So what do most people do if they are in a hurry? They say ‘F’ck it’ and move on. If someone is in a hurry and they find a parking spot DTSF but don’t have any change to feed the meter (that doesn’t have a CC reader) they will probably not go looking for another spot and just risk the ticket. Maybe that is what the city is hoping for.
GRABAR: I think so. Essentially, parking enforcement serves as a subset of what is now known as revenue-driven policing. And the idea here is that cities take advantage of these parking laws to try and get as much money out of people as possible, but not in the way that you would think, right? I mean, I think this is a common misconception. Meter rates are actually, for the most part, pretty low in most cities, which is to say they are below the market clearing price that would create empty spaces on every block. Most cities make more money from illegal parking fines than they do from meters and garage taxes put together. So, for example, New York City in 2015 made $565 million in parking fines. It’s the biggest category of fines that the city issues. But they made just $200 million from parking meters.
So what’s essentially being run here – and I don’t know if cities are conscious of this – is a system that is poorly designed that almost seems like the incentives are in favor of illegal parking because for the city, that’s where they make their money.
I would have loved to been a fly on the wall when the Parking Director, Matt Nelson and Mayor TenHaken had a conversation about getting creative with raising more parking fees. Probably went something like this;
Nelson says, “Paul, we just gotta find a way to get people to park in the ramps more.”
TenHaken responds, “Thank goodness I stopped that naked Indian mural, because that certainly would have drove drivers away.”
I asked if they thought it may be because of the fear of Federal lawsuits? No. They said it is because of public perception, and if they pull the trigger they fear the blowback.
Which I find comical considering anytime we have a controversy like this in Sioux Falls the local media circle jerks around the story for about 3 days and everyone forgets about it.
Just ask someone who moved here a year ago what they think about the f’d up siding on the Event Center and their response would probably be ‘We have an Events Center?’
The city could tear down the place tomorrow, invite the media and food trucks and make a demolition party out of it and two weeks from now no one will care.
BUNKER RAMP HOTEL A BAD INVESTMENT
Last week I was talking to a local developer and joked that he should buy the Bunker Ramp. After saying he had no interest he informed me that building hotels on top of parking ramps across the country never works out well, and maybe he is right, Lamont couldn’t find the investors.
I go back to providing retail on the south side and building studio apartments above.
The day after the bridge funding was approved by city council a foot soldier told me that the price overrun was odd to him considering this is just a deck replacement. I asked him what he meant. It was his understanding that since the bridge isn’t that old (I think constructed in the 70’s) that the piers would remain and they are simply replacing the deck like they did with the 8th street bridge.
That’s to build cofferdams to protect parts of the piers in the river that will be reused.
So for a $10 million cost overrun we are not even getting a total bridge replacement? The taxpayers are certainly going down a certain creek without a paddle.
Another foot soldier speculated to me that maybe the reason we haven’t seen it is because the mayor’s office is trying to figure out how they are going to explain the massive reserves the city coffers are nesting on.
Maybe we should institute the 1st Annual Sioux Falls Pothole Day Saturday April 1st and any citizen that volunteers for 8 hours on that day to fill potholes will receive $100 cash and a Sioux Falls ONE pin. That would be a quick way to spend some of that moldy money.
This is a rendering I did of what I was told the Bunker Ramp mural would have looked like. A Native American taking a nap next to a river dreaming of buffalos frolicking in a rainbow sky. I still have NOT seen the image.
Mr. Lalley is suggesting that is what the mayor exactly did when rejecting the selected mural choice and cancelling the project all together, mitigating risk;
This wasn’t a commissioned piece, as Boice had to explain to me, which could include parameters on the theme or content.
In this case, the intent was to allow the chosen artist “control the narrative,” as Boice put it.
That’s new.
It’s a great idea when you’re fostering and supporting artistic endeavors in your community.
For a government, for people who want other people to approve of what they do, it’s risky.
But you have to know that going in.
Rejection from the wider public is always a possibility. In my experience uncertainty is the artist’s constant companion, whether they are painters, musicians, sculptors, writers or quilters.
There’s always risk in art.
City government is inherently about mitigating risk.
We may never know the content of what was intended as a short-term mural, that was recommended by the Visual Arts Commission and rejected by the mayor.
Which highlights a more perplexing theme.
