UPDATE: Supposedly Councilor Selberg should have recused himself from this vote also since the developer he is working for is considering investing in this project also. It’s hard to keep track of all the conflicts these councilors have.
Don’t get me wrong, he probably did the right thing, but he gave little explanation why he recused himself. He did site this city code;
30.017 VOTING PROCEDURE. City council members may not abstain from voting, but may absent themselves from the meeting by physically leaving the meeting at the time an item is called by the clerk. Members with a financial interest in a matter shall disclose that interest and shall absent themselves from the meeting by physically leaving the meeting while the matter is considered.
In item #48 tonight at the city council meeting there was a controversial apartment zoning, the applicants are Cresten Capital Holdings. Without mentioning specific names, individuals investors in this group gave heavily to Jenson’s council campaign. Jensen also works for a bank that could be helping to fund this project.
Two great reasons to recuse himself.
The remaining seven councilors voted to move it to 2nd reading.
My only concern is the influence Jensen may have behind the scenes with planning staff and other councilors and one of the biggest reasons I opposed him on the council because of all the conflicts of interest he has financially with the city not only because of the bank he works for but deals like this.
Like I said, he did the right thing by recusing himself, but I would sure like an explanation from a councilor who bought his seat on this council with the very money he received from the investors in this project.
What do you get when a hospital lawyer, an ad agency exec, a banker, a developer, an angel fund investor and a guy who does business out of a UPS Store PO Box join forces? One heck of a political action committee. (PAC)
We all knew that there would be more money funneled into Jensen’s campaign chest after the last finance report before the election. He received an additional $13K coming from the Buffalo PAC. Curiously he didn’t spend it all, in fact he only spent about $3K on the campaign in it’s waning days (Full report). Curiously he spent around $8,500 on legal fees ($1,000 donated). I’m assuming that was for the recount. What I find ironic is that with all the money and power swirling around the SD GOP who helped get Alex elected that not one single lawyer took him on pro-bono for the recount. Stehly’s (a Republican) attorney, the Chair of the SD Democratic Party, Randy Seiler offered his services for free to Theresa. So basically the donors to the Buffalo PAC and ultimately Jensen funneled money to a Republican Law Firm (Redstone). I know, mind boggling.
Curiously the PAC is registered to a Sioux Falls residential address, a home owned by a SF hospital attorney (not the green one) and an ad agency executive (the big one in town). Both of them also have a connection (still trying to figure out) to a Sioux Falls city director that TenHaken appointed. Strangely they were only used as conduit because none of them donated to the PAC.
So who did? Well the usual suspects, with two of them pouring thousands of dollars towards Alex through various PACs, family members and individual donations. I’m surprised they didn’t find a way to get dead relatives to give since it is against the law now to use your toddler children.
BUFFALO PAC DONORS:
Matthew Paulson – $5,000.00 (Jensen’s campaign treasurer and suspected manager)
Dana Dykhouse – $5,000.00
Crescent Venture Capital (Kevin Tupy ) – $2,000.00
Daniel Costello – $1,000.00
Yes, I know, not surprising since most of these characters already had been throwing money at Jensen’s campaign. I wonder if they knew he gave half of their donation to a law firm?
Sometimes you see some pretty bizarre things at council meetings, actually just about every one over the past 5 years, but hearing a councilor (Erickson) argue against hearing from a bar manager that has had complaints filed against them about police calls is ridiculous.
Basically, during the 2021 license renewals at tonight’s council meeting, PAVE Bar was up for renewal and councilor Starr asked for them to be pulled from the consent agenda because he had questions about their police calls but asked for it to be deferred until December 1st because he learned the applicant could not attend, and Jamie Palmer, the city’s licensing agent asked if he could come later, and he said he could, she also informed the person complaining to come at a later date.
Makes sense? Right? Wait until the applicant can attend to answer questions about police calls.
Not so fast.
Erickson wasn’t happy about it, and felt that since the applicant wasn’t there to answer questions, they shouldn’t have to answer those questions.
HUH? Where the Frick is the logic in that? That would be like telling someone who was supposed to be in court to defend themselves against a violation and the judge and jury telling them if they don’t show up for their hearing they will be presumed innocent.
WOW. Christine and her lap dogs Greg and Alex have been going off the rails for a while now, and I honestly don’t understand where it is coming from? I really don’t. I could only speculate that her and her pups are friends with the people who own PAVE. Kind of reminds you of how a $26 million dollar disaster got approved. The only explanation would be something my grandma VI used to say, “Maybe she is taking 500 mg ugly pills before the meeting?”
I have not seen the police call evidence about PAVE, and I have NO idea what it is costing taxpayers, but should we at least see the evidence and have a hearing before we renew their license? I think it is only fair. Apparently Christine, Alex and Greg don’t give a rat’s ass about any of those things.
