Regular City Council Meeting • 7 PM
Item #6, Approval of Contracts, I guess it cost $1,500 to have an architect tell the city how to fill a hole, sorry, two holes. LOL.
Item #49, 2nd Reading, Making Elmwood a One-Way. This most likely will pass, but the pouting and carrying on from the five that voted for the full street vacation is going to be Academy Award material on Tuesday night. Wish I could witness, but I will be attending Boe Forum to hear about how REAL journalists uncover government corruption instead of complaining about being ‘stuck in the middle’.
Item #50, 1st Reading, More fiddling with city ordinance to allow Air BNB operators to skirt rules such as health inspections and lodging taxes other hotels and motels in Sioux Falls have to abide by. It is really curious our REPUBLICAN (connected) Chair of Council, Christine Erickson, makes quite the living from her and her husband’s Air BNB business . . . we wouldn’t want to burden them with undue taxes and regulations. I wonder if she will recuse herself from the vote? Either way, does it matter? The lobbying is always done behind closed doors. I have suggested to several city councilors it is time to tap into the Air BNB revenue and start at least a local lodging tax on them.
Item #57, 1st Reading, Supplemental appropriations for potholes. It will be fun to watch the 5 rubberstampers chastise Pat and Theresa for daring to question the Golden Boy, Cotter, about the money he needs to fix potholes, all the while citizens are losing tires and such to horrible road conditions, effectively created by underfunding our road repairs (stealing $10 million a year from the fund on the EC mortgage) and not building good roads to begin with. Most in the media say we need to trust the administration and Cotter, really? First off, Mayor TenHaken doesn’t have the experience yet to speak about road funding and repairs, and Cotter’s performance on the Water Reclamation plant and keeping it barely under the radar during Bowlcut’s administration doesn’t make the citizenry really confident in his opinion. It really is simple. Councilors Starr and Stehly want to help people. We have the money. Let’s use it to fill the potholes, and let’s do it now! Any sensible councilor wouldn’t argue about it, they would simply say YES.
Item #59, Resolution, Open up the Events Center Campus Book Club meetings to the public. Whether or not the Book Club decided to open up the meetings now is a moot point. It is NOT their decision to make. The council should pass this resolution and move on. Open Government should be the goal of any government body, whether that is in Bumphuck, SD or Sioux Falls. There is NEVER a good argument to keep the people’s business is closed. NEVER.
Stuck in the middle? Who? Why?