South DaCola

Editorial Cartoonist from South Dakota

November 2024

Mayor TenHaken SF City Council Sioux Falls snow removal Snowgates

UPDATE II: Where were the F’ing sanders today?!

l3wis 6Comments

UPDATE II: I guess the street fleet was out at 7:30 AM on Wednesday, FILLING POTHOLES! The only spots they sanded were bridges and after they left at 3:30 PM they were CALLED back at 4:30 PM to sand, and only a handful of drivers responded to the request. But hey, if you drive a public works truck in the parade of lights you are getting $60 bones an hour. Priorities folks. Priorities. I also heard and still trying to verify there was almost 90 traffic accidents on Wednesday. Surprising? NOT.

UPDATE: I was told the sanders were out at 7:30 AM on Wednesday. I would be curious how many because when I drove to work at 4 PM on Cliff Avenue, parts of 41st street and Minnesota were pure ice and packed snow and I didn’t see one single sander out.

I know I have complained about this before, but today was literally a Sh!t show. With the weather today being what is was I decided to drive my car. Bad decision. While I do have studded snow tires on my bike, I try to avoid riding in the dark when conditions are very icy, but I would have probably been safer on my bike. Normally it takes me about 20 minutes to commute to work (5 miles) it took me 30 minutes today in my car, not just because of the terrible condition of the streets but because multiple streets were closed due to accidents.

I get it, there really wasn’t a forecast for this event, but it shouldn’t matter, it is the END OF NOVEMBER! Those sanders should be ready at ALL TIMES!

I did see them out tonight at 9 PM. Thanks . . . dumbasses.

So besides the personal expenditures of folks vehicles being damaged, we have the police and fire respond to these incidents. And now we are paying NIGHT differential to sand the streets. The pennies the city may have saved by not sanding this morning when the event started doesn’t even come close to the amount being spent on responding to these accidents.

Is our Mayor that stupid?

Maybe so, but it also falls back on his lack of leadership. Dave Munson would have been on the horn to Galen Huber at 6 am sending out those sanders. Why? Because public safety should never have a price tag, it is a requirement of municipal government to provide these services thru the taxes we pay. Makes you wonder if the city is in such dire straights that they can’t even send sanders out? We have around $80 million in reserves. We could sand every road in the state for a year and still not spend it all.

I suggested to a councilor that the council write an ordinance that takes control of street plowing and sanding. Basically it would require the street department to act on their own when there is an event and craft the ordinance in a way that pretty much requires them to act immediately to any winter weather event and take that control away from the mayor.

Riverline District Sioux Falls

Riverline Committees has another executive session for second meeting

l3wis 0Comments

Still find it funny they are having a PUBLIC steering committee meeting with members of the public sitting on the committee but they can’t share this information with the rest of the public? These committee members are NOT employees of the city and are NOT elected, in other words their LEGAL STATUS to view documents in executive session is the same as ours . . . WE CANNOT view them so they shouldn’t be able to either. My assumption is in these executive sessions they are discussing the strategy on how to roll this out to the public. If you just look at the members of the committee you can tell their is NO NAYSAYERS in the group. I thought the whole purpose of the committee was to examine just exactly what is being proposed and to see if it will work. Why can’t that be done in public? Nothing is decided yet, as far as I am concerned these meetings should be public and let the public see what is being discussed AND RECORD THEM! This of course is not a surprise. One of the Committee Members and an all around bucket of sunshine, Jessie (Pins) Schmidt was on Turdbook defending the executive sessions saying that people get to talk during public input at the beginning. Talk about what? Speculating what you may discuss in the executive session? Like if a certain broker has a conflict of interest? Let’s face it folks, this administration is anti-open government and we will NEVER see any results from these meetings except a convention center being shoved down our throats with a tax increase to boot. Closed government costs taxpayers way to much, and this time it is going to cost us $400 million.

Planning Commission Sioux Falls

Why is the Helpline Center getting so many city contracts?

l3wis 1Comments

If you check the agenda for Tuesday’s meeting you will notice that the Helpline Center is getting ANOTHER contract with the city to handle phone traffic. They also have contracts for other phone services with the city.