Fortunately five of the councilors felt it was important. They left their ugly pills at home tonight.
Madeline Shields asks a pretty basic question, “People are always intimidated about running for public office . . . what is it that you hope to learn more about?”
Jensen’s answer, “The legislature compared to the city council are two very, very different things.”
Well, they are not. But we will get to that in moment.
Ironically Jensen ran on his ‘legislative experience.’ He told voters that as many times as he could. Also, the city council is the ‘legislative body’ they are the ones that (should) be making the ordinances, creating the yearly budget, etc. That duty has been robbed by the Mayor’s office (starting with Munson) and has gotten progressively worse. In fact, by charter (which I’m sure Jensen has never read) the city council specific duties is legislating, while the mayor’s duties are running the city as the city manager. By not legislating on the city council, you are effectively derelict in your duties.
Somebody asked me once if the council is not legislating, what are they doing? Well besides approving some beer licenses, they show up every Tuesday to Rubberstamp the Mayor’s agenda and Mayor’s budget while raising taxes and fees on the rest of us and handing out goodies to the banksters, contractors and welfare queen developers in town. That’s not legislating, that’s rewarding the folks who fund your campaigns. Don’t believe me, it cost Jensen $117,000.000 to beat Stehly by less than a 100 votes. Do you think this money came from his pocket? I can almost guarantee you that 99.9999% of city voters have NEVER given a penny to a council or mayoral race. So where does this money come from? The people who show up every week to rob the cookie jar, and after Tuesday’s meeting, they will now be at the front of the line.
Jensen is right, the council isn’t a legislative body anymore and they should be brought up on ethics violations for not following their duties as prescribed by the charter. Folks, that may just happen. As John Lee Hooker said in a song once, “Pot’s on, gas on high, we are cooking.” The council isn’t going to like what’s for dinner when we are done.
UPDATE: As you can see the council and mayor are moving forward with their plans (Items #40-41) on a night when most people will be paying attention to the election. The items are also misleading because in the titles it says NOTHING about moving public input or meeting time moving. Only if you read the red notes you will see the changes.
This change could also be construed as unconstitutional in the public input ordinance;
Notice that currently public input at the beginning of the meetings doesn’t allow you to comment on pending business coming up in the rest of the meeting, which is also unconstitutional, but they are saying with this NEW ordinance that you can’t comment on what happened during the meeting though the items have already been voted on and the business of those items is closed. The SCOTUS has ruled very recently that you can discuss ANY city business at public input whether it is on an agenda or not. I think they said as long as a citizen is commenting on business that is ‘germane’ to that government body, it is allowable. I guess now the Mayor thinks he knows better than the Supreme Court. Not only do they suck at transparency, they are getting very sloppy legal advice.
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I just found out this afternoon that the mask mandate isn’t the only controversy coming on Tuesday. There are two items that will probably get first readings on Tuesday night also that have not been presented to the public in an informational, which is no surprise. I knew that both of these were coming after Stehly’s seat was bought by the banksters and developer welfare queens, and they have to do with shackling citizens;
• The first is a move rumored to be brought forward by Councilors Erickson and Jensen that would move the regular council meetings to 6 PM. This of course would give citizens very little time from when they get off of work to attend the meetings on time in person and an obvious assault on open government.
• The second is rumored to be proposed by Mayor TenHaken himself to move public input to the end of the meetings.
I have no doubt both will get the 5 votes they need to pass. These actions come after just a few weeks ago the Mayor ended the traditional mayor/director meetings with council leadership on Friday mornings and also the move to remove red notes from ordinances that are being changed.
This of course is NO surprise since this mayor and council has had a full on assault on transparency and their hatred of open government and more importantly citizen input and advocacy. They despise more than anything else and won’t be happy until they lop off the citizens rights to dissent their government, or at least make it more challenging to do so.
Messing with public input and citizens rights to advocate for themselves is a whole new level of disgusting behavior by this administration and city council. I would ask if they have any shame, but you know the answer.
So why are they so Hellbent on silencing the public? Because they have several plans to hand over MORE of your tax dollars to the elite who fund their campaigns and they are tired of the public making that process messy and in the open.
And if you think the steamrolling won’t happen, wait until Starr leaves the council (hopefully) and they replace him with another rubberstamper.
Prepare for your taxes and fees to rise exponentially while your voice and services get stifled. This is what happens when you let a non-partisan government get controlled by political hacks of the Republican Fascist Party with no governing experience and deep, deep, deep hatred of citizen activism and transparency.
We have a virus destroying our city alright, and the only way to stop it is with lots of Sunshine.
l3wis 
