Sen Mike Rounds addresses Lincoln HS, 4/26/19
l3wis I was actually impressed with his presentation. Learned a lot of things, though I don’t agree with everything he said.
2019
Wouldn’t this make great transitional housing?
It’s too bad the city is suing to demolish;
At that time he told us the home was about 80% complete.
“The heating, the plumbing, the water all that, electrical stuff is done, we just got to do the fancy stuff, so our hope is to have it done, hopefully by the end of the year,” Strizheus said.
But now the city is suing Strizheus to have the home demolished and lot cleaned up.
It would make a great transitional home for people struggling with addiction. You could easily get 8-10 or even more living there.
Oh, my bad. We don’t ‘allow’ those kinds of housing in the ‘nice’ neighborhoods. We like to cram them into Whittier. The rich shouldn’t have to look at addicts coming and going unless they volunteer at the Banquet over Christmas break.
An Open Letter to Sioux Falls City Councilor Greg Neitzert
Over the past year there has been many things said by our esteemed councilor at public council meetings, on Facebook and in the media. It all culminated last week with the special meeting to hire our new internal audit manager and a discussion on the Greg Belfrage show between councilors Stehly and Neitzert in which Neitzert called Stehly a bully and a ‘LIAR’ he also inferred that councilor Starr was a liar to (which is actually a violation of council ethics).
While this was all going on Neitzert kept trying to say that the character of the new city council employee was being questioned, assassinated and denigrated. I still don’t know what he is talking about. In fact if you watch the council meeting or listen to anyone talk about her in the meeting, NOBODY questions her character only her qualifications. Some even state they are NOT questioning her character. If you are questioning someone’s qualifications for a job, that is NOT questioning their character – those two things are polar opposites.
So here are the FACTS that Councilor Neitzert claims people are ‘Lying’ about;
• Nobody on the City Council or during public input questioned Mrs. Nelson’s character. (I can’t speak to random comments on FB)
• While Mrs. Nelson has extensive financial and business experience (12 years) she has NO internal audit experience or supervisor experience.
• Mrs. Nelson has broad conflicts of interest with the city, not just with her husband as a director, but with the finance department she currently works in and a very close family friendly relationship with one of the sitting city councilors.
• Mrs. Nelson was warned in advance (before her nomination was publicly noticed) that the city council wasn’t in full consensus of her employment. She knew there would be a high level of scrutiny. This of course is NOT Mrs. Nelson’s fault, this ‘doubt’ was caused because of a poorly executed hiring process by councilor Neitzert. She still chose to move forward knowing it would be a contentious debate.
• Councilor Neitzert denies he ramrodded the process. He says that most if NOT all resolutions are noticed on a Friday and Voted on a Tuesday. While there is a lot of truth to that, most resolutions are benign, and have full support of the city council. They include things like gifting old equipment to other communities, appointing city board members, allowing SculptureWalk, giving out awards, etc. They don’t usually involve hiring a city council manager of this importance. They also are NEVER brought forward in a special meeting that has a singular objective (ex; golf contract). It was noticed on a Holiday Weekend, with NO attached documents that explained who Mrs. Nelson was or why she was qualified. It was also during a special meeting at 5:30 PM the following Tuesday. Her appointment could have easily been postponed for several weeks so the public could vet her. Just the day after her appointment Neitzert said it would be a full month before she transitioned into her position. So what was the rush? Councilor Stehly had NO choice but to put out a robo-call to inform the public this was coming down the pipe – FAST. While you may have had issues with her verbiage and tone, she did NOTHING wrong, or made false statements. It was ‘ramrodded’ and the parking ramp debacle was ‘controversial’.
• The city’s legal team blew off the nepotism and conflict of interest concerns as being ‘legal’ and since they were legal, in their eyes there were no problems. South Dakota has an ‘F’ rating in government corruption, mostly because we have NO ethics, conflict of interest or nepotism laws (or very weak ones).
