I had heard rumors of another doctor running, but apparently it was a pharmacist from Avera;
My name is Jim Burzynski, and I am running for the central district seat for the Sioux Falls City Council. Come on down for a cup of coffee and sign the petition to add me to the ballot. Let’s get a new voice for the core neighborhoods that have been neglected for too long.
I’m glad to see Soehl has at least one challenger, and it looks like he is a professional who has support from the All Saints Neighborhood Association. Ironically, his wife, Dr. Connie Taylor works in the same department as council candidate Dr. Sarah Cole at Avera.
I’m actually surprised the cheese and wine Democrats are putting someone up against Soehl. But on the other hand if you look at Soehl’s lackluster record it shouldn’t be a surprise.
After bribing one of HenTaken’s campaign goons with a (fake) autographed picture of Reagan standing next to John Wayne I was given access to Poops future text messages to his followers. Here is a sampling;
‘Village on the River was my fault . . . just kidding.’
‘I was put on laundry duty tonight. Yes, Dutchmen can fold . . . Benjamins!’
‘I will fire another city director today. Big reveal tomorrow!’
‘I have a tramp stamp . . . BLESSED.’
‘Erica has been running the city the past 3 1/2 years. My bad.’
‘Marshall just told me the secret of his success. I forget.’
‘Good luck getting Werther’s candy at HyVee on Minnesota. SOLD OUT!’
‘I will be talking to a random minority group on Thursday. SELFIE MANIA!’
‘COVID is sooooo 2021!’
‘Pinball rocks! The Bonus Round room at StartUp Sioux Falls will pay the yearly rent.’
‘Pride Sioux Falls asked me again to read a proclamation. I feel a family camping trip coming on.’
This is just a sampling of the text messages supporters will receive over the next couple of weeks. Share yours!
I agree, the mayor shouldn’t be using insider information to sooth his followers hunger for pop rock, but that is small potatoes compared to giving city employees a bonus right before an election.
In an interview Monday afternoon, TenHaken said he’s “always looking for different ways to communicate with people,” and said he liked the “pure, 1-on-1 communication” someone could get via a texting service.
“People like to know what’s going on in their city,” he said.
LMFAO! Yeah Paul, I have been asking for almost 4 years! What is going on? Backdoor meetings about bonuses, deals with Sanford, deals with developers, all done in the secrecy of your armed guarded offices. When were you going to drop us a text about over stepping your boundaries and secretly negotiating a bonus for employees from a mystery fund?
Islam added if elected mayor, “I’ll always be transparent about any news involving one of our taxpayer funded buildings.”
Mayoral hopeful David Zokaites had similar concerns, calling it “a disgusting abuse of mayoral privilege.”
“This is unethical and appalling but not surprising. Sioux Falls government has corruption problems (a massively-overpriced parking garage) and tries to hide bribery (gifts of third party paid travel) ,†Zokaites said in a statement to KELOLAND News. “What’s a little insider information compared to bribery and corruption? Certainly this abuse of insider information should stop immediately and an apology should be issued.â€
David is right, this is highly unethical it may even violate campaign rules but that didn’t stop Poops massive ego from spilling out;
TenHaken said in response that in any election with an incumbent, candidates are going to be “envious” of the platform that provides and the advantages that come with it.
“That’s part of what comes with being the existing officeholder,” said TenHaken, adding he remembered the feeling from his run four years ago.
Sounds like something one of his campaign GOONS would write.
First off, the obvious, there were NO incumbents last time around and the other candidates that would have had access to that information certainly didn’t use it to their advantage since they both lost miserably. Secondly, just because you are the current mayor doesn’t give you the right to use information that WE own against your opponents, as Taneeza points out;
“The Premier Center is owned by Sioux Falls taxpayers,†Islam said in a statement.
Any information about what goes on at that facility should be public information shared to everyone at the same time, even if the mayor knows in advance.
