I joked recently that I considered bringing a ballot question to the Charter Revision Commission that would ban marketing/banking/real estate executives from running for mayor or city council. While snarky, maybe I need to get serious about it!?
For the record, I don’t personally know Mr. Spellerberg and when he announced today, I had no clue who he was, BUT, he did what I have been telling potential candidates for several months; YOU MUST ANNOUNCE FIRST AND EARLY. I actually put that window between October 1st and Thanksgiving. Well someone must of heeded my advice, unfortunately it wasn’t somebody I know 🙁
A Sioux Falls mortgage loan officer is the first person to publicly announce their candidacy for next year’s Sioux Falls City Council elections.
Ryan Spellerberg made the announcement on Monday afternoon that he intended to run in the city’s southwestern district, a seat currently held by Councilor Marshall Selberg, who is term limited.
Spellerberg’s release named affordable housing, reducing crime, investing in infrastructure and expanding the city’s park system as some of his main goals.
You know, all the things that a good city councilor would and should be working on. I am always surprised that people running for city council for the past 20 years mention the same things they are going to work on. Well guess what, most of the things he mentioned are on cruise control and take little to no action from the council. Taxpayers fund the police, they don’t need the council’s help running the department. The chief is appointed by the mayor and does what the mayor tells him to do. Most of our taxes go towards infrastructure (new and maintenance). I am not sure how a councilor could improve this, just another cruise control policy that the council approves spending on in normal routine business. Our park system is our greatest asset and the city manages the system well, especially when it comes to funding and expansion. Not sure they need anymore cheerleaders on the council.
I agree, affordable housing needs help, but like past candidates, promises made, promises broken. It is going to take bold and courageous policy changes that will piss off the developer and realtor industry, and I am sorry, but someone on the inside can’t fix this problem because of their blatant industry conflicts. You can’t have two masters.
It often surprises me when people throw their hat in the ring to run for city council and have little to no idea what the body actually does. Everything he mentions in his press release is already being done by the current council besides improving affordable housing.
Basically Spellerberg is saying, “I am the status quo. Now where do I pick up my rubberstamp?”
I speculate, though I have not heard either way, that Mr. Spellerberg was likely recruited by either the administration, Councilor Selberg or both;
He has yet to file a statement of organization for his municipal candidate campaign, but his announcement has already drawn support from Councilor Alex Jensen, who said “Let’s go Ryan Spellerberg!” in a Facebook post.
As I assumed, the mayor will be recruiting candidates, just not sure if this is one of them. But he fits the PTH Council candidate mold; White. Male. Christian. Developer/real estate/banking. Transplant from another state (but still midwestern). Volunteered on some non-profit boards. You get the picture. I wonder how many city elections he has voted in? We will get you that info, even though it doesn’t seem to matter to people, since Dr. Cole was elected to council with no local voting record.
I did laugh about this part in Spellerberg’s resume;
In his spare time, the 46 year old has been involved with Habitat for Humanity, Sioux Falls Veterans Community Project and teaching Financial Peace University by Dave Ramsey.
The first two projects, great for our community, but Dave Ramsey??!! I actually have listened to Dave, and what is really ironic about his advice is that it is common sense. So maybe we need someone like this on the city council to teach a little fiscal common sense?!
I think they are beyond help.
I am willing to give Mr. Spellerberg the benefit of the doubt. He just announced, and if he can come up with a workable solution to our affordable housing issues, he would be worth installing, he just better keep that to himself 🙂
Here is my random count on potential council candidates;
NE District, Pat Starr is term limited so this seat will be open. So far I have heard a male moderate Republican is considering a run in the district.
At-Large. Jensen is flip-flopping everyday. It is comical. Every day I either get an email or text telling me that either Alex is running or he is not. I could care less at this point. But there is a community activist considering running for the AL also. Alex has bent so many rules behind the scenes that if he decided not to run I think the council that is left next Spring would be OK with that. It is unfortunate that the public doesn’t know some of the BS this guy has been up to, because he certainly wouldn’t be on the council anymore and NOT running for re-election. If Jensen bows out on a 2nd term run, it won’t be because of ‘family commitments’ it will be because no body wants him around Carnegie.
SW District. Obviously Ryan is running, but I have heard about two other potential candidates in that race.
NW District. I have heard about two candidates running in this district, both minorities.
Since Spellerberg’s announcement, I expect more PTH hand picked candidates to announce while I watch all the others play catch up.
The thing about announcing a run for council now is that you can always back out before you have to collect petition signatures next year. Maybe you get on the campaign trail, and realize this isn’t for you, that’s fine. Just announce already, because if you don’t we are setting ourselves up for another blowout.
