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1st Amendment Curt Soehl Downtown Sioux Falls Open Government Open Meetings SF City Council Sioux Falls

Sioux Falls City Council Chair doesn’t like being yelled at

l3wis 4Comments

Curtist the Blurtist had a plan last night. He pulled an item from the consent agenda. The city was allocating $150K for two new ambassadors for DTSF. While I think it is awesome DTSF is creating jobs, I doubt the employees are making $75K each for the summer, but as DTSF says they need money for ‘training’. LOL. Why did Curt pull the item? Because he thought this would be a great opportunity to talk about the great thing these ambassadors are doing. Well, he was wrong. While our country is going into a tailspin because of a very stupid person, constituents are NOT happy, and they certainly won’t be happy about the city spending more money on the transient issue by spending more money NOT ON THEM!

So some constituents weighed in, and it wasn’t pretty. While they were certainly not friendly in their testimonies, they weren’t wrong. After the trip to the woodshed, Curt was unhappy so he said something like, “I didn’t know we were going to get yelled at . . .” First off, Curt, that is really your main job, listening to constituent complaints, and secondly if you want to POP off at constituents during a meeting you are VIOLATING a rule MMM put in place, NO CONSTITUENT INTERACTION WHILE THEY ARE AT THE PODIUM. So Curt, if you want to change the rules, which I am ALL for, to allow councilors to interact with constituents during public input, DO IT! But until that rule change is made I suggest you such your pie hole and take it like a big kid, or better yet RESIGN. Your disdain for public engagement is getting old, like you (as you pointed out in the meeting.)

Open Government Open Meetings SF City Council Sioux Falls

City of Sioux Falls still can’t get agenda page to work correctly

l3wis 2Comments

SIRE, the system that the city council has used for years for their agendas and videos is broke, again. This system has been acting up since the days of MMM. How can a system be permanently broke for over a decade?! Well it came to a boiling point last week when the audit committee meeting had to continue to recess because the streaming system didn’t work. The meeting is posted now but you will see all the problems with it. Some would say this is just a hard problem to solve, but with hundreds of hours of staffers trying to fix it and millions in service fees you would think it would be fixed by now. Nope. This isn’t incompetence it is being done on purpose to make the government less transparent.

If you look at the ‘recent’ tab on the agenda page you will see now they list the oldest meeting first so you have to scroll all the way to the bottom to find the newest meeting. WHY!? They changed this recently.

I have said for a long time almost all the local government entities around us and in the state live stream their meetings on YouTube so you can pause them or watch them again right after they finish. It is also a FREE service, and since the city live streamed other events like pressers, their is absolutely no reason they could not use it for council meetings. If someone wants to see the agenda they can go to the city website you can also LINK that page under the YT live stream video.

Like I said, this all started with Mike the Maniac and his control over the media and staff ‘leaks’. But he has been gone for 7 years! FIX IT ALREADY!

1st Amendment Bishop Dudley House Downtown Sioux Falls Homeless Mayor TenHaken Open Government Open Meetings SF City Council

The City of Sioux Falls doesn’t understand transparency and open government

l3wis 7Comments

Here we go again, concocting some ‘solution’ for an issue in the city and not bringing the public along in that ‘solution’;

City officials say more information on a $150,000 marketing campaign aimed at addressing “nuisance behavior” and discouraging panhandling in downtown Sioux Falls is coming soon.

There have been several ‘rumored’ ordinances that are awaiting the council’s approval including making it illegal (trespassing/camping) in our parks. But why not have a public discussion where the citizens can offer solutions?

Asked for an update this week, TenHaken’s communications officer Vanessa Gomez said, “I would expect us to be able to share more in the next month or so.”

So what’s the big secret? If you are instituting new laws shouldn’t you tell the public in advance? My guess is that they are going to be very controversial and I wouldn’t doubt the ACLU gets involved. Just like the Brockhouse animals you are going to drop this in our laps at the last minute.

I told a city official last week that every country and community that has either solved homelessness or made virtually invisible did it one way; Transitional housing. I suggested the city buy four Tzadik properties on bank foreclosure, remodel them to be 1 bedroom and studios and gift them to the St. Francis house and offer them a yearly subsidy for handling the transitional housing. We seem to be throwing money at ad agencies to educate the public, but we are doing very little to actually help these folks. For $150K you could house 25 people for a year!

I suggest that moving forward, the council tells us what they are planning, and NOT next month, TODAY!

1st Amendment Canton Downtown Sioux Falls Harrisburg School District Mayor TenHaken Open Government Open Meetings Sioux Falls Tea

Is this proof that Mayor TenHaken is actively pursuing closed government?

l3wis 5Comments

Not sure, but I will lay this out for you. Around a year ago or so MPO (Metropolitan Planning Organization of Sioux Falls) had a zoom meeting. At the meeting were several city administrators I believe from Tea, Canton and Mayor TenHaken. The city manager of Harrisburg could NOT attend so he designated a private contractor who was the city’s acting (part-time) planning director at the time (they just recently pulled back after hiring Watertown’s Planning person). The ‘fill-in’ at the meeting said the discussion quickly turned to the dividing line between SF and Harrisburg and Poops adamant distinction of HWY 101 being that line. The ‘fill-in’, a former city of Sioux Falls engineer, disagreed with the mayor and said that is not ‘definitive’ and never has been. Then the mayor proceeded to accuse this person of lying about what he ‘knows’ and what he believes (I am still waiting for the minutes from the meeting). Besides the meeting itself being a little rough and contentious it was what Poops did after the meeting that was really petty. He instructed that MPO changes it’s meeting rules only to include city employees as fill-ins and not private contractors. While I agree, seemed it a little odd you would send your private contractor to this meeting, BUT, they were discussing planning and development and he was the acting planning director for Harrisburg, so it made sense at the time. I just find it incredibly insecure and petty to make a rule change because you didn’t like a private citizen telling you what was up in an a official meeting so you change the rules. You got a lot of issues man.

Marty Jackley Open Government Open Meetings South Dakotans State Funding State Legislature

South Dakota closed government, ripe with corruption

l3wis 1Comments

Our AG recently said that state government needs to be more transparent in the wake of all the rats stealing from the citizen coffers. If you think this is just a handful of bad actors, I can guarantee there are probably hundreds of state employees stealing from us. Why? Because, first off, it is RICH coming from a guy who helped cover up a DCI sexual harassment case, EB-5 and Gear-up. This is the guy promoting open government? LMFAO!

With one-party rule basically controlling most of the offices in South Dakota who is going to investigate wrong doings or lack of open government? Good question.

I keep telling people that OPEN government saves taxpayers money because it roots out unethical, fraudulent and corrupt actors. Open government is also more efficient because you don’t have to play the hiding secrets game so things get done much more quickly.

I don’t have much confidence in our AG telling us he is working towards a more open government, coming from a guy who has a Cummins Diesel engine attached to his paper shredder.

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Sioux Falls City Council Chair doesn’t like being yelled at

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