2025

UPDATE: The Pavilion roof may be in trouble?

UPDATE: So I recruited some ‘needlers’ to see what they can find out. And oh boy, it is radio silence at the attorney’s office, the Pav and TenPoopen’s communication office. It has actually been a great laugh with those who shared with me the responses. I think I said to one of them, “Maybe you should remind Vanessa she works in the ‘Communications Department’. Accent on the Communications part. I wish I could change this font to brown, but our color blind mayor wouldn’t get it.

I told you a few weeks ago that I found out another contractor was putting the city in a bind. The city owns the Pavilion so we are responsible financially for any building upgrades, and the Pavilion takes millions each year in maintenance costs from the entertainment tax. Replacing the thingies on the roof cost us, ALOT! So the ‘rumor’ is that while replacing the ‘thingies’ they tore up the rubber roof (you really should not walk on them, let alone carry equipment and materials across it.) Not sure what the city is doing to get relief, but if they had a half a brain they would threaten a lawsuit to get the money. I was told that the repairs will cost over $1 Million. Another city project, another bad contractor. I thought we did RFP’s so we could select the best contractor? And where were the city building inspectors during this process? Were they not checking on the progress? And if so, couldn’t they see the roof damage? Someone told me once, “The city building inspectors are afraid of ladders . . . and the outdoors.”

Bank suing Tzadik

Dakotanews reported about this about a month ago;

Now, tenants of several Tzadik properties in Sioux Falls and Rapid City are facing another concern; foreclosure.

I was able to see the cover letter of the case;

Notice that the State and County are listed in title, why not the city? I think with all the code enforcement violations the city could have contributed to this suit. But also notice a certain company that has gleaned millions in tax rebates and TIFs from the taxpayers of Sioux Falls is also listed as a defendant. Yeah, would have been a bad look for the city to get involved in a case against a massive city campaign donor. Wouldn’t it?

I have told residents of TZADIK that the mayor doesn’t give two rips about your living situation, if he did, he would have came down on them hard, a long, long, long time ago. Instead he just whines and schedules another chiropractor appointment.

TenPoopen doesn’t know what fiscal restraint is

During his state of the city, which seemed more like having coffee with your pastor in a hotel lobby then an official meeting (it was in a hotel lobby, no lies) he talked about all the ‘crap’ nobody cares about (he bragged about the new sewer plant). Then he started whining, and that is his new thing, whining how everyone treats him unfairly. He cried about the legislature taking property tax revenue from the city and made up some statistic* about how we were going to lose money, then he said, “You have two choices when faced with this, you can either 1) find new revenue sources OR 2) increase the current taxes.” WOW! Or NUMBER 3CUT SPENDING! I was blown away that he didn’t even mention this as an option. It amazes me that an elected official is either that arrogant, naive or stupid (probably a combination of all) that he wouldn’t mention budget cuts. And I am not supporting what Sally and Tesler are doing in DC I’m just saying, when less tax revenue is coming in, you adjust. Is there something I am missing? I also found it funny you could only live stream the event on YouTube and not in the city’s stream service or citylink livestream. YouTube is only used when it is convenient for their warped agenda. Maybe next they will give the lead janitor the authority to charge a TP surcharge to fund his kid’s college fund.

*Paul said the city would lose $25 million over the next decade. So yeah, he is whining about losing $2.5 million in tax revenue per year with a city that has a $700M yearly budget. (.0036% of budget). We also have around $70 million in reserves. The city NOT hurting from the property tax cut.

I also noticed the mayor is trying to rip off my old man mohawk. NO dice Bruh. No dice.

Update: Did the Sioux Falls City Council approve Saturday metering in DTSF? Nope.

Update: I talked to some attorneys about this and they all disagreed with me on the tax issue. One attorney said it was a ‘government services fee’ basically you are leasing the space from the city so it is a fee. But they all agreed with me that the council really should have approved it in a 1st and 2nd reading so there would have been a public hearing before its implementation.

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When I saw the story yesterday that they were going to start metering on Saturdays I wondered when the city council approved this. Well, they didn’t because they did not have to. According to charter, ordinances 77.080-77.082 gives the parking director and strangely the city engineer the authority to determine when they can charge these fees. A few months ago when they banned monster trucks in DTSF the council did discuss Saturday metering but never gave a timeline or even voted on it, so I was expecting a vote this Spring. But I would argue that it DOES NOT give the director the authority to make this move;

The director of public parking facilities shall establish the hours during the day and night when parking meters or gates must be used and when the time limitations shall be effective, 

Notice it says the director can determine the TIMES during a specific day, but it DOES NOT give him the authority to pick the days of collection, which he did here, SATURDAY.

I would encourage an attorney with some free time to go DTSF and park at a meter on a Saturday, receive a ticket then challenge that ticket in court by saying the director didn’t have the authority to pick a NEW day to start metering.

There is also the labor involved. Obviously they had to hire some new people to watch the meters. Was this in the budget? Did the councilors approve that? I doubt it.

This is a MAGA move by our Mayor. You don’t have the authority to start TAXING constituents on a new day without the approval of the policy body which makes taxation decisions, because as Staggers once said, you can call it a ‘parking fee’ but let’s call it what it really is; a ‘tax’.

The parking division also has a revenue issue putting most of their yearly earnings into bond payments for that color fart bunker ramp. The parking division needs more money, and they are coming for yah. I have contended that the city make ALL parking DTSF FREE, 24/7 except meters on Phillips, I would have them running non-stop, 7 days a week, and I would charge $5.00 an hour. If you want people coming DTSF to shop, may I suggest more FREE parking in ramps.

Sioux Falls City Council Chair doesn’t like being yelled at

Curtist the Blurtist had a plan last night. He pulled an item from the consent agenda. The city was allocating $150K for two new ambassadors for DTSF. While I think it is awesome DTSF is creating jobs, I doubt the employees are making $75K each for the summer, but as DTSF says they need money for ‘training’. LOL. Why did Curt pull the item? Because he thought this would be a great opportunity to talk about the great thing these ambassadors are doing. Well, he was wrong. While our country is going into a tailspin because of a very stupid person, constituents are NOT happy, and they certainly won’t be happy about the city spending more money on the transient issue by spending more money NOT ON THEM!

So some constituents weighed in, and it wasn’t pretty. While they were certainly not friendly in their testimonies, they weren’t wrong. After the trip to the woodshed, Curt was unhappy so he said something like, “I didn’t know we were going to get yelled at . . .” First off, Curt, that is really your main job, listening to constituent complaints, and secondly if you want to POP off at constituents during a meeting you are VIOLATING a rule MMM put in place, NO CONSTITUENT INTERACTION WHILE THEY ARE AT THE PODIUM. So Curt, if you want to change the rules, which I am ALL for, to allow councilors to interact with constituents during public input, DO IT! But until that rule change is made I suggest you such your pie hole and take it like a big kid, or better yet RESIGN. Your disdain for public engagement is getting old, like you (as you pointed out in the meeting.)