I think if I was advising a candidate, my advice on a campaign slogan would be, “Save the Children!” Wins every time! I would avoid, “Save the Dead Animals!” It just doesn’t have a good ring to it.
Also, hire an experienced graphic designer to create a logo. I know it is fun killing 50 hours in Word creating the perfect logo with your children, but it’s not a science project, you are marketing yourself and it is OK to hire a professional to create that image of you (that’s my lame graphic designer rant).
Now for some common sense;
Spot on as always. “Hey chatgpt, write a campaign announcement for….”
So PTH will hand pick more puppets, that’s a given. With all the secret meetings, I would guess that is where he detaches the strings from the outgoing Council member and attaches to his new pick, if they were to win of course. Scott, you will surely make his campaign donations known to the public, won’t you? Will PTH be verbal again during the campaign, like the Theresa vs Alex race? So many things to look forward to in this next election, it’s bound to be exciting and biased at the same time. How many of the candidates will be Lloyd endorsed? This will definitely be good!
If you want to know, and learn where most these ‘candidates’ are originating from, especially the At-Large Candidates, they derive from the inner-bureaucracy of city government, from within the city government itself – the boards, committees, commissions, the non-profit corporations, the partners such as Forward Sioux Falls, the Steering Committees, the list of Supervisors of the four Townships. Landownership matters, and from this group, the strongest voice derives from one who owns the land, and despite the fact many own 1 acre plats of land throughout the city, keep in mind, the largest landowners are those family heirs of whom originally held the land patents first given to Americans under the 1841 and 1862 Settlement Acts, those 160 and 320 acre estates/homesteads, to whom today have agreed to “Subdivide” their land into 1 acre sections of land to be used today for Commercial, Residential, or a Mixed Use section of land. From this small group, you get the full extend of power behind any “City”. Knowing the history, much of the power behind the city derives from the heirs stemming from the Western Town Company, Dakota Land Company, the Queen Bee Land Company, the Milwaukee Rail Road Land Company. From here you today have the extended heirs of small homesteads such as the Pettigrew Family (Pettigrew Heights), the Van Eps Family (County property), the Phillips Family (McKennan park), the Lyons-Axel Family (Fairgrounds), the Tuttle Family (Southeast Sioux Falls), not to mention the existing Townships of Split Rock, Delapre, Wayne, and Mapleton of whom each have a strong core base of Core Supervisors of whom watch over, and guard their areas.
too bad I can’t use the eye roll emoji.
He won’t come up with solutions. He can’t even do his own job on his own.
What the heck is MLZ rambling about???
Yep, another banker in a banker town. Check his closet. I bet he owns more than one pair of luggage tan leather wingtips with marshmallow white soles, too. Oh, and a windowpane dark blue blazer, too, and some khakis.
The bottom line is this. The council needs to be enlarged to about 30 members so the people can be truly represented within the council.
Sioux Falls, however, has had a history of not political inclusion, but rather political exclusion, which has made it a continual feast for the few, for the developers, and those who are connected.
This historic exclusion and political attitude comes from decades of a commission form of government, where only a mayor and two commissioners for many years ran this town. Then, in 1986, they gave a hint of inclusion by expanding the then commission from two to four. But that was obviously not good enough. So, in 1994, we got the current city council of eight and a mayor, but given how this city has grown in the last 29 years it’s quite obvious that eight cannot adequately represent us any more…. We need about 30 instead.
When Sioux Falls moved from the commission form of government with 4 commissioners and a mayor to the current city council in 1994, Sioux Falls and Miami, Florida were the only two cities in America with a population over 100,000 that were run by an exclusive commissioner form of government of a few and not many.
Now, you may ask where the commissioner form of government came from, which I allege still has its attitude and tenets in our current form of city council government. Well, it was first utilized in Galveston, Texas. If, my past local and state government education still serves my memory right. It started in Galveston after a hurricane there in 1908, I believe, which devastated that city, and after special legislation from the Texas legislature, Galveston was allowed to form a “dictatorial” form of local government to get the ball rolling again and the city back up on it’s feet. The fact that the Texas legislature had not allowed this type of local government before, nor any other state in the union back then, demonstrates the concerns political leaders had back then about a commission form of government and should still have today. Because city commission government, which is government by a few, or a city council with not enough members are both blatant forms of dictatorial leadership which must be ended, and definitely ended now in Sioux Falls as well!
( and Woodstock adds: “Yep, once again Texas has messed up our politics… and in a big way”…. #DontMessWithDevelopers #DonMessWithTaupevillians )