So much for buying ‘LOCAL’ when serving as a Sioux Falls City Councilor
l3wis So guess which SF City Councilor went to Brookings to buy their Tahoe? Apparently NO dealership in Sioux Falls could get them a good deal. Now that’s some civic pride there!
2018
Is the Sioux Falls Planning Commission skirting state public input law?
I noticed this on the Planning Commission’s agenda page;
This is what was done at the previous meeting;
As we know, or maybe not, state law changed that ALL public meetings have to provide GENERAL public input at ANY time in the meeting. The Planning Commission decided to skirt this at their latest meeting. Are they violating the NEW state law? Not sure, but would not surprise me, their arrogance is usually insurmountable, mostly due to planning staff who backs them up.
Shocker of the Day! Golden Dragon sells to Dudley House for expansion
As I mentioned in my post about the Bloomberg opinion piece yesterday, our food banks and homeless shelters are growing just as much as development in our community. While I don’t know the real reason why Golden Dragon sold to the Dudley house after a surprise vacation and ultimate sudden retirement, my guess is they have been in negotiations for quite awhile, and as a person who used to work for the former owner of the Golden Dragon at his former location (Golden Wall where Kaladi’s is) he is a shrewd businessman, and I can guarantee he negotiated a good deal, even if the Diocese is claiming THEY were approached.
While no determination has been made for the property, “the church does not acquire property for speculation,†he said. “We do it for possible future ministry purposes, but I don’t know what that would be. We consider affordable housing a ministry of the church. The proximity gives the opportunity for examining programing with various outreach ministries.â€
Would you want to live in an apartment next to a homeless shelter?
Probably kind of hard running a successful casual Chinese restaurant next to a (large) homeless shelter. I also find it interesting that Dudley bought this property (which was hospitality) without consulting the neighbors or city for an OBVIOUS expansion of the shelter or subsidized housing.
This one is going to be fun to watch when they ask for a rezone and expansion. I know many people who live in that neighborhood (home owners), they are NOT going to be hoodwinked this time around.
I think is is disgusting how city planners have allowed the Whittier neighborhood to be the ‘social services’ haven. I have often argued these services should be along Minnesota Avenue close to the jail and safe home. Devaluing these people’s properties (that are already modest) by plopping these organizations in the middle of these neighborhoods is NOT acceptable.
UPDATE: Bruce addressed Sioux Falls School Board working session today about auditing bond election
Notice in the video below that Bruce is cut off at around 3:30 minutes. I guess they have a 3 minute limit at working sessions (where do they come up with these silly rules?). He had some other questions on his list to ask. He was going to ask what the current SFSD debt is before taking out a $300 million dollar bond. No one knows. The only thing I could find is $13 million in debt service in a financial report from last year(?). That would put their current debt at around $100-150 million. But it is still a mystery.
I also find the facial expressions and nervousness of Todd Vik, the business manager of the SFSD interesting. Mr. Vik is sitting in the corner and hunched over his laptop and NOT very happy about Bruce’s testimony. From what we could see from Brady Mallory’s FB video on election night Mr. Vik and Doug Morrison were the ones entering the vote tally into the computer. BUT, we are NOT certain because we haven’t been able to audit the election documents.
Which brings us to Bruce’s testimony. We still have received NO word from the SFSD if they are going to provide documents concerning the election which are taxpayer domain and owned by the taxpayers. They have said ZILCH.
I think they are playing a game of running out the clock.
Some have asked me if we get the opportunity to audit the election and the results are off by a considerable amount and the bonds have already been borrowed, than what happens? Honestly, I don’t know. I do know a lot of people would be in a lot of trouble, but I’m not sure if the bonds can be given back? I know, complicated.
If the SFSD really has all the integrity they claim to have, they would turn over the documents ASAP and let us look them over and recount the ballots. We could easily do it with a group of volunteers on a Saturday afternoon. They need to do this BEFORE one penny is borrowed.
It will be interesting to see what smoke and mirrors they present us. But after watching Mr. Vik and Mr. Alberty’s performance on this video, I expect this to get really messy before it gets resolved.
Notice the crickets after his presentation.
Bloomberg gives Sioux Falls some love
While this article gives kudos to our massive growth (mostly in people) and talks about taxpayers investing in business, what the article doesn’t mention is the massive separation of rich and poor and how the two largest growth groups are those who make over $100K and those who are living in poverty (working poor).
I will still argue that growth for growth’s sake will eventually bite us in the rear. We are already seeing this in our school system that has almost half of it’s student population on FREE or reduced lunches and the fast and steady growth of our food banks and homeless shelters.
So while growth does help to produce NEW wealth, it also has a see saw affect on the poor.