2025

Downtown Sioux Falls Food Food Stamps food tax Sioux Falls

Why are restaurants in Sioux Falls failing?

l3wis January 6, 2025 0Comments

Well, at least someone in the media has figured it out;

I am beginning to wonder if this market is adding restaurants faster than it’s growing the resident and visitor population.

That’s one of the problems. The other is horrible service (many experienced managers and servers left the industry during Covid, permanently). Prices of course with inflation are also to blame. Food quality is also at an all time low due to cost cutting by restaurants. Also, there really is no destinations. Just look at the restaurants and bars that are always busy, they have great service, good food, decent price points and a reason to be there. I’m sorry, an aluminum stool at a bar with Coors Light on tap and a buffalo chicken wrap on the menu isn’t roping me in or keeping me there. I think the hospitality industry in Sioux Falls needs to realize the same old, same old, just ain’t cutting it anymore.

There is only a handful of locally owned restaurants I go to anymore, and they are getting slimmer. I also got a kick out of this statement;

and even the impact of so many people using weight-loss drugs,

I about fell out of my chair laughing at that one. If people can’t afford to go out to eat, they certainly can’t afford $1,000 a month designer diet pills. Look around at people when you are at a restaurant and count the people who are NOT overweight. You may find 2-3 out of 40. Trust me, people are getting enough food to eat. It’s the garbage we are being fed.

Downtown Sioux Falls Mayor TenHaken SF City Council Sioux Falls

Sioux Falls City Council Agenda (Jan 7, 2025)

l3wis January 6, 2025 0Comments

The council has had a few weeks off, so I knew stuff was piling up, and it’s a big-in;

City Council Informational • Tuesday January 7, 2025, 4 PM

• Real Time Information Center by Jon Thum, Police Chief (not sure what this is but looks interesting). Hopefully this will be an effort by the SFPD to be more open with citizens and their assistance in helping to solve crime. I’m sorry, but a large majority of the 16 murders this year in Sioux Falls were preventable and we need to be sharing more data and information with the public.

Regular Meeting • Tuesday January 7, 2025, 6 PM

Item #22, This resolution of necessity is for the construction of an urban section connecting Detroit to the existing urban section of Grant Street which is 650+/- feet East of Detroit Avenue. (This will be an interesting item during discussion. I am NOT sure if the properties are willing to pay for the completion of this street, but maybe that is what was negotiated?)

Item #29, An ordinance of the City of Sioux Falls authorizing the City to issue bonds backed and repaid by the City’s existing 2nd penny sales tax to utilize for $68,000,000 in parks and recreation improvements at the Westside Recreation Center, Kuehn Park, and Frank Olson Park. (IMO, the city council missed an incredible opportunity to put these bonds to a vote during the spring elections. The numbers have been the same for over a year, there has been NO mysteries. They will pass it even though most taxpayers in Sioux Falls have no idea this is going on.)

Item #6, Approval of Contracts;

Sub-Item #3 (When you have to pay a private contractor $70K to create a budget book you have to question the competency of our finance department. Maybe they need to hire a private contractor to replace the staples in their staplers to?)

Sub-Item #6 (Settlement for $595K for easement property. Notice that this was awarded to the developer who sold the Tre Ministries property and will not be developing it).

Sub-Item #7 (Why are we paying the RR $100K for bridge repair? Biggest Grifters EVER!)

Sub-Item #15 (Onward and Leadership Training Agreement. More waste on leadership programs. Maybe teach city employees how to be more efficient and productive?)

Sub-Item #16 (Millions more to the Pavilion to fix something? I would really like a tally of how much money from the entertainment tax we have spent so far on the Pavilion. May guess it is north of $100 million since it’s inception. A project that was supposed to cost $19 million and when finally completed was around $50 million, with millions more in repairs and subsidies over the years).

