South DaCola

Editorial Cartoonist from South Dakota

l3wis

Dusty Johnson Sioux Falls

Is anyone in leadership going to address the housing crisis in Sioux Falls?

l3wis 4Comments

The other day I heard Dusty Johnson talking about this issue, so I decided to email him the other day with my ideas;

Dusty,

I heard you talking the other day about the struggles with affordable housing in South Dakota.

We are in a crisis mode in Sioux Falls. I’m afraid the combination of developer and contractor handouts to build has caused this situation, plenty of businesses coming, not enough people to work those jobs. I’m afraid Amazon will have to build an RV Park/Campground to house the workers, because there will be no other place for them to live.

While we can’t go back in time, this all happened because we used taxpayer resources to incentivize the developers and contractors instead of the workers and housing buyers. We can do differently moving forward though. We need to end the welfare to big out of state businesses who pay below living wage salaries and start using Federal, State, County, and City programs to fix up our core neighborhoods where the affordable housing exists if the buyers are incentivized. We can do this through low interest or no interest loans, property tax rebates, fixing up infrastructure, etc. I call it starting from the bottom up. It also would prop up local contractors and businesses to fix up these homes. It also helps fight crime and neglect and it would be great for transferring slumlord neglected rental housing to first time homebuyers to fix up.

Trickle down has never worked, in fact it is proof that it has created this crisis. Instead we need to prop up residents to create more density in Sioux Falls and clean up these neighborhoods.

I know you are a Republican and may this agree with some of my suggestions, but the opposite just hasn’t worked, and never will. I told the planning commission and city council all these TIFS, tax rebates and breaks to big business and developers is just like pouring gasoline on a fire. We don’t have the workers, and even if they move here, we don’t have the housing. If we don’t do things completely opposite of what we have been doing, in five to ten years Sioux Falls is going to be a crime ridden dump.

Thanks for listening.

Scott L. Ehrisman

I figured since no one at city hall or in the state legislature is doing much about it except suggesting prisoners in Springfield work harder at building Governor houses, I would suggest to Dusty what is really going on here, is that we are failing, miserably, because of the bullcrap theory that if we give the rich developers and contractors at the top, somehow magically it would trickle down to us and solve our affordable housing issues. We also have to find a way to control rents in Sioux Falls and stop realtors from falsely inflating home prices in Sioux Falls. The value of my home changed very little over 17 years, usually 0-2% each year and then within two years it jumped up over 25%. Give me a break.

Downtown Sioux Falls Levitt Pavilion Sioux Falls

Levitt, this one doesn’t go to 11

l3wis 2Comments

I finally figured out what the city, or should I say a developer, has requested as a reasonable decibel level for the Levitt. The story I was told is that the Levitt’s decibel level has to read 90 or below by the South Entrance of the Cascade Apartment building/complex, which I find to be an interesting boundary considering the level determined by city ordinance should affect the whole area. I have argued to the do nothing city council, who have literally done nothing about the decibel levels downtown (especially when it comes to trains, planes and motorcycles) that they need to be increased, at least on the Levitt grounds which is a publicly owned park. It is NOT the taxpayers fault or problem that a developer who takes massive amounts of welfare TIFs from the city built apartments across the street from a live outdoor music venue. If I were the Levitt, I would crank it up, and if the private developer doesn’t like it, they can sue the city and we can cancel their TIF. I would also suggest the next time they build an apartment building in a noisy DT area, they need to insulate the windows and walls.


I will say though last night at the Levitt I was pleasantly surprised, the volume was perfect, so they must be experimenting with the Spinal Tap amps after all.

This reminds me of the other issue with Levitt, selling alcohol in a park that by city ordinance bans alcohol. I have told the city council that this is silly and they should just lift the ban, let their be private sales AND let people bring their own. But like I said, when it comes to our city council doing things that benefit the public in general like noise levels and alcohol ordinances they put on the cruise control, look into their laps and do nothing.

Also folks, I am pleading with you to leave your dogs at home. They don’t want to be sitting in the heat and it is not good for their physical or mental health and as an audience member, I really get tired of them pooping and peeing around me. I still think the Levitt in coordination with the City Council should ban pets from the premises, or at least have an area for people that are too dumb to not bring their freaking dog everywhere.

Developers Development

Is Hultgren Construction’s Aaron Hultgren now trying to do business in Hawaii?

l3wis 2Comments

A few weeks ago a little birdy asked me if I knew where Aaron was, you know the guy involved with collapsing the Copper Lounge, dragging asbestos through our town and being a part of the Bunker Ramp. I said I hadn’t really thought about it but last I heard his former(?) partner set him up in Texas.

