South DaCola

Editorial Cartoonist from South Dakota

September 2024

County Commission David Barranco Downtown Sioux Falls Minnehaha County Property Taxes SF City Council Sioux Falls Taxes

Bikes, Bonds and Belittling

l3wis 8Comments

Not sure if you caught the above meeting, but it was a scorcher. While I would agree with Minnehaha County Commissioner Joe Kippley that Leah shouldn’t be fooling around with past elections, I don’t agree with him asking her to resign in public. He should have wrote her a letter, got a couple of his other commissioners on board and CC’d the media. It was extremely unprofessional, and the kicker is he is the health director for the city. Getting ‘political’, which was what his stunt was, is not the ethical standard I want my health director to be holding. If anything Joe should resign because of his conflicts, and I have a feeling he will AFTER the November election so they can appoint someone. More trickery. Oh, and the commission has allegedly been playing games with bond levies. More to come on that 🙁

COUNCIL KICKS THE CAN DOWN THE ROAD ON THE RIVERLINE DISTRICT

At the council meeting last night the council took the line item out of the 2025 budget and concocted a steering committee to study the purchase. While I’m happy they killed the line item, I am not happy they are continuing down the path which will ultimately have us buying the land. From talking to councilors I got the feeling they were just going to kill it and let the River Rats figure it out, but this must be the compromise. Folks, all this is, is smoke and mirrors by the council. They plan to implement a 3rd penny tax to have us paid for the Convention Center. This is short-sighted. They should implement a entertainment corporate tax on all business with 500 or more employees. If you think this place will have an economic impact on your businesses, prove it, pony up.

Oh, and Councilor Barranco was the ONLY councilor to vote against a property tax increase. Thank You David! That vote proved to me that at least 7 councilors don’t give a rat’s ass what economic position you are in, they need their play palaces!

E-BIKES HAVE INVADED DOWNTOWN

Not really, but some people seem to be butt hurt they are sitting around downtown. They are not junkers, so I am not sure what people are concerned about. Other cities do it this way. I think the only tweak I would make is having the bikes in a mobile unit so they are not scattered everywhere downtown, but like I said, there is a million other things we need to worry about downtown, and a random bike parked on a corner ain’t one of them.

WAS HARRIS DEBATING BIDEN LAST NIGHT?

After the first 10 minutes of the debate last night I thought Harris was debating Biden.

Sioux Falls Sioux Falls Airport Sioux Falls Transit Transportation

Transit On Demand is available at the airport

l3wis 1Comments

I stand corrected! I had a long post written last night about how On Demand doesn’t appear to go to the airport, but it does;

The airport, for example, wasn’t an option. I was instead prompted to take a bus and then a 50-minute walk.

As it was explained to me by a reporter, the app just gives you options and the first option was to take a fixed route or walk.

Uh, okay.

But my bigger concern is the data mining;

Via has its own app that you have to download, and there are quite a few steps to get it all set up,

While data can make the service much better, your personal information like credit card and tracking info should be scrubbed every 24-48 hours. I want to use the service, but not sure I can trust a 3rd party contractor partnering up with another 3rd party software provider (and who knows what other financial services they are partnering with?)

All this Bloomberg Institute of data mining is getting old.

Downtown Sioux Falls Sioux Falls

Business Diversity Ordinance needs to be implemented Downtown Sioux Falls

l3wis 8Comments

As I have mentioned before, Downtown Fort Collins, CO was really transformed once they did a business diversity plan. Basically no two similar businesses can be on the same block on either side of the street. It’s really basic, you can have two restaurants or bars next to each other, but they must be different in concept, etc. What’s fascinating is DTFC has all kinds of business diversity; credit unions, chiropractors, dental offices, mortgage, you name it. It is also 4x the size of ours in walking accessibility. And here is the last comparison, Fort Collins climate and population is very similar. We can do this here.

It’s really an easy process. Basically DTSF as an org would hire a consultant to study the ordinance. The city council would fund the study and once completed, present to the council where they can make tweaks in a couple of public working sessions. After about 16 months you could pass the new ordinance. There of course would be a grandfather clause (basically if you are already established, you don’t have to leave, BUT any changes in lease agreements or closures the ordinance would be in effect.)

I started thinking about this more since Vishnu Bunny was forced out DTSF. I knew this would eventually happen since a small group of investors are buying up DTSF properties like mad and paying way over appraisal pushing the little dude out. I know several DTSF business owners who rent but would prefer to own their storefront. One of them told me, “We can secure the loan, we just can’t find anything available.” One of the problems is the joint venture between Tupy and Paulson and their development company they run out of a UPS store PO Box. They are literally buying all and any property DTSF which they will eventually transform.

Jeff Mann, the owner of Vishnu is a good guy. I should know, I helped him beat down the city and Mayor Huether at the time to get Vishnu DTSF. There was some clown, whose name we won’t mention, trying to influence the mayor to stop the venue and we went to the media. Huether had a change of heart and showed up to the opening in which I proceeded to explain genital piercings to him. His face was priceless. Either way, Mann has shown he was a staple of DTSF in which I participated in several art exhibits on First Fridays. We really are losing a gem.

Our downtown is turning into a dump because we don’t promote business diversity. I have almost boycotted every downtown business except one, because they promote business diversity. Maybe DTSF needs to have their next board meeting at Book Coop and learn a little about diversity.

Charter Revision Commission Ethics Mayor Subprime Mike Huether Mayor TenHaken Mike Huether Munson Open Government Open Meetings SF City Council Sioux Falls Sioux Falls Charter Revision Commission Triple Check the Charter

I couldn’t agree more with Mr. Kirby

l3wis 4Comments

Joe did a great blog post today about the charter. While I disagree with some of his premises and anecdotes he is right about ONE thing;

City government would be improved if we established a better separation of powers while at the same time, strengthening the role of our legislature. Here are some changes I think are worth considering in the charter and/or the way city government operates.

  1. Take the next mayor off the city council to establish better separation of powers.

I think this would FORCE the council to do policy because they would be running their own meetings and agendas. This doesn’t mean the mayor could not still present policy but he would have to get at least ONE sponsor on the council and if it really is HIS policy and not something a department head cooked up, he needs to come to the council and present.

I think the charter has worked well also, but the biggest problem is the laziness of the councils since and the corruption at city hall. This of course spells incompetence.

Some rules and regs really do work, but you must apply them, this city has NOT when it comes to policy and our legislative branch.

Harrisburg School District Open Government Open Meetings

Update I: Did the city of Harrisburg violate open meeting laws

l3wis 3Comments

Update: I want to correct this post. Since it has been confirmed he resigned and was not terminated they can handle it as a personal issue in executive session. Now if he didn’t willingly resign, they would have to vote on terminating him in public.

Update: The rumor circulating is he was terminated because he pissed off developers. I know, shocker!

The short answer is YES. When the Sioux Falls city council decided to fire then city clerk Owens behind closed doors they got slapped with an open meetings violation. Harrisburg recently fired their city administrator behind closed doors. That is a NO-NO. Whether the person was doing a good job* or not does not matter, an appointed position like this is hired in the open and fired in the open. I hope this person slaps Harrisburg with this violation.

*There was a quiet recall effort amongst citizens in Harrisburg to get rid of the city administrator. Not sure if this had an effect on his firing or not? He also was getting into it with our mayor over jurisdiction lines and the state over the prison. Will we ever know why he was fired?

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