1st Amendment Canton Downtown Sioux Falls Harrisburg School District Mayor TenHaken Open Government Open Meetings Sioux Falls Tea

Is this proof that Mayor TenHaken is actively pursuing closed government?

l3wis January 4, 2025 4Comments

Not sure, but I will lay this out for you. Around a year ago or so MPO (Metropolitan Planning Organization of Sioux Falls) had a zoom meeting. At the meeting were several city administrators I believe from Tea, Canton and Mayor TenHaken. The city manager of Harrisburg could NOT attend so he designated a private contractor who was the city’s acting (part-time) planning director at the time (they just recently pulled back after hiring Watertown’s Planning person). The ‘fill-in’ at the meeting said the discussion quickly turned to the dividing line between SF and Harrisburg and Poops adamant distinction of HWY 101 being that line. The ‘fill-in’, a former city of Sioux Falls engineer, disagreed with the mayor and said that is not ‘definitive’ and never has been. Then the mayor proceeded to accuse this person of lying about what he ‘knows’ and what he believes (I am still waiting for the minutes from the meeting). Besides the meeting itself being a little rough and contentious it was what Poops did after the meeting that was really petty. He instructed that MPO changes it’s meeting rules only to include city employees as fill-ins and not private contractors. While I agree, seemed it a little odd you would send your private contractor to this meeting, BUT, they were discussing planning and development and he was the acting planning director for Harrisburg, so it made sense at the time. I just find it incredibly insecure and petty to make a rule change because you didn’t like a private citizen telling you what was up in an a official meeting so you change the rules. You got a lot of issues man.

1st Amendment Media

Welcome to Push!

l3wis January 4, 2025 2Comments

My friend Suzanne Sunshower, who now lives in Michigan (she used to live in SD for a short stint) started this blog by reprinting her father’s editorials from the 60’s thru the 80’s, it is fascinating;

PUSH is a new writing partnership between myself and my long-deceased dad. For almost twenty years, from deep within the 1960’s to the early-1980’s, my dad wrote weekly editorials for a popular Black newspaper called The Michigan Chronicle.

Developers Development Downtown Sioux Falls Janet Brekke Sioux Falls

UPDATE: Why is the City of Sioux Falls offering 0% interest loans for Historic Homes?

l3wis January 4, 2025 3Comments

UPDATE: A city official told me this proposal was purely administrative and the council had little to do with this idea. How can the mayor authorize funds that are Federal housing grants at 0% interest? Good question. The council controls the purse and they need to put their foot down on this one and base the interest rate on income.

So the city has decided to create a whole new set of grifters, historic home owners;

The City’s Historic Preservation Loan Program offers a zero-interest loan to homeowners who live in residential historic districts or have an individually listed property on the National Register of Historic Places. The goal of the loan program is to help homeowners restore historic properties.

Don’t get me wrong, as you know I am a gigantic proponent of Community Development loans as I was once a recipient, and I have suggested to city council over the past decade to ramp up the program and have city employees engage homeowners in lower income neighborhoods. Former councilor Janet Brekke actually tried to get some legislation passed that would offer a pilot program doing just this and she was told to pound sand by not only City Hall but her fellow councilors.

Just drive around Whittier and Pettigrew and you will find that a large percentage of these properties need repair and this is where our community development could step in AND SHOULD.

I have a feeling a certain grifter who has received thousands of dollars from city coffers for his ‘historic projects’ pushed for this. One grift just isn’t enough for this guy.

I don’t have a problem with giving these people actual loans, I believe historic homes need to be preserved, but a 0% interest rate? Really? While most people who own these homes are wealthy and own multiple properties we literally have homes falling apart in these other neighborhoods, why not a 0% interest rate for these folks? Why does the mayor dislike poor people so much?

Welcome to ‘Grift Falls’ where the wealthy get to play with our money and pay no returns. I encourage the council to get involved and change the interest rate based on income, like MOST community development loans work (I think I paid a 2% rate, but could have avoided paying any of it back until the home sells). In other words, many of these folks won’t even make one payment back to the coffers and wait until they croak or sell before we get our money back.

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