Most setbacks for facilities like this are 300 feet. But the IM 26 task force is suggesting 1,000 feet from parks, schools, churches AND residential. One cannabis advocate said to me, ‘That means NO dispensaries basically anywhere in Sioux Falls. Not on Minnesota Avenue or 41st street.’ They also pointed out to me that when they looked at a map and did a GIS approach to the setback they could only find a couple of spots in Sioux Falls.
The rumor going around is that Mayor TenHaken is the one who instructed the task force to make the setback so strict. I still don’t understand how we continue to allow Sioux Falls Mayors to stick their noses in policy issues. He is violating city charter.
As I have told the mayor and council publicly, your views on the morality of using legal cannabis is NOT your problem. You must uphold the laws on the books and not make it so difficult to distribute a product that the voters of South Dakota deemed legal.
I expect several lawsuits challenging the setback if passed. I also expect it to be passed, because that is what authoritarians do. I also think there could be a petition drive in Sioux Falls to change the setbacks in city ordinance.
And with the delay in the verdict on Amendment A, I don’t expect the SD Supreme Court ruled in favor of it. I think they will agree with the lower court. You also have to remember that the high court takes the summer off, so don’t expect a verdict until this Fall.
After several residents complained about the city spraying people, pets and children in broad daylight, we are going to get the take from the city;
Vector Control Update by Denise Patton, Health Program Coordinator
It is going to be fun to listen how they are going to spin spraying residents in late afternoons. They have already used the ‘money’ excuse, but I don’t buy it from a city that has a $700 million dollar yearly budget. I have also suggested the city use cheaper more organic approaches to Vector Control. Not to mention it has been so dry this year, I don’t think I have seen more than 2 mosquitos in the city.
Since then, there have been ZERO updates on how that program worked. Well if you look at the latest numbers for South Dakota, only 46.6% of people are FULLY vaccinated. Well below the 70-80% we need to be at.
I’m not sure what the numbers are in Sioux Falls, likely higher, but it would be nice to get an update. The one thing I have noticed about this administration is if something fails, they never talk about it again. I hate to say it, but if we don’t ramp up vaccinations in Sioux Falls immediately, we will be right back in the same boat we were last Fall. As the Covid variants get stronger, we will experiencing many more breakthrough infections.
Don basically talks about how the city attorney’s office did an outstanding job getting the Sioux Steel easement pushed through. Pretty crazy to hear a city director brag about getting the city council to possibly violate open meeting laws by voting on an agenda item without giving the public the whole story. We still have NO idea how this suddenly became park land or what that process was.
Also note that if you watched the council meeting the assistant city attorney said the council could vote to release that information, but guess when they were told they could vote to release the information? Five minutes before the 2nd reading. Yeah, now that’s transparency.
Also note that the first phase of the project will be the residential portion and not the hotel and entertainment part. Go figure.
At Tuesday’s informational meeting there was a presentation on maintenance of the city buildings. While I understand there are some buildings we HAVE to own like fire stations I think we need to learn a lesson from COVID and when we were debating the City Center building (which is still entangled in a lawsuit over the failed HVAC system) the Finance Director at the time suggested that leasing is way more affordable than building and maintaining. And with COVID we have learned that many, if not all of the pencil pushers with the city can easily work from home.
Saving money by leasing office space makes sense on many levels. You have NO maintenance costs, no bonding costs and if you need more or less space you simply pack up the office and move.
Working from home could also save the city bundles of money in office space. Obviously many city workers can’t work from home, but I think most of the office staff could.
I also think the Mayor (he is the city manager per charter) should look into selling off city property we don’t need anymore after moving many people to work from home or to leased properties and we should use the revenue to pay down bonds on current properties like The Denty, the Bunker Ramp, the City Administration building and water treatment expansion.
I have often been baffled by not only this mayor but past mayors who want to expand FTE’s for the city (23 this year) because with advances in technology, etc, we should be finding ways to reduce the city workforce by making working conditions for city employees more efficient. I have also suggested that the city terminates most of their middle management. There really should only be team supervisors and directors. I have found following city politics over the past 15 years that middle management really does very little except talk a lot.
I believe if the city would take a 3 tier approach to our building infrastructure and workforce they could save the taxpayers millions of dollars a year. This of course would require the Mayor, any mayor, to follow the charter and do their job, which is managing the city, it’s properties and employees instead of getting in the weeds with legislative priorities which is the council’s job.
I have often taunted councilors to start violating their charter duties and start talking directly to city employees about complaints. Of course they are NOT allowed to do this by charter, so why does the mayor think it is OK to screw with the council?
I think this city could run way more efficiently if we had a mayor that actually concentrated on managing the city instead sitting in his garage coming up with cute program names. Just listen to hisbudget address, I couldn’t even keep track of all the acronyms he presented about employee improvement and mentoring. The only thing city employees should be trained on is CUSTOMER SERVICE to the citizens. That should always be their top priority. Holding hands and singing campfire songs doesn’t really matter when our streets are full of potholes and violent crime is on the rise. I am all for training city employees and keeping them up with the latest standards and procedures, but we need a city manager that understands that public employees serve those who pay their wages not the mayor. I have noticed since the Munson days that administrations have used city staff (mostly management) to serve their whims instead of the people.
Something needs to change with it comes to managing our city, because the current administration isn’t cutting the mustard.
l3wis 