Well about 50% of our council decided to show up and actually contribute to the meeting. While Brekke, Stehly, Neitzert and Starr shared some budgetary ideas (we will get to that in a moment) the other four had little to say. Soehl and Kiley didn’t even bother to show up, Selberg said he was basically just there to ‘listen’ (he is one of the laziest city councilors I have ever seen) and Erickson admitted she was working on her ideas with the administration and wasn’t going to show her cards. Brekke called her out on it and wondered why she wasn’t going to share.
As for ideas that were shared;
• Stehly offered many great ideas including cleaning up our core neighborhoods with tax rebate incentives and eliminating project TRIM and putting that under the city’s forestry department (something both of us have been suggesting for over a decade).
• Brekke talked about long term strategic planning and possibly hiring an outside mediator to assist with it (that was a funny exchange with Erickson who suggested the council’s note taker staff could do that).
• Starr focused on the need for workforce development.
• Neitzert suggested (after making fun of the Denty’s crappy location-LOL) that we work on policy to make our city more walkable with safer streets.
While I was happy to see HALF of the council contribute to this working session, it seems the other half (who include the chair and vice-chair) were out to lunch.
Councilors of, by, and for the people were there. The rest must be hiding in North Korea with Trump.
Missing from an important Council Budget Meeting:
Councilor CHRISTINE ERICKSON, AT-LARGE, representing all Sioux Falls residents
Councilor RICK KILEY, SOUTHEAST DISTRICT
Councilor MARSHALL SELBERG, SOUTHWEST DISTRICT
Councilor CURT SOEHL, CENTRAL DISTRICT
These are councilors who were ELECTED to represent thousands of residents AND who are paid with PUBLIC TAX DOLLARS.
Curt Soehl, I live in the Central District. Where were you?
To all four of you:
As you are all aware, this was a preliminary meeting to openly discuss the budget with the public present.
There is no excuse that is acceptable for being absent.
correction:
the 2 districts not represented at the meeting were Central (Soehl) and Southeast (Kiley)