South DaCola

Editorial Cartoonist from South Dakota

Harrisburg School District

Harrisburg School District Open Government Open Meetings

Update I: Did the city of Harrisburg violate open meeting laws

l3wis 3Comments

Update: I want to correct this post. Since it has been confirmed he resigned and was not terminated they can handle it as a personal issue in executive session. Now if he didn’t willingly resign, they would have to vote on terminating him in public.

Update: The rumor circulating is he was terminated because he pissed off developers. I know, shocker!

The short answer is YES. When the Sioux Falls city council decided to fire then city clerk Owens behind closed doors they got slapped with an open meetings violation. Harrisburg recently fired their city administrator behind closed doors. That is a NO-NO. Whether the person was doing a good job* or not does not matter, an appointed position like this is hired in the open and fired in the open. I hope this person slaps Harrisburg with this violation.

*There was a quiet recall effort amongst citizens in Harrisburg to get rid of the city administrator. Not sure if this had an effect on his firing or not? He also was getting into it with our mayor over jurisdiction lines and the state over the prison. Will we ever know why he was fired?

Elections Harrisburg School District Sioux Falls

When you don’t vote, your taxes will go up

l3wis 11Comments

You can’t give much credit to the Harrisburg School District or the media for making this election known. I believe I saw ONE story a few weeks ago about the election. It had a 4% voter turnout. That is pathetic. I think it is time that local elections require at least a 20% voter turnout to be legitimate. 769 voters basically went to the polls yesterday and raised the taxes on over 23K voters (and thousands more non-voting residents). I am puzzled how we can allow 769 people to decide to take out a $30 million dollar bond.

I do believe the school is needed, no arguments there, but this looks more like a county fair straw poll than an actual election.

Elections Harrisburg School District SF School District Sioux Falls

UPDATE: Will the Harrisburg School Bond election results give us some insight on the SF election

l3wis 8Comments

UPDATE: The Bond election passed with almost 85% approval (no surprises there) and like the SFSD election a low voter turnout, about 10%. I still wonder how these elections would have turned out if held with the Mid-Terms.

I think it will be very interesting to see the results of the Harrisburg School Bond tonight.

There are many differences. Harrisburg is taking out $40 million (not $190) and they are having NO tax increase attached to it (their levee is already higher than SF).

Another factor is that Harrisburg and other surrounding towns like Brandon and Tea tend to be a little more fiscally conservative when voting.

I still think it will pass, I’m even willing to say by 75%. But what if it is 85% or higher? Does that tell us that Sioux Falls 85% passage is believable? What if it is a lot lower? Or doesn’t pass (60%)?

The voter turnout will also be another factor.

While the results certainly can’t be compared 100% to the SF School Bond election, there will be some areas we can review and do some comparisons.

I also find it curious that the SFSD told voters they had to have the election in September because their budget HAD to be submitted to the state by September 30. So how is it that Harrisburg can have their election after that magical date in the middle of October and still be able to submit it to the state? Oh, that’s right, because the budget can be amended and submitted to the state later. Both Sioux Falls and Harrisburg school districts could have had their bond elections with the mid-term in November. It would have saved taxpayers money by holding it with the midterms. There would have been a larger voter turnout AND it would have been tabulated by a machine by an un-bias county auditor instead of having finance administrators count the votes by hand.

The results will be interesting.

Developers Development Elections Harrisburg School District School Funding SF School District Sioux Falls Taxes

Harrisburg School District proposing a $40 Million bond with NO tax increases

l3wis 12Comments

I know, you must be scratching your head a little, as am I. How can the Harrisburg school district propose a $40 million dollar bond without a tax increase? Oh, I don’t know, it’s that little thing called GROWTH!

Rasmussen said there are enough new homes and businesses in the district to support the proposed $40 million dollar bond vote without increasing taxes.

This was my argument about the SFSD bond, with record breaking building permits for over 6 years and the massive growth in Sioux Falls, why would we have to increase property taxes for our bond? Or better yet just build the schools out of the capital outlay without bonding and paying a $100 million in interest. How can a small community like Harrisburg figure out this simple math problem and NOT Sioux Falls? Sometimes arrogance gets in the way of prudence.

I think it would be safe to assume that the Harrisburg bond will pass the 60% threshold easily, especially with NO tax increases. It will just be interesting to see if they hit 85%. Yeah right.

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