I will agree with Taneeza on one level, there was poor planning of speakers for a $100 ticketed event. The speakers should have been more diverse, not just on gender but on culture. The problem is that the SDDP is become more and more RIGHT every day, and one of the reasons I may never return to the party in South Dakota.
Planning Commission Meeting, 6 PM, Wednesday May 1, 2019
On Thursday, May 2, city employees and city councilors will have an opportunity to see a presentation on the Sioux Steel Development, then they will be wined and dined, but there’s nothing ‘unethical’ about that.
On Wednesday, May 8, The Mayor TenHaken will give his Big Hairy Audacious State of the city address. He interestingly picked to do the address at SE Tech. I assume he did this to talk about the NEW Sioux Falls Community College.
On Thursday, May 9, The SF Housing Summit will be held at the DT Holiday Inn (instead of a city owned building). At this point there is still a registration fee for the event, and I noticed that the public input portion was left off the calendar (It is supposed to be after 3 PM).
On that same day Levitt will give us their concert series lineup. Not sure why this is ‘Invite only’. How is the public going to find out who it is if they are not invited? LOL.
I’m actually very excited about the concert series and plan to attend every concert. And I will probably purchase food and drink while I am at the shows. But I’m still going to fight to change it to BYOB. If this doesn’t happen this year, I will work the council to change this eventually. If we truly want to give taxpayers a FREE concert series (after they have helped fund this program in capital and maintenance) we should have the opportunity to bring our own alcoholic beverages like HALF of the other Levitts across the country allow.
Surprise, surprise Sioux Falls government ethics is in question. The Sioux Falls Board of Ethics was asked what should have been a simple question by City Councilor Theresa Stehly on April 25, 2019.
Can a developer, who is planning a major downtown project where they will be pitching a $24 million tax break, host a food and booze event without an ethics violation being levied against the invited city officials?
Anything can be can be questioned if it has de Minimis or nominal value. Even if there is no minimum or maximum value, if there is no minimum or maximum time period, it can be an ethical conflict. If dots can be shown or perceived or the optics can make it look bad, it is an ethical conflict. These have been the rulings in two previous decisions of the Board of Ethics.
What we learned in this meeting, apparently this does not apply to City Council or department staff if a developer wants to wine and dine the right people.
This was a preemptive advisory request by Stehly, not a post event ethics violation she was asking the Board to rule on.
The Board decided, since there is no “crime” yet, there was nothing they could do to preemptively advise the people in their jurisdiction to not attend the heavy food and alcoholic drink event designed to soften the $24 million TIF request.
The previous ruling requests were preemptive in nature, so was this one. Explain this to the cops and librarians, how South Dakota has only ethics laws affecting them (kind of).
This is good stuff, Thune talking about our lying president and why he is voting for impeachment (He’s talking about Clinton not Trump).
l3wis