I will admit the city DOES need to use private phone services sometimes but it seems they are sending a buttload of duties over to this private non-profit. Why not buy them and make them a city entity? Probably break even.

I find all these contracts interesting since the CEO of Helpline is Janet Kittams who was the previous chair of the planning commission and still has a seat until April of 2025. She also served as chair when attendance was less then ideal. This is a blatant conflict of interest. Heck, she even signed the contract herself!

While the Helpline Center has had city contracts for a long time, it seems lately they are getting quite a bit more.

Wonder if a city councilor can tell me how much TOTAL we spend on the Helpline Center each year and if these services can be spread out to other contractors or better yet, teach city employees how to answer a phone. Seems pretty simple to me.

Mayor TenHaken SFPD Sioux Falls

Should Police Chief Thum be terminated?

l3wis 7Comments

I wasn’t making the suggestion, but a friend and I were discussing all the murders in Sioux Falls over the past year and he suggested it.

I actually defended the police on one aspect, they have no idea domestic disputes are occurring in private residences unless someone reports it, so prevention of domestic violence is a tough one to tackle and actually takes the work of many non-profits in our community.

But I can’t defend the police when these murders occur in open spaces like a public park.

I think Thum has done a good job of trying to clean up a department that has morale issues, BUT he needs to UP the patrols of the officers. Several of these murders were preventable because they occurred in public spaces.

Just look at the Dunham Park incident. Nobody called the incident in while the physical fight was occurring in the middle of the afternoon in a park surrounded by apartments? C’mon!

I’ve said since the city’s covid lockdown SOME city employees haven’t really changed their habits of laziness. I have often said that ALL city employees need to have there workflows annually inspected, and if they are NOT up to par, lay them off. It would be harder to fire them do to how a Union works, but you could lay people off due to budgetary reasons. In other words cutting payroll so the mayor would have NO choice but to lay people off. Now while the mayor has the power to hire and fire whoever he wants to without interference from the council, the council does set the budget and they could slash payroll and leave it up to the mayor to cut the fat.

And the mayor’s lack of effective employee leadership is contributing to the problem. When your a city employee busting your butt filling potholes and you see the mayor that makes 5x what you do doing jumping jacks at an elementary school in the middle of the morning, it makes you not want to fill those potholes very fast. And cute little challenge coins don’t mean nothin’.

I have often said city employees are an INVESTMENT and we should make sure that INVESTMENT is working for us. So whether that is a parks worker or a patrol officer we need to give them all the tools to be successful and effective.

Denny Sanford Premier Center Downtown Sioux Falls Elections SF City Council Sioux Falls

What is the difference between an Advisory Election and a Bond Election?

l3wis 2Comments

First the definitions;

An advisory question is a type of ballot measure that is non-binding, meaning the outcome of the ballot measure has no legal effect on a state’s laws. This type of ballot measure is also known as an advisory referendum, advisory vote, or non-binding ballot measure.

A Bond Election is a type of ballot measure in which voters decide whether to authorize a local government to issue bonds to pay for specific projects or services. It is typically used to fund public works projects such as roads, bridges, and other infrastructure. The money raised by the bond issue is usually repaid by raising taxes or other revenue sources. Bond elections are often held in conjunction with other elections, such as municipal or county elections.

We had an advisory election with the Events Center. After citizens voted 54% in favor of building the Denty the city council had to take LEGAL action to take out the bonds, in which they did.

If the election was an actual ‘bond election’ it would have taken a 60% passage to pull the bonds, and since this is a LEGAL election, there would be very little action from the city council to initiate those bonds because the citizens LEGALLY approved the bonds in a LEGAL election.

I am often saying that an advisory vote is actually ILLEGAL because NO LEGAL action is being taken by the public in an election. I have encouraged councilors to have a LEGAL bond election with the Rec bonds and CC bonds. First it makes their job that much easier and secondly you are giving citizens the ability to tax themselves if they choose to (we will need an extra penny sales tax in order for the bonds on the CC to work).

If the city pulls an advisory election on the CC, I encourage any local attorney to sue the city for their ILLEGAL election.

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