2019

City of Sioux Falls trying to package new public safety facility bonds with past bad decisions

So this is what the city of Sioux Falls does, they make bad decisions in the past and instead of trying to correct them, they just pile it on with more bad spending decisions.*

While the new public safety center is needed, no doubt, they are playing a game with bonds and re-financing prior bad decisions;

Also included in the potential bonding package would be about $3 million for a new fire station in southeastern Sioux Falls and between $7 and $10 million for the third phase of the River Greenway project downtown. 

The two bonds being considered for refinancing were taken out by the city in 2009 for quality of life improvements, along with the flood levy project completed in 2015. Those bonds have $11.85 million and $19.7 million remaining on them, respectively.

That’s right, besides the public safety needs we want to continue to fund the river Greenway Project expansion (that is NOT needed – and likely will continue to flood due to global warming) and let’s not forget the fancy footwork the previous mayor played with Federal Funds that would have paid off the levy bonds but instead used the money to pay for the MAC that we didn’t need and continues to lose money each year.

If I was on the council, I would have NO issue with the re-finance and funding the public safety facilities, BUT, I would nix the expansion of the river greenway and just do inexpensive bike trail upgrades, etc, and stop building Roman like structures. We need to work on flood control of the Big Sioux, not build more monuments to nothing.

*There is a rumor I heard from another local media person that the city may need more money for another failed over budget project in town. I have no idea what that would be, or the cost – but I have my guesses. I guess the cat may be let out of the bag as soon as this week. Oh, brother.

UPDATE: Mayor TenHaken has been pushing for a 6 PM Council Meeting start time

As I have been hearing behind the scenes, Mayor Paul has been asking the city councilors their thoughts are on changing the regular city council meeting to 6 PM instead of 7 PM.

I got word yesterday that he has been fielding opinions from the council. If it goes to a vote, he will probably have the 4-5 votes he needs.

As you know, I’m against this change (I actually wish it would have stayed on Monday nights and the School Board and Minnehaha County Commission would change their meetings to 7 PM night meetings).

I think it is a good time for the working public to show up. It would be very difficult for people to make a 6 PM meeting if they have to work until 5 or 5:30. And BTW, these meetings are about the PUBLIC, not the elected officials or public employees, this is OUR meeting and it should accommodate us and our busy schedules, it is about open and transparent government.

Today at the city council informational, councilor Stehly made it public that the council was considering this move. She pointed out that if there would have been a regular 6 PM meeting tonight, the city council informational would have been cut short.

So why is the mayor pushing for this? Honestly, I think he wants to shorten the informational meetings for fewer questions, and he wants to limit public input, and lastly wants to get home earlier. Hey, Paul, if you don’t like being at the meetings, we can certainly change the charter so you don’t have to chair them anymore, but remember, you didn’t want that.

He has told the council that it is about the city employees coming to the Tuesday night meetings. As I have said in the past, the directors know what they signed up for, they are paid very well, and guess what, it is a PUBLIC sector job. Something else people may or may not know is that they get ‘comp’ time. In other words, if they have to spend a couple hours at the council meeting Tuesday Night, they can leave early on a different day, so it really isn’t cutting into their ‘private time’. I have also suggested if they don’t like working in the public sector, they can always work in the private sector with the rest of us, in a right to work state, where refusing to work overtime could result in termination, and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it. City employees don’t have it that tough, and I think PTH is just using them as an excuse for his own personal agenda.

UPDATE: PTH also said that the media requested the meetings start earlier, this is NOT true, some in the media have denied this. Also, PTH claims it is for people who ride the bus. Not sure about this one either.

I hope the council doesn’t move forward with this, but I have a feeling they will, and one more notch will be put on the closed government bedpost.

UPDATE II: I guess the council has changed their mind on this, and it probably doesn’t have the 4-5 votes to change. I guess the Deputy COS also said the administration is calling it off.

New Sioux Falls Police Officers

Eight new officers were sworn in. Six Males and two females. I’m not sure if any of them are minorities.

I decided to do a little research on our local TV stations to see how they breakdown in these matters. I only counted the ON-AIR personalities, this is what I found.

ALL STATIONS COMBINED: 49 TOTAL • 32 MEN • 17 WOMEN • 4 MINORITIES

KELOLAND-TV: 21 TOTAL • 14 MEN • 7 WOMEN • O MINORITIES

KSFY-TV: 14 TOTAL • 10 MEN • 4 WOMEN • 3 MINORITIES

KDLT-TV: 14 TOTAL • 8 MEN • 6 WOMEN • 1 MINORITY

Not that this has any correlation, but I just thought it was interesting. Also not shown in the numbers are the LGBTQ community, which a few of the stations do have.