South DaCola

Editorial Cartoonist from South Dakota

2019

Elections SF School District Sioux Falls

UPDATE: Sioux Falls School Board Election, Tuesday May 21

l3wis 29Comments

There are 4 candidates running for 2 spots with one incumbent. Alberty is NOT seeking re-election (I wonder if he will be offered a job with the district like the previous School Board President)?

I am recommending a vote for Anderson and Hubbel. While one is a liberal and the other a conservative, they do see eye to eye on several matters, including transparency and putting students/teachers first. Both have been critical of the top heavy administration and lack of public engagement.

While Reiter is the incumbent, in the 6 years she has been on the board, she has simply been a rubber stamper only questioning the administration when she knew her NO vote wouldn’t really matter. Baker was co-chair of the school bond issue task force. I was hardly impressed with that process.

There are two forums, Today at 5:30 at the IPC that the Chamber is sponsoring, it most likely will be live feed on the Chamber’s FB page and the School District’s YouTube Channel. There is a 2nd forum tomorrow at NOON at Democratic Forum, Royal Fork meeting room.

The School District will again use vote centers (most of them located in the Southern part of the city). I believe there is 13 of them, you can vote at any of them with a valid ID. The election will likely be hand counted again, but I am not sure. My guess is if we get around 3,500 votes cast, I will be surprised, so this could be anyone’s game.

Developers Development SF City Council Sioux Falls

Is someone waiting in the wings to scoop up the parking ramp project?

l3wis 14Comments

Yeah, I know, Mr. Conspiracy theory here, and who can we believe? But this is an interesting change of events;

The group said it had proposed changes to the project to the city, but then it stopped receiving any notices or responses from the city, which the developer also alleges canceled meetings before alerting it that it was terminating the deal, which would have co-mingled public and private money to see two hotels, restaurants and retail space built around a parking garage at 110 S. Mall Avenue.

So the city council now is on ‘silent mode’. The city refused to negotiate the deal and late last night, TJ TypeOver sends out a press release saying they are looking for someone to complete the project.

When the performance bond payment didn’t come in, do you think the city got a little nervous and did some ‘shopping around’?

It will be interesting to see how fast another developer swoops in, and who it is. Information lockdown usually means things are going on in the backroom. At this point I can’t even speculate who would want to take it over, but we have our guesses 🙂 Heck, I wouldn’t even be surprised if one of healthcare monsters builds a hospital on top of the parking ramp.

It will be fun to watch as the administration and the rubber stampers talk about how they ‘saved’ the doomed project while the rest of us roll our eyes.

Audit Sioux Falls

Sioux Falls Parking Department must be audited immediately

l3wis 1Comments

Some of the same players and city employees who helped the Rubber Stamp 6 and Bowlcut-n-Bucktooth ramrod the parking ramp through are still employed by the city, namely Matt Nelson, whose wife just became the audit something manager.

It will be interesting to see if the city will do any internal investigating of how city employees let this bad deal go through. In reality, it should not even have gotten to the city council for approval.

Now it will cost taxpayers more money to hire an external auditor. The hits just keep coming.

Mayor TenHaken SF City Council Sioux Falls Theresa Stehly

UPDATE: TenHaken could have killed Village on the River before it got this far

l3wis 14Comments

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that the bonds were sold before PTH came into office. So if he would have killed the project, it likely would have cost us in fines. I think I predicted about $2 million at the time. But in hindsight it would have saved us in the long run, because now we have a structure without a private partner.

Over on the WussCollege chief talking mouth, Pitty, is trying to defend the mayor’s position on the parking ramp. But early on PTH could have killed the project, and did not. As one commenter said;

When Mayor TenHaken took office, he announced his administration was vetting the project and development agreement and subsequently endorsed the project during a press conference in July 2018

I also find it a bit ironic that while Pitty likes to throw Stehly under the bus, she is the only one (with Starr) who has tried to stop this project while Pitty’s buddies Neitzert and Erickson steamed forward.

VIDEO BELOW is last night’s CC meeting;

So why didn’t PTH stop the project before it got this far? As someone put it to me last night, he didn’t have a legal team in place at that time that knew their heads from a hole in the ground. While I commended PTH last night for killing the project, he really could have stopped it much sooner. While real leaders do get things done, they also get things done right and know how to say NO when necessary. It seems the only two leaders we have right now in city government is Stehly and Starr who had the vision and foresight to know this was doomed from the very beginning.

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