Well, apparently his past must have caught up with him in Texas so he went all the way to Hawaii to ‘try’ to escape. I guess he has never heard of the googles on the interwebs. As someone said to me while discussing this story with them, ‘A lot of people try to hide from their past in Hawaii.’

He has two LLCs that have names that likely have nothing to do with what he is doing; LLC1 & LLC2

I guess he has been trying to develop affordable housing in Honolulu and has been pitching his bill of goods to different organizations. I guess one of these organizations found lots of interesting stories about Aaron’s troubled past in Sioux Falls and started getting references about him, and he wasn’t getting too many positive ones, if any. Like I said above, Google works in Hawaii also.

I’m not sure what happened with the project he pitched, but whether he lives in Texas, Hawaii or Greenland I have a feeling the Copper Lounge will follow him around for the rest of his life.

Donita Trump Noem Kristi Noem

Noem is running for President, and that is some very scary crap

l3wis 16Comments

Sneveliscious did a podcast with Slate about it.

It actually makes me ill to my stomach thinking about her as president. I coined her as the Sarah Palin of South Dakota when she ran for the state legislature, and I still haven’t changed my opinion and hopefully she ends up like Sarah, out of office.

While I could certainly go on a rant about how I really don’t approve of her fake Libertarianism, anti-choice, anti-LGBTQ, pro-bible, anti-public education, anti-worker attitudes, I think what scares me the most about Noem isn’t her political leanings, it’s that she is extremely ignorant especially when it comes to national history, the constitution, and anything governmental. She is so dumb, she actually thinks the rest of the country is just as naïve as the South Dakotans that voted for her. They are NOT. University studies/polls across the country have the country leaning left to center by a very tiny margin. But the extremists on the left and the right make up only about 30% of voters combined. In other words, her Trumpian whacka-doodle Republican brand isn’t good enough to get her elected president, and she is too stupid to realize it. Why do you think she goes through staffers so quickly? Because she either fires them or they quit because of the disagreements, and these are people are right wingers like her.

If Noem totally falls on her face running for president, which I think she will, good riddance. If she wants to be a shIt talker on FoxMaxx, go for it, and please take your TV studio with you, it will be our parting gift and a fair trade not to ever see you in government ever again.

SF City Council Sioux Falls

Sioux Falls City Council approves land transfer in Public Meeting without providing public supposed confidential legal documents

l3wis 17Comments

At the council meeting tonight you will hear a lot of legal mumbo jumbo about ethics ordinances, Supreme Court rulings and executive confidentiality. The problem is that it’s all horse pucky.

I am still of the opinion that the city council CANNOT meet publicly and vote on publicly announced agenda items in a public meeting without sharing the legalities of this land transfer. This is what they were told tonight, that they would essentially be violating ethics rules if they talked about the legalities discussed in executive session in a public meeting.

The whole purpose of having a public meeting to approve an agenda item, any agenda item, is to release that information publicly to the public before it is voted on.

Ethics be damned if you can approve deals like this in a public meeting without giving the public the legalities of the deal. I believe it is a gross violation of public meeting laws and rules and I would have been sitting up there tonight, I would have recused myself from the vote and stated that I would be violating said rules if I voted on it. I found it interesting that one councilor probably knew that since they were absent tonight, or likely they are heavily invested in the project.

When I talk about corruption and openness in government, this is a prime example. It’s what the public doesn’t know that corrupts the process.

I have never been so disappointed and disgusted as I was tonight watching this boondoggle. What makes it even more hypocritical is the very people who benefitted from this top secret land transfer didn’t even have the courtesy to show up tonight. Go figure.

Sidenote; there is a new public advocate in town that moved here from Florida in March who speaks during public input. He is very well spoken and takes the council to task for the issues with housing, public transportation, internet access monopolies and lack of affordable healthcare for self-employed individuals. It only took this person a couple of months in Sioux Falls to smell the lack of leadership in our city government.

« Previous Page — Next Page »

You Missed

Miranda Bayse Planning Commission SF City Council Sioux Falls

Councilor ‘Lucy’ Bayse proposes ordinance change without consulting local fencing industry

Arterial Roads Downtown Sioux Falls recreational Road Funding Sioux Falls Sioux Falls Parks and Rec

UPDATE III: BREAKING: LOCAL TV STATION TRACKS DOWN NEWEST HOT DOG CART!!!

Harrisburg School District Open Government Open Meetings

Did the city of Harrisburg violate open meeting laws?

Bonita Schwan

Personal Privilege