million of that is for ‘TLC’ of existing schools.
UPDATE: I guess the School District’s Financial Director, Todd Vik mentioned that they would try to use super precincts in the proposed September 18th election. I missed that, but a reader pointed it out to me. I’m still researching whether they can do that in reference to Federal Law and disenfranchising voters.
I’m getting very nervous about how they are going to sell this to the community. Like I said, I support public education, we need new schools, I get it. Where I get troubled about the proposal is the details of what the money will be spent on and the lack of documents from the TF supporting why we need to do this.
This proposal will be doomed if they don’t start sharing ALL of the information with the public. Government works best when it is open and transparent, this proposal is already on shaky ground.
Rapid City, be careful what you wish for
Rapid City just approved spending $130 million on a new Events Center. While I don’t live in RC, I can’t speak for what the people there want, but if they truly want it, who am I to tell them no. But as a person who went through this very dubious process in our city, a few words of advice;
Go with the flat siding, no matter what the architect and engineer may say. Trust me on this one.
Consider NOT using a CMAR (Construction Manager at Risk) I would keep the process as open as possible.
Use a local contractor that you can trust.
Make sure you have plenty of parking.
Make sure profits go towards paying down the bonds and not into some mysterious slush fund.
Avoid sponsorships from mega hospital complexes and credit card companies.
Make sure you build it big enough.
Make sure your fire department has a fire truck that can reach the top.
And lastly, when the mayor or the city council tells you to ‘just trust them’ do the opposite and question their intentions.
Not sure why RC residents want to double their per capita debt (or more) but have it, just remember, there will be less headaches if you keep the process open and transparent.