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l3wis

Elections Mayor TenHaken SFPD Sioux Falls

Mayor TenHaken gets partisan with latest endorsements

l3wis 5Comments

Yesterday I received a campaign postcard from TenHaken in which he was endorsed by former Police Chiefs Barthel and Burns.

Besides the fact the Barthel never worked for him and Burns was hired by Huether, the postcard came off very partisan;

• Stood first against a national narrative and provided proper funding and unwavering support for Sioux Falls law enforcement.

The defund the police movement had nothing to do with actually defunding police departments. It has been debunked several times. It has to do with redirecting police funds for preventive crime measures and training officers on diversity issues and better deescalation efforts. If anything it would expand police departments by adding other services and counselors.

It’s just a right-winger partisan talking point like CRT (which is actually a law-school college level course on civil rights suits). Nobody wants to defund the police, including the most vulnerable like minorities in poorer neighborhoods. And it has never been a discussion in Sioux Falls. The only thing debated is whether they should get overtime for running parades which brings us to who actually approves the funding for the SFPD, the city council NOT the mayor.

He also brags about stealing an idea from his former opponent by renaming it;

• Opened the city’s first Police Department remote report-to-work location.

C’mon Poops! You are NOT fooling anyone with all your fancy name changes. If it walks like a duck, it’s a precinct. One of the dumbest things he has ever came up with. Also, he acts like we are NY City and that the officers can’t bother themselves by checking in at the main law enforcement center. You can get anywhere in Sioux Falls in about 17 minutes max.

Employment Mayor TenHaken Sioux Falls

Does the City of Sioux Falls really have a full-time employment shortage?

l3wis 11Comments

When you factor in the city having well over 1,000 employees, it is hard to fathom that they have a retention and worker shortage problem. I clicked on this web ad today and out of 27 positions, only 8 are full-time and the remainder 19 are part-time.

My guess is if you are only looking to hire 8 full-time people when you have over 1,000 current employees, you are sitting pretty good as an organization. Ironically, besides more officers, that we supposedly need, and a mechanic most of the other positions are not really applicable to the service of the public when it comes to infrastructure and public safety (really the only main expenditures a city should have). Does the finance department really need another accountant (as of 2021 they had 6 in the finance department) or a Librarian (they have 9 with 40+ Librarian associates) I will agree though hiring a full-time counselor is a good idea since the current private contractor we are using has a counselor director that is a Federally convicted criminal.

I’ll say it again, the retention bonus had nothing to do with retention, it had to do with an election and a mayor who has done almost absolutely nothing for 4 years for either the citizens or the city employees and is trying to play catchup 30 days before an election.

Open Government Open Meetings Sioux Falls

Sioux Falls isn’t the only one struggling with Public Input issues

l3wis 9Comments

It seems the war on open government is being fought across the state;

Two seemingly harmless words added to a state open meetings law in 2019 have sparked a debate over the rights of citizens to publicly comment at official government meetings in South Dakota.
Those words, “regularly scheduled” were added in front of “official meetings,” launching a legal tug-of-war between public officials and advocates of community input. Some government bodies have used the language as a legal loophole in which they have denied the public the right to speak at some official meetings.

This is often the game played with these kinds of complaints. Recently a Sioux Falls citizen filed a complaint with the Minnehaha State’s Attorney about open meeting violations when Mayor TenHaken was chair of a city council meeting in which he didn’t call public input on two pulled consent agenda items. It was pretty obvious that he didn’t call the public input on purpose because it concerned a bar that was in the middle of a pending sale and if their liquor license renewal would have been denied it would have affected that sale. I cannot connect those dots yet, but once we find out the new owners, it will look a little more clear. So what happened in that case? While MSA Dan Haggar admitted that city ordinance was probably violated, he said he has no authority to do anything so he sent it to the AG’s office. The AG’s office said this was a city matter and that the complainant had to take it up with the Sioux Falls Ethics Board (you know the place where complaints go to die). She also could have hired an attorney and took it to court. I have encouraged they at least file an ethics complaint to get it on record before they throw it out (this is probably one of the most cowardly boards we have in city government). Like the two examples in the SD News Watch story, you can see the run around you get when you challenge public input and how to remedy it. There is no remedy.

I have told the city council on many occasions that NO local government in South Dakota has ever gotten in trouble for being too open.

Developers Development State Funding State Legislature

HB1033 Amended to block Developer Welfare Cookie Jar

l3wis 2Comments


Not everything that happens in the legislature this year is a total toilet flush. HB1033 which provides $200 Million towards housing passed after being amended to leave the welfare developers hands out of the cookie jar.

Section 6. The executive director of the South Dakota Housing Development Authority shall approve vouchers and the state auditor shall draw warrants to pay expenditures authorized by this Act.

Originally the private contractors and developers wanted a portion of this fund to carte blanche build whatever they wanted  whether it was affordable housing or not. Now the SDHDA has the power to make sure the funding goes towards worthy accessible housing projects. The private developers still get a piece of the pie if they are willing to help build affordable housing.

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