Wow! This is a crazy first. The city of Sioux Falls wants to spend up to $10 million dollars of public money on the River Greenway expansion to make a development more attractive that hasn’t even been built yet;
Phase three would see the trail system extended between the upper falls at Falls Park to Kiwanis Park, which sits between Sioux Steel and the river.
Shouldn’t we wait to see the final plans of the Sioux Steel Development before we start building this? And if the city has already seen these plans, why are they NOT being shared with the public before we are asked to borrow the money? I may not be opposed if I could see the plans.
My first reaction is BRAVO! I have been watching it tonight and it has been working well. I would also encourage the city to put ALL pertinent information on the city website.
Isn’t it funny how the Iowa Jew who runs the South Dakota Republican party loves to mouth off about how horrible the Dems are in our state but has absolutely NOTHING to say about Butina’s involvement in the state party and some of it’s operatives?
Not a peep.
And then there’s this trade delegation organized by Democratic State Representative Michael Saba who apparently says it is going so well it may open other trade negotiations besides ag products.
Once again, not a word from Iowa . . . uh . . . I mean South Dakota Republicans.
UPDATE: I guess I’m an anti-semite because I called the leader of the SD GOP a Jew from Iowa. He is a Jew from Iowa. That’s not anti-semitism, that’s a FACT! My point has nothing to do with him being a Jew, my point has been all along that the Christian Right Wing Republican party in South Dakota, who constantly are telling us about their SOUTH DAKOTA VALUES and CHRISTIAN BELIEFS are ran by an IOWAN who is NOT CHRISTIAN.
I busted up laughing when a reader sent me this photo of a cell phone tower on church property near Cliff and East 10th street (next to the old Bike Barn).
We have presentations on Microblading & The 3rd Phase of the River Greenway Project. This should be interesting to see how they will spend around $10 million on this project.
Item #7, Approval of Contracts, apparently it costs $79K to design and manage the construction of a very small Dog Park Downtown. I think I need to get into the dog park design business.
Fire Chief Goodroad also provides some information on what the design process will include for the public safety training center;
The Architectural Services will provide programming services and final space requirements for the following: • Main Classroom/Office Building • High Rise Training (Burn Tower) • 2-Story Training Building • 2-Story Mixed Use Training Building • Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) • Hazmat/Rail • Outdoor Live Fire Props • Propane Fuel Farm • Police/Fire Emergency Vehicle Operations Course (EVOC) (high and low speed) • Outdoor Classroom • Tactical Gun Range • Site Development and Landscape
Item #69, 2nd Reading, Bee Keeping ordinance. I think will have the support of at least 5 councilors. But it will be interesting to see what amendments get tacked on.
Item #74, 1st Reading, Clarifying the duties of the City Attorney as advisor to certain citizen boards. While I support the change, it should have been put on the ballot in the Spring for citizens to vote on it.
Item #79, Resolution to increase the funding for the Bunker Ramp by $1.5 million. It’s too bad this is all the way at the end of the meeting. I suspect the discussion about this should be HOT. I think they have at least 5 votes to pass this, in fact I wouldn’t be surprised if this actually gets 7 votes. Hopefully though we will get some answers as to what this is for, but I’m guessing we will just get a lot of runaround with directors telling councilors during questioning, “I’ll get that info for you tomorrow and email it.” (so the public can’t see it tonight before it passes). I have often thought that a vote should be automatically deferred one week if city staff can’t provide an answer in the public meeting, or at least try to find it before the vote takes place. What’s the point in answering a question after the passage of legislation?
Item #80, Resolution to appoint citizen board members. The mayor gets to appoint two members to the State Theatre Board (since we THE TAXPAYERS gave them money). I can feel the warmth of the popcorn already.
The killing floor continues at the CRC meetings. They will take up several items including;
• Removing Mayor from Council, Super Majority to approve bonds & plurality or ranked choice voting. I suspect they will all be killed by the CRC. In the graphic below you will see the timeline they are working with in this slaughter of good legislation and changes to the Charter.