We may never know if the mural in question was patently offensive to one or more groups of people in the community.
We may never know if the mayor was reacting to some real or perceived public consequence if he approved it.
With public art comes public scrutiny.
Artists usually want that.
Government usually does not.
While I still struggle with this supposed offensive mural, you can only look a block away to a naked dude that has been standing there for 50 years (with a short stint in a parks and rec boneyard).
While it appears that the mayor was mitigating risk, it also suggests to me he was more worried about what Taupeville would think of the mural and not everyday folks.
Just another shirtless Native American in front of the Bunker Ramp of Democracy.
As the unofficial greeter at Mount Rushmore, Black Elk spent 27 years welcoming guests and promoting Native American culture. A Huron Daily Plainsman article noted that he posed for an estimated 5,000 photos daily during peak tourist season, earning Black Elk the distinction of being the most photographed Native American in the world. In addition to his photo record, the Sioux City Journal reported that Black Elk was the first person to have a live image broadcast over the Atlantic — via the Telstar satellite that launched in 1962.
It seems the state did a fine job of mitigating the risk of having a shirtless Native American pose for pictures in front of Mt. Rushmore now if we could just figure it out in Sioux Falls.
Amber Hansen, Reyna Hernandez and Darcy Millette sent the statement to Sioux Falls Live in advance of a meeting of the Visual Arts Commission, which meets at 9 a.m.
“We are grateful to the Sioux Falls Arts Council, the Visual Arts Commission, and MarketBeat for their support during the city’s selection process for the 10th Street parking garage mural. As of now, we do not know the reason behind the Mayor’s decision to override the VAC’s unanimous selection of our design, ‘Buffalo Dreamer.’
“As local artists and community focused muralists, we are disappointed by the exploitation of time, energy, and resources that the city’s process demanded from those it claims to serve. Despite our disappointment in what has transpired, we are hopeful that this experience ignites a conversation surrounding issues of transparency and systemic power plays concerning who determines and shapes the arts and culture in the city of Sioux Falls and throughout the state of South Dakota.”
I was glad to see they acknowledged their disappointment in the process. What has NOT surfaced is the actual rejected image. I doubt we will ever see it.
This is why I have pushed back on the mayor having a full-time arts coordinator in his office. Decisions about public art should take a village, not a dictator.
—————————
The VAC will be meeting at 9 AM at the City Center Admin building downtown in City Center Conference Room 110. There isn’t really anything special about the agenda except for public input could get interesting.
There has been a lot of hoopla surrounding the rejected Bunker Ramp mural project. But without knowing what the rejected mural looks like (there have been several accusations that it was insensitive towards Native Americans and the LGBTQ+ community) it is hard to make a judgement call as to if this all to do about nothing.
Some have said that the image cannot be released due to artist permissions and copyright infringement, but my experience with being in a juried exhibit or competition those rights can be waived. I have not seen the image but I encourage the artists to release the image to the public so that the public can make that call.
Transparency goes a long ways, and in the case of rejected art, showing the image to the public would bring a greater understanding of what the artists intended and what the jurors and mayor perceived.
I doubt these three artists worked this hard to win the selection only to dupe the public into a secret plan to offend them with controversial art. If you think that you truly are ignorant to how the process of creating art works. It’s not like they suggested putting a statue of a naked dude in DTSF for 50 years.
I struggle with the notion that 6 members of the VAC who unanimously approved the initial concept would be so naive to move forward with a piece of art that would offend a certain group of people.
Me thinks the only people offended by the concept are not really affected by it’s message just butt hurt they were NOT honored and obeyed.
*for the record, I found out about this when a friend of mine casually said, ‘Have you heard what is going on with the parking ramp mural?’ I said no. So I decided to go read the agenda minutes from the VAC meetings and found a missing narrative in the January meeting. Not only were the minutes initially missing as to what the planning director discussed about the mural, the agenda page incorrectly listed it as a Jan 11 meeting instead of Jan 17. I contacted someone who may have been in attendance and they confirmed to me that the planning director came to the meeting and told the VAC the mayor had selected the other mural concept. This is another reason I have suggested that ALL city board/commission meetings be recorded and live streamed on YouTube.
The Mayor has the right to reject the recommendation, just like the city council has the right to reject zoning proposals from the planning commission. What he cannot do is bully all of the participants that were involved in this long and complicated process.