• Mayor TenHaken never said whether Mrs. Nelson would be missed or even replaced (this would have been nice to know during a longer vetting process). You would think an employee with this much experience in finance, a person who implemented key finance software, and an employee who won an award (from the past mayor) would be valued by the administration and asked to stay. (I’m hearing from my city hall moles that there was a discussion about it, but since it was a personnel issue, and Mrs. Nelson would be bettering her career, they just let her proceed. If all this happened, I’m not sure why any of that is confidential and couldn’t be shared at the special meeting by the HR department).
• Councilor Neitzert said since he had 6 councilors sign off on her nomination he didn’t feel the need to get a total consensus. Though, during the meeting, councilor Brekke pointed out that most city council employees have a consensus of the entire council before getting approved. In fact, in the 13+ years I have been blogging about the city, the last time I can remember there was NO consensus of the city council was when they voted to terminate City Clerk Owen, and that discussion was behind closed doors with a public vote.
• After 3 weeks of job employment ads mostly online without the assistance of a job recruitment agency, the city got 15 candidates in which NONE of them had audit experience and only ONE of them was a current city employee, with an obvious conflict, and she was chosen. Some people call that ‘inside baseball’ but I won’t speculate any further.
Councilor Brekke suggested to Councilor Neitzert (who is the audit chair) that a broader search be done to find someone with audit experience. Her request was either ignored or rejected.
Councilor Starr, who was part of the hiring committee suggested early on that they hire a recruiter. They said it would cost too much, though Starr pointed out you could get one as low as $5K, and in most cases you don’t pay unless they produce qualified candidates. In other words, no harm, no foul. His suggestion was also discarded.
I think ‘the fix was in’ as soon as Mrs. Nelson turned in her application, and there was no going back from there. Just listen to what Neitzert said on Belfrage, ‘Shana is a Rock Star!’ Great, but why not do a broader search for a qualified ‘Rock Star’? And why totally ignore the suggestions of your fellow councilors? Who is the bully?
While I could care less if Councilor Neitzert wants to act like a Crazed Man-Child in the media, I am truly asking him to stop calling his fellow councilors liars, bullies, self-appointed victims and disrespecting and ignoring their opinions. If you disagree, you simply state that, and move on. If they have good suggestions about the hiring process, you try them. It’s really that simple.
As I have pointed out above, there is only one reason why this process when to Sh*t, and that person needs to take a hard look into the mirror. The only one who truly let down Mrs. Nelson through this process was the one leading the process, City Councilor & Audit Chair, Greg Neitzert.
Sioux Falls Community College
I’m not going down the road of who knew what and when. The State Legislature is full of ignorant whiners that are more worried about harmless crops, abortion and guns. Education is NOT even on their radar. Let’s forget about them for a moment.
I think it is a fantastic idea to have a Sioux Falls Community College. I am a SE Tech Alumni and I enjoyed my two years at the school (though I wished I had the money to further my education – we will get to that in a moment.)
Technical education works for people. I have often argued unless you want to be a doctor or a lawyer, what’s point of college? Don’t get wrong, there are many other careers that need a college degree, but for the most part, tech education works.
It’s cheaper, it’s faster and you can get good paying jobs (if you leave the state).
The debate that is going on behind the scenes is how we keep it affordable and tuition low?
I already know what the right wingers have up their sleeves, they want to hire non-union teachers and they want to have in-state work requirements for scholarships. While this may help with the balance sheets, it is short-sighted.
How can we keep tuition low (or at least debt low)?
My idea is too have extensive work study programs and volunteer tuition forgiveness.
How does it work? A volunteer program would have to be set up. And if you volunteer for certain non-profits, the city or even private business thru internships you would get a break on your tuition. It could be a massive program that is funded by the state, the city and businesses and non-profits. They would pay into the tuition fund (this would allow us to have a high level of teachers and learning). This would make the college more affordable, it would help out the community and would be flexible for the students. They wouldn’t have to be stuck working in our state if they didn’t want to and we would be winning on both fronts; A properly funded higher education institution and affordable learning.
Oh, and NO guns on campus.