As for the comment about being ‘envious’. WOW! You really are more arrogant than I thought. Trust me, I have had a lot of emotions about how you have run this city, like your lack of courage, ethics and transparency when you make decisions. But trust me, I don’t think I have ever been jealous of those qualities, just embarrassed that our city is being run by a bunch of toddlers in a clown car going around a track in a secret room in the basement of city hall. AND I can pretty much guarantee your two opponents are not jealous either.
This absolutely was not caused by the farm show or their people or their vendors. It was strictly the Denny staff that took all the ice out. Again the farm show staff nor any of their vendors caused this!
On FB host parents of the Stampede players have been saying they will get an update tomorrow about the ice repair and future of the season.
No matter how this happened, the truth needs to come out and the cost to tax payers. If the damage was caused by negligent EC staff, they need to pony up.
UPDATE: Apparently city employees were told they were getting bonuses 5 weeks ago assuming the comment below is from an anonymous city employee;
You predicted something a week after it was published on the city employee website! Wow, what a clairvoyant!
I have known for awhile that city employees have a secure sharepoint website. Many private employers and other government agencies have this. I also find it ironic that if the city is struggling to find people they only have 22 jobs listed with 17 of them being internships that don’t pay a living wage.
But what I find even more revealing is that the city employees were told 5 weeks ago that they would receive this bonus even though the city council hasn’t approved anything. In fact they could vote down the proposal all together or amend it to find the money in each of the departments budgets.
So how can the Mayor, the Unions, HR, Finance and Legal departments of the city PROMISE city employees a bonus on a taxpayer funded secure website when the policy body and more importantly the public know nothing about it?
Cruise control government corruption at it’s finest. BTW, anon city employee, thanks for the tip.
As you can see in the city council agenda for Tuesday (Item #39) TenHaken plans to give around $2.49 million in a ‘Retention Incentive Pay’ bonuses to city employees. If you do the math that is around $2,000 per employee, which likely excludes management, but I am not sure because the presentation for this program will be done 2 hours before the first reading with NO attached documents.
I know, the secrecy is sooooooooo surprising.
While we could argue back and forth about whether city employees deserve this or not and the (non-existent) metrics, there is a bigger question of timing and where the money is coming from.
The city could have easily used ARPA funds to give a bonus for working through Covid (mostly from home) but they had tennis courts and butterflies to fund with that money. The money is coming from the General Fund;
That the Mayor has certified that there are available for appropriation unassigned fund balances carried forward from prior years or revenues in excess of those estimated in the budget to provide funding to supplement the 2022 budget.
So where did this money come from? Let’s do a brief economics course. In the private sector when you have money left over at the end of the year, that is called a profit from running a successful business by marking up goods and services. In the public sector when you have money left over that means you are NOT fiscally responsible because you are overtaxing the citizens and NOT managing a balanced budget that takes care of all the services and debt. In other words, if the city has over $2 million laying around for operations, what other departments have money leftover? If you look at the city departments and sub departments, the city has a couple dozen.
I have always felt that the city should spend every penny they receive from us from taxes and fees on services and infrastructure back to the citizens, not bribes to the city employees and socialist welfare handouts to the developers, banksters, bondsters and friends of Prince Poops.
Our city employees are well compensated, they have amazing benefits and pensions, not sure why we also need to give them a bonus? Oh and if you look at item #38, they are also getting more vacation time.
Besides dubious funding of this ‘Bonuses for Votes’ plan you have to question the timing and secrecy of planning, only weeks from a city election.
When people challenge me to stop questioning the ethics of our current mayor I say, just look at this proposal. It has nothing to do with keeping city employees, it’s just plain corrupt.
*It will be interesting to see how the media spins this.
SPEAKING OF CORRUPTION, A STORM IS COMING
We learned this week that the Feds and FBI seem to be concerned about some low hanging fruit by entrapping a low ranking officer for sending images of his penis to someone he thought was 12 years old.
But what’s more concerning to me is why the FBI is lurking around Sioux Falls. We have known for a long time that sex trafficking in our state and city is a problem and my speculation is this isn’t about one person.
I will actually defend our police chief and mayor on this issue, and getting ahead of this problem and being very public about the solution will only gain you accolades in the end. Choosing to keep this secret will only blow up in your face.
l3wis 
