And Marsh got a little help from his friend Mr. Zylstra on the CRC dais to support his claims.
Sorry folks, but you don’t understand the term ‘narrow’. Alex Jensen beating Stehly by less then a 100 votes is a ‘narrow’ margin, but this was not. I couldn’t find the exact results because the new city website has blocked all previous election information and a lot of other stuff, not bad for a site that cost us $400K+ 🙁
But I did find a news article that was reporting on the results after the polls closed and this is about as close as I could get;
Yes: 13,466
No: 15,369
As you can see, it wasn’t a ‘narrow’ defeat.
I’m not sure who is pushing the buttons of the CRC members but I can guarantee if this makes the ballot again, I think voters will vote by an even wider margin to reject this. Remember the minimum wage fiasco?
Pay isn’t what is deterring candidates from running, it’s time commitments. I think if we paid the councilors as full-time members (after removing the mayor as a councilor) you would get better candidates. Just look at the current crop of incumbents. Jensen has already bailed on a 2nd term, and I have also heard that Cole and Merkouris are probably not going to seek 2nd terms.
Besides the time commitments, I’m sure that chasing their tails when trying to get assistance from the administration hasn’t been a lot of fun.
The CRC had every change they needed in front of them. Add another council seat, remove mayor as chair and hire a city manager, etc. and while they rejected all of these wonderful ideas they were hellbent on pushing for this back door way of getting raises.
It’s the council’s duties that need to change, not their pay.
Good Article, I agree, I do not support giving the city council the power to simply pick and choose their paychecks, the current charter is fine as it is read today.
I do disagree, that we have to remove the mayor from the city council. The process works great the way it is, and leaving the Mayor on the council is the proper move. However, ‘we’ can transition to a separation between the two even by leaving the mayor on the council by electing a Odd Numbered Council, as it removes the need of a tie breaking vote, giving to the mayor the means to veto any disagreements.
$20,000 a year for a City Council position is fine, leave it as is, that is a good salary for a part time job, when many commit less than 10 hours a week to the job, while others commit maybe more, they all have full time jobs, businesses, other interests. There are people like myself, who would do the job for “FREE” and if we have to take the salary, we would donate it to a non-profit group to help the community, or use it to host more town hall events on monthly dates.
The Mayor has gained more power, cause the City Council has become gutless, they refuse to grab their power, and they refuse to use their Investigative Powers to place the City Officials, Officers, Agents, Employees, Corporate Partners on Public Trial…
When is the last time this city had a public trial? Never. Well – they did place Greg Neitzert on public trial but that is it…
We need a City Council who is willing to do their job, not bow down.
Sioux Falls population has almost doubled since 1994, when this current council system was put into place.
Based on that fact, we should have 16 and not 8 members on the council. Because if we had more council members, then responsibilities could be shared more easily and more sensibly.
More council members would also mean more neighborhood candidates, which could increase the candidate pool, while reigning in campaign costs, hopefully.
But as I have mentioned before, this is the town that has always allowed for exclusivity when it comes to governing. Don’t forget before 1994, we had a commission from of government consisting of a mayor and four commissioners, and at that time Sioux Falls and Miami where the only two cities over a 100,000 in population with a commission form of government; which is a government of the few run by a few (developers)….
Oh, and back in ’16, Trump got 306 votes from the Electoral College. At the time, he called it one of the greatest landslides in EC history, but many laughed at that… But technically, it was a landslide in its own right, because 55+ is considered to be a landslide, but not the greatest one in history, however. Then, if you look at the numbers above you will notice that the “NOs” got 53% of the vote, so then it is fair to say that the results of that election were in between a “landslide” and a very close race…. So, NO, it wasn’t a “‘narrow'” margin at all…. 🙂
( and Woodstock adds: “Man, that Trump sure is a fxxker”……. )